"No, I am not. I don't even know what 'the Echo' means."
He studies me for a moment, his expression giving away nothing. "The Echo is the power driving the apocalypse, the power that will merge both worlds."
"There's only one world."
"Wrong. There is this world, the one normal humans live in. Then there is the Echo, the world populated by desecrations of the human form."
"You said the Echo is the power behind what's happening, but now you're calling it a different world." I lean forward. "It can't be both."
"Of course it can. The Echo is the power generating the change, and it is the world that I and the monsters rampaging through this city came from."
I shake my head as I struggle to decide if I should believe him, if I should trust him to tell me the truth about even one thing. "Why do you keep saying I caused what's happening?"
"Because you did."
"No, I did not."
He mutters something that must be a curse, based on his tone. "Enough of this. Tell me about the magics. Tell me the truth or I will torture it out of you."
"Okay, here's the truth." I lean even closer, his breaths reflecting off my face. "I have no fucking idea what you're talking about."
"That's too bad—for you." He brings out his knife, holding its tip to the underside of my chin. "Last chance."
"I can't tell you about 'magics' that I know nothing about."
He presses the knife's tip into my flesh just enough to make his point, but not enough to break the skin. "Tell me about your relationship with Sefton Stainthorpe."
Cold floods through me, raising goosebumps on my arms. "Dr. Stainthorpe? I don't have a relationship with him. I barely know the man."
"Of course you know him. He created the Echo for you, with your help."
"What? You're insane."
Dax draws the knife across my skin, but again without piercing it. "You admit to knowing him. If you won't explain how the two of you did this, then tell me what happened in the days leading up to the merging of the worlds."
I glue my back to the wall, lift my chin, and spit my words at him. "Go to hell."
"We're living in hell already." He touches the knife's wickedly serrated edge to the underside of my ear. "Tell me what I want to I know, or I'll start slicing."
Nothing I can tell him will help because I have no idea how or why the apocalypse came to be. But I might as well share the events that happened before the Echo crashed into my world. Maybe that will satisfy him, though I doubt it.
"I have to start a few weeks ago," I say. "When Dr. Stainthorpe first visited the library."
Chapter Four
Allison
Three Weeks Ago
I've got the evening shift on this Tuesday, manning the check-out counter at the public library as I do five days a week, sometimes on Saturdays and sometimes in the evenings, working whatever hours I'm asked to take. While I prepare books for shelving, applying an adhesive plastic covering to paperbacks, I keep glancing at the clock.
Seven forty-two.
My shift ends at nine, closing time. Groaning and rubbing my aching neck, I return to my task. With a ruler, I smooth the bubbles out of the plastic sheath on a Nora Roberts novel. If only real life provided happy endings for everyone, the way these novels always do. Instead it doles out pain far too often and leaves me to slave away at a minimum wage job that doesn't require the master's degree I'd worked so hard to earn. I don't have anyone to go home to either. No parents. No real friends, just work buddies. No loved ones at all, only a long string of bad dates and failed relationships.
I won't tell Dax about that. My past and my private thoughts are none of his damn business. Instead, I get back to my story.
A man pushes through the main doors, stepping off the portico and into the open area in front of the check-out counter. As he walks toward me, I can't help noticing several things about him. He's attractive, with dirty-blond hair cut short and bright blue eyes. The guy has a trim build too, and I can see muscles stretching his suit jacket, though he doesn't seem like he works out obsessively. His suit looks a bit rumpled, just like his hair. He sports a shadow beard too, but based on his unkempt clothes, I suspect he simply hadn't bothered to shave, rather than his stubble being a fashion statement.