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“Is the spook here?” Dylan asked.

“Yes. Can’t you see him?”

“No. But I can see whatever the fuck that is in the corner.” Dylan reached for the door handle.

“Stop!” the figure spoke, its chilling voice neither male nor female, just other. Moreover, I think I heard it in my head.

Dylan grabbed me and pulled me behind him, one hand clasped around my wrist. The robed figure edged further into the room; it straddled the fiery light but was not quite inside the room.

“What do you want?” Dylan said in his best I’m a doctor voice, though he looked anything but: bare-chested and wearing only stripy flannel pajama bottoms.

“It wants me,” Tristan said, standing beside Dylan to shield me. “Leave her alone. It’s me you want.”

The Custodian raised its head, and its hood fell back a little. Dylan and I stumbled backward when we caught a glimpse of its face, a stretched taut skin of matte alabaster over a hairless skull with sunken white eyes that had pinpricks of black at their center. The skin was stretched over its teeth so you could see every single tooth. The overall effect was bloodcurdling, and if I wasn’t mistaken, the light level in the room had dropped. The Custodian’s skin sucked the light out of the room like a leech.

I quailed, and my teeth started chattering from fear.

“She shines, like you,” the Custodian said to Tristan, though its white teeth remained static. It had no lips.

“It’s me you want.” Tristan stepped forward, blocking my view.

“No, Tristan.” I leaned toward him, but Dylan tightened his grip on me.

“Stay where you are,” Tristan snarled, and I didn’t know if he was addressing me or the… the thing.

“Fairfax, we meet at last. We can trade. Your exceptionally talented soul for hers.”

“You have no right. She’s of the living.”

“As are you. But your time is done. She sees you, and that is not permitted. She’s tasted death and eluded her fate, and her soul is talented, like yours.”

“No!” Tristan cried out. “That’s impossible.” He turned bright, terror-filled eyes to mine. His fear was my fear. The Custodian turned its ice-white gaze on me, and I noticed its white, spiky, long eyelashes like shards of thin ice. Every cell in my body contracted with fear and revulsion, and I felt sick to my stomach.

“Her life force is strong. Like yours.”

“That means she’s not for you. Keep your fucking hands off her,” Tristan growled.

Shit!

Dylan pushed me more forcibly behind him, and his whole body tensed as if for a fight.

Two more Custodians appeared in the distance behind the one dressed in black. They were dressed in white robes and were gliding slowly across the heather toward the entryway to my bedroom.

Oh no! More of them!

This would be impossible to contain. Tristan saw them. “There is competition for my soul,” he warned.

The Custodian turned to glance behind itself.

Tristan took a couple of steps forward, then gave Dylan and me one quick glance. “Beauchamp,” he whispered. “I love you. I will find you. Now go.” Before I could stop him, he launched himself at the black-robed figure.

“No!” I shouted.

Tristan pushed the Custodian back through the portal onto the moss and heather.

“Tristan!” I tried to struggle out of Dylan’s hold.

“Emily, no!” Dylan wrapped his arms around me.