Chapter 6

Dreamcatching was just as eye-searingly precious and utterly deserted as on our first visit. Lilah was again at the front counter, this time sitting on a tall stool with a copy of Middlemarch open in front of her, halfway through, indicating that it had been another slow business day. Her hair was again braided into a fuzzy and shining crown around her head, and today she was dressed in a long yellow dress that was as sunny as the smile she gave us when we walked up to the counter. She’d either forgiven Suzume for last time, or, as a consummate professional, she was hoping that we’d come back to purchase a few pewter objets d’art.

She was polite when she greeted Suze, but there was a pleased look on her face when she turned to me, and her voice was playful and teasing when she asked, “Change your mind about the personal energy-bubble class?”

Even the knowledge that Matt was currently tracking my movements couldn’t stop the infectiousness of her bright mood, and I felt my mouth tug into a reluctant answering smile. “Sorry, not quite. We’ve actually been looking into”—I glanced around, just in case I’d missed some hidden New Age shopper or the creepy, pregnant Allegra. Everything seemed empty, but I erred on the side of caution, dropping my voice and saying, as if I had a role in a sixties British spy thriller—“that other thing.”

Lilah nodded reassuringly at me. “It’s okay. I’m the only one in the front today. Tomas is working in the back office, and our part-time stock boy just took a new shipment.” Her mouth quirked a little. “They’re both Neighbors too, so you don’t have to worry about dropping secrets.” Then she wiped the smile away, and very seriously asked, “Were you able to find what killed your friend?”

I looked over at Suzume, expecting her to jump in and answer, but to my surprise she stayed quiet. She’d left a large gap between us, and was leaning against the far end of the counter, her fingers idly picking through a small bowl of glass beads. Despite her best attempts to remain innocuous, though, there was a sharp attention in her eyes as she watched Lilah closely. Feeling my look, she turned to me just long enough to give me a small, encouraging nod, as if to say, You’ve got this.

It was a bit surprising—I’d played a large role in our last questioning, but she’d definitely been in the lead. Passivity was a strange and unusual approach from Suze, and not one that I was in any way used to seeing. Assuming that she probably had some internal reasoning going on, I pulled my attention back to Lilah, who was waiting patiently for my answer. From the sympathetic expression on her face, it was clear that she was assuming that this was a difficult conversation for me to have. It was, just not for the reasons she was assuming.

“No,” I finally answered carefully, “but we’ve found a trail, and were hoping that you could give us some answers.”

She nodded, but she also looked a little surprised. “Of course, if I can help you, but I already told you—”

I pulled out the glamoured circular for Iron Needle and set it down on the glass counter in front of her. She broke off whatever she’d been about to say and gave a small sound of surprise. Her hands shot out to it as if pulled on a wire, and she immediately began running her fingers over it, her eyes narrowed in concentration, silently mouthing words to herself. It reminded me of watching a blind person reading braille, every part of them focused on the information their fingertips were sending.

“That was sent to someone who got the same tattoos as my friend,” I said.

Her fingers never stopping in their restless movements over the paper, Lilah frowned. “Tattoos . . .” she muttered, shaking her head before she’d even finished the word. “No, I know who runs this store.” She said it with utter confidence. “Jacoby wouldn’t hurt anyone. He isn’t well, but he wouldn’t hurt anyone.” As she talked, she lifted the card up and rubbed her cheek slowly against it. It was a strange movement to watch, because she seemed to have almost completely forgotten my presence. “Besides,” she said, still focused on the card, “he could never have set this glamour himself.”

I looked quickly over at Suze, but she remained fixated on Lilah, watching her in a way that very viscerally reminded me that she was a predator at heart. Without guidance, I pushed forward, saying to Lilah, “I know. He told us. One of your full-blood elves did. They hired him to give a certain tattoo with a certain ink to anyone who came in with one of those, and then hand them a flier that would lead them to one of your speed-dating events.” I pulled out the flier that Jacoby had given us and showed it to her.

Lilah flinched at the sight of it and bit her lower lip hard enough for me to wince myself. She looked worried now, and the hands that were holding the card were shaking enough for me to notice. But she nodded at the flier, then very carefully began to run her mouth across the front of the Iron Needle card, letting her lower lip drag against the paper as she breathed in heavily, almost seeming to taste it. Her golden-brown eyes were noticeably more golden than before, gleaming more than they should’ve under the fluorescent store lights. I shifted uncomfortably, realizing in that moment that being a half-blood was much more than having a pair of pointed ears and a useful illusion trick. Lilah was as much a poser as I was—pretending to be human while hiding a nature that was very, very inhuman.

“Nokke didn’t set this,” she said, her voice low and much throatier than usual, different in a way that both set my own instincts on edge and at the same time rubbed down my spine like velvet. “Maybe Hobany,” Lilah muttered. “Maybe Amadon.” Moving as suddenly as a startled deer, Lilah dropped the circular back on the counter and pressed the heels of her hands hard against her mouth. Her eyes squeezed closed in a way that I recognized all too well, and when they opened again their brilliance was gone, faded back into the unusually pretty, yet passable for human, golden brown that I remembered. She looked straight at me and I could feel her fear in the back of my throat. “We need to talk,” she said, quiet and intense, “but we can’t do it here.”

“What do you—”

She dropped her voice even further, low enough that I had to lean in to understand her. “Tomas is in the back today.”

“Do you think we could ask him—”

She shook her head hard and interrupted me. “You don’t understand. He’s loyal, Fort. Human murders won’t matter to him, not with this.” She tapped the edge of the circular with one finger, suddenly looking unwilling to touch it again, like it was dangerous. Lilah whispered, “For some of the Neighbors, it goes beyond loyalty to the Ad-hene. It’s beyond devotion.” Her eyes bore into mine, begging me to understand.

There was a rustling behind her, the scrape of a shoe against cheap carpeting, and she jumped like a girl watching a slasher film. Her hand shot out, grabbing her thick copy of Middlemarch and yanking it quickly on top of the circular, blocking it from sight. Automatically following her example, I stuffed the advertisement in my hand back into my jeans pocket.

The beaded curtain behind her parted, and a tall guy with a weediness and awkwardness that screamed high school student leaned into the main store with an air of general apology for his very existence. From the straight dark hair that hung over his ears and his skin tone I would’ve guessed he was Hispanic, but his eyes were a brilliant, unnatural emerald green, indicating that wherever his mother had hailed from, his father was from somewhere very different. He was carrying a large brown box with an overflow of packing peanuts that scattered around him like a lazy snowfall.

“Hey, Lilah,” he started, then caught sight of us and froze, a dark flush filling his cheeks. “Oh, sorry. Didn’t realize you were with customers.” I felt a distinct flash of empathy as his voice cracked painfully twice in that simple comment, his blush darkening each time.

Lilah turned partially to look at him, her face and voice immediately becoming warm and reassuring, reminding me of how she’d acted around Allegra. Her shaking hands, hidden from the boy by her body, were the only sign of her real emotions. “It’s not a problem, Felix. What do you need?”

He coughed twice, and, apparently realizing that he now had no choice but to talk in front of strangers, muttered, “I was opening up today’s shipment and I was wondering where you wanted me to set up about twenty crystal unicorns.”

“I’m not sure. Give me a second and I’ll come back and look them over.”

Felix nodded, looking relieved, and hurried backward so fast that his box tilted dangerously and released a huge puff of packing material, but thankfully no crystal unicorns.

When he was completely out of sight, Lilah turned back to us. “He’s just a little shy,” she said apologetically. “He’ll grow out of it.” Her hands, still shaking, fluttered a little, and she cleared her throat hard before continuing, “and the teen years are always so hard for the changelings.” I wondered if she was thinking of Jacoby, who had clearly not grown out of whatever exacerbated hard times the changelings suffered through in high school. Then she leaned over the counter and whispered, “Listen, I’ll call you and we’ll meet somewhere to talk.” She pulled her book off of the circular and nodded at it, clearly wanting me to collect it without her having to touch it again. I stuffed it back in my pocket, her own revulsion translating to me. “I’ll call you soon,” she repeated forcefully, and I wondered if she was talking to me or to herself.

I mouthed a good-bye, and Suze and I headed out to the car. I glanced around automatically in the parking lot, but if Matt was still following us, he’d found a hiding spot that I couldn’t locate.

We were both quiet during the three attempts it took for the Fiesta’s engine to catch, but as we pulled out and into traffic I looked over at Suze.

“Well?” I asked expectantly.

“Hm?” She gave me her most innocent look, the kind she would probably give if found in the dead of night in the middle of a chicken coop with blood and feathers stuck to her mouth.

“Don’t give me that. What do you think about what just went down?”

Suze dropped the act and looked back at Dreamcatching with suspicion written all over her face. “Lilah was being awfully helpful for someone answering questions that could implicate others of her own kind.”

“Maybe,” I agreed, then considered. “But it sounded like she was trying to protect and exonerate Jacoby when I first showed her the circular. She was worried about him. She didn’t sound like she was trying to protect those full elves, though. I thought she actually sounded scared of them.” I glanced over at the kitsune.

Suze spoke slowly, almost reluctantly. “Unless she’s got a better poker face than I think she does, she was really shocked when she saw the card. And she wasn’t faking being afraid. And I can’t say for sure, but I don’t think she lied to us.”

I thought about it while we sat at a stoplight. “Jacoby was talking about the differences between the Neighbors and Themselves, and Lilah talked about some of the Neighbors being extra loyal. Do you think there are splits in the elf and half-elf community?”

“Makes sense with what I’ve heard.” She mulled it over, stretching her legs out as far as the Fiesta’s limited leg room would allow, then added, “Lilah doesn’t strike me as someone drinking the elf Kool-Aid.”

Part of me relaxed. My gut had been telling me that Lilah had been honest, but I’d wanted some independent confirmation. In the arts of detecting deception, I trusted Suze’s gut more than mine—in the same way that people consulted art thieves when building museum security systems.

With that out of the way, I turned to my second-most-pressing question. “Who was Lilah talking about? Hobany? Is that actually a person’s name?”

“Fort, doesn’t your brother tell you anything? The elves are in single digits on the real ones, the full-bloods. Those guys have life spans that are so damn long that the rest of us just call them immortal and leave it at that. No one except them and the Neighbors know exactly how many of them there actually are right now, but there are only five names that get thrown around.”

“Amadon, Hobany, Nokke. Who are the others?”

My phone rang, my ringtone cutting through the conversation very effectively. At Suze’s very expressive glance, I considered that if I was going to be tracking down a killer and unraveling secret plans much longer, I would probably need a more serious ringtone than the Tetris theme song.

Looking down at the number displayed, Suze raised her eyebrows. “How about you ask your new girlfriend? Guess she wasn’t kidding about calling you soon.”

I’d already answered the call, so there was nothing to do except make a face at Suze that promised retribution. She looked extremely unimpressed.

Lilah was talking fast and with a slight echoing sound in the background that made me wonder if she was calling me from a bathroom.

“Hey, can I meet up with you somewhere after the store closes at six?”

