He moves.
Cassian’s out of the car before I can blink. The door slams shut behind him, and in one fluid motion, he crouches low and slips around the hedge like a shadow with a vendetta.
What the hell?
And that’s when I hear it. A voice behind me. It's too close.
“Who the hell are you?”
I freeze.
My blood goes cold.
I don’t turn around. Not yet. Because that voice, it’s notjustclose. It’s pointed. Directed at me.
Well, shit.
Before I can decide, a hand clamps around my wrist.
“Hey!” the cop barks. “I said who are—?”
He doesn’t finish.
Because right then, something goes wrong. Not with him. Withme.
It’s like getting struck by lightning from the inside out. My whole body jolts, nerves short-circuiting. I lose my footing.
No. It's worse than that.
I lose thefloor.
One second, I’m standing on the Candy Maker’s hideous carpet. The next, I’m falling.
Not into the basement.
Not into another room.
Not even into a different part of the house.
I’m falling through nothing.
No sound.
No gravity.
No walls.
No up. No down.
The world winks out like a blown lightbulb, and for one breathless heartbeat, I hang suspended in a pressure-thick void. Like the universe just swallowed me whole and can’t decide whether to spit me out or digest me alive.
My scream catches, stuck behind clenched teeth.
And then—
I land.
Hard. Flat on my back on something cold, solid… and weirdly familiar.
