Inked

Chapter 1

According to Mark Twain, in a notebook entry dated in 1897, time is atomized, broken into infinitesimal fragments in which moments that have been lived are forgotten and without value, while moments that have not yet been experienced do not exist and are of no importance. Only the present, the immediate, has significance; time is isolated, time is discrete. Even memories, hardwired into the brain to give dimension to the temporal, are fleeting.

Because we die. Because each life is a single conscious moment, burning.

Lost, in time.

There were no zombies at the party. I would have been happy to find some. If nothing else, the small talk would have been less insulting. Nor would I have been as tempted to shove an opera singer over the railing of the yacht.

“But my dear, you look so cultured,” complained Madame Borega, loudly enough that heads turned to stare. “What do you mean you’re from Texas?”

Her affront was palpable, her distress audible in the faint tremor of her rich vibrato vowels. Texas, apparently, was apocalyptic. I might as well have told her that I was a killer—and that the two tiny demons hiding in my hair would be more than happy to set her face on fire.

Both of which were true. But she didn’t need to know that.

A gentle hand touched my elbow. I looked up to find Grant beside me, leaning hard on his cane. His gaze was faintly amused, but darkly so, and he settled his attention on Madame Borega with a smile that held an edge.

“Wonderful performance last night,” he said in his deep rumbling voice. “Your Aida was a joy.”

Madame Borega lowered her gaze, smiling—but, before she could thank him, or demure, or tell Grant that he was a hot, hot former priest and she wanted to pull a Thorn Birds on his ass, he added, “But frankly, Suzanne, I was shocked to learn that you were using an enhancer.”

The woman froze, staring at him. A deep crimson flush stained her décolletage and rose into her face, all that red visible beneath the heavy pale cake of her makeup. I thought she was embarrassed, but then her lips tightened and her eyes hardened, and it was like watching a skunk lift its tail.

“My voice,” she said, “needs no enhancement.”

“I’m sure it doesn’t,” Grant said, in the most conciliatory tone imaginable. “I just thought, perhaps, that you had been ill. Using a microphone is nothing to be ashamed of, which is what I told Roger Breckin over dinner.”

Madame Borega’s gasp was so violent, this time people did more than turn their heads. Conversations stopped. Drinks were put down. I held myself steady in the three-inch heels I had been wobbling in all night, and casually rubbed the back of my neck. A small hot tongue rasped across the back of my hand.

“You told Roger…” began the opera singer, touching her throat. “Oh, my God.”

And with that, she fled—in fits and starts, stopping every few feet to stand on her toes to scan the crowd. Grant made a small humming sound, slid his large warm hand around my waist, and guided me in the opposite direction. His limp was more pronounced than usual. I kept my steps deliberately short, pretending it was the heels that were making me careful.

“I’m no opera expert,” I said, twining my fingers through his, “but I think you just ruined that woman’s night.”

Grant was taller than me even while stooping over his cane; a ruggedly handsome man with brown hair brushing the broad shoulders of his tuxedo, dark eyes keen with grim humor. “Roger Breckin helps finance the Seattle Opera House. He’s one of the richest men on the West Coast. He’s also Susan Borega’s benefactor, but his standards are exacting. One hint that her voice needs a microphone to fill the hall he paid for, and she would be ruined.”

“Ah. But at dinner we were seated with a Watanabe and Anderson. No Breckin in sight.”

“Funny how that works,” Grant replied, and tightened his arm protectively. I bit back a smile, and glanced over the railing of the yacht. I meant only to look at the water, still unused to living close to the sea, but instead spied three demons being dragged through the cold dark ocean like body surfers, their claws lodged in the outer hull.

Zee, Raw, and Aaz. Steam rose from their small angular bodies, along with bubbles and frothing foam. Red eyes glinted like rubies shot with fire, and when they saw me observing, I was given three vigorous thumbs-up signs. My boys, rocking out. I had vague childhood memories of them watching Flipper on old hotel televisions—that, and Muscle Beach Party with Annette Funicello, who they still thought was hot. All they needed now was sand, shades, and some chocolate-covered surfboards to eat over a bonfire, and their fantasy would be complete.

I flicked my fingers at them in a subtle wave, and two small voices began humming inside my ear, long bodies coiled against my scalp with a subtle sinuous weight that still, after all these years, made me want to pat my head to reassure myself that no scales, tails, or snouts were sticking out of my hair.

I forced my hands to stay still, relying on faith and trust. No one else could see Dek and Mal. I might feel them, but the two demons hidden in my hair were only partially in this dimension, bodies resting here and elsewhere, lost in some mysterious realm that all my boys traveled like armored skipping stones.

My protectors. My friends. My family, bound to my blood until I died and passed them on to the daughter I would one day have. Just as they had been passed on to me.

Grant peered over the rail, choked down a quiet laugh, and then turned to scan the crowd. Watching auras. Reading every guest’s darkest secrets with nothing but a glance. For a long time he had thought he suffered merely from synesthesia—a cognitive peculiarity allowing him to see sound as color—but he knew differently now.

“Maxine,” he said, speaking my name softly, so no one would hear him. I had used an alias all evening, but I missed being myself, hearing my real name. “Thank you for coming with me tonight.”

I gave him a wry look. “And let you face the hyenas alone?”

He smiled, but it was tense, and I could not help but notice how he was careful to take the weight off his bad leg. His grip on the cane was a little too tight. It had been a long night standing, or having to sit with his knee bent. Bone did not heal well when crushed, but Grant never took anything stronger than Ibuprofen—and for an old injury like his, that was nothing.

Better pain than the alternative, though. For both of us, control was paramount. I might be dangerous, but so was Grant. More so, maybe.

I followed his aimless gaze, taking in the after-dinner party. We were on a luxury yacht, cruising around Elliot Bay. The sun had been gone for hours, and I could see the glittering lights of downtown through the far windows, glimpsed around men and women who dazzled almost as brightly. This was not my kind of crowd. Not Grant’s either, though he moved among them with an ease that I envied. I had always been an outsider, but for once my feelings of isolation had nothing to do with not being human. I simply was not human like them.

Seattle’s elite. Software moguls, Boeing executives, famed novelists and musicians, sports stars and movie stars; old money, new money, more politicians than I could shake a stick at; as well as one former priest who was a celebrated philanthropist—and me. His date.

The last living Warden of a multidimensional prison that housed an army of demons waiting to break free and destroy the earth.

But tonight I was in a dress. First one I had worn in years. And since it had been a long time, I had decided to make a statement. Deep neck, no back, short as hell. Bright red. Long black hair loose, faintly curled. Good thing this was a night event, or else I would have had to make adjustments to the wardrobe, what little there was. No one but Grant and a handful of others ever saw my skin while the sun was up. Safer that way.

Few ever saw my right hand, either, but tonight was another rare exception. I glanced down at the smooth metal encasing several of my fingers, veins of silver threading across the back of my hand to a shining cuff molded perfectly to my wrist. Not quite a glove, but almost. Bound so close to my flesh and the curve of my bones and joints that sometimes it seemed the metal had replaced flesh.

The armor was magic, or something close. Bound to me for life. And though possessing this…thing…had proven useful in the past, the metal had a bad habit of growing. I usually wore a glove to hide it—wore gloves anyway, during the day—but this was a good night to test an old theory: that most folks would accept most anything strange as normal, because the alternative simply could not be imagined.

I had not been proven wrong. Magic had become nothing more dangerous than jewelry. This was Seattle, after all. If you didn’t have some kind of piercing or body art, you practically couldn’t get service at local coffee shops.

“Did you find any sponsors for the shelter?” I asked, as a leggy blonde strolled by on the arm of a giant whose face I recognized in a vague, sports star sort of way. A member of the Seattle Seahawks, maybe. He stared openly at my breasts, and then my face—but did not appear embarrassed until he glanced sideways and found Grant frowning at him.

“Several,” Grant said, still watching the football player. “Not much hard cash offered, just goods and services, which is all I was really after. I’ll probably have to sell one of the Hong Kong apartments, but it’s near the Peak. Even in this market I shouldn’t have trouble finding some tycoon willing to lay down thirteen million.”

“Right,” I said dryly. “Small change.”

“Whatever it takes.” Grant gave me a grim smile. “I doubt my father expected that his money and property would be used like this when he left it to me.”

“You make it sound as though he would have found it dirty. There’s nothing shameful in keeping a homeless shelter afloat, or helping people.”

“I know,” he said quietly, still watching the crowd. “But I don’t like the attention any more than you do.”

True enough. Grant did not need donations to keep the shelter going, but there was little wrong with getting things for free, or involving the private and public sector in charitable works. Unfortunately, that meant events like this, where his looks, history, wealth—and how he was spending it—had made him a minor celebrity.

That was also why, over the past eight months of our relationship, I had declined attending other black-tie events that Grant had been invited to. Cowardice, excused as self-preservation. I was afraid of people asking too many questions. I was unused to attention. Not accustomed to being noticed, most certainly not for being on the arm of a man.

A man, I had been told, who had never once in five years brought a date to these events. Which, given what I knew about Grant, was not much of a surprise.

But it did make me stand out.

And that, as my mother had always said, was a good way to get dead, and fast.

The dinner cruise docked an hour later. Every bone in my feet felt broken, and my soles burned. I hobbled down the gangplank, fighting to maintain my dignity. Grant was having his own difficulties.

“A long hot bath,” I muttered.

“Long hot night after that?” he replied, grimacing as the gangplank bounced under the weight of so many people. His cane slipped on the red carpet that had been laid upon the thick metal rails.

I grabbed his hand. “You’re getting ahead of yourself, buster. We haven’t even made it off the damn boat yet.”

He flashed me a pained grin. “Race you.”

I groaned, and slung his arm over my shoulder, making it look as though I needed him to hold me. He sighed, and planted a rough kiss on top of my head.

Some of the guests had drivers waiting for them, but most had driven themselves and chosen the valet parking that the function organizers had provided. I was sensitive, though, about who got behind the wheel of my Mustang, and had left the car a block away in a short-term lot. I was kicking myself for that now, but it couldn’t be helped. I didn’t want to risk questions about why there were so many shredded teddy bears in my backseat, along with bags of nails, fast-food cartons, knives, and a half-eaten aluminum baseball bat—teeth marks plain.

So we walked, we limped, we hobbled down the sidewalk; and we were not alone. It was a crowded Saturday night. People everywhere, young and old.

And demons. My demons. My little boys.

Red eyes glinted in the shadows, watching us from cracks beneath closed doors and in the spokes of hubcaps. Above my head I heard whispers, and the rasp of claws against stone; and another kind of hum in the air that was partially from the throats of the demons in my hair, but mostly the city: engines rumbling low and warm, and the thrum of hot electricity running through the veins of the buildings around whose roots we walked. I heard laughter, glass breaking, a throb of music from the open door of a bar; a groan from an alley and the long liquid rush of urine hitting concrete; and a small dog, barking furiously from an apartment above our heads.

I saw no zombies in the crowd. Zombies, who were not the living dead, but humans possessed by parasitic demons who had managed for millennia to slip through cracks in the prison veil. The parasites could take over a weak mind, and turn a human host into little more than a puppet, a means of creating pain and misery: dark energy that was more than food.

We reached the parking lot, a parcel of concrete stuck between two office towers and bordered by a low wall covered with thick ivy and splashes of graffiti. Claws rasped, and I glanced to my right as Zee tumbled from the shadows beneath a scarred Pontiac.

He was only as tall as my knee, mostly humanoid, and preferred to stand with his shoulders hunched, the tips of his black claws dragging against stone and leaving narrow grooves. His small face was angular as the point of a knife, each thick strand of his hair razor sharp. A series of spikes rode down the length of his spine. His skin was the color of coal mixed with mercury, and I knew from experience that it was indestructible. Nothing could kill Zee or his brothers.

But the party in the ocean was over. His red eyes were solemn. I straightened with concern, as did Grant. Dek and Mal, who had begun to poke their heads from my hair, went very still.

“Maxine,” he rasped. “Got company.”

Grant glanced ahead, to his left where the Mustang was parked in the maze of cars, and narrowed his gaze. “One person. His aura is weak.”

Weak. Which was another word for dying. I gave him a quick look, then slid out from under his arm, kicked off my heels, and flew across the concrete on light, silent feet. Raw appeared from under a car, bounding ahead of me to sweep broken glass out of my way. He was a blur of darkness beneath the strained cold fluorescent streetlight, and thankfully, no one else was around to see him.

The same could not be said for the man bleeding to death in front of my car.

He was on the ground, propped against the bumper with his cheek resting on chrome. Old man, maybe in his seventies—mostly bald, with a ring of feathery hair around the back of his head that was white as snow. Hands large and grizzled as leather meat hooks clutched his stomach, blood seeping through his fingers.

A lot of blood. He was sitting in a puddle of it, and even in the bad light I could see that his dark slacks were as glistening and soaked as the white dress shirt that stretched crimson across his soft torso.

His closed eyes snapped open when I was less than three feet away. A brilliant blazing gaze, sharp with pain—but even sharper with intelligence. He looked at me with such intensity, I stopped in my tracks, swaying.

“Finally,” he whispered, his English heavily accented, though I could not place the origin.

I heard the rushed click of a cane behind me, but it was a dim sound compared to the roaring in my ears. “Sir. We’re going to help you.”

I snapped my fingers. Moments later a wad of gauze padding was flung at me from the shadows beneath a car. The old man did not seem to notice, which was what I had hoped for—though I could not account for the way he looked at me, with hungry recognition, as though I was someone he had not seen in years.

I picked up the gauze, and held out my hands. “Don’t be afraid.”

He grimaced. “Never. You look…the same.”

I froze, and then forced myself to move again, stepping close, walking barefoot in his blood. It was shockingly warm, and squelched beneath my toes.

He had not been shot. Stabbed, multiple times in the same spot. Defensive wounds covered his arms, and there was a gash along his throat that I had not seen earlier.

I reached for him. “Sir, move your hand. I have something to put on your wound.”

The old man shifted, but it was to reach into his pocket. I did not pay attention to what he removed, but crouched close, pressing the gauze against his wound and pushing down. He groaned, panting for air. Trembling so violently his teeth chattered. Pink foam flecked his lips.

I glanced over my shoulder. “Grant.”

“I called nine-one-one,” he muttered, drawing near. “Five minutes, they said.”

We did not have five minutes. I glanced down at my right hand, at the armor glinting along my fingers, and tightened my jaw. I could do this. I could move us through space to a hospital. I could even take us back in time, though that posed a whole other range of risks.

But I never got the chance. The old man grabbed my hand, and squeezed with surprising strength—staring into my eyes with that same unnerving intensity. “You have to end it. We thought…it was over, but we were wrong. We were wrong…and she tried…to warn us.”

I stared, but the old man was not delirious. There was too much clarity in his eyes, a profound need that was hard and cold, even terrifying. His desperation was the only thing keeping him alive—but that was fading, too.

“Maxine Kiss,” he whispered, chilling me to the bone. “I have a…message…from Jean.”

I knew only one Jean. My grandmother.

Heat roared through me. He pushed something into my blood-soaked hand. A flat plastic card, and a flap of leather.

“Finish what she started.” He breathed brokenly, but I was too numb to ask him what he meant. The old man’s eyes fluttered shut.

“Maxine,” Grant murmured, bent over his cane, his fingers brushing my shoulder. “He’s almost gone. I can see it.”

Even I could see that. My eyes burned from seeing it. I heard sirens in the distance, and Zee crept close on all fours, peering at the dying old man with peculiar familiarity. Raw and Aaz were close behind him, twins in every way except for a dash of silver on Raw’s chin. Dek and Mal uncoiled from my hair, making small sounds of distress.

“Ernie,” Zee rasped, but the old man did not open his eyes. All his intensity, his desperation, had bled out of him. His breathing slowed. His muscles relaxed.

I watched him die.

Grant’s hand tightened on my shoulder. I sat very still, hardly able to breathe—afraid to breathe—a small part of me crushed with inexplicable grief. I did not know this man, but I felt like I should have. I should have.

Zee sighed, running his claw through the old man’s spreading blood. He placed the tip on his tongue, tasting, and glanced over his shoulder at the others, shaking his head. I would have to ask, but not yet. I could hardly swallow around the lump in my throat, and there was an ambulance coming; and with them, the police.

I tore my gaze from the old man, and glanced down at what he had given me. The plastic card was a hotel key, and I held it up over my shoulder. Grant took the key without a word, and slid it quickly into his pocket.

The other item was far less mundane. It was leather, and covered in an intricately inked design that resembled roses. But it was not normal leather. At least, not from anything that had moved on four legs.

I was holding a flap of human skin.

Chapter 2

No escape. The old man named Ernie was dead in front of my Mustang, but even if his body hadn’t been blocking the car, it would not have felt right to simply leave him. He had been murdered. Murdered, while looking for me. And those two things, I feared, were related.

The police arrived with the ambulance. We stood aside as the EMTs checked the old man’s vital signs and came to the obvious conclusion. And then we stepped aside even more as the police cordoned off the area and took us back to their vehicle for questioning.

Before they were done, a black sedan rolled up. Two familiar men got out. They took one look at us, whispered to each other, and then walked to the dead old man. Hovered, crouched, poked and prodded with latex gloves on their hands. I tried not to watch them. Or think about the hotel key and leather burning a hole in Grant’s pocket. Red eyes blinked lazily from the shadows, and two hot tongues rasped the back of my neck.

When Detectives Suwani and McCowan were done with their cursory examination, they held three plastic bags, which they passed off to one of the uniforms waiting on the sidelines. Then, with careful deliberation, they walked over to where we were waiting.

Suwani was a slender black man, not quite as tall as me, but lean, with a sinewy strength that started at his hands and wrists, and no doubt reflected the rest of his trim body. McCowan, on the other hand, had already lost most of his neck behind his sagging chin, and the rest of him was built like the love child of a dump truck and an elephant. Big, lumbering—kind of cute, kind of soft, kind of bullheaded—kind of this, kind of that, which I suspected was just a mask, given that his eyes were anything but dull or dithering.

Suwani gave me a sharp once-over, but only McCowan stared at the low neck of my dress, his gaze traveling down my legs and then up again—barely reaching my face. Grant cleared his throat. “Gentlemen. I wish we could have met again under better circumstances.”

I wished we had not met again at all, but those were the breaks. Suwani nodded, and looked at me. “Did you know the victim?”

“No,” I said. “We were coming back from a party, and found him in front of my car.”

“You have a bad habit of collecting corpses,” McCowan replied. “Last time we met there was a dead man who had your name in his pocket. And now another corpse just happens to be found beside your car. You sure you didn’t know him? Or that he didn’t know you?”

Grant frowned, and this time when he spoke there was a faint melody in his voice, soft and filled with a thread of that old familiar power. He could do things with his voice. Change people. He could reach inside the heart of a soul and make something new. I could not imagine a more dangerous ability—nor a man whom I trusted more to wield it.

Grant was the last of the Lightbringers, just as I was the last of the Wardens, and the two of us should never have met. But we had, and now I was the only person who could keep him alive while he used his gift. We were bound together. Our hearts shared the same steady rhythm. Even now, I felt his pulse riding mine, soft and warm as a coil of sunlight.

“What did you learn from his body?” Grant asked, his voice sliding through me with a shiver. I could not be affected by his power—nor the boys—but I felt the ripple nonetheless. Zee said it tickled. I had told the little demon that it made me uneasy.

Suwani blinked. McCowan swayed ever so slightly. But then their gazes cleared, and the black detective coughed into his hand. “He had a gun in his possession. Recently fired. Shots were reported near here less than an hour ago. We were called out to investigate, which is why we arrived so quickly.”

“He killed someone?”

“We don’t know that,” Suwani said, and then frowned, as though he wasn’t quite certain why he was talking so much. “But there was a body, a young man. Heavy drug user. His arms were so eaten up with needle tracks he had started injecting into his leg.”

“Anything else?” Grant held his gaze, but this time it was McCowan who stirred.

“The old fellow’s name was Ernie Bernstein,” said the burly man, rubbing his brow as though he had a headache. “Israeli passport in his suit jacket, along with a thousand dollars cash. Nothing else on him except for that gun.”

Nothing except a hotel key, and a piece of human skin.

And a message from my grandmother, dead now for more than thirty years.

The distinction between human and animal skin was subtle, especially when aged and treated. Human skin was softer than animal, fine and supple, even more so than lamb; and thin, with a delicacy that belied its inherent strength. Most people would have been unable to tell the difference. That I could was not something that made me proud, but I had seen human skin before, dried and preserved for horrific reasons. It was not something I would ever forget. And it was on my mind now as Grant and I climbed the steps to his apartment: the entire top floor of the former furniture factory that housed his homeless shelter.

The detectives had driven us home to the co-op. My car was part of evidence. Luckily, there were three little demons in my life who were capable of playing housekeeper when they wanted to, and when I had opened up that door—slowly—there were no knives to be found on those vintage leather seats; no chewed-up baseball bats, rusty nails, decapitated teddy bears, or issues of Playboy. Sixty seconds of good hard work. All they had left behind was a decorative square pillow that had not been there before, and that had i love the police embroidered on it in big red letters.

My boys. Such comedians.

I carried my high heels in one hand, and held Grant’s with the other as he made his way slowly up the stairs. His jaw was tight, but not entirely with pain. It had been a hard night. Zee paced through the shadows ahead of us, while Dek and Mal—now that I was in a safe place—uncoiled from my neck and slithered down my arm to join Raw and Aaz in the shadows.

“How long will you be gone?” Grant asked, when we were safe inside the apartment and its spacious golden comfort: oak floors, exposed brick, dark windows that filled the entire length of the southern wall—almost as many bookshelves built into the other. A grand piano stood in one corner, in addition to a cherry red motorcycle that Grant would never be able to ride again; and my mother’s trunk, pushed against the wall alongside the workstation where he carved all his flutes. His gold Muramatsu was the only exception, and lay gleaming upon the dining table.

