Karhi Emelyn

What the hell had Michael been? Silver blood? And Karhi should have realized something was wrong when he was leaning against the van, and it was groaning from his strength. Michael hadn’t even complained that Karhi was grabbing him too hard. A normal human would have complained with how strong Karhi’s grip was.

Night had fallen while they had worked to get the bodies squared away. Lunette had made calls to deal with Hashem’s body and the bodies that were supposed to be transported to the mortician.

Karhi stood against his car, arms crossed over his chest. One lone light attached to the building shone across him, casting long shadows.

He looked up when Lunette exited the building. She had pulled her hair up into a ponytail to get it out of the way.

“Hey, didn’t you try to fuck that Summer faerie when we were trying to figure out who was killing Hazel’s advisors like a century ago?”

Karhi growled. “Lunette, shut up.” His face was burning. How had he not even sensed that Michael wasn’t human?

“Quit trying to have sex when we’re working on shit, and then I’ll stop bring it up,” she snapped back.

She was right, but he didn’t want to say it out loud. He couldn’t even claim that Lunette wouldn’t understand because she wasn’t even interested in sex. He knew that was a weak excuse. He was a weak excuse.

“This is a role reversal,” Lunette said as she typed something on her phone.

Karhi glanced at her. “It is.”

Karhi was the one who usually made bodies disappear when his siblings messed up and killed someone. Or when their fledglings did. Ilona had made it his responsibility for the first few decades of his life to dispose of bodies when she was done with them. It was a specialty of his.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

He shrugged. He felt stupid and childish, but he didn’t want to talk about it with Lunette. He was mortified that he had gotten carried away with Michael.

“How did he die?” Karhi asked.

It took Lunette a split second to understand the subject change, but she picked it up quickly. “I couldn’t tell from the outside. Maybe something internal like a brain haemorrhage or something. There wasn’t any external damage.”

Karhi nodded. He wanted to focus on something that wasn’t his stupid mistakes. The body in the morgue that didn’t belong there was a good distraction.

“Have you ever seen silver blood?”

He shook his head. “Zeren might know.” He uncrossed his arms. “What did he mean about Sloane?”

Lunette shook her head, tapping on her phone. “If you don’t know, how would I?”

Karhi gave her the finger and she responded in kind, but she did the British V-sign.

She held her phone out. The speaker was on.

It rang twice before Zeren answered. “Hey Luna, what’s up?”

“Zere, I’ve got Karhi with me. We just came across a creature we’ve never encountered,” Lunette said.

“Oh?” Zeren sounded like he had a grin on his face. He lived for obscure monster shit. “Do tell.”

“He killed someone and took on their form.”

“Anthroshifter?”

“Definitely not.”

“Did he eat any part of them to gain their form?”

Lunette and Karhi exchanged unnerved glances. “No, I don’t think so.” Lunette answered. “I took a look at the body before calling someone to remove it.”

“Though he did seem familiar with how to pack a body into a mortician’s van,” Karhi added. “And seemed familiar with how to handle himself around a morgue. We were meeting a mortician’s assistant.”

“So, either he had knowledge of those items or took it from the assistant somehow. Okay. How did you reveal him?”

“I found the assistant’s body. I threw him away from Karhi after using cruciopathy on him, but he shrugged off my cruciopathy. I got the jump on him and made him hurt, but it didn’t last at all. He completely shut it out.”

Karhi nodded in agreement even though Zeren couldn’t see it. Lunette’s power, cruciopathy, was the ability to cause pain with a thought. Lunette claimed it was more complicated than that, but it was what it boiled down to. It wasn’t common for her to encounter someone who could block it out.

“Interesting,” Zeren murmured. They could hear him scribbling down notes.

“Yeah, and I must have cut him because he bled silver.”

“Silver?” Zeren was having a hard time containing his enthusiasm.

“And his eyes were glowing. And he had these . . . burns? On his face?” Lunette glanced at Karhi.

Karhi shrugged. “It was like hard, black rock or something on his face. It almost looked like wounds, but I’ve never seen it before.”

They heard more of Zeren scribbling on paper. “Fascinating . . .”

“He also teleported.”

“Teleported?” Zeren asked incredulously. “He didn’t just Jump?”

Jumping referred to moving from one dimension to another. Like cutting open a portal from this world into the Fey world or a bestia world. “I have no idea what the difference is,” Karhi admitted.

“Did he seem to cut a portal really fast, like Carrick does, or did he just disappear?”

“The second,” Lunette answered.

“Wow . . .”

“Do you know what it is?”

“Not a fucking clue.”

Lunette glared at the phone. “Zeren.”

“Come on, Lunette. If you and Karhi haven’t encountered it—you have 100-plus years on me. Silver blood rings some bells, but I think I’ve only heard about it in the context of Enforcers, and I don’t know anything about them.”

“Enforcers . . .” Karhi trailed off. “I’ve heard that before.” Something in passing, maybe from Hazel.

“They don’t pop up in our world often. I don’t think any creature less than a millennium old would have ever encountered them. They have more to do with the Fey and the bestia and stuff. But there isn’t a lot in literature about them.”

“Why would they be interested in Sl—”

Karhi cut Lunette off before she could continue. “Zeren, could you do some digging?”

“Oh, for sure. But I don’t really have my library easily available. I’ll do what I can, but honestly, I don’t think I can look into it until after Samhain. I’m sorry, guys. Is it urgent? I could try to have someone grab some books for me and overnight them.”

Lunette sent a questioning glance at Karhi.

“He didn’t really seem interested in us . . .” Karhi said after a moment of deliberating.

“No, just Slo—”

“That’s fine, Zeren,” Karhi interrupted. “Thank you.” He tapped Lunette’s phone to end the call.

Lunette gave him a murderous look. “Why did you keep cutting me off?”

“I don’t want Zeren to know that he was interested in Sloane.”

“Why? He wouldn’t care.”

“No, but when Ilona finds out that there was some powerful creature looking for Sloane, do you think she’ll be kind to those that knew?”

Lunette didn’t have an answer for that. They both knew the answer. If they kept it quiet from Zeren, he wouldn’t be a direct recipient of Ilona’s wrath.

“Exactly,” Karhi said. “Did you find anything else of interest in there, outside of Michael?”

Lunette’s eyes went wide. She had remembered something. “Fuck, right. I forgot about it when I smelled something decomposing.”

Even if a body was only a few hours dead, they could smell decomposition. A body started to breakdown the minute it died. “What was it?”

“The cause of death for Rhegium Phillips. It appeared to be blood loss, but there was a bit of blood left in the body and they tested it for toxicology and found a neurotoxin.”

Karhi blinked. There was only one that Lunette would be interested in. “Hemlock?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, it was on there. Karhi, if he’s involved—”

Karhi barely had time to react before the scent of wet dog hit his nose. He turned to look but paws the size of his own hands knocked him to the ground.

His head cracked against concrete, fireworks exploding inside of his skull. He snarled in pain, his teeth growing into fangs. His senses sharpened. The smell of gas and wet dog weighed heavily in his nose and the pain in his head flared angrily.

A brown werewolf pinned him to the ground. Teeth snapped at his face, but he rammed the heel of his palm into its jaw. The blow stunned the wolf, and Karhi reached down, sliding his hand between the wolf’s back leg and his own body. He jerked his knee up and grabbed the wolf’s haunch, heaving the leg up and throwing the wolf off.

Karhi rolled to his feet and came face-to-face with Lunette.

Lunette glared at the wolf, and it howled out in pain where it lay stunned on the ground. Almost immediately, bright green fire erupted from the wolf. Karhi and Lunette jumped back, and the wolf stopped crying.

The wolf got to its feet and stood up. Its brown eyes crackled with bright green light, and it snarled at them.

“What the fuck?” Lunette whispered.

There was no heat coming off of the wolf and Karhi just barely had time to shove Lunette out of the way as it lunged at her.

The wolf yelped in pain as Lunette threw her cruciopathy at it, but it continued on. This time her powers didn’t knock it down. It was expecting them.

Most creatures were flammable to an extent. But human vampires were like dry brush compared to most other creatures. A good fire would tear them apart and, if they survived, leave them scarred for centuries, if not the rest of their lives. It was one of the few things they couldn’t heal from easily.

But this fire wasn’t even regular fire. It didn’t burn, and it didn’t light anything near it.

Karhi had only ever heard of one fire like that.

“Lunette, it’s soulsilver,” Karhi shouted.

“Oh fuck,” she cursed, dodging the wolf’s attack.

Their best plan of attack was to run. They couldn’t overcome soulsilver.

That was, until Lunette pulled out a gun and fired off a shot at the wolf. The sound rang through Karhi’s head. It wasn’t just a regular gun. She had moon silver rounds.

The wolf screamed in pain, and Karhi smelled blood. Shifter blood smelled like human blood, except much stronger. It was nauseating.

The wolf lay on the ground, unmoving. But Karhi could hear that its heart was beating strong. Lunette had grazed him, stunning him.

For the first time, Karhi realized that he recognized the wolf.

It was one of Sloane’s werewolves.

“Fuck,” Karhi swore, lunging for Lunette before she could fire off another shot. He knocked the gun out of her hands. It clattered on the asphalt.

“Karhi, what the fuck?” she shouted at him.

Karhi grabbed Lunette, dodging the wolf as it regained its faculties. “That’s one of Sloane’s friends,” he hissed.

“Friend or not, the fucker is trying to kill us,” Lunette shouted, shoving him away and darting for the gun.

“Wait!”

The shout didn’t come from Karhi, but he ignored it anyway, bolting for Lunette. If they killed one of Sloane’s friends, Karhi didn’t know if Sloane would survive it.

Lunette kicked Karhi before he could take the gun from her. “Are you really going to let this wolf kill us for your fucking girlfriend?” she shrieked at him, turning back to where the wolf was stalking towards them. The green fire licked at his coat, creating a shimmering effect as he stepped forward.

A blur of red fur and green flames knocked the wolf down. Snarls of pain and anger rang through the night and Karhi and Lunette exchanged wide-eyed glances.

Another wolf, Sloane’s other friend, was tearing into the first wolf. They were both engulfed in green flames. The scent of blood had already been pervasive, but it was all Karhi could smell now. He put his hand to his nose, trying to block out the smell.

“We should go,” Karhi murmured to her. “Let them deal with this.”

“No, I’m going to fucking kill that asshole,” Lunette growled, bringing up her gun and aiming it at the two of them.

Karhi smacked it away from her before she could shoot. “Stop that.”

Lunette punched him in the jaw, pain exploding through his face.

Karhi elbowed her in the nose in response and snarled. “You fucker.”

“Fuck you, Lunette.”

“Bell, stop.”

Karhi and Lunette’s attention snapped back to the werewolves to see they had both transformed back into their human forms. They were completely naked, wrestling on the ground.

“She’s a fucking vampire, Mickey!” Bell shouted at him. “It’s his fucking fault!”

“No, it’s our fucking fault,” he roared back.

That took all the fight out of Bell. He went limp where Mickey had him in a headlock.

Mickey continued, keeping Bell in the headlock, shouting at him. “You’re lucky they didn’t fucking kill you. Those two are fucking old. You think, because we have soulsilver now, we can just do whatever the fuck we want?”

Karhi and Lunette exchanged surprised glances.

“You’re a stupid fucking idiot. We’re the ones who disappeared. It’s not his fault that Sloane wanted to die.”

Karhi blinked. He . . . had never really thought about it that way.

The more he found out about her, the more Karhi had found himself wondering why Sloane ever went home with a vampire. She had known what he was the night he met her. She had known what he could do.

And yet she flirted with him and drank with him and . . . done other things with him that night. And it had started to make less and less sense. But now it did.

Sloane had wanted to die.

Karhi’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out and checked it to see Sloane’s name.

He stepped away from the wrestling werewolves to answer it, motioning for Lunette to follow him.

“Sloane?”

“Karhi—is Lunette there?”

He tilted his head to the side. Interesting. “Yeah, hold on.” He put the phone on speaker. “Okay you’re on speaker.”

“I just remembered—a few years ago, there was a vampire nest in the warehouse district. Shifters hired Zero and Theron to get rid of them. And I just realized that one of the buildings the vampire nest took over was the same building Mikko was held in.”

That was interesting.

Lunette looked at the phone quizzically. “You think that’s related?” she asked.

“No—well, I don’t know. But I know that apparently the shifter courts owned that building? Or at least some of the surrounding buildings? And the vampire courts owned other buildings? Could that be related?”

How had she come to know that?

Lunette didn’t ask, though. She responded pensively. “Hmm . . . it could be. That would explain why I can’t track the owners. But if I start with knowing who could potentially own it, I may be able to trace it from there. Alright, that’s useful, Sloane.”

“Where are you?” Karhi asked.

“Lazarus. I needed something to drink. I’ll—”

They heard a heavy slamming sound through the phone, and then Sloane shrieked in pain.

His grip on his phone tightened. “Sloane? Sloane. What’s—” A high pitched ringing pierced his ears and he winced. The call disconnected.

Lunette looked up at Karhi, eyes wide. “What the fuck?”

Karhi was already running for Lazarus.

Sloane Briallen

“That went well for the two of you,” Mira said as I closed her front door behind me. She emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her shorts.

“Fuck you,” Annie growled without much heat. The running had been hard on her. I tried to make it as smooth as possible, but bodies weren’t designed to be smooth rides like cars.

“What happened?” Mikko asked as I went into the living room where he had been laying on the pull-out couch. He was freshly bandaged and sitting up.

I set Annie down next to him and stepped out of Mira’s way as she moved to the first aid kit next to the couch. I made myself busy grabbing pillows from where Mira kept them below the stairs. I stacked them behind Annie to give her some support. The pull-out was big enough for two people.

“Rumor got out about Sloane,” Annie muttered, adjusting herself against the pillows. “Riley and Shayna pushed me over the railing outside their apartments. Then Aisha came out to finish me off.” Mira braced her arm with a splint, and Annie groaned.

The nice thing about shifters was that when they had broken bones, as long as you put their bones in a relatively straight line, they healed without any medical intervention. Annie would heal within a day or so with just a splint.

“I didn’t realize Aisha lived in those apartments,” Mira said, wrapping the splint loosely to keep it set.

“I think her boyfriend or something lives there. I don’t know, man. All I know is I’m gonna fucking wreck those bitches when I see them again.”

“I’ll help you,” I growled.

“No, you won’t,” Mira replied. “If you get involved, and one of them gets hurt, you could wind up on every shifter’s Most Wanted list, and you cannot survive that many people hating you.”

“I survived it as a human.”

“You survived it when other humans hated you. You need to at least have your year mark behind you to stand a chance.” She looked at Annie. “And you ain’t going after them either. You could get killed.”

“You got a whole ass army of vampires in that contract you got with the Queen, and you ain’t gonna use it?” Annie shot back at her.

Mira’s stunned look told us she had forgotten about that.

“You didn’t even remember,” I said.

Mira sneered at me. “Look, I ain’t used to having no fucking army behind me, alright? I know you got training with a fucking war general as a teenager, but we don’t all got that backing, ‘kay?”

I chose not to point out that I didn’t have that backing anymore since I broke up with that war general’s boss; it didn’t really matter. That wasn’t the point. “You should talk to Aoife about if there’s anything they can do,” I said. “The whole family is under Hazel’s protection, right?”

“Yeah, I made sure. But Aoife’s actually been on assignment. I was working directly with Hazel on the contract.” She got up from where she had been crouched next to Annie, moving back to the first-aid kit.

“Even better—direct line to boss lady,” I said. “We—”

I didn’t get to finish that sentence because it was interrupted by a loud snore.

Mikko was passed back out, curled up next to Annie. He was holding her hand, but he was dead asleep.

“Wish I could fall asleep like that,” Annie grumbled, awkwardly crossing her broken arm over her chest.

“You will soon enough,” I said. Shifters slept a lot when they were healing big flesh injuries or broken bones.

“How did you know I was in trouble?” Annie asked.

“This kid, Michael, said you sent him to tell me.” My brow knitted together. “Which . . . in retrospect . . .”

Annie’s face scrunched in confusion. “I was so fucked up, I couldn’t send anyone to you. Much less some rando kid.”

I had also come to that conclusion.

“Must have seen when I fell off the second floor, then.” She was already beginning to nod off.

“I guess . . .”

I looked at Mira, who was shaking her head while digging through the kit. “What a shitty time for Amos to go out of town,” she muttered.

I paused, the gears in my head turning.

Genie and Frankie’s parents are murdered, shortly followed by Mikko going missing and Annie’s attack. And then Amos Black, a very famous PI, the man I had spent a good portion of my childhood following around . . . he had been called away right when my family might need him. A strange, unexpected child helped me find Annie twice.

Mira peered up at me. “You think . . . this might be about you?”

I threw my hands up. “I don’t know. It seems really fucking weird, doesn’t it? All these coincidences all at once? Leading to me needing to come back to town?”

“Who would have that kind of power?”

Well . . . one person came to mind.

“No,” Mira said, hearing my thoughts. “She was upset when you broke up, but she never showed up at our house again after you left. She wouldn’t do this.”

I gave her a look. “Stay in your own head.”

“Arachne wouldn’t do this, Sloane,” she said, this time much sterner. “She was resentful, sure. But she wouldn’t be capable of this kind of cruelty.”

I shrugged again. “Mira, I don’t know. You asked who I knew. That’s who I know.”

She sighed through her nose, pulling out another roll of bandages.

Silence fell between us, and I fidgeted. I was okay with silence generally, but this one was heavy. So much had happened in the past forty-eight hours, and it was weighing on us.

I glanced at the VCR under the TV to see that it said it was almost four-thirty. “Mira?”

“Yeah?”

“What time does Lina get home from school?”

She cursed, seeing the clock, too. “I’m supposed to pick her up from after care in fifteen minutes.”

“I can do it,” I said, stepping towards the kitchen. “Where is she going?”

“Silo Roberts.”

I paused for a moment before shaking my head. Of course she was.

“Hey, it’s not like I chose it for her,” Mira snapped at me. “We’re zoned into that school.”

I knew that. I had lived with my mom maybe a mile away from here growing up. Everyone here went to Silo Roberts. It was the biggest public elementary in the area.

“I’ll see you later,” I said, grabbing her keys from the hook in the kitchen.

I got out of Mira’s truck to lean against it, leaving the doors unlocked. Mira had called ahead to let the school know that Lina would have someone new picking her up. She had told me they would bring her out to me.

The school had barely changed since I was a kid. A big tan block with a butterfly garden near the back entrance. Blue double doors led into the school and a wide awning spanned the walkway from the back doors to the pick-up zone. A chain link fence surrounded the property, including the parking lot. It honestly looked more like a fortress than a school, it was just missing the barbed wire at the top of the fence.

Gazing at the school brought back memories, but they weren’t the memories I would have expected. I had met Mickey and Bell here. I had been attending this school when my mother died. This was the only school I attended full time until I was sixteen in Washington and made an actual attempt at high school.

But what I thought about was Mira and Lina.

Mira had had Lina when she was seventeen. We’d taken care of anything they needed that they couldn’t get with disability. If they didn’t have enough money or anything, Frankie and Genie would steal what they needed to live. And the electric and phone companies had always been a sucker for Mikko. He’d become great at the art of begging them not to shut off service. We’d had a hard time, but we’d survived.

“Briallen!” barked a booming male voice.

I looked up to see a man in a black uniform moving toward me. He was beefy and tall with graying brown hair and a full, bushy moustache and beard. At his ample waist was a belt with a gun and Taser along with a nightstick and a walkie-talkie.

“Officer Morgan,” I said, nodding to him. “Long time no see.”

“Haven’t seen you in a long time. Mira said you got adopted?” He stopped in front of me, and we shook hands.

“Yup. Moved to Washington. Finished high school there. Moved to Minnesota. Came down to visit Mira and people.”

Officer Morgan had been one of the cops who used to be on our beat. He and his partner had been two of the nicer cops to the runaways. He had never used unnecessary force with us, which was why we had been warm towards him. Plus, he would buy us food sometimes when he had some free time.

“How’re they?” he asked. “I see Annie and Mira a lot when they come to pick Lina up.”

“They’re alright,” I replied. Too complicated to discuss. “So, you’re the cop around here now?”

He smiled bitterly. “School resource officer.”

“What happened to that big fancy badge of yours?” I asked. I noticed the one on his belt was a lot smaller.

His bitter smile turned into a dark grimace. “I pissed off too many people in my precinct. Tried to report the cop that shot Mira’s mom and a few other people in that drug raid and got shut down and got demoted.”

I sighed. “Cops protect cops.”

“They do,” he growled. “Except when you try to do the right thing.”

I nodded. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t have particularly warm feelings towards the police, but I didn’t think this was the best company to say ACAB in.

“But this is definitely easier,” he said, the dark look on his face disappearing. “Working with kids is nice. And there’s no bullshit politics. It’s nice to see little Lina all the time.”

“I believe it.”

He looked me over. “You’ve grown up so much.”

“It happens.”

He smirked.

“Morgan!” came a shout. We looked over to see his partner waving him down. A lanky kid my age. I didn’t recognize him.

“I gotta go,” he said. “It was good seeing you.” We bumped fists.

