“Randolph!” I shouted.

“What?” he yelled from the kitchen.

I burst through the double doors, never as glad to hear the irritation in his voice as I was then, and gripped the shoulder of his orange vest tightly. “I need you to look at my wrist.”

“Your wrist… Why?” His gaze snagged on my face and what must’ve been unease behind my eyes. The last of his color drained away. “Are you okay? Did you see…something?”

I shoved my arm at him. “Just tell me what you see.”

“Okay.” He gently took my arm, and that single action reached through my worried haze to remind me how much I missed Pop. “What am I looking for? Were you hurt?”

“In the elevator. I thought I saw…” I shook my head at the impossibility of it all. “Scales. Saelis scales.”

His dark, bushy eyebrows drew together over his brown eyes as he gazed down at my wrist. “But…there’s nothing there.”

“I felt them, Randolph,” I said, my voice low. “They were there, and then they weren’t.”

He grasped both my elbows, concern lining his brow. “This is what happens when you try to go cold turkey with your iron. You see things that aren’t there. Trust me, that’s all it was.” His voice sounded raspy, almost like a warning hiss to convince me. And maybe him, too. He hadn’t handled the haunted ship well at all.

It couldn’t be a sign of withdrawal, though, since I’d had a forced dose of iron just moments before I’d seen the scales. But I also didn’t want to needlessly worry Randolph with this. Rusted balls, it had been stupid to tell him in the first place.

“You’re probably right,” I said with what I hoped was a reassuring look. “Are we ready to go?”

He nodded, his entire face relaxing. “Mase gave me a key to lock up the outer door when we leave.”

I took a slow breath, willing myself to chill out. “Good man.”

Randolph pocketed the list of items we needed, and we exited through the inner and outer doors and out onto the planet Orin. Sunlight threw bright white stripes across my vision and drilled a painful burn to the back of my skull.

It had been close to nine weeks since I’d left Mayvel and seen the sun occasionally peeking through between electrical snowstorms. It had been two months since I’d been on solid ground, running for my life through the underground mines on The Black. That seemed like a lifetime ago.

The few places where I’d left my skin uncovered with baggy clothes soaked the sunlight in like water, but my eyes teared up so bad, I thought about declaring myself a vampire and turning back to the spaceship. Of course we would land on a planet with multiple suns. I didn’t know if that was accurate or not because large yellow spots kept bursting across the sky everywhere I looked.

Orin was in a neighboring star system and the nearest habitable planet to The Black, the rogue planet that had drifted near Earth’s debris. If we’d travelled through the Ringers’ ring by Neptune, and if they’d let us through, we would have been to Orin instantly, but we hadn’t been able to try since that one had broken down.

The door closed behind us, and Randolph twisted a key in the lock and dropped it into his pocket with the list.

He sniffed. “No need to cry about it, James. Let’s go.” He stepped off the ramp and stumbled when his feet hit dirt.

I lunged to his side to catch his elbow. Apparently neither of us wanted to give up our space legs for this bright, hellish planet. “You’ve been in a dark ship as long as I have. Let’s just take a minute so we can see where we’re going and get used to walking on solid ground, okay?”

“Yeah. Okay.” Out here in the light, his usually ruddy cheeks seemed hollower, his color washed out. He blinked hard, and his hands shook at his sides. “You’re a good—” He looked down at me with his warm brown eyes, a watery smile curling his mouth. “You’re a good person, you know that?”

My chest swelled with his kind words at the same time my blood simmered. How could Ellison and Captain Glenn think he would function on a strange planet on his own, knowing his alcoholism was wearing him thin?

“We just have to stick together, you and me.” I tucked my arm through his, my girlish hands half covered by fingerless gloves. “No wandering to the river bean stand, got it?”

He chuckled, loudly, and several heads turned on the dirt road a few yards ahead. Using his body as a shield, I kept my chin tucked low underneath the hood of my sweatshirt.

“If I never see a river bean in my life, then I will die one happy man,” Randolph said.

Said the guy who’d survived on nothing else while on top of the Vicious’s elevator for over a week to hide from the ghosts. I couldn’t blame him.

Orin seemed to be a melting pot of several different kinds of species. Fur and flesh and everything in between—even some non-Saelis scales—strolled, crawled, or bounced either down the road toward the outdoor marketplace or up the road toward a large cluster of squat, red-stoned buildings. Mase had landed the Vicious among a long line of ships on the side of the road between two parking meters. Some of the ships had maintenance crews washing the windows and performing other services I knew nothing about.

