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somewhere close by. So was little Tyson.
    Killing the guy with my bare hands in front of so many witnesses—
    That would be bad.
    I wasn’t exceptionally concerned about committing murder—just the part about getting caught. That snapped me out of the battle lust, leaving a sick feeling to slither in my gut. I flexed with the gathered power, sending concussions of it
into
his head. I didn’t consciously understand the technique, just knew in the moment that it would fuck him up, but not in any way that would be fatal.
    The frenzied man’s eyes rolled wildly and he dropped to the floor like a sack of filthy laundry.
    Breathless, Sanjeet leaned on the wall beside me.
    “What kind of hold was that?” she asked.
    I didn’t answer. In the final moment of contact, I’d felt something, and now I stared at the intruder’s prone form, my eyes focused on the space beyond his body. I caught sight of it again—a little tendril, smoke-like, questing around his head. It was the most I’d seen of whatever plagued the people in this house. The wispy tendril stretched like a tether in the space behind him, but I still couldn’t make out what it was attached to.
    Marshaling my focus, I softly murmured the syllables of my name. The thing jerked away suddenly, like a cuttlefish startled beneath a rock. Before it slipped away completely, a rapid series of impressions flashed behind my eyes.
    Not the main force. These were a distraction.
    I bellowed for Father Frank, practically leaping down the stairs. Sanjeet stared after me in shock.
    “It’s fine. I can handle this,” she called down the stairs. She almost sounded like she believed it.
    When I hit the bottom, Lady Scarface was waiting. She’d dragged herself to her hands and knees. She snatched at me, fingers hooking into the leg of my jeans. I kicked her in the jaw. I didn’t do it full-force—given my steel-toe size thirteens, that probably would have killed her. She collapsed again anyway.
    Fine by me.
    I sprinted toward Halley’s room, my engineer boots thundering against the hardwood. I nearly wiped out on a little plastic lawn mower left in the middle of the floor, but caught myself, splaying my hand against one wall for balance. My wings spread wide reflexively—not that they could exactly help with my balance on this side of reality, but my brain seemed wired to expect that they would.
    Still teetering a little, I pelted down the hallway and crashed headlong into the door. When I tried the knob, it was locked. That wasn’t a good sign. I yelled for Father Frank, smacking my hand against the door.
    No answer.
    The Davis house was old, and this seemed like one of the original doors. The thing was solid. I kicked at it, aiming for the region around the knob. My bloodsucking sibling Remy could probably have yanked the door off its hinges with a single, elegant flourish, but things didn’t work that way for me. I was a lot stronger than your average mortal, but I was no Superman.
    I had to bash the heavy rubber heel of my boot against the door three times before the thing finally splintered. I still strained as I shouldered it open—Halley’s hospital bed had been shoved against the other side. The thing weighed a ton.
    “Mazetti! Report!” I barked. The words leapt from my mouth before I could question them. For a minute, I felt like I’d been possessed by the ghost of a former self. Memories surged at the edge of consciousness—a jungle. Wet. Stiflingly hot. An urgent sense of purpose jangling like the clarion of an alarm.
    The old priest groaned a semi-coherent response from somewhere on the floor. In an instant, the memories scattered. I was myself again—and a little empty for it.
    Father Frank levered himself up.
    “Where’s Halley?” he muttered. He spat blood. His lower lip was split and a deeper cut purpled above one eye. The room lay in shambles, shattered glass from the big front window crackling underfoot. The rocking chair was in pieces, and it