be lucky enough to have you trapped in my head in the first place?”
“I came back with a body.” He shakes his head and glances at Jaxon, still conversing with the Bloodletter. “I was confused, too, but I know that much. The last thing I remember is my brother trying to kill me and I was moving on instinct, fading toward him to protect myself. When you turned to stone, I’m pretty sure you took my faded body that was still re-forming with you. And, well”—he spreads his hands wide—“here we are.”
That makes a twisted kind of sense to me, even though I don’t want it to be true. But what else could have happened? I didn’t shift to my gargoyle form on purpose—I didn’t even know it was possible. But if he was fading into me at the exact same time, maybe it messed with how I shifted. Or maybe I messed with how he faded. Either way, it really might be my fault that he’s trapped in my head. Ugh. So not what I wanted to realize.
I turn back to the Bloodletter with that knowledge churning in my head and try to get her attention again. “What do I need to do for you to let me out of here?”
The Bloodletter and Jaxon walk back to the cage bars. Jaxon’s face looks extremely worried, and I suddenly have the urge to hug him, to tell him everything is going to be all right.
“You’re the one in the cage, and you want to ease his suffering. Point fucking made,” Hudson growls, but I ignore him, holding Jaxon’s gaze instead.
The Bloodletter interrupts. “You need to let me teach you how to build a wall so you can lock Hudson out. You have to put a barrier between the two of you, Grace. Hudson can’t be trusted.”
“I know that.”
“Do you?” she asks. “Do you really? Because I don’t think you can fully understand until you know him. Until you see how he operates, up close and personal. You may not believe it, but the time will come when you want to empathize with him.”
“I would never—”
“Oh yes, you would. You will. But you can’t. You have to stay strong, to be on your guard at all times. No one in your world is more dangerous than Hudson. No one else can do what he can. He’ll tell you anything you need to hear, everything you want to hear. He’ll lie to you, he’ll trick you, and when you lower your guard, he’ll kill you. Or worse. He’ll kill everyone you love, just because he can.”
Hudson stops pacing, his face turning to stone as he waits for my reaction. Only his eyes are alive, a vivid, storm-tossed blue that delves into the very heart of me.
“I won’t let that happen. I swear,” I tell her, even as panic races through me. “How can I lock him out?”
“That’s what I want to show you,” she says. “If you’ll let me.”
“Of course I’ll let you. I thought that was the whole reason we were here—so you could teach me how to get rid of him. I just don’t understand why you felt like you needed to lock me up.” I turn to Jaxon. “Or why you thought it was okay to let her.”
He looks sick. “I didn’t—”
“He doesn’t have a choice. And neither do you. It’s bad enough that Hudson could take over your body. But now that he’s started talking to you, we have to find a way to create a partition between you and him before it’s too late. This cage will give us the freedom to do that, since he’s behind bars, too.”
I notice that she doesn’t mention that it protects anyone inside the cage from his power—namely me—but I don’t call her on it. Not when my stomach is doing a triple somersault in the worst possible way and I have bigger, more important things to question her about. “Too late?”
“Yes, too late,” she reiterates. “The longer we wait, the greater the chance that the next time he takes you over…” She pauses and glances at Jaxon before turning back to me. “The next time, you might not be able to find your way back.”
Her voice echoes ominously throughout the cavern, her warning hitting me like a wrecking ball. “That can’t really happen, can it?” I whisper through a throat tight with horror.
“Of course not!” Hudson starts pacing the room again. “I mean, seriously. Who would actually choose to spend