“Charlotte, listen. I know you think he’s stronger than you, but it’s a lie. It’s his best lie. He’s the parasite—he’s feeding off of you. He’ll never be as strong as you are. You have to cut him off and you have the power to do that.”

“I can’t,” I say in that same yelling voice that seems to be the only tone I can speak in right now. “Look what he’s made me do already.”

Sierra’s eyes dart to Linden. To his bloody shirt. “I suggest you don’t move,” she tells him. “This will be over soon.”

Over soon. Over for him or for me? Or both?

My fingers press on the knife and I can’t fight it as my arm starts to draw it across Linden’s throat again. I hear him gasp—in fear or pain, I’m not sure—but it’s a distant awareness.

Then I hear the click.

“I will kill her. You do this and I will kill her before I let you use her!”

I look up at my aunt and am terrified to see a gun pointed at my head. “Sierra?”

“I know you can hear me, Jason. You cannot win. Not today.”

Jason. His real name. Not a lie. For some reason that allows the tiniest sparkle of confidence inside of me to begin to shine.

Sierra takes another step forward and peers into my eyes. “Look at my face. Don’t think for a second that I won’t do it. If Linden dies, she dies. And if she dies?” Then she chuckles; a dark sound so reminiscent of Smith that I shiver. “I was too strong for you, and so is she. There is no revenge here for you today.” Sierra takes one more step forward. “If you try anything, I will sacrifice her to stop you.”

“Charlotte,” she says, softly now, “I understand this is hard, but you’ve got to jump onto your supernatural plane. He can’t fight you on two fronts and he won’t kill Linden as long as I have this gun on you.”

I don’t have the necklace. I’m not even sure how I jumped last night. “Can’t. Fight. Knife,” I barely manage to get out.

“Linden,” Sierra says, turning her attention to him now, “When I tell you, push Charlotte’s hand away with all your strength. Charlotte, get ready to jump.”

I grit my teeth and nod, trying to gather focus. What if I fail? Will Sierra kill me to save Linden?

I hope so. I don’t want to live if my life is going to be the hell I saw in Smith’s world last night.

“Charlotte, when you get there, you have to find his world,” Sierra says, pulling me back to her. “It’ll be in there somewhere.”

“I’ve been in his world,” I choke out between clenched teeth.

I see a flash of fear in her eyes and I can tell that wasn’t what she wanted to hear. But she recovers quickly. “Go to his world and destroy it. Smash it. Whatever you have to do. No matter how he tries to stop you. You have to destroy everything. Especially him. You have to banish him.”

She looks at Linden. “Are you ready?” I notice she doesn’t ask me. Because I’ll never be ready for this.

I feel Linden nod very slightly against my arm.

Sierra says, “Now!” and Linden’s large, strong hands wrap around my arm, still holding the knife to his throat. He pushes back an inch. Two inches. That’s as far as he can force my arm away, but it’s enough.

“Jump, Charlotte!” Sierra orders. “And hurry. He needs a doctor.”

To save Linden, I think and hold on to the image of his face as I let my whole body relax and I reach for my supernatural plane—wanting it, willing it more than anything I’ve ever needed in my entire life.

It takes so much will and effort to make the leap that I stumble before I even reach it and a second later, I’m sprawled on the reflective floor. But my legs are hanging off an edge.

An edge that wasn’t there before.

I glance back into an abyss of the same kind of black nothingness Smith threw me into last night and I scramble for a handhold on the sleek, slippery floor. I manage to hook a leg up over the edge and pull myself onto the mirrored floor that used to disorient me so badly.

I let myself look behind me for one instant. The blackness is deeper than my dome is tall and I can imagine it swallowing my entire supernatural plane.

I feel a tingle near my feet and then my toes are hanging over the edge again. I gasp and scramble to a safer spot and stare at the edge of my reflective floor. It’s slowly, very slowly, disintegrating. Falling into the blackness. The pit is literally eating my world. This is what Smith has done to me.

White-hot anger spreads through me. Now I realize how much of me exists in this world—how much this world is me—and the empty shell I’ll be if Smith steals it. I get to my feet and stride forward, looking for the door.

It’s more than a door now; it’s a wide, massive gate that stands open, sucking my dome into it. And then the horrifying truth crashes over me—the gaping hole behind me isn’t eating my dome; it’s the void left from my world being sucked through the door into Smith’s world. And the destruction seems to be gaining speed.

I look at the gate, and then at the darkness behind me and I realize where this is leading. Smith’s world will be the endless, powerful one; mine will be small and dark, and surrounded by the eternal void. A tiny prison in my mind that will hold me captive as surely as steel bars.

But Sierra was right; for the moment, I’m stronger. My world is bigger, and I still maintain my Oracle powers. I can beat him. I just have to figure out how.