“Nice seein’ you. Tell Lee and Pearson I say howdy.”

He grinned. “Will do.” I watched him walk up to the baby cop. He waved again before disappearing into the building, the blue door closing behind him.

Moments later, the blue doors opened again, and a woman came out with Lina following behind her. It struck me, looking at Lina, that she seemed a little droopy. She looked sad in her blue plaid uniform skirt, the same one I used to wear. Her shoulders were hunched, and she was looking at her scuffed Mary Janes as she walked out.

When Lina saw me, she bolted towards me, shouting my name. She slammed into me, hugging my stomach.

I put my hand on her head. Her hair was soft, like crushed velvet.

“You’re picking me up?” she asked, looking up at me with bright, excited eyes.

“Yeah. Your mom sent me to come get you.”

“They stopped being mad at you, but I haven’t gotten to see you!” She scowled up at me, which was heartbreakingly endearing, to be honest. “That’s lame.”

“Agreed,” I said, crouching down. “Let’s go get ice cream.”

Her face lit up. “Yay!” She jumped on my back, and I straightened up.

“Excuse me, miss.”

I turned around to a very familiar face.

She looked like a frog with a blonde wig and pink suit. She had been the teacher taking Lina out, but I hadn’t noticed her past Lina.

“You’re picking up Evelina?” the woman asked. Her voice was high. I could see from the way she squinted at me that she was trying to figure out why she recognized me.

“Yo! VP Redding!” I grinned. “Long time, no referral!”

Her eyes went wide. “Sloane? Sloane Briallen?” Her froggy face went through a range of emotions—fascination, surprise, and, finally, horror.

“The one and only. I’m all grown up!”

She gaped at me. “Oh. My. God. I don’t believe it.” She looked like her worst nightmare had been realized.

I glanced back at Lina. “Better believe it. My best friend’s kid goes here. I came down to visit, so I’m picking her up.”

She eyed me warily. “You’re not here to wreak havoc with your friends?” She looked around, searching for Mickey and Bell.

My mood darkened. “No.” Lina squirmed against me. She could feel my anger. “Good to see you, VP Redding. C’mon, Lina. We’re going.”

“Wait,” Redding said.

I glanced back at her.

“I wanted to tell you that there was . . . an incident today.”

I raised an eyebrow. “An incident?”

“Lina and one of her friends got into a fight over crayons.”

I glanced at Lina over my shoulder. “Oh?” I felt Lina tense against me.

“I broke it apart, but they were shouting at each other. Lina wouldn’t let her borrow a crayon. I think a discussion about sharing should take place.”

My knowledge of Lina was limited, but my knowledge of Vice Principal Redding was vast. “Noted,” I said coldly, turning from her. “Thanks for your concern. Let’s go, Lina.”

We stopped at a Häagen-Dazs close to the school. Lina got vanilla, and I got a triple scoop of chocolate fudge ice cream. It’d been so long since I’d had chocolate or ice cream that I’d almost forgotten what it tasted like. And I’d completely forgotten how much I loved it.

We sat at a white wire table outside, with a cup of water, some napkins, and a cup for me to set my ice cream into. The table was under an awning to keep out the sun. I watched Lina in the reflection of the windows of the ice cream shop. I waited until she seemed content with her ice cream before I asked, “You feel better?”

She looked up, vanilla ice cream in a ring around her mouth. “You knew I was sad?”

“You seemed droopy.” I took a napkin and dipped it into the water to wipe the vanilla off from around her mouth.

She looked down, nodding quietly.

“What was VP Redding talking about?” I asked.

She looked back up at me. “Why do you call her VP?”

“Is she not the vice principal?” I asked. “She was when I was young.”

She shook her head. “She’s a teacher, now.”

“Oooh, demoted.”

Lina shrugged. “She was watching our class for my teacher today. We were just coloring.”

I nodded, waiting for her to continue.

“And then Laura Milne grabbed my crayons because she broke all hers. And I told her she could take one or two, but she couldn’t have the whole box!” She clenched her fists. “And she punched me! And Miss Redding came and told me I was being a bad sharer and didn’t even say anything to Laura about punching me. And when I told her, she said she didn’t see it!” Her eyes were misty.

I sighed, setting my ice cream down into the bowl. “I’m sorry, hon. She used to do the same thing to me.” The helpless anger that bubbled in my chest reminded me of what I used to feel when I was a kid. I couldn’t do anything for Lina about this, just like I couldn’t as a kid.

She blinked back tears. “She did?”

“Yeah. And could you hear in her head?”

“Yeah, she just didn’t care about me or what really happened. She was just annoyed and wanted the shouting to go away.” Tears leaked down her face. “A-and Laura is not my friend. She makes fun of me and is mean to anyone who tries to be nice to me. She treats me bad, and I don’t know why!”

I patted my lap. “Come here.”

She climbed into my lap, and I hugged her, careful to avoid her ice cream.

It had to be hell. The kids didn’t understand her, and she hardly understood herself. And she could hardly explain it all by saying, “Hi, I’m Lina. I’m a psychic. So is my mom. It’s why you think I’m weird.” Even if it was the truth, I didn’t think that’d go over well.

I murmured into her strawberry-scented hair. “I got in trouble a lot at school. Which isn’t the same, but still.”

She wiped her eyes, sniffling.

I pushed her hair away from her face and turned her on my knee to face me. “Miss Redding sucks. Let me tell you about what happened to me when I was your age.”

Her eyes rounded, and she smiled. “Yes, yes!”

I grinned.

I had been in aftercare, like Lina was. There weren’t a lot of kids in aftercare that day, so the teachers let us go out to the playground.

I was on the swings. My mom had taught me how to swing by myself without anyone pushing me, and they were my favorite.

I pushed my legs up as I arced down in my parabolic path. When I hit the top of my arc, I put them down and swung back. Up and forward. Down and back. Up and forward. Down and back. Up and flying. Down and on the ground.

I tasted copper in my mouth and my chin and cheeks stung. I had landed on my stomach and my teeth felt like if I opened my mouth, they’d fall out.

I heard laughter. Mean laughter.

Even as a little kid, I wouldn’t let pain get the better of me. I did my best to hide the tears and pushed myself up. I knew that I couldn’t show the pain to whomever was laughing. That would make it worse.

A boy stood next to the swing I’d been on, holding one of the chains that connected to the seat. He was an ugly boy, older than me, maybe ten. He had frizzy brown hair and too many freckles on a bulbous nose. His name was Bradley.

“Hey!” I shouted. “What did you do that for?” I had felt the jerk backward just before the swing threw me free. He’d grabbed one side of the swing and yanked it back.

“I wanted this swing,” he said, smiling at me. It wasn’t a nice smile.

I looked at the four other empty swings hanging from the bar. “There are other swings! And they’re all empty!” I put my hand to my lip. It was swollen and split. I pulled away and saw blood, bright red and fresh.

“This one’s the best,” he shrugged. He jumped on the swing and the support bar groaned from his weight as he started to rock back and forth.

My lip throbbed painfully, and my fists clenched. “If you’d asked, I’d’ve shared!” I winced as I yelled. My lip hurt.

He ignored me, continuing to swing. He tried to kick out at me, but I dodged him.

Laughter caught my attention, and I looked up.

Two boys were playing tag. Mickey and Bell. They were in the same grade as me but in a different class. I didn’t know which was which, though, because they looked a lot alike. They were cousins.

Before I could do anything, they ran in front of me, the one behind reaching the boy in front and tagging him. “You’re it!” the boy behind shouted.

They didn’t see it coming, but I did. I tried to warn them. “Hey-y—”

Bradley kicked them in the sides on the upward swing. They both hit the ground hard. I heard the hollow thunk of their skulls hitting each other.

The kick slowed Bradley in his swinging, and he stopped himself, digging his size-eight man feet into the sand. He leered over the boys as they groaned in pain. Even as a little kid, I knew that nobody should have a smile that nasty.

There was a split second of silence.

Then one of the boys, the one that had tagged the other, started crying. It was a loud wail. It wasn’t the type of cry of a kid faking pain. No, it was genuine, I-think-something-is-broken-pain.

“Why did you do that?” the other boy shouted at Bradley.

I don’t remember the in-between. I just remember one minute I was standing, watching, and then the next, I was on top of Bradley.

I bit his arm. He screamed out in agony, and I punched him in the mouth. Later I found I wasn’t as strong as I thought, and I only left a few bruises and a bite mark. I was long and lanky, not very substantial in the weight or strength department.

“What’s wrong with you?” I shouted, pounding on his arms. “We didn’t hurt you!”

A hand grabbed my arm and pulled back. I peeled away easily and fell backwards on my butt. Like I said, I was long and lanky.

I looked up and I was ready to yell at whoever pulled me off, but it was the boy that wasn’t crying.

“Stop,” he said, eyes wide. “You’ll get in trouble.”

I looked at where Bradley rolled in the sand, moaning in exaggerated agony. “He hurt us!” My bottom lip felt raw as I spoke. I touched it and winced, but it wasn’t bleeding anymore.

He reached up and touched his head and winced. “I know.” He looked at his cousin.

His cousin wasn’t wailing anymore, but there were still tears on his face, and his eyes were red and puffy from crying. His knee was bleeding from a rock in the sand.

I paused a moment, torn. Half of me wanted to beat on Bradley; the other half wanted to see how his cousin was.

He was right. I didn’t want to get into trouble.

I got up and knelt in front of the boy, and he looked up at me, sniffling. He was dirty from playing. His hazel eyes were puffy and red, his dirty cheeks clean where streaks of tears had run down. His auburn hair was a rat’s nest of leaves and playground mulch.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

He looked at his knee for a second, and then he looked back up at me, nodding.

“You’re okay, Mickey,” the other boy said.

The injured boy was Mickey. Which meant the other boy was Bell.

“Yeah,” Mickey said. “I’m okay.” He focused on my lip. “Are you?”

I touched it again and immediately regretted it. “I’m okay.” I looked at Bell. “You?”

“Mickey’s hard head gave me a bump.”

“My head isn’t hard!” Mickey shouted at Bell.

“Hey! What’s going on here?”

A plump lady with red curls ran out on to the playground to where Bradley was groaning on the ground. That, I would soon learn, was Vice Principal Redding. She and I would become good friends. I was a troublemaker, and she was a troublestopper. Cupid couldn’t have done a better job if he tried.

“Oh, my God!” she exclaimed when she saw Bradley on the ground. She rushed to him. “What did you do?” she shouted, kneeling next to him and looking at Mickey, Bell, and me.

“He started it!” I shouted, standing up. “He—”

“I don’t want to hear it, young lady,” she said, standing up as other teachers came running to Bradley’s assistance. “I knew you were a troublemaker, Sloane! All three of you, in my office.” She started to walk away.

“They didn’t do anything!” I shouted.

I felt a hand on my leg. I looked over to see Mickey.

“It’s okay,” he said. “We’ll go.” He pushed himself up onto his feet.

“But—”

“It’s fine,” Bell said, pushing me between my shoulder blades to get me to move forward.

I still felt strange, but Mickey grabbed my arm and pulled me forward. He glanced back at me, smiling. It lit up his whole face. “Let’s go!”

When I saw that smile, all the uncertainty I felt melted away, and I smiled back. I ran after him, Bell on my heels. “Okay!”

“So, she was always mean,” Lina grumbled as I helped her out of her booster seat.

“Yup,” I said, closing the car door behind her.

She grabbed my hand and swung it. “What a jerk!”

“You said it, kid.” I opened the door to Mira’s house for her. I caught a whiff of wet dog and said, “Well, I’ll be back later, kiddo. Love you.” I kissed the top of her head and placed Mira’s car key in her hand.

“Wait, what?” she asked.

“Sloane—” I heard Bell say from inside, but I was already on my way out.

Karhi Emelyn

“I feel like we haven’t figured out anything,” Karhi said as he set the car into park outside of the Maricopa County Medical Examiner’s office. “We don’t know who owns that house or why that shifter was where they held Mikko.”

“Well . . . we know your kidnapping and Mikko’s are likely connected from that. But you’re correct—we don’t know much else.” Lunette got out of the car.

Karhi followed her. “But who would want to hurt both me and Sloane?” His car chirped back at him when he locked it.

Lunette gave him a look telling him he knew that answer.

“This is too haphazard for Ilona. Kidnapping a friend of Sloane’s and torturing him but then just putting me in a random safehouse? Those two things don’t line up properly.”

“You don’t know that they didn’t plan on torturing you. You just killed your captor before they got the chance.” She pulled out her cell phone to type on it.

That still didn’t feel right. If Ilona wanted to punish both him and Sloane, she would have just taken them at the same time to be tortured together.

They stopped outside of the building housing the medical examiner’s office. It took up the entire block, just a monolith of white reflecting the late afternoon sun onto them. Karhi had on sunglasses to block the glare.

They stood at the back of the building, next to a door that said Employee Entry Only.

Lunette put her phone back in her pocket. “He’ll be here any second.”

“So, who is this—”

The door opened, revealing a man in a lab coat and light blue scrubs. Karhi found his mind blanking for a moment, only the word Persian flashing in his brain.

His hair was dark, pulled back in a ponytail to reveal a stunning jawline and wicked high cheekbones. His amber skin was radiant and Karhi found himself wanting to touch it. It looked so smooth, especially where it stretched over his large, strong hands.

His eyes were so light, they were almost silver. He had a band-aid over one cheek and another on his forehead.

Why the hell was the morgue attendant this fucking gorgeous?

“Are you Hashem?” Lunette asked. She wasn’t even fazed. Though she had always criticized Karhi for being so much hornier than she was.

“I am,” he said, smiling. He had the deepest dimples. “But I go by Michael. You must be Lunette.” He glanced at Karhi. “And you are . . . ?”

“My brother, Karhi. Can you take us to the body?”

“Of course. I am currently processing the paperwork to bring her body, and another body, to the funeral home. All of the county personnel have gone home for the day, so you shouldn’t be bothered.”

They followed Michael through the door and into a maze of hallways. He led them with the effortless ease of someone who had done this many times. As they moved, Karhi had the opportunity to appreciate Michael’s backside from over the top of Lunette’s head.

They stopped at another door, and Michael opened it to a set of stairs. “Down the stairs, and it’s the first door on the right.” He caught Karhi’s eye and smirked at him. Karhi knew, without a doubt, that Michael knew he had been staring.

Karhi returned the smile and went through door after Lunette. As he did, Michael brushed Karhi’s hip with his fingers. Karhi barely held back a shiver.

The room they entered was quiet and sterile with a tiled floor and steel walls filled with roll-out body storage units. The faint hum of a condenser filled the room, scents of bleach and ammonia hanging in the air. And there was this musty scent, almost like ammonia but not quite. It was familiar, but Karhi couldn’t place it.

A steel examining table stood in the centre of the room with a single sheet covering the profile of a human body.

“You’re Emelyns?” Michael asked as he shut the door behind them.

Karhi and Lunette looked up sharply before glancing at each other. From Lunette’s expression, he could tell that she, like Karhi, hadn’t thought Michael knew who they were.

“Emmo mentioned it,” Michael said.

That seemed to mean something to Lunette, but it didn’t mean anything to Karhi. He had to assume that was Lunette’s contact here. “Yes,” Lunette said.

He nodded. “Cool. I don’t really see vampires in my line of work much. You know, the whole not-dying thing.”

He left it unspoken that vampire bodies dried up and shrivelled away within hours of dying. Eventually they blew away to dust.

“This is Rhegium Phillips,” Michael said, walking to the examining table and pulling back the sheet over the body. He let it fall across her chest.

Karhi didn’t feel even a spark of memory at seeing her face.

She had been beautiful, a brunette woman in her early thirties. She looked like she would have been at home at Lazarus. Dancing and singing and flirting with people that she came across.

She didn’t belong here.

He wished that he could remember her because this wasn’t the memory he wanted with her. She was pale, the colour of periwinkle flowers, and her throat was a bloodless mess of flesh. It was jagged and stuck out at oblique angles, revealing flesh and bone deep inside.

There was no way he could have done this. He had never fed so savagely.

But . . . how did he know? He couldn’t remember.

“Is this the only wound?” Lunette asked.

Michael had picked up a sheet protector hanging from the table. He pulled out pages from it and flipped through them. “She also had similar wounds on her inner thighs.”

Lunette lifted the sheet to take a look. Shame welled like tar in Karhi’s stomach, heavy and thick. He would feed from thighs as part of foreplay.

“Her stomach is heavily bruised,” Lunette remarked as she examined the body. Karhi couldn’t look.

Michael looked up from the papers, grimacing. “It looks like whomever killed her . . . er . . . ripped out her reproductive organs prior to her death.”

Karhi stared at Michael. “What?” he whispered.

“It was a savage murder,” Michael said, glancing at the corpse. “Poor woman. I have to imagine whoever did that really hated women.”

Karhi glanced at Lunette. The tar disappeared, replaced with the slightest hint of relief. This wasn’t something he was capable of. Even when Ilona had forced him to kill people that she disliked over the years, he had always done it as quickly, and as painlessly, as possible. He had spent a long enough portion of his life being tortured by Ilona. He would never inflict that on someone else.

Lunette met his eyes, nodding. She had come to the same conclusion.

Michael cursed, looking at the paperwork. It sounded like Arabic. “Coroner forgot to sign off, I can’t take this body. Just the one then.” He glanced up past them. Karhi heard the ticking of a clock over the door they had come through.

Michael looked back to them. “Do, uh, do both of you need to examine the body?”

Lunette eyed him. “Why?”

“Since I have you, I was wondering if, as payment for helping you out, one of you could help load up my van with the body I can take?” He grinned sheepishly. “It’s not every day that you have a pair of vampires around. You’re stronger than I am.”

Lunette rolled her eyes, looking back at the body. “Karhi, help him out.”

He would gladly do that. He hadn’t killed the woman on the table, but he felt too close to her to be comfortable with looking her over. He doubted he could do it as clinically as Lunette could. He couldn’t be objective enough.

Michael grinned, this time a sharper glint to it. “Excellent. If you’ll follow me.”

He followed Michael out of the room and down the hallway.

They entered another room identical to the one they had just left. There were more autopsy tables in here. Michael grabbed this table and rolled it to one of the cabinets and opened it.

He checked something inside of the cabinet before rolling it out. The body inside was wrapped in plastic tarp. Karhi couldn’t even tell the size of the body beneath the tarp. It was maybe six feet long, but a lot of that could have been the plastic.

“This one?” Karhi asked.

Michael nodded.

Karhi lifted up the body and placed it on the table.

Michael sighed in relief. “Thank you so much. That would have taken me so much longer.” He rolled the body towards the door that he hadn’t bothered closing.

“Don’t you do this for a living?” Karhi asked, following him.

“Yes. But it doesn’t get any easier to move bodies around. I’m better at it than the average person, but I don’t have the strength to just casually pick up that much dead weight and set it down. There’s a process.”

Karhi shrugged. He had lived with his strength for so long, that he did sometimes have a hard time remembering that humans really couldn’t easily lift things that seemed so trivial to him. A hundred or two hundred pounds of dead weight was nothing.

Michael led him into another hallway that opened into an enormous loading dock. The ceiling was cavernous above them, reaching maybe two or three stories up. Michael led them to where a white van was backed into one of the bays.

Michael wheeled the table down the ramp to the back of the van, and together, they got the cadaver into place. When they were done, Michael reached for a dispenser by the doors of the van. The harsh scent of alcohol burned Karhi’s nose as he pumped the button. Hand sanitizer.

He hopped out and shut the door. “Think she’s done yet?”

Karhi checked his phone. “No.” Luna would have texted him.

Michael moved the table so the long side was against the back of the van and hopped onto it. “I guess we wait.” He leaned back against the van.

Karhi tilted his head. “Wait?”

“You seemed unhappy about what was in there. We can hang out here until she’s ready.”

Karhi paused for a moment before nodding. “Alright.”

Michael patted the table next to him for Karhi to sit.

Karhi got on next to Michael, leaning against the truck and letting his legs hang over the edge of the table.

There was something oddly soothing about sitting in the loading dock of the back of a morgue. It was quiet, the AC compressor a low drone, the water moving through the pipes with a light rippling sound.

“The dead are quiet,” Michael murmured.

Karhi glanced at him, raising an eyebrow.

“Your shoulders untensed for the first time since you walked into the building,” he said. He smiled a lazy, disarming smile. “This is one of my favourite places to just be at peace. The dead are quiet.”

Karhi nodded, looking back ahead, up the ramp.

“How familiar are you with vampires?” Karhi asked.

Michael shrugged. “I sorta grew up in the Underground. So, pretty familiar.”

It made sense why Michael had just taken them in stride. Though, usually anyone who was familiar with the Emelyns gave them a wide berth. Ilona was infamous.

“I was afraid I had killed that woman,” Karhi admitted, watching Michael to see how he responded.

Michael glanced at him. “And you didn’t.” It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t even sceptical. It was just a statement.

“I did not.”

Michael nodded. He didn’t seem even a little unsettled to be sitting next to someone who thought they had killed a human. It was unusual.

“A dedicated duck could kill a human if it wanted to.”

Karhi blinked. “What?”

