Kiora stares out the empty window.

We have to get out of here. We have to leave. The blood wizard is here.

The thing about the blood wizard is that he can be inside you, he can be influencing you, and you won't even know it.

This is all the blood wizard’s doing. It has to be. He's the one behind all of this. Behind Renald. Behind Renald's boss.

I stare at Kiora's horns.

Maybe she's right.

Maybe we do need the Belladonna royal guard. I don't know how to reach them, and the only place I know that might be safe is that witch safe house Kiora mentioned.

“We're going,” I say. “Now.”

Kiora stares out the open window.

“It's him,” she says in a quiet voice.

“Yeah,” I say, confused as to how she knows about the blood wizard. “You've heard of him?”

“Only in fairytales,” she says. “He was the one who—”

Downstairs there's several large crashes that end in a guttural scream.

We both look at each other before running out of the room, flying down the stairs, and into the living room. There, we find Silvy, lapping at a rapidly growing puddle of blood.

Both of the adepts are dead.

One of the adepts has his fingers buried in the other adept’s eye sockets. The blind adept, holds the hilt of a knife, the blade of which we can't see as it's buried in the other adept’s stomach.

“What happened?” I ask Silvy, already knowing the answer.

She pauses from her drinking to answer, confirming my worst fears. “He's here. He slipped into them and made them kill each other. I sort of tried to stop them but not really.”

“How do you know about the blood wizard, Hex?” Kiora asks. Her voice shakes.

Silvy giggles. “She fought him in the Shadow Vaile. She killed the vessel he was inside of.”

Kiora gazes at me with a sort of newfound respect that I don't feel I deserve.

“We're leaving,” I say.

Silvy raises an eyebrow. “Where to?”

“That witch safe house Kiora mentioned earlier. If we’re dealing with the blood wizard, we’re gonna need all the help we can get and from what Kiora has said, they believe in him.”

“And the Austerium doesn't,” Silvy finishes.

“Exactly. The only problem is Kiora doesn't know how to get there.”

Silvy addresses Kiora. “Darling, I find it hard to believe that your bodyguard did not let you know where the location of the safe house is.”

“I know where the safe house is,” Kiora snaps.

What?!

“What?!” I say. “You just said you didn't know where it was.”

Kiora shakes her head. “No, I said I didn't know how to get there, and I don't. All I have is an address.”

I close my eyes and shake my head, trying to staple my patience to my body so it won't completely leave me.

“Arbor made me enter it in my phone,” Kiora adds helpfully.

“Good,” I say. “That's great. Can I have it?”

Kiora gives me the address, I plug it into my phone, and breathe a sigh of relief when I see where it's located.

It inside of Nightsbridge city limits. It's within the boundaries of my exile.

Thankfully.

“Out of curiosity,” Silvy says, “what was that thump I heard earlier from outside?”

“Marist,” I answer, remembering what had happened. “The blood wizard possessed her.”

Silvy nods as though this answer makes complete sense. “Are you planning on leaving her out there?”

I'm not sure how I forgot, but so much has just taken place within a five minute span that I've completely blocked out Marist throwing herself out the window. No, scratch that, I've blocked out the blood wizard possessing Marist and throwing her out the window.

I glance out the window of the living room and into the front yard. It's dark enough outside that no one will probably see her lying in a heap on the lawn until morning.

We should drag her inside. That will buy us at least a day or two, assuming no one notices the missing adepts, which isn't likely. It's worth a shot though.

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I run to the front door, pull it open, and take one step outside before I freeze in place. Marist is lying on her back, but her leg is moving. She still alive.

I run back inside. “We need to get out of here. If that fall didn't sever his connection to Marist, he might be able to slip back in.”

Kiora nods. “Where do we go? How do we get there?”

“We use her car.” I grab her keys from the kitchen. “Grab some food too.”

Kiora rifles through the pantry, grabbing pop tarts and some granola bars.

It'll have to do. Breakfast of champions, breakfast of fugitives.

Once she has the food, I pull several bottles of water from the fridge and make a call.

The emergency dispatcher is nice enough, but I don't stick around on the call long enough to give her much more information than the address and what happened to Marist.

I think about telling the dispatcher about the whole blood magick thing, but I've got a feeling the ambulance won't show up if I mention it.

That done, we head to the garage, hop in the car, and drive away.

Glancing into the front yard, I see Marist still lying there. I get a quick flash in my imagination of her sitting up like Michael Myers and turning her head to stare at us. She just lies there, looking all the world like a rumpled pile of clothing on the front lawn.

We drive out of the suburbs and into the main part of Nightsbridge.

It's at a stoplight when it happens.

Kiora and I are both eating, drinking water, and generally not speaking about what we've seen over the past few hours. The bodies. The blood. The death.

A guy pulls up next to us, looks over, and smiles. I smile back at him, annoyed, my mouth full of food, showing him all the chewed-up bits so he'll leave us alone.

He doesn't.

His smile stays plastered on his face as he sits in the driver's seat, completely still. He blinks and when his eyes open, they're tomato red.

He lifts a single finger and waves to me with it. He revs his car's engine.

