Kin

TWENTY-NINE

EVERY WINDOW AND DOOR ON THE FIRST FLOOR WAS open. She wrestled them closed, her arms aching savagely as if she’d been playing hang-me-man all day in the Park with the cousins. With that done, she made her way upstairs, step by painful step. The dishes were washed and the floor freshly mopped; Tante Sasha had probably run home to make dinner for her family. She had three boys, and they were all growing. The silence said she’d taken Conrad with her, though she hadn’t left a note.

Ruby wanted a shower, but just getting into dry clothes was all she had time for. Because after that she would clean the house from top to bottom, so that when Gran came home, she could see that Ruby had been responsible and grown up, a good kingirl.

Jeans, tank top, a cerise silk jumper—the one she’d met Conrad at the train station in, it felt like a lifetime ago. Her uniform was filthy, her socks worse, and nothing was going to save that left maryjane. There was one tiny luckcharm still clinging to the strap; she stuffed it in her pocket and started dragging a comb through her tangled, air-dried hair. Her schoolbag lay on her bed, a rain-darkened blot, and it would probably leave a mark on the comforter.

Her head had turned into cotton fuzz. It was a welcome change from the roaring.

Dry socks felt good. Her old battered trainers were just right. She gathered up her uniform, holding it crumpled in a ball at arm’s length as she smelled the sweat and fear and desperation on it.

Underneath, the faint brassy note of that awful, awful sight.

She turned, meaning to head out the door and down to the utility room—the whole uniform, blazer included, needed a good soaking—and dropped the entire ball, letting out a choked cry.

Conrad leaned against her doorframe, his eyes reflecting gold from the overhead light. For a moment they were too big and luminous, and a ripple ran through him as if he was going to shift, the points of his ears lengthening . . . and receding.

Ruby’s heart threatened to explode. “Mithrus Christ!” she hissed, forgetting how much he didn’t like being told what to do. “Make a little noise next time! You scared me!”

“Sorry.” He didn’t look sorry. Instead, he looked thoughtful. “Where are you going?”

“Downstairs, to put this in the . . . have you been here the whole time? Did Tante Sasha go home?”

“So many questions. You always ask a lot of them.” He nodded, as if he’d said something profound. “I think it’s time we talked.”

I don’t have time for this. “I’ve got to get the house cleaned up. Plus I have to make dinner. When Gran comes home—”

“Is she coming home, then?” Why didn’t he sound interested?

“Of course she is.” Ruby bent to pick up the stinking uniform. “I mean, she’s stabilized. That’s what the cop said.”

“Cop?”

“Yeah. Haelan. The one who came . . . came by and said . . .” She straightened, slowly. “Why were all the windows open? And where were you? Did you just come home when Gran—”

“Ruby, shut the fuck up.” Calmly, quietly. “Or I will beat the shit out of you.”

Her jaw dropped. She stared at him.

He held up his hand, slowly, and something fluid silver dangled from it. Alive with its own light, it twisted and turned, curling around his fingers. Its scales rasped against his skin, and Ruby’s entire body chilled.

It was a collar. Those scales would draw tight around the throat, and the shift would be inaccessible. Your senses would dull, only mere-human instead of the sharpness of kin. No more fullmoons either, unless the keyholder decided you could control yourself.

If he was holding the collar, he had the key, too.

“This is for your own good.” Almost kindly. He stopped leaning against the doorframe, drawing himself up, and the small satisfied smile he wore made his face into a stranger’s. His teeth were very white. Kin-white. “Your grandmother would agree.”

She took a single step back. What do you know about what Gran agrees about? You’re Grimtree, you’re a guest.

“Don’t make this hard.” He moved forward, and his smile widened. His boots crushed her uniform, and in a blinding flash, Ruby saw the mud—dried now—coating them.

The same as the mud on her maryjanes.

“You were in the Park,” she whispered. “You were . . . you . . .”

A zing, like biting on charmed tinfoil, all the way down her spine. Her brain refused to put the pieces together, but her body knew.

A snarl drifted over his face, a cloud over the sun. “You go poking in where you don’t belong. It’s going to take some training, but you’ll learn.”

Training? “What are you talking about? Look, put that thing away. You can help me make dinner, and we’ll just—”

“Don’t tell me what to do!” he screamed, and lurched forward.

