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Am I becoming the book?

I set it down like it was burning me, which, given my current state, it might as well have been, and drifted back to Nat’s side.

“Am I becoming the book?” I finally asked.

He stiffened. After a long pause, he nodded, more to himself than to me. “If you feel yourself fading past retrieval, it would be an option. A way to preserve the last fragments of you.”

“Will I know when it’s happening?”

“Yes. There won’t be enough of you left to talk to me. Or open a book. Or taunt the hellhounds.”

“Ah. So I’d miss out on the highlight of my afterlife.” I tried to make it sound like a joke. It fell flat. “Look, all of this is a pretty significant damper on my plans. You know, Big Brother of the Year, Boyfriend of the Decade, Savior of Mankind,” I snorted. “One of those is definitely not happening. Guess which.”

“Everything has goals,” Nat said, his voice almost lost in the quiet of the archive. “Even if the goal is just to exist.”

My thoughts snapped to Angel, hunting a lead on a changeling. The one who’d followed me had worked for Erlik once. Was it still? Did all of them clock in for him? Some cosmic temp agency for hungry ghosts with benefits?

But maybe the changeling wasn’t working for anyone anymore. Maybe it was just running. Searching for its own fix. A body of its own.

The team had traced residual magic in the shadows left by the portals in my apartment—scars of panic-jumps. A spirit on the run, leaping from vessel to vessel. In the mortal realm, it needed a body to stay real. So why keep jumping? Why never stay?

Because Erlik was stalking it, too.

Remi suspected the changeling’s movements left stains. It was leaving a trail of desperation.

Nat tilted his head, watching me connect the dots.

“Do you have anything on changelings?” I asked. “Aren’t they fae-touched? Spirits that steal skin?”

Nat studied me for a long moment, then turned and drifted toward a shadowed alcove where the older, darker texts were kept.

“Rumors,” he said, his voice low. “No one really knows. Though legend claims changelings were once high fae. They did terrible things. So, they were stripped of their forms, cast into darkness, left to roam as shades. Hungry. Unanchored. Never whole. The fae claim otherwise. That changelings existed even before they did. Hungry shadows, leeching life from anything they could touch.”

“So, they have to feed on the living to survive. And that’s all we really know?”

Nat shrugged.

“Great.” I dragged a hand through my hair—or tried to. My fingers caught on nothing. Right. Ghost. “The only thing anyone agrees on is that they’re hungry and nobody knows where they came from. Fantastic. Love a good mystery when my afterlife depends on it.”

“I think we know more than most. Changelings are spirits desperate for form, for life. So desperate that they would betray anyone or anything to exist,” Nat pointed out.

“Not unlike me.” I let that sit, uncomfortable with the weight of it. “I’ve got people who need me. Family. And a boyfriend with trust issues and excellent bone structure.”

I paused. What wouldn’t I do to return to them? Maybe that was the point. That I had them at all.

“The changelings don’t have connections, right? They’re just hungry.” Did they have anything else to hold them here? Love? Hope? Dreams? Or simply hunger?

Nat shrugged, maybe he didn’t know. He pulled a slender, leather-bound volume from the shadows. Its title was stamped in tarnished silver: On Hollow Vessels and the Hungry Ghosts That Fill Them.

He held it out. “Don’t lose yourself searching for the unattainable. You have a vessel. You only need to retrieve it.”

“But changelings are masters at tracing resonance, right? It’s how they choose bodies. Maybe it can help me find a way back to mine.”

“You already have the link.”

I blinked at him. “I what?”

Nat’s expression didn’t change, but something in his tone softened. Barely. “The protection spell you wove. Around your brother. Your mate. Your team. You poured yourself into it. You stretched your resonance, your will, your very self. That spell is still there. Still yours. Still connected to you. It’s part of your resonance.”