Page 79 of Death Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

Some staff looked confused, as if their brains had decided the last five minutes were too much and filed it under a stress hallucination.

Relief hit me so hard I almost sagged.

Then my phone buzzed.

Eve.

One message.

Dagna is here.

I stared at the screen, then looked at Faith. “She’s in the parking lot.”

Faith’s expression hardened into something deadly and bright. “Good.”

Nishi gave a quick order to her hunters over comms, then looked at Cal. “Stay with Salima. Protect her. We are going outside.”

Cal’s gaze flicked to me, worried. “I’m not leaving you.”

“I’m coming,” I replied, and my voice sounded steadier than I felt. “If Dagna is here, she’s connected to the relic. I might be the only one who can feel the thread once the shield is breached.”

Cal did not like that. I could feel his displeasure through the echo of our earlier bond flare, as if his emotions were louder around me now.

Still, he nodded. “Then stay close.”

We moved back through the hospital corridors, past Delia working faces into calm, past Spencer coordinating vampire reinforcements, past officers trying to pretend they had this under control.

Outside, the parking lot had shifted. The air near the shield edge pulsed, like heat shimmer made of shadow.

Eve and Tegan stood near the service road, waiting.

Greyson arrived a moment later in his truck, stepping out with a metal case in his hand like he was bringing a power tool to a magic fight, which, to be fair, was exactly what he was doing.

He popped the case open and pulled out a compact device that looked like a lantern built by an angry engineer. Runes etched along its frame. A crystal core. Wire wrapped around it in a tight spiral.

Faith stared. “What is that?”

Greyson smiled without humor. “A magical argument with physics.”

Tegan leaned in, eyes narrowing. “You built a shield piercer.”

“I built a shield irritant,” Greyson corrected. “It will not drop the curtain. It will give us a slit to look through, for about thirty seconds, before the shield adapts.”

Faith’s mouth tightened. “Thirty seconds.”

Greyson gave her a look. “It’s the best I can do on short notice.”

Faith sighed. “Fine. Do it.”

Greyson set the device on the ground, adjusted a dial, then pressed his palm to the top. The runes flared.

The air in front of us rippled.

A thin vertical seam appeared in the shadow film, like someone had unzipped reality just a little.

And standing on the other side of it, half in the dim pocket of the shield, was a woman with dark hair and a smile that belonged in a nightmare.

Dagna Fade looked as if she had seen better days.