THIRTY

AFTERWARD SHE WASN’T QUITE SURE WHAT HAD HAPPENED. She only remembered bits and pieces. First the red flare of agony when he backhanded her, kin strength making the blow just short of neck-snapping force, and a welter of confusion with her desperate screams and his growling roar. The bed—she’d fallen, half-sideways, and was scrabbling, the comforter tearing and her fist tangling in the strap of her schoolbag.

He grabbed her hair as she slid off the bed on the other side, her scalp searing red-hot as she tore free, and somehow she was on her back, her knees drawn up, and she kicked, catching him square in the jaw. He went over backward, the collar making a jangling sound as it was flung in an oddly perfect arc, smacking against her bookshelf and spilling downward.

Somehow on her feet, lunging for the door, trainers slipping in the pile of damp uniform, and she was in the hall, hearing his cheated howl behind her.

He’s going to be so angry.

A noise—breaking glass. Had he broken the window? Her mirror? Bad luck, just like in a feytale.

He was in the Park, a cold, rational, almost-adult voice in her head spoke up, quietly and calmly. Get out of here, Ruby, before he kills you too.

She blundered down the stairs, trapped in the syrup of a bad dream. The nightmare just kept getting worse, and worse, and she was beginning to suspect there was no waking up.

She’d locked the front door, and now her fingers plucked at it, clumsy with terror. Heavy footsteps on the stairs behind her, and that awful, rasping, jangling sound.

“Quit running. I love you. You’re my way out, Ruby.” His nose sounded clogged—had she broken it? Oh, God, he was going to be so angry, and after weeks of seeing what he could do when he was just irritated she just didn’t even, oh God, her fingers would not work on the deadbolt, just scrabbled blindly. “We’ll just get this on, and then you’ll be mine. All mine.”

Mithrus please oh please—the lock suddenly yielded, she ripped the door open and almost tripped over the threshold.

“Ruuuuuuby!” he roared behind her. “YOU’RE MIIIIIIIINE!”

The roaring was all through her, a red madness, and sky-tears spattered her face and hands as Ruby fled into the gathering, rainy dusk.

THIRTY-ONE

WHERE DID YOU GO, WHEN THE WORLD HAD BECOME a carnival-mirror reflection? All distorted, nothing in its right shape.

She ran for a long time, splashing through puddles, dodging headlights and the screaming of horns, the screech of tires. Dashing across streets, keeping to shadows like any hunted animal, as the sky gathered indigo folds close and began to dump water on New Haven in earnest.

As soon as full night fell, the shift bloomed inside her bones; the confusing patchwork jumble of streets, pouring water and bright headlamps, black-wet trees shaking off scab-leaves and showers of droplets was a Dead Harvest nightmare.

Every time the wine-fume of terror inside her retreated a little, she heard footsteps behind her. The scream was still echoing inside her head, weirdly modulated as if falling into a well.

You’re miiiiiiiine!

After a long while the rain slacked, she smelled trees and water and crushed green, and the thought that she was perhaps in the Park brought her to a shuddering, sweat-soaked halt.

Blinking, stumbling, she fetched up against a huge oak tree, every bruise and scrape suddenly demanding to be heard, a chorus of pain. The shift retreated all at once, water through a sluice, and her sides heaved with deep gasping breaths. It was too dark, her eyesight no longer as sharply adapted for a long moment as she altered into baseform. The ripples under her skin retreated, she coughed and blinked more, rainwater and salt-sweat stinging her eyes.

Where am I?

It wasn’t Woodsdowne. Hot, massive relief filled her, and she glanced nervously around, straining her ears. No footsteps. No cars. It was quiet.

What . . . oh. I know.

Another jolt of relief, so hard and fast it thumped her in the stomach a good one. She bent over, struggling with nausea, long strings of her wet hair falling in her face.

It was the park atop Haven Hill. She could see glimmers of city light through the trees, and the edge of a parking lot. Wet streetlamp glow ran on the paved surface, and she could see enough of the shape to know it was the south end. It probably would have been developed before now, except all around it were the estates of the rich—mostly Family, they liked to settle up high. The charmers lived around Perrault, and Woodsdowne was its own little country.

New Haven was a collection of parts, and all of them were jumbled now.

She swayed, her nails driving into tough bark. The wind had gentled, a steady north keener, shaking fat droplets out of the treetops. The heat was gone, swept away just as a broom would slide across a kitchen floor.

Kitchen. Red linoleum squares, and Gran’s hand, so small and still. Conrad, just standing there, dripping . . .