We started toward the marketplace. It looked similar to Mayvel’s the closer we drew, right down to the hellish number of bodies. Various goods crowded tables and racks inside tented booths. As if there wasn’t enough light already, some tent poles had multi-colored Christmas lights wound around them or dangling in strings from the top of the entryways. Christmas was over, I thought, but maybe Orin celebrated all year long. Customers and vendors haggled. Children of all species squealed and raced each other around their parents.

The air squeezed from my lungs at the press of the throng and loud volume. I stiffened my shoulders and arms since a misplaced elbow could potentially be enough for someone to recognize me. Especially if someone bumped into me and I accidentally turned feral.

Randolph, on the other hand, seemed perfectly at home, nodding and smiling as we made our way to the alcohol.

Light from the thousand suns glinted off something silver ahead. Lots of silver somethings. Saliva flooded my mouth, and need urged my footsteps faster, away from Randolph.

A whole booth filled with iron. Knives, wrenches, nails, screws, chains, support beams, and the list went on and on. Holy Feozva, it was a shrine to my self-created goddess. Or my own private corner of heaven.

Randolph placed a hand on the back of my neck as if sensing my awe. “You have a currency card?”

I tore my gaze away long enough to look up at him and nod.

“I’ll be in the next booth over.” He gave me a squeeze then left me to my worship.

I ran my fingers through a giant roll of chains and smiled at the musical clink the various sizes of loops made when they slid past each other. My other hand automatically swept over my hair. It had grown these last few months, but it was still cut too close to my scalp.

You can grow some moresies. That was a lyric from the hair-brushing song Ellison and I used to sing when we were kids. I could grow more, or could help it along in an appearance modification booth.

“You need chains?” a female voice asked from above.

I squinted up at the rustling flaps of the tent. Had my made-up goddess Feozva just spoken to me? Nope, just the small, winged vendor sitting atop the entryway. She had a hooked beak nose, bright red feathery wings instead of arms, and a row of eyes like black buttons trailing up and over her head, but the rest of her appeared to be all human.

And she sat right next to a flapping wanted poster of me.

I curled in on myself, shrinking into the hood of my sweatshirt, and heaved a shaky breath. Too many eyes, the vendor’s and mine on the paper, looked down on me in judgement. But maybe my picture had hung there long enough that it blended in with its surroundings and nobody really looked at it. Wishful thinking? Hell yes.

“Um.” I glanced up while I tapped my fingers over the iron in my pocket. For once, there wasn’t any need to steal iron. I had a currency card, which I’d stolen from a dead man who’d tried to rape and kill me. “No chains.” Those would come later. “Just…” My gaze flitted over several items, each one forming a plan inside my head inspired by my own wanted picture. “That box of washers.”

Thanks to Ellison and her iron cubes, I didn’t need the washers, but it seemed like a waste not to buy something. At least, that was what I told myself.

The vendor winged down, her red feathers rustling, her row of black eyes always watching. Good thing I didn’t intend to use my five-fingered discount. She collected my iron goods with feathered fingers tipped in sharp talons.

“Seven hundred forty-eight credits,” she said.

Even though I knew how expensive iron was these days, I blanked my face at the shock. Because the Ringers used iron to build their space-bending rings, iron was a rare metal. I handed the vendor Nesbit’s currency card with slick fingers and squeaky leather on my fingerless gloves. If she asked for identification to match the name on the card, I was rusted. If she happened to look up at my wanted poster, I was even more rusted. Sweat tracked down the sides of my face in rivers, and my heart threatened to come tumbling out of my mouth. This had been such a great idea. I readied myself to run just in case.

But the vendor froze, Nesbit’s currency card in her feathered hand poised in the air. A crackle of white lightning zigzagged across all of her eyes. I swallowed, my gaze glued to her, afraid I’d just hallucinated again. What was that?

She tracked something over my shoulder, movement from right to left. I stiffened while the hairs at the back of my neck lifted, glancing from her to either side, while I prayed whatever happened behind my back had nothing to do with me.

Still peering behind me under her long lashes, the vendor swiped the card on a machine and handed it back. “You brought company.”

I stared at her, my eyes narrowed, silently ordering her to tell me what was happening. Several breathless seconds passed while the vendor slowly packed up my washers in a brown cloth bag. Did she know who I was? Was that why she was trying to tell me something?

“Who?” I deepened my voice to make me sound more like a boy, but it ended up a growl.

