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ALICE MOVES AS if sleepwalking, and she falls asleep as soon as I get her upstairs and lay her on her bed. Her thin eyebrows are drawn up tight, and her stringy hair is glued to her neck and forehead. She shivers with nightmares and moans without waking up, not even stirring when I pull her into a sitting position to change the damp, clammy bedsheets. I wipe the sweat from her face and neck and sob, praying for whatever Isaac’s done to leave her system.

‘This craft is a poison.’ My grandmother’s voice is loud in my mind. ‘I’m sorry, baby.’

“Where were you?” I cry. “Where did you go?”

‘I am using all of my power to call back to the old mother, like you asked,’ she murmurs. ‘I couldn’t help you back there, and I can’t help you here.’

“There must be something I can do!”

She is silent, and I worry she’s gone again.

Then my body turns hot, and a new presence stretches beneath my skin. “Who—”

A new voice answers. ‘Jessie. A healer. Three generations back.’

“Please—” My voice cuts off in a strangle as Jessie pushes my hands over Alice’s forehead.

‘My healing and your immunity… maybe.’ A pause. ‘No herbs on this side, so you’ll have to do.’

“I’ll have to do wh—”

Red mage flame erupts from my palms and flows over Alice’s face and hair. Jessie won’t let me pull away. All I can do is watch with horror as my root, my aether, cascades down my friend’s body and soaks into her skin. Then Jessie releases me, and the flames snuff out.

The threat of fainting shudders through my frame. I’m drained. Weak.

Instead of herbs, Jessie used me , my own power and energy.

Alice’s eyes flutter open. “Bree…?”

“Alice!” My hands fall to her cheeks and smooth her damp hair away from her eyes.

She pulls at my wrist. “What happened?” she gasps, and her eyes dart back and forth. “There was a man. A man with red eyes… and fangs … and he—he took me somewhere. A house off campus—” She pushes up into a half-sitting position, trembling as the memories return. “You were there. They’d tied you up. Oh God. Oh God. He took my memories. ”

She starts to hyperventilate. I kneel, nearly falling forward in the process. My blood feels sluggish in my veins, heavy and spent.

“Just breathe,” I soothe, for myself and for her. “I’m right here.”

“They knew you.” Her brow furrows; then her eyes meet mine. “And you knew them.”

It’s time. I can’t avoid this anymore. “I can explain.”

When I finish telling Alice everything, she has a dozen questions ready to go. She paces the room, hands moving while she talks, while I kneel on the floor, recovering my reserves by the minute. Then she asks a new batch of questions about the Lines and the Order while changing out of her sweat-soaked pajamas and into jeans and a tee. I answer each inquiry one by one and end with Lord Davis’s plan.

Confident that she and I are both well enough, I push to my feet to search for new clothes while considering my options.

No, I consider if I even have any options.

I could just leave, like I agreed to do, I tell her. It’s my fault Alice is in the Order’s sights, and it will be my fault if they get to my father. I can’t risk her or my father falling to Isaac. I care less about my own well-being than theirs.

“But what about Nick?” she asks, standing as I pull on a black tank and leggings.

“I don’t know,” I say. I draw my hair into a tight, high puff. Battle ready. “No one’s texted or called to find out where I am, so whatever Lord Davis and Isaac are doing, they’ve either convinced everyone I’m gone for good or they’re keeping the chapter busy in some other way.”

“With demons?”

I bend to pull on my sneakers. “If Davis plans for Nick to take up Excalibur tonight, then he’s got to have a plan in motion to expose Nick to more Shadowborn. And putting Nick in danger puts everyone else in danger, including and especially Sel.”

My eyes fall to my mother’s box.

Our Brave Bree.

“Well,” Alice says, pulling her hair up too, “I’m coming with you.”

“No, you’re not,” I say, stunned.

She raises a brow. “You’ve been doing this by yourself. You need backup.”

“No, I need you to be safe. Lord Davis is behind all of this, Alice. He’s a monster. He got people killed, he sent my mother into hiding, kept me from my family’s truth. And now he wants to start a war, killing more innocents in the crossfire. I’m not letting him anywhere near you.”

She smirks. “And I could say the exact same about you.”

I blink, speechless.

“I won’t claim to be some sort of demon hunter, but I am your best friend, Matty. I loved your mother. I love you.” She meets me in the middle of the room, close enough that I can see the steel in her eyes. “So if this is your fight, then it’s my fight too.”