Don’t think about that. Her brain shut down. Shivers gripped her, great waves of them, her teeth chattering and her hair swinging, tapping her cheeks.

Something else swung too, bumping her hip. Ruby looked down.

It was her schoolbag. She’d grabbed it as she went over the bed, probably, and habit had made her keep hold of it.

The thought of herself half-shifted and running all the way through New Haven carrying her French textbook suddenly struck her sideways, and she bent over again, this time wheezing with laughter.

It hurt, and there was a screamy, breathy quality to it she didn’t like, but it wasn’t sobbing. So there was that.

A couple times she thought she was over it, but then the image would pop up again, just like a Fish Day paper puppet, and she would be off on another jagging run of hilarity. Still, it couldn’t last forever, and when the paroxysm retreated, she found herself striped with mud and drenched—again—cold, and having to pee something fierce.

It was then she found out that no matter how badly she’d wanted to sneak out and prowl at night, all it took was not being able to go home for her to wish she was there, warm and safe with Gran sleeping in her bedroom and the rain beating on her window. The plane tree’s shadow would make familiar shapes on the sill, and she would fall asleep to recognizable, comforting sounds.

Can’t go there. He’s there.

Well, where else was there to go? Cami and Ellie didn’t need this. Conrad was kin, and he was likely to be unstoppable if someone got between him and Ruby. Nico might have a chance at taking him on . . . but her brain just gave up thinking about that, too.

She wasn’t smart like Ellie or kind like Cami. She wasn’t strong like Gran. All she was . . .

Selfish bitch. You probably made him awful, just like you made Thorne and Hunter turn on each other. You probably made Gran collapse, too.

Any way you looked at it, she was poison. Trying to change into what Gran wanted at this late date was an abject failure. Now there were people dead because of her.

That was another thing. The body in the Park. Who could she tell now?

That detective. Haelan.

Would he even believe her? He’d decided Thorne was guilty; would she just be making it worse? Either way a girl was dead, lying there in the rain, and Ruby was the only one who knew.

Not the only one. Who killed her, Ruby?

She didn’t want to think about that.

You have to. Whoever killed her probably killed Hunter and that other girl. Put her backpack in Thorne’s room. Who would do something like that?

Who would believe Ruby if she told? She was held to be Wild, and flighty, but not an outright liar. Still, she’d have to choose who to approach. If she could somehow manage to pour out her imaginings, if they would sit still and listen long enough . . .

A purring broke the silence. She straightened, glancing around wildly, and the shift boiled underneath her skin again: fight or flight, fight or flight?

The sound drew closer. A sword of blue-white sliced the darkness, stinging her night-adapted eyes. The wind rose, a fresh shower of cold water spattering across her.

It was a car. Who would be up here? Teenagers looking for a makeout spot?

It’s Wednesday. Nobody is going to come out here to snog at this hour, not with school tomorrow.

She couldn’t make out the color of the car, but she was suddenly, deadly certain it was a black Semprena, its engine making a familiar sweet sound and a pair of grasping, pinching, pulling hands at the wheel, one of them wrapped with a fluid silver chain.

Even if it wasn’t, this was not a place to be found after dark. Ruby showed her teeth, catlike, and fled.

THIRTY-TWO

THE REST OF THAT ACHING-COLD NIGHT PASSED IN a blur. There was the unfamiliar façade of Southking Street at night, hard-faced jacks and different tents than the regular daytime booths. Poisonseller, blackblade knifemartin, sellers of curse and hex, the gangs on every corner shooting warning glares and raucous laughter into the street when someone passed. The only areas brightly lit were the food trucks, most of them with a beefy jack or two running the night shift and deterring trouble just by their size alone.

Ruby faded back into the shadows and cut over to Highclere, where she usually parked. Nothing for her there either; sleeping in someone else’s backyard wasn’t a good idea. She circled for a while, aimlessly, until a foggy idea crawled up out of the adrenaline-drained mush inside her skull.

Now that she had a destination, she was aware of just how tired she was. It was a long way away, and no car to take her there. She also had to stay alert, sliding through shadows, her heart rabbiting inside her ribs every time she saw headlights or heard a noise.

Hours later—she wasn’t sure how many, just that it was still dark and even the sound of traffic had faded to a faraway mumble—she turned a corner and saw the long shot of Kelleston Avenue, shuttered and sleepy even though the streetlights still buzzed and cast circles of glow around their feet.