“Vampires always seem weirded out when the idea that they could kill me doesn’t frighten me. Another human could kill me. A dedicated duck could kill me. It’s really not this scary thing everyone thinks it is.” He shrugged, chuckling. “It could be all the death I work around, but it’s not really the terrifying thing it was when I was younger.”

Karhi smiled despite himself. “I suppose.”

“Are you afraid of death?”

Karhi shook his head. “I doubt it can be much worse than living.” The words came out more bitter than he meant them to.

Michael looked down at the table. His expression had turned from amusement to melancholy. “You’re one of Ilona’s children.”

Karhi nodded slowly, unsure where this was going.

“I’ve heard she’s . . . unkind.”

“That’s an understatement,” Karhi scoffed. But he found himself wanting to comfort Michael. Or at least distract him. They didn’t need to talk about Ilona or how she treated her children. That was too heavy for a human to bear. “But she’s not here, so we don’t need to discuss it.” Karhi put a hand on his arm.

Michael searched Karhi’s face before grinning. His dimples were absolutely stunning. Karhi was drawn into them.

Before he knew it, Michael’s mouth was against his and Karhi was grabbing onto his coat. He pulled Michael against him. Endorphins flooded Karhi, and he felt lightheaded. Michael’s breath was heavy against his mouth. He smelled like myrrh and cloves.

Michael pressed hungrily into Karhi, moving to straddle him. Karhi wound his fingers into Michael’s curls and braced himself against the van. He heard the van groaning against him, but Michael wasn’t complaining about his grip being too tight.

“Hey, get the fuck away from him.”

Michael sat up straight, shouting in pain.

Karhi sat up just in time for Lunette to throw Michael off of him. Lunette grabbed Karhi’s arm and yanked him away.

“Lunette, what the . . .” He trailed off as Michael stood up. The band aids on his face had fallen away to reveal coal where skin should be. It was just cracked and black, as if lava had cooled into place on his skin. A human shouldn’t have skin damage like that . . .

His pale eyes were glowing gold as he wiped silver liquid from his mouth. His bottom lip was bleeding silver.

Michael shook his head. “What a shame. I was actually having a good time. It’s not often I get to interact with vampires.”

Karhi stared at Michael. “What the fuck?”

“Don’t get me wrong, it would have been fun to hook up with you. You’re a very attractive man. But what I actually needed was to see if you knew anything about Sloane Briallen. Unfortunately for me, you do not.” He shrugged, glancing at Lunette. “That cruciopathy is a bitch. Haven’t been hit by that in centuries. Impressive.”

And without another word, he was gone.

Karhi looked at Lunette. “What the hell just happened?”

“I found a body stuffed in one of the morgue drawers. The body looked exactly like Michael except his coat actually said ‘Hashem’ on it.”

“And he completely transformed to look like him.”

“Apparently. Whatever he was, he was powerful.”

“Fuck.” Karhi ran his hand over his hair, tugging at it.

“Yeah, I noticed.”

Karhi sneered at her, but she was already moving to where the silver blood was still on the ground. It wasn’t dissipating like most magic blood tended to.

He followed her. Focusing on something else beside the man he almost fucked in a morgue might help make the embarrassment a little less.

This wasn’t even the first time he had done something like this.

“We have some clean up to do,” Lunette said.

Sloane Briallen

“Hey, it’s been a while since we sent Mickey and Bell out for skewers,” Sharona said, sitting on the bench next to me.

I glanced up from where I was tying my shoelaces. “They’re not back?” I glanced up at the sky. The sun was beginning its descent behind the trees that bordered the back of our yard. We were having a rare day of no rain or snow. It was cold outside, but the bonfire in front of us was warm, the flames reaching two or three feet out of the fire pit. I had been hellbent on having a bonfire for my eighteenth birthday.

Our friends were milling around the backyard. A game of hacky sack was going on in one corner, two guys I both dated trying to outdo each other with the most elaborate kick. They had asked for me to play, but I was pretty sure they just wanted me to watch. They had both been trying to get back with me. I was done with it all and had sat down on a bench at the fire.

Inside of the house, I could hear Mauve telling a story about a writer she worked with. It involved a lot of alcohol, a goose, and maybe some cocaine? I didn’t know the story, but I also wasn’t sure I wanted to know. I read a lot of the writers she worked with, and I wasn’t up for her killing my heroes on my birthday.

“No. Do you think they got lost?” Sharona asked.

“Oh, one hundred percent,” I snorted, sitting up. I pulled my flip phone from my pocket to check for messages.

No good sticks. Gonna try by the creak.A text message from Bell.

“Does he even try to spell?” Sharona asked, leaning over my shoulder, her blond hair brushing against my arm.

I pushed her hair off me, and she leaned back. “No, but why does this text message sound like a disappointed dog? No good sticks. Gonna try the creek. Maybe roll around in some deer shit I find.”

Sharona laughed.

I dialed his number and held my phone up to my ear. It rang five times before going to his voicemail. I ended the call. “Must be out of service. Or on silent.” I dialed Mickey’s number.

A moment later, I heard his phone go off. I looked over to see it on one of the tables set up with food.

Shaking my head, I shut my phone. “Useless. Alright, let’s go see if we can find them.”

She stood up. “Probably find Bell halfway up a tree, trying to figure out how to come down.”

I chuckled. I’d watched Bell tree himself enough times that I couldn’t doubt her statement. “So, potentially he’s a cat. Definitely a dog.” I stood up. “Gotta tell a grown-up.” Saying that was so weird to me. Two years ago, I would have never given a shit if an adult knew where I was. Nowadays, I tended to keep Mauve and Leah pretty apprised of my comings and goings. There was an aspect of it that was comforting—someone was always interested in where I was. Checking if I wasn’t where I was supposed to be.

“I’ll meet you in there,” Sharona said, heading toward the forest.

I went into the house to find Mauve.

She stood in the center of five of my friends and two of her own friends, gesturing animatedly with a beer in her hand. Her russet brown hair was pulled back in a sloppy ponytail. When she saw me, she toasted me, the wrinkles around her mouth and eyes crinkling as she said, “Sloane!”

“Your son and nephew appear to have gotten lost in the woods.”

She rolled her eyes. “Sounds right.”

“Sharona and I are going to search for them. I have my phone.”

“Alright. If you’re not back in fifteen, we’re coming after you.”

I gave her a thumbs up.

“Mauve!” a frantic voice shouted. Sharona ran in with a bundle of something in her hands. Her brown eyes were wide with concern and fear. Immediately, the hairs on the back of my neck rose as Mauve moved past me to meet her.

“What’s wrong, hon?” she asked.

Sharona held up what was in her hands, and I realized it was the remains of a shirt and shorts.

Specifically, the remains of a brown shirt that said Life is good on the front, and black cargo pants. The same clothes that Mickey had been wearing when he left.

The shirt was split along one seam, the hem of the neck stretched and mangled, but still intact. The shorts had split along the seams, too. The waistband was torn raggedly.

“Isn’t that what Mickey was wearing?” someone asked from behind us.

“Where did you find this?” Mauve was already heading towards the backyard.

“Like, thirty or forty feet into the trees? They were just there with nothing else. I tried to call out, but I didn’t hear anything.” Sharona trotted to match Mauve’s long strides to the back door.

Sharona led us through the trees to where she had found the torn clothes. The forest floor was thick with brown pine needles and leaves. I could see bits of the cargo pants on the ground, threads and buttons. They were bright against the dark dirt.

Mauve moved past the torn clothes, calling out. “Mickey? Bell?”

I followed her, also calling out.

“If this is a prank, it’s awful,” Sharona said. She smiled as she said it, but her voice betrayed her with how it shook.

“I could see Bell doing this, but Mick—” Mauve stopped short, and I almost crashed into her.

“Mauve,” I said, ducking around her. “What—” I stopped.

More torn clothes. Bell’s salmon shorts, white hoodie, and sneakers. The pants and hoodie were torn the same way, just along the seams. But the sneakers had been shredded. Like an animal had gone after them.

But there wasn’t a hint of blood anywhere.

“Sharona, go call the police,” Mauve said, looking back at my friend.

The mention of cops coming here made my shoulders tense. “There’s no blood,” I protested weakly. “It’s probably a joke.”

“If it is, they’ll be in a lot of trouble,” she replied grimly.

I didn’t point out how she didn’t say anything about what she would do if it wasn’t a joke.

I couldn’t bring myself to.

Karhi texted me the address of where he had woken up after he was kidnapped. It wasn’t too far from Mira’s house, but it wasn’t anywhere I was particularly familiar with.

“Take Annie with you,” Mira said, bumping her hip into Annie’s to push her closer to me. I still sat on the steps with Mikko.

“What?” we chorused in dismay, looking back at her.

“Annie, you’re making both me and Mikko exhausted with all your fluttering around him. Sloane, that area is where some of Annie’s friends live. Go. You two can work some shit out.”

“I ain’t got shit to work out,” Annie muttered, folding her arms over her chest.

“Same,” I agreed.

“Bullshit,” Mira shot back. “Y’all two need to work out your new normal. Now go.”

Mikko leaned away from me, and before I could stop myself, I was standing up. I glared at Mikko. “Traitor.”

He gave me a look. “We both knew it was coming, I just pulled away, so I wasn’t leaning on you when she made you stand up. Been burned too many times by that in the past.”

Annie was standing in front of the stairs, also likely not of her own accord.

“Mira, I swear to God, the fucking mind control—” Annie started.

“If you ain’t done nothing about it by now, you ain’t gonna do nothing,” Mira cut her off. “Now go, you two. Before I make you.”

I bit back the response that she already was making us. Literally.

The scary thing was that I had hardly felt her in my head when she made me stand up. Her mind control had gotten way stronger than I liked.

“Just ‘cause you don’t like it don’t mean you don’t need it,” Mira said.

I glared at her. Stay out of my head.

She shrugged, smiling guilelessly. But I knew she was listening.

“Ugh,” Annie said. “Fine, let’s go. Where?”

I showed her the address.

She scowled. “Yeah, a couple of my girls got a apartment down the street from there.” She handed me my phone back and shoved her hands into the pockets of her shorts.

I gave Mira the finger, but I followed Annie.

Walking side-by-side with Annie down Mira’s block brought back a lot of memories. I had barely seen her since I had come back, and most of the time, she had been unconscious. And I knew a lot of that was my own fault—I was avoiding her just as much as I was avoiding Mickey and Bell. Annie had been my ride-or-die when I lived in Phoenix. We had been almost inseparable since the day we escaped from a foster home together.

But she was a shapeshifter. And the bad blood between vampires and shifters went back centuries. Honestly, the general repulsion towards vampires from all other magics went back centuries.

Annie had been raised with a shapeshifter mom, aunt, and cousin. And while she was half, and generally hated by other “pure” (read: full-blooded and racist) shapeshifters, she had found community in other halfshifters as she had grown up. I had spent most of my time with her, but she had had a lot of halfshifter friends, too.

All of this was to say that I didn’t know how to initiate a conversation with her now that I was a vampire. I had honestly expected her to be a lot more hostile towards me than she had been.

“How long?” Annie asked.

“Almost a year,” I said. I wasn’t going to play dumb like I wasn’t thinking the same things she was. She wanted to know how long I had been a vampire.

“And you said you ain’t fed from no humans?”

“I have not.”

She ran her hand over her locs. “How did Frankie handle it?”

“He did not.”

“That checks out. Genie?”

“Beat on Frankie for not handling it well.”

“Mira?”

“Immediate mind control and keeping Lina from being near me.”

She huffed out a breath. “And Mikko had no problem.”

“Yeah.”

“So, I’m the one to tip the scales.”

“If you don’t count Lina not giving a shit. But I ain’t really seen her since that first night ‘cause I was either here when she was at school, or it was nighttime. I guess she sleeps like a log.”

“She’s five,” Annie shrugged. “She could sleep through a raid.”

“Yeah . . .”

I didn’t know where we were going in this conversation. I didn’t think Annie did either.

“Mira told me about Mickey and Bell.”

I didn’t say anything. It was too frustrating and confusing to talk about.

“How do you feel about being a vampire?”

I hesitated. “What?”

“I feel like nobody’s asked you that. How do you feel about it?”

I blinked, looking down at the pavement as it disappeared beneath my feet. “Uh . . . worried y’all would hate me, I guess.”

“That ain’t what I asked,” she shook her head. “Like, if we wasn’t around, and you wasn’t worried about how we’d think of it—just you. How do you feel about it?”

How did I feel about being a vampire? Had anyone ever asked me that before? Had I ever even thought about it before?

I had spent so much of the past year hating myself, convinced I would never be able to return to my old life. I had stayed in Minnesota because I thought I needed to stay away. I thought that if I went back, they would just reject me and hate me. I had already lost Mickey and Bell—that family was gone. I loved their mothers, but I couldn’t look at them without being reminded of what I has lost. I couldn’t look at them and not see their sons.

And I had just assumed, when Karhi turned me that I had lost the rest of my family. And that was all I could ever focus on. Everything was gone.

I had never thought to ask what I had gained.

“I guess not going to the bathroom anymore is cool,” I finally said.

Annie snorted. “What?”

I shrugged. “It was the first thing I could think of.”

She looked up thoughtfully. “Yeah, I can see that. It’s annoying to find a bathroom when you out and places won’t let you in cause you not a paying customer.”

“And I can still eat and drink. It’s fun, actually. I can eat how much I want and not get sick.”

She shrugged. “I could already do that.”

“We’re not talking about you,” I shot back.

She chuckled. “No.”

“And I heal fast. And I’m a lot stronger and can move a lot faster.” I smiled. “It’s nice. I guess I don’t hate it? Like, the blood drinking is weird, but I don’t have to really think about it too much cause my sire always makes sure we have blood in the house. And it’s not like I hurt anyone.” I paused. “Did you know there’s a whole industry of small scale farmers paying vampires to kill their cows for them?”

Annie gave me a weird look. “What?”

“I don’t know. Just thinking that I don’t think I know any vampires that kill humans. It’s all hunting or slaughtering animals, or using blood workers and the Red Cross.”

“So, you’re okay with being a vampire?”

I held my hands up in response. “I made my bed. It’s not like I didn’t know what I was doing when I left the bar with him that night. It’s not like my birthday’s ever been the best anyway.”

She raised an eyebrow at me. “You trying to make me feel bad for your or something?”

I scowled at her. “Can’t y’all pity me for like a second? Karhi said the same fucking thing yesterday.”

She frowned. “I don’t like you comparing me to your sire . . . but he also right.”

I rolled my eyes. Coming to Annie for pity was always a losing game and I knew it. I really wasn’t picking the right people to pity me. And that’s probably what I needed if I was being honest with myself.

“He turned you on your birthday?”

“Yeah. I was at the bar I worked at doing shots, and I hooked up with him.”

“You hooked up with a vampire?”

I shrugged. “I didn’t think I had anything else to lose.” I looked at the ground, suddenly unable to even look at Annie. “Not until Mira called me, anyway. And told me Mikko was gone and Genie and Frankie were back. And then I remembered how much I had to lose.” I bit the inside of my lip.

I had been drowning in my sorrow at losing Mickey and Bell. The days in the past two years had blurred together, even after I became a vampire. Everything was just going through the motions. Nothing about changing the scenery from Washington to Minnesota, or even changing the humanity from living to dead, had done anything for me. It had just been one giant smear of ash and grey and apathy and hopelessness.

“Why did I lose sight of everything else when they disappeared?”

It took me a minute to realize that I had asked that question out loud.

“Everyone has their breaking point,” Annie said. “That was just yours. I don’t know . . . if I lost Daoine, I don’t think I could come back from that.” She pronounced it theena.

Daoine was her cousin, the only family Annie had left. She lived at one of the local churches. She used to be glued to our hips when I lived in Phoenix.

“Where is she?” I asked.

“Her church goes on a trip just before Samhain every year. Keeps the kids from sneaking out to the festival. This year she’s a chaperone now that she finally old enough.”

I nodded pensively. “How do you think she’d take this?”

“Probably say something about it being God’s will, hug you, and ask you to come to mass with her on Sunday to revel in your new life.”

I chuckled. “You’re probably right. And you’d say something about Jesus being a vampire, and then she’d get mad.”

Annie smirked, shaking her head. “I’m pretty sure you’re the one who came up with that.”

“Nah. It was you.”

She pushed me. “Nah.”

I stopped, tilting my head at her. “You pushed me.” I furrowed my brow.

She shrugged, stopping with me. “Don’t make it a thing.”

“You’re . . . not mad at me?” I hadn’t expected Annie to be laughing and joking with me, much less touching me.

She started walking again. We were getting close to the address Karhi had sent. “I wasn’t taught to be particularly kind to vampires,” she said. “But I also wasn’t taught to turn on family for being different than I expect. You always had my back. Covered for me with cops. Covered for me with boxing. Covered for me in foster when we first met. Wouldn’t be right if I turned my back on you. Ain’t happy about you being a vampire, but I also ain’t happy that Frankie and Genie lost they parents.”

I had expected Annie’s judgment to be much harsher than everyone else’s.

“I will set you on fire though if you hurt any of them, though.”

There it was.

I couldn’t hold back the laughter that erupted in the back of my throat. “Good to know.”

She eyed me for a moment before looking away, the hint of a smirk on her lips. She came to a stop. “This the place?”

The number on the house in front of us matched, and I could see the broken bars where Karhi had escaped out one of the front windows. It was a nondescript house, painted a dark grey over the stucco. The front yard was well kept with some trash here and there from people passing by and just tossing things. There weren’t any decorative plants and the walkway from the sidewalk had some weeds between the blocks of concrete. It was an unobtrusive house that blended in with the rest of the neighborhood. You wouldn’t have thought anything bad could happen here.

And that was kind of the point, right? Karhi was kidnapped and taken here, and it was designed for magics. No one was supposed to notice this place.

“A couple of my homegirls live in that apartment complex.” She pointed to a series of two-story buildings a few houses down across the street.

“Anyone I know?”

“Riley and Shayna? I think they was after you.”

I shook my head. “Don’t know them. Shifters?”

“Yeah. So, I think—”

“I’ma stay here,” I said.

“Yeah, I don’t think they’d be quite so understanding like me.”

“Real understanding,” I rolled my eyes.

She left, but not before punching me in the arm. Normally, I would have been angry about it. As it was, it meant things were okay between us. A sense of relief settled between my shoulder blades.

I knew that Lunette had already searched the house, but I didn’t have much else better to do while I waited for Annie. At the very least, I was curious to see what someone had apparently thought was a good prison for a 500-year-old vampire.

The front door was open. Either no one had bothered to lock it after they abandoned it, or Lunette had left it open.

The first thing that struck me was the sterility. Everything was white and unblemished. Nothing hung on the walls and the front hall didn’t have any sort of key hooks on the walls or a table by the door.

Lunette had said it seemed like a safehouse, and she wasn’t wrong. No one had ever lived here. The threshold let me through as if I was walking into a business. There was no resistance, not even a whisper of reluctance to let me in.

The hallway went off to my left. In front of me gave way to a large room with an open kitchen. There was a folding table to one side with chairs. The back wall was a sliding glass door with white blinds obscuring the backyard from view.

To one side was a series of closed doors. As I moved towards them, there was the faint, musty scent of old urine. It was the same thing I had smelled where Mikko had been held. I remembered, at the time, thinking he must have picked a corner to pee in.

But thinking now . . . he had said there had been a bucket for him.

I opened the closest door to me. It was the room Karhi had been held in. I smelled the bleach, like Lunette had said, and I smelled the same musty scent. In fact, it was stronger in here.

That didn’t make sense though. Vampires didn’t pee. Why would I smell that here?

Light footsteps scuffed through the front door. I looked back from the doorway. It couldn’t be Annie—even with my vampire hearing, she was still quiet.

A familiar face popped around the corner though it took me a second to recognize him. Messy dark hair and band aids on his face.

“Uh . . . Michael?” I asked, looking down at the nine-year-old.

“Yes!” he grinned brightly.

Something about the grin unsettled me. “What are you doing here?”

“Annie sent me over here,” he said, glancing behind him. “She pissed off one of them shifters and she’s in trouble now.”

The mismatch between his cheery demeanor and the words that came out of his mouth was so discordant, it took me a moment to realize the gravity of what he had said.

I bolted, jumping clean over the kid as I went.

Annie was strong, but she was still weak from the beating she had taken the other day. Normally I wouldn’t have a problem leaving her alone with some shifters, but I couldn’t take that risk with everything else that had happened recently. If that kid had said she’d pissed off some shifters, then I’d take him for his word. I couldn’t risk her getting hurt again.

I heard the commotion before I reached the apartments.

They were shaped like U’s, a courtyard in the center walled off from the rest of the street. There was a concrete wall with a metal gate across the tines of each U.

“I knew you was a fucking freak,” I heard from behind one of the walls, “but friends with a vampire?”

“It’s none of your fucking business,” Annie growled. The ferocity behind the words was immediately undercut by her coughing.

I vaulted the wall into the courtyard. Landing, I only had a split second to take in what was going on before I needed to move. I could already sense that there was a full-blooded shifter among us.

Shattered tiles surrounded Annie where she lay on the ground just below the balcony that lined the second floor of the apartments. Her left arm was crushed beneath her, and the scent of her blood was heavy in the air.

