I am lost to a world of dreams.

“I’ve been waiting a long time for you,” a deep voice says.

Even though I’ve never heard his voice, I know who it is, and I hate him. Levi.

A forked tongue dances in front of my face. “Do you feel it?” Levi asks. “Power.” He inhales. “Ah, it feels good.”

A serpent large enough to be a dragon slithers into view. Straight out of darkness. There is only him and a black backdrop.

“We finally meet, Harper Sinclair.”

“Where am I?” I ask.

“Dreams,” he answers. “The horror of the Infernum without actually being here. Maddeningly dark, isn’t it?”

There’s nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide. Only blackness.

“Why?”

He laughs, circling me, his tongue hissing. “Because you have the power to pull me free.”

“I don’t,” I protest. “My family . . . we don’t have that kind of power.”

“You do.” He sounds so sure of himself.

Anger wells up inside of me, and I spin, trying my best to keep up with him as he moves. Faster and faster we go.

“You made me do terrible things,” I call out, my voice shaking. I have a bad habit of crying when I’m angry.

“You could be so much more than what you are, Harper,” Levi tells me. He stops so abruptly, I almost fall into him, his large, reptilian eyes glowing red. He has silver scales, and they shine even though there’s no light to make them glow. “You were born from darkness. Just like the demons here. A human born to the underworld. Your soul for power,” he offers. “Give me your humanity, and you’ll never feel pain again. You’ll never know it.”

“Harper.”

Somewhere beyond the darkness, someone calls my name.

Levi hisses, his fangs flashing. “Choose!” he yells, all patience gone.

“You will die,” I tell him, my voice frosty. “For what you’ve done to that man when I was small. For what you’ve done to people. You will die.”

I suddenly wish I knew the man I’d given the message to. What his name was and whether or not he had a family. Maybe it’s better he stays unknown to me, but there is power in knowing a name. A power that lets people put things to rest, and I want to put him to rest. I need to put him to rest.

“You will die,” I promise.

Levi’s eyes glow. “You would have been magnificent.”

Fangs dripping, he lunges for me.

I fall into another dream.

I am inside a tent. Other than a circle of lit candles, an athame, and a snake—a large dark boa constrictor—there is nothing in the space except a cloaked elderly woman sitting cross-legged in the center of the candles. The snake slithers around her, easing his body through her legs and over her clothes. Squeezing her. Loving her.

Long, stringy silver hair surrounds a face as craggy as a mountain. The woman’s eyes are closed.

It’s hot inside the space, the air so thick and heavy, it’s hard to breathe. I catch a whiff of stagnant mud and sulfur.

A rustling at the tent’s entrance draws my attention.

Two figures duck inside.

I gasp. My parents.

The woman’s eyes pop open. “Why have you come to me?”

My mother—a woman I’ve only seen in pictures—steps forward. Her stomach is swollen, her long brown hair pulled protectively around her shoulders, her green eyes glowing. She looks too young to be my mother. She looks like me. I look like her.

My dad is a study in opposites. Auburn hair. Brown eyes. Slender and athletic. A pair of glasses sits perched on his nose, the spectacles softening a face that would otherwise be rugged.

“We need help,” my mother pleads.

The woman waves at her candle-lit circle, and my parents join her. Heads bent, they whisper frantic words I’m not meant to hear.

“Stop!” I beg them. “She’s going to hurt you.”

I am nothing and no one.

The elderly woman lifts the athame, pulls the ceremonial knife free from its sheath, and places it against my mother’s stomach.

I can’t look.

I can’t look away.

Lifting my mother’s shirt, the woman grins, baring rotten teeth and gums glistening with spittle.

“Don’t!” I beg.

She plunges the athame into my mother’s pregnant belly.

If she screams, it’s lost to me.

“Help me,” I cry.