The Vane Estate sat on a limestone bluff overlooking the I-10 corridor, a brutalist masterpiece of concrete and glass that looked less like a home and more like a mausoleum.

  Sean drove the rental Camry up the winding driveway. The gate code—2011, the year they graduated high school—still worked. The heavy iron gates swung open with a silent, well-oiled glide.

  He parked next to a fleet of cars that hadn't been driven in months: a vintage Porsche, a G-Wagon, a Bentley. They were covered in a thin layer of dust.

  Sean stumbled out of the car. The world tilted dangerously to the left. The deafness in his left ear was now a roaring void, and the migraine from the "phantom 911 call" felt like a hot nail being driven into his eye socket. He was running on empty. The magic—the Entropy—had burned through his reserves. He didn't come here to save a friend. He came here because he was broke, bleeding, and needed a ten-million-dollar parachute before he crashed.

  He walked to the front door. He punched in the code. Beep. Beep. Beep. Click.

  He stepped inside.

  The house was freezing. The air conditioning was set to meat-locker temperatures. It smelled of antiseptic, expensive leather, and the cloying sweetness of dying flowers. The curtains were drawn. The house was a tomb.

  "Marcus?" Sean called out. His voice cracked, echoing off the polished concrete floors.

  No answer.

  Sean walked through the living room, past the grand piano that was covered in unopened mail. He moved toward the master bedroom on the ground floor. The double doors were ajar.

  He pushed them open.

  The room was dark, lit only by the blue glow of a medical monitor. Marcus Vane was sitting on the edge of the bed. He was unrecognizable. The linebacker Sean remembered—six-foot-four, two hundred and forty pounds of Texas beef—was gone. In his place was a skeleton wrapped in silk pajamas. His skin was yellow, jaundice from the failing liver painting him in the colors of a bruise. His cheekbones were sharp enough to cut paper.

  He was holding a bottle of pills. OxyContin. The big bottle. And he was unscrewing the cap with shaking hands.

  "Put it down," Sean said.

  Marcus didn't jump. He didn't look up. He just laughed. It was a wet, rattling sound. "I wondered when the ghosts would show up," Marcus whispered to the bottle. "I thought it would be my dad. Or maybe that girl from Cabo. But no... it's Sean Casias. The grifter."

  "I'm not a ghost, Marcus," Sean said, leaning against the doorframe to keep from falling over. "And you're not checking out early. I need a loan."

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  Marcus looked up then. His eyes were cloudy with pain, but the intelligence was still there. Sharp. Bitter. "A loan," Marcus wheezed. "Of course. You didn't come to say goodbye. You came to check the pockets of the corpse."

  Marcus poured a handful of pills into his palm. A lethal dose. "I have a billion dollars in the bank, Sean. And I can't buy a single hour of sleep. Pancreatic. Stage Four. The doctors say I have weeks. The pain says I have minutes."

  He raised the pills to his mouth. "Go rob the safe in the study. Combination is my birthday. Just let me finish this."

  "No," Sean said.

  He moved. He didn't run—he didn't have the strength. He just was there. He crossed the room in three strides and grabbed Marcus’s wrist. His hand was cold. Clammy.

  "Let go," Marcus hissed, trying to pull away. "Let me die."

  "You can die when I say you can," Sean snarled.

  He didn't know what he was doing. He just knew he couldn't lose the money. He needed Marcus lucid. He needed him to sign a check. Sean focused on the hand holding the pills. He reached into the "Static."

  Stop the pain, Sean thought. Just long enough to get the signature.

  He visualized the nerve endings in Marcus’s abdomen. They were firing red-hot signals to the brain. Screaming. Sean grabbed those signals. He treated them like a radio frequency. And he turned the volume down.

  The transfer was violent. Sean gasped. He braced himself for the recoil. Usually, when he Shifted reality, the universe took a pound of flesh. He expected a seizure. A nosebleed. A heart attack.

  He took the pain.

  Marcus’s back arched. His eyes went wide. The pills fell from his hand, scattering on the floor like white confetti. "The... the fire," Marcus whispered, touching his stomach. "It's gone."

  Marcus looked at his hands. Then he looked at Sean. The look wasn't gratitude. It was shock. And then... Awe. Pure, terrified, absolute belief. Marcus didn't see a con man anymore. He saw a miracle.

  And that’s when it happened.

  As Marcus looked at him with that raw, unadulterated faith, Sean felt a surge. It wasn't a cost. It was a credit. The "Static" in Sean’s head didn't get louder—it got quieter. The dizziness from his inner ear vanished. The migraine that had been blinding him for hours simply evaporated.

  Sean stood up straighter. He took a deep breath. The air tasted sweet. He looked at his hands. They weren't shaking. He looked at Marcus.

  It’s a circuit, Sean realized. The thought hit him with the force of a revelation. I spend the energy to do the miracle. The miracle creates the belief. The belief refills the energy.

  He wasn't dying anymore. He was feeding.

  "What are you?" Marcus breathed, staring at Sean like he was seeing the face of God.

  Sean smiled. It wasn't the practiced smile of a scammer. It was the genuine, terrifying smile of a predator discovering a new food source.

  "I didn't fix it," Sean said, his voice vibrating with a new authority. "The tumor is still there. The clock is still ticking. I just muted the alarm."

  Marcus grabbed Sean’s arm. His grip was surprisingly strong now. "Keep it away. Please. I’ll give you anything."

  Sean looked down at the billionaire. Five minutes ago, he would have settled for fifty grand and a getaway car. Now? Now he realized he didn't need a loan. He needed a disciple.

  "Anything?" Sean asked.

  "Everything," Marcus said. "Half the estate. The stocks. Just don't let the fire come back."

  Sean gently removed Marcus’s hand from his arm. "I don't want half, Marcus. I want the liquid assets. Ten million. Tonight."

  Marcus reached for his phone on the nightstand. His hands were steady. "Done. Call Thorne. I’ll have him wire it."

  Sean walked to the window. He looked out at the dark hills of the Dominion. He felt the power humming in his veins—borrowed, stolen, recycled from the desperate hope of a dying man.

  "And Marcus?"

  "Yes?"

  "We're going to need a bigger building," Sean said. "I think I just figured out how to live forever."