JJ hit the ground and lost the breath she had just fought to keep.
The blue arena lights smeared across her eyes.
Her throat hurt the most. Ty's fingers had been there a second ago; every cough scraped the bruised ring.
The thing wearing Ty's body looked up.
The skeletal hand still hovered above him, one long finger pressed against his raised arm. The wrist ended in empty air where muscle and shoulder should have been.
Ty's stolen body stayed locked in place anyway.
The cuffs around his wrists popped twice. Smoke leaked from the seams. Dark fire made it halfway over his knuckles, then folded back like the metal had bitten it.
"Get off me," he said, and Ty's voice came out wrong around the edges.
The hand held.
Omina's golden-green aura drew tight around her shoulders. She kept one hand open at her side and the other low enough to throw before anyone noticed.
The joke had gone out of her face.
That scared JJ more.
Omina was thinking.
