The only reason I wasn’t seeing the deaths of everyone I was hugging was because I was using every ounce of mental energy I could spare to block my visions. I didn’t want to see the deaths of my grandparents. My best friends. Jared. Would Jared die in all this? Could he? I had no idea, but I sure didn’t want to find out.

“Here,” Kenya said. She held out her hand to me, encouraging me to take another look, to see if her future was still dire, full of fear and death.

I winced and scooted out of her reach. I’d already looked when she was sleeping at JFK. I just barely touched her, barely opened my mind to a vision, and I instantly felt fear rip at my chest so hard and so fast, I snatched my hand back like I’d been burned. I wasn’t about to repeat the experience.

“We didn’t set things right. I’ve already looked. Nothing has changed.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “We need to find out who opens those gates. Who opened them in the first place when I was six. We need to know for sure if it’s the same person. Did you find anything on a Dyson?” I asked my grandparents.

A group of nephilim had come for me before. They were watered-down versions of Cameron. Even with centuries of breeding with pure humans, siphoning the celestial DNA out of them, they were strong. Much stronger than normal humans. We defeated them, but the leader told me who sent them. A man named Dyson.

“That’s who we need to be looking for. If we can just stop him from opening the gates again, won’t this all be over?”

“In theory,” Granddad said. “Villanueva is looking into it, but there are a lot of Dysons out there.” Villanueva was our sheriff and a member of the Order. Having the county sheriff on our side came in really handy, especially when it came time to explain certain unexplainable events.

I nodded. “At least we’re looking in the right direction.” Or I hoped we were. “I’ve tried to remember more about him. Anything. But my memory of that day just isn’t that great. I’ve even tried to draw him.”

I pulled out my sketchpad and showed them what I remembered. I’d done a rough drawing of the man, his short blond hair whipping about his head, his light blue shirt stained with his own blood because the best image I had of him in my mind was when I—no, we, Malak-Tuke and I together—had stabbed him with a stick. Leaves flew about us as he scrambled back, his eyes wide in astonishment. He’d summoned Malak-Tuke for himself. He’d wanted to be possessed by him, to control him, but apparently Satan’s second-in-command had other ideas. When he’d entered me, when I’d swallowed him whole, breathed him in, the man went wild with anger.

I closed the sketchbook when I realized it was doing no one any good. I doubted if they knew him that they’d recognize him from my six-year-old’s memory and amateurish drawing. “We have to keep looking. It seems our only shot at stopping this war before it starts is finding this man’s identity.”

“And stopping him,” Glitch said.

Granddad started the van and we headed back to Riley’s Switch. It would take a little over an hour to get there, which meant I had a little over an hour to snuggle with Jared. I leaned back against him and squirmed until I found just the right spot. He laughed softly and nipped at my ear.

“You have to tell me everything,” Brooklyn said from over the back of my seat.

I couldn’t help but notice how much effort she put into avoiding eye contact with Cameron. Surely they’d kiss and make up eventually.

“I want to know all about Maine. And the kids there. And boarding schools. They seem so foreign.”

“They are,” I said with a grin. “They definitely take some getting used to.”

“A little different from Riley High?” she asked, one corner of her mouth rising.

“A lot different.” Then I thought about it. After a quick glance toward Kenya, I said, “And yet not so much.”

Brooke nodded in understanding. “Did you keep up with your exercises?”

I rolled my eyes. “Yes, Mom.” She was always pushing me to try to see more. In my visions. In pictures. I remembered one such exercise and grabbed my bag to rake through it. Finding the picture I had of us in the fifth grade, I took it out and showed it to her accusingly. “You took Mrs. Bradshaw’s paperweight.”

“What?”

“You took it. The whole class got in trouble, and you’re the one who took it.”

She snorted, indignant. “I so did not.”

I narrowed my eyes on her. “I was there,” I said, shaking the evidence at her. “I saw the whole thing. She made you mad when she wouldn’t let you go to the bathroom because you’d just been, so you took her dragon paperweight when she was busy snapping pictures.”

After several false starts at a comeback, she switched directions. “I put it back the next day,” she said, more than a little disconcerted. “Maybe you don’t need to practice quite that much. Don’t want to overdo, you know? Pull a brain muscle or something.” She tapped her head for emphasis.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” I gave her my best tough girl attitude, channeling Kenya.

Unfortunately, Kenya picked up on it and leveled a deadpan expression on me.

“What?” Brooke and I said in unison.

BETTY AND THE BARCALOUNGER

Driving through Riley’s Switch after so long an absence caused a lump to form in my throat. The warmth of nostalgia spread through me as we passed familiar trees, schools, and the small businesses that lined Main Street. But all that stopped when we hit the square. Glitch was right. We’d been invaded by the media.