Two women stood against the railing that overlooked the ground floor. From the angle, they had to have pushed her off the second story.

A full-blooded shapeshifter stood over Annie, her hands partially transformed into scaly talons.

I barreled straight into her, shoving my shoulder into her solar plexus. She shouted in pain, the blow knocking her on her ass.

I could feel the points of my claws against my palms. My canines grew into fangs, and I bared my teeth.

I flew after the woman, but she was already getting her feet under her. I dodged off course just before she launched herself into me but couldn’t avoid her.

Pain exploded against the side of my head, and I saw stars. The scent of my own blood pierced my nose.

The blow knocked me over, but I turned the motion into a forward roll, coming back up with no stars in my vision but a hell of a lot of blood. I wiped it out of my eyes, just bobbing out of the way as the shifter swung her hand at me.

I popped back up just in her guard, wrapping my arm around her arm to keep her from grabbing me.

Before she could react, I rammed my shin straight into her crotch. The crunch of bone-on-bone juddered up my shin and thigh, and I bit down the whimper of pain.

The shifter howled in agony, crumpling to the ground, hands clutching at her pelvis.

“Broken pelvis is a bitch,” I snarled at her, lunging to finish her off.

“Sloane,” Annie whined.

The wind left my sails at her voice, and I turned my momentum into a spin back to Annie. My goal wasn’t to teach anyone a lesson. My goal was Annie.

I shot nasty looks at the women above me, but they didn’t make a move to come down. They stared at me in horror as I went to help Annie up.

Annie cradled her injured arm against her body. I was careful to pull her up by her other arm.

“I know Siyavash taught you to kill, but don’t,” Annie muttered when she was standing, using her good arm to hold the mangled one. It was bent in the wrong places.

I grimaced. “Are you okay? I smell blood.” I couldn’t see any fresh blood on her, though.

“Healed,” she growled. “But they broke my fucking arm.” She looked up at the other two. “Halfborn pieces of shit,” she shouted at them. “You fucking sent Aisha after me?”

“What’d you expect?” one woman shouted back. “You fucking with bloodsuckers? You ain’t welcome here no more.”

Aisha moaned from where she lay on the ground, a limp mass of broken shifter.

“She’ll heal fast,” Annie said to me. “We gotta get out.”

“Alright,” I said. I glanced at the gate and wall. It was still locked from the inside. “You’re not going to like this,” I said.

“What?”

I put my hand to Annie’s back and swept her legs out from under her. I leapt over the wall holding her, and we ran.

Well, I ran.

Karhi Emelyn

Sloane handed him the keys when they got back to the car, climbing into the passenger seat without a word.

“Does this mean I can have my car back now?” he asked as he started it.

She shrugged. “Maybe.”

She sat with her feet up on the seat, knees pulled to her chest. Her arms rested on her kneecaps, and she leaned against the door, gazing out the window. Her emotions were a dense knot that he couldn’t decipher.

“Was that your first time watching someone die?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Saw someone die from a heroin overdose once.” She sighed, her breath not fogging up the window. “Saw a cop kill a man once.”

He didn’t have a reply for that. He had come in on the tail end of the shifter dying. Sloane had been tense, but he could tell at the time that she hadn’t been scared or worried. She just seemed tired.

“I saw my mom die,” she murmured quietly.

He glanced at her in surprise. “You did?”

“She was a chain-smoker,” she said. “Died from lung cancer before she even hit forty. I watched her die in the hospital.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. He could feel the hole the words left in her as she spoke them. There was a numbness associated with talking about her mother.

She shrugged. “Predisposed, I guess.”

Like her.

“Like me.”

He couldn’t look at her.

“You told me once, when you got angry at me . . .”

He winced.

“You said I was dying when we met.”

He had.

She had been angry that night. He hadn’t really known why, but he had come home to her, and an explosion of thin, yellow paper surrounding her. Phonebooks. Torn phonebooks all around her, as if a bomb made of phonebooks had detonated in the room. Karhi hadn’t even known he had that many phonebooks in his apartment.

But she was tearing them apart and throwing the pieces she pulled out to the ground.

Her rage turned on him when he walked in. “I never wanted to be a vampire.” The cold fury in her voice was like ice against him. He found himself taking a step back from the intensity.

“You could have said no,” he replied.

“Consent doesn’t exist with vampires.”

He didn’t have a reply for that. He hardly remembered the night he had turned her. He had been drunk. He hadn’t even remembered her at first when he woke up with her in bed next to him.

She flew towards him faster than he expected. He couldn’t avoid her shove. It was weak enough that it didn’t matter.

“I didn’t want this,” she screamed at him.

“You wouldn’t even be here anyway!” he shouted back before he could stop himself.

She froze, the fury still there, but now with confusion mixing in. “What?”

“Nothing.” He turned from her to go to his room.

He didn’t get very far before Sloane yanked him back.

He shoved her off, spinning around. “Leave me alone,” he snarled. He felt fangs prick at his tongue as anger snarled against the back of his neck. It was hot and loud.

“What did you mean?” she demanded.

He clenched his fists. “You were dying when I found you.”

She stared him. “What?” she whispered.

“I could smell it on you when we met. Probably lung cancer. It smells on your breath when you have it.” Like mould. It wasn’t a pleasant smell.

And then, he had turned on his heel and stormed out of the room, letting her deal with it on her own. Letting her process her death. On her own.

“I wasn’t surprised, you know,” Sloane said, pulling him out of the memory of that night.

“You weren’t?”

She was still looking out the window. “My mom got lung cancer early in life. And I smoked a pack a day basically since I was ten. The year before we met? Two packs a day.” Her voice was bitter. “I guess it wasn’t surprising.”

Karhi didn’t know enough about medicine to agree or disagree, but it seemed possible. Tragic, but possible.

“I haven’t seen you smoke since I turned you.”

“Doesn’t turning affect addictions?”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t change enjoying them.”

“Guess I stopped enjoying them.”

He didn’t reply, letting the silence settle between them.

“That day . . . I was angry because it was Bell’s birthday.”

He remained silent. Her emotions were a gentle tug on him, and they told him that interrupting her would result in her clamming up.

“He bulked up in high school. Started playing soccer. Even got a scholarship to U-dub in Seattle for it. But I used to tease him and say he was strong, but he’d never be strong enough to tear up phonebooks. I even made a bet with him on his eighteenth birthday that he couldn’t tear one in half.” She laughed humourlessly. “He couldn’t. He had to buy my dinner that night.”

He nodded for lack of any other response. He didn’t know what to say.

“Mickey and Bell are cousins,” she said. “Their moms adopted me when I was fifteen. The adoption went through on my sixteenth birthday. And on my eighteenth birthday, they disappeared.”

He found himself exhaling heavily. She had been hit with a lot of bad shit on her birthday. He had turned her on her nineteenth birthday.

She continued. “I guess, this whole time, they were werewolves? No idea how when there ain’t shifter blood anywhere in their family.”

He actually knew the answer to that. “It can be a recessive trait that pops up generations down. It’s rare, but it happens. Were their fathers in the picture?”

She shook her head. “When their moms found out they were pregnant, the fathers bolted. I guess they could have been shifters. But usually, halfshifters start transforming at nine or ten.”

She was right. “Eighteen is odd . . .”

“Either way, they fucked off to wherever to be wolves and left me behind and didn’t tell me anything. And here I am, trying to deal with my one family falling apart and my other family coming back together and I just . . .” She huffed out a breath through her nose. “I don’t know.”

“Well, the upside is—you don’t have to know.”

She gave him a sceptical look.

“It’s one thing at a time, Sloane. You can’t expect to deal with it all at once. Right now, your focus is on Mikko and finding out what happened to him.” He turned onto Mira’s street. “And I don’t know him, but I’m pretty sure Bell is being a dick. Mira already told him to knock it off and he’s still pushing.”

She rubbed her forehead. “It’s what he does. He doesn’t like things being undone. And to him, I’m a giant thing undone. He wants to fix it already.”

“Some things take a while to fix. And some things never get fixed.”

She slammed her feet down onto the floor and sat up straight, looking at him with wide eyes. “I don’t want that.”

“Oh?”

“They’re . . . I’ve known them since I was five. I can’t . . . I can’t let them go again. They’re my brothers.”

He smiled, his gaze on the street before him. “One thing at a time Sloane. Unravel Mikko. Then you can re-ravel them.”

She blinked at him, her alarmed expression turning into curiosity. “You’re . . . a lot more insightful than I ever gave you credit for.”

He shrugged. “I’ve been around for a long time. I’ve had more knock-down-drag-out fights with Lunette than I can count.”

“But at the end of the day, she’s still your best friend.”

He grimaced. He didn’t like calling Lunette his best friend. It sounded childish and weird. “She’s something,” he said. “Whatever it is, she’s still the first person I can turn to.”

He pulled up in front of Mira’s house and put the car in park. He almost missed what Sloane said as he pulled out the keys.

“Liar.”

He blinked in surprise, turning to look at her. “What?”

“If she’s the first person you turn to, why didn’t she know about the heroin? Why does she still not know that Ilona tortures you on the reg? Why do you keep her in the dark like that?”

He didn’t have an answer for that.

“Instead of telling her, you tell me; because it’s easy to pour out your guts to someone who doesn’t have as much of a vested interest in you.”

“Ouch, Sloane,” he said, putting his hand over his heart. “That really hurt.”

She ignored that. “Just talk to your fucking sister.”

“You talk to your fucking brothers.”

She gave him the finger and got out of the car.

But he could feel the relief that had kindled in her chest. It was a small flame, but it was one he had helped ignite. And it made a small flame inside of his own chest kindle. He felt good.

He followed her out of the car, locking it as he did. Though, considering that Mira’s house was full of thieves, did it even help him to lock his door?

He decided it didn’t matter. It made him feel better, so he would continue to lock it.

He followed Sloane to the path that led to Mira’s house and didn’t continue past the sidewalk. Sloane was halfway down the walkway before she noticed. She stopped, looking back at him. “What are you doing?”

“Mira told me yesterday that I wasn’t to step foot on her property ever again. And while she did it so that Ilona couldn’t force me to come back, there was still some obvious seriousness in the command.”

Sloane pressed her lips together, nodding. Footsteps behind the front door made them both look up, and Mira opened the door.

“You can stay over there,” Mira said to him. “Mikko’s going to come out anyway. He’ll be out—”

Mikko’s voice from inside cut her off. “I need the sun, woman. I haven’t seen it in days. Just let me have this.” He emerged from the house, using the doorway to steady himself. He looked up towards the sky and smiled as the sun hit his face.

“Mikko, you’re still limping,” Annie said, ducking under him to come out standing next to Mira.

He continued to look towards the sun, eyes closed. “I can limp just as well out here as I can in there.” He opened his eyes and grinned when he saw Sloane. “I was worried it was a fever dream and that I made you up.”

Sloane’s laughter was so loud and genuine that Karhi had to double check to make sure the sound was coming from her. It was. The laughter was a full belly laugh, her cheeks turning pink with mirth.

He had never heard her laugh like that before.

Looking at Mira, he saw a strange expression on her face. She looked like she was going to cry—her brow knitted together, a frown on her mouth. It took him a second to realize she was relieved.

Sloane glanced back at Karhi, a confused smile on her face as she sent him a questioning look. She had felt the tug of his thoughts as he went through the experience of her laughter.

He shook his head, focusing on Mikko.

Mikko already looked better than the night before. He still had a black eyes, and cuts on his face and arms, but they were clean. And the majority of the bruises seemed lighter. It had been pretty dusty and grimy where he had been held—a lot of it had probably transferred to him and coloured his skin and injuries darker than they were.

A second surprise for Karhi: Sloane stepped up to Mikko, ducking around Annie and Mira, and hugged him. Karhi had never seen Sloane initiate a hug with anyone. She let Zeren hug her, even hugged him back, but she never went out of her way to do it.

Karhi had thought he was beginning to realize just how much he didn’t know about Sloane. But watching this now, he had only just scratched the surface. It was more than just all of the magic stuff. Of course, he hadn’t known how involved she was in the Underground, but there was so much more.

He had known she was a foster kid, but he hadn’t even realized how long she had been in it. He’d known she’d been adopted but hadn’t known she had brothers. He’d known about Elizabeth, but it never even occurred to him that Sloane would know, too.

But more than all of that, he hadn’t realized that despondence, anger, and apathy weren’t even part of her normal persona. She was warm and kind. As she pulled away from Mikko, she took his hand in hers, lacing their fingers together and helping him sit down on the top step. It didn’t even seem alien to her—she was falling into old habits. All this time, she had been missing her family, and he had never even noticed.

He was ashamed to realize how jaded he had been to it all. How jaded he had become.

“We found where you were held,” Sloane murmured to him.

Mikko nodded but didn’t say anything.

“Why is the vampire here?” Annie asked, looking from Mira to Karhi. Her tone indicated that her feelings on the subject of Karhi were neither warm nor happy. She was standing in the front yard now, her and Mira having stepped down to give Sloane and Mikko space on the steps.

“Vampire is helping us figure out what happened to you guys,” Sloane replied. He felt her twinge of annoyance at Annie. “His name is Karhi.”

Annie sneered but didn’t say anything else.

Sloane glanced at Karhi, which he took as the cue to take the lead.

“Mikko,” he said, “can you tell me what happened? Starting from the last thing you remember from before where you were taken?”

The breeziness of Mikko’s posture from walking out into the sun and hugging Sloane deflated. His shoulders sunk, and he looked down at the ground. He nodded, squeezing Sloane’s hand. “Um, yeah. So, Annie and I separated after she won her boxing matches that night. I was bringing the money to Mira and Annie was going to a party. The last thing I remember is going to the bus stop to get back to Mira’s and . . .” He shook his head. “Everything goes black until I woke up.” He leaned heavily into Sloane, keeping his gaze firmly on the ground.

Sloane let go of his hand to put her arm around him.

“It all sort of blurs together,” he said. “I could take off the blind fold, as long as no one was in the room. And when they were in the room . . .” He brought one knee up, crossing his arms against chest and hunching over. His voice didn’t waver as he spoke, and he hardly seemed to notice the way he had moved to sit. “Um . . . they’d tell me before they came in to put on my blindfold. And then—and then they’d come in and they’d grab me by my wrists, making sure the ropes were still tight. Then they’d—they’d like . . . they’d just hit me and smack me. A c-couple times they’d cut me with knives? Or maybe claws?” He shook his head. “And I’d ask them why they were doing this, and th-they wouldn’t answer. Just tell me to shut up and hit me again until I couldn’t stay awake.”

Mikko’s recounting was curiously steady despite the handful of stutters. Karhi had found over the years that the more fucked up stuff that had happened to someone in their lifetime, the more dispassionate they could recount recent fucked up stuff.

“You said they didn’t give you any sort of explanation. But did they say anything at all?”

Mikko shook his head. “Besides telling me to put on the blindfold, no. I think, once, while I was losing consciousness, I heard a man say, ‘who is that?’ And I think they said I was the mistress’s prisoner or something? But I never heard a woman ever talk.” He shook his head. “But I also had a lot of bad dreams, and I don’t know if that was real or a nightmare.”

Karhi nodded. “Are you sensitive to magic at all?”

He shook his head. “Not like Sloane. Sometimes I can feel it a bit. And I think, maybe I felt it a bit in there. Sometimes it would get weirdly cold. And I’d just feel this . . . despair. And I thought at one point it could be magic, but it also usually happened when I got beat. So . . . I don’t know. It could’ve just been my body.”

“Did they give you anything to eat or drink?”

“When I woke up, there was usually like some bread and a bottle of water and some carrots or something.” He grimaced. “Hard to open the bottle of water with tied hands.” He rubbed his wrists where the bruises were darkest on his skin outside of his black eye.

Karhi asked a few more questions about where he had been and what he had heard, but Mikko didn’t have anything else for him. He did comment that they left him a bucket to go to the bathroom. Karhi had remembered the room smelled like piss, but he hadn’t seen any buckets.

“Thanks for telling me,” Karhi said.

Mikko sighed unhappily. “I don’t think it was very useful.”

“I wouldn’t say that.” He wasn’t going to argue that it was the most useful information, but it was good to have. In investigations like this, useless information tended to build on more useless information until something fit together, and the information as an aggregate was useful.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. He checked it to see Lunette was calling. “Sorry,” he said to them, turning away to answer the phone. “Hello?”

“I found some stuff here, but nothing too useful.”

“Yeah?”

“The room he was in had a secret trapdoor. It led to this underground system of tunnels. I found some buckets with human waste.”

“Those would belong to Mikko.”

“Yeah. I also found some dead shifters. All died the same way as the other one, I think. One of them had like $600 on them in cash, which was weird, because all of the rest of them only had wallets with plastic.”

“Hold on.” He looked up at where Sloane was still next to Mikko, Annie on his other side comforting him. “Hey, how much did you make at those fights? The money that disappeared?”

“$598,” Annie replied, eyeing him suspiciously. “Why?”

“That money was taken from Mikko,” Karhi told Lunette.

“Alright. I’ll give it to you when I see you.”

“Thanks. Anything else?”

“Not really. I’m going to dig up some more on the magic that was used because I was able to get some glyphs off the doors. Meet up back at that motel?”

“Sounds good.”

She hung up.

Karhi put his phone away and relayed what he had learned to the rest of them. Most of them had probably heard the conversation, Sloane being a vampire, Annie being a shifter, and Mira being able to read minds, but Mikko would not have.

“She found the cash?” Mikko asked, perking up.

“Yes. Probably took it from you as a bonus for their services.”

“Wait . . . you think they were hired?” Sloane asked, tilting her head at him.

“It’s the only thing that really makes sense,” he said. “Lunette and I are going to look into it and see if we can identify the shifters that she found.” She hadn’t said it, but he knew Lunette was probably already working through how she would get that information. “I’ll get you back that money later today.”

“I’ll just go with you—” Sloane started.

“Actually, I’d like you to ask around about where I was taken to. See if you can find out anything with your sources around here.” Also, he didn’t want to have to constantly separate Lunette and Sloane from fighting all the time.

She paused, clearly having forgotten she had agreed to that. Then she nodded. “Sure. You’ll tell me the minute you find anything?”

“I will. I’ll text you the address where I woke up. We’ll meet up later tonight after I go to the morgue.”

“Okay.”

“I’m taking my car.”

“Fine,” she scowled. “Still can’t insure it.”

He rolled his eyes and left.

Sloane Briallen

I did my best to ignore Karhi and Lunette’s awkward conversation while I showered. Listening to them was like listening to the most awkward teenagers trying to make amends. How could two four-hundred-plus-year-old grown-ass adults be so absolutely bad at communicating? Especially when I knew that Lunette was basically Karhi’s best friend. As weird as that sounded to say about old-as-fuck vampires.

I washed all the grime off of me and when I could hear Karhi explaining to Lunette what had happened the night before, I finally got out of the shower and toweled off. I was uncomfortable with Lunette knowing about what was going on with my family, but I also knew that she was likely the only one who could help us, unfortunately.

Lunette’s whole thing was information. She gathered it and traded it and used it as currency.

She had gotten into the internet early on and was into coding and how computers work. That eventually led her into becoming a very good hacker. She lived in a mansion in California, and from what Karhi had told me, she had a whole server room that took up half of one floor.

If anyone could help me find out who did this to Mikko, it would be her.

Which sucked for me because our relationship could cordially be called icy.

“Oh look, it’s the useless fledgling finally makes an appearance,” Lunette sneered as I exited the bathroom.

“Oh look, the grown-ass woman doesn’t know how to accept an apology,” I shot back, throwing my duffel bag to the side.

She sputtered, trying and failing to find a response.

“We’re all vampires,” I said, pulling on socks. “I’m not going to pretend I can’t hear.”

Karhi let out an annoyed sigh. “Can we just pretend to get along for a couple hours?”

“No,” we both said.

He rolled his eyes. “Lunette, have you had any success with who took me?”

She shook her head. “I’ve been trying to track down who owns the shell company that owns that house, but so far, nothing.”

“How about the woman I’ve been accused of killing?”

I blinked. What?

“We can go to the morgue later today. I know someone who knows a mortuary assistant there who can get us in.”

I couldn’t keep it to myself. “You killed someone?” I didn’t know Karhi all that well personally outside of the heroin stuff. But I did know his reputation from growing up with stories about Dusky and her children. Karhi wasn’t particularly known for killing humans. He had had an incident after he was just turned where he went into frenzy in a city nearby his hometown. It had earned him the name Tuhkanharmaa, or “ash grey” because of his eyes.

“I have been accused of killing someone,” he said. “Is it possible I did? Yes. Is it likely? Not really.”

“Is it from when you lost your memory?” He had given me the basic lowdown of his past few days while we were headed to Mira’s house the night before.

He nodded. “I found out after you and Corvine left when I went to Lazarus. Supposedly I took someone home, and she showed up dead several hours later. I don’t know anything past that.”

It was weird seeing this side of Karhi. The spiteful, annoying ball of sarcasm I knew had transformed into this analytical, self-aware creature of intelligence. It was refreshing in a way I couldn’t really explain.

“Well, if we can’t follow that line of questioning any further right now, let’s move on to your thing,” he said, looking at me. “Do you know where your friend was held?”