I drove here. With Cami and Ell. There had been a low hulking shape chasing them—a minotaur, a monster of rage and pain birthed from the core’s stagnant sickness.

She’d always thought that’s where the monsters came from—somewhere else. Not her own house.

Ruby shuddered. But if she was on Kelleston, it meant her goal was in range. There was something else, too.

Halfway down the street was a callbox, the shiny phone sitting under a glare of buzzing fluorescents. It was a half-shell instead of an enclosed box, and that light meant anyone could see her a mile away, but she didn’t care. She walked, a little unsteadily, her trainers slightly squishy. Her hair was a wild rat’s nest, and she supposed she looked like a wandering jobber. If a police patrol saw her, maybe they’d take her in for vagrancy. At least until they found out she was under eighteen and dragged her downtown for breaking curfew.

Then they’d take her back to the cottage, and that was where she absolutely, positively couldn’t go.

She stopped, her head tilted, decided she hadn’t heard anything. The callbox glowed, and when she finally reached it, leaning against the scarred glass side of the cubicle, a wave of weariness so intense swamped her she seriously considered sinking down on the pavement and sleeping right there. The hazy idea that the light would keep her safe was so compelling she actually closed her eyes for a few moments.

A contrary, nagging impulse wouldn’t go away. So she picked up the receiver. A dial tone greeted her, and the charming on the box sparked a little as she dug in her schoolbag. A single quart-pence, round and silver, slid into the phone’s innards, and she dialed.

Crackle. Buzz. “733, what are you reporting?”

It took two tries to make her voice work. “I have a message, for Detective Haelan.”

“This isn’t an answering service—”

“I know.” Wouldn’t anyone let her talk? “There’s another body in Woodsdowne Park. A girl. Public school. She . . . she has red hair.” Like me. Mithrus, did I . . . was it that I . . . ?

A short silence. She could almost feel the woman willing her to say more. There was a ghost of other voices on the line, whirring and buzzing.

“Okay. What’s your name?”

“He didn’t do it. Danel didn’t do it. Tell Haelan that. I know who did, but you can’t catch him. He’s dangerous . . . and . . . and . . .” What was she trying to say? She lost the thread, staring down Kelleston. Why was her heart suddenly thundering? And her eyes watering.

“Miss, are you still there? Miss? Tell me more. Where are you? Who is this?”

Headlights. Creeping along, and the car eased out into a pool of streetlamp shine.

It was black, and glossy, and low-slung.

Ruby slammed the phone down and spun, her quart-pence discharged from its innards with a chiming click—of course, you didn’t need to pay to dial emergency, why was she suddenly so stupid—and ran for an alley that would cut through to Cleverjack Street. Behind her, the engine gunned, but she made it just in time and kept running. There was a screech of tires, a crashing noise, and she sprinted for all she was worth, bursting out onto Cleverjack with her schoolbag bumping her hip and her eyes white-ringed with terror. Houses flashed by, the occasional small café or storefront dead and dark just like Kelleston’s buttoned-up buildings, and if she could just get to 79th she could cut up and be in familiar territory, under whispering black-barked elms.

Head down, fists pumping, the shift burning as she used every ounce of speed and agility it could give her tired body, Ruby ran for the last place anyone would expect her to go.

THIRTY-THREE

ST. JUNO’S WAS DOWNRIGHT EERIE AT NIGHT. FOR one thing, it was dead quiet, and the bulk of the nunnery on the other side of the lacrosse field, where the Sisters went when they weren’t at the school, looked weirdly insubstantial. Maybe because the field itself was full of ground fog, rising in thick white billows that made her shiver. She’d often wondered whether you could catch the Sisters coming across the field if you got to school early enough, their black robes swinging and their head coverings magpie-colored in the predawn hush.

She hunched her shoulders, digging in her schoolbag. There was a folded square of charmed tinfoil in one of the pockets—it was one of those things every self-respecting girl up to no good needed at all times. Tinfoil held minor charms like a dream, and it broke some lockcharms and certain alarm-chain charms without alerting anyone. A girl with any sort of charm ability and the patience to keep trying until she got it right could learn how to slip a square of folded tinfoil through a tiny aperture and work on the lockcharm from the inside, suppressing the alarm-chains with a sort of relaxed, focused attention. Ruby always kept a couple spares in her bag, folding and charging them when Gran wasn’t home, and she’d kept Ellie and Cami supplied with them all during middle school. Not that either of them used them when Ruby wasn’t around.

