Faye stared at Koskay without really seeing him. There was a buzzing in her ears, and her vision was blurred. Had he really just said what she thought he had? She had to choose? Between Finn and Lucas? She had to send one of them into a living death? Faye felt her knees buckle, but Koskay held her up, pressing her to him, so close that she could smell the sickly sweet stench of his aftershave. It made her gag.

 

She heard Finn’s voice, an incoherent roar of anger that shook the room, and pushed Koskay away, shrinking from his touch. She blinked, focing herself to focus.

 

‘Go on,’ said the Russian. ‘Choose. Only you can do it, Faye. Tell me who you want to save.’

 

Faye turned slowly to look at Lucas, still unconscious on the chair. He looked so thin, so ill – as if his life was fading away already. Then she looked at Finn. He was still yelling, still fighting against the rope tying his hands together, straining so hard that she could see the veins in his neck standing out. As their eyes met, he became still, his gaze burning into hers. She shook her head once.

 

‘I can’t,’ she told Koskay, her voice sounding somehow calm and at the same time completely alien. She felt light-headed, distant. ‘I can’t choose. You can’t make me. I can’t.’

 

Koskay tutted. ‘Then, my dear, I will take both of them. Do you understand? I only really need one, but if you don’t choose . . . Save one, or lose both. Your choice.’

 

His words thudded into Faye’s brain like arrows, snapping her back into focus. How could she do it? Both of them meant so much to her. But if she didn’t . . . She couldn’t let them have their lives drained out of them, becoming mere husks, creatures only existing to do Koskay’s bidding. She couldn’t stand by and let that happen. Finn . . . how could she live without him? Since the moment they’d met, it had been as if a piece of herself she hadn’t even realized was missing had been returned to her. He was a shape in the jigsaw of her heart that no one else would ever be able to fill, and if he were gone, she would for ever be less. And Lucas . . . Lucas was the brother she had never had. He teased her, told her she was wrong when she was wrong, and stood behind her like a rock if he thought she was right. They laughed together – enough to know that thirty years from now – fifty, even – they would still be laughing together, at the same kinds of things. They were each as essential to her as breathing. She loved them both – differently, but endlessly. And yet . . . she had to choose between them?

 

Faye raised her head and looked Koskay straight in the eye. ‘I’ve made my decision,’ she told him firmly.

 

He smiled, and for the first time she realized how ugly he was. Under the surface of his unnaturally smooth skin, bled from the people who served him, lay pure evil. And evil, when you recognized it, was always ugly.

 

‘Wonderful,’ Koskay said softly. ‘And who do you choose, my dear?’

 

Faye took a step back and turned towards Finn, meeting his eye. She saw a flash of something there – hurt? Understanding? – and realized that he thought she was going to choose him. Then, before Koskay had a chance to react, she launched herself towards the glass room. The Russian lunged for her with a yell, but she dodged him.

 

‘No!’ Finn shouted behind her. ‘Faye – NO!’

 

She didn’t listen. This was the only decision she could make.

 

She leaped into the chamber so fast that she crashed into the opposite wall. The door slammed shut behind her, forcing Koskay to leap back. Behind him, Faye could see Finn, on his knees. He was staring at her, his mouth open in an agonized yell that she could not hear. In the fraction of a second that the world was still, she smiled.

 

I love you, she mouthed, willing him to read her lips. I love you.

There was a hiss, and the chamber seemed to sink back into the wall. The room outside disappeared.

 

Faye looked around. Suddenly the air inside was filled with thick gas. There was no sound – Faye couldn’t even hear her own breathing – but she knew that the chamber was still moving, sliding back into the wall. The arm restraints snapped open and closed, searching for their quarry, but she avoided them. She reached out her hand to steady herself against the side of the chamber . . . but she couldn’t feel anything. It was as if everything had vanished, and she was walking into a bottomless, endless valley of mist. It was as if she didn’t exist. She had faded into the universe, a weightless thing in an imaginary place.

 

Is this what death is like? she wondered absently, blinking as she breathed in the gas.

 

Faye blacked out.

 

 

‘NO!’ Finn screamed as the chamber disappeared into the wall, taking Faye with it. ‘Faye! NO!’

 

There was a low moan from Lucas, as if he knew what had happened. He moved his head against his restraints.

 

‘I’m going to kill you!’ Finn screamed, trying to tear his hands free of the ropes binding them together. ‘I swear, Koskay – I am going to kill you.’

 

The Russian turned from the wall with a smile. ‘Ah. Young love. So noble. And so easy to manipulate. She was very predictable, your Faye.’

 

Finn stilled. ‘What do you mean?’

 

Koskay shrugged. ‘Well, let us look around the room, shall we? Ah, yes. Now, here I am, left with two half-supernatural beings. Why would I give one of them up? No, no, no. I am sorry, my American boy, but you and your half-brother are too valuable to spare.’ He chuckled coldly. ‘Too many distractions do not make for harmonious planning. With Faye gone . . . now I can get down to the real work.’

 

‘Where is she?’ Finn whispered, feeling hope slipping away. ‘What have you done to her?’

 

Koskay sighed. ‘A tragedy. You should not have brought her with you to this place, Finn. You have only yourself to blame, really. I had already modified the chamber, you see. For a supernatural. It is so much more powerful now. Before, she would have just become one of my workers. But now . . . now there will be nothing left once the machine has taken all that lovely young life of hers for me.’

 

Finn slumped against the wall, his head spinning.

 

Koskay chuckled again, glancing at Lucas, who was unconscious once more. ‘I will leave you two alone. All brothers need some bonding time, do they not?’

 

Finn didn’t look at the Russian as he left the room. He was hardly aware that his captor had gone. Instead he stared at the tiled wall where Faye had vanished, his heart breaking under the weight of a grief that was deep enough to fill three lifetimes.

 

It had been an age since Finn Crowley last cried. His life had been long, and much of it had been harder than most people could even comprehend. He had learned early that crying did nothing for anyone, least of all for him. But now Finn cried as if he would never stop.

 

Faye. He’d seen her mouth moving as she looked at him through the glass. He’d read her lips as easily as he’d read her beautiful face. She’d told him she loved him. Finn had never really been sure until that moment, but now he knew, because she’d said so. Faye loved him.

 

And she was gone.

 

Faye was dead.