“You want me to what?”

The kitchen lights grew very bright. Claire’s tongue swelled inside her mouth. Her mouth went dry. Tiny, iridescent spots dotted her peripheral vision. Her body felt very cold.

This must be what it feels like to go into shock.

The boy didn’t move, not a muscle. She should have taken advantage of the moment. At the very least, she should have grabbed the weapons in case he changed his mind. But even in shock, Claire was stupidly certain that he wouldn’t hurt her.

I’m not going to kill you, Claire. You’re going to kill me.

Maybe she should want to. After what he’d almost done to her, maybe a normal girl would. But she wasn’t normal. She knew that now, more than ever.

“What’s your name?” she asked, her throat dry, her body anticipating the answer.

“I don’t have a name. I’m Nobody.”

“My name’s Claire.”

He obviously already knew that, but in faerie stories, it mattered, sometimes, if that knowledge was freely given.

“My name is Claire. What’s yours?”

“Nix.” His pupils flared. “Now you have it. You have everything. Kill me.”

His tone was feral. There was no other word.

“Do it!” he screamed. His body twisted, as if he was in pain. “Pick up a weapon.” The boy—Nix, Nix, Nix—hurled the words at her, each carrying the weight of a punch and the threat of something much, much worse.

He’s going to kill me. If I don’t kill him, he’s going to kill me.

She took a step toward the weapons he’d laid out on the counter, trying not to look at them.

“Keep moving, Claire.”

The closer she got, the more she averted her gaze. From him. From the sharp edge of the dagger, the glint of the gun. With each step, her body thawed.

So this is what coming out of shock feels like.

“Pick up the gun.” Nix’s orders were curt and clear. He hadn’t moved, but she knew he would if she didn’t do exactly what he said. “Pick it up!”

She picked up the gun.

I won’t kill him. I won’t.

“Aim it at me.”

“No.”

“You won, Claire. You won. This is what you want. This is what you’ve always wanted.” He spoke the words like they were sacred. Like he was delivering his own eulogy, and somehow, it was all about her. “You’re everything, and I’m nothing, and I. Can’t. Kill. You.”

Everything?

Everything wouldn’t have been the most anonymous girl in her ninth-grade class. Everything wouldn’t have to nearly die to get her parents’ attention. Everything wouldn’t want a boy who wanted her dead.

“Aim the gun at me, Claire. Do it now.” He stalked toward her, grace incarnate. “Point it at me. Pull the trigger. It’s easy, Claire. So easy.”

He was getting closer.

And closer.

“It wouldn’t be the first time, would it? What, are you too good to kill me? Am I not your type?”

“No.” She threw the gun down in a fit of rebellion. The second she did, he dove at her. Contact. His body. Hers.

Touching.

For a moment, Claire flew. Weightless. Entangled. And then he twisted, cushioning her landing, then moving to cover her body with his own.

He’s afraid the gun is going to go off, she realized. She struggled against the shield his body was offering for hers. She was the one who’d thrown the gun. She was the one who’d put them in danger. Why was he protecting her?

The gun clattered to the floor, the safety still on. Silence filled the room, and Nix jerked his body away from hers, the ghost of his touch lingering on her skin.

“You threw the gun,” he said, voice rough, eyes wide. “You threw it away.”

“I didn’t think about it going off. I just wanted it gone.” Claire tried very hard to look as determined as she felt. To choose the words to get her point across. “I won’t hurt you. You shouldn’t try to make me, because I won’t.”

For a moment, Nix resembled a shepherd who’d seen the messiah. Awe colored his every feature. Even his tattoos seemed to glow with some kind of inner joy. And then, as quickly as it had come, the expression disappeared, and Nix blanched.

No words.

Just a choking sound, like the air was suffocating him.

And then he leapt to his feet, and before Claire could stop him, her would-be killer was gone.

8

Nix’s feet pounded against the ground. Limbs reached out to scratch him. The summer air, heavy and hot, stung his lungs with every breath. He had to get away—from the girl, from what had just happened, from the feelings threatening to suck him into a black hole of asking and wanting and doubt.

She’d thrown down his gun. People who trafficked in death didn’t do that. True killers anticipated death—their own. Others’. They saw it everywhere. An active Null, one who’d given in to the impulse to play God, might have bucked at Nix’s offer. She might have wanted to kill him with her own weapons, on her own time.

But she wouldn’t have thrown the gun.

Claire has never killed anyone. Of that much, Nix was sure. And yet …

The Sensors had identified Claire as a Null. Ione had designated her Code Omega—too dangerous to approach, even for Nix. The last Omega Nix had killed—number Nine—had the bodies of fourteen women buried in his backyard. In pieces.

Nulls were evil. Those designated Do Not Approach were worse.

Nix stopped running. He backed himself into a tree and forced himself to breathe. To think. Not about Claire—what if—what if—what if—but about the fact that The Society had misclassified her.

Claire wasn’t dangerous. At least, not yet. So why had The Society told him she was? Why had Ione ordered him to kill her from afar?

Why had she sent a backup team to finish the job?

It was almost as if The Society knew that she’d have this effect on him. As if they doubted that he would kill her. As if they’d feared he would figure out—No.

Nix couldn’t breathe. His chest tightened, and he felt the urge to cut himself to slow the panic that was creeping up his spine.

Claire cried. She laughed. She got upset when he told her to kill him, and she was puzzled when there were things that she didn’t understand.

Claire had never killed anyone.

Now that he had started his mind down this path, there was no stopping it. The facts bombarded him, one by one. Claire hadn’t commanded her neighbor’s attention the first day they’d met. The police had come to her house, but they’d left and never come back, which meant that either Claire had intentionally thrown away the protection they might have provided, or else, she hadn’t had the power to make them stay.

Claire had dreams. Claire had nightmares. Everything she felt went directly to her face, and she felt everything.

She even felt him. His presence.

What if it wasn’t an act?

What if Claire really was what she appeared to be? What if she was just a sweet girl? A sweet, Normal girl who couldn’t even kill someone who’d come very, very close to killing her?

No. Nix was on his knees. He didn’t know how he’d gotten there. The rocks in the soil pressed into his kneecaps, and a roll of nausea spread through his body.

“The Society protects Normals from the Nulls.”

Without warning, Nix is nine years old again. His trainer’s name is Ryland.

Ryland has a knife.

“For thousands of years, men with the ability to sense evil in others have banded together to hunt the monsters in their midst.” Ryland twirls the knife around his fingertips, and Nix wonders what the lesson will be this time. A Nobody knows better than to hope that the knife is for show.

“You are the right hand of The Society. You are a weapon. You are a tool.” Ryland brings the knife to skid lightly over the surface of Nix’s skin. It takes the Sensor one try, two to figure out where Nix is standing—but he doesn’t cut him. Not this time. Instead, he spins the blade, offering Nix the hilt.

Then they bring in the corpse. For practice.

Nix came out of it on all fours on the forest floor. Eliminating Nulls was his purpose in life, the altar on which his blood and tears and sweat had been shed. On The Society’s orders, Nix had killed—One, Two, Three, Four. Nulls who valued the average human life no more than that of an ant. Five, Six, Seven—again and again and again, Nix had put them out of their misery and saved the lives they otherwise would have taken—Eight, Nine, Ten.