Zee and the others were suddenly nowhere to be seen. I headed directly to the bedroom, shedding my dress as I walked. Grant’s sharp intake of breath cut through my heart, and I tossed the slip of red silk at his face. I was wearing a lace thong and nothing else: a far cry from the cotton granny panties that usually covered my ass.

“Not long.” I glanced over my shoulder, watching as he crumpled the dress against his chest and made a slow inspection of my nether regions. “And if I find any answers, I’ll come here first before I make any mission to mayhem.”

“Hmm.” Grant limped after me, a bit more spring in his step. He dropped the dress and began unbuttoning his shirt, exposing his strong throat. The bow tie already hung loose beneath his collar. I turned to face him, backing into the bedroom, slowly enough that he caught up with me before I was hardly through the door. His gaze was dark with something deeper, more raw, than hunger, and I placed my hand against his chest, over his heart. I trembled, or maybe that was him. Both of us like kids.

He covered my hand, and we stood unmoving. Just being with each other. As always when I was naked with Grant, he felt huge, permanent as a mountain, radiating heat as though lava burned beneath his skin. Immovable, resolute. I loved that feeling. I loved him.

Grant brushed my cheek with the back of his fingers, his touch impossibly gentle, and then did the same to my breast. I held still, savoring the ache that spread through me; taking pleasure in the fact that we were here now, together, when everything in our lives said we should not be.

“Be careful,” he said quietly.

I kissed his throat. “You have ten minutes to show me how careful you want me to be.”

The name of the hotel written on the plastic key was Hotel Vintage Park. A quick Internet search had revealed that it was a boutique establishment located in downtown. I took Grant’s Jeep and drove fast, listening to the Strictly Ballroom soundtrack version of Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time.”

Raw and Aaz sat in the passenger seat, legs dangling while they clutched teddy bear heads against their chests, white wispy stuffing trailing into their laps. Zee perched on my thigh, peering over the wheel at the road ahead of us. Dek and Mal, coiled around my shoulders, were busy singing a countermelody to the music on the CD player.

“So,” I said. “Who was Ernie?”

“Munchkin,” Zee rasped, placing his hands over mine to help me steer. “Little boy.”

Not so little now. Not so alive. “My grandmother knew him when he was a child?”

“War child,” replied the demon, leaning back against my chest to peer up at me with large red eyes. “Big bad war.”

World War Two. My grandmother had been in Hiroshima when the Americans dropped the bomb. Luckily for her, the blast had occurred during the day, while the boys slept on her skin. They had protected her until she could get free of the danger zone—just as they had protected me under similarly lethal circumstances. If I died, the boys would die—or so the family legend went. Ten thousand years of women, a single bloodline that Zee and his brothers had survived upon—and one that they had no intention of giving up.

“I doubt Ernie was in Japan when my grandmother knew him,” I said. “Germany? Israel?”

He picked at his sharp teeth with a long black claw. “China.”

I frowned. “How and why?”

“War,” he said again, simply, as though I should understand everything from that one word. Which I did not. Ernie Bernstein, I had guessed, was probably Jewish. And a Jewish child in China during World War Two did not add up. Not yet, anyway.

It was well into the middle of the night when I arrived, and the roads were almost empty as I drove up Spring Street past the angular glass behemoth that was the Seattle Public Library. At the Fifth Street intersection I saw the awning of the hotel on my left, next to the Tulio restaurant. No left turn. I had to circle two blocks before I found myself directly in front of the hotel, and parked across the street.

I sat staring at the front doors, thinking hard, and then patted everyone’s head. Their skin could slice through solid rock, but only if they wanted it to. I had free rein to touch them—as did Grant and several others.

I braided my hair and tucked it under the collar of my navy sweatshirt, oversized and borrowed from Grant. Grabbed a blond wig from a canvas tote bag on the floor and slid it over my head. It was an expensive piece of work, with real hair instead of the coarse synthetic stuff, but I hadn’t been especially careful with the thing, so it looked as though I had just rolled out of bed. I slapped a baseball cap on top, wrapped a pink scarf around my throat to partially obscure my chin, and then slid on a pair of heavy-framed glasses—lenses thick enough to blur my eyes, though they were nothing prescriptive. I stuffed chewing gum in my mouth, too, just to make my cheeks look puffier. Slid on a pair of pink knit gloves to hide the armor on my hand.

As disguises went, it was pretty awful, but if Ernie had used a credit card to stay here, then the police would track down his room sooner or later. Best not to be too obvious with my appearance. The boys could disable security cameras—out on the street and inside the hotel—but not eyewitnesses.

The front doors were locked, but I used the key card to get in and strode across the lobby with my shoulders slightly hunched, head ducked, a harried expression on my face. Apologetic, even. A young woman dressed in an ill-fitting brown suit manned the front desk, and gave me a questioning look as I approached.

I held up the room key. “Sorry to bother you, but my grandfather is visiting and forgot his medication in his room. He gave me his key, but I can’t remember if he’s in 304 or 403.”

The woman smiled faintly, which eased the shadows under her eyes. “His name?”

“Ernie Bernstein.”

“Oh!” she exclaimed, smile deepening as her short nails tapped the keyboard. “I like him. But it’s not either of those numbers. He’s in 610.”

“Thank you so much,” I said, and began to turn away. She stopped me, though, and dashed into a small room on her right. She was gone just for a moment, and when she returned there was a slender FedEx envelope in her hand, which she slid across the counter to me.

“This arrived for Ernie. And…could you tell him hi for me?” A pretty flush stained her cheeks, maybe because I was staring at her. “There was a…guest who was rude to me last night, just when Ernie was checking in, and he…you know, took up for me. I appreciated that.”

I smiled, throat aching. “Yes. He’s a…good man. He’ll be glad to hear from you.”

She beamed, which took years off her already young face, and made her look twelve years old; a kid who needed a hug and pigtails. Made me hurt for her, that Ernie was dead—made me hurt for Ernie, too, who seemed to have been a decent man.

I took the elevator up to the sixth floor, and found the hall quiet and still. The door to his room opened as I approached. Aaz peered out, giving me a toothy grin. A do not disturb sign hung on the brass knob.

There was nothing extraordinary about the room I entered, except that it was nicely decorated with cherry accents and a king-sized bed dressed in pale sunset-orange canopies. Covers rumpled, unmade. Curtains closed, all the lamps turned on, though the light felt stifled, strangled; like most hotel rooms. I had never been in one that felt truly well lit.

A briefcase lay on the desk. Behind me, the boys were prowling. Sniffing the floor and sheets, peering into the bathroom. I glanced over my shoulder and found Raw eating a bar of soap. I cleared my throat and he shrugged, also taking a bite out of the chrome dish it had been sitting in. He gave the rest to Aaz, who swallowed the metal without chewing, and licked his lips with a sigh.

“Maxine,” Zee rasped, poking at the contents of a small carry-on suitcase. He dragged out a stuffed black sock, which he sliced open with one claw. Several wads of cash tumbled out, each one as thick as my wrist. Nothing but one-hundred-dollar bills.

It was a tremendous amount of money. After some thought, I scooped up the rolled wads and tossed them into the canvas tote bag I had brought with me. I did not need the cash, but it was Ernie’s and if he had family somewhere, then they deserved to have the money sent back to them.

“You must know what this is about,” I said to Zee.

The spines of the little demon’s hair flexed, and he glanced at Raw and Aaz, now sprawled on the bed, rubbing their round little tummies. “Old hunt. Old work from our old mother.”

Old mother. My grandmother. I gave them all a hard look, and focused on the briefcase. It was an antique but well-made, and the locks were crafted from solid brass. Dek slithered from my hair, humming to himself, his snakelike body coiled around my upper arm while his small furred head tilted in careful scrutiny. He touched his long black tongue to the lock, and it began sizzling from the acid in his saliva.

I had the briefcase open in moments, and found files inside. I flipped through them, noting yellowed pieces of paper covered in handwritten notes, along with typed documents: telegrams, letters, lists of numbers and codes that made no sense. In a large manila envelope I found black-and-white photographs. One caught my eye, and sent my heart scattering into a hard ache.

It was of my grandmother, a night shot. I knew because her arms were bare, and there were no tattoos on her skin. She was wearing a chi pao, a slender silk dress with a high collar and slit up her thigh that exposed a long trim leg. Her hair was down, her face very young. She looked just like me, but no older than eighteen. Zee and the others crowded close to stare at the photo, and made small choking sounds.

A little boy stood under her arm with a big grin on his face. He was skinny, with badly cut dark hair, and held a soccer ball under his bony arm. He might have been ten years old. No dates had been written on the photo, no identifying information, but it had to be Ernie. I recognized his eyes.

Another photograph caught my eye. It was my grandmother again, but just her face; less than a portrait, and more like someone’s attempt to be artful. I saw the edge of an alley behind her, blurred laundry hanging from lines. A day shot. She wore a high collar and sweat beaded her brow. She was so young. Painfully new, but with the beginning of that hard edge in her eyes that I knew so well. Because it was in my eyes.

There were bumps in the image, and I turned it over. Found a message typewritten into the yellowing paper. Started reading, and my knees buckled. I sat down hard, missed the edge of the bed, and landed awkwardly on the floor. I hardly noticed.

Maxine, I read, in that small classic typeset. If you get this, save Ernie. Save them all, if you can. I can’t do any more here. She’s

But the sentence went unfinished. She’s…and nothing. She’s dead, I thought, She’s alive, she’s a demon, she’s—

Spots of light flickered in my vision. I blinked hard, and reached out to grab Zee by the scruff of his neck. I felt dizzy. The wig was suddenly too hot. Sweat trickled down my back.

“My name,” I hissed. “This note is addressed to me by name. Just like Ernie knew my name.”

Zee quivered. I released him and stood awkwardly, knees still weak. After a few short steadying breaths, I threw the entire contents of the briefcase into the tote bag, including a box of bullets, and the unopened container of a new disposable cell phone.

On my way out, I stopped at the front desk again. “Quick question. My grandfather wants to make sure he’s paid up for the next day or two. Did he use cash or a credit card?”

The young woman did not need to check the computer. She tilted her head, thinking. “Cash. He said he was old-fashioned that way. I think he paid for the entire week, so he doesn’t need to worry.”

I nodded, and left at a quick trot. The police would not track Ernie Bernstein to this hotel for a while yet, and if he had been as careful as I thought, then perhaps not at all. The man had not wanted to be discovered; in fact, he’d been paranoid about it if he had eschewed the use of a credit card. Or maybe he really was old-fashioned.

But somehow I didn’t think so. Ernie had known he was being hunted. And the hunter had caught up.

Now it was time for me to do the same.

Chapter 3

“Shanghai was a refuge for Jews during World War Two,” Grant said, over an early breakfast. “It was the only place in the world that didn’t require a visa, so thousands of Jewish refugees went there to escape the Nazis.”

Long night. Almost dawn. I could feel it in my bones as I chewed on a piece of bacon, eyes burning with weariness—or so I kept telling myself. “But the Japanese occupied the city, and they were allied with Hitler.”

“Allied, maybe, but they basically left the Jews alone. Forced them to live in a particular neighborhood, required passes to move around the city…a hard life, but compared to what was going on in Europe, it was nothing.”

I finished the bacon, rubbed my hands on a napkin, and leaned over to stare at the files spread on the table between us. I still felt shaken by the message on the back of the photo. I should have been used to strange things by now, but my tolerance for the bizarre, apparently, was not that strong when it involved my family.

Raw and Aaz were on the floor by the television, watching an old Yogi Bear episode while fishing into a box of razor blades, eating them like potato chips. Zee had a laptop in front of him, delicately tapping the keys with his claws while his little brow wrinkled into a frown. My credit card and a copy of the New York Times were beside him, open to the financial section. Dek and Mal coiled over his shoulder, peering at the screen, occasionally whispering in his ear. Grant followed my gaze. “Stock broker now?”

I grunted, sipping coffee. “I’m not sure I want to know.”

Grant picked up the picture of my grandmother. He had said very little about the message, but the line between his eyes had not yet smoothed away. “Remarkable resemblance. Have you spoken with Jack yet?”

“All the women in my family look the same.” I reached for the FedEx envelope, already torn open. “And no. He’s disappeared again.”

Jack Meddle. My grandfather. A respected archaeologist and intellectual, who on the surface seemed like nothing more than a cheerful, dapper, eccentric old man who lived above an art gallery in downtown Seattle. But he was even less human than Grant or me—though I was no longer certain if humanity could be judged so simply.

There was very little in the FedEx envelope—which I had ripped into as soon as I left the hotel and gotten into the car. Contents minimal—just a handwritten letter, read for the first time in the dark, and now here, again, at the kitchen table.

E.

I hope this reaches you in time. Be careful. Don’t do anything stupid. And don’t get your hopes up. She’s not Jean. She won’t understand what we went through together. How could she? How could anyone? I don’t care what Jean told you. That was more than sixty years ago. Grandmothers are not their granddaughters, and the dead don’t speak for the living.

Nor do the living ever listen.

Best,

Winnie

As before, the words had a hypnotic effect. I could not stop staring at them. One, in particular.

Jean.

Strange, seeing my grandmother’s name written in someone else’s hand.

Almost as strange as seeing my name typewritten on the back of her photograph.

I reluctantly gave the letter to Grant. While he read, I twisted in my chair to look at Zee. “I want the story. I want to know what happened. These children who knew my grandmother. Why?”

Raw and Aaz stopped chewing razor blades. Zee sighed. “Double eyes, double life. Old mother worked undercover.”

“Undercover,” I echoed. “Undercover? Are you saying she was a…a spy?”

Dek made a tittering sound. Zee held his little hand like a gun and blew on his finger. “Kiss. Jean Kiss.”

I slumped in my chair, drumming my fingers on the table. “For which country?”

Mal began humming the melody of “America the Beautiful.” Grant coughed, but it sounded suspiciously like laughter. I tried giving him a dirty look, but it was difficult.

My grandmother, the spy. Of course.

“So she was in China during World War Two,” I said, chewing over the idea. “Hiding out with Jewish refugees in Shanghai while spying on the Japanese?”

Grant stared at the letter in his hands. “It would have been easy for her to do. Twelve thousand Jews, plus a million Chinese, crammed into a neighborhood that was approximately one square mile in size? Good place to get lost.”

“But what does that have to do with what’s happening now? Ernie said they were wrong, that my grandmother tried to warn them about something. And that now it was time to finish what she started.” I looked at Zee, frowning as the little demon’s shoulders twitched. “Sounds like she did more than just spy.”

“More,” Zee rasped, sharing a long look with the others. But that was all, and he would not meet my gaze, no matter how close I leaned—even when I slipped out of the chair and crawled toward him, on all fours. I pushed down the screen of his laptop. It was almost dawn. I could feel it in my bones. Zee stared at my hand, chewing his bottom lip with sharp teeth.

Grant set down the letter. “I don’t like this.”

“Winnie, and the other people she refers to…all of them could be in danger. If nothing else, they’ll know what’s going on. Since the boys aren’t feeling particularly talkative.” Again, I tried to catch Zee’s attention, but no luck. He simply sat, staring at my hand, his gaze finally ticking sideways, thoughtfully, to take in Raw and Aaz. Both of whom were sitting very still, watching us worriedly. Little comfort—but not much of a surprise. I had never been able to rely on the boys for complete answers. Just riddles.

I sat back on my heels. “There’s a P.O. box listed for the return address on the FedEx envelope. The 10019 zip code is in New York City, an area just south of Central Park. Zee was able to lift a scent off the letter. I sent the boys on a hunt to see if they could narrow down the location of Winifred Cohen.” I looked at Grant. “And they did. She’s alive.”

He slouched in his chair, fingering the letter. “You want to go there.”

“I have to.”

“How? Driving cross-country?” Grant narrowed his eyes. “I know that look on your face.”

I hesitated, and held up my right hand, staring at the fragments of armor encasing my fingers and wrist. “I could be there in seconds.”

“Not worth the risk, Maxine. You don’t know what you’re doing with that thing. You could end up in New York City before there even was a New York City, and what then?”

“Exploring America before it went European holds some appeal to me,” I replied dryly. “How’s that for a vacation?”

Grant shook his head, jaw tight with concern. I understood. I knew better than to try to time travel. I watched television. Folks who messed with that shit usually ended up destroying the world. I already had enough on my plate, thank you very much.

But she addressed the note to you by name, whispered a bleak voice inside my head. Your name.

I gritted my teeth. He said, “You’ll have to fly. And I’m coming with you.”

“I know,” I said, staring at my hands, the armor—suddenly feeling like Zee, unable to look anyone in the eye. When Grant did not reply, I forced myself to meet his gaze—and found him staring. “You thought I was going to argue?”

“You usually do,” he said gruffly. “Lone warrior. Venturing into the wilderness, beating your chest about how you don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”

I thumped my chest. “I don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”

“It sounds sexier when you’re naked.”

I wanted to thwack him in the head. “Is it too much to confess that I just don’t want to be apart from you?”

His jaw tightened. “No.”

“Good.” I looked away from him, unable to handle the intensity of his gaze. Too many years spent alone, too many expectations to overcome that I would always be alone. And here, this man, who rocked me with emotions I was still unaccustomed to feeling. What I felt for him defied words.

My skin tightened. I glanced at the window, and found the overcast sky not much lighter. But the sun was moments away from cresting the horizon, somewhere beyond the clouds. Dawn.

Zee stepped over the laptop, dragging Dek and Mal by their tails. Watching me carefully, Raw and Aaz dropped their razor blades, and clambered close—all of them crawling into my lap, wrapping their long sharp arms around me in tight, fierce hugs. I felt tension in their small bodies, hesitation—too much left unresolved in their silence. They knew it, I knew it. Nothing to be done about it now. I kissed their heads anyway, thinking of my mother and grandmother, and listened to the symphony of purrs that rolled through my body like thunder.

“Sleep tight,” I whispered.

I felt the sun rise. In the blink of an eye, the little demons disappeared into my flesh, coating me with smoke and fire—five pairs of red eyes, glinting across my body. Every inch of me, from between my toes to the middle of my neck and scalp, now covered in tattoos: my boys, tingling beneath my clothes as they settled restlessly into dreams.

My face was the exception, but the boys could shift positions in an instant if danger arose, making me entirely invulnerable. Nothing could kill me while they slept on my skin. Not a bullet, not fire, not a nuclear bomb. If I were held under water, the boys would breathe for me. If I was thrown into a pit and locked up without food or drink, the boys would nourish me from their own strength.

But only while the sun was in the sky. At night I turned vulnerable, mortal.

The armor on my hand had also changed its appearance. With the boys away from my skin, the metal had been simple, unadorned, bright as polished silver. Now, like a chameleon, it had dulled to match the coal black shadows on my flesh—engravings of coiled delicate lines appearing mysteriously to blend with scales and the sharp etched angles that were bones and hair, and claws.

Like roses, I thought, staring at my armored hand; and then glanced at the FedEx envelope where I had placed the fragment of leathery human skin.

Grant followed my gaze. “This is going to be ugly.”

“Always is,” I said, and reached for the laptop to start searching for flights.

The problem with murderers was that they usually took you by surprise. Not just with the act itself (though few ever really expected to die suddenly, violently). It was the actual perpetrator who could be a shock: familiarity, motive, lack of motive, the very fact that this was a person no one would expect to kill.

Murder was premeditated. Murder was planned. Murder required a commitment—not just to kill, but to live with the killing.

I had taken lives, demonic and human, but always in self-defense, or in the defense of others. I had learned to sleep at night despite the death on my hands. I could look at myself in the mirror without flinching. Usually.

In the case of Ernie’s murder, I assumed that someone had been hired to take him out; perhaps the kid found shot nearby, or someone else. The attack on Ernie had been deliberate and vicious. Knives were always vicious. Stabbing someone again and again took a level of resolve and intimacy that pulling a trigger didn’t quite reach. To kill someone like that meant you were used to murder—extremely desperate—or you really hated the guts of the person you were attacking. Sometimes all three.

Ernie had covered his tracks, though. It would have taken resources to follow him. Or someone who knew him well. The mysterious Winnie had known where he would be. Chances were good someone else he trusted had been in the loop, too.

I thought about that a lot during the flight. It was six hours from Seattle to New York City. I had never been on a plane. Never wanted to be on a plane. I hated the idea, even though I knew, intellectually, that a domestic flight would not be dangerous. It was international travel that caused trouble—moving from night to day, and back again. The boys might wake up.

But by the time we landed at La Guardia, I was a mess. Air pressure, air sickness, bad air, no air. No zombies, though. I had been seeing less of them over the past few months. Most of the parasites had left Seattle—run from my presence—but ten minutes inside New York City, I wondered if something else was at work. No dark auras, anywhere. Not even a taste. Far cry from the last time I had been here.

It was a little after seven in the evening when the cab dropped us off in front of Winnie’s apartment building. It was located on a quiet street filled with brownstone walkups, tilting trees, and the nearby glow of a small deli. Still daylight. I listened to the hum of air conditioners bolted outside windows, and the hush of quiet laughter from the couple at the intersection.

Winifred’s apartment building, unlike its neighbors, was taller than five stories, a cream-colored concrete block of windows with a green awning over the double-wide glass doors, and an elevator visible at the far end of the small lobby. Red geraniums framed the entrance, overflowing from massive clay pots.

I watched the street, listening to the rippling sensation on my skin as the boys shifted restlessly in their dreams. Not quite a warning, but close enough. I glanced at Grant, and found him also watching our surroundings; intense, a hint of gold in his brown eyes.

“Anything?”

“Nothing remarkable. But something doesn’t feel right.” He briefly nudged my shoulder. “Don’t.”

I frowned. “Stop reading me.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“Who said I was worried about you?”

Grant smiled grimly. I shook my head. Maybe I had been too hasty in agreeing that he should come along. I was getting soft. Something I had been telling myself for almost a year now.

