When I approached them, Stephan had been telling Alex something in a low voice, but shut his mouth immediately when he saw me.

“Gemma,” Stephan said in an eerily calm voice. “It’s so nice to finally meet you.”

Well look at him. Pretending like he’d never met me before. What a jerk. Now I’d love to be able to tell you that I spat every foul word that was running through my mind right in his face. But I didn’t. Just being there in the same room with him, I felt like I was suffocating, and my voice was getting strangled inside my throat. So instead, I just stood there like a coward, nervously eyeballing the Death Walkers that were gathering out in the driveway.

“Well, Alex, you’ve done a good job here—keeping her out of trouble and everything,” Stephan said. “But I’ll take it from here.”

Take it from here. What did that mean? Detach my soul. Sick the Death Walkers on me? I eyed the door that led back inside the cabin, contemplating whether or not to make a run for it. But where would I go?

“Okay,” Alex told Stephan, and I wanted to smack him in the back of the head.

“Traitor,” I muttered.

He shot me a look and shook his head once as if to say be quiet.

“Look,” Alex said to Stephan, “I understand that there are some things that need to be done here. But what I don’t understand is why they’re here.” He pointed at the Death Walkers.

“That is a very good question.” Stephan said in a condescending tone. “But right now, all I need for you to do is give me the Sword of Immortality and keep your mouth shut. You know better than to question anything that I do.”

Wow. I couldn’t help but wonder if there was some kind of How To class that Keepers were required to go to in order to be such crappy parents/guardians, because Stephan reminded me a lot of Marco and Sophia with the do-what-you’re-told-and-don’t-ask-any-questions attitude.

Speaking of Marco and Sophia, weren’t they supposed to be gracing us with their presence?

Stephan held out his hand and tapped his foot impatiently as he waited for Alex to surrender the sword over.

“Okay, I’ll give you the sword,” Alex said, and my gut clenched. “But I have one small thing I have to ask you before I do.”

“Make it quick,” Stephan grumbled.

And the next thing I knew, Alex’s fist was slamming into Stephan’s face. After that, everything moved by in a blur. Stephan staggered back. Alex yelled at me to run. And I suddenly found myself running inside the house and out the back door into the forest.

Definitely not the brightest thing I’ve ever done.

Chapter 35

I’d made it a little ways into the forest before the entire severity of my situation hit me. I was running through the forest, being chased by Death Walkers and Stephan. Great thinking Gemma. Way to set yourself up for a cold death. Didn’t your dreams teach you anything?

Yep, I was a real genius.

Debating whether to head back and get the heck out of the trees, I slowed to a jog. What were my options here? I mean, I could either head back to the cabin and face whatever was waiting for me there, or I could keep going farther into the trees, probably end up lost, and eventually get captured if this played out anything like my nightmares, which I was beginning to think might be a big possibility. After discovering I possessed Foreseer abilities, and that I might have been going into visions without the crystal balls help, what’s not to say that my nightmares weren’t the real deal too?

In the midst of my indecisiveness, I heard a twig snap from behind me. I reeled around and did a quick skim of my surroundings. I could barely see a thing, though. The only light I had to go by was the faint light trickling down from the moon.

My heart hammered in my chest as I slid the knife out of my back pocket and held it out in front of me like I was some kind of Sword Fighting Master or something. Which, of course, I so wasn’t. Another snapping twig, and then I saw it—my imminent doom. My grip tightened on the handle of the knife, my life flashing before my eyes as Stephan and a handful of Death Walkers ascended from the trees. Ice crackled over the snow, moving straight for my feet. The temperature descended. My body glazed cold, and I was hit with a spine chilling sense of déjà vu.

My breathing was heavy. My hand trembled. And, I swear, everything moved in slow motion as Stephan trampled up to me, and I swung the blade at him. He flicked it out of my hands effortlessly, and it fell to the icy ground with a clank. Then he bent down, scooped it up, and tucked it into the pocket of his jacket.

“Hello Gemma.” He grinned a spine chilling grin. “Going somewhere?”

Okay, so now what?

Chapter 36

Dragging me behind him like a ragdoll, Stephan trampled through the snow back toward the cabin. The Death Walkers chill nipped at my heels, and my breathing had slowed due to the cold. I wasn’t going to lie and say I wasn’t scared. I was downright terrified. But on a positive note, unlike in my nightmares, he hadn’t commanded the Death Walkers to finish me off.

“You know, things were never supposed to come to this,” Stephan said, jolting me to the side as he swerved around a dead pine tree. “This wasn’t part of the plan.”

“What plan?” I asked in a shaky voice. “The one where you kill me.”

“Kill you.” He laughed like it was the silliest thing he’d ever heard. “Oh Gemma, no one wants to kill you. In fact, you being alive is very important.”

