I surged with pride. That’s my boy.

Souls glittered and pulsed as they moved around the building. Two familiar souls followed them, one of which stole my breath.

“Goddamn that Daisy, she shouldn’t be anywhere near this,” I yelled.

A woman broke away from the others and ran at me. I punched her directly in the spirit box, making no attempt to ease her into it.

Her spirit box jolted back, dragging her body with it.

I widened my eyes. That was neat. I hadn’t even known that was possible.

On cue, the rest of the shifters picked up speed, running at me now. Behind them, furry bodies turned the corner, the wolves from the front of the building.

“Act faster, Lexi,” Mordecai yelled.

“Right, yes. Faster.” I punched another, and another, hearing yells or grunts with each spirit assault. But I couldn’t keep doing it one by one—it was letting the other shifters advance on me, and soon there would be too many for me to handle.

A man reached me and struck out. I bent back just in time, watching an enormous fist sail past my head in HD. Mordecai’s hand jutted out, just as fast. His fingers curled around the man’s wrist. Using the man’s lunge to his advantage, Mordecai spun and yanked, bringing the guy’s body forward and meeting his face with an expertly thrown kick.

“Okay, yes, go ahead and fight,” I said, slashing with spirit and taking two shifters down at once. But the wolves were almost upon us, running as a pack with perfect synchronicity.

“Focus on the living… Focus on the group…”

The voice was like a dying breath, rippling through the world of spirit. I barely understood the words while understanding them perfectly. I knew exactly who’d uttered each syllable while having no idea.

A shock of spirit blasted through the scene, bleeding away the colors of our plane a little more. Like an extremely heightened trance, time slowed down, then fell away all together. I felt tiny little strings connected to each of the souls around me, the ends all hanging loose. All inactive and waiting for me to grab them up.

A light breeze fluttered all the strings, and then I saw, abstractly, what I had previously only felt. Each string had a different hue, but they could be grouped into five overall categories—one for those without bodies, one for those with, and three more I didn’t understand.

“Not yet…” I couldn’t see a body, spirit or otherwise, but it felt like the breath of a dying man had fluttered my hair.

Now I knew why people thought ghosts were so scary.

Fear jumpstarted my heart and suddenly I was falling. Rolling. Turning end over end.

The sun blasted my face. Someone yelled my name. A body flew to the side.

I blinked and wiggled my fingers, which felt strange. My body felt strange. Too…present, somehow. Too…substantial.

“Alexis,” Mordecai yelled, terror in his voice.

I blinked twice, getting my bearings, only to realize I was standing stalk still while Mordecai spun and turned around me, grabbing people, delivering strikes, and throwing bodies out of the way. It turned out he did know what he was doing. He was utterly magnificent, and here I was, a dead weight.

“Alexis, what’s happening?” Mordecai asked, thrusting his foot up and crunching a guy right between the legs. That’s what you got for picking on someone who trained with Daisy—no rules.

“I freaked out, but I’m back. I’ll—” I cut off as I realized the wolves had surrounded us in a large circle. Those in human form—the ones still standing, at least—slowed and took a few steps back, their postures changing. They were waiting for something. I could sense Bria, Jack, and Daisy lurking behind us a ways, and Zorn was following a moving soul that stepped out from around the far corner.

Tall and stacked with muscle, the man walked toward us with a slow, hunched-over gait, like a cage fighter entering the cage. His tight jeans must’ve cut off his circulation and his equally tight button-up shirt looked far too expensive to rip when he changed. Like the earlier shifter, he had a pricy watch on his wrist.

It had to be Will Green. His minions had secured his prey, and now he would show that he didn’t need to change shape to finish the job.

“Look who it is,” the man said as he entered the outer ring of wolves. The shifters in human form parted to the sides, giving him more space. “The little Wolfram boy. Amazing that you’re still alive.”

His pale blue gaze swung to me, the first of the shifters to voluntarily notice my presence. His twisted stare, filled with unhinged menace, hit me like a Mack truck, manifesting as a blow to my middle. I barely kept myself from stepping back with the force of it.

“And what have we here? I do believe you have the mark of a Demigod.” His head tilted, surveying me, and his eyes lit with a vicious gleam that made my skin crawl. “You couldn’t have been marked by the father, or I wouldn’t have gotten the tip off. So that must mean you’ve been marked by the son.” Greed filled his dead, pale eyes. “Does the father want you dead, too, I wonder? He learned his lesson the hard way—everyone knows he’s tried to scare the son away from making the same mistake.” A sickly smile spread across his thin lips. The scar running down his cheek and curling around his chin stretched grotesquely. “What would you be worth to the son, I wonder, if we were to let you live?”