“Parker Donatrough and friends.” She finally flicked her row of black eyes to me. “Drug baron.”

Drug baron? If I were to have brought company, it would’ve been the police or ghost kind. Not a drug baron. Wait… Mase had said a drug baron was after him. Could this guy, Parker, be the same one?

“How many friends?” I asked.

“Four.” She flipped the Closed sign on her register over and glanced in their direction again. “If you see them, you’ll know.”

Mumbling my thanks, I took the bag from her and set off to find Randolph in the next booth. I stuck my gaze to the dirt road, though that might make me seem like I had something to hide. Probably because I did. If Parker was here looking for Mase, did he know about me, too? Or any of us? With a little digging, anyone could find out who the rest of the crew on the Vicious were.

Randolph was talking prices about several large, wooden tables to the human vendor. I sidled into the tent behind them so they’d block me while I peered out. We needed to get out of here, but we couldn’t exactly leave without any food when we weren’t sure when we’d be able to land again.

Down the road a bit, in the direction Parker had gone, I spied an appearance modification booth wedged between a produce tent and a fresh bread tent. I could be in and out in five minutes.

“Just pick one,” I hissed to Randolph. “Then start on the food. I’ll be right back.”

He gazed down at me, seeming to read my expression. “Uh, we’ll take the cherry oak one. Anything’s better than eating off a gurney,” he said with a forced smile.

The vendor’s eyes widened. “A gurney?”

“Long story,” he said, following after me out of the tent. “We’ll be back to pick this up later.”

“Have you seen Mase anywhere?” I hissed, glancing around for anyone who had Drug Baron & Friends stamped to their foreheads.

“No, but you could call him.” He plucked a phone from his inside vest pocket and handed it over. “Mase handed these out in case there was trouble. They’re pre-programmed.”

I looked over my shoulder at the appearance modification booth, and my head spun at the thought of really going through with this Mind-I idea. It was beyond reckless, but I had no other way to warn Moon and Pop that was long-range enough. And now I needed to warn Mase.

“I’ll meet you in the produce or bread tent, but I have two things I need to do first.” I handed him my bag and pointed at him so he’d be sure to listen. “Produce or bread. Nowhere else. Not without me.”

“Great boogly bags, something has happened, didn’t it? Produce or bread, I got it.” He held up a finger. “Then alcohol or I boycott this whole damned day.”

We parted ways next to a wooden stand filled with fruit. I ducked inside the cramped appearance modification booth and quickly slid the folding door shut. A slow breath heaved from my lungs as I sat. I tapped a finger to the male picture on the glowing screen since Nesbit’s card had a male face, although I supposed it didn’t really matter.

With the copies of me that Ellison and Captain Glenn were hiring, I would confuse the police better if no one knew who the real me was. Or where I was if there were sightings across several star systems. No more James, chef’s apprentice son to Randolph. It was time I reembraced the physical embodiment of Absidy Jones, ghost magnet, thief, wanted murderer, though I hadn’t actually killed anyone. But the day was still young.

“Scanning,” a soothing female robotic voice said.

A red laser double-pulsed as it scanned my head.

While the lasers, localized painkillers, and hair embedding needles did their thing, I held the phone Randolph had given me in my lap and dialed Mase’s already programmed number. After the twentieth ring, long, dark hair waved down past the middle of my back, just like it used to.

“Chain embedding laser in three, two, one.”

I clutched the phone in my fist, refusing to hang up in case he answered. Worry twisted my gut, and I clamped my back teeth tight. Had Parker already gotten to him? Was he the drug baron Mase said he owed money to? Why wasn’t Mase answering?

Soon, chains whispered through my new hair, and the added weight to my head throbbed aches to my neck and shoulders. But it was worth it. As James, a fourteen-year-old boy, few people would listen to me, but as Absidy Jones, I might be able to somehow force us through the rings again to go home. I had myself back, but I was seconds away from changing my natural state once again.

I hovered my finger over the Mind-I button, my whole arm quaking with the magnitude of this decision. Invasive, dangerous, but not permanent. I could have Ellison take it out again after I told Moon and Pop about the Saelis’s plan to destroy the rest of humanity. Then they could warn everyone else and maybe find a way to get off Mayvel and Wix as soon as possible. But for the short time the Mind-I was implanted in my head, the Saelis could control me, likely with a push of a button, just as they had the Saelis/human hybrids in the SAIL Nursery. They’d come after Ellison and me, all in perfect synchronization, like when we’d attempted to escape the Saelis on The Black.