“Yeah,” I said “I’m working a partial shift. Can you come to my apartment around eight?”

She immediately agreed, and I gave her the address.

I paused, then just went ahead and asked. “Lilah, why are you being this helpful?”

“I know about our treaty agreements that the Ad-hene made with Madeline Scott,” she answered grimly. “And I’ve heard about what Prudence Scott does to people who break the rules. Whatever the hell the Ad-hene are cooking up here, I don’t want innocent Neighbors to pay the price for it.”

I certainly couldn’t argue with that. “Okay,” I said, talking through the awkward moment. “I’ll see you at eight. Call me if you get lost.” Thank God for inane social niceties, I thought as I hung up.

Suze was looking at me, assessing, clearly weighing something but not saying a word.

Irritated, I asked, “What, Suze? You’re looking at me like I’ve got stuff on my face.”

“No, just thinking.” There were subtexts to her subtexts in that comment.

I sighed heavily. “Are you going to share it with me?”

“Just remembering that I still have my old boom box in a closet.”

“What?” It was a good thing that I’d just stopped at a red light, because the completely left-field nature of that comment gave my brain whiplash.

“You can borrow it.”

“I’m going to need more help on this non sequitur, Suze.”

There was a gleam in her eyes that I didn’t know how to interpret, but I was pretty sure that it boded poorly for me. “You know, to hold up outside Lilah’s window.”

“You’re nuts,” I said flatly.

“I can already see you composing your mix tape. Don’t forget to put ‘In Your Eyes’ on it. Chicks dig that one,” she said, with a little twist of viciousness on the last part.

I shook my head. “I have to go to work and earn back some of that money I just spent bribing a junkie, so I’ll drop you off at your place so that you can keep yourself company with the crazy.”

She made an affronted sniff, and we drove in silence for several long, uncomfortable minutes until finally she internally forgave me and made an innocuous and clearly peace-making joke about a particularly obnoxious billboard ad, which started a normal conversation. It allowed both of us to ignore the suddenly tense undertone that had emerged, and when I dropped her off we said good-bye with an unusual level of politeness.

As she started to walk to her door, I abruptly leaned out my window and said, “Listen, Suze, about the roommate thing—”

“Oh, don’t worry, Fort.” And the expression on her face was definitely enough to make me concerned. “I am all over that.”

I shuddered and went to work.

I brooded through my work shift, wishing that carrying tiny plates of expensive food could occupy more of my thoughts and give me less time to try to puzzle through either why elves would want to kill Gage in such a confusingly convoluted manner or Suze’s moodiness. I was able to come up with an equal number of theories for both.

As if in answer to my inner desire for distraction, it was a slow night on service and I had the misfortune to be tapped as the test server for Chef Jerome. Whenever he was working on new dishes, some unfortunate member of the waitstaff was picked to see how the dishes would work when introduced to the movement of a serving platter. Tonight that unfortunate person was me.

Most of the dishes that night were pretty usual. Delicate, ornate, yet surprisingly sturdy. Chef Jerome’s experiment with halved coconut shells turned out to be not quite perfectly balanced yet, much to my dismay and Chef Jerome’s invective-laden rage. And the final capper on the evening was working with Chef Jerome’s newest creation, a strange variation on bombe Alaska that involved several pieces of fruit that had been exquisitely carved into flower shapes and then drenched in some mysterious combination of alcohol, and which Chef Jerome envisioned as being carried out while on fire. Unfortunately the mix on the alcohol was a little off, and sparks kept catching on my shirt and having to be beaten down by Chef Jerome’s alert sous-chef, Melissa.

By the end of the ordeal Chef Jerome was busily working on adjusting the alcohol mix to retain flavor but burn slightly more manageably, and I was reflecting that my wish for distraction had come at the high price of my work shirt, which now had several burns.

I finished my shift at seven. Paying the fee at the parking garage made me wince and remember why I usually took the bus to work. There was a lot behind Peláez, but it was only for the customers to park in. Those of us who actually worked there and drove in had to fend for ourselves, which in this part of town generally meant dedicated parking lots. The Peláez managers were extremely ruthless in enforcing their parking preferences. One of the busboys earned extra money by going into the lot and cataloguing the parked cars every thirty minutes. If a car was parked in the lot for more than three hours, then steps were immediately taken to determine if it actually belonged to a customer. If it wasn’t, then the tow truck was called.

I called Suzume while I worked on getting the Fiesta started. I waited impatiently while the phone rang, then was surprised to find myself in voice mail, which had somehow never happened before. Even more surprising was how professional Suze’s voice mail message was.

“Hey, just wanted to remind you to head over to meet up with Lilah,” I said. I paused, racking my brain for something to say, then heard the incoming call beep. “Oh, good, that’s you,” I said in relief. “Crap, I shouldn’t have said that out loud. Shit, I— Okay, I’m just going to give up now. Delete this message.”

I had a bad feeling that that message would come back to torment me in some way. Deciding to deal with that hurdle when it came, I picked up Suze’s call and repeated the less idiotic portion of my voice-mail message.

“Can’t make it, Fort. Sorry.”

“What?” I was shocked, and felt a pang of hurt feelings. I had to ask, “Is this about before? In the car? Or later? I swear, I have at least seventy-eight percent faith that you are doing a good job trying to find me a nonhuman roommate.”

“Keep your skirt down, Louise; your slip is showing.” Her derisive snort and insult to my masculinity were so quintessentially Suze that I relaxed. “I’m not ditching you; I’m at work. My cousin Midori has been covering for me the past few days, but one guy asked for me by name, so I couldn’t bail. I’ll finish this as soon as I can and come over, but in the meantime I’m sure you can handle Lilah if she starts getting feisty.”

“Feisty in what way?” I asked suspiciously. Suze responded with a combination of cat meows and cracking whip noises, and I hung up on her.

After I put the phone away and wrestled the Fiesta into gear (the clutch was slowly dying and needed to be replaced—which was unfortunately what I’d been saving up for before I’d had to bribe Jacoby), I froze, weighing Suze’s words. Was this a date? I pondered that for a second, then relaxed. No, this was a strategic meet-up to discuss serious territorial business.

Besides, if it was a date, I still had a half hour after I got home to change clothes before she showed up.

•   •   •

As it turned out, I did not have that time. When I reached the top of the third set of stairs, I found Lilah sitting in the hallway next to my door. She was still wearing the yellow dress from this morning, with the addition of a bright blue coat that fell into that category of coats that seem to straddle the line between heavy button-up sweater and dedicated outerwear. Her coppery hair was loose for the first time, falling down her back in a wavy mass that suggested a much higher wind outside than I had personally experienced. A stretchy white headband with a cheery fake sunflower attached to it was doing double duty of both keeping her hair out of her eyes and providing backup cover for her ears.

Seeing me, Lilah scrambled to her feet. I noticed that her ability to blush extended not just to her cheeks, but down her neck and presumably to lower reaches as well.

“Sorry I’m early,” she said, making a noble attempt to brush off her backside without being obvious about it. “It’s a really bad habit of mine. Usually I bring a book and wait in my car until I’m only fifteen minutes early, but I took a cab tonight.”

Despite the circumstances that had led to this meeting and my own brooding over it, I smiled at the image of Lilah waiting outside parties until some invisible social acceptability clock counted down. “No problem, as long as you don’t mind that I’m still dressed for work.” I gestured to my charred shirt and my pants, which had been on the receiving end of one overfilled serving of Chef Jerome’s coconut soup. I’d tried some, and it was an extremely delicious dish, but balancing something that came served in a hollowed-out half of a coconut had been too much of a challenge for me.

Looking down, Lilah laughed. “Not at all,” she assured me. Then: “It’s not like it’s a date.”

From the look on her face, she knew her mistake the moment it came out of her mouth. I gave a very strained, very fake laugh as I agreed, “No, not a date at all.”

She faked an answering laugh. Then we both laughed together. It was horribly painful.

“Because it’s not,” she said, still fake chortling heartily.

“Nope,” I answered.

There was a long pause as we stared at each other, caught in a social nightmare.

It was totally like a date.

“Would you like a drink?” I asked, desperate to do something to salvage the situation.

“Oh, sweet Jesus, yes.”

•   •   •

The last time Chivalry had asked me if I wanted something to drink, the result had been Macallan 1926, which was part of the impressive collection of alcohol that he had built up during Newport’s days as a port for the booze runners during Prohibition. I’d learned later that the bottle he’d brought out with absolutely no show or ceremony would’ve run upward of sixty thousand dollars on the open market.

In stocking my own personal liquor cabinet, I’d had to take a more restrained approach. For one thing, there wasn’t a lot of cabinet space in my apartment, and my liquor cabinet actually doubled as my cleaning-agent cabinet. So when I needed the social-lubricating benefits of hard alcohol, I pulled out my trusty bottle of Banker’s Club—a brand of rum so cheap that it actually came in a plastic bottle. The taste matched the price, and as I mixed us each a rum and coke, I hoped that the comparatively high quality of the Coca-Cola would cover up the worst of my cost-cutting sins. Or that it would be so horrible that she’d overlook the fact that, lacking clean glasses, I’d poured our drinks into matching coffee mugs.

Lilah did make a notable face at her first sip, which she immediately tried to cover up by complimenting the apartment décor, but the answer to the foul taste was the same as with most alcohol: drink more. By our second glasses we’d both managed to move past the initial social awkwardness enough to be making eye contact again, and I was able to give Lilah a more detailed description of the situation to date, from Gage’s death to Matt’s discovery of the tattoo link to the missing persons’ reports, finishing with the morning’s visit to Iron Needle and the subsequent discoveries there.

Finally, with no more background information left, I asked her what she knew.

Lilah pondered the contents of her mug for a long moment before answering, and when she spoke it was very slowly and reluctantly. “Nothing more than you’re telling me, Fort, but I’m worried about which members of Neighbors Jacoby said were involved. I wouldn’t use his phrasing—”

“You mean older, really snotty fucks, always brownnosing it up isn’t accurate?” I asked dryly.

That made her laugh. “Okay, maybe it’s a little accurate,” she said with a hint of wry humor, but then she immediately sobered again. “We call ourselves the Neighbors because it was one of the politer terms used back in Ireland for the older race. We call the true ones who are left the Ad-hene, or Themselves if we’re not being entirely polite, but there are a bunch of other names they’d respond to. Sidhe, the Gentry, Tuatha Dé Danann, elves—all are accurate terms, plus dozens of others.” She tossed back the last of her drink, then looked at me seriously. “The vampires live a long time. How old is your mother?”

“She was born the year that Edward II of England was deposed by his wife. Fourteenth century.”

Lilah nodded. “And your brother and sister?”

“Prudence was born during the American Revolution. Chivalry was born at the end of the Civil War.”

“And there aren’t many other races that live half as long as vampires, right?”

“As far as I know.” I couldn’t help feeling a small spasm of irritation. Lilah knew the answers to all of her questions, and the subject of exactly how many centuries of life I could reasonably expect to see always put me in a poor mood. “What’s your point?”

