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“Kristoff? Thatcher here,” Bryce said tersely into his phone, eyes never leaving me. “How far away are you? Kara’s slipping. I’ve never seen it this bad.”
Who was he talking about? Should I be worried about her? I wondered distantly.
He shoved his phone into his pocket, moved in and gripped me by my shoulders. “Kara!” he shouted at me and gave me a sharp shake. “Your name is Kara!”
I sucked in a breath, surfaced. Kara? A flare of sick dread gave me something to hang on to, though it too threatened to melt away. “R-right. Kara.” I reached up to cling to his upper arms, looked into his face, my eyes wide in panicked desperation. “Bryce, this is bad. Don’t let me go. Please.”
“I have you,” he said with fierce reassurance, and comprehension suddenly bloomed on his face. “That’s why Mzatal left me behind,” he murmured to himself, so low I barely caught it. He shook himself and returned his entire focus to me. “Kara. Mzatal is going to take care of Paul, and I’m going to take care of you. Kara.” He shifted to grip me by the upper arm, then led me out and toward the living room.
I didn’t resist. “Yes . . . yes. He’ll take care of Paul. And I’m Kara.” That was right. Wasn’t it? I felt my eyes squinch in doubt, looked up at him as we walked. “You’re sure?”
“I’m damn sure,” he told me. “Rhyzkahl did this to you. You’re Kara Gillian. Summoner. You have Mzatal who loves you. You have good friends: Zack, Jill, and Ryan who’ll be here in less than a minute. You’re Kara.” He sat me on the sofa, dropped down beside me, and kept hold of my arm. “You have an aunt, uh, Tessa, and a demon guard Eilahn. You rescued Idris a little while ago. You are Kara.”
I gave him a jerky nod. “Sure. Okay.” I looked around the living room. Eilahn crouched a few feet away, eyes on me. Why was she tracing sigils, and why did she look pissed and intense? “Kara,” I echoed, but the name felt strange on my lips, and the familiar room didn’t seem as inviting as it had a moment ago. “I don’t feel right.”
“I know, Kara.” Bryce shifted to face me more, shook me a bit. “It’s the sigils, the scars. It’s Rhyzkahl and his fucking implanted virus.” His gaze flicked to the door then back to me. “I hear Ryan’s car. We’re going to take care of you.”
I clung to his words. “I trust you,” I said and held his arm in a death grip. “You’ll take care of me.”
Ryan burst through the front door. “Kara!”
Distress spiked as I heard the name. I released Bryce, twisted to face my friend. Yes. Ryan was my friend. “Ryan! Something’s wrong.” He would help. That much I knew. “I don’t know what, but it . . . it is.”
Ryan moved to crouch in front of me, face a mask of worry. “Shit,” he breathed. “Kara. Kara!”
My brow furrowed at the shout. Was that my name? It didn’t seem right.
Bryce scrutinized us, jaw tight. “You two are going out back,” he commanded, then stood and pulled me to my feet. “Let’s go.” He jerked his head at Ryan. “Now.”
I offered him a tremulous smile. I trusted these two men, and that absolute certainty helped ease the churning disquiet. Obviously distressed, Ryan led the way down the hall to the back.
“This is a nice house,” I murmured as we passed through the kitchen. Ryan shot a startled look back at me, and Bryce’s hand tightened on my arm.
“It’s your house, Kara,” he insisted. “Your house.”
Fear twisted my gut as I struggled to process that. I looked around for anything that clicked as personal, as mine, but found nothing. How could this be mine? None of this made sense.
Ryan took my other arm as we stepped off the back porch, and together the two men quick-walked me to the mini-nexus. As soon as we crossed the boundary of the power focus I dragged in a shuddering breath, feeling as if the curtain obscuring my Self reopened a crack. I clawed my way up, clung with everything I had to that slim awareness. “Kara,” I gasped out, tasted it, fought to reclaim my name. “Ryan. Bryce. I’m Kara.” I wrestled against the uncertainty and panic that threatened my tenuous hold. But how long could I do so? For now I held fast to the sloping plain of glass, but if it tipped more . . .
The converged potency of the mini-nexus seeped through me, threw the curtains wide and added power to my grip. Yet I knew it could only delay my descent. The instant I lost the potency, I’d be gone. Kara would be gone. Forever.
Fuck no. Not while I have breath in my body.
I drew from the mini-nexus, called up all of my internal reserves. “I know who I am. I know what I am,” I said through clenched teeth. “The instant I leave the nexus I’ll lose it, but I’m not fucking giving up yet. I’m going to beat this shit,” I looked from one to the other. “We’re going to beat this shit.”
“You’re goddamn right,” Bryce said fiercely. Ryan gave an equally determined nod. Eilahn crouched a foot beyond the perimeter of the mini-nexus, still tracing sigils, teeth bared and eyes glowing with relentless focus. They had my back. Always had. My posse.
Kara’s posse.
The scars on my torso abruptly flared white hot, then quickly subsided to a billion tiny ant bites of prickling heat. Shit. No way was that a good sign. I drew measured breaths—in through my nose and out through my mouth, with a silent “Kara” each time.
Ryan released his hold on my arm, shifted to face me, expression intense. Without warning or preamble, he seized my dress at the neckline and ripped it from me, leaving me in nothing but bra and panties. I knew why he’d done so, but Bryce jerked in surprise.
“Shit! What the hell?” He lifted his free hand to intervene, then paused as comprehension lit his eyes. “The sigils,” he murmured.
Ryan yanked my bra free and cast it aside to fully reveal all of the patterned scars. I focused on his face. No. Same hair, same eyes as Ryan, but now with subtle differences in the features. Not full-fledged Szerain, but headed that way. And far more stable than ever before, perhaps because of the potency from the node at the plantation combined with that of the mini-nexus.
A pinpoint of heat ignited over m