The light is still red.

To my left, I see an eighteen wheeler approaching the intersection. Not fast, but not slow either. I glance back at the guy in the car, the guy who the blood wizard is inside of. That smile is still plastered on his face, but now he's nodding at me.

As the eighteen wheeler is just about to enter the intersection, the guy next to me guns his engine, pulling in front of the massive truck at the last second. The sound of metal and glass breaking in the night is enormous, like a physical beast tearing its way through our windows. Kiora covers her mouth, choking on granola.

I stare in horror at what the blood wizard has just done. He might've killed two people. Not just the driver in the car, but also the driver of the eighteen wheeler.

The blood wizard has raised the stakes.

I u-turn and floor it, turning right on the first street I see.

I drive, slowing down, trying to stay calm. A car in the opposite lane of traffic, pulls into my lane, flashing its brights on as the driver floors it.

I swear out of the way and watch in my rearview as the car barreled into a storefront.

Please let that store have been empty. Please let it have been closed.

I lick my lips.

How is he doing this? How can he be controlling so many random people in Nightsbridge? It doesn't make any sense.

Another vehicle veers into my lane of traffic, this one a truck. When I swerve again and the truck swerves with me. I spin the wheel back around, my backend kicking out and slamming into the front of the truck. I shift the car into reverse and gun it.

We shoot down a back alley, and then cut through another, finally pulling into a two-story garage for an office building.

“What is going on?” Kiora asks. “Why is everyone trying to kill you?”

“Not everyone,” I say. “One person. The blood wizard.”

“How?” she asks. “How is he controlling them?”

I open my mouth to answer but nothing comes out.

“How are we supposed to get to the safe house if he's following us?” Kiora asks. “We can't let him know where it is. It’ll put all of our lives at risk.”

I glance down at the map on my phone.

I swallow. “Okay. Let's go on foot. I feel like he's looking for this car right now. Maybe he won't expect to be looking for pedestrians.”

Kiora gives me a smile. “You wouldn't happen to have any witchstones that make you turn invisible, would you?”

I smile and nod. “I do. I have a bunch of those.”

She gives me a sick smile. “Back in Blackhart, right?”

“Right.”

“Great.”

“Exactly.”

We slip the pop tarts and granola bars into our pockets, finish our water, and get out of the car.

“Stay close to me,” I whisper.

“Can Silvy open a portal to the safe house?”

I shake my head. “Not unless we go to the Shadow Vaile. She can only open direct portals to places she's been or seen.”

“How did she open one to Marist’s?”

“I’ve driven by there.”

“Doesn't your maps app have a Street view?”

I shake my head. “I mean, yeah, it does, but that won't help. She has to have physically seen it.”

“Not helpful,” Kiora mutters.

“She never is.”

“I can hear you both,” Silvy says after appearing on my shoulder. “You know that just because you to can't see me doesn't mean I'm not here.”

“Maybe she'll go away,” Kiora says.

“Maybe,” I say. “Fingers crossed.”

We make our way out of the garage and through a back alley. Once there we stick to the shadows, moving from dumpster to dumpster, keeping an eye out for any cars or trucks that are moving slowly, searching for us. At the end of the alleyway, I stick my head out, looking into the street.

All the traffic lights blink yellow even though they should be functioning properly. All the cars and trucks on the road drive in slow circles.

I duck back behind the dumpster and we wait for ten minutes. I stick my head out then and see that the flashing lights have turned back to regular traffic lights. The vehicles are still circling, but they've moved farther away.

He's searching for us.

“Can you run?” I ask.

Kiora nods.

I count us down and we sprint across the road. I am fully expecting to get hit by a car at any moment. On the other side of the road is the beginning of a subdivision.

We make our way down the street, constantly looking around. Anytime we spot headlights coming, we run into the bushes and hide behind them. My nerves burn with panic.

At one point, a lamp in one of the yards turns on and I let out a tiny shriek. My hands shake.

When we finally make it to the safe house, we both stare up at it. It's another two-story building, although this one is all modern architecture. Glass and concrete.

We walk up to the front door and Kiora places her thumb on a black little square directly below the peephole. It looks like a leftover piece of electrical tape, but after a split second, there's a click and the door cracks open.

“Home sweet home,” Kiora says, pushing the door open.

We step in and close the door behind us. Both of us let out sighs of relief in the darkened house.

Silvy starts giggling. “You're not going to want to turn on the lights.”

“Why not?” Kiora asks, walking across the room. I heard her trip and fall, hitting the ground hard.

“What was that?” I ask. “Are you okay? Is someone in here?”

“I'm okay,” Kiora says. “I just tripped on something.”

She turns on the light and we both stared at two people.

Two bodies.

I immediately recognize the asymmetrical green horns.

It's the witch I saw inside of C&C. Beside this witch is the other one. The witch who'd been holding her hand.

Both of them float upside down at the center of the room, slowly turning as their knuckles drag bloody circles against the tile.

At the center of the bloody circle on the left, written in blood, is the word Hexana.

At the center of the circle on the right, is the word Covington.

Hexana Covington. My name. I'm next.