“Important to whom?” I whimpered as my shoulder scrapped the bark of a tree. My skin burned beneath my jacket, and I could feel the warmth of the blood bleeding out.

“And my son,” he continued, shaking his head with disgust. “He should know better. Let’s just hope no permanent damage has been done?”

“Permanent damage to what?” I asked.

He laughed wickedly. “Oh, you’ll soon find out.”

That did not sound good. At all. Was he referring to my soul being detached? Or was there something even worse waiting for me back at the cabin?

And where was Alex? Had something happened to him? I guess I was about to find out, because the cabin had come into view.

By the time we reached the back door, a small part of me felt grateful. My body had practically gone numb from the cold, and I knew that the inside of the cabin would be warm.

But other than that, I had nothing else to look forward to.

Stephan paused at the sliding glass door, his hand still grasped tightly onto my arm. With his free hand, he reached inside the pocket of his jacket and drew out the sword he’d stolen from me early, the blade glinting dangerously in the porch light.

“Just to make sure you don’t run away again.” He lifted the sword, and I screamed as he sliced the blade across the upper part of my leg. It slashed through my jeans and stabbed into my skin. Tears stung at my eyes as blood seeped out.

“I think that should teach you a lesson not to ever run off,” he said, wiping the blood soaked blade off on his jeans.

The world swayed around me. I thought I was going to pass out. The pain…it was excruciating.

I teeter-tottered on the border of consciousness as Stephan yanked me inside the cabin.

I felt a tiny rush of relief when I saw that Alex was in the living room. At least he believed me now—about his father being bad—and was on my side. At least I wasn’t in this alone. That’s what I thought, anyway, until I realized the he was just sitting on the couch, completely unguarded. There was no reason for him to be here. Why hadn’t he run out into the forest to save me?

Alex’s bright green eyes went wide as he caught sight of the gaping wound on my leg, which looked even worse underneath the bright lighting of the living room.

“Jesus Christ, Stephan.” He jumped to his feet. “What the heck did you do to her?”

“She needed to be taught a lesson,” Stephan told him in a serene voice. “Running away is not an option for her, and you should know better than to tell her to do so.”

I noticed a spot of dried blood beneath Stephan’s nose and wondered if Alex had made him bleed when he’d clocked him one.

I hoped he had.

“I said I was sorry about that. I didn’t understand the situation,” Alex said apologetically, staring down at the floor.

“The situation,” I repeated, my confusion swirling just about as bad as the room was. “What situation?”

Stephan shoved me onto the couch, and Alex winced as I stumbled and landed on it awkwardly. But he didn’t try to help me.

“She needs to be alive,” Alex warned Stephan. “She won’t be useful if she’s dead.”

Gaping at Alex, I pressed my hand to my leg, trying to get the bleeding to stop. Was he kidding? I didn’t understand. It seemed like whatever evil thing was about to take place here, he might actually be a part of it. I’d already come to the conclusion that whatever Stephan was going to do to me wasn’t going to be for the good of all humanity. If that were true, he wouldn’t have been working with the Death Walkers, who could in no way represent good. And besides, look what Stephan had done to my mother.

“We need to do it now,” Stephan told Alex “Before things get worse.”

“Do what.” My voice sounded weak and pathetic. “What are you going to do to me?”

“Gemma.” Alex gave me a sympathetic look. “I already explained to you what was going to happen.”

“You’re going to let him detach my soul,” I said, flabbergasted. Sparks were pouring through my body, and I suddenly despised them more than I ever had. “After all of this. After he sent my mom to The Underworld. After he showed up with them.” I pointed to the window were the glowing eyes of the Death Walkers were peeking in.

Stephan clapped his hands together. “Bravo. Very impressive—discovering what I did to your mother.” He gave a dramatic pause. “But how on earth did you do it?”

I waited for Alex to tell him about my Foreseer ability, and the visions I’d seen with and without the crystal. Surprisingly though, he kept his mouth shut.

I raised my chin defiantly at Stephan. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

He glared at me. “Your mother needed to be gotten rid of. She was getting in the way. And she went like a coward—crying the whole way to take you instead of her. She didn’t seem to understand that the world’s fate is depending on you and your inability to feel.”

So not true, but I couldn’t tell him that. “If the world’s fate depends on that, then why are you working with the Death Walkers? I just don’t see them being in a on a plan that has anything to do with saving the world.”

“What I do is really none of your business,” he snapped. “But if you must know—they are working with me to protect the world.”

I gave Alex a pleading look. “You can’t be buying this. Not when it’s Death Walkers that will come out of the portal and destroy the world. How could they be working to help protect the world, when they’re the ones who will be destroying it?”