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He’s going to lay his hands on me. I’m not going to escape this house, not ever.

There are drumbeats in the background. Or maybe that’s my pulse.

He reaches for me.

The noise swarms around me. Louder, louder, louder. It’s all I hear.

And then it shatters.

“Callie, Callie, Callie,” he says. “Callie, Callie, Callie—”

“Callie, wake up!”

I gasp, my eyes snapping open.

Gazing down at me, the Bargainer looks half mad, his jaw clenched impossibly tight and his brows sitting heavily above his wild eyes. His pale hair hangs loose around his face.

I suck in a heaving breath, wiping away the moisture on my cheeks.

A nightmare. It was nothing more than a nightmare.

Des’s hands grip my upper arms, and now I reach out and squeeze his hard forearms, just to make sure he’s real.

I’m breathing heavily, and now we search each other’s eyes. He’s seeing everything in mine—all the dark little pieces of me that I lock away during the day. Deep in the night, they get stripped away.

I hate it, that he’s seeing how scared I am of my past.

But I’m also seeing things I shouldn’t be seeing in his expression. Like fear, concern. He’s all raw edges right now.

“He’s gone, Callie,” the Bargainer says. “He’s gone and he’s not coming back.”

I don’t bother asking how he knows any of this. I simply nod. It’s the thing he and I don’t talk about.

Then awareness seeps in. Des’s is mostly on my bed, and our hands are all over each other. If he were anyone else, his presence would scare the living shit out of me.

But Des is … Des is my moonlight.

A chilly breeze raises my gooseflesh, and I look past him, towards the window above my desk. Only a few jagged pieces of glass are still lodged in the frame. The rest of the window pane is scattered in shards on my floor.

I blink a few times, then turn back to the Bargainer.

He lifts a hand to the mess, and the shards of glass rise into the air. Piece by piece they fit themselves back together until the pane of glass is whole once more. “I used the window.”

“Youflew?” I ask, skeptical and a little curious. I’ve still never seen what his wings look like.

He gives a slight nod.

“You wouldn’t wake up,” he says, and I hear a thread of concern in his voice.

I don’t usually wake up. Not when I’m that far under the pull of my nightmares. I have to let them play out.

“How did you know?” I ask. “About the nightmare, I mean.”

He’s still searching my face, like he’s trying to make certain I’m okay. “It doesn’t matter.” He releases my arms. “Scoot over.”

I do so, and he settles in next to me, his back resting against my headboard. “The guy was a real asshole, wasn’t he?”

I know he means my father.