Mira plopped down on one of the benches near the center of Oglethorpe Square and put her head in her hands as she rested her elbows on her knees. “I can’t keep doing this, Danaus,” she moaned. “First it was you, then Jabari with the coven, and then it was Rowe and the rest of the naturi. Now, a bori? I can’t do this. I came to Savannah to escape the insanity that seemed to follow me throughout Europe. Now it seems to have followed me here.”

I stopped and knelt in front of Mira, wishing I could tell her that I thought I was wrong and that it was something less frightening. The bori were called the guardians of the soul, while the naturi were the guardians of the earth. The two races had been born to create a balance on the Earth, but from what I understood, the two seemed to be locked in a permanent power struggle over who truly ruled the Earth. Centuries ago, long before I was even born, the bori and the naturi were imprisoned in separate, alternate realities. For the most part, the naturi had succeeded in escaping from their cage this past fall and their now-queen Aurora was free. Though at least she had her own problems in the form of a younger sister who was attempting to wrest the crown from her.

A bori running loose in the world was an entirely darker matter that neither Mira nor I truly wanted to face. The bori were the creators of the nightwalker race, from what I understood, and had the same ability to control the nightwalkers the way the naturi could control the lycanthropes. Mira already had had to suffer the indignity of being controlled like a puppet by Jabari and me. She didn’t need to have a bori free in her domain as well.

Putting one hand on her knee, I placed my other hand under her chin and forced her to look up at me. “We’ll get through this,” I said firmly. “We’ve survived the naturi. We can survive a rogue bori.”

“You say rogue bori, but you don’t know,” Mira said grimly. “How do we fight a creature that can control us both?”

I flinched—the bori that had a hold on my soul had managed to take control of me when we were in Peru. Mira and another nightwalker named Stefan had cast a spell that killed a horde of naturi and captured their souls. The bori that held me reacted to the souls and appeared to feed off the energy, controlling me and forcing me to attack Mira.

“We’ll find a way.”

Mira frowned at me. She wrapped the fingers of her left hand around my hand, which was still beneath her chin. “I would never have expected you to be such an optimist.”

I smirked at my companion in this nightmare that never seemed to end. “Do we really have any other choice?”

“Not really,” she admitted.

Mira looked up over my right shoulder, squinting as she tried to focus on something. Then she suddenly lurched to her feet, nearly knocking me over in her haste. She took a couple steps forward as I rose to my feet. Her emotions pushed unbidden through me, filling me with fear and rage.

“Scan the area,” she ordered in a gruff voice. Her hands were held out to her sides, her fingers curled slightly as if she meant to summon up balls of fire at the first sign of trouble.

I sent my powers out from my body so that they flooded the park, and then farther away, covering several blocks. There was nothing out there. A scattering of nightwalkers and a couple of lycanthropes, but not the naturi I knew that she had me searching for. I reached out farther, covering the entire city, and to my surprise, there wasn’t a single naturi in the region.

“There’s nothing here,” I said, drawing my powers back into my body. They swept over Mira, pulling with them an unexpected cold chill, as if a part of her energy had mingled with my own.

“That’s impossible,” she replied, twisting around to pin me with a confused glare. She pointed toward a tree more than a hundred yards away, but I saw nothing there. “I saw one right there!”

“Was it Rowe?” I inquired, taking a couple steps toward her so that I was standing beside her. My eyes covered the entire region surrounding the tree, but nothing moved. The one-eyed naturi was the only one we had encountered that could magically pop in and out of an area. He had nearly captured Mira that way in London.

“No,” she whispered, turning her back on the tree and walking back over to the empty park bench she had been seated on only moments ago. I watched her shake her head as if to clear it while her slim shoulders slumped. Her fear had dissipated with the wind, but now a growing confusion ate away at her thoughts.

“Who was it? A naturi you’ve seen before?” I pressed. We needed to know if there was another naturi like Rowe, that could use magic to appear and disappear at will. This added a new element of danger to the naturi if there were more that could potentially grab the Fire Starter.

“It was nothing,” she muttered. “Just a trick of the shadows and the night.”

An uneasiness grew in the pit of my stomach and a frown pulled at the corners of my mouth. Nightwalkers had the best night vision possible, as far as I knew, and between the lamp and moonlight, the park wasn’t that particularly dark. How could Mira have mistaken a shadow for a naturi? Was this the same shadow she had seen outside the house of the First Communion? Or similar to the crying baby that she had heard at the conservatory? Something had potentially found a way to play with the nightwalker’s mind, making her more dangerous to those around her.

“Mira…” I started, but my voice trailed off. How was I supposed to tell her that I thought something was intentionally driving her crazy?

“It’s nothing, Danaus,” Mira said, turning to face me again. She resumed her walk through the park and I fell into step beside her, unable to tap down my growing concern for the nightwalker. “Our focus needs to be on finding a way to locate our killer,” Mira continued after we had walked a couple of blocks.

Between the Fire Starter and a nightwalker hunter with a bori-owned soul wandering around Savannah, I had little doubt that the bori would eventually come looking for us.

There were still a few more hours before sunrise when Mira dropped me off at the town house. She had muttered something about wanting to do some research. I said nothing as I got out of the car. The nightwalker had been through enough for one night. So had I. As I reached the top stair leading to the front porch, I turned and watched her drive off in her sleek car, disappearing into the thick shadows cast by the trees.

Instead of going into the house, I trudged back down the stairs. While it was late, I knew I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep anytime soon. Images of the naturi and the threat of the bori were dancing through my brain. In fact, that combination left me wondering if I would ever sleep again.

The naturi had become a threat bigger than I had ever anticipated. They had slaughtered dozens of humans since Rowe began his campaign last summer to free his wife-queen. From so many bodies, the chests had been ripped open and organs stolen for blood-magic spells woven to give the one-eyed naturi an edge when it came down to hunting Mira. At Machu Picchu, thirteen humans had been slaughtered to open the door between worlds—hearts stolen from innocent people.

And now that Aurora was free, the killing would only grow worse. Her only desire was to wipe humanity from the face of the Earth, freeing the planet from a deadly parasite. The queen of the naturi had yet to make her move, but it was only a matter of time. She would strike, and I feared that the nightwalkers would not be strong enough to combat whatever she threw at them. We had underestimated their determination at Machu Picchu. Now they were more numerous and more powerful with Aurora at their side.

Gaizka was an entirely different matter. I hadn’t expected to ever be faced with the bori that held a chunk of my soul. It had allowed me to slaughter a nightwalker and an innocent human he was using as puppets. One woman had her throat torn out simply because she associated with nightwalkers in what was possibly a scheme to expose the nightwalkers to the rest of the world. And now it was chasing after a young girl simply because she had the unique ability to spot the creature.