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WAS THE PART KELSIE liked the best—when the crowd really started dancing.
    They were right on the edge of out of control. Familiar faces from her Ivy Street clubbing days and a bunch of new people too. She was ready for them. Tonight she’d blend her music and her power to create the most awesome dance party Cambria had ever seen.
    The boom frames on the big speakers beside her rattled, sending the bass like a heartbeat through the floor of her DJ platform. She let the energy fill up the room like a flood, carrying her away.
    She amped the bass, then flipped her bulky headphones off one ear to hear the whooping and hollering.
    She leaned against the wave of eagerness from the crowd.She needed this. It was only here, in the DJ booth, that she could forget about the stupid mess of her life. The flashbacks to last summer stopped when the vinyl was spinning.
    She bent over her turntables, matching the next track’s tempo to the remixed pop song already playing. Then she reached out into the crowd and cross-faded between decks. . . .
    In one voice, the crowd roared.
    The savage delight of their reaction was that of an animal let off the leash. The wilder they got, the wilder Kelsie felt. The farther she went out on a limb, the more they wanted to follow. Her spine was a hot white spotlight shining right out through the top of her skull.
    Dad would’ve been so proud. He’d barely recognize her, up here in the DJ booth five feet above the dance floor. Close enough to be part of the crowd, but separate, too. Working the room with her music and magic.
    A thought stabbed through her—if only she’d gotten him help years ago.
    The energy in the room darkened, Kelsie’s loss spilling across them. She eased back, counting out a long breath. The panic attacks had begun the night Dad died. She was getting better, though, with the Zeroes’ help. Her roomie—Thibault, that was his name—was teaching her the Middle Way.
    When she’d started DJing two months back, the crowd kept carrying her off, and she’d forget that she was supposedto control the music. Songs had stuttered or faded out into embarrassing pauses.
    Tonight she wouldn’t miss a beat. She’d make the Zeroes proud, and pay them back for taking her in. She was one of them, even if she hadn’t been practicing her power as long.
    Chizara’s lights swung toward the middle of the dance floor and landed on a couple. A girl and guy eye-banging each other as they danced, oblivious to everyone else. Kelsie felt a pang of envy. They were lost in their own world. She wondered if she would ever be part of something so private and intense.
    But it was weird. Around the couple the crowd was growing restless and shaky. Like they sensed something they couldn’t be part of. The intensity in the room became rough and unpredictable, and someone stumbled across the dance floor. Suddenly nobody seemed to know what to do with their bodies.
    Kelsie gasped, feeling the crowd’s shakiness reach out for her.
    She could fix this. Something light and simple would drag them back from the edge, the kind of thing that got played during time-outs at a basketball game.
    Kelsie reached for the crate of vinyl, but something weird happened—she couldn’t recognize the first album she pulled out. The artist and track names were in some kind of alien scrawl. The pictures turned to slush, spreading across the crate and infecting every cover until they were all unreadable.
    Beside her the decks seemed to turn into mouths with sharp pointed teeth. She leaped back before they could snap off her hands.
    â€œOh my God!”
    Her confusion crashed against the weird tides of energy on the dance floor, forming a feedback loop of pure panic. The music from the speakers jolted—two mismatched beats colliding, like a dogfight breaking out.
    Out on the dance floor the crowd became an angry sea, and the music turned to screams. The