I dialed in the apartment number that Zee had given me and hit the buzzer. I let it ring until it choked off, and then tried again. No one answered. A deeply tanned, gorgeous young man—dressed like he was ready for a jog—exited the elevator, and pushed open the glass doors. He gave Grant a lusty smile, and with a lingering backward glance, strode down the sidewalk.

I stuck my foot in the doorway before we could be locked out. “Dude. You were just totally undressed.”

“Try not to be jealous,” Grant replied dryly, limping past me into the building. “I can’t help my unbridled sexual magnetism.”

We rode the elevator to the tenth floor. Seemed like a nice enough place. Quiet, clean, modern. I was no expert on apartment buildings, though I had inherited a place uptown, along Central Park. No strong memories of it, except that it faced the southeast, had a view of the trees, and had been bought by my great-great-grandmother during the Depression. I doubted seriously that I would be stopping by for a visit, though part of me wondered if some of my mother’s things would still be there, covered in dust after more than a decade of absence.

Winifred Cohen’s door was near the elevator. I lingered for a moment, simply listening, but heard nothing from within but the faint caress of soft music: violins weeping to Mozart.

Grant knocked. I nudged him aside. Safer than standing in front of a door when you did not know what was on the other side. Might not be Winifred. Maybe Winifred wasn’t Winifred. People were never who we thought them to be.

No one came to the door, though I sensed a presence inside that apartment; like a mouse hiding in a hole, whiskers quivering just enough for the big bad cat to hear.

I knocked again, and leaned close. “Winifred. My name is Maxine Kiss. I’m here because of Jean, my grandmother. And Ernie.”

Nothing. I shared a long look with Grant, and reached into my back pocket for the lock picks I had brought with me. “Winifred. If you’re in there, please say something. Or else I’m coming in.”

The music kept playing softly. No footsteps. No whispers of movement. But I felt something. She was there—or someone else was. I hoped it was not the latter.

It took me only moments to open the main lock, but there was a deadbolt on the other side, and probably a chain. No good way of undoing those without kicking in the door, and that was too much attention to bring on ourselves. I was ready to suggest that we wait another hour—until the sun went down—when I finally heard a faint shuffling sound on the other side. I stepped away, as did Grant, leaning against the wall beside the door while I stared at the peephole.

The locks clicked. Five metallic rasps as bolts and chains were thrown back. Then, nothing. Grant gave me a long look, and I shrugged. If she—or whomever—wanted to play games, then fine.

I opened the door. Found shadows in a long hall. Nothing but darkness, and the soft mournful keen of violins shrouding the air. I held up my hand to Grant, motioning for him to wait, and walked inside. Zee, sleeping between my breasts, began tugging gently on my skin. I ignored him, listening hard, but all I could hear below the music was my own pulse and the near-silent scuff of my cowboy boots on the hardwood floor.

Until cool air moved against my cheek and someone reached from the darkness to stab me in the throat.

The blade snapped instantly. I smelled perfume, heard the harsh rasp of someone breathing, and turned toward the darkened closet door that now housed a small hunched figure that swayed so unsteadily that I reached out, and brushed my fingers against a wrinkled elbow. My skin tingled beneath my tattoos; or maybe that was the boys, reacting. I felt strange, touching her. Light-headed.

The old woman began to back away, and then stopped, staring down at the broken knife: better suited for steaks than throats, though she’d had good aim. It took strength to cut into the cartilage of a human neck, but not if you stabbed at the soft part. Which she had. More knives, I thought, peering into eyes so dark they were almost black.

“Winifred, I presume,” I said quietly, as Grant entered the apartment and shut the door behind him, watching her warily.

“You really are her granddaughter,” replied the old woman, staring up at me with no small amount of wonderment and unease—glancing briefly at Grant with an even more troubled gaze. She had an American accent, though her vowels were tinged with the faint coil of another place and time. A stout woman with long gray hair and a round stomach that pushed against her blue housedress.

“Some test.” I took the remains of the steak knife from her hand. “Were you expecting someone else?”

Winifred Cohen gave me a profoundly bitter look. “I was expecting not to live out the night.”

And with that, she turned and shuffled down the dark hall.

Chapter 4

“You have to understand that we were children,” said the old woman some time later, nursing a cup of hot tea in her hands. “We knew there was a war raging, but to some degree we were insulated from it. Jewish refugees in Shanghai were tolerated, even encouraged to be enterprising. The Japanese thought our industry would help support their troops. We had school and synagogue. We had music. We had each other. It was, for that time, as good a life as could be expected. Especially compared to what the Chinese suffered.”

“My grandmother,” I said, perched on the edge of a pale blue sofa. I had been offered tea, and turned it down—as had Grant. No time for pleasantries, just patience. More patience than I could spare.

Winifred gave me a long steady look. “You resemble her. Uncannily. Even if I had not…. tested you…your face would have convinced me.”

“But you chose violence.”

“Survival,” she replied without remorse. “Hit first, ask questions later. I’m meant to die, and I’m not ready.”

She said it with a dull hard tone in her voice, eyes dark and pitiless; but it was her blunt acceptance that chilled me. Death was coming. She knew it. No whining, no bargaining or depression. Merely resolve.

I had so many questions. Grant took over with the most basic. “Who wants to hurt you?”

Winifred hesitated. “Ernie?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, wishing I could lie and tell her that he was still alive, charming hotel clerks and enjoying the sights of Seattle with his bundles of cold hard cash.

Winifred closed her eyes, and suddenly all that hard strength seemed to melt out of her. She set down her tea, hand shaking so badly that dark liquid splashed over the rim into her saucer. “I told him not to go.”

“Ms. Cohen,” Grant said again, his voice rumbling and persuasive. “Why did he die? Why do you fear for your own life?”

“Because we helped her,” said Winifred softly, with more than bitterness; melancholy, maybe, a profound sadness that was bone deep and weary.

Images from those old photos flickered through my mind. Save them all, if you can. “My grandmother?”

Winifred shook her head. “No. Another woman. She was called the Black Cat because in the late thirties she had been a hostess in a nightclub of the same name. A white Russian among Koreans. All the women who worked in that place had a black cat tattooed here.” Winifred patted her backside and gave me another long look. “By the time your grandmother met her, she had many more tattoos than that.”

I was holding my breath, and released it slowly, painfully. I had been more afraid than I cared to admit of hearing that my grandmother had somehow contributed to this old woman’s trouble, and Ernie’s death.

I considered the human skin in my backpack. “She can’t still be alive.”

Winifred stiffened. “Of course not.”

Grant studied her with a great deal of thoughtfulness. “What did you do for this…Black Cat…that would be worth your lives? Especially now, after all these years?”

Coldness returned to her eyes. She stood slowly from her chair. He politely began to rise with her, as did I, but she waved us back with a faint hiss of her breath and left the room with a slow shuffling gait, as though her bones ached. Grant and I stared at each other.

“What do you see?” I whispered.

“Fear,” he murmured. “Guilt.”

“She believes she’s going to die.”

“It’s more than that,” he began, and then shut his mouth as Winifred returned to the room. She held a linen parcel, folded into a tight square, which she tossed down on the table in front of me. I unfolded it quickly, inhaling scents of lavender and something older, meatier, like death; and found myself looking at another block of thin delicate leather, tattooed in a pattern that resembled roses.

Grant made a rough sound. I stared long and hard at the skin before turning my gaze on Winifred. She had fallen back into her chair, wrinkled hands resting in her lap; posture boneless, limp, her gaze so distant and empty, she might have been dead.

“This is human,” I said, “but you knew that.”

“All of us took a piece of that woman,” she said quietly, as though speaking only to herself. “We were told to by your grandmother.”

I sat back. Grant cleared his throat. “How many of you?”

“Just the four. Ernie, me, Lizbet, and Samuel.”

“And where are the last two?”

“Dead,” Winifred whispered. “They married, later, after their families came to the United States in ’47. Lived in Florida for the past ten years. Police found them shot to death in their home more than a week ago.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, as gently as I could. “But what made you and Ernie think their murders had anything to do with the both of you?”

Winifred tore her gaze from the scrap of dried human skin. “Because their killer mailed Ernie and me the…mementos…that Samuel and Lizbet had kept in their home safe. A warning, you see. A promise.”

Her wrinkled mouth tightened with bitterness. “And because Jean told us what would happen for playing with the devil.”

Sunset. I fled to the bathroom. Waved along in the right direction by an old woman whose eyes were haunted, knowing. When I walked away, I felt naked, like there was a target drawn on my back.

The bathroom was small and simply decorated in white tile and a white fuzzy rug on the gleaming floor. Sparkling clean, a faint scent of shampoo mixed with bleach. I shut the door just as I felt the sun slip beneath the horizon—so much a part of my senses that it was easy as breathing to know the time. Survival instinct.

I leaned on the sink, staring at myself in the mirror, counting down the seconds. Watching my eyes. Remembering countless evenings watching my mother’s eyes, or trying to, at that exact moment of the shift. She had never shown pain. Just smiled and laughed, and acted like it was a game, the old hard game, which would be mine one day, after she died. She had not wanted me to be scared of that future, even though I should have been terrified. She had wanted to keep me innocent for as long as possible—and she had, best as she could. I hadn’t realized then what a gift that was, but I understood now. I understood too well. And there was no repaying that kindness except to pass it on, one day.

The sun ticked down, swallowed into my body. Zee and the boys woke up.

I had tried once to explain the sensation to Grant, but there were only so many ways of describing what it felt like to be skinned alive with acid and knives, before a girl felt like a whiner.

It hurt. It would always hurt. From my toes to between my legs, to my fingernails and nipples and scalp, to the very top of my neck. No part of me unscathed, except for my face. My hands tightened around the rim of the sink. I closed my eyes, unable to look at myself.

The boys dissolved from my skin in a cloud of smoke and silver shadows, red lightning flickering through the ghosts of their bodies as they flowed from beneath my clothes and coalesced inside the bathroom. I smelled burnt hair and a whiff of something stiff and cold, as though a tunnel had been opened to some cavern miles deep below the earth, where the air was so pure that a person could grow drunk on just one breath.

My eyes were still closed. Muscles quivered and sweat rolled. Strong arms wrapped around my legs, while two long bodies coiled over my shoulders.

Zee whispered, “Maxine.”

I forced a smile on my face and drew in a long quivering breath; several, before I found my voice. “Hey, bad boys.”

Dek and Mal licked the backs of my ears. I patted their heads. Raw disappeared into the shadows behind the toilet and reappeared moments later with a giant bag full of M&Ms and a six-pack of beer. He handed those to Aaz, and then disappeared again—returning with a bucket of fried chicken, a nail gun, and a plastic bin full of dirty syringes, plastered in orange BIOHAZARD stickers.

I sat on the edge of the toilet, scratching behind Zee’s pointed little ears as he grabbed a fistful of individually wrapped packages of M&Ms and shoved them, paper and all, into his mouth. Behind him, Raw had picked up the nail gun and was shooting studs down his brother’s throat. Aaz giggled, swallowing each one. Dek, watching them, made a small sound of protest—and I opened a beer, which he fitted his entire mouth over and then knocked back with a sigh. Mal, who had disappeared from my shoulders, poked his head up from within the fried chicken bucket, too much like some crazed demonic gopher. He licked his chops and gave me a toothy grin.

I nudged the container of used syringes toward Raw. He cracked it open and began popping each one into his mouth like candy bars. Over the crunching sounds of plastic, chicken, paper, and aluminum, I said, “Tell me about the Black Cat.”

“Bad news,” Zee rasped, licking his claws. “Gave our old mother a hard run.”

“And that’s the reason three people associated with this woman have been murdered?”

Zee lowered his hand, sharing a long look with the others, who stopped eating. “Price to pay. No good road from that hunt. Bleed for darkness and darkness gets a taste.”

Winifred was going to wonder why her bathroom smelled like fried chicken and beer. “Why? Was she a demon?”

Zee sighed, resting his chin upon my knee. Hair spikes flexed, and his red eyes narrowed with memory as his claws gently tapped the tile floor. “Almost.”

“Almost. What does that mean?”

“Means almost.” Zee scrunched up his face. “Blood never lies, Maxine.”

I gave him a long look, suspicions and theories rumbling through my head. But before I could ask, Dek lifted his head and froze. All the boys did, staring at the door.

I was up in moments, out of the bathroom, running down the hall. Grant and Winifred were still seated in the living room, talking softly, but they stopped when they saw me. Grant did not need to hear my warning. He braced himself on his cane and rose in one smooth movement, knuckles white around the carved oak handle.

“Winifred,” he rumbled quietly, still staring into my eyes. “You need to come with us now.”

The old woman paled. No arguments, though. She stood, swaying, and Grant steadied her with his free hand. I moved ahead of them, Dek and Mal settling heavily in my hair. Red eyes winked at me from the shadows of the long hall. I listened hard, heard nothing.

The door loomed. Grant and Winifred lingered behind me. I held out my hand, gesturing for them to wait as I crept forward. From the shadows of the closet, Zee whispered, “Clear.”

And it was, when I opened the door. Nothing there.

We left the apartment without incident, and took the elevator down to the first floor. Winifred watched me the entire time, with such intensity my skin crawled. So many stories in her eyes, so much she knew that had not been spoken. I hated secrets. I hated the mysteries in the past that no one, even if they tried, would ever be able to explain. To understand something you had to live it—or live something so close that the empathy was second hand. What this woman had gone through—the events chasing her now—was beyond me. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try.

As the elevator doors opened I said, “You have ten seconds to tell me why you’re being hunted. No riddles. I want answers.”

“We were children,” Winifred said tightly, still evading my question. “We didn’t know what we were doing.”

I noticed she clenched that tightly folded square of linen in her hands, a hint of human leather peeking out from beneath the edge of cloth. I stuck my foot in the elevator door, holding it open. “Right. Because taking that from a dead woman is morally ambiguous. Try another one, Ms. Cohen.”

Winifred gave me a haunted look. “She wasn’t dead when we took it.”

And then, almost at a run, she rushed past me into the lobby. Grant began to follow, and stumbled. I grabbed his elbow, clinging tight, feeling as though he was holding me up just as much as I was holding him. I stared at the old woman’s rounded shoulders and whispered, “What is this?”

“Something worth killing over,” he replied, voice strained. “She wouldn’t say much to me, but whatever happened when she was a child left a black stain in her aura. Almost like a…handprint. I saw something similar in Ernie, but I didn’t think much of it at the time. He was dying. He might have shot someone. Any of that would cause a shadow.”

“I don’t believe in coincidences,” I muttered, and let go of him to hurry after Winifred, who had stopped by the glass entrance and was looking back at us with those old dark eyes. We were alone. No one around to hear more confessions. I reached for the old woman, intending comfort, strength—something, anything, that would reassure her that it was safe to tell me the truth.

Before I could reach her, the glass in the door shattered. Winifred staggered into my arms, collapsing against me. I gasped, stunned, falling down with her—and my fingers touched wet heat. Came away red. She had been shot in the back.

A roar filled my ears, deafening and cold. Grant began talking into his cell phone. I hardly heard him. Winifred was still breathing. I slid out from under her, trying to keep my hand on her wound. Pressing down with all my strength.

Save them.

Blood seeped past my fingers. Winifred’s breathing was rough, little more than a strangled hiss—but except for that and the quiet persistence of Grant’s voice, silence seemed to press around us. Such terrible silence, as though what little sounds we were making meant nothing to the crush of empty air surrounding our bodies.

A strong hand covered mine. Grant whispered, “Go. Find who did this.”

I shook my head. “Not safe for you.”

His lips brushed my ear. “Justice, Maxine.”

I tore my gaze from the blood spreading through Winifred’s clothing and gave him a sharp look. Found nothing in his eyes but that old grim determination; and deeper yet, anger.

I stood, and his hands replaced mine, pressing down on the wound. My fingers snapped at Raw, who was peering at us from around the ruined remains of the door.

“Protect them,” I snarled.

And then I was gone, kicking out the remains of the glass to run into the street, searching for a shooter.

It was a cool Sunday night in New York City, and while this particular street was quiet, I heard the growling hum of cars and people rumbling through the night. No screams, though. No fingers pointing. Just me, and windows across the street, a mixture of light and dark. I stared, searching for movement, anyone watching—but found nothing except for a handful of people strolling across the intersection toward me. No sign that any of them knew what had just happened. I heard their careless laughter.

I began walking in the opposite direction. Zee flitted through the shadows, appearing briefly in nooks between brownstone stairs and garbage cans; leaping from the branches of slender shade trees and then reappearing moments later in the darkness beneath parked cars. I kept waiting for him to say something, but all he did was give me brief, uneasy glances that made my stomach hurt.

“What,” I finally asked,” did you find?”

“Nothing,” he rasped. “Gone.”

“You can find the shooter. Don’t play dumb.”

Zee fell backward into the shadows. I kept walking, scanning the street. Trying to let my instincts do what my demons would not. But ten minutes later, I had no answers. Nothing. Nothing, anywhere. Winifred’s attacker had escaped. I had known it the moment I stepped free of her apartment building.

Zee peered at me from beneath another parked car. I gave him a long hard look. He ducked his head, fading away. But not far. Close as my own skin, if anyone threatened me. The boys felt those things. My life was sacred. They would have known a gunman was close. They had known. But the threat had not been for me, or Grant—who they protected almost as carefully. And so they had let the bullet go.

But that failed to explain why they did not want the killer found.

Winifred was being loaded into an ambulance when I returned to the apartment building. A crowd had finally gathered. I was trying to push through them when my cell phone rang.

“Stay where you are,” Grant said, as soon as I answered. I found him by the ambulance, staring at me.

I stayed. I lingered, watching like everyone else. Grant was helped into the ambulance with Winifred, and when they left, I walked away, rounded the corner, and headed toward Central Park. Headlights dashed through my vision, warm fetid scents blowing over me, briefly. It was easy to get lost, to feel lost, to lose my thoughts to bullets and demons, and question what the hell I was good for if I could not protect one old woman.

I’d been having that conversation a lot with myself over the past several months. People always seemed to get hurt around me. It was why I had been raised to be a nomad, to never linger in one spot for long; to avoid making ties, roots, relationships that mattered.

I was such a bad daughter.

I walked for a good twenty minutes until my phone rang again.

“We’re at St. Luke’s. Tenth and Fifty-ninth,” Grant murmured, and in the background I heard voices chattering, shouts, metallic clangs. “Police coming to question me. Winifred’s in surgery.”

And then he hung up again.

I flagged down a cab and headed for the hospital. Took me another twenty minutes to reach the ER entrance, but I did not go inside. I circled the hospital until I found a small stone wall to sit on, and perched there in the shadows, watching cars and people. A homeless man slept on a slab of cardboard some ten feet away, and beyond him a young woman crouched with a cigarette in one hand and a bottle of Gatorade in the other. She was humming to herself. No one paid attention to me. I sent a text to Grant’s phone. Five minutes later, I received a reply.

STAY AWAY. GOT IT COVERED.

Which was the best I could hope for, though it bothered me that I was not in there with him. Where there was one bullet, there would be another. The killer would want to make sure the deed had been done. Unfortunately, until the police left it was best I keep out of sight. I could not afford for my name—alias or otherwise—to show up on another report. If word got back to Suwani and McCowan, and I had to assume it would, more questions would follow. Grant’s mojo wouldn’t be able to save me forever, and I was unprepared to move on.

I’m not ready, Winifred had said.

There was a small garden behind the wall I perched on. I glanced over my shoulder at a pair of sharp red eyes. “You did that on purpose. You deliberately allowed that woman to be shot.”

Zee gave me an inscrutable look. “Debts paid in full, Maxine.”

“Winifred is still alive,” I snapped. “The killer will try again. I need to know who is doing this.”

Still, he hesitated—and something broke inside me. I turned, grabbing his shoulder. Shaking him, or trying to; he dug in his heels and wrapped his claws around my arm. Both of us, pushing against the other. Pretending to, anyway.

I knew his strength. He could crush my bones with the slightest pinch, or flay me in strips with one judicious swipe. But I was not afraid. I had never been afraid of Zee, or the others. We were family. But family could be a pain in the ass sometimes.

Dek and Mal poked free of my hair. Raw and Aaz crept close, eyes huge.

“I am sick,” I whispered, “of never hearing the simple truth.”

“Truths never simple,” Zee rasped. “Only death, simple. Only birth, simple. Between, threads and hearts and lies, and we are not interpreters. We are not you.”

His grip relaxed. So did mine, but we did not stop holding each other. Zee whispered, “Past and present always tangled. Too many mysteries.” He touched his chest. “Only truth is yours. Only truth that matters. What you see matters. Not what we see. Not what we tell you.”

I closed my eyes. “Zee. I need help.”

“We help,” he whispered, pressing his warm sharp cheek against my arm. “But no answers here. Never were. Just shadows. Memories.”

“You could have told me that,” I said, all my anger slipping into weariness. “So if not here, then where?”

Again, that odd hesitancy. “Got to travel, Maxine. Far away.”

“You promise there will be answers?”

“Promise enough,” he replied.

“Grant and Winifred need to be protected.”

“Time will protect them.” Zee grabbed my right hand. His words echoed in my head—time, time, time—and terrible instinct made my heart tighten with fear. I opened my mouth to protest, but it was too late. Raw and Aaz wrapped their arms around Zee, and the armor on my right hand, hidden beneath my glove, began to tingle and burn.

My muscles turned to liquid around my bones, and every soft organ in my body seemed to shrivel and lurch. Darkness swallowed me.

Always, darkness.

Chapter 5

It was hot when I started breathing again. A sick slick heat that plugged my nostrils with slugs of air so pungent that breathing was almost like drinking rotten wine; I could taste the individual notes of urine and feces, along with garlic and smoke.

I rolled over on my side, head pounding, and gagged into a puddle that smelled worse than what I had been breathing. The back of my head was wet with the stuff. My stomach heaved again, pain sparking behind my eyes. Small hands touched me.

