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We turn down the hall toward the cloisters, barest moonlight that pierces the storm illuminating the edges of the Gothic stone windows. Poppy snarls and nearly snatches the top of Orla’s dress. She screams and twists away, stumbling down the steps beneath the colonnade, into the pounding rain of the cloisters.

Our feet slip and slide in the mud, chasing Orla through the rows of graves. I don’t know where she plans to run from us until I see the angel that holds the scythe and the willow tree that arches over it. My stomach hollows.

Beside the old willow, Orla turns and grips her knife. Poppy and I pace toward her—she closes in from the left while I advance from the right. My stepsister watches us, back to the willow, nothing but the small stiletto knife glowing orange in her hand.

“You won’t turn me,” she breathes. “Kill me, but don’t turn me. I don’t ever want to be what you are.”

Something about her words stops me, and my feet halt in the mud beside my mother’s grave.

I don’t want to be bound. I am no one’s slave, least of all the siphon inside me. I reach for the Light and the Dark—the grounding power of logic and love—and I feel the hunger pass.

But Poppy is unable to stay her appetite any longer. She runs her tongue along her teeth and lunges.

Poppy slams into Orla, and the two of them crash to the ground. They’re a chaotic mess of limbs in the night beneath the shadowed curtain of the willow branches.

“Poppy, stop!” I scream.

A flash of metal. Poppy yelps. And then Orla lands a kick to Poppy’s chest, flipping her onto her back. Orla’s knife protrudes from Poppy’s ribs.

Panic rakes at my chest before I remember—only silver can kill her, and Orla’s anchor is fashioned from steel. Orla leaps to her feet, bends down, and rips the knife from Poppy’s rib cage.

Poppy’s white eyes flare. She throws herself at Orla, biting into the hand that holds the knife. Orla drops it and screams as Poppy’s sharpened teeth tear into her hand. Blood spurts in her mouth, staining it red. For a terrible few seconds, Orla can’t get free, and Poppy gnaws at her hand like a dog with a bone. I run between them, grabbing Orla’s arm and Poppy’s hair, desperately trying to separate them. Finally, Orla rips her hand free, now a mangled mess. I get a glimpse of bone, and my stomach twists.

Poppy’s eyes are glowing moons in the dark, and the blood and skin that hangs from her teeth looks nearly black in the night. The storm surges around us, slicking Poppy’s burnished curls to her head.

Orla can’t fight her, can’t outrun her. But I can.

I scoop my stepsister up easily, thanks to my siphon strength, and sprint through the graveyard. Poppy screeches in fury, splashing through the mud behind us. But I am just as fast as she is. I skip between gravestones, slipping in mud, dodging from shadow to shadow. I make our path unpredictable, taking odd turns through the rows and scattered ancient trees.

Ahead there is a small stone building—the charnel house. I duck behind it, falling onto the earth in its shadows and dropping Orla against its back wall.

I listen. I can’t hear Poppy. Did she follow us? Could we possibly have lost her? The sound of the storm drowns out all other noise. Early winter rain hits my skin like small knives. My feet, still bare, are already turning numb.

A clack of a beak.

“Girl.” I glance toward the willow. I can barely see the dark outline of two birdlike figures resting in the branches. “Girl, you are in—”

“Mortal peril!” Caldwell interrupts, croaking loudly and fluttering his wings. “Mortal peril! Imminent danger! On the verge of disaster! Do you know what that is? That is a siphon! A siphon! I don’t like foul language—pardon the pun—but fuck!”

I can’t risk responding and letting Poppy know where I am. I gesture at them to go away. They don’t listen.

“Use us,” Cavendish insists. I can almost see his one eye glaring at me, a glint in the moonlight. “Set us free. We will wreak devastation.”

I can’t deal with them. I shake my head adamantly and turn back to Orla. She’s shaking. At first I think it’s from the chill, before I look down to the wrist she cradles. Saints. There was nothing clean about Poppy’s bite. Orla’s hand is barely attached, dangling uselessly amid a muddle of tissue and blood.

I scoot closer to her, back to the charnel house, and wrap an arm tightly around her. I draw my scythe too, though I don’t dare light it. The clocktower rises over the graveyard before us, its yellow face a sinister, watchful eye. I can see the edge of the colonnade—the shelter of the school—and I try to calculate how quickly I could sprint toward it. But I don’t know where Poppy could be lurking.

I push my back against the cold stone and force myself to breathe slowly. The sound of Orla’s heart still pounds in my ears, the smell of her blood clouding my instincts. Focus.

I watch the dark. And I listen.

The rain pounds against the stones, splatters against earth. There are other sounds, so quiet I’m not sure if I’m imagining them, so ordinary I can’t know if they’re Poppy, hiding somewhere among the rows of markers, or something else.

A brush. A drag. A crinkle. A plink.

I search in every direction, scanning the yard, peering through the rain into shadows. My chest grows tight. Gooseflesh rises along my arms.

A soft scraping comes from somewhere in the distance. Husshhhh. I scan the night, but I can’t see through the downpour. The skin on the back of my neck prickles.