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“You’re wasting your time.” The Drone’s voice drew my attention, his mouth twisting against his mangled cheek. “You can’t control them.”

Because he could override my control, even when I was fueled by Yang. He could also scramble the signals. He had created the mutations after all.

My chest collapsed with helplessness, and the heave of my breaths shook my body. I ducked my face beneath the surface to wake the fuck up. But when I blinked at the shore, the monster was still there.

I swiped at the blood tickling my lip. “What do you want, Aiman?”

“The Drone.” Fangs glistened, so much longer and pointier than I remembered. “Address me by my title.”

He’s a phantom. A harmless, residual puff of nothingness. I armored myself with that thought and stood to my full height.

Water rushed off my body, and the surface lapped at my hips. “I’ll address you however I want. You’re dead.”

His eyes blackened, as dense and dark as his cloak. “Am I?”

A goddamned volcano had swallowed him. Apparently, ghosts couldn’t grasp the fact that they were dead. My children’s apparitions never seemed aware of it.

I gestured to the stagnant stillness around us. “We’re in the spirit world, asshole. Which means you’re just a fog of hateful energy and neurotic memories.”

So why wasn’t he transparent like Annie and Aaron? I inched forward until a few yards separated us.

His chest and shoulders were broad and solid, standing a few inches taller than six feet. The toe of his boot peeked from beneath the cape, firmly planted on the dirt, indenting it and leaving a footprint.

He didn’t have to be floaty and airy, but it certainly would’ve eased my wildly beating heart. Could he have survived that fall? I never actually saw his body hit the lava.

“You look confused, Eveline, but I think you know what is real and what is…spirit.” His Arabic inflection tumbled out with sophistication despite the mouthful of teeth. “Besides, you and I have a connection that defies all rules.”

“There is no you and I.”

And he was an illusion.

Maybe Jesse was okay. Maybe the aphid sensations in my gut were illusions, too.

In the distance, a toad croaked. A toad? Couldn’t be. Whenever I crossed over to never-never-land, the ripple of life vanished.

But that wasn’t true, was it? Aaron told me once I could bring life with me.

My fingernails dug like knives in my palms as I willed myself back to reality. Silence cocooned the landscape, my heartbeat the only sound as it rushed past my ears. “Why am I here?”

“I am here because I’ve grown tired of waiting.”

Though I stood as tall as possible in the pond, my insides shrunk with dread. “Waiting for what?”

“We want the same thing,” he said, matter-of-factly.

My lungs constricted. “And what is that exactly?”

“We both want nymphs.”

When the Drone was alive, he’d twisted his religious beliefs beyond sanity and massacred the human race in the name of Allah. He used nymphs to breed a perfect, Drone-serving species. Obviously, we didn’t want nymphs for the same reason, and evidently, death hadn’t cured his madness.

Sliding footsteps marked his approach, pausing when the hem of his cape touched the water.

Then it dawned on me. He’d never fully escaped his aphid mutation, which meant he couldn’t enter the pond. I splashed, splaying my hands and directing waves of water as I rushed forward. He backed up, the hem of the cloak sloshing over the dirt.

Shadows swelled behind him, taking the form of hard, shell-like wings.

Oh shit. Not good. I stumbled backward, dipping lower in the water.

The black holes of his eyes impossibly darkened. “How is Dr. Nealy’s health?” He dragged his tongue over one fang. “Any new cravings?”

Had he bitten Michio as part of some plan? Fury blasted through my body, inflaming my face.

I charged forward, splashing frantically. “It must suck knowing your life’s work is so easily washed away with a drop of my blood.”

And now I had a new weapon. Trustworthy or not, Michio was stronger, healthier, maybe even invincible. No one could stop us from reversing the nymph mutation. That thought fueled my stupid courage as I continued to spray water at the retreating shadow.

His wings snapped out, shooting him skyward like a bullet in the night. His godawful roar followed him as he swooped back down, his melted face warping in rage.

I dropped to my ass, sinking into the water until the surface submerged my chin. He can’t hurt me. He can’t hurt me.

His claw swung out, and a cold painful smack slammed into my face, hurling me into blackness.

My body spiraled in a sea of black, and suffocating terror washed over my face. I wanted to draw air, but I was submerged beneath water. My legs and arms flailed, connecting with nothing, falling…

The Drone. His wings in the sky. The claw in my face. Was he hovering above the surface? Waiting for me to come up?