“There have to be others." Other young people with incredible gifts. Others with no home and no direction, with ghosts in their pasts and the potential to do so much more. "Other Naturals," Briggs filled in. "To continue the program." Hearing him say the words gave life to something inside of me-a spark, a sense of purpose, a flame. Feeling that, letting mnyself feel it, I held his gaze and nodded. Slowly, the newly minted director of the FBI smiled. Game on.

"Director." I greeted him with his new title. "You're sure," FBI Director Briggs said, "that this is what you want?"

"Celine saw the resemblance between you and your mother, between your mother and Laurel, and between Laurel"-Agent Sterling's expression flickered, just fora momentand me. I thought of Director Sterling telling me that some privileges-such as torturing the Pythia-were reserved for active members of the cult, while others were open to Masters who'd already handed their seat off toa replacement. “She's not just my sister." I met Agent Sterling's eyes. "She's your sister to”

How did you find me?" I did Lia the favor of changing the subject. "We didn't," Sloane said. "Celine did." Celine?

I tried to pull back from him, but he held me close. "You've been looking-and looking and looking for some way to make it right. You're not a killer, Cassie. You just finally accepted that sometimes, the biggest sacrifice isn't made by the person who gives up her life." He lowered his forehead to touch mine. “Sometimes, the hardest thing to be is the one who lives." My body was shaking. My hands trembled as they found their way to his chest, his neck, his face, as if touching him, feeling him beneath the pads of my fingers, might make what he was saying true. I love you. I love you. I love you. I heard the sobs before I realized I was sobbing. I dug my fingers into the back of his neck, his T-shirt, his shoulders, holding on for dear life.

I couldn't look at anything but the body. My mother's red hair was splayed out around her, a halo of fire against the bright white of the sand. Her lips were dry and cracked, her eyes unseeing. "Put down the knife!" Agent Sterling's voice sounded like it was coming from far away

I love you. I love you. I Her grip on my hand tightened. Her body blocking the motion from the Masters, she jerked me forward. My hand on the knife. Her hand on mine. I felt the blade slide into her chest. She gasped, blood blooming around the wound. I wanted to pull the knife out. But for Laurel, I didn't. "Forever and ever," I whispered, holding the knife in place. I held her. I love you. I love you. I love you. I didn't look away. I didn't so much as Not even when I heard Agent Briggs's familiar voice. "Freeze!" She slumped forward, bleeding, the light beginning to drain from her eyes. blink, not even when I heard a door slam open. My mom isnt moving. Her heart isnt beating. Her eyes -they don't see me. I pulled the knife out of her chest, and her body fell to the ground as FBI agents poured into the room. I love you. I love you. I love you. Gone.

She advanced on me. "We have to fight. Laurel's just a baby, Cassie. She's you, and she's me, and she's ours. Do you understand?" They can make you do anything. "You have to kill me." My mother's words sliced into me, ice-cold and uncompromising. "No," I said.

My team will find us." I channeled Lia and willed those words to sound true. Wherever this place is, they won't stop looking. They'll figure out that the director is working against them. We just have to buy them time."

I will kill you," Cassandra hissed. "I'll like it." You want me to pick up the knife. You want me to fight. "Forever and ever." I closed my eyes. I waited. Forever and ever. Forever and ever. "No matter what." I wasn't the one who'd spoken those words. I opened my eyes. The woman holding the knife was shaking. “Forever and ever, Cassie. No matter what."

"I wondered how a person could survive something like that, but that's the thing, She didn't survive it." The blade still against my neck, I pushed down the urge to swallow. "You did." She loosened her grip on my hair. People look at you, and they see her. They love her. But you're the strong one. You're the one who matters. You're the one who deserves to be seen. “Were you born here?" I asked, watching her face for any clue that my words had hit their target. "Or have you been around for much, much longer?" A bit more slack. It wasn't enough. She had the knife. I didn't. "Do you have a name?" I asked. No one has ever asked. No one has ever looked at you and seen. The woman with my mother's face smiled. She closed her eyes. And then, she let me go. "My name," she said, her voice echoing loudly enough for the Masters to hear, “is Cassandra." I scrambled backward

"Where's the knife?" I choked on the words. “Mom- The hand that had been stroking my haira moment before grasped it tightly now. She jerked my head to the side. "Mom- She raised the knife to the side of my throat. “It isn't personal. It's you, or I'd been warned, over and over again, that my mother might not be the "You don't want to do this," I said, my voice shaking. it's me." woman I remembered. "But that's the thing," she whispered, her eyes lighting on mine. "I do."

Her face was hidden by a hood, but as I made my way to my feet and stepped toward her, dràwn like a moth to the flame, she lowered it. Her face had changed in the past six years. She hadn't aged, but she was thinner and pale and her features looked like they'd been carved from stone. Her skin was porcelain, her eyes impossibly large. She was still the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen. “Mom." The word escaped my throat. One second, I was stepping hesitantly toward her, and the next, the space between us had disappeared. "Cassie." Her voice was deeper than I remembered, hoarse, and when her arms wrapped around me, I realized that the skin on her face looked smooth in part because of contrast. The rest of her body was covered in twisting, puckered scars.