You could never tell when you’d need to stage a break from education, and since neither Ellie nor Cami was brave enough to go on their own, it was up to her to drag them into having a good time and ensure they could leave school grounds.

Only this time, she was trying to get in.

Getting on school grounds had necessitated climbing a weirdly corkscrewed oak at the north end of the high stone wall closing Juno’s off from the rest of New Haven. Dropping down on the other side had rattled her teeth, and she supposed she should just be grateful the charm-laid defenses didn’t decide she was a danger at this hour.

The rain had stopped. High scudding clouds filled the sky, and it was cold. Her fingers were numb, but her teeth had stopped chattering. She supposed she should be vaguely worried about that, but it didn’t seem important.

What was important was this door, leading out from the main gym onto the lacrosse field. It had been loose the last time they’d had to go out for Phys Ed, sweating under the hot gray blanket-sky. Cami’s surprisingly hard toss of a dodgeball. Go get ’em, Cami! Ellie had yelled, a bright piercing happy noise over the chaos of other girls shrieking and slipping in wet grass.

It was, thank Mithrus, still loose. She slipped the charmed tinfoil through gently, delicately, her other hand on the lever. The door buzzed, Potential uneasy, its net of charm and defense only half-mollified by the fact that she was a student, and hence, familiar.

“Please,” she whispered through numb lips. “There’s no prohibition against me coming in, just leaving before lastbell. Please.”

The tinfoil sparked, there was a slight stinging in her fingers, and the door opened with a slight begrudging groan. She nipped through, smart as you please, and was plunged into darkness when it closed behind her.

A small sobbing sound finally escaped her. The gym echoed, enough faint glow filtering in through the high wire-shielded windows above the bleachers to let her see once she took a breath and really looked around.

The wooden floor was just the same, its painted lines for ditchball and basquetoz glowing faintly with anti-cheating charms.

Ruby sagged against the door. The defenses humming against her back, meant to keep all sorts of things away from vulnerable young Potential-carrying girls, were comforting but scratchy, like a wool blanket. Her nose filled with the tang of old sweat and greased wood, chalk and the familiar, indefinable odor of school.

There was at least a dry pair of panties in her gym locker, maybe a shirt that didn’t reek too badly, and probably a snack too. She could find somewhere in this great big stone pile to sleep, and in the morning she could figure out what to do next.

At least she’d told someone about the body in the Park. She shivered, and the temptation to just slide right down and pass out on the floor was amazingly strong. It was weird how just doing something simple, like calling Emergency and blurting out a secret, could make a huge weight shift from your shoulders.

There was plenty else pressing down on her, though. Ruby forced herself to move away from the door. Her footsteps squished, trainers squeaking. Was she leaving footprints?

I’ll worry about that later, she told herself, and headed for the locker room.

The school had been a Mithraic cathedral once, and there were all sorts of interesting, forgotten places curled up in its warren of passages. The choir loft, for example, behind a carved-stone frieze that was delicate enough to be charm-worked, but was a relic from the Age of Iron. There were a couple places in the library nobody ever went unless they were hiding, and there was a small rundown shed in a copse on the side of the lacrosse field—the side that wasn’t the gravel driveway, the ancient barn that was now storage, or the nunnery and its attendant gardens.

None of those places were what Ruby wanted. She ghosted through the refectory, long narrow tables charmwaxed and gleaming, took a hard right through the double doors, passed banks of lockers and what the students called Death Alley—Sister Eunice Mithrus’s Blessing’s Science classroom on the right, Sister Margaret’s Ethics and Deportment on the left. Somehow, Sister Margaret always knew when you were trying to sneak down this hall, and Ruby held her breath and crossed her fingers as she slid past the frowning black oak door. Ethics and Deportment was Year Nine, but Mithrus Himself couldn’t help you if Sister Margaret saw you in the refectory with your knees crossed, or caught you bending over to pick something up in the hall instead of sinking down with your knees together and scooping it up without your skirt riding up to show what she called Your Treasures. Whether she meant your panties or what’s underneath yon panties, Ruby never figured out.

She’d managed a frigid locker-room shower and was marginally cleaner, and at least the mud and branches were out of her hair. Down past more lockers, tucked behind an ancient age-blackened stairwell that led up to the Drama loft, where the club of wannabe actresses spent all their time (and smuggled in honeywine coolers whenever they could), yet further down. She ran her fingertips along the metal lockers, wincing a little as broken fingernails scraped on layers of chipped paint.