I shook my head. “I know the approximate area, but Corvine handled it. It wound up being good that she did because there were a lot of charms to keep things out and when she showed up with him, she was literally smoking.”

“Approximate area is good,” he said. “We can probably figure it out from there.”

“Can’t you call her again?” Lunette asked me. The venom in her question was a little less than usual. I would take it.

“I only know one way to summon her, and I don’t even know if it’ll work this time. She doesn’t currently owe me any more favors, and it’s a tossup if she hears me summoning her.”

Lunette narrowed her eyes at me. “Useless.”

I gave her both fingers. “Go fuck yourself.”

“Clever,” she rolled her eyes, turning from me.

“Enough,” Karhi groaned with all the conviction of a wet sponge. He sounded like a parent tired of siblings squabbling. Though I guess with how vampires worked with families, it would be like his child and his sister squabbling . . .

“Wait,” Karhi said, his wet sponge conviction melting into confusion. “Lunette, how did you find me here?”

“Your phone has GPS, idiot. I pinged you.”

I had no idea what that meant, but Karhi looked annoyed. “Of course, you did.”

“How else was I supposed to find you? Come on, let’s go.”

Karhi’s annoyance didn’t disappear, but he still followed Lunette out. I was the last out of the room, turning off the light as we went.

I led them back to the parking lot where I had fought the bearthing. Curiously, the creature was gone. There was still blood on the pavement, and tufts of hair from the creature as well as Mickey and Bell, but that was the only trace.

“Ugh, it reeks of dog,” Lunette said, lip curling.

“When you’re dealing with werewolves, it be like that sometimes,” I shrugged, surveying the parking lot. It was devoid of cars and the nearest human was a block away. There wasn’t much industry in this area, just a lot of abandoned buildings.

“That’s a lot of fur,” Karhi said, looking at where the creature had died. “You said it was a bear?”

“I was calling it a bearthing, but it was fucking huge, so I don’t know. Could’ve been a big ass dog or something.”

“A shifter?”

I shook my head. “Ain’t never seen a shifter that big. I mean, maybe a bear shifter? But it didn’t feel like it.”

Lunette looked at me skeptically. “What does a shifter feel like?”

I bristled. “What do you mean? It feels like a shifter. Different than a vampire or a mage or a parahuman. Everyone knows what they feel like.”

“They don’t,” Karhi said before Lunette could snap something back.

I blinked at him, eyebrows furrowing. “What?”

“I’ve suspected for a while, but yeah—Sloane, you’re a sensitive.”

That word jogged a memory I had forgotten I had. This wasn’t new information for me, but it had been so long since someone had named it that I took it for granted that other people could do it, too. “Oh, right. Y’all are blind.”

“Are you kidding me? She’s a fucking sensitive?” Lunette scoffed, looking me up and down. “I guess it makes up for the lack of any useful powers.”

“You know what’s also sensitive?” I sneered, stepping forward and letting my claws grow. “Your eyes, you bi—”

Karhi shoved us apart. “Fuck off, both of you. Sloane, go look in the buildings in the north. Lunette, you take the south. I’ll handle the west.”

To the east was just parking lots and train tracks.

I glared at Lunette, but I did what Karhi said and headed north.

Being back in Phoenix brought back a lot of memories. And a lot of them brought out the worst in me. I had learned years ago that picking fights with people who were trying to get a rise out of me was useless. But I had been out of Phoenix by the time I learned that. The scents and sounds here brought me right back to the worst times of my life—where I had been defensive and angry and would do anything to avoid seeming weak. Phoenix coupled with Lunette was probably one of the worst combinations for me.

I needed to focus on what I was doing.

A sensitive was someone who was more sensitive to magic. We could easily identify vampires, mages, shapeshifters, parahumans, and so-on. Depending on the degree of sensitivity, we could even identify the species a shapeshifter was. I could normally identify dog or cat or horse—but past that was a toss-up.

Being a sensitive had its perks. As I walked down the tiny streets between buildings, I could get a feel for the area around me, sensing where there was more or less magic. Phoenix had one of the highest population densities of magics in the US. There was always the faint trace of magic in the air.

There was even a huge, famous family of mages right in the city, the Praecantrix family. I didn’t know if they were one of the reasons behind the huge magic population, but at the very least, they were a big part of it. It was nine identical twins, three sets of triplets (I know, right?), and the parents. Rumor had it they were some of the most powerful mages in the world.

The buildings around me were maybe three or four stories tall, mostly brick, with boarded up or just straight-up broken windows. There was at least one “For Lease” sign on every wall of the buildings, and some boasted manufacturing space. Like anyone would have an interest in putting a manufacturing plant here.

The streets between the buildings were narrow, some barely more than alleys, with a car parked here or there. The gutters were littered with trash and the road was pale from years of use and stained from the cars that passed through. The sound of far-off honks traveled through the air, but nobody was close by. People didn’t really drive through here.

The early afternoon sun was warming up the ground, and I could feel the light on my skin, but the warmth was barely more than a whisper. Sometimes it was a perk, being unaffected by temperature. Like when it was too hot or too cold. But more often than not, I found myself thinking of it as something like a numbness to change. There was a piece I missed about being cold from the early morning and warming up with the sun.

At least I still felt water. Sometimes I liked to blast the cold in the shower and then turn it hot so I could feel that drastic change in temperature. It was nice.

I passed through the streets like a ghost, humans few and far between, listening and feeling around me. The ebb and flow of the city was constant, and the buildings were quiet.

Something prickly filled the air, and I rubbed my forearms as if cold.

I looked up at the building that had drawn my attention.

It was a corner building, the sides on the streets faced with orange brick, the other sides made of yellowing concrete. Most of the windows and doors on the first floor had been bricked over, and the front door was locked and barred. There was a sign that read “Historical Preservation Area” affixed to the bars.

There was a window on either side of the corner of the building. One of them was broken already. Judging by the glass still on the ground below it, it was a recent break.

I glanced around to make sure no one was nearby before leaping up to grab the windowsill and pulling myself up. I threaded myself through the broken glass and dropped to the floor.

I landed in a foyer, a rickety hostess stand in front of me. The stench of must and decaying flesh permeated the air. Some animal had crawled in here to die. At least, I hoped it was an animal.

Stairs led up in front of me, some of the steps missing. On either side of them were archways leading into other rooms. Something drew me to move to the room on the left.

Sunlight shone through one of the windows at the top of the room. The remains of wooden tables lay on the floor, small round things with rotting chairs. It looked like this had once been a dining room. I was in old China Town, so this probably used to be a Chinese restaurant.

Something told me to move to the door at the opposite end of the room. Because I trust my instincts, I moved towards it. Also, because I trust my instincts, I snapped off the leg of one of the chairs as I made my way over.

As I got closer, I realized that the door I was aimed for had a dark ring around the jamb. I smelled burnt wood and ozone.

I reached out for the doorknob and a zap of static electricity stung my fingers. I cursed, shaking my hand out. Was that magic? Had this been where Mikko had been held?

I was hesitant grabbing the doorknob this time but there was no discharge. It swung open on loose hinges and revealed the room beyond.

It was empty, wooden floors scuffed and well worn. Maybe it had once been a second dining room. There was a shattered window on one wall. The pungent scent of urine and blood soaked the air.

And the scent of Mikko.

I moved closer to the wall with the window, where the smell was heaviest. The wood was tan, and I could see dark spots on it.

Blood.

This had been where he was held. The floor and wall looked the same from the pictures Karhi had received, and I saw dark strands of long hair on the floor. It was heavy with the scent of laundry.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I jumped, my heart flying into my mouth. I cursed as I pulled it out, checking the screen on the front. I almost ignored it when I saw it was Karhi until I remembered I wasn’t doing that anymore. “Hello?”

“There’s nothing going on over here and Lunette doesn’t have anything. How are you doing?”

“I found it,” I said, pulling my free arm around myself to ride the adrenaline the phone call had stirred. “Building at the corner of Third and Buchanan. Fresh broken window. There’s nothing here, but I’m looking around.”

“Alright, we’ll be there in a minute.” He hung up.

Only the prickling of the hairs on the back of my neck and the faint smell of cologne warned me to duck before a two-by-four smashed into the wall right where my head had been. My phone clattered to the floor.

I popped back up, coming face-to-face with a dark-haired man the size of a fridge. It took me a split second to recognize him as one of the men who had been trying to get at Karhi at the brothel. I could see the whites around his eyes, and his nostrils were flared.

I found myself more confused and alarmed than scared, really. Taking in this huge man, a shifter, holding a piece of lumber, trying to . . . what, beat a fledgling to death?

“What kinda fuckin’ shifter tries to knock someone over the head with a piece of flooring?” I asked, holding my hands out in a what the fuck position.

He snarled, and fangs filling his mouth. His hands had claws where they held the improvised bat. He rushed me, raising the piece of wood over his head as he did.

I rolled on the floor, bypassing him and coming back up. He skidded to a stop, spinning to face me. His shoulders heaved with harsh breaths.

He came at me again and I rolled again. He swayed on his feet where he stopped. His turn back to me was slower this time.

“What are we doing?” I asked him, looking from him to the door I now stood by. “I can roll all day, but you don’t seem to be—whoa, buddy, you okay?”

He was shaking, and his mouth was wet. Too wet to be just normal spit. I could hear his heart and it was going a mile a minute. His pupils had dilated to consume his irises.

He dropped the bat, his hands shaking too much for him to keep a grip on it.

I stepped back uncertainly. Now was probably the time to bolt, but wasn’t I supposed to also ask questions?

He uttered a pained cry and dropped to the ground, shaking and convulsing. He let out choked screeches of pain before suddenly stopping.

His heart was still, his breath stopped. Dead.

“What the fuck?”

I spun to face Karhi and Lunette, barely keeping from lashing out at them in surprise. Lunette had been the one to speak, staring at the dead shifter.

“What happened?” Karhi asked me.

I shook my head, looking from him to the dead man. “He tried to jump me, but I dodged it. He tried another time, and then he just started shaking and then . . .” I gestured vaguely in front of me.

Lunette crouched down next to the body, turning him over and examining him. “Foaming at the mouth, too?”

“Yeah.”

“Hmm . . .”

“What are you thinking?” Karhi asked.

She shook her head. “This is familiar, but I can’t remember why. I need to do some digging.” She straightened up to face me. “Did you search the rest of the building?”

“No, I came in through the broken window in the front and came into here.” I looked around. “I don’t get it. Corvine said there were spells all over the place to keep her out. But I don’t see anything in here that looks like spell work.” Granted, I wasn’t super knowledgeable about wielding magic or how it worked.

Lunette walked over to the other two doors that I hadn’t gone through yet, going just through each door before coming back in. “Did you see the burn marks on the walls?”

I nodded.

“The spells were originally inlaid around the doors.” She looked up above us, towards the shattered window. “There’s burns around the window, too. That’s probably how Corvine got out.”

“Why are they burned?” I asked, glancing up at the window.

“When a spell is broken by a powerful force, like a bestia queen, it can overload the magical circuit, for lack of a better term.”

“Oh, like how when an outlet short circuits, sometimes it gets black around the edges?”

She nodded. “Corvine was too powerful for the wards to keep her out or in. I can’t see any of what the writing was before, so I can’t even tell what type of magic.”

“She told me that it was a battery of spells, some of which were to keep out the Fey, but they can mess with the bestia, too.”

Lunette’s gaze was still on the window. “I have some research to do.”

My phone buzzed where it still lay on the floor. I winced at how loud it was, bending over to grab it. It was Mira.

“Hey,” she said when I answered. “Mikko’s awake. He doesn’t have much to say, but he figured it would help to tell you and your sire if it helps your investigation.”

“My investigation?” How did she know what I was doing? I hadn’t even asked Karhi about it until we were too far away for her to hear it out of my head.

“I know you, Sloane. You want to know who did this. So, you asked your sire if he would help because he has resources we could never hope to have.”

I hated that she could peg me so easily. “Fine.”

“See you soon.”

I hung up.

“Take your fledgling back,” Lunette said, looking at Karhi. “I’m going to do some more searching around here. See if you find out anything from the boy.”

“You don’t have to talk about me in the third person,” I growled at her.

She ignored me, her focus already back on the burned walls.

“Come on, Sloane,” Karhi said.

I glared at Lunette before turning away. “Fine.”

Karhi Emelyn

Sloane pulled a battered man, presumably Mikko, out of the cab and thanked the cab driver in Spanish. She handed him a hundred-dollar bill before he drove away.

Mikko put his arm around her neck, and she took most of his weight for him.

The door to Mira’s house opened, and four people flooded out of the house—Mira, Genie, Frankie, and a black woman Karhi didn’t recognize.

The woman Karhi didn’t know, a shifter, rushed ahead of the others and when she reached Mikko, she put her hands on either side of his face. As she did, Karhi saw that where his right ear should be, there was only a gnarled, scarred stub of skin.

“Babe,” she murmured, searching his face. “What happened?”

Mikko smiled but it was tight and uncomfortable. “A lot. I’d really like to shower and go to bed, if we can do that.”

She kissed his forehead before pulling her hands away. She looked at Sloane. “I can take him.” Her tone and expression told Sloane she didn’t have a choice.

Sloane passed Mikko off to the woman—Annie, Karhi thought from things Sloane had said—and Annie slung his arm around her shoulder. Together, they headed into the house. Frankie followed them, hovering uncertainly, asking Mikko if he could get anything for him.

Genie and Mira stayed outside, and Sloane stepped to stand in front of them. As she did, two shadows separated from Mira’s house. One was a giant red wolf, the other the barrel-chested man Sloane had addressed before Corvine had come. Bell, Karhi thought his name was.

“What happened?” Mira asked.

Sloane shook her head. “Corvine found him. And then something came after us.”

Karhi had begun to move closer to the house when he had seen Sloane. Now he stood across the street, not bothering to hide himself. Two werewolves, a vampire, and a mindreader would find him in a minute. He would just be a quiet, unobtrusive presence instead.

Sloane told them about when Corvine had come out with Mikko, explaining what she had learned about his captivity (namely, nothing) and then when they had been attacked by the creature.

“What the hell was that?” Mira asked, glancing between Sloane and the two wolves. Karhi got the feeling she was reading their minds and seeing whatever had attacked them.

Sloane shook her head. “I’ve never seen anything like it before. Giant bearthing? Dunno.”

“Same,” Bell agreed.

“Did you talk to Mikko in the cab about what happened?”

Sloane shook her head. “He slept for most of it, using me as a giant pillow. He barely slept the past few days.”

“If I was getting tortured, I’d probably be the same,” Mira agreed.

Sloane grimaced. “Did you see in his head?”

She made a so-so motion. “I didn’t go digging, because I didn’t want to accidentally dredge it up for him when he’s so raw. But I saw bits and flashes. He was blindfolded for the most part, and no one ever spoke to him. They just beat the shit out of him when they felt like it.” She shook her head. “It doesn’t look like he got much about what was happening to him. They just kept him afraid the whole time, and he didn’t see anyone’s faces until Corvine rescued him, and she pulled his blindfold off. They made him put the blindfold on before anyone came into the room.”

“Great,” Sloane growled.

Genie signed something to both of them and Karhi noticed for the first time that neither Mira nor Sloane had been signing in front of her, but she didn’t seem to be lost. Was Mira relaying the conversation telepathically to Genie? Even if Genie was good at lipreading, it was usually only possible to get forty to fifty percent of the conversation that way.

Mira answered Genie out loud. “He doesn’t have anything broken or hurting in a way that makes me think he won’t just heal up. He seems okay.”

Genie nodded.

“I accidentally dislocated his arm,” Sloane winced, glancing at the house apologetically.

Mira shrugged. “Are you staying tonight?”

“He’s going to be out for a while, and I should probably get some sleep while I can,” Sloane replied. “You have a full house, so I’ll just head back to my motel room. Call me when he wakes up? I want to be there when he tells us the full story.”

Mira gave her a thumbs up and glanced at Genie. She signed something and Genie nodded.

Genie hugged Sloane before turning back to the house. Mira followed her.

That left Sloane and the two wolves.

Sloane looked at them and pointed at each of them. “You are going back on the back burner.”

Apparently, he hadn’t learned a thing from what Mira had told him earlier. Bell bristled. “Sloane, you can’t keep us waiting forever. You said—”

“I said we would talk. Didn’t say when. At least you know there’s an end to your waiting,” she shot back. Karhi felt the heat of the anger behind those words like a fire inside his own chest. He had felt more emotion from her in the past ten hours than he had felt from her in the past ten months. “You let me think you were dead for two years, Bell. You can wait a couple days for me to figure out who is trying to kill my family.”

Bell’s jaw clenched, and his hands balled up into fists.

Sloane smiled without an ounce of warmth. “What, do you want to argue with me? Emphasize how you’re my family?”

He didn’t have an answer for that, but his body language seemed to indicate Sloane had hit the right notes.

“Thought so,” she said. She turned her back to him. “Go fuck yourself.”

She glanced at Karhi as she walked to where his car was parked in front of Mira’s house. She pulled out the keys and said, “Come on.”

Karhi didn’t especially want to tag along with Sloane. But the rip current of emotions inside of her made him think that he should. He wasn’t worried that she was dangerous, but he suspected she needed something from him.

And honestly, the longer he could stay away from his hotel, with Ilona easily able to find him, the better.

He followed her and got into the passenger seat, not bothering to point out that this was his car, and he should be driving it. At this point, it was her car. She had stolen it fair and square.

Sloane let out a harsh, humourless laugh as she pulled out onto the street.

Karhi glanced at her, raising an eyebrow.

“I just can’t fucking believe that you, of all people, are the only person I can actually stand to be around right now.”

Karhi shrugged one shoulder, looking back out the front window. “Sometimes it’s easier to handle strangers than friends.”

She didn’t reply, but her uncertainty and anger tugged at him like annoying children.

“What did you want to ask me?” Karhi finally said when it seemed like she wouldn’t gather the courage to tell him why she had really wanted him to come with her. She was staring out the front windshield, navigating to whatever motel she was staying in.

She huffed a breath out through her nose. “Karhi . . . will you help me find whoever did this to my family?”

“If you give me a shred of context for anything that’s happening, maybe.”

She blinked in surprise. “You knew I was going to ask?”

“I knew you wanted something from me. I have five centuries on you, and it’s no secret that I’ve played detective for Ilona over the years. So, your question isn’t surprising. Especially because I’ve recently realized that you know a lot more about me than I would have thought three days ago.”

He felt her discomfort as his words hit her.

That’s what he had thought. “You knew,” he said.

“For fuck’s sake, Karhi. You called me Elizabeth the first night we met.”

Karhi looked out the passenger seat, suddenly too uncomfortable to even see Sloane in his peripheries. As he did, she pulled into the parking lot of a Super 8. “Yeah, well . . .” He didn’t have anything else to say in response. She was right and he didn’t have any excuses.

She parked and killed the engine. He couldn’t see her, but he felt her gaze like a pressure on the back of his skull. “Is that why you turned me? Because I looked like my grandmother?”

He shrugged, focusing on the numbers of the rooms in front of him. “Maybe? I don’t know, Sloane. The night I met you was a particularly bad night with Ilona. I was trying to avoid going out and getting high. So, I went to Swanskin’s and thought maybe I could distract myself with hooking up with someone. And then . . .” He didn’t know what else to say. They did what they did, and the next morning he woke up in bed with her in her turning coma. “I don’t know what you want me to say,” he finished lamely.

She wasn’t angry with him, which he hadn’t expected. He’d been actively avoiding thinking about how Sloane was Elizabeth’s granddaughter for months. He had mistaken Sloane for her when the first met, but after talking to her that night, he had just chalked it up to coincidence.

He had been horrified when he found out that was not the case after looking into her background more.

“I don’t really expect you to say anything,” Sloane said when the silence between them had become too loud. “I guess I just wanted to finally clear that air because I never acknowledged it. And it takes two to turn.”

He hazarded a glance at her, and her face and emotions confirmed that she wasn’t upset.

She was just tired.

“Yeah,” he said. “Thanks.” It didn’t take two to turn quite like she said, but it didn’t matter. They were okay.

It was rare for Karhi to feel embarrassed or awkward or sheepish. But Sloane made him feel like that way more than he was comfortable.

He was a bit soothed to know that he made her feel the exact same way.

But she was better at moving on from it than he was. “I’ll give you more context if you help me find out who did this to my family,” she said, finally meeting his gaze.

“You know that’s a pretty lousy bargaining chip,” he replied, cocking an eyebrow at her.

“Do you have anything better to do?”

“Find out who kidnapped me and tried to take me from the brothel?”

“I could probably help. I know a lot of people in Phoenix.”

He hadn’t thought of that. In fact . . . “Wait, you were the one who brought Luna to Madam Bovary’s.”

“I knew she was the only place in town that really did hookers and drugs. And her employees are all genders, which I knew would appeal to your pansexual ass. Plus, turns out I knew one of the women that work there, so that helped us get in easier.”

He considered it. “You grew up in foster, but you were mostly a runaway? Homeless?”

“Basically.”

It struck him that the thoughts of growing up homeless or being reminded of her childhood didn’t really seem to bring up any emotions for her. It was a time of her life that she seemed to accept. Sometimes she even looked back on fondly. Not all of it—not even most of it—but enough of it.

