Tell me, where did I go wrong?
Keeping calm to carry on,
lifeline's blurry in my palm.
Murphy's Law - Honey Revenge

I DIDN'T MEAN to murder the innocent.

But when blood stains your past, it floods your future. Wherever you roam, karma will follow—whether you're in the grocery store, waiting for the bus, or running from your sins.

It'd taken an embarrassing amount of coercing from my deceased companion to move from our parking spot before emergency services showed up. When I relented, we made a painstaking journey to an empty parking lot three streets over. I drove at hardly a crawl, slamming the break at every flash in the sky. Lightning pierced my eyes like headlights. Thunder rattled my bones like a swerving semi.

We sat in silence. I pressed my forehead to the steering wheel, my white-knuckled grip trembling and nails digging into the zebra-print cover.

"Are you okay?" asked Cade.

A sharp chill nipped my arm, and when I turned, his fingers rested tentatively on my elbow. His ambient glow shone brighter to highlight the mist curling from his body.

I tried to laugh, but it sounded more like choking. "I'm not the one who's dead."

As soon as the words left my lips, I fought a cringe of instant regret. It wasn't the most sensitive thing to say to someone who had been alive not two days before, but much to my relief, Cade chuckled.

"You've still got your spunk." He leaned back, tilting his head toward the backseat. "Do you think your little dragon is okay?"

Emotion gripped my throat like my great uncle's hand. While the storm had lessened to a steady rain, and the flashbacks returned to their repressed corner of my brain, I hadn't dared check on my familiar. His sleep wasn't natural. I'd never seen him so still—not even the week he'd attempted transitioning to decaf.

I stretched for the unzipped bag on the backseat and set it on the console. Venti rested inside, curled around the same socks he'd nuzzled into before Folga's attack. Steam drifted lazily from his nostrils, and when I scooped my palms under him, he gripped my socks in his sleepy claws.

Venti was alive—and he was going to be so upset that he'd missed out on the chaos.

With a sigh of relief, I pulled him close to my chest. He snuggled against me on instinct. Even in a state that refused to wake, he was always down for cuddles. The dragon's feisty heart was softer than most gave him credit for. If only his mouth was as sweet.

"I don't know what happened," I said finally. "He should have woken up when Folga dropped her human form."

Cade tilted his head. A half-smile broke his stoic expression as he ran his fingers across Venti's back. My familiar shivered at the mist that trailed along his mocha and cream scales.

"Those beans really knocked him out." Cade leaned down, inspecting the dragon's peaceful face. Steam and bitter mist mixed in a fog that danced across the rock star's features. "I'd say I've never heard of coffee having that effect, but... guess I'm the exception to that, huh?"

Any other time, I would've laughed at his dark humor. My arms tensed beneath Venti's limp body.

"Beans?"

Cade nodded. "After you fell asleep, he went scavenging for more cards. Brought back that bag of coffee beans you found. For a tiny little guy, he sure can down the snacks."

My blood ran cold, and it wasn't from the spiritual mist. I tucked Venti's head against my shoulder before using my other hand to rifle inside the side pocket of my duffel. The plastic wrapper crinkled as I pulled it out. Cade backed away, flattening himself against the passenger door.

I raised a brow. "Seriously?"

"Hello? Life-threatening allergy here."

"You're dead," I reminded him. "I don't think a bag of beans is going to re-kill you."

Cade gulped, eyes locked on the all-powerful piece of plastic. "Nope. Not risking it."

Part of me considered telling him that his seat was covered in the dust from Venti's multiple bean binges, but I didn't want him phasing through the door—or, god forbid, hiding in the engine. My week had been terrible enough without the potential of ectoplasm ruining my Jeep. That would've been hard to explain to a mechanic.

One untrained in vehicles with one-way passes to the Underworld, anyway.

I flipped down the visor and turned on my reading light. Squinting against the brightness, I glanced over the sticker on the front of the coffee bean bag. It was far too small, with a handwritten label that'd been smudged worse than the oddly-effective spellbook.

"Can you read this?" I asked, turning the label in Cade's direction. "You don't have to touch it."

He didn't look convinced, but after what appeared to be much internal debating, he leaned forward. His head tilted to one side and then the other before he finally shrugged.

"Looks like Charlie Brown's teacher took over snack day," he muttered.

Great. Just what we needed.