“Wow.” I blew out a breath and glanced to the side with dramatically played-up fatigue. “Do you always babble this much, or just when you’re meeting new people?”

A vein pulsed next to his eye and his jaw clenched. A wave of aggression washed over me, and a manic light entered his hardening stare.

This guy wasn’t right, in the way a circus clown with blood dripping from its mouth wasn’t right. Something was off in his gaze, in his bearing, and in the way he was looking at me. Like his intellect had dimmed, making way for the rabid animal to take over.

I’d once overheard Jack warning Mordecai not to let his wolf strip him of his logic. It made so much sense now. Will Green had clearly lost that battle long ago.

“You need to learn respect, girl,” he growled.

Goosebumps spread across my skin. Adrenaline surged through my blood.

“You don’t teach people respect through violence, you fucked up, sad excuse for an alpha. You don’t sneak-attack your betters when they are vulnerable, and you don’t prey on minors. You stole your throne from the Wolfram family, and today I will help that family punish you for it.”

The Line pulsed out a thick throb of power. My magic swelled beyond what I’d yet experienced. Time slowed down again and spirit spiraled around us. The little strings attaching everyone’s souls glittered into view a second time, their ends resting at my feet and pulsing like beacons, almost urging me to grab them up. I started to collect them one by one, using my eyes, but then sank into the feeling of that other place—the place with no time, and no physical presence—and sucked them to me. I felt them, all of them, like balloons floating together from a festoon of ribbons. The souls were all connected to me, and mine was connected to the spirit around us, as if I stood in the middle of an intricate, glittering spider web.

Will snarled, a pure animalistic sound.

The world snapped back to full speed, and the alpha surged toward me in human form.

I plunged a thick cord of my magic through Will’s middle and wrapped it tightly around his spirit box. Surprise lit up his face, quickly overpowered by that manic fire that wasn’t controlled by rational thought.

Power throbbed through me and I shoved his spirit box with my magic. A sharp sound left his mouth. He barreled toward me, his momentum taking him the last couple feet, his arms reaching.

I pushed forward on the balls of my feet at an angle, easily stepping around his loose-handed swipe. I slapped his arms out of the air and then smashed my fist into his nose. My knuckles cracked and so did cartilage.

Souls throbbing within bodies closed in around us. I yanked that bundle of strings I’d sensed in my magical grasp, slamming souls against their suddenly tight housings.

Screams and shrieks and terrified panting filled the air, louder than before. I had their attention.

“You will leave this boy alone,” I roared, shaking Will’s spirit box. I tightened my grasp of the strings connected to the other souls. “You will forget he exists, or I will rip away your life essence and play puppet with your bodies, do you hear me?”

I shook all of their spirit boxes this time, in hard yanks.

“Do you hear me?” I hollered.

Someone broke off from the group, racing away.

Without thinking, I yanked the string and held fast. The force stopped him short and he bowed around his chest before falling to his knees, clutching at his heart. An inhuman scream erupted from his throat. He flopped around like a fish, completely lost to hysteria.

Another broke away. And another. I held on to their spirit boxes, keeping them from running even though the sensation drove them to blind panic. If I didn’t, Zorn and Jack wouldn’t be able to catch them all. They wouldn’t be able to keep Mordecai safe.

Screams turned to howls. Fear rose from the group, a palpable thing. Voices went hoarse.

“Uh-oh,” I said, uncertainty pawing at me. I was handling this very badly and I wasn’t sure how to hit the ejector cord without landing myself back in the middle of a bunch of angry or recently crazed shifters. “What do I do now?”

Will’s power throbbed. A strange keening worked out of his mouth. He wobbled where he stood, but I could tell he would not take a knee. He would not submit, and until he did, Mordecai wouldn’t be in the clear.

“You can end this,” I said to Will. “You can end this at any time.”

“Fuck…you…” he spat, his face red.

Clothes ripped as Will’s body elongated, starting the change to his wolf. His spirit box altered with it, the hard outer crust changing density. The power I’d wrapped around it began to seep into the fibers. I brushed up against his soul.

“Oh gross,” I uttered, freezing.