Kieran shifted from side to side, that strange feeling of absence between them gnawing on his nerves.

“Sir.” Zorn stepped through the wolves’ bodies. “We need to make some decisions and wrap this up. At this rate, we’ll be noticed. It’s a miracle we haven’t been already.”

Green’s spirit reached his body and stared down at it. “I’m dying.” His expression heated and he zeroed in on Alexis. “You filthy, soul-stealing bitch.”

Green’s spirit darted at her. Kieran reacted without thought. He sent a blast of his power, laced with Alexis’s magic, through the center of Green’s spirit. It sent the spirit staggering before jerking him to a stop and keeping him put.

The figure within the smoke—the hazy, blurred form—jerked up, and Kieran got the strangest sensation that it was looking directly at him. In a moment, Alexis startled, the sensation of her slamming back into him like it had earlier. The form blurred even more before dissipating entirely, and Kieran took a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

“So it is your mark, huh, Junior?” Green spat, his face twisted in rage. “Does Daddy know, I wonder? We all know he’s not the romantic type.”

Kieran didn’t have time to digest what Green was saying. His attention was on Alexis as she sucked in a deep breath. She blinked, and the haze cleared from her eyes—she was present in a way she hadn’t been a moment before.

“I can put his spirit back,” she said in a rush. “He—or it?—showed me. In that weird plane. I theoretically know how, at any rate. It seemed so easy.”

“Who showed you?” Bria asked. “Where?”

“He said he’s dying,” Kieran said.

Alexis’s magic slid across his, deliciously intimate and powerful, and his grip on Green was flicked away.

“He is,” she said. “His body is, at any rate. There’s a small transition time after a soul leaves. Usually, the body is dying, so the spirit can’t go back. But if the body’s healthy, I think the soul can be locked back in, however fragile the docking, and the person can go on living.” She snapped, urgency riding her words. “It’s like those people who have near-death experiences. You know, the ones who remember hovering above their own bodies or seeing a light at the end of the tunnel? Their bodies were mended enough to keep on trucking, and their souls hadn’t given up. They were able to re-forge the connection.” She blinked a few times in confusion. “Or maybe someone did it for them…” She shook her head and waved it away. “I don’t know. This afternoon is super confusing. Bottom line, I think I can fix him.”

“Do it,” Kieran said before turning to Zorn. He sent another pulse of magic out to keep the downed shifters put. “But his reign of terror ends today. Get these shifters into a holding pen. Green has just lost his army.”

“Okay. Okay, okay.” Alexis braced like she was about to wrestle. “All I have to do—”

“You better make this right, you filthy whore,” Green swore.

Kieran bit his tongue, barely keeping himself from cutting Green down a second time. Alexis needed to practice her magic, and in case all didn’t go as planned, she had the perfect guinea pig.

“I bet you talk about women like that because you can’t get any for free,” Alexis murmured, yanking him into the air before stuffing him unceremoniously back into his skin. “You probably use your power to force them, you disgusting creep.”

“Which is why it’s so enjoyable to feel you manhandling his spirit.” Bria rested her chin on her fist and wafted the smoke more thoroughly over Green’s body.

Alexis’s face closed down in concentration.

Zorn stepped closer. “I re-routed Henry to grab a van. He’s not far out. Half-hour, tops. Daisy is working on re-directing people who want to get back here, but a delivery truck needs to unload.”

“Just need to…” Alexis wiped her forehead while bending over the body of Green, not unlike that blurry figure that had appeared in the negative space of Bria’s fog. “Two more…” She swore softly. “That one’s fucked. My bad. That should be okay, though. The rest look good.”

“What are you doing?” Bria asked, yanking up the sleeve of her shirt. Goosebumps covered her skin.

“I can braid my power and spirit together to fuse the prongs back into place.” Alexis wiped her forehead again. “Then I just have to change the density of the spirit box back to normal, and we should be cooking with gas.”

Bria held her arm up to be appraised by Zorn, silently relaying the presence of a spirit in their midst. His second should’ve been off directing the guys, but instead he stood there, half turned, his attention on Alexis. He obviously wondered the same thing Kieran did—could she fix a soul she’d previously torn out of a body?

