She staggers back toward the lectern, grabs the book from where it fell onto the floor. “You have no idea!” she screams again, brandishing the book like a weapon. “This is my one chance, my one chance, to bring him back, and you think I’m going to let you ruin it? You? You pathetic, miserable excuse for a…”

“Human?” I interject, even as my mind runs wild at what she’s suggesting. Bring him back? Who? Hudson?

“Is that what you think you are? Human?” She laughs. “God, you’re even more pathetic than I thought. You think I would do all this to get my hands on a human? One trip to town and I could have a hundred of them without even trying.”

I have no idea what she means, or even if she’s telling me the truth. And still her words go through me like lightning. Still they wake up something inside me that I don’t recognize but somehow feels the slightest bit familiar. Am I a witch after all, despite what Uncle Finn said? Is that what this voice I keep hearing inside me means?

And if I am, so what? There are more than a hundred witches at this school alone. What makes me so special? The fact that she thinks I’m Jaxon’s mate? Or something else? Something more?

There’s no time to dwell on the whole mess right now, not if she’s being honest about knowing the spell. And not while the clock is ticking inexorably toward twelve seventeen. “Are you seriously trying to bring Hudson back?” I ask, and though I know Lia’s crazy and that she plans to kill me, there’s still a tiny piece of me that might actually feel sorry for her…or it would, if she hadn’t also been responsible for the murder of my parents.

The fact that it’s Hudson’s death that did this to her, that made her so lost and broken that she came up with this ridiculous, convoluted scheme to bring him back…it’s pathetic and heart-wrenching all at the same time.

But still, there’s no way Lia can be allowed to bring Hudson back. Not if one-tenth of what Jaxon told me about him was true—and I know that it was. No wonder Flint and the other shifters were so adamant about doing whatever they had to to stop Lia, even if it meant killing me. But they were insane to think Jaxon would ever play a part in this. There’s no way he would ever try to bring his brother back. No freaking way.

Knowing this makes me feel horrible for doubting him.

“You can’t do this, Lia.”

“I’m going to do it. I’m going to bring Hudson back,” she answers. “And you’re going to help me.”

“It’s impossible, Lia. You can kill as many people as you want, find as many spells as you think necessary. But you can’t bring the boy you love back from the dead. It doesn’t work that way.”

“Don’t talk to me about what I can or can’t do,” she snarls, even as she pulls out her phone and holds it out to me so I can see the time. “In five minutes, you’ll know the truth. Everyone will.”

I really hope that isn’t true. I read Frankenstein last year—I can only imagine what abomination she’ll bring back from the dead if her little plan actually works.

Before I can say anything, though, the main doors to the room rattle on their hinges. Seconds later, the whole wall shakes, but the stones stay in place. As do the doors.

“He’s getting close,” Lia says, crawling to the edge of the altar and pushing to her feet.

“Who? Hudson?” I ask, shivers of horror sliding down my spine at the thought of a resurrected vampire breaking through those doors—and then doing God only knows what? Feeding from me because of whatever Lia thinks I am?

“Jaxon,” she answers me. “He’s been out there for a while, trying to find a way to get to you.”

Jaxon. Jaxon is out there. For the first time since I woke up strapped to this damn altar, I feel like there might be a chance to stop Lia. And to save my life. “How do you know?” The question escapes before I even know I’m going to ask it.

“Because I can feel him. He’s desperate to get to you. But no vampire can enter a room he isn’t invited into—even the most powerful vampire in existence. If he wants in here, he’ll have to use more power than he even knows he has.” She laughs, and this time there’s no hiding the crazy in it.

“I hope he’s suffering. I hope he knows what’s happening to you in here and that it’s killing him that he can’t get to you. I can’t wait for you to serve your purpose so you can die and finally, he’ll know just how excruciating it feels to lose a mate.”

It turns out that even in the middle of all this, I can still be shocked. “You’re wrong, Lia. I’m not—I’m not Jaxon’s mate. I don’t even know what that means, but I’m sure if it were a thing Jaxon or Macy would have told me.”

“It’s cute that you believe that. But it doesn’t matter what you think. What matters right now is that it’s true. And that he believes it.” She shrugs. “Then again, he also believes he can get around thousands of years of safeguards and break down these doors to get to you. So he could very well be delusional. Who knows?” She shrugs. “And who cares? As long as he suffers when you die, I don’t care what he believes.”

As if on cue, the door rattles, its hinges screaming at the pressure brought to bear on them by Jaxon’s powers. “Jaxon!” I scream his name, desperate for him to hear me.

The rattling of the doors stops for just a second. “Grace! Hold on! I’m almost in!” The door shakes so much that the rocks around it start to crumble.

“Come in! You’re invited in! Please! Come in, come in, come in!” I shout the words loud enough for him to hear them.

Lia just laughs. “Not your room, Grace. Not your invitation to issue. Sorry to burst your bubble.”

The alarm on her phone goes off before I can respond, and suddenly she’s all business. “It’s time.” Raising her arms above her head, she begins to chant, her voice low and rhythmic and strong, so strong.

She doesn’t falter at all, doesn’t stumble over words even though the written spell is long gone. Looks like she wasn’t lying when she said she’d been practicing for months. Which means I really did throw myself off this altar for nothing.

My shoulder is not impressed.

I mean, logically, I know this isn’t going to work. There’s no way she’s going to be able to bring Hudson back from the dead—life just doesn’t work like that. Believe me, I know.

But I’m not going to lie, when a breeze sweeps over me out of nowhere, ruffling my hair and brushing against my skin, it chills me to the bone. As does the sudden electricity in the air that follows it.

Every hair on my body stands straight up in response. Combined with Lia’s odd chanting that’s only getting odder, it’s more than enough to have me screaming for Jaxon like the hounds of hell are after us.