"Your weapons won't work on me, little one." He smirks, taking a step towards me. I take another step back, my eyes darting down to the watch on my wrist.
"What do you want from me?" I demand, pulling my hands behind my back.
"I want you to be prepared when the time comes. You're almost ready," he says.
I fidget with the watch behind my back and press the emergency button on the side. Dani is drunkenly sleeping right now, but I pray that the sound of the emergency beeping and vibration will rip her out of her slumber.
"Ready for what?" I ask.
"For your day of reckoning." Suddenly, his head cocks to the side slightly, and he narrows his eyes as if he's pondering a difficult question. After a moment, his gaze flickers back to my face, and he nods his head appreciatively.
"Ah, epinephrine. Your friend is a resourceful little witch, I'll give her that. She just cut down our time together significantly." He seems vaguely irritated but not entirely surprised.
"How would you know that?" I ask, taking a few more steps backward.
"Because I know everything," he says, smirking. Before he says another word, I whip around and take off in the direction of my body. I don't know how long it takes for the adrenaline to kick in or if it will even work, but I'm going to give myself a head start.
"Run run run,
As fast as you can,
But you won't escape me,
Nobody can."
Orias' singing swallows me whole, a nightmarish soundtrack that I can't turn off. My lungs and legs burn as I fly down the street, but I don't slow my pace. Every so often, I have to dodge a spirit or two. So far, I've nearly collided with an old man who perished naturally at a ripe age, a teenage girl who looked like she'd been strangled, and a mother walking hand in hand with a little boy no more than five years old.
Finally, I round the corner and I see the door to my hotel building burst open. Out of nowhere, my entire body begins tingling. An involuntary scream escapes my lips as I am suddenly lifted off of my feet and forcefully drug towards the building. My surroundings blur past me until I sail through the door of my hotel room and skid across the floor. I scramble to throw myself down on top of my physical body and I wake up instantly, gasping for air and flailing my arms.
A set of hands grab me, and I scream.
"Blair, calm down! Hey, look at me!" Dani's soothing voice washes over me. "You're okay, everything is okay." I rip my hands out of her grasp and throw my arms around her neck, breathing heavily, my entire body shaking from adrenaline, fear, and stress.
"He was there . . . Dani, he was there, and he wants me," I say shakily, urgently scanning the room as if Orias is going to appear at any moment. The vision of those evil black eyes tearing into my brain is burned into my memory.
"It's okay. You're safe now. We figured he'd come back eventually. But you're alive, and that's what's important," she says soothingly, stroking my hair.
I detach from our embrace and push myself off the bed, glancing down at my thigh. There is a tiny speck of blood where Dani injected me and black ash where my throwing knife used to rest in its holster. I close my eyes and shake my head, pacing back and forth as she stares at me with concern.
"The adrenaline theory worked, but there's some lag time between this world and the AP. And somehow Orias sensed when you injected me," I say, frantically pacing the room.
"But more importantly . . . my weapons don't work on Orias, and he destroyed my knife like it was nothing. H—he called me into the AP in the same way that I call my targets except he was able to transport my astral body without me walking at all."
Dani bites her bottom lip and stands, yanking open the nightstand drawer and rustling through some loose papers. She latches onto one and hands it to me. I feel her eyes on me as I read.
Biblioteca Bartolome Calvo
"A library advertisement?" I ask incredulously, the paper trembling in my palm.
"We need to do some research. We still don't know anything about Orias other than the fact that he seems to enjoy tormenting the shit out of you. We need to know what we're up against. The situation with Diego, Isaac, and Smith can wait." She looks at me expectantly, and I nod, my too-fast pulse still thumping in my ears.
Dani walks over to my bag and tosses me a pair of light denim shorts and a flowy yellow top. "We are going to figure this out, okay? I promise," she says, staring into my eyes. "We will figure out how to kill him."