“Where?” I rasped, coughing. I dug my fist into concrete, pushing hard. Arms hooked around mine, tugging me up on my knees.

But those arms did not belong to a demon.

I froze, turning my head slowly to gaze at the small pale face pressed close to mine in the shadows. It was night, but my sight was good enough to see the dark glitter of concerned eyes.

I knew those eyes. And the recognition was so startling, so violent, my gut seized up as though punched. I bent over again, aching.

Ernie. Ernie Bernstein.

“Come on,” said the boy, with an unnerving amount of compassion and maturity. “Hurry.”

He grunted as he helped me stand, and when I touched his shoulder I felt only bone. He was gaunt, little more than a stick figure beneath the oversized button-up and shorts hanging on his frame. He grabbed my hand, grip tight and sweaty. I had no choice but to follow. Dazed, riding the moment. Dreaming, I thought. My life was nothing but a twisting dream.

He hauled me down a narrow concrete lane that curled like the gut of a snake; a suffocating space crowded with laundry lines, and open doors where men hunched in boneless exhaustion with their eyes closed. Faint lights burned behind them, revealing glimpses of movement; skirts and bare arms, and glass glinting, fleeting as ghosts. I heard pots banging, babies wailing; shouts, followed by the low throaty grunts of sex; and as I pressed my palm against my aching head I saw red eyes in the shadows, steady as stone and fire.

I could make no sense of the maze that Ernie led me down, and finally blocked out everything but the need to stay on my feet and breathe. It was so hard to breathe the air, which was unrelenting in its heat. Sweat poured down my body. My jeans and turtleneck felt like a burning coffin against my skin.

A breeze finally cut against me. Faint, but the movement of air felt like a splash of cold water against my face. I tilted my head, inhaling, and moments later found myself discharged from the narrow alley. Expelled in a rush, like something hard and dirty that had passed for days through some sweaty bowel. I stood on a wide avenue where the buildings, at first glance, resembled some mask of European charm; but then Chinese men, nearly naked and glistening with sweat, ran past me with their heads down, hauling empty rickshaws behind them.

Thunder rolled in the distance; man-made or a storm, I could not tell. I glanced at Ernie, who still held my hand. He was staring at my clothes.

“Hey,” I whispered, afraid of my own voice. Afraid of him, this place, everything around me. I was not supposed to be here. No one, I thought, should have that power.

His head jerked up, but there was nothing startled or young in his gaze. His eyes were old, far too old.

“Your head,” Ernie said. “He hit you.”

“He,” I echoed. My head ached. I was still touching it lightly. “No. I was…sick.”

He did not believe me. Just a glint in his eye, a thinning of his mouth, but that little shift in his expression made me feel small and cut. Like I had violated some trust between us that I had never known existed. That never had.

“But you ran from him,” Ernie said, his English heavily accented. German in origin, I thought. Or Polish.

I hesitated, needing to sit down—feeling exposed on the sidewalk, far too vulnerable. “Run?”

Ernie frowned impatiently. “You only dress like a man during the day. Did you steal his clothes because you were in a hurry?”

He thought I was Jean. My grandmother. I took a moment, unsure how to respond. “I’d rather not talk about it.”

Disappointment, even hurt, flashed across his face, but he nodded stiffly and gestured down the street, which seemed filled with sluggish activity; a quietness to each slow movement that made the night feel deep and old. “I can’t walk you home. I have to go. Mutter does not know I slipped out.” He released my hand, and teetered backward, still studying me. “You seem different.”

No shit. “How did you know where to find me?”

Finally, Ernie looked uncomfortable. “You always see the baojia unit leader on Thursdays. But he drinks,” blurted out the boy, and then stared hard at his shoes, which had holes where his big toes should be. “He’s mean when he drinks. We all know that.”

I thought of the hotel clerk, smiling as she talked about old man Ernie. And here, the boy, still a champion of women. I felt a howl swell in my throat, but swallowing it down only made my eyes burn with tears.

Here’s your chance, I thought. Ask him about the Black Cat. Don’t waste time.

But when I opened my mouth, all I said was, “Go on home, Ernie. Thanks for helping me.”

Nothing else to say. Nothing. He was just a kid, and I was the grown-up here. Whatever was happening now was bad news, and would get him killed in sixty years. If I could take care of it without getting him involved more than he already was, if I could do this without upsetting time more than it already would be—then I had to try. I had to keep him, and his friends, safe.

Which meant talking to—and finding—someone else.

Ernie nodded, but still lingered—like there was more he wanted to say. He rubbed his wrist as though it hurt.

“What is it?” I asked, as gently as I could. “Ernie, you can tell me.”

He ducked his head, fingers going still around his wrist. I glimpsed a mark there, half-hidden beneath his thumb. Reached for him without thinking. He flinched, taking a step back—and shot me a haunted look that cut me to the core. I had seen those eyes before, on other kids, and it was a bad look. Kids were not supposed to grow up that fast.

No chance to say a word, though. He turned and ran down the street. I let him go, and then became aware of others watching me, both Chinese and European. Curious stares. Some calculating. I was a new face, and fresh meat.

I melted back into the dark lane we had emerged from. It was still and empty, unlike the road; and I needed a moment. I needed more than a moment.

“Zee.” I breathed, sliding down the wall into a crouch. I tugged at my collar, and then stripped off my leather gloves. Armor glinted along my fingers and the wrist cuff had grown in size, embedded now in my lower forearm with quicksilver tendrils. I would be lost to this metal one day. If I lived that long.

Small clawed hands touched my knees, long fingers edged in flesh sharp and hard as obsidian. Zee whispered, “Maxine.”

“Playing games with my life,” I murmured, listening to bells clang, and distant shouts in Chinese. I heard the echoing report of guns, very distant; synchronized single-shot blasts that made me imagine an execution. I smelled shit, and realized it was coming from my hair.

“You want truth,” Zee rasped. “Give you truth.”

I gritted my teeth. “I suppose we’re in Shanghai. When?”

“Four-and-four.” He glanced over his shoulder as Raw and Aaz melted from the shadows, chattering at him in their native tongue—which I did not, and never would, understand. Zee stiffened, and then relaxed. I tapped his hand.

“We know,” he said quietly, still watching his brothers. “We know we are here.”

We. The other Zee and his brothers—who were in their right place, and right time. I was probably creating some kind of planet-wrecking paradox by having them in the same place, together, but hell if I knew what to do about it. The boys had brought me here. I had to assume they knew what they were doing in between the teddy bear decapitations and soft porn.

“I need clothes,” I said. “I stand out too much.”

Raw disappeared into the shadows, and emerged less than a minute later with a bundle of cotton that, when shook out, appeared to be a dark brown dress, loose and flowing. Simple cut, with long sleeves, mother of pearl buttons up the front, and a round collar. The hem came down to just below my knees. He also gave me a new matching pair of lambskin gloves.

I moved away from the road into a nearby doorway, dressing quickly. I tossed my jeans and turtleneck to Aaz for disposal, and then reluctantly put aside my cowboy boots for a pair of brown shoes that had a hard, flat, sensible heel. Raw slid my other shoes into a cloth satchel the color of mushy peas. Inside, I glimpsed knives, and tins of food.

I felt like a stranger to myself. I stood for a moment, sweating and weary, and tilted my face to the sky. No stars. Just clouds, bruised with the faint reflected light of the city.

China, I thought. I was in Shanghai. And it was World War Two.

I found my grandmother less than thirty minutes later, flirting with a drunk Nazi.

I had been floating until that moment, drifting in a daze through the soup of the hot night and suffering a dreamlike schizophrenia; lost in the shadowed kiss of a European-flavored city, only to be torn sideways into Asian byways: meandering lanes and alleys no wider than the span of my shoulders. I passed elderly Chinese women perched on low wooden stools, playing mahjong while bickering at naked, shrieking children who played in the stifling darkness among piles of trash that had been swept into rotten heaps wet with water trickling down the narrow gutters.

Most ignored my presence, but some of the children chased me with their hands outstretched, begging for money, trying to sink their small hands into my bag. Open sores covered their arms and legs. I could count their ribs. I gave them the tins of food.

Zee led me; in snatches, glimpses. Dek and Mal were silent in my hair. I did not see Raw and Aaz, but knew they were close. I was comforted by that, but it was a painful, uneasy consolation. I was lost in time. What I did here would ripple into the future. It was not my first journey into the past, but I had never been set loose, faced with the potential cost of being that butterfly flapping her wings—and causing a thunderstorm on the other side of the world.

Ernie’s young face filled my mind. Save him, whispered a small voice, but I could no longer blame the letter on the back of that photo for such urgency. You have to make sure he doesn’t die in your arms. Not murdered. Not him.

Not any of them.

I heard music in the night. A lonely saxophone playing a heartbreaking version of “Over the Rainbow.” Zee glided through the shadows, little more than a glimpse of spiked hair and sharp joints. Dek licked the back of my ear. I patted his head as I stepped free of the residential alley and found myself staring at a party.

Just a glimpse, beyond an open gate built into a thick stone wall that followed the curve of the road. Barbed wire fencing rose almost five feet higher than the wall itself, ending on the right-hand side at a distinctive fluted turret that was as out of place as the German signs framing the gate. Young Chinese children squatted on the sidewalk, playing what looked like rock, paper, scissors with a pair of Jewish kids, a boy and girl. Carts rumbled down the road between us, hand-pulled by gaunt Chinese men—who gave wide berth to a car parked alongside the street; a black Peerless, top down, revealing quilted leather seats that looked soft as a glove. I knew cars. This one was old-fashioned for 1944, but lovingly cared for. An Asian man sat behind the wheel, dozing.

No one paid attention to me: lone woman lurking at the entrance of the alley. The streets were dark. No electricity to spare. No oil to waste in lamps.

I heard glasses clinking, and smelled food. Yeast scents, and something meatier. Even a hint of coffee. My stomach growled. Zum Weissen Röss’l was the name of the place, according to the largest of the signs hanging above the gate—written, too, above the arched entrance of the elegant white building that was at the far end of the courtyard. Round tables and wicker chairs dotted the swept stone ground, and the saxophone’s mourning tones were pure and sweet. I could not see the musician.

Business was good. Tables were full. I saw waitresses circulating in traditional Bavarian outfits—white frilly aprons, with white puffy sleeves and collars, overlaid with a dark button-up smock and full skirts—tucked and nipped to accommodate starved frames. Muted laughter spilled into the night, glasses clinking. A surreal sight, and nothing I would have expected to find in the middle of occupied war-torn territory.

I glanced down at Zee, who was little more than a bulge in the shadows. Found him staring at the restaurant, utterly rapt. Breathless, even. I had never seen that look on his face, and it occurred to me, with some shame, that—sixty years in the past, or ten thousand—confronting a world that had been dead and gone was no easier on him and the boys than it was for me. Worse, perhaps. I had no memories of this place. I had nothing to latch my heart on to. Except for my grandmother. And, perhaps, young Ernie Bernstein.

I looked back at the courtyard. And just like that, saw her.

She was sauntering out of the white building, bearing a tray. Nothing but her arm was visible, and a loose arrangement of long black hair. I could not see her face. But I knew. I knew with absolute certainty that it was my grandmother.

I almost crossed the road. Aaz grabbed my hand, holding me back. I did not fight him. I could not. I watched my grandmother serve a table full of Nazis.

I had not noticed them until that moment, but in hindsight I could hardly believe I had been so blind. They were sitting in plain view of the open gate, red armbands glowing upon their brown uniforms, sharp black swastika lines standing in sharp relief against white spotlight circles. Blond men, drinking beer and spearing thick sausages on their forks. Two uniformed Asian soldiers sat with them, bayonets leaning against the table. Japanese, I thought. A night out for the men in charge.

I held my breath as my grandmother leaned close, setting down mugs and taking away empty plates. Aaz tightened his grip on my wrist. But in the end, I did not need to worry. No one touched her body. Not that she looked as though she would have minded. I felt like I was losing my mind.

The first and second time I had ever met my grandmother, she had been a chain-smoking, hard-eyed, dangerous woman. Gritty, leathery, with a masculine edge to her clothing and walk. A mother, to boot. No funny business. Not this young thing with a sweet face and ready smile. Not this girl who wore black heels and a frilly white apron, and glanced at Nazis with a come-hither glint that was so startlingly sexy I wanted to look away in embarrassment.

I stood there in the shadows, suffocating, suffering the heat again as if my skin would melt off my bones, or stuff my lungs with cotton. Looking at my grandmother was like checking out an inferno that I could not control. I was totally at a loss about how to make contact with her. Wondering if I should. Remembering that I already had, given the note addressed to me on the back of her photograph.

Just as my grandmother straightened to walk back into the restaurant, her stride faltered, head tilting ever so slightly—as though listening to a whisper in her ear, or just silence. Perhaps the same silence emanating now from Dek and Mal, who had stopped purring and were so still I wanted to look over my shoulder to make certain no one had a gun aimed at my back.

My grandmother turned slowly, a faint smile on her lips—though it was strained now, more clearly a mask. I did not move. I did not breathe. I was deep in shadows across the road—not close by any measure—but she found me instantly. She met my gaze.

Her eyes widened, and she fumbled the tray in her hands. The Nazi she had just served patted her ass with a deep chuckle. She hardly seemed to notice. Just flashed me another look, and then walked quickly into the restaurant.

I sagged against the wall, and waited.

It took more than an hour. I watched people. Listened to a city that was sixty years in my past, embroiled in a war sixty years dead, and found myself thinking that life here, besides certain obvious differences, was not so removed from life in my own time. The toys might be different, and the clothes, and the setting, but people never changed. Fear and hate never changed, nor did love. Or courage.

I saw all those things in the courtyard beyond the wall. Jews who sat at tables around the Nazis, forced to pretend there was nothing wrong. Men scooted their chairs so they blocked their wives from sight, and the laughter I had heard earlier grew quieter, and edgier, as the soldiers drank more deeply from their cups. Those who had been eating left quickly. Those who thought about eating stopped at the gate, took one glance inside, and kept going. Some of them tapped the playing children on their heads, and made sure they came along, as well.

Until almost no one was left. Just the Nazis and Japanese. And my grandmother, who served them. No other waitress came near. The mysterious saxophone player was replaced by a violinist who began playing Strauss. My knees ached, and I settled into a crouch with the boys gathered close. Wondering where the Zee from 1944 might be lingering. Close, no doubt. Close enough to touch.

When the Nazis left, they tossed paper money on the table—but one of the men slipped something else to my grandmother; an object small and dark, like a twig. Her only reaction was to thank him with a pretty smile, blushing when he chucked her under the chin.

She stood politely to the side as they filed out, one after the other, into the street. The Peerless sputtered to life. I had almost forgotten it. The driver rolled ten feet forward to the gate, and then exited quickly to open doors. Within moments, they were gone.

So was my grandmother, when I looked for her again.

I was patient. Nothing better to do. All the time in the world. Raw pulled a cup of hot unsweetened tea from the shadows, and placed it in my hands, along with a warm sugar cookie that melted in my mouth. Tasted fresh from the oven. I almost asked where it was from.

I sensed movement on my right. Watched as the Jewish boy and girl who had been playing earlier outside the gate reappeared, kicking a ball between them. The girl was blond and slender, no older than ten or eleven, while the boy was likely the same age, and dark as Ernie. Not siblings. Nor had they returned to the restaurant gate just for the hell of it, though they were pretending hard that wasn’t the case. It was late, I thought. Probably almost midnight.

My grandmother left the restaurant at a brisk walk, dressed in a simple brown skirt and white blouse, short-sleeved and tucked in. Her heels clicked. No smile on her face. Nothing pleasant at all about the look in her eyes. She resembled, finally, the woman I remembered; but that did not comfort me as much as it should have.

The kids peered around the gate. My grandmother faltered when she saw them, glancing briefly over their heads at me. A warning in her gaze. I knew how to take a hint. I stayed put, melting even deeper into the shadows.

“Samuel,” she said to the boy, and then rested her hand very gently on the girl’s head. “Lizbet. Curfew will begin soon. You both should not be here.”

I straightened. I knew those names.

Samuel pulled a slip of paper from his pocket and held it out to my grandmother. She took it from him, and then caught his wrist as he pulled away. He began to protest—she muttered a sharp word that sounded distinctly German—and the boy stilled. She dragged him near, holding up his arm to stare at his inner wrist.

I was too far away to see what she was looking at, but I recognized her anger. “This is recent.”

The boy remained silent. Lizbet whispered, “It happened this afternoon. She said he was getting old enough to be a real man. Her man.”

My grandmother made a small disgusted sound, and released Samuel. “You have to stop going to her.”

“Nein,” he muttered sullenly, rubbing his wrist. “We need her connections. Our families need her.”

“I can get you money, things to trade—”

“You cannot keep our families safe, Fraulein,” interrupted Lizbet softly, and grabbed Samuel’s hand, tugging him away. “Her reach is too long.”

My grandmother shook her head, swearing softly, and took several quick steps after them. She grabbed the girl’s hand and pushed something into it. I had a feeling it was the same object the Nazi had given her. Money, maybe. Something valuable, if the stunned look on Lizbet’s face was any indication. She swallowed hard, clutched the object to her chest, and gave my grandmother a fierce, grateful nod.

The children ran. The woman watched them, clutching her skirts. And then, slowly, tilted her head to study me.

She looked so young. Maybe eighteen was too old. It was hard to tell, but one thing was certain: the boys had abandoned her mother early, and left a teenager to fend for herself. No doubt my great-grandmother had been murdered in front of her daughter, just as my mother had been murdered in front of me. That was how it worked. Once you lost the protection of the boys, death always came knocking.

My grandmother finally walked toward me. Red eyes glinted from her hair. My own Dek and Mal also uncoiled from around my neck. Her pace faltered when she saw them.

And then she took a deep breath, and kept coming until she was so close I could smell the fried sausages on her body, and the beer, and the cigarette smoke.

I smelled like somebody’s piss. Not that I cared, right then. My grandmother had died four years before my birth. Every time I met her it felt wrong and heartbreaking, and unspeakably profound.

“What are you?” she finally whispered. I had no ready answer, even though I had spent the past hour trying to imagine what I would say.

I was still holding my cup of tea. Zee pushed up against my leg, and the shadows rippled around us. Raw and Aaz appeared, but they were not alone. Another Raw, another Aaz, gathered close behind them. And Zee. Her Zee.

The boys stared at their counterparts, gazes solemn, knowing. As though this had happened before. As though they knew it would happen again.

Dread sparked. Time had become fluid in my hands. Perhaps there was a very good reason that Zee kept secrets from me. Because he did know things that I should not—because there was no safe warning for what had brought me here. Not without possibly changing some distant outcome that he knew would come to pass.

Terrified me. Gnawed at my gut. Surely the future was not set in stone. There had to be more than fate. More than the bleak certainty that what I did now was leading to some inevitable destiny that I could not change.

“I’m from the future,” I said, figuring my grandmother could handle the truth; not having anything better to tell her. “Far, distant future.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Bullshit.”

Well, at least that was familiar. “You think the boys would just be standing here if I was lying?”

Her lips tightened with displeasure—also familiar, and startling. I had seen that expression on my mother’s face. Made me wonder if it was something else I shared with them. Little bits and pieces of us, bleeding true in our veins from across decades and centuries.

Blood never lies, Zee had said.

But there was something else that bothered me. We’d had this conversation before. In my past, in her future. I had met my grandmother the first time I ever time-traveled. She had been in her thirties, and my mother had already been born. Fourteen years old.

But that had been the first time for my grandmother, too. She had never met me before then, I was certain of it. No one could be that good of an actress, and my grandmother would not have bothered trying to hide the truth. All of us were poor liars—if such a thing could be inherited.

Here we were, though. Standing side by side. Almost twins, except for the expressions in our eyes. I was glad that much was different. Something of me that was mine, and mine alone.

But it made no sense that she would not remember this encounter later in her life. No sense at all.

“Assuming you’re telling the truth—” she began, but my patience had finally worn too thin.

I made a sharp gesture. “I’m here for Ernie. For Winifred, Samuel, and Lizbet. I’m here because you asked me to finish something, to save them, and now they’re almost all dead. In my time, dead.”

My grandmother flinched. “How?”

“A woman named the Black Cat.” I watched carefully for her reaction. “Seems to come right down to her, though I don’t know why or how.”

But I thought my grandmother might. She closed her eyes, rocking back on her heels. Then, without a word, turned and walked away. Demons slipped into the shadows. I gave Raw my teacup.

And I followed.

Chapter 6

We did not talk. Not even when her Raw appeared from the shadows with a cream-colored silk scarf, which she passed to me. I wrapped it around my head, with special care to hide my face. Best if no one saw us together. It would be hard to explain where her twin had been all this time. Maybe the boys could find me eyeglasses or a wig—though that sounded stifling.

No one else was out. I remembered my grandmother reminding the children about a curfew, but except for a distant scuff of boots, and low drunken laughter, I saw no soldiers, no one at all positioned to enforce that rule. I felt the oppression, though—worse than the heat. There had been life in the streets earlier, but now it was just ghosts and a hush that was as heavy and suffocating as a plastic bag pulled tight over the mouth of the city. Life, choked out.

And hiding. Quivering. I thought of Winifred Cohen, and her presence behind that closed locked door. Like a mouse. Same now, but deeper. The fear and weariness of the people hiding behind the walls of their homes had bled into the air. Each breath made my skin prickle. My sweat felt like the product of poison, or fever.

We walked only five minutes before we reached a long street lined entirely with row houses. My brief impression was of large arched windows and gray brick; laundry lines sagging with holey shirts and underwear; and one light burning from a first-floor window. Every other was dark.