I was locked in. In where?I forced myself to concentrate. I was still indoors, but the ground was covered in sand, almost too hot to bear, like the desert sun had been shining down on it for days. The ceiling overhead was high and domed, made of stone and carved with a symbol I recognized. Seven circles ringing a cross. The room was circular, and recessed into the walls were stone seats, looking down on the sandpit below. Not a pit, I thought. An arena. And that was when I knew. You poisoned me. You healed me. Buried deep in my memory, I could hear the words Nightshade had spoken to me all those weeks ago. He'd told me that we all had our choices. He'd told me that the Pythia chooses to live. Perhaps someday that choice will be yours, Cassandra.

He lowered the knife. I could feel the blood dripping down my neck You killed Nightshade," I said, the truth coming into focus. "Somehow, you got past the guards" "I chose the guards," the director corrected, a light in his eyes. "I arranged the shift changes. I oversaw the prisoner's transfer myself."

"For some of us," the director said, his voice low and smooth, "this has never been about murder. For some of us, it was always power." There are seven Masters. And one of them is the director of the FB1.

"Dean," I said suddenly. "If he knew where I was, if they'd found me..." "He'd be here?" Director Sterling suggested. "Given what I know of Redding's whelp, I tend to agree." I surged upward and winced as something bit into my wrists. I looked down. Handcuffs. Someone had tampered with the tracking software. Someone had cuffed e to this bed. I looked back up at the director. "This isn't a hospital," I said, my heart beating in my throat. "No," he replied. “It's not." There's an antidote to the Masters' poison," I repeated what Director Sterling had told me earlier, my chest tightening. “But the FBI doesn't have it." "No. They don't." The poison the Masters used to kill was one of a kind. It was, I'd been told over and over again, incurable.

I woke to the sound of beeping. I was lying on something soft. Forcing my eyes open, I remembered The poison. The pain. The sound of footsteps.

She dipped her finger into a colorless paste. I thought of Beau, who'd died screaming, and of everything Judd had told me about Nightshade's poison of choice. Incurable. Painful. Fatal. Ree's left hand closed around my chin. She jerked my face to the side, her grip like steel. Too late, I tried to fight. Too late, my hands tried to block hers. She smeared the paste down my neck. Some poisons dont have to be ingested. My heart thudded in my chest. Some poisons can be absorbed through the skin. Ree let go of me and stepped back. At first, I felt nothing. And then, the world exploded into pain.

You're asking yourself how you could have been so wrong about me," Geoffrey said smugly. "I know all about you, Cassandra Hobbes. I know that you were investigating the Daniel Redding case. I know that you helped catch his apprentices." He offered me a twisted smile. «But you didn't catch me." You killed Bryceshe always did get under your skin. Then the Pythia whispered in your ear. Did she play to your ego? ell you who to kill? Was she the abyss, looking at and into you? I took a step forward on legs that weren't as unsteady as they'd been a moment before. You burned those girls."

"I told you once," the hooded figure intoned, “that if you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you." "Friedrich Nietzsche."" I recognized the quote-and the haughty, overblown delivery. "TA Geof?" I'd met him on the Redding case, when he'd attempted to pick me up in the wake of a girl's death by sharing his “vast" knowledge of serial killers. I'd spent an evening in an abandoned lecture hall with this guy, Michael, and Bryce. "It's Geoffrey," he corrected tersely, lowering his hood.

You're one of them?" I meant it as a statement, but the words came out a question. "I was retired." Ree obliged me with an answer. "Until my former apprentice got himself killed." She gave me a look. I understand I have you to thank for that." "You recruited Nightshade."

Someone caught me under my armpits. “Easy there." Ree's voice came to me from a great distance. I tried to tell her, tried to make my mouth say the word, but I couldn't. Poison. "It's not that I don't appreciate what you did for Melody--or for Sarah." As the world went black, Ree leaned down. "But all must be tested," she whispered. “AII must be found worthy."

I opened my eyes, and the room swam around me. I thought, at first, that there were tears in my eyes, that thinking of the family I'd found in the program had broken the dam inside of me and let in the grief for my family of blood. But the room didn't stop spinning. It stayed blurred. I opened my mouth to say something, but words wouldn't come. My tongue felt thick. I was dizzy, nauseous. My right hand found its way to the cup of coffee. The coffee, I thought, unable to form the words out loud. Even my thoughts were scrambled. I tried to stand up, but fell. I grabbed for the booth, and my hand hit Celine's thigh instead. She didn't move. She's slumped over: Unconscious. I fought my way to my feet. The world kept spinning, but as I stumbled forward, I realized-the room was silent. No one was talking. No one was coming to help me. Dean and Lia, Michael and Sloanethey were slumped in their booths,