Zara had prized her soul above all else. And now had none.

She picked up the beaker and turned it in her hand, this way and that, eyeing the golden contents, the iridescent mist seeping from the narrow mouth, analyzing pros and cons, incentive and disincentive, reaching an impasse every time.

In the end she turned off her mind and made the decision with what mild emotion was left to her.

She tipped the beaker to her lips and drank.

MAC

The eviction from my body is instantaneous.

The moment I hear myself speaking words I’m not saying and never would, I’m seized by the Sinsar Dubh’s gargantuan will, scraped from my body, and stuffed back into my box.

Never think me weak, the Sinsar Dubh purrs. I got you, babe. ALWAYS.

As it crams me into the cramped, dark interior and slams the lid, I think—bullshit! There is no secret compartment inside my body that I can be stuffed into!

Just like there never actually was a book, open or closed, inside me. The Sinsar Dubh painted two elaborate illusions for me, and did one hell of a sales job. I infused both illusions with my belief and was thereby imprisoned. Not by the Book.

By my own gullibility.

Belief is reality.

In here, disembodied, I apprehend that truth in a moment of exquisite clarity and realize it’s the keystone of existence. Not just mine. Everyone’s. What’s the surest way to be victimized? Believe yourself a victim. To win? Believe yourself a champion.

I believe myself a body, kick the lid off my nonexistent box with it, and the boundaries around me crumble into the nothing it really is.

I stand tall, my fury boundless for too many reasons to count but I’ll start with: I’d been basking in a warm exchange with Jada. The first one in what seemed a small, painful eternity. She’d let me call her Dani. And deep in her eyes I’d glimpsed a welcome flash of that old familiar fire. My girl was in there. And getting closer to coming out.

Then my mouth had called her a “stupid cunt.”

Yep. That’s enough to thoroughly piss me off.

I hate that word. No idea why. I just do. And the instant hurt in her eyes, the unguarded emotion that preceded her intellect processing that the Book had taken me over again, had utterly slayed me. I have no doubt she’ll understand I didn’t mean it, but that’s not the point. It just leads me to my second point: my psychopathic intruder deceived me.

Again!

How many times will I fall victim to its endless mindfuck?

What is wrong with me? It’s not like it can cast a spell on me. I’m it. It’s me. It can only try to control me with deceit and lies. And it keeps working!

I expand my awareness, feather into my limbs, settle behind my eyes and look out.

I may be free of the box, but the Book has full control of my body. I can feel my limbs, peer out through my eyes, but I can’t control any of it. I’m a passive, straitjacketed observer.

My hand is around Jada’s throat, shaking her violently. I can’t see it because it’s invisible, but I feel my fingers deep in the flesh of her throat as she dangles a foot above the floor.

Right. I called her a cunt and now I’m strangling her. My fury multiplies.

I permitted you to stay and watch her die, the Sinsar Dubh gloats.

Permitted, my ass.

I’m here and I’m not leaving and her dying is never happening. Dani is what I opened the Book for and I will destroy it for her, too. I gather all my will and focus it on the hand around her throat.

LET GO LET GO LET GO, I will with the full force of my rage.

NEVER, the Sinsar Dubh thunders back, flattening me, crushing me paper thin, nearly blasting me from my passive presence in my limbs.

On Jada’s throat, my fingers tighten cruelly. She chokes, clawing at my arm.

How can the Book be so strong when it was recently so weak? I focus again on my hand, zero in on a single finger, stoking my rage. If I can affect even one finger, that’ll prove to me that I can—

A strong arm hooks my throat from behind and yanks hard, choking off my air. The Book instantly releases my grip on Jada, realizing belatedly that although it had made my body invisible, suspending her in the air had given its position away.

I seize upon the fact with interest. It’s fallible. It makes mistakes.

The Book uses my lips to shape soundless words, and suddenly a dozen duplicate versions of me spring into existence, cramming the office with identical Macs. I realize dimly that I look like hell, assuming we all look alike.

Lor and Fade go into instant battle mode, attacking versions of me.

“I’ve got the real one, she’s still invisible!” Barrons roars.

That may be true, but the other Macs are fighting like banshees, leaping on Lor’s and Fade’s backs, kicking, punching. The Book is either capable of throwing glamour that actually has substance or weaving a highly sophisticated illusion of it that convinces the others they’re actually interacting with it. Whichever it is, the end result is the same. Time seems to suspend a moment while I apply this information to my sister, Alina. Was she, too, nothing more than one of these types of illusions? Never back from the dead at all, merely an elaborate ruse that fooled everyone? If I questioned one of the duplicate Macs, would they, too, be fully programmed with pertinent information like Alina was? Now that the Book had what it wanted, did that mean Alina had already ceased to exist?

The Book doesn’t fight the arm around my throat, instead it stabs viciously back past my rib cage, and I feel the spear sink into Barrons’s body. It must have seized it from Jada’s thigh sheath at the same time it grabbed her by the throat—in the instant that, stunned by my transition, she’d hesitated and didn’t kick up into the slipstream fast enough. I’d missed that part because I was occupied destroying my box and discovering my power. I hear a soft hiss of breath, then Barrons growls and his hold on my neck loosens.