A whole-body shudder coursed down to my trembling knees. I inched my finger closer.

The computer screen flickered, blipping a glow across my hand. Gray scales marked my skin, more of them this time, nearly halfway to my elbow, and then gone again in the blink of light.

A rush of panic spread through my chest. I yanked my arm back as the screen flashed again and again. This booth was broken. Or I was. The scales were just a withdrawal hallucination like Randolph said because my skin was normal.

I plucked Nesbit’s currency card from the machine, cinched the hood of my sweatshirt over my new hair and chains, then stumbled out of the strobe-lit booth.

The female robot’s voice said, “Have—d-d-d-d-day.”

Yeah, definitely broken.

The sun’s rays speared into my skull. Shielding my eyes the best I could, I blinked down at my wrist and underneath my fingerless leather glove. Nothing. Completely normal.

Forcing myself to breathe easy, I went in search of Randolph at the fruit tent. The crowd swept me along, but it was so packed that the throng jostled each other for a pocket of air. I ran into several creatures and people, not by choice, and finally smashed straight into a wall. A wall made of bricks and a black trench coat. An odd choice of clothing for a wall.

My lungs pinched together when I glanced up into a glassy pair of dark blue eyes, the centers of which appeared cracked like plastic. White starbursts webbed through the blue irises and seemed to darken the pupils into black holes. The strange eyes belonged to a giant of a man with a bald head and alabaster skin. The four men at his sides wore guns within easy reach, and the white energy sizzled across their eyes in erratic pulses. One of them thrust a tablet at me. A color photo of Mase stared back.

I blanked my face while my thoughts rioted. Feozva’s hell, we had to get out of here.

“You need to tell me if you’ve seen him around here,” the man with the cracked eyes growled, but his voice didn’t sound human. The words scraped out of him like gears grinding over petrified bones.

My mouth pinched tight automatically at his order, and he seemed to zero in on it as if waiting for a lie to spill out. Or reading my body language to see if my actions matched my answer. I had a strange feeling he didn’t miss much. But I’d acted my way aboard the Vicious somewhat well, enough to convince a distracted crew I was a fourteen-year-old boy. I could get us out of this too.

I steeled my spine, examined the picture of the face I knew so well, then flicked my gaze up to meet his. “Never seen him.”

He gazed at me for several more heartbeats as if telepathically splitting open my skull to peer inside. Then he shoved past me with a hand as pale as his face.

Randolph stepped in as if from out of nowhere, his face unnaturally calm, and pointed at Mase’s picture. “Mind if I see that?” Without permission, he plucked the tablet with the picture away from the other man’s hands. “Oh, yeah, I’ve seen him.”

I ticked my gaze to Randolph and willed him to shut the fuck up. What the hell was he doing?

“He was standing over by the river bean stand about five minutes ago.” Randolph pointed vaguely behind him. “I noticed him because he needs a haircut. Bad. Said he was going to stock up on milk after he was done because he drank all of it. If you hurry, you can probably catch up to him.”

Somehow, he kept the venom out of his voice even though the ambiguous accusation was still there, even though now was not the time.

“Find him,” the cracked, pale man who had to be Parker said to his cronies.

The four of them swept past the fruit tent while Parker loomed over me as if he could hear all my truths behind my thrashing heartbeat.

“Until we meet again,” he said, his voice like a grinded threat.

“We’ll look forward to it,” Randolph said.

Rusted balls. I nudged my foot forward and stepped on the back of Randolph’s heel.

He cleared his throat. “What I meant to say was good luck rounding that fellow up. I’m sure he deserves it.”

Parker eyed us both before stomping off.

“We’ll look forward to it?” I hissed.

Randolph’s eyes widened, and he held up his hands. “I don’t speak drug baron. They’re going in the opposite direction as we need to go, right? I did Mase a favor.”

“Listen to me.” I held to his vest, desperation tightening my grip. We had minutes before Parker doubled back, if that, and we were still scattered all over the planet minus most of what we needed. “You get what you have there and the table, and I’ll get everything else.”

“What? Everything?”

“Meet me back at the ship.” I wrapped my arms around his bulk and pressed my cheek to his chest as I lifted the ship’s key from his pocket. “Head down, Randolph,” I said on a wobble, and then I shot out of there.

