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Earlier, I managed to fill Temper completely in, starting from eight years ago. She’d always known someone had broken my heart, but until tonight she’d never known the details. I’d told her about my deal with the Bargainer and the mystery I’d gotten myself involved in, and lastly, I told her about Eli coming here during one of the Sacred Seven days and shifting on me.

Poor Eli. I’m no longer the only supernatural he’s going to have a reckoning with. And personally, I’d be much more scared of Temper’s wrath than mine.

Outside, the wind whistles against my windows, shaking the glass panes against their frames. It sounds like a dying creature. The waves crash angrily against the cliffs, the whole thing so loud that once I do fall asleep, it becomes the soundtrack to one anxious dream after another.

I hear those fae children in my head.

He’s coming for you. Coming to get you.

Their hands hold me in place while something in the distance creeps closer. Closer.

The moaning wind is speaking to me. Humming.

“Fee, fye, foe, fin, I caught the scent of a sweet siren. Fey, fye, fah, fing, I’ll pluck her feathers and make my bird sing.”

I try to pull against the children’s hold, but I’m stuck. I stare out my window, and I swear I see a dark silhouette against the night.

I drift, lost in the sea of my mind.

The doors and windows rattle. “Let me in, siren; I’ll give you wings to fly.” I swear I can hear the voice right in my ear. “Just open your door and part your pretty thighs.”

My exhale echoes in the still air.

“Callypso, it won’t be long …”

And then the strange dream evaporates away.

I rub myeyes as sunlight streams into my room. My nose itches as a soft feather flutters down it.

Scrubbing my face, I glance at the clock next to my bed.

Two p.m.?

I hadn’t planned on sleeping that long. Then again, for most of the night, I wasn’t really sleeping so much as gliding through one unsettling dream after the next.

I throw the covers off me, causing dozens of feathers to flutter into the air.

I make a face. Not the bedspread too.

Eli must’ve shredded up my comforter. I hadn’t realized …

I push out of bed, more feathers scattering along the floor.

Ugh.

I lift up a foot, peeling the little bastards off my skin, when I really take notice of the feathers littering my floor. Hundreds and hundreds of them are arranged in lines that arc away from my bed.

I back up, tilting my head.

When I see it, my blood runs cold.

It’s a wing. The feathers are laid out in the shape of awing.

Someone was in here.In my house. In my bedroom. Someone stood near me while I slept and meticulously placed hundreds of feathers.

I round the bed, my skin beginning to crawl, only to see another identical wing arcing from the other side of it.

I put a hand to my mouth. My heart feels like it’s going to pound out of my chest.