We entered a place of oppressive silence and climbed a set of rickety wooden stairs to the third floor, where my grandmother unlocked the last door at the back of the landing. Hot, stifling air rolled over us when we entered. I smelled mildew, so strong I choked, and tried to breathe through my mouth. We were in one small room with wooden floorboards, cracked walls. Not much furniture. Just a long, lumpy sofa, two battered chairs painted red, and in the far corner by the window—which opened out onto a glassed-in private balcony—a white porcelain sink that had been bolted into the wall, rusted piping trailing free from the bottom like a naked spine. A tin bucket sat on the floor, with washrags hanging over the edge, and a hose coiled from the faucet.

“Don’t drink the water,” said my grandmother suddenly.

I unwrapped the scarf, pushing sweat-soaked hair away from my face. “Don’t touch the food, either?”

“Be careful,” she replied testily. “Better if you only eat what the boys bring you. There’s not much food here anyway, but what’s available is usually spoilt rotten.”

“No one at your restaurant seemed to notice. Especially the Nazis.”

Her mouth tightened. “Locals usually only order drinks, but the Japs allow in special shipments of fresh fixings to keep the Krauts happy. They’re the only ones who can afford those meals. We get a couple of them every week, crossing the creek to Little Vienna because it reminds them of home.”

The disdain in her voice was biting, even hateful. I marveled at her acting skills in front of those men. “Your American accent doesn’t bother anyone?”

Her dark eyes glittered. And then she spoke a stream of what was probably invective—and that sounded perfectly, flawlessly German.

I raised my brow. “I see.”

“I doubt that,” she muttered. “If you are from the future, then how does this war end?”

“Well. And that’s all I’m going to say about it.”

She gave me a cold look. “I don’t like this. I don’t even know if I should believe it.”

“You’re a spy,” I said, matching her tone. “You should be used to a lot of things you don’t like or believe.”

She stared. And for one moment stopped being my grandmother, becoming simply, Jean: a young woman alone, with her whole life ahead of her. Dangerous, maybe—but vulnerable, too. Flinching, as Dek and Mal freed themselves from my hair, slithering down my arms.

Her gaze hardened again, though. I would have been worried for myself if I had been anyone else.

“Be careful where you say that,” she said, her voice deathly quiet.

I tilted my head. “You use those children to help you?”

Her hand balled into a fist. Before she could reach me, both Zees tumbled from the sofa, standing in her way. She stopped. I did not move a muscle. Still as stone, radiating calm. Maybe I was as good an actress as she.

Around us, shadows moved, glinting with sparks of red. Aaz appeared—mine, I thought, though I could not say why. He carried two plates filled with a delicate shrimp salad. Raw swung a basket of rolls and butter.

My grandmother and I stared at the food, and then each other.

“Don’t think this is any less bizarre for me,” I said quietly.

She looked away, and reached up as if to rub the back of her neck. Except her hand was still balled into a fist. She uncurled her fingers, one by one, so stiffly I almost rubbed my hand in sympathy.

“Well,” she said in a low voice, and took the proffered plate of salad. “Come on.”

I did not move. “My name is Maxine.”

Again she flinched, swearing softly to herself, and then sat down hard on the sofa. Dust particles flew into the air around her, and I backed up a step, trying not to sneeze, watching her through watering eyes. Her head remained ducked, shoulders bowed, toes turned inward toward each other. Like a kid.

I hesitated, took my own meal from Aaz, and perched gingerly in one of the red chairs. Raw placed the basket of rolls on the floor between us.

My grandmother picked at her shrimp. Seemed like a crime to eat so well with people starving around us, but I forced myself to take a bite. Tasted good, but not enough to distract me from watching the play of emotions across her face. Anger, still; and grief.

“Hey,” I said softly.

“Maxine was my mother’s name,” she whispered, and shoved a forkful of salad into her mouth.

I had to call her Jean. Grandmother was out of the question. She had not asked how many generations removed we were, and I did not want to tell her. Less I talked the better.

“I was almost eight when we left the States,” Jean said, over an entire apple pie, still warm and placed on the spare chair, which we had dragged close. Each of us held a spoon, taking turns digging directly into the tin. The crust was buttery and flaky, the apples full of cinnamon. Guilt and odd circumstances aside, it had become a lovely meal.

“It was after the market crash. I don’t know why we left. But we landed in France, traveled through Germany, and then took a winding path through Yugoslavia, Greece, down into Turkey. Finally ended up in Iraq. I was thirteen by then. My mother had never been to China, but she made friends with people who had family there. Sephardic Jews, big-business types. By then, there were rumbles coming out of Germany. My mother remembered the first war, and wanted us far away from it. She thought China would be that place.”

Jean stabbed the pie a little harder than necessary. “I’ve been here ever since. Got tied up when the Japs did their number on Pearl Harbor, and then the damn Krauts had to get involved because of that fool Hitler. Someone needed to play cloak-and-dagger on this side of the Pacific. Better me than anyone else.”

Her mother could not have been dead that long. “So you pretend to be Jewish.”

She shrugged. “Dark coloring is all the same over here. Makes you one way, even if you’re not.”

“You can’t be fooling the people in this neighborhood.”

“Only the baojia stick their noses in business that doesn’t belong to them. Jewish tattletales, hired by the Japs. Some of them are stand-up, though. Especially if you pay them.”

“You missed an appointment with one tonight.”

Jean went silent, studying me again. I debated telling her about meeting Ernie, but she spoke before I could say a word—her tone cautious, careful. “His idea. He told me the Krauts were coming in for dinner at the White Horse. He thought if I waited on them, I might hear something.”

“Did you?”

“Not enough. As far as Hilter is concerned, most of the hard action is in Europe. Won’t waste good intel on the officers out here. But you never know. Little bits help.”

“And the kids? I saw Samuel pass you a note.” And Ernie seemed to have made himself her unofficial protector.

“They also help,” Jean said quietly. “They’re in a…unique position.”

“With this…Black Cat. Who tattoos young boys and calls them her…men.”

Jean said nothing. I leaned back, staring at the ceiling, which was covered in black patches of mold. It was still hot, but maybe I was getting used to it. I could breathe more easily. I heard gunshots again, in the distance. Jean looked at the window, drumming her spoon on the edge of the pie pan.

“Black Cat,” she said quietly. “Russian whore. But she’s got her hooks in the local underground spy network. Happened right after Richard Sorge got checked out in ’41. He was a piece of work. Left behind a hole that needed filling, and the whore was in the right place. She had been one of his favorites, and knew some of his contacts. Except she’s no patriot. Not for Russia, not for anyone except herself.”

“Have you met her?”

“No.” Jean hesitated. “She’s dangerous.”

“And you’re not?” My tone was sharper than I intended; for a moment, I sounded like my mother.

Spots of color touched her cheeks. “You don’t understand what’s at risk.”

“I understand she uses children to do her dirty work. I guess you all do, to some degree.” I ignored the flicker of guilt and outrage that flared in her eyes. “What was on that boy’s wrist?”

She sat back, jaw tight, glancing from me to Zee, all the boys sitting quietly in the shadows of the room, watching us, and each other. All of them, so quiet. So solemn.

“I don’t like this arrangement,” she finally said, ignoring my question. “I tell you everything, you tell me nothing.”

I stood, dropping my spoon into the pie pan. “I’ll find out what I need on my own, then. Wearing your face should count for something, I think.”

She swore softly. “It was a tattoo. Of a rose. She brands all her…men…with them.”

“Samuel doesn’t look a day over eleven.”

Jean said nothing. She did not need to. I looked down at my gloved hands. “I need to meet this woman.”

“And do what? Kill her?”

“Whatever it takes.” My voice sounded tough, decisive. It was a good act. Good enough to fool my grandmother, who, in this place, this time, was almost ten years my junior. I was the old guard here. It gave me new respect for my mother. And for Jean, for accepting my presence as well as she had. If my own descendant showed up one day to boss me around, I think I might suffer an aneurysm.

Jean stood, utterly grim-faced. “There are circumstances—”

A crashing sound interrupted her. It was from downstairs, like a door getting kicked in. Shouts followed: a frail male voice protesting in German, swallowed by louder, guttural Japanese tones. A woman screamed. I ran for the door.

Jean got there first, blocking me. Below us, more shouts, and the crunch and crash of furniture being broken. The woman’s voice broke into a piercing wail. I could still hear the man speaking in German, but in ragged fits and gasps. The floor beneath my feet vibrated. I smelled smoke.

She grabbed my arm. “You intervene, you’ll make it worse.”

“Really,” I muttered, trying to shrug her off. “You sure about that?”

“You’ll make it worse for them,” she clarified. “And for me. I can’t afford to be noticed. Not like that, and not now.”

I leveled my gaze. “Trust me. You can take it.”

Her fingers tightened around my arm—a crushing grip. Behind me, at the door, someone knocked, but it was so faint it sounded like the scuff of a cat’s paw. Jean and I froze, and then we heard it again, followed by a whisper. I could not understand the words, but I knew the voice.

Ernie.

Jean let go before I could shove her away. Raw and Aaz were already clearing the evidence of our dinner, shoving plates beneath the couch, and silverware down their throats.

“You can’t let him see you,” Jean hissed, blocking me as I reached for the doorknob.

“Too late,” I muttered—and knocked her aside. I opened the door, saw a pale gaunt face, and in seconds dragged the kid inside—with the door shut and locked behind him. Cutting off, as I did, a rolling barrage of shouts that continued to rise through the floor in muted waves.

Ernie was dressed in limp pajamas, his chest bare. Ribs jutted, and his collarbone was so pronounced it could have doubled as a hanger. Sweat trickled down his skin. He stood, blinking at me with huge terrified eyes—as disconcerting as the violent tremors shaking his body. He snatched at his wrist, and then hugged himself convulsively, gulping down the beginnings of a tremendous, wracking sob.

I knelt, keenly aware of Jean standing in the shadows behind him. He had not yet seen her. I placed my hands lightly on his bony shoulders, and he surprised me by throwing his arms around my neck.

“I ran,” he whispered.

I looked over his shoulder at Jean, who was tight-lipped, pale. She pointed at the floor, and mouthed, “His home.”

I closed my eyes, and drew him closer. He smelled like mildew and sweat. “You did the right thing.”

“Mutter told me.” Ernie drew in a wheezing breath and began coughing. Below, the soldiers screamed in Japanese, and the answering replies in German were broken with sobs. The boy instantly slapped his hand over his mouth, cutting off both a cough and gasp, and took a broken step back to the door.

Or tried to. I refused to let go, and stood—sweeping the boy into my arms, carrying him to the couch. He weighed nothing for a kid his age. Just bone, gangly limbs, and clammy skin. He tried to protest. I ignored him, and sat down with him in my lap.

“Cover your ears if you need to,” I whispered harshly, looking across the room at Jean. “But you’re not going anywhere until those soldiers are gone.”

He did not cover his ears, but instead buried his face against my throat, holding on with all his strength. I could feel his heart pounding. Mine, too. I remembered the feel of his old-man blood on my hands, the rattle of his last breath. His eyes, searching mine, for that one last time.

Behind Ernie, well out of his sight, Zee and the boys uncoiled from the shadows like deadly blooming roses, unfurling claws and wild razor hair. But their gazes were soft as they stared at the boy. As were the gazes of their counterparts, clinging close to Jean. I met her gaze and held it. Wishing I could read her mind.

She stood rigid, pale. Below, wood cracked. More shouts. A muffled scream. Ernie flinched. So did my grandmother. I was past that. What I was feeling did not allow room for flinches. Just violence.

But it finally got quiet. Boots tramped on the stairs outside, and then faded.

Ernie stirred, and when he did, demons scattered silently into the shadows. Jean had nowhere to go, and I watched something shift in her eyes—resolve, maybe. She moved from the darkened doorway. Standing in plain sight.

She nodded at me, and I let Ernie sit up. He rubbed his eyes—turned his head, just so—and froze.

Jean did not move. She stood with her feet braced, hands loose at her sides—as though ready for a blow. Ernie was so still in my arms. And then, slowly, he tore his gaze from her to look at me.

I raised my brow. “Surprise.”

He sucked in a deep breath and scrambled off my lap, nearly falling in his rush to get away. I did not reach for him, or move. Neither did Jean, but her gaze found mine for one brief moment. Tired, angry. Resolved.

“Ernie,” she said gently. “Meet my sister.”

“Sister,” he whispered, backing up until he hit the wall. “You said you had no family.”

“I had to. Maxine was doing…sensitive work.”

“Still am,” I told the boy. “That was me you helped earlier.”

Jean gave me a sharp look. Ernie still seemed startled, but his shoulders relaxed, just a fraction. He mumbled, “Thought there was something different. In your eyes.”

“You can’t tell anyone,” Jean said. “Not Samuel or Lizbet. Not even Winifred.”

Ernie flashed her a defiant look. “You said you trusted us.”

“Not a matter of trust.” I pushed myself to the edge of the couch and leaned forward. “Safety. Anyone who knows about my presence would be at risk. Bad enough that I’m here at all.”

Ernie was a brave kid. He held my gaze with the same unwavering intensity that I would see more than sixty years from now. “Someone looking for you?”

“Not yet.” Jean stepped close. “But you’ll need to be careful.”

I finally stood from the couch. “I’d like to see your wrist, Ernie.”

Jean stiffened. So did Ernie, but he grabbed his wrist, hugging it against his gaunt stomach. I walked to him. He tried to back away, but he had no place to go.

“I have to go home,” he mumbled, ducking his gaze.

I held out my hand. Jean drew close and said, “Ernie. Samuel showed me his tattoo.”

The boy gave her a hard, despairing look. “He promised he wouldn’t.”

Jean shook her head, and I felt her helplessness. “Not an easy thing to hide, short stuff.”

He closed his eyes, banging his head lightly against the wall. “And did Lizbet and Winifred show you theirs?”

Jean blinked. “What?”

I knelt, and took hold of Ernie’s wrist. My grip was gentle but firm, and I bit the inside of my cheek as I made him show me the tattoo.

It was familiar. I had seen it before, on a scrap of human skin. But this was smaller, singular; perhaps a rose, though the coiled lines felt more like the tangle of an unending knot, or a particularly distorted ouroboros. Reminded me of the engravings on the armor encasing my fingers and wrist—still hidden beneath my glove.

I tried to speak, but my voice croaked. I had to try again, more softly, almost whispering. “She did this to you?”

Ernie nodded, shivering. Jean knelt beside me, peering at the tattoo. “And Lizbet? Winifred? What was done to them?”

He hesitated, and touched a spot above his heart. “Right there. She did us all at the same time. And then made the same marks on her body.”

I released the boy, rocking back on my heels. I stared at his feet. Bare, dirty toes digging into the floor. His breathing was loud, rasping. Like he was suffering from congestion in his chest.

It took all my control, but my voice finally sounded normal when I said, “It’s gotten quiet downstairs.”

He hesitated. Jean said, “Wait outside. I’ll go with you in a minute to check on your parents.”

I did not watch Ernie go. Nor did I stand until I heard the door shut behind him. I found Jean watching me.

“I wish you had never come here,” she whispered.

“You afraid?” I asked coldly, softly, certain that Ernie had his ear pressed to the door.

Jean moved so close I could taste the sweet scent of apple pie on her breath. “There’s a fine balance in this place. Upset that, and people will die.”

“People will die.” I pointed at the door. “You willing to sacrifice Ernie and his friends? Because I promise you, kiddo, that’s what you’re doing.”

“I’ve helped them all I can. I have to look at the bigger picture.”

I forgot she was my grandmother. I grabbed the front of her dress and hauled her close, frustration and disappointment mingling with desperate, weary anger. “You listen to me, Jean Kiss. Every life matters.”

She shoved back. “I’m just one person.”

Oh, God. It was like listening to myself. “You’re the most fucking dangerous woman in this world.”

“I can’t be killed,” she rasped. “That’s not the same as dangerous, and you know it.”

I released her. She sagged backward against the wall, eyes glittering.

“I try,” she whispered hollowly. “People think I whore for all the goods I get, but I don’t care. I pass out food and items for people to trade. I get work passes for some, if they have no other way. Medicine, messages…when there’s a need, I do what I can. Maybe where you come from life is different. Maybe you have the luxury of living in a world where people don’t suffer. But this isn’t it. I can’t do everything. There are too many. There will always be too many.”

I heard defiance in her voice, but mostly despair. Profound weariness. Have mercy, whispered a small voice in my mind. Have mercy on your grandmother.

Because she is right.

I drew in a slow, deep breath. And then, carefully, leaned against the door beside her. Red eyes glimmered from the shadows. I sensed a breathlessness in the boys; anticipation, even.

I almost asked about the Black Cat, but when I tried the words felt too heavy, too painful. I was a weak woman. I tapped my foot against the floor and said quietly, “The Japanese soldiers do this all the time?”

Jean closed her eyes, odd relief flickering briefly across her features. “More recently. Used to be that some of their best were stationed in Shanghai, but they’ve been sent into the Pacific to fight the Americans. All that’s left are kids who hardly know how to hold a bayonet. But here they are, in a uniform, with power. Goes to some of their heads.”

“What did they want?”

“Looking for American currency. Shortwave radios. Evidence of spying. That’s their excuse, anyway, but I bet if you smelled their breath for liquor, it would set your nostrils on fire.”

“It won’t last,” I whispered. “None of this.”

Jean tilted her head, studying me. “How much longer?”

I hesitated. “A year or so.”

But you won’t be here when it ends, I almost told her. And I don’t want to think about how the experience will change you.

Jean looked at the door and pushed herself away from the wall. “Stay here. I need to walk Ernie downstairs and make sure his parents are okay.”

I almost told her to be careful. Instead, I went to the door, and watched her slip out of the apartment. Demons faded away with her. All of them, except the two Zees. They stepped free of the shadows and crouched in front of me, perfect twins, utterly inscrutable. I knelt, needing to look them in the eyes.

“Well,” I said. “I hope you both know what you’re doing.”

“Doing life,” said one Zee.

“Fitting pieces,” added the other.

“Right,” I muttered, wiping sweat off my brow. “But what if I make things worse? Or what if I don’t do any good at all?” I looked at my Zee. “This has already happened before, for you. More than sixty years from now you’ll remember what goes on in the next ten minutes, but for me, it hasn’t occurred yet. But Ernie’s still dead in the future we came from, so whatever I did here…it didn’t work.”

“Think too much,” Zee rasped, tapping his forehead. “Just be.”

“That’s crap,” I snapped. “Is the future set in stone, or isn’t it?”

“Don’t know.” Zee held out his hands. “Nothing stays the same.”

“Except when it does,” said the other Zee. I wanted to strangle them. Instead I curled my hands into fists and pushed them hard against the floor. I could hear faint voices below me, speaking German. No more Japanese. The soldiers had gone.

“Whatever caused her to send that message through Ernie hasn’t happened yet. She doesn’t even want to get involved. And,” I added, tapping them both on the chests, “why is it her older self didn’t—or won’t—remember me? Care to explain that?”

Neither of them did, if their silence was any measure. I stripped off my right glove, holding up my armored quicksilver hand. My grandmother’s Zee flinched when he saw it, and rasped a single unintelligible word. I ignored him.

“Am I supposed to help those children?” I asked my Zee. “Or is there another reason you sent me here?”

His eyes narrowed. “All kinds of help.”

The other Zee’s claws raked lightly across the floor. “Help her.”

I stared. “Help my grandmother? In case you hadn’t noticed, that’s not the way it usually works. One dies, one goes on alone.”

Which, I had to admit, was about as petty and selfish as anything I had ever said. Knee-jerk reaction. Of course I would help her. Of course. But for one brief moment—just a heartbeat that lasted a lifetime—I felt a prick of resentment. No one had come to help me after my mother had been murdered. No one.

Floorboards creaked outside the door. I slid my glove back on and stood. Jean slipped inside, a faint flush in her cheeks. She glanced from me to her Zee. “I need some clean cloth and antiseptic. Cans of sardines, too, and a couple flints. Hurry.”

“Serious injuries?” I asked.

She shook her head and leaned back against the door, hugging herself. “But they blamed me. I could see it in their eyes. I think they were appalled that their son had gone to me for help.”

“They don’t know you spy.”

“But they know I’m not one of them.” Jean grimaced, bowing her head so deeply I thought she would be sick. “Does that ever get easier?”

“No.”

Bitterness touched her mouth. “You ever wonder what we’re doing with ourselves? You got that figured out in the future?”

I found myself shuffling close, heart so heavy my feet would hardly move. But I had to. I had to be near her. “You want to know what the point is.”

“One woman responsible for the world,” she breathed, her pain so palpable, so much mine, I could feel the burn of her tears in my own eyes.

“That’s not the point,” I whispered, wanting desperately to touch her. “Just the tagline.”

“And?”

And, I was going to lose my dignity. I was going to lose myself in her grief, if I stayed here one moment longer. “The point is to do good. To do the things no one else can do but you. Because of who you are.”

“A Hunter,” she said.

“Jean Kiss. Hunter Kiss.” I swallowed hard, filled with memories. My grandmother—her future self—had given me a similar lecture under the hot sun of the Mongolian steppes. I had been lost in time. Lost in every way. But she had been my anchor.

“You’re not alone,” I said.

Jean held my gaze. “And you, in your time?”

I smiled faintly. “It worked out.”

Silence drew thin and piercing between us, until finally she whispered, “If you do this wrong, a lot of people will suffer. Not just those kids, but their families.”

“That’s why I need your help.”

“A lot of people need help,” she muttered, wiping her eyes as both Zees rolled from the shadows bearing small bags. “But the Black Cat is something else.”

“You said it’s complicated.”

“She owns people. The right people. She specializes in compromising situations.”

“And that matters during wartime?”

“Wars don’t last forever. And some indiscretions are worse than others.”

I studied her. “You’re not telling me everything. Why did she tattoo those children?”

“All I’ve heard are rumors. No one wants to talk about her, not even the kids. And I’ve tried. She gets a hold on people. Not just with fear, but something deeper.” Jean made a hooking motion with her finger, and slashed the air. “You stop owning yourself when you work for that woman. The tattoo is her way of cementing the bond. She’s covered in them. Each one a life she controls.”