“My grandfather was old when the Romans first stepped onto British soil. Old and in the middle of a war among the Ad-hene that had already lasted a thousand years and devastated the population, but they kept fighting and killing because that was what they liked to do. To them, having a child, raising it, training it—those were things that you did so that someday you’d have a worthy opponent to kill. They whittled themselves down from probably a million at their peak to less than a hundred before they actually started even trying to do something about it. When they finally stopped being able to kill each other, they turned to torture.” Lilah’s face paled under her freckles at some memory, and she swallowed hard, taking a long moment before she continued. “You don’t want to see the inside of Underhill, Fort. There are captive Ad-hene in there who will never die of old age, and who every morning are tortured and flayed, and every night are healed so that it can happen all over again.”

“I didn’t know about that,” I said quietly. “My brother didn’t tell me.” There were a lot of things Chivalry hadn’t told me during the time we’d spent together during the summer, and I hadn’t pushed him on any of them. In that moment I was shamefully aware that I hadn’t pushed him because I hadn’t really wanted to know—that, transition or not, I still desperately wished that I could’ve continued running away from who, and what, I was. And Chivalry had let me, and told me only about what I needed to know at the moment, or the things that wouldn’t truly appall me, like goats for trolls or feral cat colonies for kobolds. Not a fifteen-percent surcharge squeezed from local supernatural businesses. Not the torturing practices of the elves.

Lilah continued. “Underhill’s openings into Ireland were locked for a reason. The cost to do it was the potato famine, but they didn’t catch all of the Ad-hene. My grandfather, Nokke, was the one who came to America, and he’s the one who negotiated with your mother for a place in her territory where a gate to Underhill could be opened. One of the rules she made all of them swear to was that the only prey they could hunt or kill was themselves.” She set down her glass on the floor beside the sofa and scooted closer to me. It wasn’t a romantic scoot, but almost as if being closer to me was necessary to underscore how seriously she needed me to take what she was saying. Her voice dropped, intensified, and as she spoke about her people, I wondered if she’d ever said these things out loud to any outsider before. “This is why I’m telling you this, Fort. There are a few people among the Neighbors who know everything I’ve just told you, and probably even more than that, and they idolize Themselves. All they think about is how they can somehow breed their way back to a race that is closer to what the Ad-hene were—more longevity, more power, more”—she paused, fumbling for a moment, then her jaw tightened and she said what had stuck in her throat—“more of the bloodlust. My boss, Tomas, is one of them. Most of the parents of the three-quarter crosses are, to some degree.”

“And you’re not?” I didn’t try to contain my curiosity. I was trusting her, and nothing so far had made me doubt that I was trusting her, but the fact remained that the people she was describing to me would consider her part in this conversation treachery.

Lilah shrugged and leaned back, the intensity of the earlier moment diffusing as we switched topics. “My parents are both Neighbors. Growing up, so were all the kids that I was allowed to play with. Everyone lived in the same area, and were really tight-knit. It’s the secrecy, you know? It ties us together.” She smiled a little. “I remember in elementary school a bunch of the teachers thought that we were a cult. Not really wrong, either.”

“So, what happened?”

“A lot of things. I mean, the life itself is completely insane. My mom and dad are half siblings.” She laughed cynically at my expression. “Yeah, you heard me. My younger sister? She’s not just my half sister; she’s my aunt. My god, it’s like we’re damn show dogs with this obsession with genealogical charts. I wouldn’t be surprised if an AKC rep arrived to give me a pelvic exam. My prom date? I thought he was my second cousin. He thought he was my second cousin. Turns out, nope, he’s actually my dad’s son. Apparently Dad was getting put out for stud for a while. Would’ve been nice to know that before I got to third base with a biological brother.”

“Wow,” I said, not exactly sure how to respond to that. One thing was clear—a conversation with this much incest in it required a third glass. I pulled a bottle of Banker’s Club over and poured us both three fingers’ worth, not even bothering to add Coke. I took a long drink, then said, “That is beyond fucked up.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “I don’t know which was the biggest kicker—my baby sister or my prom date. But as soon as I graduated from high school, I was gone. Like, in-the-wind kind of gone. I moved out to Phoenix. Got a job, an apartment, a boyfriend I wasn’t related to, did everything I could to pretend I wasn’t what I was. I played human. Took a few philosophy courses at the community college, rethought a lot of the things I’d just accepted.”

I recognized all of those things from my own life. My desire to escape my mother’s mansion and every part of being a vampire that I could had begun far earlier, but college and its aftermath had been my pantomime as well. “I get that,” I told her, and when we looked at each other it was with a deep sense of perfect understanding. There were large parts about ourselves that we each hated and would rather pretend didn’t exist, yet at the same time couldn’t escape. I knew what had pulled me back into my mother’s close orbit, but I didn’t know what had changed for Lilah, so I asked her. “Now you’re back in Providence and working with other Neighbors. What changed?”

“It was really good. I lived like that for seven years.” For a long second, clearly thinking about those years, she seemed lighter, happier. I wondered what she’d been like away from her family and Providence when she was playing human. Just like I’d been doing until recently. It occurred to me how similar we were—and the thought surfaced that if I was with someone like Lilah, I could go back to pretending most of the time. The thought was both enticing and disturbing, and I almost missed it when Lilah said, “I came back home last year, after my boyfriend wanted to move in together.” She took a long sip of her drink.

“A three-thousand-mile relocation is definitely one way to say no,” I noted.

“Yeah, not my smoothest moment. And I still hate Themselves and their shit. I mean, honestly, I hate it. My grandfather and the others . . . all they care about is trying to inbreed us as much as possible to somehow get an end result that is more like them. And those seven years away from all of that were the best seven years of my life. But it was seven years of hiding. Not just my ears, but about how I grew up, what I thought about, what I was struggling with. And when he kept trying to get more serious, I imagined doing that for the rest of my life . . . and I came back. Because for all that shit, I didn’t have to lie. They knew who I was, what I was, and they could understand. We might argue about everything else, but at least they understand.”

Looking at her, I wondered how much it must have cost her to make that decision. Because I knew that it hadn’t just been about leaving the boyfriend and Phoenix; it had also been about abandoning a dream. Once again, I knew how that felt.

“Were your parents happy?” I asked, knowing what the response would be. Madeline had been over the moon with delight when I’d (as she put it) “come to my senses.”

“Oh, thrilled,” Lilah said, and we shared rueful, knowing smiles. “Every time my dad visits my apartment he tries to toss my birth-control pills, my mom is frantic to set me up with a three-quarter Neighbor, and my baby sister has a few sociopathic personality quirks that we’re all trying to iron out.” I winced. At least Prudence left me alone. “But I can live some of my life around humans, and when I need to, there are Neighbors who are more like me to hang around. So, right now, it kind of works.” Her golden-brown eyes were considering as she looked at me. “How does it work for you?”

“What do you mean?”

She rearranged herself on the sofa, giving the impression of digging in and getting comfortable. “You live away from your family, with humans. I asked around about you after the first time you came by the store. The rumor was that you were living human for years.” She sounded honestly curious and slightly envious.

“Yeah, I guess I was.” I thought about it. “It was easier to pretend to be one, and I thought I was happy.” Looking at Lilah, though, I was struck again that she was someone who really had walked in my shoes. I’d never doubted the depths of Chivalry’s love for me, but he’d made no secret of the fact that he couldn’t understand why I struggled with what we were. And as much as I valued Suze’s odd friendship, she walked through the world with utter confidence and comfort in who she was. So, looking at Lilah, I was honest. “But I think you’re right—it’s harder now, seeing my family more, being reminded of all the crap that comes with being a vampire, but it’s also . . . better, in some ways. Like with Suzume—it’s just easier to be friends with someone without having to self-edit every family anecdote or joke, or be afraid that someone is going to notice something that is physiologically inhuman and call the CDC or the National Enquirer.”

It felt good to say it. And good to look at Lilah and know that she understood.

There was a pause. Then Lilah asked, with a playful grin, “Hey, is it true that your mom owns that?”

I laughed. “No, that one’s just a rumor. Someone else started it to throw cover.” Then, “But here’s a good one: my mother’s brother Edmund got Dracula published.”

Lilah gaped. “No!”

Finally, family history that was actually amusing. “Yeah, he owned Archibald Constable and Co. and thought that all of the mistakes would make it easier for real vampires to lie low. He also owned the magazine that published Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla.”

Lilah was now laughing so hard that she slipped sideways on the sofa. “Did he publish Anne Rice, too?” she managed.

“No, apparently that just happened.”

That set both of us off, and it wasn’t until we tapered off into small snickers and hiccupping giggles that we realized how close together we’d ended up. Her face was right next to mine now, close enough that I could feel the warmth of her breath on my face. Our shoulders were touching, and my hand, which a moment ago had been chastely sitting on my own leg, was now pressed between us. We froze, and a million possible outcomes flashed through my brain as we looked at each other, neither of us leaning in closer, but neither pulling away either.

I wasn’t sure what would’ve happened, but the charged silence between us was shattered when a sudden rapping noise, coming from my bedroom, echoed through the apartment. We jumped apart, Lilah giving a startled squeak while I made a noise that, while definitely not feminine in any way, was certainly not how Rambo would’ve responded.

Pulling together the shreds of my composure, I reached down for my inner spaghetti Western hero and said, “Stay here,” to Lilah. As she remained on the sofa, leaving me to the hosting duties of investigating creepy noises, I rushed into my bedroom, cursing myself internally for not stashing some kind of weapon under the sofa at some point.

I flipped on the lights in my bedroom, but after a tense glance around, nothing looked out of place. I retrieved the Colt out from under my mattress, feeling deeply relieved once it was comfortably in my hand. The rapping noise repeated, coming from my window. I approached it cautiously, holding the Colt ready in a two-handed grip. With a deep breath, I stepped completely in front of the window, prepared to jump back or fire (or do both simultaneously) if Gage’s killer had returned.

It was a distinct letdown to see Suze sitting casually in the tree outside my window.

She smiled at the sight of me and wiggled her feet, looking completely unconcerned about just how high up she was perched.

“Suze? What the hell’s wrong with using my front door?” I yelled out at her as I pulled up the window and its screen, entertaining very dark thoughts about the gun still in my hand. Not that I’d ever shoot her. But a warning shot might someday be in order. Suzume had made window entrances into my apartment before, but she’d always done so in fox form, and usually only for legitimate pranking purposes.

“Just wanted to check out the lay of the land before I came in. Just in case exciting things were happening.” I gave her a very dirty look, and she made a shooing gesture with her hand. “Scoot over, I’ll hop in.”

I watched in disgust as she climbed over the window ledge and inside. If she’d been parked outside for god only knew how long, then she’d certainly chosen her moment to knock loudly and scare the crap out of me and Lilah.

“My neighbors are going to call the cops, you know,” I said, resenting how she somehow managed to climb inside the window with the grace of a prima ballerina.

Suze made a very rude noise that conveyed her opinion of my neighbors. “They don’t expect to see me, so they didn’t see me.” She gave me a smug smile. “Yeah, I’m awesome. No JV-squad elf tricks here.”