Elbows flying, I sailed through the crowd as fast as I could. I snatched up meats I didn't recognize the names of that weighed as much as I did. An unattended wheelbarrow sat between two tents, so I dumped everything into it and claimed it as mine. After piling a variety of breads on top, I spied a tent filled with clothing. And corsets, some of which made my mouth water and not just because they were decorated with metal. Since the credits on Nesbit’s currency card were being eaten up fast, I quickly settled for a pair of leather pants and a cheap corset, though I wanted every single one of them because I had corset dreams and goals.

While I wheeled everything toward the Vicious, I twisted around to see if I could spot Randolph in the lively marketplace. No orange vest anywhere.

With his phone pressed to my ear, I tried Mase, the captain, and Ellison. After the thirtieth ring on Ellison’s number, I finally gave up. Why was nobody answering?

When I made it to the ship, sweat poured from my hood-covered hair and stung my eyes. I'd forgotten how hot my hair and chains were, especially bundled under a thick sweatshirt in the pounding sun.

The wheelbarrow was so heavy that it kept rolling backward down the ship’s ramp and even tipped halfway over before I shoved it upright again. Once it was safely locked inside the ship, I headed toward the squat red buildings in the distance at full speed. They shaded the cobblestone roads, so I kept to the shadows to cool my skin. The roads branching off from the main one were narrow, about enough space between buildings for two side-by-side people. More buildings sprang up at the ends of those paths, red stone with bright blue doors.

The few people and aliens who wandered here had hoods drawn over their faces, too, as if this whole part of the planet was shifty. Some leaned against walls, peering out with unseen faces at those who passed.

With no idea where I was headed and no time to get there, I stuck to the main road. Large trucks lined one side, and both people and a variety of aliens worked together to heft large wooden crates inside them. Standing between two trucks were an olive-skinned man and a stocky black man wearing all black, his arms crossed over his chest. Captain Glenn.

I strode toward him for help to speed our exit off this Feozva-forsaken planet, but a large, black-hooded figure pushed away from a building as soon as I passed. His—maybe a his—footsteps thudded against the cobblestone road behind me in time with mine.

I instantly corrected my direction, away from the captain, who didn’t seem to notice me. My heartbeat stuttered. Sweat trickled down my sides. My muscles tightened in preparation to run, but I willed myself to chill, begged the involuntary hitch in my steps to appear as a result of the crumbled cobblestone. Maybe it was just a coincidence. Maybe I needed to drop that word from my vocabulary.

I turned left down a narrow pathway off the main road as nonchalantly as I could manage. A moment later, so did the footsteps. I took another path on the right past the next building. Technetium, molybdenum. I mapped my location as I turned corners and charged ahead on the periodic table in my mind so I wouldn’t get lost, starting with iron, because I always started with iron. Tantalum, halfnium.

The footsteps still followed, echoing loudly on the narrow pathway between buildings.

From the open door of a building I’d just passed, a familiar voice floated. “Name.”

I skidded to a stop and whirled around. Ten feet away, the hem of a black cloak billowed behind another building and vanished.

Allowing myself only a slice of relief, I barged into the building with the voice. The air tasted hot and thick with body odor and alcoholic fumes. A mounted teralingua head stared blankly from high on the opposite wall, its gray velvet fur dull in the low light. A long slab of wood butted up close to one wall, and several crossbeams attached the floor to the ceiling in X patterns. Bales of hay dangled over narrow ledges about halfway up the high walls, above which were several boarded-up windows. Broken tables, chairs, and an explosion of glass littered the floor. Slumped over the broken furniture lay several unconscious bodies. In the middle of it all stood Mase and the back of someone I didn’t recognize.

Mase’s gaze snapped to mine over the other person’s shoulder, the tension in his face softening a fraction. "What happened?"

“I should ask you the same.” I skirted past the figure standing in front of him—a female, not human, older with lines fanning across her temples. She stared at me as I passed, and I stared right back.

Her hair, pulled back in a long ponytail, matched the color of her albino skin. Twin gray-scaled streaks cut down the center of her forehead between large yellow eyes and down her nose, mouth, and chin. Scales and white hair. She looked an awful lot like a Saelis, minus the extra limbs.

She wore a dark brown leather duster that skimmed her chunky boots made for ass-kicking and a burnt orange-colored button-down shirt. Various sized knives were strapped down her pants, and blood smeared the knuckles of both her hands. Mase’s too. It appeared I’d missed a bar brawl.

"Parker's here, Mase,” I hissed. “He's looking for you."

“What?” He winced then dropped his head back and stared at the ceiling, his molars clenched tight. "Fuck me."