“You knew this, and you let those kids near her?”

Jean gave me an angry look. “It’s not like they asked for permission. And I wasn’t their babysitter. It just happened. You do what you can to survive. I’m sure she made them an offer they couldn’t refuse.”

“Most predators do,” I retorted.

Jean pushed away from the door and snatched up the bags that both Zees had left on the floor. The little demons watched her silently. She pointedly ignored them.

“With or without you,” I said.

She did not answer me. Just fished into the cloth bag and pulled out a handful of thin metal rods no longer than my pinky.

“Flint,” Jean said absently, as though she hadn’t heard me. “More valuable than gold around here. Inflation has made cash almost worthless. People have to trade for goods. Canned food is always worth something. Just one of these flint rods, plus a couple tins of sardines will help the Bernsteins get back on their feet.”

She began to leave, and hesitated, looking down at the floor, her hand on the knob, the wall—anywhere but at me. “Take a nap. We can’t leave until dawn.”

I did not ask where we would be going. “Thank you.”

“Not yet,” she said roughly, opening the door. “Not until everyone gets out of this alive.”

She left. I stood for a long time, hearing her voice echo. Reading words inside my mind.

Save them.

I just wished I knew how.

Chapter 7

Aaz brought me a blanket and pillow, which I tossed on the floor. I tried to sleep—and I suppose I did, fitfully—because I would close my eyes only to open them with odd visions haunting my brain: Grant, his large hand sinking warm through my breastbone to hold my heart; or old man Ernie, covered in rivulets of blood that wriggled like red worms upon his stained white shirt, coiling tight until they resembled the tangled outlines of roses. And in another dream, the last, I found myself a giant, colossal as a mountain, sitting naked and cross-legged upon a peninsula while watching the pinprick lights of a distant city glitter far below me like stars. If I breathed hard I would call down storms. If I wept, I would flood the plains. If I cracked my knuckles, earthquakes would rip through the mountains and collapse stone upon the city. I knew this. It made me afraid, and excited.

Frigid air caressed the back of my neck. I turned, ever so carefully, only to discover a pair of immense golden eyes floating within a sinuous trail of smoke. Blinking lazily at me. Smiling, even, but with cold and bitter humor. Lightning flashed within its body, burning with symbols: knots and coils, and tangled hearts.

We are both Gods, whispered the golden-eyed creature. But they do not see us.

Unless we make them, it added, moments later.

I woke up. Drenched in sweat. So nauseous I slid my hand over my mouth, fighting not to gag. My temples throbbed, and my neck was sore. Mildew seemed to crawl up my nostrils.

I forced myself to take deep breaths; listening, as I did, to gentle murmurs from the apartment below me. Jean sprawled on the couch. I could not tell if she was asleep, but red eyes glinted, and I heard the soft familiar crunch of jaws tearing through metal. Dek and Mal, coiled close to my head, began kneading my shoulders.

My dreams lingered, especially those golden eyes. Maybe it meant nothing. Maybe.

But my gut hurt. And when both Zees crept close, watching me carefully, there was something old and knowing in their gazes that only made me feel more ill.

I grabbed my Zee and dragged him close, pressing my mouth to his ear. “What are you hiding?”

His breath was hot as fire, but he said nothing and pulled away. Pulled me, too, and I rose carefully to my feet. Trying to be silent, though the floor creaked beneath me. Jean stirred, and glanced at me. Not a trace of sleep in her eyes.

“I need air,” I said quietly. “I’ll be back soon.”

“Be careful of soldiers,” she replied.

I was more careful of not making noise on the stairs. Soft steps, hugging the wall. Wooden splinters covered the second-story landing, but the largest had been swept into a neat pile. No more door, just a white sheet pinned in its place. I paused for a moment, thinking of young Ernie resting on the other side of that thin cloth. My hands felt warm for a moment with the memory of his old-man blood.

Hot outside, but there was a light breeze and no mildew scent. I stood on the stoop, inhaling as deeply as I could, again and again, until my nausea faded. Dek and Mal hummed against my ears: Kenny Loggins’s “Danger Zone.”

Several hours left before dawn. It was very dark outside. I listened carefully, but heard nothing except my heartbeat, and the faint scrape of claws as my boys rolled free of the shadows around my feet. I sat down on the steps, taking in the night. It was 1944, but this could have been a quiet street sixty years from now. Some things were not bound by time.

Like me.

“The Black Cat,” I said to Zee, rubbing my knuckles as Raw and Aaz prowled around my ankles. “I need to know more about her. Like why she’s so tough my grandmother won’t take her out.”

“Told you,” Zee replied. “Connections.”

“That’s not enough when kids are getting hurt, and you and I know it.”

The little demon leaned close, rubbing his cheek against my arm. “Different mothers, different hearts.”

“Not that different.” I ran my gloved fingers through the thick spines of his hair. “Just not confident. Not tested enough to be sure of how far she can push. I remember what that feels like. And you…. You came to her when she was still young. You left her alone in the world when she was just a kid.”

“All kids. Every mother.” Zee spat, and the acid in his saliva burned a hole in the stone steps. “No choice.”

Bullshit, I wanted to say. You could give us all more time.

But that would be like telling thunder not to make sound, or water not to be wet. It just was.

Somewhere, distant, an engine chugged to life with a dull, throbbing roar. Made me flinch. I had not realized until then how silent the night was. “You’re not going to tell me anything useful, are you? You never do.”

“Safer not to,” he muttered. “Safer to trust you.”

And then he looked sharply at the door behind me, and snapped his claws at the others. Raw and Aaz fell backward into the shadows, while Zee leapt into the darkness between my legs and the stairs, slip-sliding from this world into another.

I heard a muffled cough. Found Ernie behind me, slight and pale as a ghost.

“Maxine, not Jean,” I said.

“I know,” he replied quietly. “I can tell you apart now.”

I scooted sideways, and he sat down beside me. “My parents are finally asleep.”

“Will they be okay?”

He shrugged. “They could be dead or sick. Anything else is okay.”

Tough kid. But not tough enough to hide the quaver in his voice, or the way he twisted his fingers. I tore my gaze from him to watch the street. “They depend on you to help out with things.”

“I don’t mind working.”

“How much does the Black Cat pay you?”

Ernie stiffened. “I don’t want to talk about her.”

“She’s the reason I’m here.”

“Then you should leave. She’ll kill you.” He began to stand. I caught his wrist. His tattoo was raised and warm beneath my hand—almost too warm, as though it were infected. Or burning with a life of its own.

“She can’t hurt me,” I told him, staring into his eyes. “But she can hurt you, your family. Which is why I need to be very careful in how I handle her.”

He shook his head, despair creeping into his eyes. “You don’t understand.”

“I understand that she has connections, that she frightens you, but—”

“No!” He gasped, wrenching his hand away. “She’ll make me betray you—and Jean. I won’t have any choice.”

I stood, looming over him. “If she threatens your family—”

He shook his head so violently that spittle flew from his mouth, and a low strained sound tore from his throat, guttural and hard. It was not the kind of sound any child should make—too desperate, too old, too wild. He began clawing at the tattoo on his wrist, nails raking so deeply he drew blood.

I grabbed his arms, holding him still. He would not look at me. I waited for him to say something. Anything.

“She asked me once about Jean,” he finally mumbled. “She asked all of us about her. Before she marked us. She asked if we knew a woman covered in tattoos. Tattoos that disappear at night. The others had no idea. But I…I’ve seen Jean when she didn’t know it.”

His voice was thick with shame. I wondered exactly what he had seen when spying on Jean, and quite honestly did not want to know. He was a twelve-year-old boy, though. I could take a wild guess.

“So you saw…her tattoos,” I said carefully. “Anything else?”

Ernie’s cheeks flushed bright red. “No. And I didn’t say anything, not even when she asked.” He rubbed his wrist. “If she asks again, I don’t think I’ll be able to hold back.”

“You act like that mark gives her power over you.”

“It does,” he said simply.

I released him. He rubbed his arms, and pushed past me into the building. Head down, shoulders hunched. He never saw Jean standing in the shadows, watching him.

She waited until the floorboards creaked on the second-story landing, and then stepped outside to join me. Her hair was a mess, and there were circles under her eyes.

“How much did you hear?” I asked.

“Enough to know that I need to push some cotton into the keyhole of my door.”

“Forget that. The Black Cat knows about our bloodline. She knows you’re close. Which means she’s not human…or very well informed.”

Jean stared thoughtfully at her feet. Two tiny heads poked free of her hair, blinking lazily at me. Dek and Mal, who had been utterly still until that moment, returned the favor.

I said, “Were you already aware of this?”

“No,” said Jean, but slowly, as if she was not entirely certain of her answer. “I had been feeling something, though. At the back of my head. Just…instinct.”

“The boys never mentioned anything?”

“I never asked.” She finally met my gaze. “My hands were full. I didn’t want to know.”

I stared, waiting to feel appalled, angry—but all that hit me was a sense of deep, abiding sorrow. My grandmother was being truthful when she said that her hands were full. Overwhelmed, not sure what to do, whom to help, how far to extend herself. Fighting to survive—mentally, emotionally—in the same way that people here were trying to keep their bodies alive.

“How long has it been since your mother died?” I asked abruptly.

Jean stiffened. “What—”

“It’s been five years for me,” I interrupted. “Close to six. She was murdered on my birthday, shot to death in front of me. Right here.” I touched my head. “Worst day of my life.”

Jean backed away, and then stopped. “It’s been seven years for me.”

I don’t know what I had been expecting to hear, but seven years was not it. Seemed like a lifetime. “You must have been a baby.”

“Eleven.” Jean’s voice was strained, her eyes dark and empty in the shadows. “We were in the countryside, helping refugees. My mother had traded one war zone for another. I guess it was the times. But Zee…the boys…they didn’t want us there. They thought it was too dangerous for me, with only my mother for protection during the day. I think…I think that’s why they left her when they did. She wouldn’t listen. She didn’t…give them a choice. It was me or her.”

They made the right choice, I almost said, thinking about my mother—who had done everything in her power to keep me out of harm’s way. Taking me into a war zone would have been unthinkable to her.

I found Jean giving me a sharp look—as though she had read my mind and wanted to defend her mother—but the moment passed, and all the fight inside her seemed to shrivel up into a cold small shell. Jean rubbed her arms. “It was difficult. I was completely alone. No other foreigners for a thousand miles, and my Chinese wasn’t good. There were so many times when I got into trouble.” She stopped for a moment, her gaze turning inward, and then, very quietly said, “Men would try to hurt me, but the boys…The boys would make my skin burn, like fire.”

Red eyes glinted from the shadows. Jean hugged herself—and then laughed quietly, bitterly. “For a long time, all I worried about was me. Some things don’t change.”

“You did fine,” I said quietly.

Jean gave me an unpleasant smile. “Maybe. But I think it’s time to do better.”

We changed clothes. Zee and the boys delivered the wardrobe. Jean was elegant in loose slacks, with a long-sleeved silk blouse tucked in and buttoned to the neck. A touch of red lipstick and several dabs of eye shadow made her look like a movie star. I, on the other hand, wore workman trousers, patched and stained with paint; and a loose white men’s cotton shirt. No makeup. Just some dirt smeared lightly against my jaw. The boys also brought me horn-rimmed eyeglasses, the lenses nonprescriptive, but so thick the world was little more than a blur in front of me. I plaited my hair into two braids and tugged a canvas houndstooth billy cap over my head.

Jean frowned. “Someone should lock you up in the library you escaped from.”

“I was going for hot and sexy,” I replied dryly, “but I guess that’ll do.”

She grunted, and passed me a blue card, a folded sheaf of papers, and a round tin pin. “Put that on and never take it off. It identifies you as a Jew. The papers are from a woman who died here a month ago, but they’ll do in case you’re stopped. The blue card is the most important, though. It’s a monthlong work pass. You’ll need it to cross the bridge into the city.”

“And our similarities?” I pointed at my face, and then hers.

Jean hesitated. “People see what they want. I doubt anyone will look too closely, but once we get close to the bridge, we’ll split up and enter the checkpoint separately.”

“How will your neighbors react to my presence?”

“Most people here are more concerned with how bad their diarrhea is going to get, or with finding food, work. Are you fluent in any languages but English?”

“Just Spanish. I doubt that’s going to be helpful here.”

“So don’t talk. And if the Japs ask you anything, pretend to have a German or Polish accent. Any accent. Act like you have trouble speaking English. Whatever happens, you’re no longer American, or British, or any citizen of an Allied country. You’re a stateless refugee like everyone else in this ghetto.”

“I see some flaws in this plan.”

“There is no plan. Just you, appearing in my life, when you shouldn’t be here at all.” Jean smoothed down her blouse, and I reached up to my shoulders where Dek and Mal were coiled, humming a Bryan Adams tune. I thought it might be “The Only Thing That Looks Good On Me Is You,” and scratched under their chins.

Jean’s frown deepened. “They sing for you?”

“Yours don’t?”

She reached up to pat the little hyena heads poking free of her glossy black hair. “They mutter a lot to themselves.”

They were still muttering—and mine were still singing—when the sun came up and their bodies dissolved into smoke. Jean and I watched each other as it happened, both of us silent, her expression as grave and uncomfortable as mine surely was. Given the peculiarities of the boys, and how they transferred themselves from mother to daughter, it stood to reason that no two Hunters of my bloodline had ever been in the same place at once, and certainly had never transitioned from night to day together. I felt naked.

I could not see her tattoos beneath her clothes, but mine were a new weight against my skin, rippling and electric; an organic, indestructible shell. Dreaming, breathing. I no longer felt the heat, except in my lungs and on my face. The boys absorbed my sweat. I flexed my hands, still encased in soft leather. I had not shown my grandmother the armor. Something in me was afraid to.

We left the apartment. No weapons. Too dangerous, Jean had said, in case we were stopped and searched. No sign of Ernie on the second-floor landing, either, and it was quiet behind the white curtain. I wanted to poke my head in and ask after the boy—tell him to stay home today—but when I drew near, Jean grabbed my arm and pulled me away.

“He would have already left by now,” she murmured.

Temperatures had risen with the sun. It was muggy outside, so humid that a haze filled the air, as hard to breathe as soup. I sucked as much into my lungs as I could, and it still was not enough. No one else seemed to have trouble. The street was already active; folks getting their day started before the heat became unbearable. I saw no zombies. Instead, boys clutching books raced down the street, some kicking balls to each other—nearly hitting an elderly Chinese man practicing qigong on the sidewalk alongside a European woman of a similar silvered age. A duet of violins played from an open window, music nearly lost beneath the chatter of Mandarin and German—voices buzzing around a shed where a slender Chinese man boiled nothing but water in giant cauldrons, ladling it into tin kettles and thermoses held by women and children. Money changed hands, and laughter sparked the air.

Buildings grew from each other like the trunks of bound trees—an organic growth, spurred by human pressure—bits and pieces added on, brick and scrap-yard patches that jutted into the sidewalk, replete with grass and delicate vines growing from tin roofs. Cook fires burned in the street. I saw a gaunt, brown-haired woman vomiting against a wall, the young fellow with her staring at her puke as though he was more sorry about the wasted food than her illness. Ahead of us, an older Chinese man pulling a cart stopped to ring a bell, and then stooped with a groan to pick up a wooden bucket that was shaped like a pumpkin—one of many that had been left at the side of the road. He emptied its contents into an enclosed stone container built into his cart. A terrible stench burned my nostrils. I made a small sound. Jean raised her brow. “Mr. Li handles the honey pot waste. He resells it to farmers for fertilizer.”

She waved at him and he smiled—though he gave me a disconcertingly sharp once-over. And then leveled that same piercing look at Jean. If she noticed—and I thought she must have—she showed nothing. Simply continued walking at a brisk pace that made my leg muscles burn. Few greeted her. Caution, perhaps, or disdain; or simply because they did not give a damn. But not, I thought, because she was unknown.

We split up at the checkpoint. A bored young Japanese soldier waved through Jews with little more than a glance at the passes, though I half-expected him to pull me aside. Instead, I watched him slap a baton against the shoulders of a Chinese man—and order a strip search, right there on the bridge in front of everyone.

The man did not fight or protest. He stood very still as his clothes were torn away and thrown into the river. When a baton prodded the crease of his buttocks, he did not flinch. Nor did he make one sound when that same baton smashed against his lower back, driving him to his knees.

The soldiers laughed, though one of them looked away, his smile forced. The checkpoint guard said a sharp word to the Chinese man, planting a boot on his back to hold him down when he tried to rise. I did not need to speak Japanese or Mandarin to know what he was ordering, and was unsurprised when the man on the ground began crawling across the bridge. I held my breath, hoping he would make it without a bullet in his ass. I finally understood, in that moment, the predicament my grandmother was in. She probably saw this, and worse, every day. Unable to lift a hand. Just as I was unable—unwilling—to step in. I had a job to do here. Like my grandmother had said, there was a bigger picture.

He made it, though. I was waved through several minutes later. Jean had gone ahead of me, and I saw her deep in the crowds of rickshaw pullers and hawkers. The naked Chinese man stood nearby, carefully not looking at her. Just as carefully not seeming to touch her as she passed near him to approach me. But I saw their hands brush, and he turned instantly to walk in the opposite direction; quickly, one hand pressed against the small of his back, but utterly shameless about his nudity.

“I assume he’ll be able to buy new clothes?” I asked her quietly. “You gave him something to trade.”

“Well, that would be a waste,” she said. “I paid him for something else.”

Chapter 8

Jean hailed a pedicab, and ordered the driver, in rough Mandarin, to take us to the former French Concession—a destination I learned about only after she translated. I had been there before, in the twenty-first century—quite unexpectedly, under terrible circumstances.

The appearance of the neighborhood was as I remembered, though I had to remind myself that I was from the future—and that it was mere luck and preservation that had left the French Concession, in my time, mostly intact after sixty years. Very little seemed different. There were still those quiet streets lined with old trees, and those glimpses of rooftops and windows visible over the glass-embedded tops of high walls. The air tasted cooler, cleaner. Not so many people out and about, and there were fine cars parked at the side of the road. Japanese soldiers patrolled in pairs, eyeing us suspiciously as we passed. But no one told us to stop.

We were let out at a leafy cobblestone intersection in front of a simple black gate that looked the same as every other that we had passed. But Jean stood for a long moment, staring at it as though the iron might burn her. “Are you certain you insist?”

“Tell me why I shouldn’t,” I said. “You have a reason.”

“I’m no longer certain it’s a sufficient one.” Jean shot me a piercing look. “I do good here, whether you believe that or not. I help people. I may have to leave after this, and I don’t…I don’t know where I’ll go. I don’t belong anywhere.”

I dared to graze her arm with the tips of my fingers. “If there’s another way to remove those children from her control—”

“Even this might not be enough. The fact that she knows our bloodline exists…” Jean stopped, and studied the gate again, thoughtfully. “Ernie, Winifried…all of them. It sounds as though they lived long, full lives, regardless of what happened to them in this time and place. They died old. You and I both know that’s a gift, even if it was cut short before their time.”

It was a gift, yes, but a bitter one. I said nothing, though. Simply waited for Jean to make up her mind. I was not going to push this final step down her throat. Even if I had almost everything else.

I did not wait long. She raised her gloved fist and knocked hard on the dull iron gate. It opened so quickly, hardly before her hand was away, that I wondered whether we had been watched from the other side.

I hoped not. It was Ernie who faced us. Even Jean seemed startled to see him. He was dressed in new clothes—a starched, white short-sleeve shirt and black slacks. A uniform, maybe. It looked too large on his frame, the tattoo on his skin oversized for such bony wrists. A little tin pin was attached to his shirt above his heart. His expression was grave, which made him look like the old man he would become, instead of a little kid.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said, giving me a piercing look as though I was somehow to blame. Which I was.

“I seem to have developed a nagging concern for your well-being,” Jean replied. “You and the others. I’ve come to break your contracts.”

“You can’t. You’ll only make it worse.”

Jean laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Come on. Maybe you’ll thank me for this one day.”

Ernie backed away from the gate, one hand tapping spasmodically against his skinny thigh. Looking at us with desperate despair, as though his ragged heart was breaking in his eyes. He resembled a wild animal more than a child, or some kid raised by wolves and then tossed into human clothes—out of place, lost, and very alone.

But he was not alone. Behind him, standing in regular intervals throughout a carefully landscaped garden, were thick-necked white men—watching us, armed with rifles. All of them wore soldier uniforms, lightweight summer issue. They did not seem surprised to see us, or even alarmed, but their dead, flat gazes were profoundly cold. They reminded me of attack dogs—quiet, restrained, ready for that right, deadly moment. I wondered if they had tattoos on their wrists, as well.

I focused on Ernie. “Sometimes you have to believe in people, kid. Before you forget how.”

He began to shake his head, but froze when Jean brushed her knuckles against his cheek. “If I asked you to walk through this gate and go home, would you?”

“I can’t,” he whispered, rubbing his wrist.

“Okay.” Jean breathed. “Then listen. You and I never talked about the things you’ve had to do here. I’m sorry for that. I knew it was bad, and I never did a thing. But that’s going to change. So chin up, short stuff. Your job is to stay out of the way.”

Ernie looked so stricken. “She knows you’re coming. That’s why she had me come here to…welcome you.”

I pushed past the boy, watching the guards—smiling so coldly at them that several stirred, hands tightening on their guns. “I know I’m ready to say hello.”

Jean rolled her eyes. Ernie looked at me like I was crazy. But I winked at him, and his mouth twitched with a tentative, wary smile that warmed me to the bone.

He turned and led us down a gently curving path shadowed with palms and thick decorative grasses. The air smelled rich, with a mint undertone that clung to my nostrils. The guards watched us, but did not follow. No need. There were a lot of them, and they stood in regular intervals within the garden and against the walls. I heard several speaking softly in Russian.

