He was going to push her off. Holy shit, he was going to throw her off the roof, this was it, she was going to die—

No! She struggled with all the strength she had, kicking, wriggling, trying to bite the hand over her mouth. He let go and moved his hand down to her throat. Shit, that was worse; he squeezed her throat so she could hardly breathe.

There had to be a way to get out of this. To save herself. The edge of the roof loomed before her, so bright and sharp against the city lights. She had to do something. Wind in her hair, so strong it was hard to think. If he would just wait a second and let her think.

He said something else, his voice slicing at her ears. The wind strengthened. Was he calling it? Controlling it? Witches were strong, they were powerful, they could manipulate elements as easily as she could read one of her radio callers. They manipulated energy. She read people. She couldn’t read witches, generally, but she hadn’t tried in a hell of a long time either, had she?

She went limp, dropping her head, letting her arms fall slack at her sides. She couldn’t do anything about her pounding pulse, as much as she wished she could. Both of her hearts were beating furiously against her ribs, as if they knew what was coming and wanted to try to jump out and survive on their own. Which at least one of them could very well be capable of. She ignored that thought and focused on being heavy, limp, boneless like a heap of rags. Forced herself not to move even when he kicked the back of her leg. Her captor made a surprised, impatient sound and paused to readjust his grip on her.

She struck. Not with her body but with her energy, with all the power she possessed, forming it into a knife in her mind and driving it into his chest.

The shrieking triumph in her head drowned out his screams. He filled her; she couldn’t think of any other way to put it, and it didn’t matter anyway. He filled her with power, with light, with something that made her want to laugh and cry at the same time.

He let go of her and clutched at his chest; she felt him trying to expel her energy weapon, her psychic blade that was still embedded in him. Felt him grow weak. Watched him fall to his knees as she spun away from him on nimble feet. The height of the roof seemed to be nothing at all. The stars above shone down just for her, blessing her, as she filled herself with him and he crumpled closer to the edge of the roof—

He was going to fall. Because she was stealing his life.

Horrified, she tried to pull away, but the weapon was too bloated, too pure and full and strong to collapse. Her hands scrabbled at his shoulders, trying to yank him back away from the edge, but he struggled against her as if her touch burned him.

Which it might be doing; her skin glowed where it touched him, and energy pulsed up her arms from him. Feeding her. She was trapped in him, terrified but elated. Terrified because she was elated. It was beautiful and glorious and ecstatic and horrifying, and she gritted her teeth against it and threw everything she could into her shields, envisioning them snapping into place with a thick, heavy clang.

They did. The weapon broke. The man—the witch, whatever he was—gasped and struggled to stand, pushing himself away from her.

Wrong move. He stumbled, pitched forward. And fell over the ledge.

He didn’t scream as he fell.

“I have to call—Spud, cut it out, damn it!” She batted his eyeshadow-wielding hand away from her eye and glared at him. The glow from the lights behind him surrounded his cap like a bizarre halo. “It doesn’t matter how I look, because nobody is going to see me but Tera, and even if they do, I was just attacked and almost killed, and I think—maybe I’m crazy—but I think perhaps that gives me license to have smudged mascara!”

“Bryaela, we can’t—”

“No. No, don’t you dare bryaela me. He almost threw me off the fucking roof, Greyson. And I—I—” Shit. She couldn’t finish the sentence, because it hit her again, the way she’d fed off him, sucked out his energy. The way she’d gloried in it.

“You did what you had to do,” he finished for her. He stood a foot or so away, his arms folded and his brows drawn down, with his hair moving in the breeze. After his initial clutching and holding he’d stepped away, and she was glad. If he’d touched her just then she would have broken down, and she did not want to do that. Not yet. The inner workings of the Vergadering—the witches’ organization, a sort of magical law-enforcement agency, for which Tera worked—were pretty shadowy, but she was pretty sure that she’d need to hold on to as much of that grief and horror as she could for when they showed up.

Just in case it made a difference. She had no idea if it would.

When she didn’t reply, he said it again. “You did what you had to do, Meg. It was you or him. You did the right thing.”

Shit. “I didn’t.”

“You did. If you hadn’t done whatever you did, you’d be dead right now, and I can assure you that would most definitely not be right.”

Without meaning to, she glanced to her left again, at the spot where he’d fallen. She couldn’t seem to stop looking at it; it pulsed in her vision, glowing. “I killed him.”

“And that’s why you’re still here. Look, I don’t mean to be insensitive, but we need to get back down to dinner immediately.”

“I can’t go back down to—Spud, if you come at me with that thing one more time I am going to stick it right up—”

“Spud, why don’t you give us a minute?” Greyson cut in smoothly. “Go wait over there with Malleus.”

Spud looked from him back to her, his heavy features sorrowful like a basset hound’s, before nodding and lumbering away across the roof. Damn. Now she’d hurt his feelings.

“Meg. We have to get back to dinner now. Right away. Before the others start wondering what’s going on.”

“But—”

“No. We have to. One of two things has happened here. Either this witch attacked you of his own accord, in which case there’s no point in freaking the others out, or one of them paid him to attack you, in which case—”

“The only way to make them sweat is to act as if nothing happened,” she finished.

“Right.”

“But what if he didn’t act of his own accord? What if he was hired by someone else who wants to kill me, and it’s not one of them at all?”

“Again. If you don’t go back to dinner, you’ve shown them a vulnerability. A weakness. You may give them ideas, if they don’t have them already. They will take advantage of any weakness they can find, darling. Anything. Please, come back to the table with me now.”

She hesitated. He was right. She knew he was.

But how in the world could she go back down to that table and finish her meal as if nothing had happened? And what about— “What about the body?”

“I told Carter to take care of it.” Seeing her look, he continued, “He’ll stow it away until we decide what to do. He won’t incinerate it yet.”

She didn’t really like the sound of that “yet,” but there wasn’t much she could do. “I still want to call Tera.”

“And you can. As soon as we get through this meal, you can call anyone you wish. But we have to get through it. You have to get through it, Meg, and I know you can. Come on.” He reached out and pulled her into the protective circle of his arm, tight at his side. His lips brushed the top of her head.

She wanted to call Tera, wanted to go back to the room and crawl under the covers and sob. She’d killed a man. And she’d liked it; well, no, she hadn’t liked killing him, but she’d certainly liked what came before.

She’d gotten used to the occasional strange craving. Gotten used to—more than used to—trading energy with Greyson, as a way to keep from having to take energy from the negative emotions of humans. Well, she traded energy with Greyson for a few reasons, but one of them was that it meant she didn’t have to feed off anyone or anything else. She didn’t require a lot of energy anyway.