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Aha. Here’s where she’ll make it right. Where she’ll tell that filthy harpy to get her goddamned hands off our son, and if she doesn’t—

“She’ll make sure of it, Reece.” Without lowering her hand from Faline’s pale cheek, Emma tilts her head to capture my gaze with the splendor of her own. Except that turquoise glory is no longer saved for me. Or even focused on me. Her dazzling blues are shrouded in unseeing mists. She stares right through me despite how she keeps speaking to me. “You heard her, didn’t you? She’s got this, baby. She’ll make sure our bean is safe, okay? She’ll make sure all is well.”

“There, now.” Faline’s lips flow with a wider smirk. “It is all settled. You will have no more worries about this, my darling.”

“I’m not your fucking darling,” I seethe. “And this is not all settled! Emma. Emma.” But while I keep reaching to my wife, she doesn’t respond. Her gaze becomes more vacant. More and more, she slips into a trance like the one her mother was in after Faline kidnapped the woman and then returned her to us eight hours later as a new member of the “Faline is Goddess of all” cult. Jesus. No. Emma would gash her wrists before signing up to drink that bitch’s Kool-Aid. “Damn it! Emma, wake the hell up! She wants to take our boy! Our son!”

“And hers too.” Emma weaves her head through the air as if following the sway of a tree in the wind. “He’s special, Reece. He needs her special care and guidance.”

“He needs our care and guidance!” My senses seize and blaze before exploding and then freezing. My terror is so immense, my body doesn’t know what to do about its force. I don’t give a shit. The implosion of my soul is all-consuming—and beyond devastating. How can Faline be doing this? How can Emmalina be letting her? What the living fuck is going on? “Emma, listen to what you’re saying. This isn’t right. Wake up!”

“Hmmm.” She rocks her head again—before stopping her motions to pin me with the blue tranquility of her gaze. “I’m afraid not.”

I plummet to my knees. “Jesus.” Then utter beneath my breath, “No.” Then whisper down at my clenched fists, “No!”

“You’re the one who needs to wake up, baby.” Her voice is also just a rasp. Soft but husky, like moss growing on a rusty gate that she’s locked up tight and refuses to open. “Reece. Reece. Wake up…”

I can barely hear her.

Though she’s standing right there, with her mist-covered gaze and her sweet swaying form, it sounds as if she’s run off to an enchanted glade and is playing hide-and-seek in the trees with my addled psyche.

“Reece. Oh, baby. Wake up.”

But I stand my ground. Root myself in with the remaining strength left in my bones. “No, goddamnit. I’m not going to let you do this. I’m not going to let her do it!”

“Her who?”

“Huh?” Why is she fucking with me like this? She’s pawing at Faline like a smitten disciple, and she dares ask me that? What the hell is wrong with her? What the hell has that bitch done to her?

“Reece. Hey. Zeus Man. Come on, now. Open your eyes and look at me.”

Open my—

What the fuck? My eyes are open. Aren’t they?

I funnel all my efforts toward my face, consciously blinking my eyes. Well, holy shit.

Faline is nowhere in sight.

What I do see are the familiar outlines of furniture in the master bedroom of the Newport Beach safe house in which Emmalina and I have been living for a little over two months. Though to get technical, I’m not sure the word “safe” will ever fully apply to my existence—or that the word “house” can really stand in for the oceanfront complex I secured in case we ever needed to really vanish from the Consortium’s radar. All right, so it’s an oxymoron—“disappearing” in a three-story Craftsman with a dozen bedrooms and panoramic ocean views—but the new digs and our Bohemian disguises have so far accomplished the trick.

Now if my subconscious would only read that memo. And believe it.

A cause my conscious mind has a few choice opinions about.

“Fuck.” I swallow the end of the utterance while gathering Emma’s hand tighter against my sweat-covered chest. “I…I was…”

“Dreaming.” She soothes the word into the plane of my pectoral before trailing her lips up to the side of my neck, brushing her cool breath into my system along the way. “Just a dream, my love.”

No. A nightmare.

But I keep the words to myself, not wanting to burden her with the disturbing shit that just dominated my mind. It’s enough for me that none of it is true. That she’s right here, free from that mist in her eyes, gazing at me with clarity and love, the sweet curves of her face defined by the perfect midnight glow filtering in through the windows.

“You want to talk about it?”

“No.” The answer spills out way too fast and much too urgently—and neither tidbit escapes her attention.

“You sure?” she prods. “Baby, this is the third night in a row now, and—”