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Did they think I could control zombies and fix the Veil? That hadn’t been me.

I examined the nearest body. A woman, maybe forty, her gray skin stretched tight over sharp cheekbones. Her hands were chained to the table, palms up, fingers curled like sleeping spiders. Her original death obvious from the wound gaping on her neck like some sort of demonic smile.

Move, I thought.

Several minutes passed.

Nothing.

I focused harder. Reached for whatever had happened in that alley. Thinking about the pressure behind my eyes, the way the world had gone silent, the way the zombies had crumpled like puppets with cut strings.

Move.

Nothing.

My gaze trailed over the rest. Varied in age and gender, I couldn’t find a common denominator. Not even a cause of death. One shot. Another stabbed. Another with his skull bashed in. None of them twitched.

“Move,” I said aloud. My voice echoed off the tile walls, flat and strange.

Nothing.

I waited. Ten seconds. Twenty. The zombies remained as still as only death could.

It hadn’t been me at all.

It had been Jude.

I thought of him and unconsciously rubbed my ring. Surprised they’d let me keep it. Not many knew its significance.

My shoulder gave a dull throb before going numb. I swore I could feel the dark lines spreading. At the edge of my vision tiny dots of darkness seemed magnetized to me, floating into my space and vanishing within the dark leeching lines. What was it? Part of the weave?

I stepped between the tables of zombies and raised my good hand, as if to perform some magic yanked right out of a fantasy movie, and commanded, “Move!”

Nothing.

The utter lack of movement was almost comical.

Or maybe I was starting to snap.

I stood there in the silence, arm outstretched like an idiot, waiting for something that wasn’t going to happen. The cameras watched from above. The zombies stared at nothing with their hollow, dead eyes.

And the lights went out.

Not a blink, but instant, absolute darkness. The kind that made you wonder if your eyes were open at all.

I held my breath, listening, but the buzz of the fluorescent lights had died, the ventilation hum had stopped.

A power outage?

“Angel Mao.” The voice seeped from the walls, forming like a whisper from the shadows themselves. A chill slid up my spine. “Mate to Jude Alexander Holt.”

My blood ran cold. I clenched my good hand into a fist.

This had to be the changeling.

“I am,” I said, refusing to back down. “You’re the changeling that stalks Jude.”

An eerie titter filled the room, like broken bells clanking together. Fae? A lot of this felt fae.