“Let go of my wrist, Oliver.”
“I can’t.” The voice that comes out of him doesn’t even sound like his. “I need you.”
Her breath catches. The sound is so quiet, it’s almost imperceptible. But he hears it. He clings to it.
“It’s just the feed,” she repeats, and she’s lying. He knows she is. She has to be. “It’s not real.”
“Don’t—don’t say that.” He gapes down at her, bewildered, searching for a tell. “How can you think that? I’m so fucking gone for you, Shea Parker. Everyone sees it but you.”
She blinks. Blinks again. She looks like she did that night in the devil’s backbone, clearing her eyes of a thrall. Resurfacing. He can feel himself losing her, and it makes him rabid with terror.
“Tell me what I have to do,” he begs. “Tell me how to fix this.”
“There’s nothing to fix.”
“No.” He shakes his head. “No, I don’t accept that.”
“Let go of her, Lys.”
His head kicks up, and there’s Asher, standing on the threshold as if he’s been there all along. And maybe he has been. Lysander is off-kilter, unable to see anything—hear anything—other than the girl in front of him. Funny, he always thought the fire in her chest burned the same as the flame in his. And now he’s gone and snuffed it out. She’s cold as a coal in his hand.
“Did you hear me?” asks Asher. “I said, let her go.”
He obeys, blood humming in his ears. Shea slinks back from him the moment she’s free, gripping her wrist to her chest like he’s bitten her. He feels disoriented, sick, his equilibrium thrown off. Out of alignment, his body attuned to nothing but the way she moves, the way she breathes, the way her heart beats out of lockstep.
Distantly, he hears Asher ask, “Are you okay?”
“I have nothing to say to you,” snaps Shea. “Not unless it’s about Ellie.”
She’s leaving, her bare feet thudding against the hardwood, Asher on her heels.
“Shea, come on,” he calls, “we have to talk at some—”
A door slams shut somewhere out of sight. It rattles the joists, sets the old wooden cabin resettling on its haunches. Lysander tips back against the cool porcelain of the sink, striving for a calm he doesn’t feel. He can sense Asher watching him, his expression grim.
“Are we fighting, too?”
“Don’t start,” says Asher.
“Why not? Misery loves company.”
Mephistopheles. A Faustian horror. A master manipulator. A demon from the deep woods. He is what he is. What he’s always been.
“Why haven’t you killed me?” he asks Asher.
Asher grimaces. “What kind of question is that?”
“I’ve punched a hole through your life at every turn.” He runs a finger along the inside of his collar, the muscles in his neck stiff. “You’re just going along with it. It doesn’t make sense. You’re a good shot. Why haven’t you taken it?”
He doesn’t miss the way Asher’s trigger finger twitches. “You and I have a deal.”
“And I haven’t held up my end of it. We’re no closer to finding your sister than we were at the start. We’re not even looking.”
“Don’t bait me,” says Asher.
“It’s an innocent conversation, Sunshine.”
“No, you’re upset, and you’re looking for a fight. I’m not giving you one.”