I’d seen Suzume’s fox-illusion magic in action often enough to know that she had some room to brag there, but I wasn’t sure that it was an entirely appropriate comment, given who she well knew was sitting in my living room.

As if thinking about her had summoned her, Lilah’s head popped around my doorframe. “Oh, Suzume. I thought I heard your voice,” she said, sounding relieved. Then, confused, she asked, “Why didn’t you just come in the door?”

Suzume rolled her eyes dramatically. “Lord, now I have two people who need the CliffsNotes version.” Then, with a thick layer of condescension, she said, “Fort can catch you up later, Keebler. But if what I overheard was correct, and you don’t have a single new piece of information to add to what we already know . . . ?”

“Well, I might’ve added context and nuance . . .” Lilah started, but trailed off and gave up at the expression on Suze’s face.

“Exactly.” Suze clapped her hands loudly, making both of us jump again. “If you’re both done whining about family pasts, then I have an actual plan that will help out.”

“What?” I asked.

Suze gave me a brilliant smile. “We’re going to break into the Iron Needle and see what Jacoby wasn’t willing to tell us.”

I stared at Suze in horror, and, glancing over, saw that Lilah was in a similar state of jaw-dropped surprise.

“It’ll be fun!” Suze enthused.

•   •   •

An hour later Lilah and I were looking around nervously, still unclear how Suze had actually talked us into this scheme, while the architect of our discomfort occupied herself by picking the lock on the back door of the Iron Needle with a set of disturbingly professional implements. A security light from one of Jacoby’s neighboring businesses was giving us just enough light to both let Suzume work and make me feel far too exposed.

“So . . . do you guys do this a lot?” Lilah asked awkwardly. Because of the need to be somewhat circumspect she’d had to exchange her blue jacket for my black hoodie, and it fit her about as well as a three-man tent, with the hem hitting just above her knees.

“Definitely not,” I answered.

“Speak for yourself,” Suze said. There was a soft clicking sound, and she smiled widely. Carefully removing her tools and tucking them back into her front pocket, she crouched down and motioned for me and Lilah to imitate her. Still hunkered down, she reached up, turned the knob, and pushed the door open just enough to poke her head into the building. It was pitch-black inside and after a tense moment, Suze dropped to her hands and knees and slunk her entire upper body through the doorway. A second later there was a loud crash, and I jumped a mile, feeling Lilah’s hands grip my arm hard in surprise.

“Suze,” I hissed loudly.

She pulled back and gave us both her best pityingly superior look. “Calm down for a second,” she scolded. “I just pushed over his trash can.” With that, she turned her attention back to the store, listening attentively.

While we waited, it slowly occurred to me that Suzume was deliberately testing to make sure that the building was unoccupied. We’d known from our earlier visit that the Iron Needle closed its doors at nine p.m., but whether Jacoby left the premises at that point was unclear. Lilah said that he’d been reduced to living in his store a few times that she knew of but wasn’t sure if that was still the case, and glancing in all the windows (while doing our best to look completely surreptitious) had revealed nothing except that Jacoby had some aversion to sunlight and had blacked them all out, even the ones in the back. If someone was inside they would’ve come and investigated the noise that Suzume had just made, and we’d still be in a position to run away in a very Monty Python–esque manner.

I realized glumly that I was probably going to have to compliment Suze on her tactics later on. Nothing was more insufferable than Suzume accepting a compliment.

After a very long and stressful pause, with Lilah slowly cutting off the circulation of blood in my arm, Suze stood up and brushed off her pants. “Okay, all clear,” she said, her voice pitched low. “If you find a light switch, hit it.”

“No need,” I said, taking my moment to prove that I was at least marginally prepared for this outing and pulling my extra big Maglite out of the small duffel bag I had grabbed on the way out of my apartment. Lilah finally noticed that she was clinging and disengaged herself with a muttered apology.

Suzume’s expression as I switched on the flashlight was not quite as admiring as I’d expected. “What the hell, Fort?” she asked. “I thought that bulge was from your shotgun.”

“Are you crazy?” I responded, shocked. “No!”

She frowned, then pointed at the misshapen pocket of my Windbreaker. “Did you stuff your .45 in there, then?”

“No.”

“Then what did you bring?”

“Glow sticks,” I said, pulling them out. “From my blackout emergency kit.” She stared at me, appalled, and I said, “What? We’re engaged in crime. That means flashlights and . . . you know.” I waved the glow sticks, wishing that I hadn’t chosen the multicolored pack.

“I’ll take a glow stick,” Lilah piped up helpfully.

“Quiet, you,” Suzume said with a dangerous undertone before turning and laying into me. “Are you seriously telling me that you didn’t bring a gun? Are you nuts?”

Her voice had gone up several octaves, and I had to fight to keep my own low when my natural impulse was just to snap back at her. “B and E my mother can cover up,” I bit out. “That plus a firearm that I haven’t actually registered and don’t have a permit to carry? I’d rather not run up legal bills that exceed my college tuition, if you don’t mind.”

Suze shook her head in disgust, then shifted her dark gaze to Lilah. “And you? Tell me that you at least have a stun gun in that purse.”

We all looked down at Lilah’s purse, which was small and made out of some nubby red fabric. My experience with my ex-girlfriend told me that it was the kind of purse that women referred to as adorable, and I strongly doubted that it contained a stun gun.

“Sorry, I really didn’t expect the evening to go in a direction where weaponry was required,” Lilah said dryly. “But I do have a spare tampon if you need one.”

Suzume threw her hands up. I eyed her suspiciously, not liking what the conversation had suggested about her own assumptions for this trip. Wearing a long-sleeved jersey shirt and a pair of very close-fitting black pants (very close-fitting, and I’d been having trouble keeping my eyes in polite areas while she was picking the lock), and having mocked my earlier suggestion that she bring a coat given the early-October bite in the air, I couldn’t imagine she had anything stashed beyond her usual switchblade. Knowing her too well, though, I asked anyway. “Suze, are you carrying?”

She rolled her eyes at me and suddenly produced a very long, very serious-looking fixed knife that was almost the length of her own forearm. There was no ornamentation to it at all—it was just very straight, slim, extremely sharp steel with a leather-wrapped black handle. There were no doubts that this was a knife made solely for the business of cutting things.

I jumped nearly out of my own skin at the suddenness and sheer implausibility of its appearance. “Holy crap!” I said, completely forgetting the importance of keeping my voice down. I lowered it immediately as my voice echoed through the empty back parking area, but couldn’t help pointing out, “You brought a freaking sword!”

Suzume scoffed. “It’s twelve inches. Still counts as a knife.” She glanced at it, considering, then amended, “Maybe counts as a machete.”

It was only through strong effort that I kept my voice low. “How the hell did I not see that?” I gestured generally to her clothing, which looked incapable of hiding that kind of weaponry unless she had taken off her shirt and rolled the knife up in it.

“’Cuz I’m awesome like that,” Suzume said, her smirk wide and shining in the light from my flashlight. She pointed at Lilah, then at herself. “Respect.”

Lilah, who had been as surprised as I was when the sword emerged, hung behind me. “I didn’t see a glamour,” she said, sounding shaken.

Suzume snorted. “That’s where elves always go wrong. I didn’t try to hide the knife. I just used a little push that redirected where people looked so that they never noticed this was strapped to my leg.”

“Redirected where?” I asked.

“My ass.”

“Oh, thank god,” Lilah said loudly, clearly relieved. We both looked over at her inquisitively, and she blushed brightly enough to be noticeable even in the poor lighting. “I’m just, you know . . . glad. That it was because of magic that I was noticing . . .” She trailed off, her mortification clearly only getting worse the more she talked. Then she gathered herself up and said, “And, hey, why don’t we start looking for something incriminating instead of just standing around yapping.” She grabbed one of my glow sticks, cracked it, and shook it decisively. It was bright pink. She frowned at it—apparently this wasn’t quite the punctuation mark she’d had in mind—then pushed past both of us to walk in the back door of the building. There was a soft scuffle; then she snapped on a wall switch. The light in the room came on weakly, one of those cheap fluorescent overheads that needed time to warm up before they offered anything except an almost sullen glow. All the front windows were blacked out, so we didn’t have to worry about anyone seeing anything suspicious from the street, even though this already looked like the kind of neighborhood where people minded their own business. We followed her inside, and I pushed the door closed behind us and relocked it before looking around.

We were inside Jacoby’s office, which previously I’d only partially seen through a cracked door. A full view was even less prepossessing than the partial had been. Every surface was coated with paper—from old tattoo sketches to unopened mail with FINAL NOTICE stamped across the front. There appeared to be some furniture in the room, but it was observable only as vague shapes beneath the avalanche of junk. Bulging file folders sat stacked on the floors, topped off with partially eaten Hot Pockets and overflowing ash trays.

Lilah flipped her hair over her shoulder and resolutely started sifting through the top pile on Jacoby’s desk, and I felt bad for not sticking up for her a moment ago. After all, I’d also found myself pondering Suzume’s posterior assets with more than the usual intensity that evening and castigating myself for it. At least I hadn’t been dealing with sudden internal sexuality concerns on top of it.

That brought my thoughts back to the root of the situation, and I eyed Suzume’s monster knife, which she was still holding. “Isn’t that a bit extreme?” I asked, in what I hoped was a withering tone of voice.

Suzume looked at me, surprisingly serious. “Fort, do you know what we’re hunting?” she asked.

“No,” I answered.

“Me neither.”

I waited. Then, “. . . So?”

“So I’m keeping my options open here. I’d rather not be wishing at some point down the road that I’d brought my big-girl knife.”

“Do you seriously call it that?” I asked.

The ghost of a smile played at her lips. “Well, I also call it Arlene.”

I couldn’t help it; I gave a brief, smothered laugh. Her point made, Suze slid the knife back in its sheath, which I now registered was indeed strapped to her right thigh and gave her a very Lara Croft kind of appeal. I forced myself to turn my attention to the piles of folders on the floor, but when I glanced back at Suzume a few minutes later, I couldn’t see the knife again, even though I knew where to look. I did, however, notice again what a very nice backside Suzume had.

With three of us looking, we made good progress, but found nothing beyond useless papers, past-due bills, one disturbing discovery of at least twenty dirty needles sitting in an old soup take-out container filled with bleach, a few stashes of white powder that we all moved quickly past, and one comparatively innocent drawer filled with pot. We found the pile of glamoured Dreamcatching fliers that he’d described to us, and whole boxes full of apparently standard tattooing ink, but nothing that gave us any more clues than before. Lilah checked all of them, identifying each time that the glamours had been set by members of the Ad-hene. When we’d pulled her into the break-in party, it had been in the hope that she could identify the glamours of more participants in whatever the hell was going on, but our search was yielding no new leads.

We ended up in the part of the shop with the tattoo chair, with me poring through the thick binder of Jacoby’s client list, looking for any names that he might not have given to us, while Suzume and Lilah made one last pass through his under-counter storage and broom closet, still finding nothing except more needles; more ink; a small stash of what may have been meth; and not a single mop, broom, or plunger (this also explained the state of his bathroom, which we had all agreed upon first sight could hold no clues whatsoever, and closed the door on firmly).