“She’s doing it,” Bria mouthed to him, her eyes wide and excited. “How did you figure all this out?” she asked Alexis.

“Let her work,” Zorn whispered.

But Alexis was straightening up, her face shiny with sweat and red from exhaustion.

“It’s like I slip into this other realm where time and a physical presence don’t belong,” she said, out of breath. “And there’s this…thing there. It’s like a person without being a person. Someone I do but don’t know.” She shook her head. “I can’t possibly explain it. It’s a feeling, more than anything. Hell, maybe it’s my subconscious. But this…thing showed me the strings connecting everyone, and then it showed me how to alter Green’s spirit box and re-connect the prongs. It was like…instruction without words. Then, kinda suddenly, I was knocked back into my body.”

“Riiiight,” Bria said.

Green jerked and his eyes fluttered. His mouth opened and he sucked in huge breath. His body convulsed.

“He’s going to change—”

A pulse of power cut Mordecai off. Green’s limbs shrank and his face elongated. Fur sprouted over his body.

His spirit popped out of his body again.

“Crap.” Alexis threw up her hands.

26

Alexis

“I think I know what went wrong.” Bria turned from the built-in grill next to the stove in my new kitchen. We’d had to steal most of the supplies from Kieran’s house since my shopping had been cut short.

The guys were dealing with the shifter mess I’d created, so Bria was on dinner duty. I hadn’t been allowed to cook for some reason, and given my afternoon, and my intense fatigue, I hadn’t argued.

I wearily sank into the stool at the island. Wind howled at the window behind me, the wooden shutters drawn closed against the darkness beyond. The waves crashed wildly against the cliffs in the distance. I dropped my face into my hands.

“I know what went wrong,” I said, my words muffled against my palms. “I’ve been thinking about it for the past three hours. Well…three and a half, if you count how long it took to get home from the store that severely disappointed my shopping appetite.”

The BBQ fork swung to the side. “Oh yeah?” Bria cocked a hip, something I now recognized as a signal she was thinking professionally.

“Yeah. I’ve been in and out of trances, I’ve been fiddling with my own spirit box—”

She sucked a breath through her teeth. “Until you get a firm handle on the whole situation, I wouldn’t suggest playing doctor on yourself. You’ll probably get marooned in the spirit realm, and Kieran will kill himself trying to drag you back out.”

I waved the comment away tiredly. “I was just feeling around in there. But I’m pretty sure I know what went wrong. I mean…” I gestured with my hand. “Besides the fact that I keep getting shooed away from the spirit realm by some very pushy entity without a freaking body. I think the Line has its own minions or something.”

Bria bent at the waist with a very intense look on her face. The black smoke billowing up behind her, caught by the hood over the stove, did not bode well for our meal. “I’m honestly not sure what to say. I’ve never heard of anything like that.”

“Yeah, well, here’s some more that you haven’t heard…”

I paused as Mordecai slouched in, clearly tired but emboldened by his success. After Will Green lost his soul for the second time, and everything slowed down, the guys had all patted Mordecai on the back and praised him for a job well done. Even Daisy had dropped her competitiveness and given him a beaming high-five. After so short a time, his training was really shining through.

I waited while he opened the fridge door and stared into the depths.

I lifted my eyebrows after a moment when he didn’t grab something.

I gritted my teeth when he shifted his weight and leaned on the door, still looking.

“Oh my God, how many times do I have to tell you?” I snapped. “Grab something and get out. You’re wasting electricity.”

He sighed, but reached for the milk.

“And don’t you dare drink out of the carton,” I added.

Bria frowned at me. “Since when is that a rule?”

There really were no words.

“Anyway,” I said as Mordecai moved to get a glass. “I did repair the prongs after a fashion, and they would’ve held in a normal person, but shifters…” I formed a ball with my fingers, having no easy way to explain this to someone who hadn’t magically seen and felt it. “When they shift, their spirit boxes magically change density. That’s the moment I can easily seep in and mess around. The entity showed me how I can mimic that in a non-shifter.” I dragged my lip through my teeth. “I’m pretty sure I can do it. Practice would really help, though. Because, I mean, I’d secured the prongs to Green’s spirit box, but not well enough to withstand those few moments when the box changed. So, when he started to shift…” I let my hands drift through the air.