One break in the lockers for a restroom, another break for a broom closet . . . and the third, she felt for the knob and breathed a little prayer.

It was open.

Another half sigh, half sob of relief, and Ruby slipped through. There were stairs going down, and it was perceptibly warmer. The ancient boiler was down this way, and these back hallways were crammed with useless junk and welcome warmth. Her fingers and nose tingled, and her teeth were chattering again. Which was odd, because it had finally warmed up.

There were all sorts of nooks and crannies down here, and nobody would find her.

Hot water splashed on her collarbones. She was leaking again. She passed a stack of old hymnals and turned right, away from the passage that led to the boiler itself. It took her an infinity before she finally reached what looked like a safe spot, a pile of what was probably old Mithraic habits—the cloth smelled of chalk and teacher-sweat, her nose giving her a jumble of impressions of round faces, bad food, and voices raised in a chorus of piercing sweetness.

Ruby sank down, curled into a ball, hugged her schoolbag close, and finally, gratefully, passed out.

THIRTY-FOUR

RUNNING, WET BRANCHES SLAPPING HER FACE, A STITCH sinking its claws deep into her side. Behind her, the low whooshing as a sharp blade cleaved air. It was coming, its face a blankness, its shape hulking-wrong. The old nursery rhyme filled her skull—

Gaston hunts with stave and an axe,

watch out, watch out or he’ll claw your backs,

olly-olly-oh, olly-olly-aye,

one two three four! Time to die!

Then the ring of chanting children would spin faster and faster until someone tumbled, and they would all fall down, shrieking with laughter.

Kin didn’t play that game, though. She’d seen it at primary school and sung the rhyme at home for Gran, who had just looked sour for a moment before saying, gently but inflexibly, We don’t sing that here, Ruby.

Slipping in mud, a grating shock against her knees as she fell, back up in a flash and running, but she was tired and he was so fast, so fast. Darkness everywhere, the only faint gleams from falling raindrops or her own white hands, fluttering like birds as she ran, ran, ran.

A terrific, painless blow against her back. Warm dribbling down her chin.

She was still trying to run when she hit the ground, face-first in the leaves and the mud, and the pain came, a great cresting wave of it, breaking over her in starlight-streaked foam, and the claws came next, ripping as he tore her sideways, flipping her face-up and the sky was black. Against that blackness there were two small golden lamps, bad-luck eyes that would have been beautiful if not for the emptiness behind them, an emptiness nothing would ever fill.

The axeblade glinted as he lifted it high, and with a heaving snort, he chopped—

—down off the stack of black cloth, her breath hitching in to scream before she realized where she was and that she had to be quiet, for Mithrus’s sake. She caught herself on hands and knees, and was up in a flash, her heart thumping so quickly the individual beats blurred together, a song of hideous fear.

Stacks of antique Mithrusmas decorations, masses of old textbooks, boxes with cryptic dates and abbreviations on the side under thick layers of dust and cobwebs. Her head rang, aching a little, and her nose was full. She sniffed several times, but all she got was dust. And her eyes were all crusty, eww. It was the kind of feeling you got after you’d cried yourself to sleep and then woke up late.

What time is it? She didn’t even have a watch.

Ellie would have had a watch. She was always so prepared.

Ruby took stock. Grabbing her schoolbag hadn’t been a bad idea, even if her French textbook weighed a ton. For one thing, her wallet was in there, so she had her student ID and leftover shopping money as well as charmed tinfoil, some breath mints—her stomach growled—and a pack of choco beechgum, which would calm her tummy down while she figured out what to do.

How long had she slept? There was the same dim glow in here as when she’d collapsed, from a bare bulb burning down the long passage, lighting the way to the boiler. It was also much warmer, almost stuffy, and she rubbed at her face again, wishing she’d been able to manage a warm shower. She should have taken off her shoes and socks to let them dry, too. Her feet felt swollen.

What would Ellie do?

Well, Ellie would have a simple elegant solution for finding out the time. Probably a charm, since she was just slopping over with Potential. Cami would probably just know what time it was, the way she seemed to just know how to do everything else.

At least they weren’t involved in this huge mess. She’d kept them safely out of it. If they’d come in to meet Conrad yesterday . . .

. . . well, best not to even think about that. There were all sorts of things not to think about, and if she was going to decide what to do, she needed to, well, not dwell on them. Right?

