“I can’t leave her.”
“You have to see this,” he said. “She won’t get any better until we figure this out.”
December and Jonah were back with rope, vinegar, rosemary, and thyme.
“Let them handle it,” Nico ordered.
There would be no winner if I remained on my knees, mourning at her side as if I’d already lost her. I pressed a hard kiss to Octavia’s forehead and released her.
“This is what it’s been looking for,” Nico said when Igot to his side. “Why it brought her in here during the sleepwalking. That thing couldn’t see past the seal without her help.”
“So this possession…” I brushed the back of my hand over my mouth. “It isn’t the first time.”
“No, I don’t think so.” Nico sighed. “It probably wasn’t strong enough to possess her completely. Or maybe it was conserving power until it had enough to stay inside longer.”
“Can we reverse engineer this?” I crouched down with my elbows on my knees, taking in the faded writing on the planks. None of it made sense; the swirls and sharp angles might as well have been the scribbles of a child. “Free the contract and then destroy it?”
“Don’t!”
Nico and I whipped around to find a very awake, clear-eyed Octavia standing. Jonah and December flanked her with the long rope in hand, but not close enough to bind her.
“We won’t hurt you,” she promised, holding up both hands. Octavia’s voice had a duality to it. Two tones harmonizing in the most beautifully terrible way. “I won’t let him. And he has no interest unless you stop him from killing me.”
“Then he will gain the interest,” I promised and inched closer. “Octavia?—”
Her eyes went fully black for a moment before fading back to her normal dark brown. “The contract’s me now. My blood. So, destroying the original document won’t be anything other than symbolic.”
My stomach twisted. “You’re the contract?”
“I’ve been here before.” She tried to smile. “For longer than I thought. Childhood memories are always so fuzzy. The most important parts sometimes get buried beneath theparts that changed me the most. It’s strange that they’re not synonymous.”
Nico blew out a low whistle, a cue December and I knew well. But before she could move closer, Octavia grabbed her hand at a breakneck speed.
“Please don’t,” she whispered to my cousin. “It’s a delicate balance, trying to share this body with him, and if you get too close and too afraid, he’ll eat that power and push me inside.”
“Stay back,” I told everyone. “Don’t touch her.”
Octavia sighed and released December. “Thank you.”
“You won’t let us bind you,” I said. “But you know we can’t trust him to walk around in your body.”
“I know. I have to figure out whether I can rewrite the contract, cage him until he’s drained of power, or…let him kill me.”
“I like the sound of the first two.”
She smiled, sadness tainting its potential shine. “You spent weeks trapped in the barn. You wouldn’t know how to make a cage that could hold him for another seven years, would you?”
My gaze flickered to Nico. Red splotched on his cheeks and sweat beaded down his temples. He shook his head.
“We can buy some time—” I tried.
“Don’t lie to her.” Octavia’s shoulders straightened, eyes fully black. “You could have all the time in the world, and my kind would remain a mystery to you.”
“Says the thing that’s gotten trapped on a horse ranch by a civilian. Someone figured you out.”
He tried to laugh, mouth not quite cooperating. “A stumble on my part, undoubtedly. But your kind, you hunters, have been stumbling after my kind for decadeswith what to show for it? A seal that slowed me down but didn’t stop me from taking what I needed?”
He lifted Octavia's hand, holding it up to the ceiling to inspect how the knuckles moved.