“Pogroms drove the Russian Jews into Shanghai, but revolution forced the rest,” Jean told me under her breath, as though reading my mind. “Soldiers, mostly. The Japs recruited some for their police force, but the rest hired out as construction workers, or muscle.”

French doors stood open in front of us, tucked beneath a stone arch built below a series of balconies and large windows. Rose vines clung to immense trellises. I heard a woman’s throaty laughter. Ernie ducked his head, and led the way inside—but not before Zee twitched between my breasts. All the boys, stirring—and not just on me. Jean touched her stomach as though she was being kicked, and glanced at me warily.

It was crowded inside. Unexpectedly so. The chaos did not at first make sense. I saw old-fashioned movie cameras, and tall lights; men scribbling on notepads; a mix of Chinese and white women dressed in loose robes and heavy makeup, lounging in velvet armchairs while others dabbed sweat from their brow. I heard muffled shouts and gasps, and then brief silence; and I glimpsed beyond the milling crowd one long, naked tattooed leg.

Ernie pushed through. We followed. And it suddenly became quite clear to me what was going on.

Someone was making a porno.

A bed was the centerpiece, but all I could see were its round edges, draped in raw silk the color of butter. Again, a single tattooed leg stretched sinuously. I saw claws drawn into the flesh. Scales and veins of inked quicksilver. I glanced at Jean to see if she had noticed, and found her staring. All over my body, the boys twisted, roiling in their dreams. I knew I was looking at the Black Cat.

I saw the rest of the woman moments later, just beyond a break in the crowd. Most of her, anyway. A Chinese man knelt at the base of the bed; a giant, huge muscles straining in his back and arms as he drove himself forward into her writhing body with sharp, mechanical thrusts. He obscured her face, but I glimpsed tattooed arms, and the edge of a tattooed breast.

But not just tattoos. Flickering shadows surrounded every line and curve of her flesh. A dark, thunderous aura—one of the strongest I had ever seen.

The Black Cat was a zombie.

A photographer stood on top of the bed, taking pictures. Another crouched off to the side, doing similar work from a different, more intimate angle. Intense men, with jobs to do. Sweat rolled down their faces. Beyond them, leaning against the wall, I glimpsed three children.

I recognized Samuel and Lizbet immediately, but the other little girl with them did not immediately remind me of Winifred. The coloring was the same—dark hair, dark eyes—but there was a quality to her face that was distinctly different.

None of them was watching the sex. But not, I thought, because of embarrassment. Just boredom. As though they had seen the same scene played out so many times it meant nothing. Trays of empty glasses were at their feet, along with water pitchers and small bowls of diced watermelon. There to run errands, I guessed. Better than the alternative.

The crowd swallowed them. Ernie moved around several cameramen and disappeared. Less than a minute later a throaty, satin voice said, “I have business. Everyone, come back after lunch.”

Men and women exchanged startled looks, but no one argued, not even a grumble. Without a word, they put down whatever they were holding—cameras, makeup, iced tea—and streamed past us to the door, exiting into the garden. The children followed, joined by Ernie. All of them, except him, stumbled when they saw Jean—staring at her with horror. Not a peep left their mouths, though. Too well trained.

The man having sex with the Black Cat was the last to go. He strode out naked, still erect and holding himself in his fist. Not caring who watched. And perhaps, in this place, no one did care. But that still left behind a handful of Russian bodyguards—and the Black Cat, lounging on silk sheets. Her aura pulsed with a dark fire that I had only ever seen in one other demonic parasite—the Queen of them all, Blood Mama.

This was not her. But the parasite was very old.

Unlike its host—an unconventionally beautiful woman. Her jaw was a little too thick, her nose a bit too pointed. She had a wide mouth and a crooked smile. But there was something in that smile, and something in those features—energy, personality, a crackle—cemented by the pure, raw aggression in her blue eyes.

Hard to know how much of that was from the demon—and how much was leaking through from the real woman, whoever she might have been.

“Now this is a sight,” said the Black Cat softly. “Two Hunters, in one place. That just can’t be right.”

“Run, if you like,” Jean said in a cold voice. “But don’t pretend you’re not frightened.”

“I’m not,” replied the zombie, stretching sinuously. Her body was all woman, covered in dimples and curves that not even her tattoos could obscure. But those tattoos…Those tattoos were something else. As the eye traveled, so did each tattoo—claws becoming roses, fangs lengthening into thorns. Petals and vines dripped with sweat, curving in an inked tangle across her breasts, up to the base of her throat. Even her fingers had been tattooed, but the art stopped around her pubic hair. A fact that I found strangely reassuring—but no less unnerving. I felt as though I was looking at a bad copy of myself, as though someone had tried to re-create from memory the body of a Hunter—but gotten it wrong in ways that were disjointed, dizzying. Her tattoos shimmered in my vision.

Something else, too. I could not name it, but I felt a burn on my tongue when I looked at her, as though tasting something bad in the air. And not just the parasite.

The Black Cat leaned on her elbow, fingers digging through her brown hair, and pursed her lips into a cold, assessing smile. There was nothing kind in her eyes, no amusement. Just business. Dangerous fucking business.

“You,” she said, looking at Jean. “It’s you I’ve felt all these months, creeping around my city. I knew you were close. I could smell you and the bastard Kings in the air. But you,” she added, fixing her gaze on me. “You don’t belong. And there’s only one thing I can think of that would have the power to bring you here.”

She looked pointedly at my gloved right hand. I did not want to guess how she knew about the armor, though I had some idea. It had been worn before by one of my predecessors. No doubt she had also skipped through time.

But all I said was, “You know how this is going to end.”

“No,” she said, smiling coldly. “But you do. Or else you wouldn’t be here. Must be bad, I think. Bad for you.”

Jean lunged. Men moved to intercept her, but I was right behind, grabbing the first thing within reach—a teacup—hurling it like a baseball at the nearest head. Glass shattered against a pale brow. I snatched apples, glasses of iced tea, throwing them with all my strength. It slowed down the men a little. I was surprised that none of them were using their guns—unless the Black Cat was worried about her host. Bullets ricocheting off our bodies.

The woman threw out her hand just before Jean reached her. “If you kill me, the children will never be free.”

Jean hesitated. One of the men slammed into her, both going down in a heap. I was there in two steps, grabbing his ears and hauling backward with all my strength. He screamed, and then shouted in Russian. Large bodies loomed behind me.

“Stop,” said the Black Cat suddenly, her voice so quiet I was certain the men would not hear her. But they did, and quit all movement—standing so perfectly still I wondered if they were human. Only their chests moved—faintly, quickly, in shallow breaths that made their nostrils flare.

I finished hauling the man off Jean. He fell on his knees, clutching at his ears. She hardly seemed to notice—staring only at the Black Cat. “What the hell do you mean they won’t be free?”

“So naïve, little Hunter.” The zombie smiled as she looked from Jean to me. “But that one…she’ll understand.”

“Cut the crap,” I said. Or tried to. Because just at that moment, I saw a flash in the zombie’s eyes, and it was not emotion, but actual light. Inhuman, golden light.

Jean gasped. I took a step closer, a cold hard knot forming in my gut. The Black Cat’s smile widened, and the golden light in her eyes flared brighter, hotter. She seemed to swell in size, and gazed down upon my grandmother with a patronizing smile. “There were Gods once, little Hunter. Just so you know. They fought my kind and put us inside the prison. But not all. Those who were free left their spore in human flesh. Passed down and down and down. Until we have this.” She trailed her hand across her tattooed hip. “Her name was Antonina before I found her. Known for being…odd in the head. Premonitions, dreams. Not afraid of spilling a little blood. She saw my true form, and welcomed me into her skin. Her extraordinarily powerful skin. She had no idea what she could do with her gifts until I stepped in.”

“And the tattoos?” I asked.

“Charms,” she replied, her aura thunderous, dancing with bolts of crimson light. “And irony. Because I care for you so.”

I ignored that. “You use those marks to bind people to you. How?”

“How does a parasite feed on pain?” countered the Black Cat, gazing lovingly upon her tattooed arm. “How did those gods of old, our dear enemies, manipulate the flesh of humankind with nothing but a thought? How, dear Hunters, did they make you?”

She smiled. “A mystery, yes? But, truth. Here, truth. The tattoos are merely an anchor that I use to bind their spirits to mine.” The Black Cat raked her nails across a petal etched into her stomach. One of the Russians standing behind me cried out in pain, clawing at his eyes. The Black Cat closed her eyes, shivering. Tasting his pain, no doubt. Like having straws stuck into her body, I thought. Every time the parasite hungered, it needed only to…poke herself.

“If you kill this body,” she said breathlessly, digging her nails deeper into the petal, speaking over the Russian’s cries as he dropped to his knees, “everyone I have marked will die, as well. Here, inside, in their hearts. Those children you care so much about will never live full lives. The world will be gray to them.”

“Unless,” she added, “they die first. But then, I don’t suppose it would matter, anyhow.”

“All we have to do is get rid of you,” Jean said, though she sounded shaken.

The Black Cat gave her a disdainful look. “Forever? You’ll never keep me away from this host. And you can’t kill me.”

Jean snarled, staggering to her feet. This time, the guards used their guns.

Chapter 9

The boys raged in their dreams, surging over my skin to cover my face. Split second, less than a heartbeat. I glimpsed movement against Jean’s cheeks, a shadow bursting—and then she was protected, as well. Both of us, wearing our demon masks.

None too soon. A bullet bounced off my forehead, the impact making me stagger. I heard other pings, and then a meaty thud, a low cry. One of the shooters bent over, clutching his stomach.

Hands grabbed my throat from behind, trying to choke me. I felt nothing, and slammed my elbow backward, sending it deep into a hard gut. Fingers loosened. I turned and drove my fist into the man’s sternum. Heard a crack. He fell backward, screaming.

I looked for Jean, and found her already at the bed. Her torn blouse was gaping down the front. Somewhere she had found a knife—perhaps from the fallen men at her feet.

One of the few Russians left standing barreled toward her. I reached him first, taking us both into a heavy pile of camera equipment. Glass shattered. I found myself pinned by two hundred pounds of red-faced man. He grabbed my hair with fists the size of hams, trying to pound my skull into the floor. All I felt was a tickle. I let him work out his frustration, and was just about to use my demon-hardened nails to puncture his femoral artery when small arms reached around his neck, and hauled backward.

Or tried to. I spied a thatch of dark hair and determined eyes. Ernie.

The Russian let go of my head, reaching back. I surged upward, slamming my forehead into his jaw. I felt all the bone in the lower half of his face implode, and when I leaned away, the dent I left behind made his face resemble a crushed soda can. He swayed, staring dumbly at me, and then toppled sideways. Ernie did not let go quickly enough, and fell with him.

I reached for the kid. His eyes were squeezed shut, and he cried out when I tried to pry his arms loose. I whispered his name, trying to calm him, but when he looked at me, a shudder raced through him that was so violent I almost wished he had kept his eyes closed.

“Your face,” he breathed.

“Pretend it’s magic,” I replied, and dragged the boy close—stuffing him into the small spot between the back of a chair and the wall.

“Stay there,” I told him, and then, because he looked so scared, planted a rough kiss on his forehead. He tried to grab my hand when I turned away, but I ignored him, looking again for Jean.

She had been busy. Blood trickled from the Black Cat’s mouth, and she lay pinned to the bed with a knife pressed into her throat. Jean straddled her, appearing every inch the lethal woman I remembered. Cold, hard, and mean as hell. But the Black Cat did not look frightened. She was laughing.

“Be quiet,” Jean said through gritted teeth. I realized her hand was shaking, the knife dangerously close to slipping off the zombie’s neck—a good or bad thing, I did not know.

“You understand now?” replied the Black Cat, arching sinuously beneath Jean. “You can’t touch me.”

I strode to the bed. “What the fuck is going on? Exorcise the bitch.”

“I tried,” Jean snapped, pressing the knife more tightly against the zombie’s throat. “The boys…The boys didn’t do anything.”

The boys ate parasites. That was how it worked. We exorcised, while Zee and the others sucked the bastards in. Usually. I looked from the exposed tattoos on Jean’s chest—red eyes glittering—and met the Black Cat’s amused golden stare. “You cut a deal.”

“I didn’t,” replied the demon inhabiting the woman, aura thundering silently around her head. “But it was made of blood, nonetheless, and binding. I cannot be killed by you. Or them.”

I wanted to scream with frustration. This was not the first time I had been denied justice because of deals made between my ancestors and other demons. Promises that had to be honored, forever. Demons might be savage, but they always kept their word. As did the boys.

“And your host?” Jean raised the knife and plunged it into the zombie’s shoulder. Somewhere, out in the yard, a woman screamed. My grandmother stilled for one horrified moment—and then quickly yanked out the knife. The Black Cat began laughing again.

“Be quiet,” Jean cried hoarsely. I stepped to the bed, and the Black Cat tore her gaze from my grandmother to look at me. Finally, something more than amusement flitted across her mouth, and that light burned again in her eyes: golden, tinged with red, something deeper that was older than the night.

The zombie murmured, “Hunter. Hunter of the Kiss. The old King’s Kiss. What will you do with me now? Kill my magnificent host, and you will condemn those children. Kill my host, and I will find another, and another.” She looked at Jean. “I will feed every man you ever helped to that Nazi Neumann, for his experiments; and send the women to the comfort houses to be whores for the Japanese. And I will take those sweet children you love,” she added, in a whisper, “and take them, and take them, until they are nothing but rags on the screen.”

Zee pulsed between my breasts. I drew in a deep breath, fighting the tremor that started in my gut—rising up and up into my throat. A zombie was in front of me—nothing but a parasite—but there was demon in the blood of her host, and people’s lives at stake. Jean made a small, frustrated sound—the tattoos on her face seeming to pulse in fury. A cruel smile touched the Black Cat’s mouth. She was goading my grandmother. Pushing her. But all Jean did was quiver. That was all.

Because I took one look at her face, and I knew—I knew. She had never killed anyone. Zombie parasites, maybe, but those hardly counted. She had never, with her own two hands, taken a human life. Not even a host.

She could not do it now, either—and not simply because of the price that would be exacted on the children. I could see it in her eyes. I could feel it in my own gut. It was one thing to let the boys do the dirty work, but making the cut took a whole other kind of nerve. A nerve I didn’t have, either. The only times I had taken human life was in the heat of battle, or by accident.

This was neither. This was cold blood.

I stripped off my glove, revealing the armor, and climbed on top of the bed. I showed the Black Cat my hand. She must have known it was there—she had intimated as much—and yet she still flinched when she saw it. Flinched, as though I had struck her. She stared at the dull metal and her smile slipped away. So did her contempt. Her aura shrank.

“You know this,” I said quietly, and then pulled back one of my braids to reveal the side of my face. “And this.”

I felt the boys shift position, revealing a patch of pale human skin—and the twisting scar that was just below my ear: a brand, a symbol of a birthright that I did not understand; only that it was power. The kind of power that terrified even the most dangerous of demons—and their enemies. I was different from the others of my bloodline in more ways than one.

“No,” whispered the zombie. “No, it can’t be.”

“Look closer,” I snapped. “And tell me what you think it means.”

Because I sure as hell had no clue.

The zombie, however, stared at me like I was going to open my jaws wide and swallow her whole. She bucked against Jean, her aura shrinking even more—hugging the host’s skin so tightly it looked as though the demon was trying to hide. Jean gave me a startled look, but I ignored her, riding a dangerous edge; slipping past fury into something wild and hungry.

“Don’t you fuck with us,” I whispered, bending close, holding that zombie gaze, which was dark with terror. “Bargain or no bargain, I will make you pay. I will make you scream. You know I can. So you will let these people go. And you will leave this host and never return. And you will forget those threats you made.”

The Black Cat closed her golden eyes, but when she opened them again they were brown and human. All the fight had gone out of her. Every ounce of defiance and arrogance. All that power, pissing away. I could taste it, and there was a quiet presence inside me that felt nothing but disdain for how quickly that demonic parasite had folded against nothing but armor and a scar.

She is ours, whispered that darkness inside of me. All of them belong to us.

Heat poured from the zombie, shimmering over her stolen skin. I grabbed Jean’s shoulder, and hauled her away. The Black Cat remained on her back, chest heaving, her mockery of our tattoos suddenly resembling little more than a child’s drawing. As if I were watching ink fade, only deeper: power, heartbeat, breath—breaking loose, leaving the zombie.

Those tattoos had been alive, I realized. Each one a life.

“I could have used them against you,” whispered the Black Cat. “I could have spoken one word and forced those children to stand still while my men shot them. Or made them attack you. Or attack their own parents. They were mine, in every way.”

I took the knife from my grandmother and dragged the tip, hard, across the stab wound in her shoulder, down her arm, across her ribs and stomach. I left behind a trail of blood. No one screamed outside. I looked over my shoulder and found Ernie staring from behind the sofa, eyes huge. Still rubbing his wrist.

“Where’s his?” I asked roughly.

Her jaw tightened. “My breast.”

I found the tattoo. It looked newer than the others. I sliced it open, a single shallow cut. Ernie did not make a sound, or show any discomfort whatsoever.

“Good,” I said, also glancing at Jean, who was staring at the Black Cat as though she had never seen a zombie before. “Now get the fuck out.”

That aura flared to life. The Black Cat said, softly, “This host is strong. And she likes my kind. If you don’t kill her, someone else will take her skin. She will invite them.”

“Then you better make sure your kind knows she’s off limits,” Jean whispered.

“How dare you,” murmured the Black Cat, but there was no fire in her voice. Whatever the demon feared inside me had beaten her well and good.

“Go,” I said. “You had your fun.”

The zombie gave me a cold look. “I’ll remember you. I’ll warn the others. And my mother.”

“Your mother,” I said, startled.

“Blood Mama,” she whispered.

“She’s every parasite’s mother. You’re not special.”

“Aren’t I?” she said, finally smiling again.

Before I could say a word, that thunderous smoky aura gathered tight against the crown of the Black Cat’s head, and slammed upward, away from its human body. In moments it was gone.

And all that was left was an unconscious woman covered in terrible tattoos, resting naked and limp on a large bed. I stared at her for one long moment, remembering what the parasite had said. There was demon blood in that woman. She had been given a taste of power. If she remembered her possession, if she continued hurting people…

Safer to kill her. Do it now.

But I never hurt hosts. Not enough to cripple or kill, anyway. A person had to have limits, and innocence was one of them. This woman, Antonina, had been possessed. She now had the chance to make a new life for herself. If she could. If society allowed her to. Folks, I had found, were usually made responsible for the crimes demons made them commit. Justice was blind.

I dragged Jean away. Grabbed Ernie on the way out, and then scooped up Samuel and Lizbet. Jean tossed away the knife in her hand, and swung the last little girl, Winifred, into her arms. No one stopped us. Maybe it was the tattoos on our faces, which disappeared by the time we reached the street. Or maybe it was the bodies left behind, clearly visible from the garden once the doors opened; the Black Cat in particular, sprawled on the bed.

Or, perhaps it was our eyes, which Ernie later told me looked like death.

Either way, we got out fast.

Chapter 10

Jean and I took the children home.

Samuel and Lizbet first, and then Winifred. She was a sweet kid, and had been playing in the garden while the fighting was going on. No urge to sneak a peek, which Samuel had succumbed to, especially after Ernie had gone back inside the studio. Ernie was quiet as we crossed the bridge to Hongkou, but Samuel kept sneaking glances at my face, and Jean’s—as if he half-expected us to sprout tattoos all over again.

Winifred did not remind me of her older self. Not in the eyes, not in the face. But I guessed that was normal. I patted her on the head. Jean promised extra goods to trade, if they stopped by that night. Enough to make up for lost wages. But they were never to return to the Black Cat. Ever again.

“I promise to make sure they listen,” Ernie said, later. It was just the two of us. Jean had gone out, thermos in hand, to buy hot water from the vendor down the street. I thought she needed air, and a walk—away from me. Enough time to get her head straightened out. I needed the time, too. Alone with Ernie.

“You can’t tell anyone what you saw or heard today,” I told him.

“Magic,” he said solemnly, and with a trace of uneasiness. “You can do magic. Jean, too. It’s how she gets us stuff, isn’t it?”

“Jean cares,” I said. “She was so afraid she would make it worse for you.”

Ernie swallowed hard, shuffling his feet across the floor. He was still in his good clothes, which looked stark and impossibly new against the old sagging couch he was seated on. “Can…that woman…hurt us again?”

Part of me wanted to know how she had hurt him. Wondering if it would be good for him to talk about it. But I dashed that almost as soon as I thought it. No good.

But his question made me hesitate in other ways. Made me think about the future. How much I should say. If I told him to never look for a Maxine Kiss, then I would never be set on a course that would send me back in time. If I were never sent back in time, all of this would be different—maybe. And maybe, even now, I had done nothing to change the future. Maybe Ernie was still dead, sixty years from now. Him, Samuel, Lizbet—and Winifred.

Which bothered me. Something was still not right. Something big.

“I’m going to tell you some important things,” I said to Ernie, holding his gaze—making certain he was listening. “It’s going to sound crazy, but it’s magic—just like you saw today. And it’s the truth. Your life depends on it.”

He swallowed hard, going pale. “Yes?”

I took a deep breath. And then gave him a date and time. A place. I told him about knives. I told him to be careful. I told him not to go out that night. Not to go at all. To write a letter to the person he was looking for. Just…to write a letter.

I did not tell him he might die. No one deserved to know the date of his or her death. Maybe that was a choice some would make, but it wasn’t one that should be forced on a person. Ernie had a long life ahead of him. No need to dread the future.

Although, given the look in his eyes, I had a feeling he could hear between the lines.

“I’ll be careful,” he said, staring at me with that old-man gaze. “I’ll remember.”

I nodded, ducking my head to stare at my gloved hands—finding it hard to meet that gaze of his. A moment later he said, “You’re telling me good-bye.”

