“Ah, now there’s a story I haven’t heard in a few decades.” Rafe continues petting Poe. The cat purrs like a traitor. “It does fit, though. I can’t tell if he’s the actual alchemist from the motherland. His face is hard to make out. He doesn’t have much of one, if I’m being honest. It’s all smudged, like a burn victim. But he is a hungry sort of fellow. Souls might be just the thing he’s craving. He’s certainly collecting them.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“There were four in his lair when I had the displeasure of visiting.”
“His lair?”
“He’s taken over the Water Garden, and he seems to have cast some sort of spell. A human trap, if you will. As soon as Lainey and Ivy were pulled in, they were vaporized into his prison. After the two of you went all postal on poor Seraphina, my DNA suffered a profound moment of weakness. So profound, in fact, I was momentarily mistaken as human. I ended up in his lair, too, with the girls, who were very out of sorts.”
“You didn’t think to help them?” Jude asks through gritted teeth.
I find myself grinding my own.
Perhaps if he had, Ivy would still be alive.
Perhaps Lainey wouldn’t be opening rifts and pushing innocent classmates inside them.
“I was a tad preoccupied with getting out of dodge. Thankfully, the weakness I experienced was a temporary glitch. I escaped without a problem. But getting out-out became a different story. Dr. Psycho had his demon dogs guarding every rift he opened. I found myself trapped in a much bigger prison.”
“You said there were four,” I say.
“What’s that?”
“In his prison, when you arrived. You said there were four.”
“Ah, yes.”
“Who were the other two?”
Rafe drums his fingers against the counter, as though intentionally making me wait. “I’m afraid I didn’t get a good look,” he finally answers. “It was all very dark and ominous. And as I’ve already pointed out, I wasn’t in a hurry to stick around and investigate.”
“Then how did you know Lainey wasn’t Lainey?”
“Just because I kept a wide berth from Dr. Psycho, doesn’t mean I didn’t do a fair amount of spying. I watched him send her through a rift, and she very obviously wasn’t the Lainey we all love and adore.”
Disgust blisters up my throat.
Rafe neither loved nor adored Lainey.
He was, however, all too willing to use her.
“What about Griffin?” I ask.
“He seems to be in the same condition as Lainey.”
I glare at him. “What does he want?”
Rafe examines his fingernails. “Who dares venture inside the mind of a psychopath.”
“Says the psychopath,” Jude growls.
This earns him a biting smile. “If I had to guess, I’d say he wants power. To accomplish whatever diabolical plan he has up his sleeve, the details to which I am not privy. I can simply tell you this. The Overlay, as you call it, is a war zone. Dr. Psycho is the current warlord in power—an apex predator, if you will—and as such, he has enemies. They want to stop him, oust him, restore the balance. Whatever the case, it’s making him seek more power to shore up his dominion. A nasty cycle that requires a lot of feeding. On souls. On rubies.”
My breath catches. “Rubies?”
Rafe’s eyes glint malevolently. “He has it, you know. Wears it around his neck like a talisman.”
Beside me, Jude seethes while I struggle to breathe.
