The eyes in her hand were smooth against her palm. They knew her blood, and again they would see.

“You might as well kill me,” Mateo said. “That’s what you do, isn’t it? What you did to Mom, my grandfather, Jeremy. What you tried to do to Verlaine. You use us up and throw us away.”

“Yes. But I haven’t used you up yet. Your curse is a part of me, Mateo. As long as I live, so does the curse.”

Enough distractions. This spell—even for her, this was difficult. Elizabeth had to bring all her concentration to bear, though she knew it would mean her hold on Mateo lessened for a moment. No matter. She knew her duty.

As the eyes drifted away into the tides, she felt the cord between her and Mateo—not break, but bend and stretch, giving him slightly more liberty. He felt it, too, or saw it; he was a Steadfast, after all.

Mateo threw himself at her, bearing them both down underwater. A wave came in, tossing them hard against the shells and sand; Mateo struggled for purchase, trying to get enough grip with his feet to anchor her against the ocean floor and drown her. Elizabeth could have laughed at his foolishness.

Another wave—and this one knocked them both into a roll. Now Mateo dragged her from the water by her wrist and hair before clutching her around the throat with both hands. His knees pressed down on her legs, pinning her.

“I can kill you.” His voice shook. “Don’t think I can’t. After what you did to my mom—I’m going to enjoy killing you.”

“No, you won’t.” She could still whisper. He wasn’t even bearing down hard enough to cut off all her air. Angry as he was, justified though he thought himself, Mateo was not the kind of man who could easily take life, not even to end the curse that kept him prisoner. “You’ll hate yourself for it.”

Mateo paused. Water dripped from his hair, from his eyelashes. His entire body shook with the tension. “You’re right. I will. But if I can protect Nadia—protect everyone—then I have to do it. I have to.”

He was talking himself into it. So, he had more resolve than she’d thought.

Too bad he was only a human.

Elizabeth pulled the spell taut again, sent him staggering to the side, then to his knees in the sand. No matter how hard he struggled to rise again, he couldn’t. She ruffled his hair as if he were a small boy. “You only had a second,” she confided. “And you’ve lost your chance.”

Oh, the despair in his eyes was sweet. Elizabeth warmed herself by it.

The first thing Asa felt was pain.

Not the agonies of hell, not any longer—that would have been familiar to him. No, this felt more like … like he’d banged his nose on something.

He had a nose?

He opened his eyes and looked around. Apparently he was lying on a beach, sand all over him (scratchy—he also felt scratchy! Even that was a treat after so long without a body). A puddle next to him smelled strongly of beer.

Pushing himself into a seated position, Asa looked down at the body the Sorceress had provided for him. He was male—not that it mattered so much, but he’d been male before, when he had been what you’d call “alive,” so at least he was familiar with the equipment. Apparently he was tall. His skin was a deep, tawny shade of tan.

Something uncomfortably bulky was in his pocket. He pulled out a wallet and flipped through it. Cash—quite a lot of it, if his understanding of human economics was up to date—a set of car keys, a Starbucks card (he’d been wanting to try this coffee he kept hearing about), a Rodman High ID, and what appeared to be a driver’s license.

“Jeremy Arun Prasad,” Asa read aloud. “Sorry about your untimely death. And thanks for the ride.”

Nice voice, really. Not very deep, but—mellifluous. Pleasing to the ear. And even the flat, awkward photos on the ID and driver’s license suggested his new form was pleasing to the eye as well. That would make his brief sojourn in the mortal world simpler; such shallow virtues carried more weight than they should here. That was something you could see very clearly from hell.

Carefully he got to his feet. Balance came back to him more easily than he would have thought. Brushing the sand from his clothes and face, Asa wondered how best to begin. He knew his role here—was sworn to it by unbreakable bonds—but the town looked different from above than it did from below. First he had to get his bearings.

“Jeremy!” A tall man with braided hair and even darker skin than his own came jogging up to him. His memories of the people he had seen while observing Mateo Perez supplied the name Gage Calloway. “Hey, man, are you all right?”

“Yeah, sure. I just—I think I passed out.” The puddle of beer would support that story.

Gage paused. “You gonna be sick? Do you need some coffee or some water or something? I have a strong antipuke policy.”

“I feel fine now.” Fine. What a word for the ecstasy of having legs, arms, a voice, eyes—well, eyes of a sort. They did the job of the real thing. He was whole again. A person again. And this miracle he could only call fine.

“Yeah, you look okay, I guess. But I’ll give you a ride home.”

“What are you doing out here?” Asa thought this time of day—this, with the light beginning to emerge over the water—was sunrise, and that meant it was either too early or too late for most people to be up.

“Some people took my aunt’s patio furniture so they could hang out on the beach. I’m still missing a chair. If I don’t find it, Aunt Lorraine’s gonna kill me. This is the last party I ever have at her place, I swear to God.”