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from me. “I’ve already deadened the sound to everyone outside this room using the Shift, which I’ll explain later. Remember, you have to destroy the mind where the soul lives. Destroying the brain is the only way to make sure the wraith doesn’t survive. Are you listening?” When I just kept shaking my head at him, he sighed. “You need to get used to this, anyway. Welcome to your life, guardian.”
    The shot shattered the quiet. Cold and snow exploded in the room, coating the walls, ceiling, Asher, and me in a thick layer of biting hoar frost. My heartbeat roared in my ears. White lay thick across my vision until tears and blinking washed my eyeballs clean.
    When I could finally see again, I wished I couldn’t. Red bloomed under the snow like a blood rose, spreading across the lump underneath that had once been her face. Had Ava been aware the wraith was inside her? Had she seen Asher put the gun to her head, known she would die with no way to stop it? Why couldn’t he pull it out?
    I rolled on the bed and unloaded my stomach, retching until nothing remained but bile. Wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I sat back again, shaking uncontrollably.
    Asher had murdered my roommate. Just shot her. In the face. Without so much as a flinch. He’d said he deadened the sound, but someone had to have heard that. Were the cops on their way? Would they arrest me because I couldn’t stop him?
    “Jesus. You killed her. Why did you do that? What do we do now? Oh, God, her family. She was going to be an engineer.” I pressed my palms to my temples where a headache cranked around inside. “Her dad will never see her graduate.” Some part of me wondered if I was talking about myself as well as Ava.
    Asher stood there, head bowed, eyes hidden by the bangs that slid down to cover them. The blue markings had ghosted under his skin as if they’d never been. His arms hung straight at his sides, and he still clutched the gun. His other hand dug into his pocket and came out with a cell phone.
    “We need containment at my location … yes … the gathering needs to be today … two hours, at the mansion.” He re-pocketed the phone and held his hand out to me. Speckles of red dotted his knuckles and the tops of his fingers. Not that he seemed to notice, or if he did, didn’t care that he had the freckles of someone’s death on him. “Come on, Plaid. We really do need to go now.” His voice held something, exhaustion maybe.
    My shaking worsened. “You stay the hell away from me,” I squeaked out through a sob. “Get away from me!” I launched off the bed and went for the door, but he grabbed me around the waist.
    The room blurred, warped better than a fun-house mirror’s reflection.
    “Hush now,” he whispered against my ear in a voice full of some thick emotion that slid over me like a kind hand against bruised flesh. “Don’t fear me. Never me. I’ve got you.”
    That thrumming pulse beat against me in rhythmic waves. The machine within me, within the universe, had started up again. I struggled against his hold, but my body relaxed into the heat of him against my will. Energy spun out from him, surrounding me like a hot wind. His cologne filled my nose, already familiar, stirring a sense of safety I didn’t understand.
    It was a lie. He wasn’t safe.
    He was the monster.
    White nibbled away the corners of my vision. We stood in a heartbeat of the great unknown beast that grew louder and louder. I held on as long as I could, but calm and dizziness sucked me under.

Chapter 7
    Something cool lay across my forehead. “You’re safe here, Addison,” a woman said in a songlike tone. “I’m a friend.”
    Since when did I have any of those? I blinked my eyes open. Why had they shut? Had I been sleeping? If I was sleeping, then the dread rattling my bones must have been from a nightmare. I studied a slender face I didn’t recognize, her hair streaked at least a half-dozen different neon colors, as if a truckload