But what if . . . he knew she had friends. Now she cursed herself for talking about them all the time; he could probably recognize them in a crowd if he had to. Not to mention they might be worried about her, if they weren’t too busy with Nico and Avery and their lives going so smoothly. Maybe, just maybe, they would drop by the cottage, and if Conrad was there . . . he could be charming. He could be really charming. They might not see the danger until too late.

You’re my way out.

Would she be able to make him stop, if she was collared? If she was collared, Gran wouldn’t have to worry, and maybe by being quiet and pliable she wouldn’t set Conrad off.

She eased herself back up on the pile of habits and took a deep breath. It was something to consider. If she could just stop being an irritant to everyone, a—

—a selfish bitch, go on, admit it—

—okay, fine, a selfish bitch, maybe it would fix things.

Except.

There was Hunter’s body, wrapped in linen and lowered, fetching up against cold earth with that stomach-unseating little bump. And the girls—redheads. Mere-human.

All four, dead.

Even if she stopped Conrad doing . . . whatever it was he thought he was doing, that wouldn’t be enough. Not if Thorne was blamed for everything, not even if Conrad stopped . . .

Stopped killing.

You could hunt, you could find, but kin didn’t kill. Not unless you desperately needed food, but still, you took animals, and brought them home for cooking to prove you hadn’t done something you shouldn’t. You didn’t kill mere-humans. Or other kin. It just . . . you just didn’t do it.

It was taboo.

And . . . and Thorne would get blamed, and nobody would believe him, maybe because he was an only, maybe because he’d always been difficult. Thorny, so to speak.

It wasn’t fair.

The same old stubborn resistance rose up in her. Like when Cami had been teased so relentlessly about her stutter in primary school, and Ruby had waded into the fray. Or Ellie, in middle school, new in town and mercilessly hassled. It wasn’t fair, and that just lit every fuse in Ruby’s head.

But what should she do? Ellie was the one with all the plans, Ruby just sort of waited to be given a task, or waited until someone like Binksy Malone opened her stupid mouth so Rube could jump on her.

Well, first she should probably find out what time it was. If she snuck up to the hall, she could probably peer out without getting caught. If she was careful.

She wasn’t in her uniform, either. It was going to be tricky if she wanted to leave before school got out.

The rest, she decided, could wait until she’d found something to eat.

THIRTY-FIVE

SHE DIDN’T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT BEING CAUGHT. The hall was dark and quiet, and for a few seconds she was confused, thinking she hadn’t slept at all, before she realized she’d slept almost a whole day. No wonder she was hungry.

The clock above the lockers right next to Sister Margaret’s classroom pointed at 7:48, and the entire bulk of St. Juno’s held its breath. Not a sound in the whole place, even the soughing of the boiler—thank Mithrus whoever came down to check it hadn’t found her—held behind a curtain of stillness. The urge to scream just because she could rose up, and for a minute the thought of running amok and doing every single prank she’d ever dreamed up in an entirely empty school held a certain attraction.

At home she’d be helping Gran wash up after dinner. Then more homework and Babchat before bed—but she hadn’t been on Bab in a while, had she.

She blinked. The clock now pointed to 8:00. She’d just stood there staring at it for twelve whole minutes.

In that vacant inward time, she’d arrived at a conclusion.

She’d go to the hospital. If Gran was awake she could tell her everything. If not, she could find a Tante or Oncle and make them listen. If they wouldn’t listen, she’d find another. Someone would be willing to believe Thorne wouldn’t do these awful things.

Maybe even Detective Haelan. Now that she wasn’t terrified and sleep deprived, she could think that maybe he’d be smart enough to see past Conrad’s smile. And she could ask him more about her . . . mother. What she’d done that was so terrible kin wouldn’t speak her name.

The first step was getting out of here. Then, finding transportation to Trueheart Memorial.

Ruby scraped her hair back, wincing as her fingers encountered tangles, and got moving.

The bus lurched around a corner, like a fat rolling silver sow, and Ruby braced herself against the swaying. There was a group of jacks in the back, sniggering about something or another, and the rest of the crowd was tired mere-humans, most of them probably coming home from work.

It was the jacks she kept an eye on while the bus lumbered, downshifting, up Trueheart Hill. They had bright bandannas tied at ankle, wrist, or knee—gang colors. One of them, a dark-haired boy with bone spurs on his weeping-slick cheeks, stared over the heads of everyone in the seats, and every time Ruby stole a glance in her peripheral vision he was looking right at her. He looked vaguely familiar as well, but she couldn’t place him.