That was where we all were when the sound of a key being wiggled in an uncooperative lock suddenly emanated from the front door. There was no time for all of us to run for the back, and Suze shoved Lilah hard into the broom closet she was investigating and slammed it shut. I was relieved—Jacoby might not have been a big fan of the Neighbors, but with his willingness to exchange information for cash it was definitely not in our best interests for him to know that we were working with a mole.

But it wasn’t Jacoby who walked in the door. Instead it was a tall woman with a figure that would politely be referred to as statuesque and impolitely referred to as slammin’. A great deal of it was on display in a short, fire-engine red dress liberally coated in sequins that was practically spray-painted onto her and definitely fit into the category of club wear. She held the keys to the store in her right hand, and in her left was an old-fashioned glass bottle, the kind usually seen in rows in antiques stores or old-timey seashore shops. The contents were distorted by the older style of thick glass, but it was filled barely a quarter of the way up with a black substance that, as it sloshed the sides, revealed a weird reddish undertone, as if oil and red paint had been poured into the same container but were failing to mix.

This, I realized, was undoubtedly Jacoby’s “real sexy Latina,” here to deliver some of the special ink for the band tattoos. We definitely weren’t what she’d been expecting to find, but there was only a brief pause and a flicker of surprise on her perfect face, with its shockingly high cheekbones, and she strolled in, pushing the door closed behind her.

“Madeleine Scott’s baby,” she said, and gave a taunting, throaty laugh. “Stupid little vampire, poking your head out of the nest.” She gave a nasty smile, showing a mouthful of teeth that were just slightly sharper than they should’ve been. “Poking your head where it doesn’t belong. You’d better watch out, or someone will cut it off. Maybe me.”

“Soli, I presume,” I said, ripping off H. M. Stanley without a qualm, as I closed the binder I’d been looking at with a loud thump. Suze stayed behind me, in front of the closet where Lilah was stuffed. She wasn’t hiding her sniffing, practically whuffling as she sampled the air surrounding the new visitor. I glanced from Soli, who simply curled her lips into an approximation of a smile, back to Suzume. Suze caught my eyes and nodded once, and I knew from her face that the scents matched. This was the one who’d dumped Gage’s body into his room like a sack of garbage.

I wasn’t thinking of much when I started walking toward her other than the conviction that while I needed information from her, my first priority was going to be to hit her. That must’ve shown in my face, because she paused at the long counter that divided the front of the parlor from the back and set down the bottle of ink very carefully next to a pile of our belongings, which included the hoodie I’d lent Lilah and my heavy Maglite.

Her smile stretched across her face as she watched me come toward her. As I swung my first punch, she laughed.

I didn’t connect. She was faster than I was, faster even than Suze had been when we’d sparred. Past my first punch I found myself suddenly busy blocking the blows she was directing at me. One fist slid right through my defenses, slamming into my stomach with a power that didn’t remotely match her size. I gulped air, but when she paused to savor it I was able to grab her arm and shoulder and shove her back against the counter, then nail her in the ribs with a punch. It was like punching a brick wall, with none of the slight give and flex that even a strike that landed directly on bone should’ve yielded. Pain blossomed through my hand, and I gave a sharp yell.

Distracted by my hand, I wasn’t able to block in time, and her return strike landed directly on my face, knocking me down and onto my ass. She followed me down, her hands wrapping around my throat in a way that should’ve been reminiscent of all the fighting I’d done with Suze, but instead suddenly showed me just how careful the kitsune had been to hold back with me. Her hands went straight for the vulnerable, pounding pulse in my throat and bore down mercilessly. I wrapped my hands around her wrists, but couldn’t break her grip. All too quickly, red flared in my vision and my lungs screamed for air.

One barely heard footfall was the only warning Soli had before Suzume tackled her full-out, knocking Soli’s hands away and allowing me to gasp in a breath. For the first moment the two women were sprawled out on me, but Soli rolled quickly, taking Suze with her, and the two were immediately scrabbling on the floor, wrestling for the top position. Height and weight were against Suzume, and as I sucked in needed oxygen I saw Soli end up on top, and she again went for the throat. Suzume knocked her hands away and tried to throw her body far enough to one side to knock the taller woman off, but Soli rode her down again and punched her hard enough in the face to daze Suze.

I pushed off the floor, managing to get only as high as my knees, but that was enough, and I threw one arm around Soli’s neck and the other around her torso and used my weight to yank her bodily off of Suzume. As I pulled her away Soli scratched violently at Suze, and I realized that there was something very wrong with her hands—a long black claw, curved like a heavy bird of prey’s talon, was punching through the tip of each of Soli’s fingers, jutting out beneath and sometimes even through the beds of her perfectly human-looking and French-manicured nails. There were long, deep slices in Suzume’s shirt at her upper chest, with swiftly darkening edges that spoke of deep cuts in the skin beneath that were bleeding freely.

Soli’s elbow slammed into the side of my head as I concentrated on trying to pull her farther away from Suze and I fell backward, losing my grip on her as she hopped up with eerie dexterity. On my back, I managed to kick her as hard as I could in the back of her right knee, making her wobble and struggle to keep her balance. She did, and the brief opening gave Suzume the chance she needed to get back up, and now that long, deadly knife was in the kitsune’s hands. Suze struck, the long knife whipping so quickly that I would’ve had no chance to avoid it, but Soli was too fast, pulling to one side and letting Suze cut only air.

Suze had thrown too much weight into the strike, and for a second she was off-balance and unable to pull back, and Soli took the chance to rake a hand of those black claws across Suze’s side, hard enough that Suze made a loud exclamation of pain and surprise. She pulled back sharply, barely getting out of the way before Soli’s other hand swatted down on a similar path.

We were outclassed, I realized as I pulled myself up again. Getting close to Soli wasn’t an option again with those claws, and I looked desperately for something heavy to throw, and finally spotted my heavy Maglite sitting on the counter. I yanked hard at the edge of my sweatshirt that it was resting on, pulling it into my reach but at the same time giving a hard knock to the glass bottle of ink that Soli had set down. It fell loudly to its side at my pull and then was swept off the counter completely as I grabbed the long flashlight, and hit the floor with an unmistakable shattering sound.

Soli’s head whipped around at the sound, and her face finally lost its taunting expression, replaced by hot anger. I didn’t pause, but took my opportunity and threw the Maglite straight at her head with as much force as I could put into it. She saw it coming and ducked a split second before it would’ve smashed into her, and it continued on its path, right into the large front window of the Iron Needle, creating a storm of flying glass.

Soli stayed in a duck, and I crouched automatically, throwing an arm over my head, but Suzume ignored the window completely and focused on taking advantage of her moment. The long knife sliced down—again, Soli was aware of the danger and moved with unnatural speed, but this time it wasn’t quite fast enough. Cutting in a downward, right-to-left motion, Suzume had been aiming for Soli’s neck, but instead caught her at the shoulder, digging in and slicing across her chest and arm.

The knife penetrated, but there was no blood at all. Instead her perfect skin tore like paper and a thick, white, viscous fluid welled out and dribbled slowly out of the wound site. The sliced skin suddenly slumped, handing open like an old, ripped shirt, revealing something beneath it that was hard, shiny, and black and looked like a beetle’s carapace.

There was a momentary pause as we all stared at what had been revealed; then the room was abruptly filled with a dense reek of decay, forcing my brain to dig up a comparable sensory memory of when I was eight and on a Boy Scout hike that, due to the scout leader’s misreading of a map, took us through a mile of boggy marshland. At one point I’d stepped on something more solid than the rest of the marsh, and when I’d foolishly kicked it, I discovered that it was the rotting, half-eaten corpse of a raccoon.

That had smelled almost as bad as this did.

Soli pressed one long finger into the cut, tracing the damage and scraping her talon across the black surface to produce a sound that was reminiscent of nails across a chalkboard. She looked up, not at Suze but at me, and I realized that she was now very well and truly pissed off.

“I liked this skin,” she said, rage dripping from the words even as white glops of fluid hit the floor. “I wasn’t ready to replace it.” Her finger moved up, the claw dragging almost reflectively over what were, even at this juncture, some of the most spectacular breasts I’d ever seen. “You’ll be paying for my new suit,” she said, and even though I had no idea what she meant, I felt a deep chill of foreboding.

If that had meant nothing to me, it had meant a lot to Suze, because comprehension suddenly filled her face, followed almost immediately by horror.

“Skinwalker,” Suzume growled, and Soli looked away from me to focus on her. “Your kind aren’t allowed in this territory.”

The word scraped against a memory of a half-listened-to lecture from Chivalry about the state of the territory, but before I could retrieve it, or Soli could respond to what Suze had said, the door of the shop slammed open and Matt stood solidly in the doorway, his old .38 service pistol in his hands and pointing at the room in general.

“None of you move a goddamn inch,” he said, looking around, trying to figure out what was going on. His eyes went first to me, then, at the sight of Suze’s extremely long knife, he refocused both his attention and the sighting of his pistol to her. Then he registered Soli, and the horrible moment where I saw his gun waver as his brain struggled against the incomprehensibility of what he was seeing seemed to stretch on forever.

Then Soli apparently decided that the situation had gone far enough, and went for the door. As she came toward him, Matt automatically swiveled the gun toward her but couldn’t decide in time whether to squeeze the trigger. Thinking of those claws and just how vulnerable Matt was, I started for them as well, but Soli was already at him. Grabbing him with both hands, she threw him bodily across the room, and he slammed into me, knocking both of us backward and into the heavy counter. I lost sight of Soli and everything else as my head smacked against the floor, hard enough to disorient me.

Everything in my brain swam around for a moment, and from a long distance I could hear Suzume yell my name. I tried to push myself up and into a sitting position, but something heavy was lying across me. I blinked, trying to figure out what it was; then the smell of blood filled me, and everything that was me seemed to wink out like a blown candle, leaving just a raging hunger.

I sat up fast, and what had covered me fell to my lap. It was heavy, and as I panted in a breath I knew that it was a human that was bleeding. The smell wasn’t just in my nose; it was in my mouth and covering my tongue and my throat, and I breathed it in, and all of the aches and pains that had been filling my body a moment ago were gone, and the only thing in my mind was that this was so good, but it could still be even better, and I wrapped my hands against the human and pulled it, unresisting, closer to me, even as I dropped my head down, down toward the blood that was dripping so beautifully.

It was less than an inch away when something grabbed my hair and pulled my head back sharply, and I snarled at the thing that had done it not just because of the pain that had erupted in my scalp but because it wanted the blood that was mine—

Then I was hit squarely across the face, right in the spot that even in my haze had still been throbbing dully from where something had hit me before, and something screamed, “Fortitude!” right in my face. When I blinked, that something was a woman with tilted, richly black eyes, and I blinked again and knew that it was Suzume, and that she was about to backhand me across the face again.

“It’s okay—it’s okay,” I said, flinching backward as far as I could, given that she still had a death grip on my hair with her left hand. She eyed me, hard and suspicious.