“That just about sums it up,” I said. “Randolph sent him on a goose chase, but we need to go. Now.”

“I thought he was dead.” He shook his head and swallowed thickly. “I saw him on our ship during the hauntings, and I thought he was a ghost. You saw him? Here?”

The panicked sound of his voice snagged the air from my lungs. I nodded, a sense of helplessness knotting my insides.

Thud. thud. Something was coming with heavy footsteps. A long, bulky shadow slanted inside the bar.

Shit. Was it the black-cloaked figure? Or was Parker here already? I hurried to Mase’s side, and he walked us backward, away from the door. With whoever it was about to block the door, we needed to find another way out, but there wasn't anywhere to go. The windows on the second landing were boarded up, and there wasn’t a back entrance that I could see.

The couple-of-scales-short-of-a-Saelis female marched up to me, her yellow gaze glued to my face, and opened her mouth to speak. Needle-sharp fangs filled her mouth. “What are you?”

Holy Feozva, now was not the time for that.

Thud. Thud. The shadow lengthened across the floor of the bar. We had seconds left before whoever or whatever entered the bar.

“We climb.” Mase pointed up and lifted a boot onto a crossbeam to climb up to the landing and a boarded-up window.

Thud. Thud.

The female alien swung herself between Mase and me and slammed us up against the wall with her pale hand on each of our shoulders.

Before I could hiss a death threat, a presence darkened the doorway, throwing all of us into deep shadow. Parker ducked inside. His footsteps vibrated an icy chill over the floorboards, up through my boots, and into my quaking knees. His four minions followed, and all of them squinted into the dim light even though we stood right there by the faded cracks in the stone wall.

The alien touching Mase and me held still. I shallowed my breaths and did the same.

Parker and company moved across the bar, their boots snapping on broken glass and what remained of the bar’s furniture. His cracked blue eyes skated right past us. Was he blind? When the nearest of his gang was within kicking distance and didn’t appear to realize it, I dared to shift my head.

On the other side of the alien, Mase glared at Parker, the tendons in his neck stretched tight. The alien still held to his shoulder, but she kept her gaze pinned to me, likely still fishing for an answer to her question. She had to be doing something to us, blending us in with the wall with her scaled, lizard-like touch. But why? And who was she?

I nodded toward the doorway where one of Parker’s guys still stood. We could mow him over and make a run for it while the others’ backs were turned. But on the floorboards in front of the guy, something crackled and zigzagged, white like lightning.

“Mason?” Parker called, the bottom of his black trench coat swirling around his ankles. “I know you’re in here. I could smell your need the second you dropped down here, even over the river bean stand. It’s been a long time, hasn’t it? She’s missed you, you know. And I know you’ve missed her something awful.”

His words sank into my chest with the weight of a heavy chain. She? Who was he talking about?

Sweat leaked down Mase’s face as he watched the lightning snake back and forth in front of the doorway. His tongue flicked out and wetted his upper lip. His chest heaved.

Parker stopped at the opposite end of the bar underneath the teralingua head and turned, a half smile tilting his pale mouth.

I had to get us out of here, but I had no idea what would happen if Mase crossed the lightning to leave. He gazed at it as if he wanted to devour it. Because it was associated with Parker, a drug baron, it must’ve had something to do with Mase’s former life as a drug addict, but the way he looked at it hinted that former hadn’t been all that long ago.

Behind the lightning, one of Parker’s men exhaled a puff of steam, but nothing dangled from his fingertips or lips to indicate he was smoking anything. He shivered and glanced behind him, rubbing the back of his neck.

Mase’s unsteady breaths caught in the air too. A rush of goosebumps swept over my skin, dragging a sense of dread along with it.

Footsteps pounded outside, louder than Parker’s and all his men had been, shaking the bar’s foundation. A shapeless mass loomed behind the man in the doorway, bigger, taller.

Winter air burned through my lungs with my next inhale, and I held it, completely frozen.

The man in front of the door shivered violently and threw himself into the corner of the bar, glancing behind him as if he’d just been touched by death. Because he had.

Sharp talons scraped the floor as the shape entered. Black scales and white hair towered up to the ceiling. Jagged teeth curved from its extended snout, and its four arms were tipped with lethal claws, the whole terrifying form as solid as smoke.

Glowing green eyes cut across the room, past Parker and his oblivious crew, and connected with mine.

A Saelis ghost.

Here.

Now.

For me.

With a mighty howl that dropped my stomach to my heels, it charged.