A chill creeps through the air, frosting my skin. It’s like the warmth has been sucked out of the world. Fog smears the windows from the inside. I reach up to wipe the glass with my sleeve, but my hand stops.
The shadows outside are shifting.
They roll like smoke in water—thick, liquid, alive. And then they start to part.
A figure steps forward, emerging from the darkness. Her feet don’t make a sound. She doesn’t blink. She walks like the ground is bowing beneath her.
I stop breathing.
“Meadow,” I whisper, my voice breaking.
Malachi moves fast. A blade flashes in his hand as he releases his seatbelt, ready to make the next move. “You know her?”
“She was one of Marco’s Avids,” I murmur, “but she neverlived in the compound. I only saw her once in passing. She looked human then.”
Now she looks like something else entirely.
Her eyes are pits of black, glossy and endless. Her lips are sewn shut with thick black thread, the skin around them cracked and red. She tilts her head to the side like she’s studying us.
Then her voice pierces my mind. “You’re next, Katja.”
It’s not a whisper. It’s a screech of rusted metal inside my skull. My entire body recoils. Her mouth hasn’t moved. I know Malachi didn’t hear it.
I clutch his arm. “Whatever happens, don’t let her touch you.”
He doesn’t look away from her as he turns the hilt of his blade over in his hand. “Why? What happens if she does? And what the fuck is this smoke?”
I glance behind us. There’s nothing but black, like the car’s parked in the center of a void. No road. No sky. No headlights. The world has folded inward, and all that exists now isher.
“I don’t know what the smoke is,” I breathe. “But I’ve heard stories. If she touches you, she infects you. Leaves something behind.”
Malachi finally glances at me. “Infects you with what?”
I shake my head. “With herself.”
He swears under his breath.
“She’ll be inside you. Always. No matter where you go, no matter what you’re doing. She’ll know. She’ll feel you.”
I can feel her even now, tugging at the edges of my presence. Not my body. My existence. Like she’s reaching for me, not with fingers but with something far worse.
“She doesn’t track you,” I say. “She marks you.” I don’t even know how I know this information, but it floods my memory from somewhere forgotten.
Meadow stops a few feet from the hood of the car. Her head lifts, her black eyes fixed on mine.
Her shadow begins to move.
It rises from the pavement like smoke given shape, long, spidery arms stretching toward us. One slides across the ground, reaching for the driver’s side. The other snakes in my direction.
Malachi tightens his grip on the blade. “What happens if it reaches us?”
I meet his eyes, my voice strained. “I have no idea. I’m not an Avid expert. I’ve spent most of my life locked in a pretty prison. Or did you forget that part?”
“Some Avidian backup would be nice right about now,” Malachi mutters, seeming to realize the blade in his hand is useless. His eyes flick to the suffocating darkness outside, and I can see it on his face. He knows he’s not equipped for whatever she is.
“I have an idea,” he whispers.
He leans forward enough to keep his mouth hidden from Meadow’s view.
