Chapter 8 · No More Muting

Cole's bleeding through his shirt.

I'm staring at the red spreading across the gray fabric, at the silver knife still on the floor where I dropped it. My headphones are half-off. Leah's voice is gone from the hijacked audio but her words are still ringing in my skull.

Your sister.

"Ivy." Cole's voice pulls me back. He's pressing his hand to the cut on his ribs. "We need to move."

"You're bleeding."

"I know."

"Because of me."

"Ivy—"

"I cut you with silver and now my half-sister who I didn't know existed five seconds ago probably has this whole place triangulated and—"

"Ivy." He grabs my wrist. His hand is warm. Too warm. "Listen to me. Silver slows me down but it won't kill me. Not this little. We have maybe ten minutes before someone shows up at your door."

I look at the streaming setup. My monitor's still glowing. Chat's going insane. Viewer count's climbing. Someone clipped the audio hijack. Someone always clips everything.

"My stream," I say.

"Leave it."

"I can't just—"

"You think they need your PC to find you?" Cole lets go of my wrist and pulls his jacket on over the blood. He winces.