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She isn't looking at Seraphine. She's looking at me.

"And if it tears," I say. "The veil. Evelyn says at midnight it could go all the way open."

"It could."

"And things can come in from the other way."

"Some things can come the other way." She says it without a flicker. "I've decided that it's worth it. You haven't. That's the only actual difference between us, and I'd rather argue with you about it for forty years than lock you in a house."

Gage is watching me and trying to hear what’s happening.

"Freedom," Seraphine says. "Every book we've got. Nobody is standing behind you telling you what to do and what you are." She pauses. "And you get your young wolf back."

My stomach drops.

"Dario," she says. "He's alive. He's been fed. He's four hours from here and he's frightened, and I will put him in his mother's kitchen tonight, before midnight, whatever you decide about anything else."

"You're using him."

"Obviously." She tips her head. "But, I'm giving him back either way. I'd rather you knew that before you chose, or it isn't a choice, it's a purchase."

And, that's the thing that scares me more than the woman in my mirror ever did.

She's not lying. Sid says she's not lying.

She's still standing here handing me two doors and telling me to pick one, exactly like Evelyn, exactly like the coven, exactly like every single person who has looked at me for thirteen days and seen a woman with power they can use.

Nobody in this building is asking me what I want. They're asking me which of them I want.

I take out my phone.

It's the only clock left in this town that works, and the screen lights my hands up blue.

11:41.

"Nineteen minutes," Seraphine says, kindly. "Take them."

Then something knocks.

Not the doors. Not the windows.

Underneath. Under the parquet, under the black star, under the soles of my boots, three times, slow and patient and enormous, the way you knock when you know someone's home.

And the little girl in the nightgown says, "That's not us."

45

GAGE

COUNTDOWN TO MIDNIGHT

Six inches of air between my hand and my mate, and I can't cross it.

I can hear her. And it’s killing me. She's close enough that I can hear the woman in the gray dress being reasonable, and I can see the shape of Maren's shoulders when she decides not to cry.

I put my shoulder into it again.

Again.