~Calix POV~
The entity wearing Annalyn's face turned toward the ghost in the corridor, and every person in that hallway understood in the same second that what was about to happen could not be stopped by positioning or strategy or strength.
It could only be absorbed.
That thought arrived in me with a clarity I had not expected, and I did not spend time examining it. I had been making quiet decisions about Annalyn's survival for six weeks. One more was not a difficult calculation.
The blast came when the two of them locked onto each other, the entity inside her and the displaced spirit in Camila's body, two forces that had been circling the same wound for decades finally occupying the same twelve feet of corridor. The air compressed. The walls cracked on both sides simultaneously.
I moved between the blast and Annalyn's body before it fully released.