“Is that you?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“How do I know?” Her hand never wavered, and she seemed to be seriously contemplating backhanding me again for certainty.

“You could ask me my favorite color,” I said weakly. “Or what the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow is.”

She didn’t smile, but her grip on my hair relaxed, along with the look on her face. “Good,” she said, shortly. “Now let me grab your buddy.”

“What?” I looked down, and Matt was lying across my lap, unconscious. His head had hit the counter, and blood was still pumping merrily from a cut on his scalp. Horror bubbled up in me. “Oh, shit, Matt,” I said. The memories hit me, and I rolled over and puked on the floor.

“Timing, Fort, timing!” Suze said, pulling Matt away from me as I continued to heave. My eyes were closed when I heard her yell, “Lilah! You can stop the courageous huddling you’re doing and come give me a fucking hand!”

“Don’t yell at her for doing the smart thing and what you told her to do,” I muttered, keeping my head down. I felt a soft hand pressed against my forehead, and a handful of tissues stuffed into my hand. Cracking my eyes, my first impression was of just how frizzy Lilah’s hair had gotten while she hid in the closet. It was like a copper chia pet—adorable.

“She’s right, you know,” Lilah said, guilt filling her too-bright eyes. “That’s what I did. Even when you two were getting ripped up.”

I wasn’t sure what to tell her. I doubted her presence would’ve made any difference in the fight, but tactful phrasing was beyond me right now, and I focused on wiping saliva and the remnants of dinner off my face. As for the floor, it wasn’t as if my puke made much of a difference in the sanitation level.

“We don’t have time for this crap,” Suze snapped. “With the noise we made, someone would’ve called the cops. Grab anything that’s yours and let’s get out.” She jerked her chin at me. “Fort, Matt’s yours. Get him.”

“Suze, he’s sick,” Lilah broke in.

“And he’s still the only one of us that can carry that much deadweight.” She’d grabbed some paper towels and was winding them around Matt’s head to stanch the blood. I wondered whether it was for Matt’s benefit or to prevent a blood trail from forming. Probably both.

But she was right, as in many other things, and I pulled myself up and gritted my teeth. After what had just happened, I would’ve preferred to hide under my bed for a week before coming within ten feet of Matt, let alone having to not just touch him, but come so close to his bleeding head again. I reached for him, then flinched back, unable to do it.

Suzume jabbed me sharply in the side. “Suck it up, buttercup,” she said. “We don’t have time for you to have the vapors.”

That pissed me off, and it was anger that let me pull Matt onto my shoulders in a fireman’s carry and stand up. It was a good thing I’d been doing a lot of lifting lately—the beginning of my transition had made me stronger than I should’ve been, but Matt was solidly built with muscle, and as soon as his weight was on my shoulders I was immediately reminded of every bump and bruise from the fight.

I headed for the back door. Suzume was moving quickly around me, checking the floor and counters for anything that was ours. We were almost at the door when I remembered, and I turned to Suze and said, “Matt’s gun—”

“Lilah, grab it. It fell by the door.”

I looked back. Lilah hurried over to it, but when she reached down to take it she paused, eyeing it like a poisonous snake. The hesitation was brief; then she set her jaw and grabbed it firmly. With quick motions she swaddled the gun in my hoodie to conceal it from any curious eyes and stuffed the bundle under her arm.

It tugged at something inside me that wanted to protect her. But at the same time another part of me felt annoyed by it, by the understanding that Lilah would have to be protected, and there wasn’t a choice to it.

For a horrible moment I wondered whether Suzume had felt those same conflicting feelings toward me when we’d first met, which had been while I was being mugged by Bruins fans.

We were halfway to the car when we heard the sirens. We’d been lucky that the area was mainly filled with businesses and it had taken that long. All of us stepped up our pace anyway, Lilah falling in beside me and doing her best to try to take some of Matt’s weight by lifting his legs. It didn’t exactly help, but I appreciated the thought. I also made a mental note to suggest that Matt cut back on his carbs.

In the interest of circumspection, my Fiesta had been parked three blocks down the street in the lot of an abandoned gas station. When we reached it we discovered that it had made a new friend—Matt’s Buick was parked right beside it.

“Ever get the feeling we’re being followed, Fort?” Suze asked. I didn’t answer, instead focusing on doing my best to gently sit Matt on the ground. “We can’t ignore this,” she continued. “I know this isn’t easy for you, but he was following you. He just came running into a fight and got a full look at something he definitely shouldn’t have.” She looked at me. “You know what your mother would tell you to do.”

“He might’ve saved our lives by coming in when he did.” Matt’s face was far too pale, white even against his impromptu paper-towel turban. Blood was drying on his forehead and down his cheeks, making it uncomfortable for me to be so close to him because I could still smell it, and it still smelled good.

Lilah crouched down next to me, leaning in to look at him closely. “He should’ve been waking up by now,” she said quietly. “If . . . we would need to take him to the hospital.” I could hear what she was saying between the lines: if I wanted him to live, he needed medical attention. If I didn’t, then I should probably do nothing.

The rules in my mother’s territory were clear: if a human became a threat and endangered the secrecy that protected everyone, that threat needed to be neutralized. Sometimes it meant a bribe, sometimes intimidation, and other times it meant killing. Most felt that killing was the safest option. Lilah knew that as well as I did.

“Help me get him in the car. We’ll drive him over to the—”

“Fort.” Suze cut me off. Looking at her, I was struck by how torn she looked. Her voice gentled. “You know we can’t do that.”

“I won’t let him die, Suze,” I warned her, praying that she wouldn’t push me. I didn’t want to know what choices I might have to make.

We stared at each other, neither moving. Then she glanced away fast, took a deep breath, and said, “Put him in the backseat of his car. I’ll take him over to my house and get someone to look at him.”

“I’m not putting this on you,” I argued. “If anyone is going to risk pissing off my mother, it’s going to be me.” After all, she wouldn’t kill me.

“Oh, believe me, it’s going to be you,” she said darkly as she reached down and grabbed Matt’s legs. “Keebler, make yourself useful for five seconds and pat him down for his keys. Fort, grab the torso.” While Lilah checked his pockets, Suze leaned closer to me, her voice dropped, and I knew that this was as good an offer as she was going to make me. “I’ll haul him home and get him checked out, but he’s under lock and key until he wakes up and you talk with him. If we’re lucky, that hit to the head rattled his brains enough that he won’t start babbling about monsters and we won’t have to go to our fallback position.”

“And if we do?” I asked.

Suze started to answer, then stopped herself and took a deep breath. “We’ll talk about it then.”

I nodded slowly. “I’ll follow you in the Fiesta.”

“Better make a phone call while you’re at it.”

We lifted Matt together, both initially stumbling and barely holding him. “Fuck,” I muttered, suddenly remembering our other crisis. “The skinwalker.” There was a short list of creatures that my mother had banned from entering her territory. The skinwalkers were right at the top. I’d never seen one before tonight, but some of Chivalry’s stories were trickling back to me. None of them were reassuring.

If I hadn’t met Soli tonight and seen how easily she’d been mopping the floor with me and Suze, I would’ve risked hiding her presence from my family. With Matt’s involvement, the thought of deliberately inviting the interest of the people who would be the first to try to eliminate the threat he posed was insane. But the fact was that Suze and I were completely outmatched. I needed my brother.

We maneuvered Matt into his backseat, with Lilah doing her best to sweep off an open area for him, then helped pull him in as gently as possible. He groaned once but didn’t make any other sounds. There was a blanket crumpled up on the floor of the passenger’s seat that I knew Matt kept stashed for long stakeouts, and Lilah pulled it out and tucked it over him. She tugged up the paper towels around his head to check on his cut, and I looked away quickly, shame choking me. Matt had gotten hurt, and my first instinct had been to capitalize on it, not help him.

Lilah climbed out of the car. “Looks like it stopped bleeding,” she said. I felt her fumble around and pat my shoulder, then squeeze it quickly and drop her hand. I looked up. She was focused on me, and there was sympathy on her face. She hadn’t seen what I’d tried to do, I realized, and she thought I was just unable to see Matt hurt.

Suze was frowning at Lilah, but when the half-blood looked away from me the expression wiped from her face. There was no hiding the annoyance in her voice, though, as she said to Lilah, “So, awesome night. We should do this again probably never. Gimme the keys. One of us can get you somewhere where you can wait for a cab.”

The dismissal was clear, but Lilah shook her head with surprising firmness. “No, I’ll help you get him to your house.”

“What?” Suze was genuinely surprised. Frankly, I was as well—after the fiasco at the tattoo parlor, I wouldn’t have blamed Lilah for taking the opportunity to bail.

Lilah pointed at Suzume’s chest, where the long cuts Soli had inflicted were sluggishly oozing blood each time she moved, like a badly cut knee on a long walk home. “You’ve got to be hurting really badly. While I’m driving you can actually wrap those up or something. Unless you were really looking forward to passing out from blood loss at the first stop sign.” She lifted her eyebrows, and even after everything that had happened that night, I felt the shadow of a smile play at my mouth. I knew from hard experience that this was the only way into Suze’s good graces and away from the land of bad nicknames was by slinging sass and showing backbone.

“I’m fine,” Suze grumped, but I noticed that she shifted slightly to make her cuts less visible. “Besides, like you can actually drive stick.”

“Actually I can,” Lilah said, then pointed. “Get in the car.”

Suzume looked over at me, and I raised my hands and stepped back. “Don’t involve me,” I said. “I’ll follow in the Fiesta.”

We pulled out, with the Buick in front. Lilah might have been comfortable driving stick (as clearly evidenced by the fact that she managed to start it up without stalling), but my guess was that she wasn’t a usual driver of older American cars that had been built along lines similar in size to humpback whales, and she drove very slowly.

I’d left my phone in the Fiesta’s glove compartment before we’d headed to the Iron Needle, and I pulled it out now and dialed Chivalry’s number.

It was ten thirty, and when Chivalry picked up he answered just above a whisper. Left to his own devices, Chivalry tended to keep the kind of hours that Ben Franklin would admire, getting up with the sun and consigning anything that aired on TV after nine p.m. to his DVR.

I cut straight to the chase. “Suzume and I found what dumped Gage’s body.”

“Oh?” he said. He was surprised, but then his voice warmed with pleasure and older-brother pride. “That’s excellent, Fortitude. Do you need assistance?” Only Chivalry could find such a very polite way to ask if I needed help killing something.

Every spot where Soli’s fists had connected felt tender to the point where a tub filled with ice had nearly erotic appeal, and, given its current special level of throbbing, I was seriously concerned that the spot on my cheekbone where Soli had punched and Suzume had backhanded me might’ve been at least fractured. As much as she’d done to hide it, I knew that Suze was in substantial pain from her cuts, though given how much better her healing ability was than mine, I knew why she’d downplayed them. And this was a situation where we’d outnumbered and startled Soli. The cavalry were definitely needed. I snorted and said, “I should say so. It’s a skinwalker.”

“Are you certain?” All of the relaxed congratulation was gone, and Chivalry’s voice was tense.

“Really sure. We got a peek at the center of the Tootsie Pop.”