"It's got to be these damn beans." I crumpled the plastic in my fist and shoved it back into the side pocket. "Fugly back there must've slipped it somewhere she knew he'd see it."

How she got it in Venti's warpath, I had no idea. Even more troubling was the thought of what she'd put in the beans to keep him out for so long. They must have suppressed his instincts, his hearing... even his sense of smell. Anything that would have woken him from a sound sleep and alerted me to her grotesque presence.

We shouldn't have stayed there. I should have packed up and moved on the second the Arachnite's crooked hand slid my room key across the counter.

"Vending Machine's going to be fine, right?" Cade's voice interrupted my spiraling regret.

I blinked at him. "Venti."

"I mean, apparently Folga is Fugly."

"Do you seriously want to disagree with that?"

Cade chuckled, flicking off the reading light before his transparent finger could touch the button. "I don't know, Sam. Legs for days."

By the time I realized what he was doing, it was already too late. The little shit was trying to make me laugh. And, worst of all, it worked. His stupid, badly timed joke, matched with the mischievous curl of his lips, settled my nerves long enough for a genuine laugh to escape.

Teenage Sam melted at the sight of that grin in a magazine. Apparently, twenty-three-year-old me hadn't changed as much as I thought.

We stayed in the car for the longest time, watching the rain settle as the sun's first rays poked above the horizon. Furious clouds paved the way for a pastel pink sky that tinted our world with rose-colored glasses. I longed for it to linger. To keep us bathed in the hopeful colors of a new day.

But my once-writhing stomach started to growl, and unless I wanted to chew on crumbling blacktop, we needed to find some grub.

After returning Venti to his cozy bed of socks and panties, we hit the road—and while I promised myself that we would leave the motel's blaze in the past, curiosity burned through my willpower. I drove back toward the Skyline on autopilot. Cade's leery gaze followed the fading smoke that curled from the remains. He never protested.

Maybe I wasn't the only one with a masochistic need to see the aftermath of my consequences.

We never stopped. I slowed to a crawl as we passed the building... or what remained of it. Magical flames were powerful, and the spellbook's handiwork was an excellent example. The fire crews' quick work had been for naught. Nothing remained of the dusty motel but ash, smoke, and stubborn flames licking the few standing support beams.

Even now, a crew swore loud enough to be heard inside my Jeep as they chased the blaze's last hoorah. For every flame they put out, another began. It wouldn't surprise me if it went on for another few hours.

Magic had a wicked sense of humor.

I nearly slammed my foot back on the gas when my muscles seized. The Jeep crept to a halt as my shoe slid from the pedal. A sharp buzz lit my brain, and a familiar ache penetrated the center of my forehead. My left side tingled with pins and needles.

It was a much more forceful sense than the one the ghost rat had given at the Golden Mango: an unmistakable blip on a necromancer's radar.

A human spirit—and not the one seated on my right.

My gaze drifted beyond the agitated first responders, beyond the teasing blaze, to a flickering light around the side of the firetruck. To any normal human, it could have been brushed off as sunlight glinting off the polished metal, or a trick of the flashing red lights. They wouldn't have looked close enough to see a child's small form, or its glowing eyes that watched the devastation with luminescent tears.

The little girl did not see me, or if she did, she ignored the mint vehicle parked awkwardly in the center of the road. But I saw her. The sobs that rattled her shoulders. The burned edges of her clothes.

She couldn't have been older than ten. Not old enough to die. Too innocent to be the victim of the poster child for Murphy's Law.

Tires squealed against the blacktop before I realized I'd rammed my foot into the gas pedal. We ripped down the street before I could think better of it, and veered halfway across town before I resumed the speed limit. My chest weighed a million pounds.

I killed a little girl.

And the worst part of all was that no matter how far I'd driven, I could still feel her. A child tiny enough to fade into the background had a soul strong enough to be felt from miles away.

That was when it hit me: I felt her, just like I'd felt the ghost of that damn rat.

Yet Cade's spirit, at my side since the previous night and gods knew how long before that, never tugged at my abilities. It was as if the man beside me was no less human than the sleepy townsfolk on their morning commute.

The Arachnite hadn't felt him, either—not until he assaulted her with a sunflower. Spirits weren't meant to be hidden. They were meant to be found. To be returned.

Cade Hawkins was different, and I was determined to find out why.