“Alright,” he finally said. “I’ll help you if you help me.”

She held out a fist to him. He peered at it quizzically for a moment before realizing that she probably wasn’t the type to shake hands.

He bumped fists with her.

“Cool,” she said. “But since we finally have like two minutes to not freak out about things falling apart . . . sleep?”

He agreed. “Sleep.”

They never talked about it, but Karhi appreciated that Sloane never questioned his fear of the dark. It didn’t matter that he could see through most darkness pretty easily. It didn’t matter that his sense of smell or hearing would warn him long before his sight did. It didn’t even matter that he was stronger than most things that would come after him.

The fear was that he would fall asleep in the dark and wake up to darkness he couldn’t see through. Because Ilona had done that to him so many times in the past.

He woke up suddenly, sitting straight up and gasping for air. Darkness spotted his vision, and he could barely see anything in front of him. Panic gripped him, and he clenched the sheets beneath him.

Something soft and smooth covered one of his bunched fists and cooling calm flooded him. It soothed the hysterical fear that had hold of him, and his vision cleared.

A shabby motel room. The faint stench of cigarettes. A broken TV that only played FX.

“Lay down,” a muffled voice said. “It was a nightmare.”

Karhi looked down to see Sloane with her head turned almost completely into her pillow, one arm under the pillow, the other next to him, her hand covering his.

Her eyes weren’t even open, and her voice was sleepy. Her hair almost completely obscured her face.

He went to move his hand, but her grip tightened. “Mikko, go back to sleep. It was only a nightmare, we’re here now. Bed is safe.” She pulled his hand until he had to lay back down or lose his balance.

Laying down, he bent his elbow, and she pulled his hand to her chest. “S’okay, Mikko. They’re not here.”

Mikko. How many nights had Sloane soothed Mikko back to sleep after nightmares? Were the nightmares from what happened to his ear?

He didn’t bother to argue with her. She was half asleep and her holding his hand to her chest was nice.

They had spent a majority of their cohabitation up to now arguing and fighting. From the first day she had been a vampire, they had argued and fought and ignored each other. They had spent as little time as possible together.

Except when he had needed someone.

He had been with Ilona twice since Sloane had become a vampire. Both times, she had beat him so badly that he had limped when he left her. It only took him a few hours to heal, and the minute he could walk on his own, he had gone straight to the Carlyle for blood from Azlea and Thirn, and then to the bar downstairs searching for anyone who had a fix.

And when the high wore off, and whatever sex worker was paid, and he had to crawl back home, Sloane had been there. She was there when he came back, barely even able to talk.

The first time, it took her a bit to understand. She had just been reading a book on the couch. She was confused when he came inside, aching from the comedown and half mad with exhaustion.

But she had felt his emotions. She had understood that Ilona had done something to him.

And she sat with him on the couch, holding his hand until the comedown was done. It had to have been six hours. She held his hand and read a book and didn’t say a word.

Then, when he wanted to sleep, she helped him into bed. She sat with him, reading her book, and left the light on. When he woke up, she had fallen asleep, upright, with her book on her belly.

The second time, she had been asleep when he came home. She was pissed at how much noise he made, but she had made him drink blood to flush out his system. When he was more sane, she dragged him into bed with her and held his hand while they fell asleep. She left the light on, even though she hated sleeping with lights on.

And she never talked about it. She never asked him questions. She never made him feel bad. She just cleaned him up, sitting or sleeping with him, and waited for him to feel better. She didn’t tell his siblings. She didn’t shame him. She just waited with him.

He had never really thanked her for that.

Sloane shifted next to him. He looked over to see him staring at his hand in confusion. “Why . . .”

“You kept calling me Mikko and told me to go back to sleep.”

She let go of him and sat up. “Time is it?”

The alarm clock next to him told him he’d gotten nine hours of sleep. “Ten.”

Thump thump thump. Someone banged on the door. “Karhi, I know you’re in there.”

It was Lunette.

“I’m gonna shower while you deal with that,” Sloane said, rolling out of bed and heading for the door next to the bed headboard. She pulled a duffel bag with her as she did.

He got up, pulling on the shirt he’d been wearing the day before that he’d thrown over the dresser at the foot of the bed.

He started to open the door, but before he could even get it fully open, it hit him in the knee, and Lunette pushed through. She sneered at the room and him, hands on her hips. “What the fuck is going on?” she demanded. “You keep hanging up on me and leaving me out of the loop. And then you ask me to look shit up for you.”

He hadn’t really asked her to look stuff up, she had mostly done that on her own. But if he pointed it out, the conversation would be much longer than it needed to be. But it didn’t matter. He had been blocking her out on purpose, even if he hadn’t really actively realized it.

“If I tell you, you’ll be implicated when Ilona finds out,” he said.

She gave him the finger. “And? I’ll already be fucking implicated for knowing where Sloane is, you dense fuck.”

He didn’t have a good response for that. “Uh . . .”

“Yeah, too fucking busy thinking about you being reunited with your little fledgling to realize that she puts us all in danger by fucking existing.”

The heat that burned at the back of his neck was sudden and unexpected. Before he could think about what he was saying, he barked back, “Sloane isn’t a danger for existing. Ilona is. She’s the problem, not Sloane.”

“Sloane isn’t helping,” she muttered under her breath.

“And neither are you,” he snapped. “Lunette, did you come here to be a dick or—”

“How long have you been doing heroin?”

The words died in his throat, and he stared at her. “What?”

“Why did your fledgling know you were doing it—had taken care of you with it—and I find out, basically by fucking accident?”

Lunette was so much shorter than him, but glaring up at him, he felt almost her height. He felt small. Her glare was powerful, filled with anger . . . and hurt.

He had hurt her.

He blinked. “Um . . .” He clicked his tongue against his teeth.

“I know we don’t see each other a lot anymore, but you used to tell me everything Karhi. We lived together for over a century. Why did I find out from her?”

He remembered thinking that Luna was made of barbed wire and ice the day before.

But really, she was made of dried out brush. She was brittle and if you put a flame too close, it incinerated her. She would burn out with too much heat and neglect. And she would take everything down with her.

But if tended to, she could be brilliant and luscious and full of life.

“I’m sorry,” he finally said. “I’m sorry for cutting you out and acting like this.”

Luna flushed, looking away from him. A lot of people thought vampires couldn’t blush because they didn’t have any blood or were too dead to flush. If that was the case, what was the point of all the blood they drank? Blood didn’t stay in their stomachs.

“I thought you wanted an apology?” He held his hands out in confusion at her averted gaze.

She turned away from him. “Yeah, well . . . don’t do it again.”

He rolled his eyes. She was still shit at taking apologies gracefully. “Do you want to know what’s going on?”

“Literally that’s all I’ve asked for the past two days.”

He sighed, sitting down on the bed. Even when he was trying to be nice to Lunette, she was still an asshole.

TW on child abuse

Sloane Briallen

My relationship with Mikko had always been complicated.

For a lot of people, trauma hardened them. That was how Annie and I were. We kept everything inside and didn’t let anything get to us. We were prickly and hard, and we kept everyone at an arm’s length. It was how we had bonded. You can’t get hurt if your shell is airtight.

Mikko was soft and squishy and sensitive. He cried at Disney movies. He liked to snuggle unprovoked, unbothered by my elbow in his ribs. He hid behind me and Annie whenever there was anything serious going on. He trusted people.

I was an asshole the first time we met.

It was an alley in downtown Phoenix, close to Van Buren Street, early in the morning. Dawn was starting to creep up and sex workers were wrapping up their night to go home to sleep the day away and wait for nightfall. I’d seen a few drug dealers out and about too, but they were going home as well.

I frequently took this alley as a shortcut from Van Buren to a bus stop that would take me back to Mira. I was meeting Annie for the ride back.

The buildings on either side of me were mostly offices—bail bondsmen, lawyers, accountants. This was just on the edge of downtown before things turned seedy. It probably said something that there was a bail bondsman next to a lawyer’s office.

Industrial-sized dumpsters were lined up along the walls down. It wasn’t the best smell, but it didn’t smell like decaying food like it did outside of restaurants. It was just a vaguely harsh, moldy smell.

He was on a damp cardboard box next to an overstuffed dumpster, obscured by a couple bags of trash that hadn’t fit inside the dumpster. He’d tried to hide, but when you’re homeless, you could tell the signs of other homeless people.

He was barely more than skin and bone. He looked older, maybe thirteen or fourteen, but he was probably younger. Homeless kids always looked older than they were. He was probably younger than me. Maybe ten.

He was asleep when I found him, curled up on a bed of flattened cardboard boxes. He had dull, tar-colored hair in matted patches all over his head.

I kicked the dumpster next to him, a clanging noise cutting through the muted city noises around us.

He jumped, sitting up suddenly. As he did, I noticed scarring on one side of his face, by his ear. I couldn’t see past the matted hair too well, but the purple scarring was angry against his seashell-colored skin.

He locked dark eyes with me and tensed. His hands clenched, and his shoulders shook. It was pretty warm outside; he wasn’t shaking from the cold.

He reminded me of a small dog, like a chihuahua, shaking in fear as he stared at me. Anger flared in my chest. I wanted to kick him. I hadn’t even done anything or said anything, and he was already shaking? I wanted to give him something to be afraid of.

“Why are you shaking?” I sneered at him, stepping forward and looming over him. “What’s there to be afraid of?”

He stared up at me with wide, frozen eyes. I could see him weighing his options. Did he run and risk me chasing him? Did he risk aggravating me? Or did he stay here and take whatever shit talk I would dole out?

I feigned a kick at him, and he flinched away violently. My disgust just rose up.

“Ain’tcha gonna fight back?” I demanded.

He hazarded a glance from behind where his hands shielded his face.

I bent down and grabbed him by his arm, hiking him up to look at me. He hissed out in pain as I did. “Stop shaking, you pussy!” His arm was hard beneath my grip, just bone.

He still didn’t say anything, staring at me with wide eyes, trembling.

“Sloane!”

I glanced back to see Annie walking from the same entrance I had come from.

“What’re you doing?” she wanted to know, looking between me and the boy.

“He won’t talk and he’s shaking,” I replied, shooting him a disgusted look.

Annie sighed. “Sloane, leave him alone.”

“Why?” I’d have though Annie would be the first to jump at this opportunity.

“Just leave ‘im alone.”

I rolled my eyes and let go of him. He slumped back down on his butt, still shaking like a leaf.

Annie crouched down in front of him. “Are you okay?”

He blinked at her. The shaking eased ever so slightly, which just served to piss me off more.

“Annie—” I started.

“Shut up, Sloane,” she cut me off, giving me the finger. She leaned over. “Come on.” She took his hand and helped him up.

Looking between the two of them, frustration and embarrassment warred inside of me. I had thought Annie would be on my side. But she wasn’t. And now I felt like an asshole.

“Whatever,” I growled, turning from them to continue down the alley.

I was so mean to him in the first few months I knew him. He hardly talked and he stuck to Annie like glue. I was twelve when we met. I didn’t understand how he could be so soft and gooey. He was afraid of everything, absolutely insufferable.

It wasn’t until he started doing coke when were just out of our preteens that anything changed.

It’s funny. People don’t realize how often it happens that kids get hooked on drugs. Young kids. People won’t believe you, but I’ve seen nine-year-olds smoking weed and doing crack. It’s more common in poverty.

It had been weeks since I had seen him. The coke habit had started maybe a year before. Annie, Mikko, and I all tried it at a party and while it hadn’t stuck with Annie and me, Mikko had been hooked immediately. He would disappear for days at a time. Even without Mira’s ability to read minds, we knew. We’d seen the behavior before in Mira’s mom.

He lied to us, borrowing money with no intention of paying it back. I even caught him taking some of Mira’s mom’s jewelry to hock it. It wasn’t until he pawned a necklace Mira had gotten from her grandmother, breaking Mira’s heart, that I lost my absolute shit at him. He hadn’t come around since.

Annie was worried and dragged me into searching for him with her. There had been a recent rash of coke ODs because of something they were cutting the coke with.

I was the one who found Mikko at a party at his drug dealer’s house doing a line of coke off a counter littered with beer cans. He had been so high he hadn’t even recognized me. I hauled him out of there and told his drug dealer if I ever found out he gave Mikko coke again, I would break him in half.

Little Ray had been stupid enough not to take my threat seriously. He walks with a limp now. I’m not above using a crowbar to get my point across.

I didn’t want Annie finding him, and I didn’t want Genie or Frankie seeing him like that. Genie and Frankie had just started hanging out with us a few months before, and Frankie thought Mikko was the sun. They tagged along with him, and it pissed me off, but I’d already taken a liking to Genie, and Frankie was alright.

I didn’t take Mikko home. I got him some water from a convenience store and took him to a park not far from the party. It was dark and quiet. A couple of teenagers further down were playing on the jungle gym. I sat with Mikko on a bench, waiting for him sober up.

A coke high lasts only about fifteen minutes. And then after that your brain feels like it’s melting, and everything in your body is on fire. The aftereffects of cocaine are what make coke junkies do so much of it.

On the comedown, he tried to leave to go back. When I forced him to stay, he scratched the ever-loving shit out of me, and I had to pin him to the ground.

When he was finally sober and had drunken all of the water I got him, he was more human. I was able to let go of him without him trying to run.

He apologized for everything, but I wasn’t going to let it pass. And then he told me the story of his parents.

It’s not necessary to explain the things they did to him when he was growing up. It was too horrifying, even for me, and I’ve seen a lot. Starvation, neglect, physical abuse, mental abuse—the usual. It was all there. Until he was ten. That was when they cut off his ear in the middle of the night while they were high out of their minds, thinking they could sell it for more junk.

The state took him from the hospital. And in a lot of ways, that just made it worse. He was taken from his parents and put in a foster home. A rare foster home with warmth. A good foster home with loving, kind parents.

He lived there for a year. For a year he was safe and at peace. He was loved.

That was the worst part of it all. The story was already awful, but the fact that he had a sweet, caring family made it tragic. Like most kids with living family, he had been in a reunification program—the goal of which was eventually to go back to his parents. He hadn’t known that. He had been too young to understand, really. And why would he? They had cut off his fucking ear. In what world should he have gone back to them?

When his parents got back custody because they played nice, he no longer had a beautiful, kind family. He was back in the same, terrifying place. Being treated exactly the same except now, they made sure the bruises were covered. They didn’t do anything that got him hospitalized. They just got close enough.

He ran away two months later. He lived on the streets for three days before foster took him back. His parents lost custody for good, and foster put him in a home. Of course, he wasn’t put back in the same one. This new home wasn’t beautiful and loving. He was neglected by this family. They didn’t hurt him or starve him; they just ignored him. They had three other foster kids and only cared about the welfare check.

Mikko ran from there. He decided he was better off on his own.

We found him a month later, and from there, everything was different for him.

I never apologized to Mikko for my behavior. I just changed it. I was nicer to him. Annie and I began to spend all of our time with him to get him clean. Frankie found out and instead of rejecting Mikko, he insisted that he help get Mikko clean. Frankie was an angry kid, angrier than the rest of us, but he had hope beneath the anger.

It took months to get him clean. Two of us were with him at all times, sleeping in shifts and making sure he didn’t get to his supplier. He had two slips, but we kept him on the wagon after that.

During the time it took to get him clean, I was taken away from them for two months from November until the beginning of January. I turned fifteen during that time period. I came back, and Mikko was clean.

During the time I was gone, I was assaulted. It was why I came back. Mira found out, and Mikko was the only one there when she found out.

Mira was the one who convinced me to go to the free clinic to get tested for pregnancy and STDs, but Mikko was the one I allowed to come with me. He came, and he was there. He held me when I cried when the doctor told me I had gonorrhea and chlamydia.

Mikko and Mira were the only ones who ever knew I got the STDs. They kept it a secret and I never told anyone about it except for my therapist.

He stayed with me when I got shots and made sure I took my antibiotics to get rid of the infections. After I finished my treatment, he promised me he’d never get high again. If I could get through the sexual assault and suffer through a battery of tests, shots and oral medications that were daily reminders of what I’d been through, he could stay clean.

Mikko wouldn’t break his promise like that. Of all people, I should have known that. I had betrayed him.

I looked up at the sky. I could feel fear welling in my chest, making it had to breathe. It had been forty minutes.

I should have come back after Mickey and Bell disappeared. I should have come back and moved in with Mira and gotten a full-time job. I should have been here for them. I shouldn’t have gone on my selfish way and moved to St. Paul. If I had come back, I wouldn’t be a vampire.

But you would be dead.

I shook my head. I didn’t want to listen to that voice in the back of my mind.

You were dying when he sired you. He told you.

I shook my head again. I didn’t want to think about it. Things would have been different here.

Would they?

Yes. They would have been different. I wouldn’t have smoked so much, and nothing would be as it was. Annie would be okay, and Mikko wouldn’t have been kidnapped. I didn’t know about Genie and Frankie, but at least if their adoptive parents had died, I would have been here for them.

But I hadn’t done any of those things.

It was getting darker and darker as we passed midnight. The fear was growing in my stomach, getting heavier and heavier. What if she couldn’t find him? What if the hairbrush was useless?

Or even worse . . . Corvine wasn’t always the most reliable person. The auditory hallucinations made her forget things. She probably hadn’t even gone after him.

Mikko was probably dead.

There was a snap through the air like a firecracker going off, and I smelled ozone. I jerked around to see Corvine hunched over, chest heaving. Smoke rolled off her shoulders in waves, and her clothing was shredded. Her skin, where I could see it, was smeared with blood. I wasn’t sure if it belonged to her or not since there weren’t any open wounds that I could see.

She held Mikko in her arms. His clothing was in tatters, his skin mottled by cuts and bruises. Blood, dirt, and sweat matted his hair. One of his eyes was black, the skin around it purple and yellow, and he had cracked lips that were bleeding. If I hadn’t known it was him from the beginning, I don’t think I would have even recognized him.

But he was alive. He was breathing hard, and I could hear his heart racing, but he was alive.

I took him from Corvine almost before I knew what I was doing. “Mikko,” I whispered. My eyes stung. “Mikko.”

His head turned to me, squinting through his swollen eye. “Sloane?”

He was awake. I hadn’t expected that.

“Mikko,” I warbled. “Oh, my God. You’re alive.” The tension and fear in my stomach eased, the heaviness lifting. It didn’t completely abate, but it was enough that I almost felt dizzy.

“Sloane,” he said. He reached up and put his arms around my neck. He turned his face into my shoulder. “I knew it’d be you,” he whispered. It was so quiet and muffled in my shoulder that I almost didn’t hear it. “I knew you’d be the one to find me.”

Tears prickled at my eyes, and I looked up at Corvine. I could hardly speak over the lump in my throat. “What happened?” I choked out.

“He was inside of a metal room spelled with ridiculous amounts of magic to keep him in there. I had to kill a bunch of vampires, shifters, and a mage or two. But I got him.”

“Why are you smoking?”

“They had some magic on there that isn’t very friendly to the animalia,” she said. She held her hands up in front of her body and shook them out. As she did, her clothing changed. She still had black jeans and a long-sleeved black shirt, but they were free of rips. The only hint of what had happened was that she was still steaming.

“Why would there be magics against the bestia?” I asked. I tightened my hold on Mikko.

She shook her head. “There are some wards against fey magic that work on us. I think it was just a general battery of spells to hold someone inside.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. “Why did they have Mikko?”

“I didn’t stop for tea and cookies to ask the kidnappers what their plans were,” she snapped, shooting me an annoyed look. “I got in and out, and that was it. If you wanted me to ask questions, you should have said that before. As it is, I’m going home.”

I clenched my teeth. Right. I hadn’t been specific in my request. “Okay,” I sighed. I unclenched my teeth. “Thank you so much, Corvine.”

“We’re even,” she replied. Her gaze was like a laser, cutting through me. My skin crawled.

“Yeah.”

“For now,” she said.

Then she was gone.

I looked down at Mikko. His grip on me was tight.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“They didn’t break anything,” he said, finally looking at me. Those eyes. They were the same dark brown from when I had first met him. Scared and covered by hair.

I let out a shaky sigh of relief. “God, I was so scared.”

“Probably not as scared as me.”

I laughed bitterly. “And I was so angry with myself. I wasted so much time.”

“You thought I was using again.”

I wanted to deny it. I wanted to lie to him.

But I couldn’t do that. Not to him. “Yes. Fuck, I wish you’d been using. It would be so much easier to deal with.”

He shook his head. “Not for me. I preferred the pain. I’m clean, and I’m going to stay like that.”

I bit my lip.

“Put me down.”

“Are you—”

“They didn’t break anything. I ain’t stood up in days. They kept me tied up.”

I put him down gently. “It’s Tuesday. Going on Wednesday.”

He looked at me. “October?”

I nodded.

“So . . . they only had me four days.” He looked up at the dark sky. “God, it felt like forever.”

“I’m sorry,” I blurted out. “I’m sorry for when we were growing up and I was so mean to you. I’m really sorry. I never apologized and I thought if I didn’t—”

He held up a hand to stop my word vomit. It worked. “We’ve always been okay. Shit happens. If I was upset about things from years ago, I doubt we’d be friends.”