“How badly are you hurt?” That Chivalry asked how badly rather than are you was a direct confirmation of the seriousness of the situation.

“Banged up, but we’re both okay.”

“Where is the skinwalker now?”

“Gone. Listen, Chivalry, there’s some weird shit going on up here. The skinwalker is working with the elves on something.”

Chivalry sucked in a breath. “You need to tell all of this to Mother. Get down here right now.”

“No, Chivalry, I can’t—”

“That’s not a request, Fortitude,” Chivalry snapped. “I want you to get in your car right now and come straight to the mansion. No detours, nothing. This supercedes everything. If you aren’t in front of the mansion one hour from now, I’m coming and getting you.” He hung up. Another sign that convinced me how serious this was—Chivalry wrote regular letters to the editor of the local newspaper complaining about the decline in phone etiquette.

“Oh, not good,” I muttered as I immediately called Suze. When she picked up I explained the necessary change in plans, and she assured me that she and Lilah would be able to handle Matt. Hoping that was the case but unable to do anything about it, I made a quick, illegal U-turn and headed for the highway.

•   •   •

As I drove, most of my mind was on trying to sort through what had just happened. Skinwalkers were, unlike kitsune or the elves, native to North America, but my mother hadn’t had any contact with them until western expansion had progressed well into areas like Texas and Arizona. They had been banned from my mother’s territory more than sixty years ago, and the ones that didn’t willingly relocate had been hunted down and killed by Prudence and Chivalry, and while my brother hadn’t gone into the details, apparently they had made those executions grisly enough that no skinwalker had been sighted in the territory since, though Chivalry had once mentioned that the largest concentration of them was now in Miami, where they liked the heat, the city life, and the convenience of the everglades for dumping bodies.

That was the one thing Chivalry had emphasized: skinwalkers meant bodies. They were humanoid in shape but not in appearance. He hadn’t gone into detail (and I had not pursued it), but I’d just gotten a small window into what a skinwalker looked like in its natural form. It was apparently a rare sight—true to their name, they stripped the skin from their victims and were able to wear it to blend in to the population. No one knew how long they could wear one skin for; Chivalry had known individuals who kept skins for months or even years, but like snails with shells, there was a large amount of “trading up,” which occurred whenever a skinwalker caught sight of a face or body that it liked better than the one it was currently wearing. They were rapacious, violent, and deadly.

And I’d just pissed one off very personally. I pressed my foot harder onto the gas pedal. Suddenly seeing my family held an enticing appeal. Kind of like in the Three Billy Goats Gruff—Soli might’ve handed me my ass, but I was willing to bet that things would be very different with my big brother.

I tried not to think about what had happened with Matt. I didn’t want to think about what I’d almost done to him, or its potential implications. There had been times in the past where blood had excited me and I’d felt cold, predatory instincts stir in me, but those had been only during the days when I’d been trying to avoid my vampire heritage as much as possible and had avoided coming home to feed from my mother. I’d never come so close to sampling human blood, and I’d never before lost all recognition of those around me. What frightened me was that I’d been drinking my mother’s blood more regularly over the past few months than I had at any point since my late teens, and between that and my vegetarian diet what had happened shouldn’t have been possible.

That I knew of. The information my family had provided me about what I could expect now that my transition had started had been about as helpful as Queen Victoria’s premarital advice to her daughters. The idea that this might be my new normal made my hands shake on the wheel, and I forced the topic from my brain. Suddenly a skinwalker who seemed personally pissed at me seemed like a much better issue to ponder.

It was a weeknight and late, so roads were clear and I was able to make excellent time to Newport, pulling my car into the driveway at just past eleven. The house was completely lit up, twinkling like a jewel in the dark. I could feel the presence of my entire family in the house as I walked toward it. Prudence had avoided me for the past few months, pouting over my failure to get myself killed, and there was something intoxicating about feeling the certainty of all of them, a drumming knowledge in the back of my brain that tugged at the part of me that had come roaring out earlier that evening and was still crouched far too close to the surface.

No one was waiting for me, but I followed the pull of their presence unerringly to the small parlor to the left of the grand staircase that was reserved for family use and not quite as overwhelmingly decorated as the more public areas of the mansion.

Despite the season, a fire had been lit in the granite fireplace, and my mother sat on the rose-colored sofa tucked closest to it. She was wearing her typical set of innocuous camouflage, wide-legged light green grandma pants that accented her flowery pastel shirt, all topped off with her clunky eighties glasses and her best Barbara Bush hairdo. Chivalry sat to her left, much more dressed down than usual in a button-down shirt and jeans, with a hollow and exhausted look around his eyes. Prudence wasn’t sitting, but instead paced around the room. She must’ve been out on the town when she’d been called home, because she was dressed for the opera in a long black gown that sparkled when she moved, the full skirt swishing dangerously in her wake, contrasting the gleam of white shoulders and very generously displayed décolletage in the thinly strapped top. Her bright red hair was pinned up instead of hanging in its usual sleek bob, and the heads of the pins sparkled like the diamonds that I suspected they actually were.

Everyone was already looking at the doorway when I walked in, having undoubtedly felt my approach ever since I pulled into the driveway, if not even before that. Prudence gave me one sweeping look and continued her pacing, but Chivalry immediately got up and hurried over to me, concern filling his face when he reached out to touch my bruised cheek.

“What else, Fort?” he asked urgently, patting my arms to check for broken bones and eyeing the rest of me that was concealed by my clothing. Chivalry was able to hide his mother-hen streak most of the time, but when I was younger he’d always been the first to come running with a bottle of iodine whenever I came home after a bike ride with a freshly scraped knee.

I flinched away from his hand, as even his delicate probing had sent a blast of pain through my skull, but I gave him a pat on the shoulder. “Just bruises. I’m okay.” He looked completely unconvinced, still scanning me anxiously for injuries, and I tried to make my voice more reassuring as I repeated, “Really, I’m fine. Suze actually looks worse than I do right now.”

From her position on the sofa, Madeline frowned. “The kitsune was there? Atsuko was involved in your search?”

I shook my head. “No, Suzume was there as a favor to me. She’s my friend.” As much as that was the case, I’d met her extremely formidable grandmother, and had no doubt that the White Fox had at least tacitly given her approval for Suze’s involvement.

“How interesting, Fortitude,” Madeline said, seeming to savor the words. “I’m very pleased. The kitsune are a valuable alliance, and it’s good that you are making a strong connection where other of my children”—she sent a quick, slashing look toward Prudence—“have not.”

My sister continued stalking around the room but met Madeline’s look with a glare of her own, clearly feeling and resenting our mother’s dig. “The kitsune live in the territory under our sufferance. There is no need to beg for favors.”

“No?” Madeline asked, then dropped her voice to a low hiss, surprising me with its level of anger. “Had Fortitude encountered the skinwalker on his own, without a strong ally, I doubt we’d be getting this report.” Her blue eyes began to glow with the heat of her anger, reminding me of the Bunsen burners we’d used in high school chemistry. But as quickly as it had been revealed, Madeline pulled the anger inside again, banking and hiding it under her Betty White–esque exterior. But it was still there, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up in response. I noticed that Prudence had slowed her pacing, moving slower, more cautiously, in the wake of our mother’s temper.

Chivalry had also flinched at our mother’s words, but he must’ve agreed with them because the pupils of his eyes were expanding, swallowing the benign hazel with gleaming black, and he snapped, “It should never have been an issue to begin with.” He tugged at my elbow, leading me over to the sofa beside my mother. “Sit down and tell us what happened,” he said, fussing until I sat to the left of Madeline. He immediately sat on my left, leaving me sandwiched between them. He gave our sister a sharp look. “Stop pacing, Prudence.” She gave a small snarl at the order but obeyed, throwing herself into her favorite chair, a Louis XVI that creaked alarmingly at the sudden impact.

Everyone’s eyes were on me now, waiting with varying levels of patience, and I took a deep breath and started talking. I began with the discovery of Gage’s body and went from there—with one significant exception. I edited out Matt’s presence entirely, instead claiming that Suze and I had found a glamoured Iron Needle promotional card while we’d been cleaning out Gage’s bedroom and had simply investigated from there. Other than that I was honest about what had happened, including Lilah’s involvement. Madeline and Chivalry both listened with frozen, intent expressions, but Prudence was clearly agitated by what I was saying. When I finished with the events of the evening, claiming that Soli had fled after Suzume had managed to cut her open enough to expose her nougaty center, Prudence couldn’t restrain herself any longer. She exploded out of her chair and began stalking the room again, clearly enraged.

“This isn’t the work of a moment,” she growled. “Months went into this that we did nothing. Others will see this and act accordingly.”

Madeline stayed focused on me and reached over to give me a small pat on my knee. “You’ve done very well, Fortitude,” she complimented me, then glanced over at Prudence. “This will be dealt with swiftly.”

Prudence ignored her. “Elves with some kind of plan, daring to bring the forbidden into our boundaries. The kitsune numbers are increasing. The witches are showing discontent. More movement among the lower creatures. Now a skinwalker at the heart of the territory.” She smacked the edge of the fireplace temperamentally, cracking one of the granite stones, and said to Madeline, “They sense your weakness, Mother.”

“This isn’t the time for that, sister,” Chivalry said. “We need to focus on what is at hand.”

There was an intensity in the way that Madeline looked at Prudence, and the glitter of suppressed temper was back in her eyes, but she visibly restrained herself and, with deliberate blandness, said, “True enough.” Then she turned to me and lifted one thin, liver-spotted hand to cup my chin. “This was fine work, showing good instincts. You will continue this fine, fine work for me, my son. You will be assisted,” she glanced from Chivalry to Prudence, then back again, before hesitating a moment and then saying smoothly, “by your brother. But you, my darling, you will be in charge.” She smiled, and her upper lip pulled back enough to display her long, thoroughly impressive fangs that, unlike Prudence’s and Chivalry’s, were fixed in place and too large to retract. “And when you find this skinwalker, as well as those responsible for her presence, it will be by your command that your brother shows the consequences of defiance.”

There was a dreamy look in her eyes as she dwelled over the word consequences, and I knew that her thoughts were filled with blood and pain. I swallowed hard, but nodded like an obedient son. “Yes,” I agreed, then looked at Chivalry. There was a hesitance in his face that surprised me, and I nudged him, saying, “Chivalry?”

He looked startled for a second, then collected himself and the mixed feelings vanished as if they’d never been there. “Of course, Fort,” he said in his most reassuring voice. “You found something the rest of us had overlooked. It’s right that you should continue to lead.”

That was the brother I knew, and I relaxed.

Prudence snarled loudly, her delicate fangs sliding out from their hiding places. She swept over in front of us and shoved Chivalry hard in the shoulder, knocking him back against the couch cushions. “Stop protecting him, brother. If Fortitude is to make adult decisions, then you can’t keep wrapping him in wool.” Her blue eyes, gleaming with temper, slid over to focus on me. “Bhumika is in complete renal failure, Fortitude,” she said, and I flinched at the hard truth. “Her first dialysis is scheduled for tomorrow, along with a number of invasive and doubtless painful tests to determine candidacy for a transplant. The first time Chivalry left the hospital in three days was when you called him with the skinwalker information. And now he pretends to eagerly leave at your side.”