The apartment was very quiet, even though beyond its walls I heard voices in the street, and babies crying—metal being pounded in a loud, clanging rhythm. No match for the silence surrounding us, which muted those sounds, and dulled them. The air was hot. It was hard to breathe.

I looked at the boy. “Yes.”

He nodded solemnly. “Will I see you again?”

“Maybe.”

“Is Jean leaving, too?”

“Not yet.”

He heard the “yet” and flinched. “But she will be.”

“Even you,” I said, as gently as I could. “Nothing lasts. Not this war, not this place. You’ll find something better.”

“But not magic,” he whispered. “Not Jean. Not you.”

I smiled. “You only met me last night.”

He smiled back, but sadly. “I’ll be watching for you. Everywhere I go. I promise.”

“I’ll be waiting for you to find me,” I said quietly.

I heard a creak on the landing outside the door. Jean came in, holding her thermos. Still with that troubled glint in her eye.

Ernie excused himself, and left.

“Something’s not right,” I said, sprawled on the couch. The seat was still warm where Ernie had been. The scent of mildew was getting to me again.

Jean sat on the chair, hunched over, running a wet rag over her face and the back of her neck. I thought about asking for one, too, but was afraid of disrupting my train of thought.

“I was told you skinned that woman,” I said.

Jean stopped, and looked at me. “What?”

“The Black Cat. Skinned alive. You, or those kids, did the deed. I held the proof in my hands. Human skin, with those same tattoos we saw on her body. I didn’t imagine it.”

Disgust made her grimace. “Why would I do that? And don’t bring those kids into that kind of talk. That’s horrible.”

I slid my hands under my head, staring at the black mold on the ceiling. “I thought there must be a good reason. But it didn’t happen. Why would Winifred lie about that? And where else would Ernie have gotten that piece of skin?”

Jean said nothing. I had a feeling she had hardly heard me. Finally, though, she muttered, “I made a mistake today. I didn’t finish the job.”

I heard the echo of those same words crossing old-man Ernie’s lips, and suffered a chill. “Yes, you did.”

“I knew I would have to kill her when we went there. Discovering that she was possessed made it easier…until I learned what kind of host she was. So I told myself, ‘do it.’ It was the only way to be certain that everyone was safe. The only way.” She gave me a hard, stricken look. “It was one of the reasons I waited to engage her—long before you showed up. I could have used Zee or the others to assassinate her. I could have done it myself. Operations like that fall apart without a mind to guide them. Someone else would have stepped in, but it still would have been new territory. Old grudges gone. But I waited and waited, telling myself I needed her contacts, her information. And then, finally, when I had the chance—”

“Stop,” I interrupted. “You did the right thing.”

“No.” Jean breathed, closing her eyes. “My mother—”

She stopped. I said, “My mother would have put a bullet in her head without blinking. If for nothing else than being the kind of bitch who rapes boys and films it to sell.”

And my grandmother would have done the same, I thought. You, kid, in fifteen years or less, will be that woman.

And maybe so would I.

I stood, pacing, and then walked quickly to the door. I needed air. I needed to go back to my own time. Jean rose with me, and grabbed my arm. “There’s more. You may not agree with it.”

I waited, utterly silent. Her cheeks reddened, though her troubled gaze remained steady on mine. “I took precautions. That man at the bridge, the naked one. He works for Tai Li, chief of secret service for Chiang Kai-Shek.”

I must have looked clueless, because she blew out her breath and added, “Tai Li is called the Himmler of China. I’ve worked with his people in the past, including that man. I told him that the Black Cat had discovered something big about the war that she was going to sell to the highest bidder. Information that would change everything. And that if they wanted it, they’d have to get to her first.”

“You set her up.”

Jean clenched her jaw. “That woman is probably having her fingernails pulled out as we speak.”

I stared, stunned. “Jesus. And you were worried about not killing her?”

“I made these arrangements before I knew the woman had been possessed,” she replied sharply. “Now, death would have been kinder. Demon blood or not.”

I sagged against the wall, thinking about that. But less about torture and mercy than my own confusion. The future was still not adding up with the past.

Jean leaned on the wall beside me. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-seven,” I said absently.

She seemed surprised. “You don’t have a kid yet.”

“Is that a problem?”

“My mother was sixteen when she had me. I keep waiting for Zee and the others to force the issue.”

She looked so young. I hardly knew what to say. It was true, or so the family stories told, that if a Hunter waited too long to have a child, Zee and the boys would make certain the bloodline continued. One way or another. Lifelong celibacy was not an option, though I did not want to think about Zee condoning rape. I did not ever want to think about that.

“I don’t…” I began, and then started again, more firmly. “I don’t think you have to worry about that. You’ll have a child in your own time, when you’re ready. I’m proof of that.”

“I want love,” she said.

“You’ll have love.”

She gave me a sharp look. “Promise?”

I forced myself to meet her gaze. “Yes.”

Yes, you’ll have love, I thought. And he’ll love you. But you won’t stay together. You won’t grow old together. And neither of you will ever tell me why the hell not.

I could not imagine that happening with me and Grant. I could not—I would not—let it happen.

Jean looked away. I cleared my throat. “Do you have recent photographs of yourself?”

“Some. Why?”

I shook my head, unsure what to say. “I came back to save those kids from something that happens more than sixty years from now, and I don’t know if it worked. It all feels wrong. Winifred said—”

“Winifred?” Jean straightened, frowning. “You talked with Winifred?”

“Yes,” I said slowly. “In the future. I told you that earlier.”

She shook her head. “Winifred is mute. It’s an actual deformity of her vocal cords, according to her family. She can’t talk.”

“Surgery?”

“I don’t know. No one seems to think so.”

She can’t talk. I swayed, light-headed. Sixty years was a long time. A long, long time to find a cure.

But if she hadn’t?

Then who the hell were we talking to?

“I gotta go,” I breathed, pushing away from the wall.

Jean grabbed my arm. “Wait.”

“I can’t,” I said, and flung my arms around her, squeezing so tightly she made a small grunt of protest. I had so much I wanted to say, but no time. It would take a lifetime. It would take more than I could spare, even though time was mine. The future was not going anywhere.

My clock, however, was running faster than the rest of the universe. I needed to see Grant and that old woman. Now.

I stripped off my glove, even as I stared into my grandmother’s eyes. “Write me a letter. Warn me. Keep warning Ernie to be careful. Same with Samuel and Lizbet. And Winifred. Make him promise to you, again, that he won’t come find me. No matter what.”

“I’ll try,” she said, and then her eyes went distant, and she began mouthing numbers. “That year you gave me. You’d be my—”

“Don’t,” I interrupted. “Just think of me as your friend.”

Jean hesitated. “Will I ever see you again?”

It was the same question Ernie had asked me, but this time I smiled and snared my grandmother in my arms, holding her tight.

“You won’t be able to get rid of me,” I whispered.

And then I pushed away, my eyes burning with tears. I could not look at her—I could not—but I did anyway, at the last moment. Soaking in her impossibly young face, those glittering eyes that were already grieving. My grandmother. Jean Kiss.

“Be happy,” I said to her, grabbing my right hand, thinking of Grant and the hospital.

And then she was gone—just like that—and the darkness took me.

Chapter 11

The journey felt shorter this time, or perhaps I was finally becoming accustomed to the weight of eternity collapsing around my body. When I finally saw light again, I was not sick. My head hurt only a little.

I was outside St. Luke’s. It was night. The same homeless man I remembered from before was still asleep on the sidewalk, in the same position. The girl with the Gatorade was walking away. It had not been that long. Not long at all.

The boys ripped free of my body, driving me to my knees. I started running, though, before the transition was entirely complete—shedding demons from my skin in smoky waves that coalesced into hard, sharp flesh.

I found the emergency room, and within minutes was directed to a quiet area in recovery. Grant was there, perched on the edge of his chair—his head tilted toward the door as though listening for something. Maybe me. I skidded to a stop when I saw him. He looked so normal. All of this, normal, familiar. But in that moment all I could smell was mildew, and all I could feel was the heat, and I remembered the sounds of Shanghai at night and the Nazis with their laughter as they smiled at my grandmother.

“Maxine,” Grant said, staring at me. “Your aura.”

“Later,” I said softly, staring past him at the old woman resting on the bed. Giving her a good long look that drew readily from fresh memories.

She seemed so ordinary. Such a sick, wounded, ordinary woman. Wrinkled, shriveled, with oxygen lines running directly into her nose, and heart monitors disappearing up her short sleeve to her chest. It was a miracle she still lived.

Or maybe not so much a miracle. I saw the truth. I saw it in a way that I never would have, had I not looked the Black Cat in the face. Despite the odds, despite her advanced age, this was not Winifred Cohen.

The woman lying in the bed in front of me was the Black Cat of Shanghai.

“This is not who we thought,” I whispered.

“I know,” Grant replied solemnly, rising with a wince from his chair. “Look at her arms.”

I had not even paid attention, but I looked. Scar tissue covered her arms; rough, as though an electric sander had been taken to her skin. Or a knife. Something sharp that had cut and peeled.

“The doctors found those scars everywhere, as though she had been skinned alive,” Grant said, his voice tight with disgust. “They asked me about it, but of course I knew nothing. It got me thinking, though. And then, the longer I was with her, and the more I studied her aura—”

“That dark patch you saw.”

“Something…demonic. Buried so deeply, she might not even know it exists. There are many odd things about her aura. Fragments, just…floating. I’m not sure she knows who she is.”

I did not care. The real Winifred Cohen was probably dead—and if so, this woman had killed her, or paid someone else do it. Set up the others, even as she took over the woman’s life.

Should have finished the job. Should have finished. I felt my grandmother’s consternation. I shared it, thinking of Ernie. I had not done enough. Not enough, by far.

I walked to the far side of the bed where the shadows were thick, and tapped my foot on the ground. Zee rolled free, giving me an uneasy look.

“You knew,” I said. “You must have. You pretended she was safe. Why the hell would you go to so much trouble?”

“Many reasons,” he rasped, but a nurse chose that moment to approach the room, and he rolled back under the bed—leaving me fuming. The woman who entered took one look at my face—and then my ragged, ill-fitting clothing from 1944—and said sharply, “Is everything all right here?”

“Just fine,” Grant soothed, a melody in his voice. “If you could give us a moment?”

The nurse shot him a piercing look that lasted for all of two seconds. She swayed, touching her head. Grant said something else to her, his voice little more than a buzz to my distracted mind. The woman nodded absently, dreamily, and backed out of the room. He shut the door behind her.

I said, “Can you wake her up?”

Grant limped close, studying my face, probably seeing all kinds of ugly emotions rising from my heart. But there was only compassion in his eyes. “You went somewhere. Back.”

“Back,” I agreed. “Can you do it?”

Grant hesitated, staring from me to the old woman. His eyes grew distant, thoughtful.

“She’s aware of you,” he said, limping to the side of the bed. “Even unconscious, a part of her is reaching toward you.”

A chill raced over me. I watched the old Black Cat’s slack face. Remembered her golden eyes, the vibrancy of her lush curves. That cruel zombie smile.

Antonina, I told myself. Not the Black Cat.

And yet, I could not separate the two. It was impossible.

Grant bent over, and placed his mouth close to the unconscious woman’s ear. He sang to her, softly, but his voice rolled through me like the ghost of a summer storm, rich and heavy with thunder. I moved closer.

Her eyelids flickered. Her mouth moved, tongue darting over cracked lips. Grant motioned for me to grab a bottle of water from the nightstand, and I was ready when the old woman drew in a long, rasping breath. I rested the mouth of the bottle against her lips, and she instinctively tried to drink. I was careful only to let her sip. She finally opened her eyes, and met my gaze.

She recognized me immediately, but I could see now that it went deeper than that. I should have noticed before—realized something was wrong. The first time I had met this woman, believing she was Winifred Cohen, she had known things about me. I assumed, erroneously, that she had witnessed my grandmother in action. Only half right. Winifred had seen little or nothing. But the zombie, on the other hand, and her host…

“I know who you are,” I said softly to the old woman, when I was certain I had her full, conscious, attention. “Antonina. Black Cat.”

The faintest hint of a smile touched her mouth, sending a chill through me. I wanted to back away, but held steady, forcing myself to hold her gaze; golden-flecked, with shimmers that rose from the very human brown of her eyes. I would never forget those eyes.

“Hunter,” she whispered. “She was so taken with you.”

“The demon who possessed you,” I said.

She wet her lips. “My protector. I searched for her. For years. I felt her close sometimes, as though she was watching me, but she never…came home. Not after that day. You kept her from me. Both of you did.”

I ignored that. “You’ve been up to your old tricks. Hurting people.”

“Making right,” replied the old Black Cat. “I forgot you all, for a time. I forgot so much, but the Kuomingdang would not believe that. They did many things to me, trying to make me talk. All I could tell them were stories about Siberia. But one day they pushed me too far. I killed those men. I didn’t know how. Just that they were dead. I got out, and forgot them, too.”

The Black Cat closed her eyes, sighing. “I had such terrible dreams, Hunter. I wanted a new life. I wanted to be someone else.”

“You cut those tattoos off your body.”

“Part of the bad dream.” Her voice softened so much I could hardly hear her. “But I kept them. You don’t…throw away pieces of yourself. Like trash.”

Grant placed his hand on my shoulder. I straightened, fighting for my voice. “It was all a lie. You set Ernie up. You killed Samuel and Lizbet. Finally, you killed them. And you had yourself shot.”

“Making right,” she whispered again. “I dreamed of you, Hunter. All these years, dreaming of you. Feeling you, in my veins. And then one day I crossed paths with Winifred Cohen. I found her. I think I had been searching, all along. Quiet woman. But I could hear her.” The Black Cat brushed fingers across her brow, but barely, as if the effort hurt and weakened her. Her hand fell limp into the covers, and her eyes drifted shut. “I…absorbed her. I made her tell me what she knew of the others. And your grandmother. I wanted to punish that woman. She loved those children.

“But it all became a dream again,” she added, a moment later—sounding confused, and sad, and tired.

Grant drew me away. “Before, when we first met her, she truly believed she was Winifred Cohen. She believed everything she told us, right down to cutting the skin off a live woman. Which she did, apparently. Just to herself. Her immersion in that personality was flawless, even to me.”

“And now?”

“It’s like watching a quilt that has been cut into pieces. She’s floating in and out. Part of her is reaching for the Winifred personality. Other parts are just…resting in what she was. She’s crazy, Maxine. Well and truly scrambled. I think it’s possible she ordered the hit on herself, believing she deserved it. That she was Winifred and needed to die.”

I looked at the Black Cat. It had been only hours for me. Hours, since I had seen her as a young woman. And now she was shriveled, a shell, shot and maybe dying in a hospital bed. I had no idea what to do with a psychotic old woman who was part demon, who murdered, who believed herself to be both victim and predator. She had taken a fucking knife and cut the skin off her body. God only knew what else she had done in the past sixty years.

Dek and Mal were heavy in my hair. I looked for the others, and found them arrayed around the room, bathed in the fluorescent glow of the long bulb arranged in the wall panel above the Black Cat’s head. Raw and Aaz ate popcorn as they stared at the old woman. Zee perched at the bottom of the bed, his claws bunched up in the covers surrounding her feet. Watching her solemnly.

Maybe she felt his attention. She opened her eyes, and stared right at him. Showed no fear. Just that faint smile, which shifted from sweet to cold, to cruel.

“Your highness,” she rasped mockingly.

“Cat,” whispered Zee. “Miserable Cat. Nothing left but threads.”

Gold glinted again in her eyes, but stronger, brighter. Hot with fury. Grant stiffened, and in two strides I was back at the bed.

“You should have killed me then,” she said, trying to sound threatening, though the effect was little more than an angry, bitter whine. “But you both were too weak.”

I could have said something about mercy. I could have told her that she had been an innocent, and that the formerly possessed should be given a chance to start over. But I looked into those golden eyes, fading even now into dull human brown—glazing over with forgetfulness and confusion—and kept my mouth shut. Mercy, again. Mercy, me.

I snapped my fingers at the boys, and they fled into the shadows. All of them, except Zee. I said to Grant, “Can she harm anyone else?”

“She’s dying,” he said simply. “I can see it all around her. She’s fading. I doubt she’ll last the night.”

I nodded stiffly, sick to my stomach. Sick to death. I was walking away, again, but I wasn’t going to kill in cold blood. Not like this.

I met the old woman’s gaze. “Good-bye.”

“No,” she murmured, brow crinkling with confusion. “Not yet. I didn’t finish. I didn’t finish with you. Wanted to punish…her grandchild. Punish her.”

“You punished yourself,” I replied, and left the hospital room.

Grant and I went to my mother’s apartment on Central Park. Everything was dusty. The white sheets that covered the furniture had turned gray. The windows were filthy. The air was cold and smelled faintly of mildew. But the electricity and water worked—paid for each month by one of the law firms that had overseen my mother’s affairs since her murder.

In the closet I found clothes wrapped in plastic. I found a locked chest full of guns. A box crammed with cash and precious jewels. And in the kitchen cupboards, Spam. Along with two forks.

“I feel like royalty,” Grant said.

I tried to smile. Around us, Raw and Aaz were tumbling along the hardwood floors, tossing Dek and Mal through the air like spears—making the serpentine demons squeal with delight. I looked for Zee. I walked through the apartment, thinking of the last time I had been here with my mother. Wondering if Jean had ever come back.

I felt Zee watching me before I saw him. I stood at the window, gazing out at Central Park. Waiting to hear what he had to say. Knowing part of it already.

“Old Cat dead,” he finally rasped. “Took care of it.”

I had thought he would. I searched myself for regret, and found none. “Did she suffer?”

Zee climbed onto the wide sill. “Not in sleep.”

“And the one who shot her? Who killed Samuel and Lizbet? Ernie?”

An odd glint entered his eyes when I mentioned Ernie’s name, but he shrugged and said, “Different men, different cities. Hired like thugs. Got the scent. Tomorrow, I cut them.”

Cut them, kill them. I had time to think about that, and decide whether there should be another kind of justice. Human laws, human wheels. Evidence could be planted. Police tipped off.

I shot him a hard look. “And the rest of it? You could have warned me in time to save lives.”

He dug his claws into wood beneath him. I noticed other gouge marks, older and just as deep. “Old mother needed you. Needed you in order to…change. Be better. Stronger. Pivotal. No you around, she go on. Never look back. Black Cat get strong and stronger. Children die early. More children after that.”

“She would have done something,” I protested, though a small part of me wondered if that was true. “She would have fought to help those kids.”

“No,” Zee whispered, with utter certainty. “Would have been different. Colder, harder. No good mother. No heart. Seen it happen. Again, again.” He rested a claw upon my hand. “You got heart. Heart from your mother, because your grandmother got heart. Because you shook up her heart. Shook her hard. Made her regret. Regret is sweet if it burns you right.”

“So you’re saying…. all this was to make me go back. To help my grandmother become a better person.” I stared at him. “But she didn’t even remember me. Later, the first time I met her. We were strangers.”

Zee made a slashing motion across his brow. “Waited until lessons took, then cut you out. Better that way. No good remembering future. No good.”

I wanted to argue with that, but stopped myself. If I had met my grandchild while hardly out of my teens, it would have messed me up. It would have been all I thought of. No good remembering the future. Because it stole from the present.

I wrapped my arm around his hard shoulders, and rested my chin on top of his head. I could hear Grant’s cane clicking in the other room, coming closer.

“But we failed,” I said softly, staring at the glittering city lights. “Those kids died.”

Zee held up his clawed hand, splitting his long fingers like a Vulcan from Star Trek. “Live long and prosper.”

I stifled a sharp cough of stunned, incredulous laughter. But mostly, I just wanted to weep. Grant peered into the room. “You okay?”

“No,” I said. “There’s been a lot of death.”

“Lot more you’re not telling me. If I checked your right hand, what would I see?”

I did not want to look. “More of your future cyborg woman.”

“And the rest?”

“I couldn’t save the people I was supposed to.”

Grant leaned against the doorway, studying me. “You’re talking about those kids whom Winifred knew, and who were…targeted. Samuel, Lizbet.”

“Ernie,” I whispered, aching.

Grant frowned. “You feel so much grief when you say his name. I can see it.”

“He’s dead,” I blurted out, wondering why he should look so confused—and then remembered that Grant did not know. I had not told him yet, about going back in time. Seeing those…names…as children. Saving Ernie, at least for a moment. In this time, Ernie had been dead for days now, in my arms.

Unless he was not dead.

“Grant,” I said slowly. “How did we get here? How were we warned to find Winifred?”

His frown deepened. “There was a letter, Maxine.”

The following week in Seattle, I picked Ernie Bernstein up from the airport. It was a rare day, sunny and warm, and I was the only person wearing jeans and a turtleneck. I did not feel the heat.

I saw him coming out of customs: a portly man, shorter than me, his hair silver and tufted. But his eyes were the same. I remembered those eyes.

He stopped when he saw me. Stood stock-still, staring. Drinking me in. I walked up to him, and smiled. Not bothering to hide the fine burn of tears in my eyes.

“I listened,” he said hoarsely. “Even when Winifred called me out of the blue and said I needed to find you, and go in person. Even when she mailed me that scrap of skin and said the Black Cat was back. I waited, and did as you asked.”

Time was a funny thing. I had assumed nothing could change, but it had. I could not explain the paradox that created. Only that moments counted. That it was possible—it was possible, against all odds—to make a difference.

“You did good,” I said.

“I trusted magic,” Ernie replied, with a tremulous smile. “But now I’m an old man, and you’re still the same. I can only hope…I can only hope that Jean is doing just as well.”

I hesitated. He saw the answer in my eyes, and bowed his head.

“Oh,” he whispered, a little boy all over again, pained and grieving. “I never thanked you. Either of you. I regretted that, always. So I watched for you both. All these years, everywhere I went. I watched for your faces.”

“I was hoping you would find me,” I said.

He leaned in, and kissed me shyly on the cheek. “It was only a matter of time.”