I bit the inside of my cheek, the ache in my throat growing. He was right. I still felt heavy, though. “I’m sorry I thought you were using.” Tears spilled over.

“I can’t blame you for thinking I was using,” he said, giving me a small smile. “Because the reality was a lot fucking weirder.”

I laughed, my breath hitching. I wiped the tears out of my eyes. “I’m sorry,” I hiccuped, tears streaming down my face.

He looked at me. The smile was still there, sad and gentle. He wiped away the tears before wrapping me in his arms and pressing my head into his shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault,” he murmured into my hair. “Am I bummed you thought I was using? Yes. Am I surprised? No. You and I are okay.”

I hugged him back and it wasn’t until he gasped that I let go. I had hugged too hard. “Sorry,” I whispered, wiping more tears from my face.

“Enough sorrys,” he groaned. “Enough tears. We’re good.”

I nodded. I resisted the urge to say sorry again. Mikko was the only person who could elicit so many apologies all at once. And he was the only one who could lift my guilt.

I felt a little lighter.

“Alright, let’s try this,” he said. He tried to take a step forward. He wobbled and I caught him before he fell.

“I might need some help,” he admitted.

“No shit.”

He put an arm around my shoulder. He was shorter than me, so I had to stoop to meet him.

“You smell terrible,” I finally said, wrinkling my nose. He still smelled like laundry . . . but maybe molded laundry.

He snorted. “I’ll make sure to tell my captors next time that you disapprove of their hygienic policies.”

I smiled.

He leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “Thank you,” he murmured.

I put my arm around his back to help support him. “Yeah.”

A musty stench hit me, and I froze. It was far beyond how Mikko smelled. This was strong and reeked like an unwashed animal.

“Sloane?” I heard Mikko’s heartbeat speed up, and he clutched me tighter with the arm around my shoulder. He sensed it, too.

I didn’t answer. My muscles itched to bolt.

A growl rumbled right behind me, and I just barely avoided claws that swiped down on my head. Mikko cried out as I shoved him away.

I spun away and had a split second’s view of red eyes and black fur before my head cracked against asphalt. Pain exploded behind my eyes.

Claws tore into my neck, heat tearing across me, and I finally reacted. I kneed the creature where I thought its stomach, or balls, or something would be. It didn’t pull away, but I heard a snarl of pain, and the pressure eased from my neck. That distraction bought my enough time for me to lace my fingers together and hammer-fist down onto the first bit of the creature I could hit.

I got lucky and hit something tender. It screamed out in pain and let go of me.

My head spun but I rolled to my feet. Move or die.

I finally got a look at what had attacked me and wished I hadn’t.

It was the biggest fucking animal I had ever seen, towering over me like a pick-up. It was like a bear with a pointed snout, standing on two heavily muscled front legs and two small, thin back legs. It looked like a terrifying version of that dog that used to give Tom Cat shit in those Looney Tunes shows. Its mouth was filled with rows of fangs dripping with saliva and blood.

Thick, coarse black hair brushed over heavy muscle. I had hit its trapezius, a tender spot no matter how much muscle was there. With the vampire strength, no matter that it wasn’t a full vampire’s strength, I had injured it, and it favored that leg now as it moved, staying out of arm’s length.

That was fine. My training was more Taekwondo than boxing. I had long since learned how to use my height to my advantage.

I heaved out a kick that caught the bearthing off guard and hit it square in the tender sides of its nose. It stumbled back, wailing in pain.

I turned to run, but I wasn’t fast enough. Snarling, it launched itself at me. I leapt into the air to avoid it, but it sunk its claws into my leg and brought me back down. I hissed out in pain, a high-pitched, breathy scream.

The thing bore down on me, snout broken, blood gushing freely from its nostrils. It howled a strangled cry of pain and rage and batted me to the ground. Pain seared through my arm as I scraped against asphalt.

Fuck.

I was dead.

Something jerked me from behind, and the bearthing and I both howled in pain. The bearthing had a claw in my leg that tore through me as I moved backwards.

The bearthing reared up on its tiny little legs and shook its whole body. As it moved, I saw what had pulled it away.

Bell was on its back, choking it.

I looked up to see that Mickey had been the one to grab me.

“You okay?” Mickey asked.

“Mikko,” I choked, looking to where I had thrown him. He was on his side on the ground, trying to get up. But his shoulder was unnaturally hunched. Had I dislocated it?

“Go,” Mickey said, gently pushing me towards Mikko. “We got this.”

I stumbled on my injured leg as he pushed me, but he was already running to the bearthing. His muscles shuddered beneath his skin, and he leapt at it. When he came down, he was a wolf the size of a motorcycle, covered in russet brown fur. His clothing was in tatters on the ground from where he jumped.

Bell stayed in his human form but together, they took out the thing in no time. They tore it apart like it was a third the size of what it really was.

I crossed the distance between Mikko and me, limping the whole way, and knelt down beside him. I was careful not to put too much pressure on my leg, even as I felt it healing. “Are you okay?”

“Dislocated shoulder,” he grunted, flopping onto his back. “What the hell just happened?”

I shook my head. “Maybe the assholes that had you sent something out after you?”

“It didn’t go for me. It went for you.”

I shrugged, holding my hands up as I did in a gesture of ignorance.

He glanced past me to where the wolves were fighting the bearthing. “Is that . . . Mickey and Bell?” He had met them a few times after I had been adopted.

“Long story.”

“Does this story also include why you’re a vampire?”

I froze. What?

“Sloane, I’m not an idiot,” he said, raising an eyebrow at me. “I knew something was up when you held me without an issue. I’ve always weighed more than you and you used to struggle giving Genie piggyback rides for too long.”

I couldn’t find the words to reply to that. He was right. But I hadn’t expected him to pick up on it so quickly.

The bearthing collapsed with a final death rattle, leaving Mickey and Bell standing. Mickey’s fur was slick with blood and Bell had healing claw marks on his arms.

“What was that?” Bell asked me, looking between me and the bearthing.

I shook my head. “I don’t know. But we need to get Mikko back to the house before anything else comes after us.”

Mikko piped up. “Can we pop my shoulder back in first?”

I looked back at Mikko. “Yeah, Bell, can—”

Mikko shook his head. “I’m sure Bell is very nice, but I would really rather you do it.”

His words hit me in the stomach like a truck. I hadn’t necessarily expected hostility from Mikko once he knew I was a vampire, but I also hadn’t expected him to treat me the same. I had expected . . . well, I wasn’t sure. But not this.

And it made me feel warm in a way I hadn’t felt in a long time. It made my eyes sting and a lump settle in my throat.

He still trusted me.

I pressed my lips together and nodded. I didn’t think I could speak without crying again.

I steadied him against the ground and took his shoulder.

“On three,” he said. “One, two—fuck.”

I popped the shoulder back into place before he could say three.

“Bitch,” he huffed shakily. But there was a smile on his face, and it helped ease the lump in my throat and the sting behind my eyes.

I helped him up. “This is what you expected anyway.”

He didn’t have a rebuttal for that.

“How did you find me?” I asked Bell.

“Mira asked us to go after you just in case. We caught your scent while we were searching for you.”

I would have never thought to do that, but I was grateful that Mira had. I was almost always ready for a fight, but this time I hadn’t been. “Thanks,” I finally said. “I’m not sure I would have gotten out of this without you.”

He hazarded a slight smile, which wasn’t common for him. Bell mostly scowled.

He was offering an olive branch.

I wasn’t quite ready for it, but I also didn’t want to continue in this weird, awful limbo. Everything had been an absolute trainwreck since I had come back to Phoenix, and I hated it.

Finally, I said, “Let’s go. We . . . can talk later.”

Mickey’s tongue lolled out in what I think was a grin and Bell nodded, the smile still there. “Sounds good.”

I stood up. My leg had healed enough that it didn’t hurt to put weight on it. I moved to pick up Mikko, but he knocked my hand out of the way.

“While I love being carried like a princess,” he said, giving me a look telling me how much he absolutely was not loving it, “it is not the most comfortable position. May I suggest a cab?”

I smirked, shaking my head at him. “Sure.”

Karhi Emelyn

With Sloane disappearing, Karhi stepped off of Mira’s property immediately. Mira had already told him earlier that day that he wasn’t to step on it, and the glares of the werewolves in front of him reinforced that he shouldn’t overstay his welcome. Or lack thereof.

On the sidewalk, he still didn’t know what to do. He was annoyed that Sloane had disappeared (though arguably, it wasn’t her fault), but he also didn’t want to leave before he saw her back.

He was pretty sure Sloane had gotten blood earlier in the day when they were with Lunette, but it probably didn’t hurt to go get her more. It would take him away from here and would give him something to do. He started down the street, passing by a black car as he did.

He should also probably call Lunette.

“Bell, I swear to fucking god, if you try to go after her and demand answers right now, I will cut your fucking dick off.”

But he could stay to listen to this.

He paused just past the tree line that separated Mira’s house from the next.

“Mira, she can’t keep us waiting forever,” Bell spat back at her.

“You fucking broke her, you selfish piece of garbage,” Mira snarled at him. “You two disappeared on her eighteenth birthday, and suddenly reappear without even so much as a call? Have you even been fucking paying attention?”

Bell didn’t have a reply for that.

“She is not the person I used to know.” Mira’s voice almost hitched as she said that.

“Yeah, she’s a fucking vampire.” Bell didn’t catch that Mira was upset beyond being angry at him.

“That’s your fault, too.”

Actually, Karhi was pretty sure that was his fault, but he wasn’t going to say anything.

Bell spluttered.

“She’s barely laughed since she’s been here,” Mira said. “We are in a grim dark place, but Sloane’s humour has always been grim and dark. But she doesn’t even seem capable of that right now. And how long has she been like that?”

Karhi had never really thought of Sloane as someone who laughed a lot.

“And you’ve lived with her for almost a year,” Mira muttered.

Karhi wasn’t surprised Mira was listening to his thoughts, but he wasn’t thrilled about it either.

“What?” Bell said.

“Quit lurking,” Mira said.

Karhi knew that was aimed at him. He turned around and moved back into their sight.

Bell bristled at seeing Karhi. Karhi noted the Mickey barely seemed to react to his presence at all. He tensed, but his body language wasn’t antagonistic towards Karhi. He just looked sad.

“Why are you still here, bloodsucker?” Bell hissed at him.

“Because he’s curious and also has an answer to my question. Karhi, would you describe Sloane as a happy person?”

“I would not,” Karhi replied.

“Is she funny?”

“Not particularly.” He was beginning to see she had more of a personality than anger and apathy, but it was slow to reveal itself.

Mira glared at Bell and Mickey. Bell was doing his hardest to look anywhere but at Mira. Mickey stared at the ground. “You two fucking did that,” she snarled at them. “Sloane is one of the funniest people I’ve ever met in my life. And it used to be so easy to get her to laugh. But now? Her depression? That’s on you and the choices you made.”

Surprisingly, it was Mickey, not Bell who responded. “You don’t know what we had to do,” he murmured. He still didn’t look at her.

“I don’t give a flying fuck what you had to do,” she snapped back at him. “You don’t abandon family, Mickey Blackthorne.”

Mickey didn’t have an answer to that. He was tense, his gaze hard on the ground. Karhi could read the anger in his features, but it didn’t seem to be aimed at Mira. It was aimed inward.

“If you want to be useful and regain her trust, go find her and watch out for her,” Mira told them. “Whatever’s going on, it won’t hurt her to have backup. But don’t fucking demand forgiveness.”

“We don’t know—”

“Supposedly you’re werewolves. Y’all are trackers. Go fucking track her.”

Mickey and Bell exchanged glances before stalking off. Bell glared at Karhi one final time for good measure before disappearing down the street.

Mira huffed out a sigh through her nose. “I have a headache now.”

“I’ve heard Advil helps,” Karhi said, turning from her.

“You’re getting her blood?”

He glanced back at her, nodding.

“Good. She’s always been bad about eating or drinking.”

That made him pause. “Wait, even as a human?”

She nodded. “Food is scarce when you’re poor. And I don’t think it ever really left her.”

That . . . actually explained a lot.

He paused for a moment before saying, “I don’t know a lot about what’s going on—Sloane has never mentioned Mickey and Bell. But I’m not sure if you can reasonably blame everything she’s going through on them.”

She put her hands to her head and massaged her temples. “You’re probably right. They were just the final block that tipped the tower. But it’s easier to blame them than a lifetime of disappointment and bad shit.”

He bit his lip for a moment before turning from her. “I’ll be back.” As he did, for the first time he registered the black car parked in front of their house. It looked very familiar.

He went around to the back of the car. The plates were Arizona plates and there were bumper stickers on the back of the car. On the side, he saw the passenger door dent from when Sloane had been reckless about parking it.

“This is my car,” he said.

“Sloane is very good at hotwiring.”

He glanced at Mira. “Yeah.” He didn’t even have his keys to reclaim it. But it didn’t look in bad shape. Hadn’t Sloane said it was uninsurable?

“She probably had the VIN scrubbed off,” Mira volunteered.

“Stay out of my head,” he growled, turning and leaving.

“Nope!” she called after him.

Where St. Paul had Swanskin’s, Phoenix had Lazarus. Primarily, Lazarus was a place for magics to party and drink and do drugs. But, if you knew who to ask, you could find harder things, like offers of power and wealth—always more of either than was safe, and always at a price that wasn’t actually worth it.

The building itself was little more than an enormous pink warehouse with bubbly neon letters in rainbow colours saying Lazarus.

It was early enough that there was no line to get inside. The front door was propped open with a cinder block, a single male vampire standing outside, hands crossed over his chest. He glanced at Karhi as he walked up. “Welcome back,” he said.

Karhi let out a surprised thank you as he walked by. Welcome back? Karhi hadn’t been to Lazarus in several years. Did that greeting mean anything specific, or was that just something the bouncer said to everyone who came through? This was the only place that any magics in the city would go to be free from human scrutiny.

A concrete hallway that reminded Karhi of something he would see in a baseball stadium led from the front door into the club. He could feel a dull, reverberating sound in his chest and throat as he walked.

The door at the end of the hallway led into a cavernous room. A bar easily the size of half his apartment took up the back. The rest of the room stepped down in tiers, with booths and tables on the top tiers, couches and chairs on the lower tiers, and a chequered dance floor on the final tier. A stage rose up at the end of the dance floor, a single drum set sitting at the back of it. The room was filled with growling, industrial music playing from speakers built into the walls.

There were a handful of patrons, some sitting at tables, some sitting at the bar. Three bartenders worked to fill drinks and take orders at the counter while servers drifted around the room.

“Hey, Karhi,” one of the bartenders said.

Karhi blinked, looking at the bartender and furrowing his eyebrows. He was a tall, muscular man with a handlebar moustache and shoulder-length dreadlocks. Karhi had met him a few years back when he was in Phoenix for Ilona.

“Sid . . .” Karhi said, moving to stand at the bar. “How are you? It’s been, what, eight years?”

Sid eyed him, raising an eyebrow. He was drying out a shaker. “You were here last night, man.”

Karhi blanched. “I was?” He didn’t know how else to finish that. He wasn’t comfortable admitting something like this to someone he barely knew, but he also needed information on where he had been the night he lost his memory.

“Yeah,” he said, setting down the shaker. “You came in around two or three AM? Had a couple drinks and then left with one of the blood workers.” He pointed to a small grouping of plush chairs and couches on one of the tiers closer to them. Men and women sat or lounged on those couches, chatting to each other or texting on phones. Their outfits were flashy and revealing, most of them wearing high heels and crop tops. One of the men wore bondage gear and talked to another man with peacock feathers in his hair.

Karhi’s brow furrowed. “Do you know who?”

He shook his head. “It wasn’t one I was familiar with. She was new, maybe. You can ask Larry.” He pointed to the man with peacock feathers in his hair. “He’s the one who keeps track of them.”

“Thanks,” Karhi said.

“No problem, man. If you don’t remember, you must’ve gotten pretty fucked up.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Karhi made his way to the blood workers. He could differentiate the regular sex workers from the blood sex workers by the bites on the blood workers’ arms and necks. The man with the peacock feathers had three bruises just barely obscured by cover-up on his neck.

As he walked towards them, a hush passed through them. People saw him and they’d trail off into silence. Karhi clacked his tongue piercing against his teeth nervously.

One whispered something Karhi couldn’t catch above the bass to the peacock man. He looked up and when he saw Karhi, his eyes narrowed. He stepped in front of the others to meet Karhi. “Why are you here?” he demanded.

Karhi paused. “What?”

“I know it isn’t an explicit rule, but it is generally understood that when a vampire kills a blood worker, they aren’t welcome back.”

Karhi froze, staring at the man. His mouth went dry. “Killed?” he whispered.

“Don’t play dumb. You left this morning with Rhee, and she’s found in a dumpster six hours later? Completely drained?” He glared at Karhi.

Karhi blinked, staring at the man. It was like he had punched a hole in Karhi’s chest. “No! I haven’t killed a human in four hundred years.”

“Well, maybe you got too fucking high with her, and you killed her. You were asking if any of us did dope. And you were practically hard when Rhee told you she did.” He shook his head bitterly. “She was so new, too. She had only been here a few weeks, but she was doing so well for herself. Fucking disgusting.” He spat at Karhi.

The spit landed on his cheek, but he hardly registered it.

The woman he had picked up the previous morning had been found dead in a dumpster? But . . . Karhi would have never done that. He hadn’t killed a human in centuries. And he certainly wouldn’t have dumped her like garbage even if he had. Someone his age—there would be proper channels to report the death and make reparations to the loved ones of the deceased.

Straight-up killing humans wasn’t as accepted as it used to be. It was sloppy and displayed a lack of finesse and grace. And while using the proper channels wasn’t required, it was expected from any vampire who wanted to maintain their reputation. If Karhi had killed a human, it would be expected that he would follow the rules.

He turned to leave and felt eyes on him from above. He looked up to where there was a balcony around the edge of the room, leading to private rooms. He froze.

A pale vampire stood at the railing, in front of a door. He was tall and wiry, his hair like white ice. He locked glacial blue eyes with Karhi.

When their eyes met, whispers like the rustling of leaves filled his head. He could just make out words behind the rustling, but he couldn’t pick anything out.

Karhi looked away and wiped his face. He had to get out of here.

He had originally come here to get blood for Sloane. But all thoughts of that fled from his head as he fled from Lazarus.

He didn’t want to go back to the hotel and risk running into Ilona again. Not when he knew about Sloane, and Ilona could find out about it. Instead, he moved back closer to Mira’s house. Not exactly on her block, but close enough that he could see if Sloane came back. He could see Mira’s front yard from where he stood beneath a broken light post. It was dark enough on the street that no one would be able to see him from the house.

Here was probably the safest place to be. Ilona wouldn’t dare pull a move so close to the White Psychic’s house. Hazel would be only too happy to return the favour.

He called Luna and she answered on the first ring.

“What the fuck do you want?” she growled.

“Help,” he answered honestly.

The pause on the other end told him that she hadn’t expected that answer. “Help for what?”

“Apparently I was at Lazarus last night before I was . . . taken, or whatever. And the woman I left with turned up dead this morning.”

“Dead? That doesn’t sound like you.”

No, it sounded like Lunette, but he wouldn’t say that. “No,” he agreed. “I need to figure out what happened to me last night.”

“Or this morning. Or this afternoon.”

“Luna, one thing at a time,” he growled. Everything today had been so much of a blur that he hadn’t been able to actually sit down and process anything. His kidnapping (if that’s what it had been?), the men who had tried to take him from the brothel (related to the kidnapping?), or Sloane’s reappearance (probably not related to the kidnapping).

“Where’s that bitch now?”

He refrained from asking if she was talking about herself. “Luna—”

“Fine,” she snapped. “I’ve been looking into that house you escaped from anyways.”

He blinked. “What?”

“After that bitch split my head open, and you were so fucking helpful in telling me what’s going on, I needed something to do to keep from killing you. When we drove to the psychic’s house, you described where you woke up. I took your description and went searching for the general area. I caught your scent and followed it back to the house.”

He wouldn’t comment on it, but this was actually the only way he knew Lunette gave a shit about him. She would tell him to go fuck himself while also actively searching to help him. Carry and Onyx, and even Zeren to an extent, were all very expressive and affectionate. Over the years, it had worn him down and he had begun to reciprocate it. Even expected it.

But Lunette’s entire exterior was made of barbed wire and dry ice. It hurt to touch her. Oftentimes, it hurt to talk to her. She took brutally honest to mean that she would beat him over the head until he bent to her.

She had learned a lot from Ilona over the years.

Silence had fallen between them and Karhi realized she was waiting for him to acknowledge her. “Yeah,” he said.

“It was a small, three-bedroom house. Some furniture in the rooms, but it was pretty obvious that no one had ever lived there. No food in the kitchen, just some plasticware and paper plates and cups. It was a safe house or something.

“There was no one there. I could smell blood and bleach—someone had cleaned up after the shifter you killed. I saw where you broke through the window, since that hadn’t been fixed yet. But otherwise, there was nothing. Not even anything in the trashes.”

He hadn’t expected Lunette to find anything, but he did still find himself disappointed at the lack of new information. “Is that it?”