I looked at my brother, but he didn’t deny what Prudence was saying. He simply looked back at me, his face set in unreadable lines. “Chivalry, what—”

Madeline interrupted me, her voice an iron bell that filled the room and made even Prudence look cautious. “And your motives, daughter? Do you offer Fort a true choice between you and Chivalry as assistance, or a false one?” She studied Prudence intensely and asked, “Will you follow your brother’s commands as if they were mine? Can you do this?”

Prudence didn’t answer at first, looking at me instead. When I met her eyes, I was surprised to see that the restless anger and irritation that I was so used to was missing, and instead there was something else. It wasn’t aggressive, but seemed almost . . . curious. I was shaken as much by the change as if the rising sun had been purple. Prudence gave a short nod to our mother. “Yes.”

Madeline exhaled, long and thoughtful, those hard eyes examining my sister, weighing what she had just said. Then her attention shifted to me, and part of me shivered at her expression. I was being examined and considered as thoroughly as Prudence had been a moment ago, but I didn’t have two centuries of starch in my spine to help me through it. It was a natural fear, I reminded myself, just like a bunny would feel when facing a saber-tooth tiger, and I did my best to hide it. After a moment Madeline gave a small nod and said, “Then there is a choice before you, my turtledove. Which of your siblings will go back to Providence with you?”

Chivalry gripped my hand, and I tore myself from Madeline’s absorbing gaze to look back at my brother. There was clear worry on his face now as he glanced at our sister; while our mother might’ve accepted Prudence’s words, Chivalry was clearly not as trusting. “It’s fine, Fort. I can go with you,” he said, low and urgent. “Bhumika is getting the best care in the state right now, and she wouldn’t be alone for a second.”

I hesitated. Everything inside me wanted to take the protection that Chivalry was offering, knowing that he would do everything in his power to shield me not just from the physical threats, but also from hard decisions. If Chivalry discovered Matt’s involvement, he would hesitate to kill him—not out of a belief that Matt shouldn’t die, but because he knew that the death would hurt me. Prudence wouldn’t do that.

I also wanted to take Chivalry so that he could continue to do what he had done for most of my life, which was to stand as a barrier between me and my sister. My foster parents’ blood was on her hands, and she’d been the one to teach me the harsh lesson of what could happen to humans who found themselves entwined in our shadowy world of secrets.

But as much as I wanted those things, I also wondered how much it would cost Chivalry to leave Bhumika right now. She was dying, and nothing the doctors could do would stop that—she’d been dying from the moment that she’d married my brother five years ago, and he’d spent each day of those years cherishing the time they were together, knowing all too well that it would end like this.

I wished deeply that I could make the decision I would’ve made a year ago. But I’d changed since then, and that it was time to be adult enough to, for the first time, protect my brother. “No, it’s okay,” I told him, squeezing his hands with completely false reassurance. I looked over at our sister. “I’ll take Prudence.”

No one spoke at first, but everyone was looking at me, assessing the decision, weighing what this meant in the strange dynamics of the family. Finally Madeline nodded. “Very well,” she said. She leaned forward, brushing a finger against my bruised cheek, and looked me over, her eyes seeming to catalog every injury, even those hidden by my clothes. She gave a small tsk of her tongue. “This is a deadly opponent, my son, and the elves have always had the loyalty of serpents. You will need to be a very wary little mongoose indeed, and a strong one.” She pushed the cuff of her sleeve back and drew her thumbnail slowly across her wrist, making a short cut. Blood welled up sluggishly, thicker than a human’s would’ve been, and much darker. She held the wrist up in front of my face. “Feed.”

Craving rushed through me, but I hesitated, resting my hand against the middle of her forearm to keep her from pressing her wrist any closer. “I fed last week, Mother. It’s too soon.”

Chivalry put one hand on my shoulder, patting me soothingly. “She’s right, Fort,” he said. I still hesitated, but his hand moved to the back of my neck, not pushing but just gently guiding me forward. I gave in then, and I dropped my head willingly and drank. My mother’s blood was thick, and I had to suck hard to get it into my mouth, where it seemed to sizzle on my tongue, and I shuddered as I felt the path of each drop down my throat and into my body. I was dimly aware of Chivalry removing his hand, but then the rush and excitement of my mother’s blood, hinting at strength I couldn’t even dream of, washed over me and the rest of the room dimmed, my world tightening around me until all that existed was my mother’s wrist and my own mouth.

Feeding was always like this, but suddenly the memory of pulling Matt, unconscious and bleeding, toward me flashed in my mind, and fear lit my brain back up as I wondered whether that was the future that waited for me on the other side of transition—more than twenty years of a surrogate uncle’s love disappearing in a wave of hunger that wiped away all identity and ties. I pulled my head back sharply, away from Madeline’s wrist. She let me go, as she always had in times like this, but then another hand shot forward, grabbing my hair and forcing me back down to the blood.

It was Prudence’s voice, hard and determined, that said, “None of that squeamishness, baby brother. This task does not call for weakness.”

I pushed back, trying to get away, but she was older and stronger than I was, and neither Madeline nor Chivalry spoke or interfered with what she was doing. I was unable to resist the blood when it was right at my mouth and I continued to drink, long after I would normally have stopped, Prudence’s hand remaining, inescapable, determined that I would drink to her satisfaction. I was completely full when Prudence’s hand finally relaxed and let me up. It took me a few blinks to adjust to the room again, and I felt shaky, both from nerves and the rush of energy and excitement that bubbled up inside me.

The blood that remained at the surface of Madeline’s wrist sank back inside her, and the cut tied itself together as I watched. But as she pushed her sleeve back down I noticed that she was shaking and somehow seemed smaller, weaker, diminished even, her face almost gray as she seemed to crumple up inside, looking suddenly as tiny and harmless as a truly human old woman. Chivalry reached past me, stretching out one hand to steady her, but in a sudden flash the old woman was gone and Madeline whipped her head around, those lips drawn back to reveal her fangs in a clear threat, her blue eyes bright enough to cast their own glow in the room. Chivalry’s hand froze, then wrapped quickly around my shoulder instead, giving me one small tug toward him, away from my mother. Then she blinked and the glow was gone and her mouth relaxed, once again hiding what she was.

I was stunned and confused. “Mother? Are you . . . okay?” It felt strange asking the question or even letting it flicker my mind as a serious consideration. She was infinitely more powerful than I was, had spent centuries reigning as the dominant power on the entire Eastern seaboard, but I found myself asking it anyway.

Madeline pulled herself upright and waved one hand like a grumpy senior. “Go, Fortitude. Bring me back the true head of the skinwalker.” Despite the tremors still running through her, she gave a very hard, extremely bloodthirsty smile that left no doubt in anyone’s mind who we were dealing with. “I have a space on my wall that needs a change in décor.”

I felt oddly reassured by that statement and got up with Chivalry, allowing him to herd me out of the room and back to the main foyer, Prudence close at our heels. When we stood at the front door, Chivalry cut a hard look at Prudence, even as he started talking to me. “Call me if you need anything, Fort.”

Prudence smiled at him, her fangs still out. He met her gaze for a long minute, glancing away just before it would’ve been long enough to be considered a challenge. She was a century older than he was, a vampire just coming into her prime, far stronger than him. Chivalry backed up slowly, then headed up the stairs to his room, probably to change clothes before returning to the hospital. He glanced backward just once, to give me a significant glance, then turned the corner and was gone.

Prudence gave me a wholly nonreassuring smile and linked her arm companionably with mine, tugging me along until we were strolling together out into the parking area where the cars waited. I didn’t like touching her, and I could feel my skin crawling at her proximity, but I forced myself not to comment. Too much was riding on my ability to control this potentially explosive situation and my sister’s actions, with far too much at stake to pull my arm away like I desperately wanted to. We finally reached the cars, the Fiesta looking even scruffier than usual in its spot between Chivalry’s Bentley and Prudence’s gleaming new Lexus.

Having my sister as my backup, with me in charge, was not something I’d ever expected to happen, and it was already itching at me. “So, what are we going to do?” I asked her. “Storm Underhill?”

Prudence turned to face me, shaking her head slightly. “Underhill is older magic, brother. Not even our mother could enter and find her way out again without the permission of the elves. Its entrance may lie in our territory, but it is a hole no sane person would enter.” She gave me a cool smile. “No, we don’t go to the powerful ones. We’ll hunt sideways, toward their mixed-blood scions. Find me one of those involved in this business and I’ll shake out all the information you could desire.” The gleam in her eyes left no doubt as to how she would “shake out” that information. Prudence took great pleasure in being the bogeyman Madeline used to keep the races that lived in the territory toeing her line.

Prudence continued. “I will need to gather some belongings and find suitable lodging in the city. You will need to rest.” She reached out one long, perfectly manicured finger to touch my cheek. I flinched automatically, but the expected sharp pain failed to materialize, replaced instead with just the dull sensitivity of a week-old bruise. Her smile widened at my surprise. “You should never refuse Mother’s gifts, brother. That will be gone by tomorrow, and you can renew your investigations.” With her free hand she reached into her small clutch purse and removed a business card, which she handed to me. “Call me when you have determined your next step or if you need me to do something.” Her voice turned serious. “Do not hesitate on this, Fortitude. You’ve done well so far, but a skinwalker is nothing to toy with. They were not exiled simply because of their poor table manners—they are dangerous. Even to us, if we are not on our guard. Especially for you, so vulnerable still in body and mind.”

It was like talking to a body snatcher, and I couldn’t hold it in anymore. “Why are you doing this, Prudence?” I asked suspiciously.

She lifted one carefully tweezed eyebrow and smiled coyly. “Doing what?”

“You know what.” Her finger was still resting against my face, and I pushed her hand away, not hard, but firmly. “We don’t like each other. Your birthday was ruined this year when Luca didn’t kill me like you’d hoped. Now you’re offering to help me out? What’s in this for you?”

The coy smile widened, became as close to genuine as I’d ever seen on her face when my life wasn’t in danger. “You’ve grown up since I last saw you, little brother.” She pressed both hands against my face, holding them there with just enough firmness that I knew I wouldn’t be able to dislodge them. “Things are changing. You are changing.” She leaned in, her perfume swirling around me, and I couldn’t suppress my shudder as she whispered, “I am curious.” Then she let me go and walked over to her car, pausing just as she reached down to open the driver’s-side door. She smiled again. “I’ll be seeing you again soon.”

I hesitated, then asked, “Prudence?”

“Yes, little brother?”

“What was wrong with Mother? Is she . . . sick?”

She gave me a long, considering look, the bright moonlight darkening her hair until she seemed constructed entirely of black and white. When she answered, Prudence’s voice was gentler than I’d ever heard it before. “She’s old, Fortitude. For all her power, all her strength, even for her there is only one path that age will lead to.” She shook one admonishing finger. “Don’t forget to call, or I’ll have to track you down.” Then she got into her car and drove away.