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from the remnants of the house behind her. I balled my hands into fists and set my sights on the man in the suit.
    He turned his head to me as if sensing my presence, his grin firmly in place. “Ah, you’re awake, darling. I was beginning to worry.”
    “Enough!” Grandpa barked, his voice thudding through the air with enough force to make its own thunder.
    Mr. Suit’s smile faltered, and his eyes flashed a glimmer of yellow. “Fine.” He flicked his hand, and the swarm of liquid darkness shot forward at Grandpa and Nate.
    Without a second’s hesitation, they both slashed through the fluid black tar with their weapons of light, parting it like the Red Sea. Each twirl of the blue sword and crack of the whip cut the darkness down like the light was making parts of the swarm evaporate.
    But it only lasted so long.
    Mr. Suit’s grin returned when he saw them working so hard to cut him down. It was a game to him—everything was a game with that smile, and he was the show’s host.
    He punched both hands out, and rigid bolts of black lightning shot forward.
    Grandpa and Nate’s blue and green weapons absorbed it for a brief moment until they were flung back ten feet, grunting with the impact.
    I started forward again, my heart thumping in my ears as I scanned the ground for anything I could use as a weapon.
    A glint of silver peeked out of the dirt—a knife!
    In one fluid motion, I crouched down mid-run, grabbed the hilt, pulled it back, and let it fly.
    I saw every spin, every millisecond of flight as it flew toward my opponent’s finely clothed chest.
    It stabbed through his ribs up to the hilt.
    He didn’t even flinch.
    He smiled as he pulled it out without an ounce of blood staining his shirt.
    I stopped running toward him, my jaw dropping. How was he still—?
    “Now, now, darling. You can do better than that.” He grinned at me, his next contestant. “Maybe you just need a little more incentive.” He flicked his hand again, and a tar-soaked lightning bolt sprang out of his palm straight at me.
    I threw myself to the side and landed on my shoulder as the bolt hit the ground. Clay shrapnel exploded behind me, pelting my back with sharp ceramic slivers.
    I sucked in a breath through gritted teeth and rolled onto my stomach.
    Blue light sparked to life five feet from me, and I saw Grandpa again, sword in hand.
    Our bald attacker flashed another smile, waving his hands around lightly to conduct his orchestra of dark shadow as it snapped and swarmed around Grandpa.
    Buzzing filled my ears, but Grandpa swung his sword faster than I’d ever seen him move before, slashing the darkness to pieces, steam floating off the edge of his blade. Then suddenly, Nate was there with a green whip spinning in front of him so fast it might as well have been a solid shield of green light that the darkness couldn’t penetrate.
    The man in black pressed his hands toward Nate and Grandpa, both of them in front of me now.
    “Eve, run!” Nate yelled as the darkness pressed in on his shield and forced him to his knees. “Get Ria. Run!”
    I looked to the right and saw Ria standing. She was caught between wanting to help and having her feet clamped to the ground with fear. Mine felt the same.
    Nate grunted something I couldn’t catch, and then, all at once, Grandpa was flung to the side, and the darkness enveloped Nate, pressing him into the ground. A thousand dark buzzing fists pounded on him like machine gun fire until his unconscious body lay at the bottom of a crater.
    I gasped as my mind was pulled in three directions—Grandpa, Nate, Ria. Who should I go to first?
    My feet decided on Ria before the rest of me had finished the debate. She was the weakest one here. Obviously Nate and Grandpa were stronger than I’d realized, or at least they knew what the hell was going on. Ria was the only one who wouldn’t survive if this man—whatever he was—turned on her.
    The moment I moved though, his eyes snapped to me. “Still