“Mira should have used her money to buy you some new clothes instead of toys,” I criticized, trying to redirect the conversation away from me.

“But she did! Look!” Lily commanded. She took a step away from the sofa and threw out her arms before spinning around in place. She had on a pair of worn-looking jeans and a faded T-shirt over a black turtleneck sweater.

“They don’t look new.”

Lily gave a little snort.

“It’s the style now,” Mira informed me. “It’s called distressed.”

“Sounds like a rip-off to me,” I muttered. Mira simply shrugged her shoulders as if to say “What did it matter?” And in truth, it didn’t. Lily was happy.

“I only had time to pick up a couple outfits,” Mira said. “I thought we could go shopping tonight for some more clothes and essentials.”

It was a peace offering. Between the distinct pallor to her cheeks and the fact that she had shopped for Lily, I knew the nightwalker had not hunted tonight. She had turned her focus to Lily, using the child as a way of distracting herself from the pain I had caused. I wasn’t sure if she had actually forgiven me, but she was at least willing to call a truce.

At that moment, nothing sounded more appealing than trailing after Mira and Lily as they went on an intense shopping expedition, where we would encounter nothing more stressful than choosing between which pair of shoes to buy. No naturi. No bori. No coven and no Ryan. We could even stop and have a cozy dinner together at a restaurant. A normal night. A normal life.

“We can’t tonight,” I said, tearing my eyes from Lily’s disappointed expression to Mira’s look of concern. “Mira and I have some things that we need to take care of.”

“It’s that thing, isn’t it?” Lily demanded, clutching her small gaming system to her chest as if I were threatening to take it away from her. “The monster I saw that killed that girl.”

“Lily, would you please go upstairs and play with your new…PSP?” I asked. “I would like to speak to Mira.”

“Hey, I saw this bastard first!” she said, raising her voice. “I should be involved in this. You can’t push me out.”

“Watch your language,” I calmly replied, not allowing myself to be swayed by her outburst. Lily had spent most of her life on the streets. She had experienced enough horrible things in her short existence. She didn’t need to be exposed to our world any more than she already had.

“No! I’m not going anywhere.”

Mira rose from the sofa in the boneless fashion that seemed to be unique to nightwalkers. She turned around and stared down at the teenager coldly. “Lily, go upstairs,” she said in a low, even voice. For a moment, I thought Mira was using her ability to control the girl’s mind, but Lily soon proved me wrong.

“This is bullshit!” the teenager shouted, stomping her foot. “I should be involved.”

“I promised that I would protect you,” I countered. “This is me protecting you. You will go upstairs. Mira and I will take care of it.”

Lily glared at Mira and me, then she whipped her gaze over to Tristan, sitting quietly in a chair in the corner with his own handheld gaming system. I flinched at the sight of him. My focus had been so trained on Mira and Lily that I hadn’t even noticed him in the room. I was seriously losing my touch. Such a slipup would get me killed.

“Can Tristan come up with me?” she asked.

“Tristan is staying down here with us,” Mira replied, surprising me. In most cases, she had not felt compelled to include the young nightwalker in our discussions. I had thought it was her decision to keep him protected against the growing threats in our world. Maybe she had realized that protecting was not helping him grow stronger. He wasn’t learning how to protect himself, which had always been her grand plan when it came to her blood brother.

Lily let out a growl before she spun on her heel and stomped her way up the stairs to the second floor. Along the way, she muttered every curse word she knew while complaining about our combined stupidity. It was all I could do not to laugh.

“She reminds me of you,” I murmured, looking over at Mira.

The nightwalker arched one brow at me as a slight smile lifted her full lips. “I can curse better.” The smile fell from her face almost as quickly as it had formed as she turned serious again. “You saw it, didn’t you?”

I let my eyes close as my mind replayed the vision of the mist pouring out of the man. This was the creature that had damned my soul for all eternity. “Yes, it appeared at your house. I—I don’t know how we’re going to fight it.”

“What do you mean?” Tristan asked, pushing to his feet.

I turned my gaze from Tristan to Mira, who was intently watching me. “Have you ever encountered a bori?”

“No, but it’s all spirit, isn’t it?” she said, with a shake of her head.

“How did you know?” I demanded.

Mira sat down on the edge of the coffee table so that she could easily look at both Tristan and me. “With the naturi escaping from their prison, I started to think that maybe the cage that held the bori could be diminishing as well. Time erodes all things, right? So, before meeting up with Ryan, I flew to Venice and spoke to Jabari. He loaned me several journals regarding the bori. They included a description of the creature.”

“The bori are the guardians of the soul?” Tristan asked.

“And our creators,” Mira added, turning her head to look over at him. “Nightwalkers were created by the bori centuries ago to fight in the wars against the naturi. It’s why we’re dependent upon soul magic for our survival.”

“What are they?” Tristan said, shaking his head. “You said it’s all spirit. What did you mean?”

“A bori appears to be pure soul magic,” I replied. “I don’t think it has a body of its own. It can shapeshift into different forms, but it’s at its physical strongest when it possesses the body of another creature. When Gaizka appeared at Mira’s, it possessed the body of this middle-aged man.”

“Gaizka?” Mira repeated.

“Yes, Gaizka. The part owner of my soul.”

“Oh,” she whispered, her shoulders slumping.

“What?” Tristan gasped, taking a step toward me.

“A bori owns part of my soul,” I admitted. Normally, I would never have uttered such a thing aloud, and never to a nightwalker, but oddly enough, I trusted Tristan because Mira trusted him. I knew the young nightwalker would never reveal my secret to the world, even under threat of death.

“Oh,” he murmured, sitting back down in his chair. “I guess that explains your…abilities.”

“When you saw it tonight, what did it want?” Mira asked, drawing us back to the problem at hand.

“It wants us to go back to killing naturi,” I replied.

Mira chuckled softly, flashing a brilliant smile up at me. “You make that sound like such a horrible thing.”

“It is!” I snapped. “When we combine our powers and destroy the naturi, we’re not destroying their souls like we thought. We’re directly feeding Gaizka, making it stronger. It’s how it managed to escape in the first place.”

“Shit,” Mira hissed, shoving both her hands through her hair, pushing it away from her face as she stared down at the floor. “Danaus, we weren’t killing them that way because it was particularly fun. It was because we had no other choice. That weapon can’t be stripped away now.”

Coming around to the front of the sofa, I sat down on the arm. “But it has been. We can’t give Gaizka any more power. We can’t risk setting it loose in a world where it will have no other competition against other bori. I’m not sure exactly how they feed, but in a world filled with humans, getting energy from their souls can’t be that hard. Gaizka would become a god among men.”

“And we have enough to worry about with Aurora and the rest of the naturi running loose,” Mira finished. The nightwalker drew in a deep breath and slowly released it, letting her shoulder slump. “All right. It’s agreed. We don’t combine our powers any more. The risk is too great, now that we understand what we’re doing.”