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Celie stilled, then stepped aside to reveal a silver-haired woman standing at the threshold, her arms folded across her chest. Stormy grey eyes glared at Evan, faint wrinkles pulling at her skin. As she approached, he instantly cowered.

“Wait, wait, let me explain—”

Evan’s hands were occupied with the soup bowl so he couldn’t protect his ears. Rhea instantly reached out and pinched the lobe, bony fingers tight like iron clamps.

Evan hissed, pleading for mercy but Rhea just dug her fingers harder into this earlobe, her brows drawn together.

“You got into trouble again and nothing small this time, Evan,” she let go of his ear, a barely perceptible tinge of concern fleeting past her grey eyes. “You could have lost your life. Along with several others.”

Evan handed the bowl back to Celie who was as stone-faced as ever around Rhea, then rubbed his ear. “But I didn’t. No one died. And it’s all done. Bygones, Rhea. Let bygones be bygo—Aaah!”

Rhea’s claws clamped down on his ear again. “You’re not old enough to lecture me, boy.”

“Okay, okay. Sorry. Let go—please, let go. It really hurts. I haven’t recovered completely from my injuries.”

Rhea loosened her grip and stared at Evan for a long moment as he nursed his reddened ear. Then with a sigh, she shook her head. “You’ve strolled down a grave path, Evan. If you think this is over, you couldn’t be farther away from the truth.”

Evan paused, the pain in his ear forgotten. “What do you mean?”

Rhea frowned at Evan, then her eyes trailed to the floor. Her frown deepened “What is this? I’ve told you to keep the space around your bed clean. Are you so attached to bad luck?”

“What…” With a puzzled look, Evan glanced down.

Black stains dotted the white tiles near his bed as if something was crudely scrubbed away. “DidIdo that?”

Celie stilled. And the other two sharp-sensed individuals instantly noticed the shift in her demeanor. Rhea stared at her unblinkingly, making the girl shuffle uncomfortably.

Evan straightened, an unsettling feeling stirring in his chest.

“Celie?”

With a thick swallow, Celie dropped her head. When she spoke, her voice wavered. “When… When Aaron took you and disappeared. Misty… I think she was inside the room. By the time we found her, she was…”

A sharp pain pricked Evan’s abdomen where he was stabbed with the shard of spiritual energy, even though the injury had already healed after hours of rest. But he didn’t hunch over andgroan in pain. Didn’t even move. His eyes dropped to the black stains on the floor.

They weren’t, in fact, black. But a dark red.

Blood red.

Misty.

Evan clenched his jaws to keep his chin from quivering as he stood up. He didn’t break down like he wanted to, didn’t cry his heart out or burn his room down. If he could freely express his grief, the world would go up in flames around him.

Silently, he walked out of the room, steps sluggish and unsteady. He looked around the living room in a daze, the kitchen, inside the cabinets. The bathroom, guest room, storage.

Nothing.

Empty.

He didn’t even know what he was looking for. Perhaps for a ball of black fur curled in a corner, injured, recovering.

No one had explicitly said she was dead, right?

Yet, when Evan plopped down on the couch in his living room, the grey cover dusted with black cat fur, his eye turned bloodshot. Deep down he knew she was gone. Her absence was similar to losing a limb. Even though it felt like she was there, she wasn’t. She would never be.

If only he hadn’t been in the room. If only he hadn’t come home that day. If only he’d been stuck in the Enclave Passage forever, maybe Knox wouldn’t have been able to abduct Evan.

Maybe Misty wouldn’t have been dead.