"Max, go on," Stas said, steering the conversation back on track.
"There's not much else to tell," Max continued. "With my help, Vladimir keeps drawing energy from the curse, but there's less of it every time. There's simply nowhere for it to come from now that the curse is isolated. For the moment, it's enough to keep Vladimir conscious, but soon the source will run dry. That's why we're looking for a way to fulfill the Darkness's desire—which, judging by Kaandor's account, we understood correctly. We need to find it a vessel. Then we'll be able to keep siphoning energy for as long as necessary."
"And it never occurred to you that a sentient entity might not be eager to serve as someone's personal battery?" I asked.
Stas smirked, while Max spread his hands helplessly.
"Until today, there were no signs that we were dealing with something conscious. That's why Kaandor's story raised so many questions for me. But if the spirit was once part of the Darkness, that explains a lot. Just like your curse, Kaandor doesn't resemble other werewolf companions. Most likely, it was contact with the Darkness that changed him and endowed him with different properties—not vampire venom mixed with a binding spell, as we previously believed."
"Now that we've finally sorted out the fundamental order of things—as they truly are, not as you imagined them—it's time to get to the point," Kaandor said with satisfaction.
In a single leap, he appeared beside Viola and stretched himself across the blanket. The bed, of course, didn't so much as tremble, and once again I found myself wondering whether Kaandor would behave differently if more people could see him—or if things would only get worse.
"So that wasn't all the news for today?" I asked warily.
"Just the prelude to the first major headline."
I rolled my eyes toward the ceiling and silently begged—no idea whom—for patience.
"Well? What else is there?"
"Oh, you're going to love this."
You know," I said dryly, "I liked you much better when you were gloomy. You could at least pretend to have something resembling empathy."
"As if irritation is all you're feeling right now," he shot back impudently. His amber eyes pierced into mine so sharply that I almost felt long claws brushing the strings of my soul. "Don't lie. You're burning with curiosity."
"More like fear that I'll never find out how this ends."
"Could someone please put an end to this private exchange of yours?" Viola snapped. "You do realize that only you and Max can actually see him, right?"
"Oh, it's quite all right, my dear," he purred, stretching long fingers toward Viola's face. "You'll see soon enough. All you had to do was ask."
A sharp claw touched Viola's pupil.
My jaw dropped—not so much in horror as in sheer disbelief. For a split second, I panicked, thinking Kaandor had somehow manifested physically and actually touched her eye. But Viola didn't scream. Not at the moment of his "touch," at least.
Then she suddenly jerked toward where Kaandor stood, and this time she screamed at the top of her lungs, her voice echoing through the hotel:
"What the hell?!"
Fear lent her strength. She recoiled violently from the vision that had opened to her on the bed, desperate to be anywhere but near Kaandor. Misjudging the distance, she slipped and fell to the floor. Everything happened so fast that neither Max nor I managed to reach her in time. Even on the ground, Viola kept scrambling backward until her spine hit the nearest wall—which was only a meter or so away.
Forgetting everything else, she instinctively flung out her hand, trying to knock the creature off the bed. One swing—nothing. Another—and a white-toothed smile spread across Kaandor's face, closer to a predator's snarl than anything human.
"You wanted to take part in the conversation," he murmured through clenched teeth, audibly savoring the scene before him.
"So you could have let others see you all along?" A wave of indignation rose in my throat.
"Of course not," he replied, shaking his head as if I'd asked the most ridiculous question imaginable. "I could only do it with the witchling, because she touched the Darkness. And since Viola remains herself, it means the vessel is unsuitable once again."
"Obviously not," Viola said, her chest still heaving with the aftershocks of adrenaline. "I'm not the Supreme, and I was never meant to become one. Max and I were given a different fate under the stars—the burden of hunters."
"And you bear it well. But you reek of primal magic, which is why the Darkness was tempted."
"Wonderful," I cut in at last. "So, what have we learned today? Vladimir is losing his mind, Max has been hiding it from everyone. The Darkness is a semi-sentient entity searching for a vessel—more precisely, for a Supreme Witch powerful enough to contain it. Did I miss anything?"
"Yes, one tiiiiny detail," Kaandor drawled, demonstratively pinching his thumb and forefinger close together. "What happens when the Darkness finds a suitable host?"
"You tell me," I said flatly, refusing to play his guessing games, then turned to Viola. "Since you can see and hear him now, it's your turn to translate for the others."
"Hey!" she protested. "Why me?"
"You were complaining," Max backed me up, clearly as exhausted by the dark companion as I was. "Now you get the honors."
Viola shot her brother a venomous look, but her sense of fairness won out. With a sigh, she began relaying everything to Stas and Diana.
"As you may have already realized," Kaandor said, "the Darkness is the counterweight to Mother Nature, and it seeks to become her equal. Nature, in its own way, can be described as the beginning of all things—light and life. And a counterweight, by definition, must be…"
He gestured toward me, inviting me to finish the thought.
"Darkness and death?" I ventured.
"Precisely," he nodded, clearly pleased. "And if the Darkness grows stronger—brighter even than the light—what, in the end, happens to life and balance?"
He gestured again, this time yielding the floor to Max.
"The balance collapses?"
"Coo-or-rect," Kaandor drawled, spreading his arms and pointing at each of us in turn. "Which means that when the Darkness finally finds a vessel—"
"We're all doomed," we said in unison, and my mouth went dry.
"Exactly. You see? Not so complicated after all. One simply has to keep your attention."
"You lost it about ten times along the way."
"And won it back."
A heavy silence settled over the room. This was not what any of us wanted to hear on the eve of graduation.
"So what now?" I pressed. "If the Supreme really was born, how do we even find her? She could've moved away from Xertonia years ago with her family. And how much time do we have left? What if we're already too late?"
One question after another crowded my mind, each answer more hopeless than the last. How were we—six high school seniors, even with our peculiarities—supposed to stand against something like the Darkness? If it was a near-omnipotent force with an inexhaustible battery constantly recharged by the negativity of the modern world—wars, human suffering, natural disasters—how were we, a bunch of kids whose biggest worry had been college applications, supposed to play detectives first and superheroes next, and save the world?
"Why search the entire country for the Supreme," Kaandor asked calmly, "when one witch knows exactly who she is?"
He fixed me with a knowing look. For a moment, I didn't understand who he meant—until the answer surfaced on its own.
I gasped.
"Maria," I blurted out, turning to the others. "My mom. She knows who the Supreme is."