“It’s owned by a shell corporation, but I haven’t been able to figure out where the money is coming from. The doors were reinforced with heavy steel, and those bars over the windows could withstand a beating from the outside if necessary. But obviously not from the inside. Whoever owns it is definitely used to dealing with magics, but maybe not vampires since we can cut through steel. I’m digging deeper but it’ll be a bit before I figure it out.”

He nodded even though she couldn’t see him. “Thanks, Luna.”

“What is that brat doing?”

“Do you actually want to know, or are you going to just yell at me about her some more?”

“You could answer, or we can talk about how you turned a nineteen-year-old.”

There were no good ways to get out of this conversation. But . . . Lunette had had a lot of slip-ups with turning humans over the years. As far as he knew, they had never been underage, but she had been in trouble a lot with the vampire courts.

“Do you know the consequences?” he finally asked.

Lunette made a noise of disgust in the back of her throat. But she did answer. “It depends,” she said. Her voice sounded tight, like she was just barely holding back another growl of irritation. “Nineteen is a grey area with humans. Because humans’ age of adulthood is generally recognized as eighteen. The vampire courts generally frown on turning below twenty. It’s illegal below eighteen, but eighteen and nineteen are grey. Basically, as long as the fledgling doesn’t pull any shit, you should be fine.”

That was a minor relief. It hadn’t really been a huge concern of his, but because of the questionable legality, it had been niggling at the back of his head. “Thanks,” he said.

“Did you turn her at nineteen or eighteen?” she asked.

“Nineteen,” he said. In fact, it had been her nineteenth birthday the night he had turned her, he later found out.

“Oh good. Because if you had turned her at eighteen, you have to keep track of her until she turns twenty.”

His brow furrowed. “What?”

“A sire staying with their fledgling for a year after they turn is a general rule. But if you turn them at eighteen, you have to stick around until twenty, because you’re kind of their guardian. It’s this weird . . . not law, but kind of unspoken rule.”

He hadn’t known that.

“And incidentally, fledglings under twenty aren’t really subject to the same rules as the rest of us. They’re still underage. They don’t get punished for things the same way overage vampires do.”

He leaned against the lamp he had been standing next to. “Like what?”

“Eh, violating rules in neutral territories like the courts or violating hospitality rules like they have at big festivals or parties or whatever. Most of us would get put to death. They get a stern warning, and their sire gets fined.”

“Fined?”

Lunette chuckled darkly. “Money or service or any other sorts of things. I heard one time that a sire that had pissed off the courts had to serve as Aurelia’s hand maiden for like a decade after her fledgling killed someone at a Yule festival.”

Karhi glanced up at the sky thoughtfully. He couldn’t see any stars, just darkness. A gentle breeze brushed his skin.

“Karhi, why don’t you know any of this shit?”

“Because I haven’t sired hundreds of children,” he replied coolly, clicking his tongue against his teeth.

She replied with something not physically possible.

“I don’t have tentacles,” he replied distractedly, something popping into his mind. “Lunette, how normal is it for fledglings to forget to feed?”

The pause he got in response told him that she hadn’t expected that question. “Uh . . . not at all. Why?”

“Sloane forgets frequently. I’ve had to open a vein more than once to feed her. And then, afterwards, she drinks two or three bags of blood.” He didn’t want to tell her that Azlea and Thirn told him to ask because he was still trying to understand what the hell had happened with them.

Lunette cursed. She sounded . . . impressed? “How is she still alive?”

“I don’t know. I spoke with Mira, and she said, with the way they grew up, Sloane went without food more often than not.”

“Hmm.” He heard her scribbling something down. “Yeah . . . that could be it. Big influences can carry over into vampirism. For example, someone who spent a lot of time trying to be invisible as a human could have an ability to—”

“Turn invisible?” He had never heard of that as a vampire power, only a paramortal power . . .

“No. Vampires don’t develop powers like that. No, they could make themselves easily overlooked as a vampire. They could be in a group of people, and the next day, no one in that group even remembers they were there that night.”

“Or someone who spent most of her life dreaming and imagining a better life would wind up being able to make illusions as a vampire?” Onyx had spent her life locked up by her father because of her albinism. She’d had to find ways to entertain herself.

“Yes. Sloane’s power may not have manifested because the whole time it’s just been incredible thirst control.”

He nodded thoughtfully.

“Anyway, where is she?”

He heard a car door slam just as he caught the scent of burnt meat and sulphur on the wind. He looked up to see a taxi in front of Mira’s house. Sloane was already out of it, by the door next to the curb. She opened it and reached in to help somebody out.

“Gotta go,” he said.

“Karhi!” Lunette protested. “What the—”

“Call you later, bye.”

Sloane Briallen

It would start with a crow. It was the only way I knew how to get to Corvine.

Fortunately for me, they were everywhere, and it only took a few minutes to find one once I started looking. It was perched on a broken neon sign advertising a pawnshop.

I launched myself into the air, moving as fast as I could. The bird barely had time to register that I was coming at it before I had grabbed it off the sign. The crow squawked, driving its beak into my collarbone where I cradled it to me.

I swore, landing on the ground before darting into the closest alley. I didn’t want people to see me yelling at a bird. It wouldn’t be weird in this part of town, but I still didn’t want the attention.

The crow squawked and beat its wings against my hands, pecking to get me to let go. I caught its wings and held on down by its stomach to keep it from pecking. The feel of its glossy feathers beneath my fingers made me want to shudder. I had always had an image of feathers carrying disease, and that hadn’t changed since I died.

I moved us back to the alley from which I had originally spotted it. Doing this next part always made me look batshit, but it was the only way to do it. Corvine had never taught me her stupid summoning spell.

Tucked away in the alley, hidden behind dumpsters, I moved the bird close to my face but not close enough to peck my eye out. I could feel its little heart thumping hard enough to beat out of its chest.

“Corvine!” I shouted at the bird. “Hello! Anyone in there?” I hoped she was attuned to crows like she was ravens.

The bird stilled, staring at me. I didn’t know if it recognized its master’s name, or if it was scared that I was yelling at it. Crows were smart, but I wasn’t sure if they were this smart. Oh God, I hoped it didn’t poop in my hands. That was the last fucking thing I needed right now.

“Corvine!” I yelled. “Come out! I need to talk to you!”

“Sloane!”

I looked up.

Karhi stood next to the dumpster I hid behind, staring at me with wide, confused eyes. I could feel the judgment emanating from him. He thought I’d finally cracked.

I dismissed him, shaking the bird. “Corvine! Get your ass over here. I need to talk to you.”

“Sloane, what are you doing?” Karhi stepped toward me, but I took a step back.

“Karhi, stay away from me.”

Before he could reply, the glossy feathers pressed hard into my hands and I started, dropping the bird.

The bird didn’t hit the ground. A man did.

He towered over me, enormous black wings rising high above him. They enclosed his broad shoulders, cocooning him.

He had dark umber skin, as if dipped in the same inky blackness of his wings. His hands and feet were talons, like a bird. His feet talons were longer than my forearm and I would definitely not want to see them at work. They could probably disembowel a rhino. While flying.

An enormous bird skull sat on top of his head as a hat, the beak thin and sharp enough to skewer a fly. Long dark hair flowed from beneath it, framing the hardened face of a warrior. A skirt of black, brown, and white feathers encircled his waist.

I had never met any of the corvae, Corvine’s warriors, but I’d seen her with them. I knew what they looked like.

“What the fuck?” Karhi whispered.

I ignored him. “Do you know who I am?” I asked the birdman.

He bowed his head deeply. I had to take a step back, so he didn’t accidentally kill me with the beak of his skull hat. When he spoke, his voice was deep and melodious, something I wasn’t expecting. Their language, Carlahck, was an ugly series of harsh squawking and cawing. I had expected his speaking voice to be very similar. “Yes, Sloane Briallen. Of course. We all do.”

That would make things so much easier. “I need her,” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “I think that was made clear by how violently you shook me.”

I eyed him for a second. I felt no shame, but something was clicking together.

“Were you watching me?” I asked. The chances of having come across a crow that wasn’t just a regular crow were a little too low for this to have been coincidence.

He didn’t say anything. His gaze was dark and intense.

Right. That wasn’t the point.

“Tell her she can repay her debt to me,” I said.

His eyebrows rose but he nodded. “I will go to her now and tell her.”

“Thank you . . .” Did the corvae have names?

“Korbin,” he supplied.

Of course, it was. “Thank you, Korbin. Tell her I’ll be at home. And tell her I needed her ten minutes ago.”

“Yes, Sloane Briallen,” he said. He bowed to me again before he took a step back. His wings opened out and up. They beat down and he launched into the air, disappearing from sight.

I turned to Karhi, who was staring up at the sky, mouth agape. I could feel the vibrating mass of confusion, awe, and disbelief in his head.

“Are you going to continue following me around?” I asked him.

He looked at me, the awe fading from his face into hard lines of annoyance. “What the fuck is going on?” He scowled, an expression that was so blessedly familiar on him that I almost laughed. Nothing in the past two days had been familiar.

The humor disappeared just as quickly as it had come. Fine. We needed to do this. “Keep up,” I said, before bolting past him. He followed me, no problem.

“I grew up here,” I said. “This is where my family lives. And someone has been trying to hurt them. That guy you have pictures of?” I ignored the guilt that bubbled up as I said that. There was time to deal with that later. There was time to deal with everything later. “He’s been missing for four days. And I didn’t go looking for him because . . .” The guilt came back up, like acid reflux this time. It burned the back of my throat, and I couldn’t say anything else.

“Because?” Karhi prompted.

I pursed my lips angrily and shook my head. “I thought he had tanked his sobriety and was on a coke bender from the stress of everything else that’s happened to our family.” The feeling of shame was bitter and harsh in the back of my throat. I tried to swallow it down, but it remained.

“And who is Corvine?”

“Bestia queen. She owes me a favor.”

He cursed under his breath.

“What?”

“Carry and Onyx were right.”

I hadn’t expected they would guess Corvine was a queen . . . but I guess if it was anyone, it would have been them to guess.

“Why does she owe you a favor?”

“Something about breaking curses. I’ve never really followed why, she just does.” I waved my hand dismissively. “Why are you here?” I was much ore interested in that, though I had a sinking suspicion I knew why. Lunette had already told me that she was looking for me.

“The Samhain festival.”

Yeah, I had guessed. The Arizona Samhain festival wasn’t the biggest Samhain festival, but it was up there.

“We were called here to attend with Ilona. She’s looking for you.”

I could feel the fear that crept into him as he spoke. But the adrenaline and focus for finding Mikko was a solid barrier and kept the fear away from me. “To torture me?”

He glanced at me for a moment. I could feel the war inside of him to answer truthfully and to . . . shield me? That didn’t sound right.

“Why do you care about protecting me?” I asked. He had never had that instinct before.

He sputtered. “I—I don’t care about protecting you.”

“The war between telling me and lying to me in your head says otherwise,” I replied. I just narrowly avoided a car as we crossed the street, traveling way too fast. I heard tires squealing and shouts of surprise and dismay.

He curled a lip in a sneer. “I just don’t think anyone should have to go through that. Whatever.”

I had always known he felt like that. I had felt his disdain for Ilona along with his simultaneous anxiety at doing anything to displease her. The fear was palpable when she was even brought up. But there was something more to it. I could feel it beneath the embarrassment and feigned disdain.

I glanced at him for a moment. Was there . . . it felt like admiration. “Wait . . . do you actually like me more now that I stole your car and completely fucking fooled you into thinking that I was a vanilla human when I was alive?”

His eyes narrowed but I had hit the nail on the head.

“Karhi, what the actual fuck is wrong with you?”

It was ridiculous. Everything was so hard and heavy. I was so fucking scared for Mikko that I couldn’t even be scared for myself. But this—this was a welcome relief. The eye of the storm. The flush of embarrassment I felt from him when I called him out was a wonderful bit of levity in the middle of the worst week of my life. He didn’t really answer, just grumbled something unintelligible.

Okay. I could fucking do this.

“This is your brother that’s missing?” Karhi asked after we passed a couple streets in silence.

I made a so-so motion. “Not by blood. But we grew up in foster together. We were both chronic runaways. Frankie and Genie, I told you about them finding their parents dead. But on top of that, Mikko went missing this week. And I found Annie late last night, barely breathing and covered in blood. Mikko was the only one left I hadn’t found, and I thought . . .” I trailed off. I didn’t know how to finish the sentence. I thought what? He was high somewhere? He was dead somewhere from a high? I didn’t know, but I had been too afraid to look. “They called me to come back. They needed help.”

Annie had been right. Mikko hadn’t skipped out on them to do coke off someone’s counter somewhere. He was still clean. I felt awful for doubting him, but at the same time, I actually felt worse knowing the truth.

“Why did it have to be him?” I murmured. At this point I was just talking to avoid being left with my own thoughts. “He had it the worst. I mean, yeah, we were all beaten a lot. Any one of us, we were in our fair share of abusive foster homes. One guy beat me with a belt once. But—”

“Wait,” Karhi interrupted.

I looked at him, furrowing my brow. “What?”

“Are you telling me this to avoid feeling guilty?”

I blinked. “What?” That hadn’t been what I was expecting. I had been expecting outrage, shock, horror—people always wanted to focus on the pain of being raised in a shitty system if I brought it up. People loved trauma porn. It was an easy way to avoid what was really bothering me.

“Using the bad shit that happened to you in the past as a way to distract from how you’re feeling now—I fucking invented that shit, Sloane. I have five centuries on you. You’re going to have to try a bit harder.” He gave me a condescending look, rolling his eyes.

I glared at him. “Like you even want to hear about my feelings.”

“Well, no. But come on, try harder.”

I didn’t have an answer for that. But weirdly, his nonchalance and outright mockery was actually helping. I hadn’t been called out like this in years.

And . . . he knew it. I could feel his satisfaction at making the tension in my shoulders ease just a little bit.

Finally, I said, “I hate being able to feel your feelings.”

“Back at you, babe. But you and I can sit down one day and get fucking wrecked and see who can tell the worst story with a straight face.”

I glanced to see his smirk. “No heroin,” I said. “I don’t get fucked up like that.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Alcohol or weed?”

“I feel we can do both.”

He laughed.

When we arrived at Mira’s house, the door was already opening. Mickey and Bell stepped out as we stepped on her front walkway.

Right. Them.

The initial shock at seeing them had worn off. And while I wasn’t looking, it had been replaced with anger. Because in the back of my head, I had finally put together that they had been alive for two years and had never come looking for me.

Anger was easier than pain and I embraced it.

I held up a hand to them. “I do not have the ability to deal with you yet.”

“Sloane, we need to talk,” Bell said, fists clenching at his sides. The muscles in his shoulders strained against his shirt.

“Bell, if we do this right now, I may tear you’re fucking arm off,” I smiled without any humor. “I don’t have the time or energy to deal with one of your temper tantrums. At least this time, I acknowledged you’re alive. Now go fuck yourself.”

It was easy to focus anger and just anger on Bell. I avoided looking at Mickey because my feelings with him were more complicated. I had never been able to stay angry with Mickey. And moving on from anger would mean I would have to focus on the betrayal from both of them, and now was not the time.

Karhi broke the awkward, angry silence I had created. “Sloane, why are we here?”

“We’re here because this is home,” I answered. My original plan had been to walk into the house from here. But Mickey and Bell being here made it that much harder.

“Home?” I could feel his confusion. “With the White Psychic?”

I didn’t give it a moment’s hesitation. “The who?”

“Move,” I heard Mira say from behind Mickey and Bell. She appeared from between them, wiping wet hands off on her pants. “I go to the bathroom for one fucking second and this shit.” She looked up at me. “You don’t have to keep up the act, Sloane. I met your sire earlier today.”

“What?” I demanded. “Why the hell would you two meet up?”

A strong feeling quenched my indignation—horror. It wasn’t mine. I looked at Karhi to see him staring at the ground with wide eyes. “Ilona . . . asked me to pay my respects to her because she had a contract with Queen Hazel.”

“She knew,” Mira said.

“That bitch,” Karhi growled. “She knew about your relationship with Sloane and used me as a fucking puppet.”

“Wait,” I interrupted, staring at Mira. “You have a fucking what?”

“Yeah, I signed a contract with Hazel like two months ago. Amos hired a lawyer for me and came to the negotiations,” she said, waving her hand like it was no big deal. “I didn’t agree to anything that I was uncomfortable with. Basically, we’re in a truce and they can call on favors from me or vice versa. We both reserve the right to say no.”

I blinked, staring at her. “Mira, what the fuck?”

She didn’t have a chance to answer. Another voice interrupted.

“We will deal with that later.” A cool wash of energy hit me.

I looked up to see Corvine standing at the edge of Mira’s lawn. She looked like a teenager in a pair of black jeans and a long-sleeved black shirt. There was a faint, hazy aura around her.

“Corvine,” I said. A bit of the knot in my stomach eased.

“Dealing with whatever you’re talking about is a problem for another time,” Corvine said dismissively. “We have other work to do.” She addressed Mira. “I need something from the boy. Hair would be the most preferable.”

“I have his hairbrush.” Mira disappeared back into the house.

It was still weird to me that everybody had been living with Mira.

“Korbin had to explain to me that you saying you wanted me ten minutes ago didn’t actually mean you wanted me in the past,” Corvine said. “That’s why it took me so long.”

I forgot. Corvine didn’t always understand hyperbole.

Mira came back out with the hairbrush. Corvine held up a hand, and the brush lifted from Mira’s hands and threw itself to Corvine. Animalia associated with animals that could fly had a specific proficiency in telekinetic powers.

Corvine looked at me. “Are you coming?”

I nodded. “Yeah.” I walked over to her and took her hand.

“Sloane—” Karhi said, taking a step to follow me.

I never got to hear what he wanted to say because Corvine pulled me into the sky.

It was always a disorienting feeling, flying with Corvine. I hadn’t done it much, but when I had as a human, she moved so fast that I couldn’t keep up. But now that I was a vampire, able to process thing so much faster, I actually saw as we moved.

Buildings and houses rushed below us. City lights rose up and swallowed the crisp night. The smell of exhaust and metal permeated the air.

And then we were floating above the city. Corvine let go of my hand, and I stayed in the air. It was the weirdest feeling in the world. I felt completely weightless but at the same time, I remained upright. Nothing supported me, but I was standing.

For about a minute.

Then I was rotating backwards.

“Uh, Corvine,” I said when I was halfway upside down.

Corvine flicked her hand at me and something righted me and kept me there. It felt like a block or something against my shoulders and ankles.

The hairbrush was a small plastic thing wound with fine, dark hairs.

Corvine held it out in front of her in her right hand. She held her left hand over it and began to murmur. It sounded like English, but I couldn’t pick up the words.

Mikko’s black hairs were wound into the plastic bristles on the brush. They started to glow. I felt the discharges of magic from the brush, and Corvine stopped murmuring. I hadn’t seen a lot of magic in my time, but I knew a bit about how blood or hair worked in a spell. It could be used to track someone.

Corvine held the brush out in front of us and moved it slowly around. It reminded me of that scene from The Princess Bride when Inigo asks his father’s ghost to guide his sword to find the secret door in the tree.

Then we were moving forward. We didn’t stop until we were by the mall, on the other side of town.

Corvine’s brow furrowed.

“What?” I asked.

“There’s a cloaking spell. It’s telling me he’s in four different places at once.”

“Corvine, how—”

“Does Mikko speak any other languages?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “Why?”

“I’m doing the spell in English because he speaks English. It helps to filter out through the rest. And because this city primarily speaks English, it also helps connect the spell to the city, also filtering out other influences.”

“Well, he knows sign language.” I thought she need a spoken language.

“Right,” she said. “Right.” She shook her head. “I don’t know it.”

“I do.”

She regarded me for a second before saying, “Put your hand on the handle.”

Her hand was cool as I covered it with mine.

“Now. You want him more than anything right now. Focus on that desire. Focus on it, and sign what you want to do.”

The levy I’d put on my guilt broke. If I had searched for him sooner, called Corvine sooner, maybe I would have spared him from the torture. If I hadn’t dicked around on it, too focused on him on a coke bender, maybe he would be here. It was all my fucking fault that he had been gone for so long, and I needed to find him.

Corvine stiffened beneath my grip. Holding out my free hand, I signed, Find Mikko.

The brush jerked away from us, and my heart flew into my throat. We were flying forward and then down.

The only thing that kept us from crashing to the ground was Corvine. She slowed us before we hit, and we alighted gently on pavement.

We had landed in the Phoenix Warehouse District close to where I had found Annie. There were a lot of brick buildings and empty parking lots. We were in one such empty parking lot.

“Uh . . .” I looked around. This couldn’t be it.

“I know where he is,” Corvine said, pulling her hand from mine. “I’m going to get him. I brought us here, a couple blocks away, so when I came out with him, they wouldn’t find you.”

I blinked. “You know where he is?”

“I do. I’m going to bring him out.”

“I want to—”

“No,” she cut me off. “You’re not coming with. This will be faster and easier because I won’t have to worry about you.”

Then she was gone without a word, disappearing into the air.

I scowled. I hated Corvine for leaving me behind, but she was right. She didn’t need to worry about my sorry ass. And I had known her long enough that I knew she wouldn’t back out of her agreement.

I’d wait.