I bolt upright then, my gaze searching the shadowy darkness until it collides with Jaxon’s. “What’s going on?” I demand in a voice made shrill with fear. “Why am I in a cage?”

“It’s okay,” he soothes.

“It’s not okay. I’m not some animal in the zoo, Jaxon. Get me out of here. Now.”

I start to reach for the bars, then think better of it, since they’ve got this weird, electric glow to them and I can’t help wondering what that means…not to mention what it will mean for me if I touch them.

“We can’t do that, Grace. Not yet,” the Bloodletter answers.

“Why not?” For the first time, I start to wonder if Hudson’s words were actually true. If he wasn’t just saying those things to mess with me.

“Much as I enjoy messing with you, Grace, I’m not in the habit of issuing warnings for no reason,” Hudson admonishes from the shadows.

“Stop talking to me!” I practically shout back. “Can’t you see I’m in trouble here?”

Jaxon and the Bloodletter exchange a surprised look.

“Who are you talking to, Grace?” Jaxon asks.

“They can’t hear me,” Hudson reminds me, and I clamp my jaw tight.

“It’s okay,” the Bloodletter says. “I know Hudson is in there with you. I’m the one who put you to sleep when I realized just how strong Hudson’s hold on you is.”

Part of me wants to ask how she knows, but then I figure, why wouldn’t she? What’s the point of being that old if you don’t know a lot about a lot?

“Oh, please.” Hudson lets out a long-suffering sigh and steps away from the shadows again to pace in the narrow space next to my bed. “She makes me sound like a cult leader. I haven’t forced you do anything you didn’t want to do.”

I turn to him in shock. “You mean besides stealing the athame and trying to kill Cole? Oh, and the fact that I’ve now blacked out three times in as many days?”

“To be fair, Cole deserved it. And we didn’t try to kill him.”

I watch as the Bloodletter grabs Jaxon’s arm and pulls him away from the cage bars to tell him something privately. Fuck my life. More secrets.

But I use the space to hiss quietly back at Hudson. “You’re right. We didn’t do anything. You did.”

He sighs and leans against the ice wall again. “Potato, po-tah-to. But back to the situation at hand. I warned you not to trust her.”

“You warned me after she’d already put me in a cage. What good is that?” I snipe back.

“And besides, you’re the reason I’m even in this cage, so you’re the one I should be blaming.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Same song, different singer.” He waves a careless hand.

“I have no idea what that means.”

“It means more powerful people than you have bent over backward trying to absolve my little brother of guilt. I don’t even know why I’m surprised that you’ve turned out to be just like the rest of them.”

“I’m not trying to absolve Jaxon of anything!” I whisper-shout. “I’m just trying to get out of this damn cage. How did you come back without a body so that I’d be lucky enough to have you trapped in my head in the first place?”

“I came back with a body.” He shakes his head and glances at Jaxon, still conversing with the Bloodletter. “I was confused, too, but I know that much. The last thing I remember is my brother trying to kill me and I was moving on instinct, fading toward him to protect myself. When you turned to stone, I’m pretty sure you took my faded body that was still re-forming with you. And, well”—he spreads his hands wide—“here we are.”

That makes a twisted kind of sense to me, even though I don’t want it to be true. But what else could have happened? I didn’t shift to my gargoyle form on purpose—I didn’t even know it was possible. But if he was fading into me at the exact same time, maybe it messed with how I shifted. Or maybe I messed with how he faded. Either way, it really might be my fault that he’s trapped in my head. Ugh. So not what I wanted to realize.

I turn back to the Bloodletter with that knowledge churning in my head and try to get her attention again. “What do I need to do for you to let me out of here?”

The Bloodletter and Jaxon walk back to the cage bars. Jaxon’s face looks extremely worried, and I suddenly have the urge to hug him, to tell him everything is going to be all right.

“You’re the one in the cage, and you want to ease his suffering. Point fucking made,” Hudson growls, but I ignore him, holding Jaxon’s gaze instead.

The Bloodletter interrupts. “You need to let me teach you how to build a wall so you can lock Hudson out. You have to put a barrier between the two of you, Grace. Hudson can’t be trusted.”

“I know that.”

“Do you?” she asks. “Do you really? Because I don’t think you can fully understand until you know him. Until you see how he operates, up close and personal. You may not believe it, but the time will come when you want to empathize with him.”

“I would never—”

“Oh yes, you would. You will. But you can’t. You have to stay strong, to be on your guard at all times. No one in your world is more dangerous than Hudson. No one else can do what he can. He’ll tell you anything you need to hear, everything you want to hear. He’ll lie to you, he’ll trick you, and when you lower your guard, he’ll kill you. Or worse. He’ll kill everyone you love, just because he can.”

Hudson stops pacing, his face turning to stone as he waits for my reaction. Only his eyes are alive, a vivid, storm-tossed blue that delves into the very heart of me.

“I won’t let that happen. I swear,” I tell her, even as panic races through me. “How can I lock him out?”

“That’s what I want to show you,” she says. “If you’ll let me.”

“Of course I’ll let you. I thought that was the whole reason we were here—so you could teach me how to get rid of him. I just don’t understand why you felt like you needed to lock me up.” I turn to Jaxon. “Or why you thought it was okay to let her.”

He looks sick. “I didn’t—”

“He doesn’t have a choice. And neither do you. It’s bad enough that Hudson could take over your body. But now that he’s started talking to you, we have to find a way to create a partition between you and him before it’s too late. This cage will give us the freedom to do that, since he’s behind bars, too.”

I notice that she doesn’t mention that it protects anyone inside the cage from his power—namely me—but I don’t call her on it. Not when my stomach is doing a triple somersault in the worst possible way and I have bigger, more important things to question her about. “Too late?”

“Yes, too late,” she reiterates. “The longer we wait, the greater the chance that the next time he takes you over…” She pauses and glances at Jaxon before turning back to me. “The next time, you might not be able to find your way back.”

Her voice echoes ominously throughout the cavern, her warning hitting me like a wrecking ball. “That can’t really happen, can it?” I whisper through a throat tight with horror.

“Of course not!” Hudson starts pacing the room again. “I mean, seriously. Who would actually choose to spend their life as a Jaxon Vega fangirl?”

I ignore him.

“It’s absolutely possible,” the Bloodletter assures me. “And the longer he stays in you, the harder it’s going to be for you to get him out—especially if he decides he doesn’t want to go.”

Hudson runs a hand through his hair, his fingers tangling in the longer, wavy strands on top. “Believe me, that will not be a problem, Grace. I want out of you at least as much as you want me out.”

“What happens if he decides to stay?” I ask. “I mean, how does it happen?”

The Bloodletter studies me for several seconds, as if weighing how much she wants to say. “First, he’ll start to control you more often—and for longer periods of time. When he lets you go, it’ll be harder for you to remember who you are, harder to fit back into your everyday life, until it will seem easier to just let him take over. Until one day you just give up completely.”

“I wouldn’t do that to you, Grace. You have to trust me.” Hudson sounds almost as frantic as I feel. “Don’t build the wall. Don’t let her lock me up.”

I turn and stare into Hudson’s eyes. He’s stopped pacing now, and we both just hold the other’s gaze for what seems like minutes. I can’t tell what he’s thinking, but as he’s proven, he can hear every one of my thoughts. I wish I could trust you, but you know that’s impossible.

His shoulders slump, but he nods. “I know.” He must think the words this time, because his lips don’t move, yet I hear each one like a gunshot.

“Don’t listen to him,” Jaxon tells me urgently. “Whatever he’s saying to you is a lie. You can’t trust Hudson. You can’t—” He breaks off all of a sudden, his eyes wide with shock as he presses a hand to his chest.

“Stop him, Grace.” The Bloodletter’s voice slices like a lash.

“Stop what?” I demand as Jaxon stumbles forward a few steps before falling to his knees.

“You’re killing him,” she answers hoarsely, and that’s when I realize my hand is outstretched toward Jaxon, power like I’ve never felt before racing through my body.

I gasp, drop my hand. But Jaxon continues to clutch at his chest.

“Stop it!” I yell at Hudson. And when that doesn’t work, I beg. “Please stop! Don’t hurt him. Please don’t make me hurt him.”

And just like that, the flow of power evaporates.

“Jaxon?” I whisper as he slowly drops his hands back to his sides. “Are you all right?”