She had to stand, shifting from foot to foot and hanging on to a pole. Being on her feet seemed like a great idea, but it also meant the group at the back could see her.

Across the aisle, a stout graying man with a three-piece suit and a monocle glanced up from his newspaper, incuriously. The headline screamed at her in heavy dark print.

REDHEAD RIPPER STRIKES AGAIN.

The subtitle was chilling. Four Slain, Killer at Large. The type underneath wriggled and blurred: she couldn’t read it at this distance. Four? Were they counting Hunter, or not?

There was a grainy picture, the top of a head with curly hair, but she couldn’t see the rest of it under the fold. Why was he doing it? If he wanted to kill a redhead, why not Ruby?

What would happen if he had managed to get the collar on her?

She turned to peer out the window and realized the bus was three blocks from the hospital. The stop line almost burned her hands, but she yanked it and saw the sign at the front light up. Stop Requested.

The jacks in the back made a little more noise. She hoped this wasn’t their stop too and began pushing for the front door as the bus braked.

It was raining again, a thin penetrating drizzle, and the towered pile of the hospital crouched restlessly under the lashing wind. A Mithraic tau knot over the front doors was lit by a random reflection of headlights, and it actually cheered her up a little. It was like seeing the tau and the Magdalen’s sad gaze all over St. Juno’s, a secret little letter from the past.

Inside, the fluorescents and the reek of disinfectant and illness was just the same. Did time ever move in a hospital, or did it just slosh around aimlessly? Did it boil down thicker and thicker, the way Gran made candy sometimes?

Stop it. Pay attention.

She took the stairs instead of the elevator, even though her legs ached. Her trainers still squooshed a little. Her nose tingled, though, working just fine, leading her unerringly through the corridors and stairwells until she reached the private rooms. Spendy, but Woodsdowne could afford it, and the Clanmother would get the best of care.

If Gran was in the private rooms, she was out of critical care, and that was good, right?

Ruby ghosted past the nurse’s station—there was nobody there, though voices echoed from a doorway leading into another space, where she could see the edge of locked glass-fronted cabinets and a long counter. Probably where they hid the dangerous drugs; two nurses murmuring like birds in the treetops. A sharp high note of laughter, and Ruby’s nose twitched a little.

Even here, amid the disinfectant and boiled food and industrial laundry smells, she could trace Gran’s familiar musk with its sharp undertone, the Levarin cologne she dabbed behind her ears and on her wrists with its layer of crushed green grass, and the faint odor of baking bread, warm fur, and safety. Ruby glanced in either direction, pressed down the door handle, and stepped inside a pale-pink seashell of a room that tried to be restrained and elegant under the clutter of medical paraphernalia. An IV pole, and a soft beeping from a monitor showing a heartbeat, nice and strong.

The window looked into a dark courtyard, three old thick-trunked oak trees beginning to drop their leaves in clumps to the stone walks below. Their branches scraped and rustled, almost audible through the rain-spattered glass.

Gran lay on the bed, its upper half tilted upward probably so she could breathe more easily. Thin tubes ran to her nose, and the pale fluid inside the IV sack, dangling overhead, dripped once, twice.

Ruby took a step forward.

It looked like she was sleeping. Her color was good, a high rosy blush on her planed-down cheeks, but her platinum hair was a little askew, its braid done by someone who lacked the requisite quick, firm fingers.

Sometimes Ruby braided Gran’s hair. Gran said she was the best at it.

A small sound escaped Ruby’s lips. Sleeping was good, right? She looked good. She looked, as a matter of fact, like she was just napping and would rise, irritated and brisk, setting everything to rights about her with quick efficiency.

There was a chair on the other side of the bed. Ruby pulled it close, and was just about to sink down when Gran’s eyes snapped open.

Icy gray, her pupils pinpricks, the old woman stared straight ahead. Her thin lips moved, just a little, and the croak that came out froze Ruby clear through.

“Katrina?” Slurred, as if Gran had been at the whiskey too much and was pleasantly buzzed. “Katy, is that you?”

Ruby’s breath rode a shuddering sleigh out of her mouth. “It’s me, Gran.” She reached for the old woman’s hand, so fragile and bruised, and picked it up carefully. “I’m here.”

“I did not mean to,” Gran’s voice sharpened, losing its slur, but she didn’t blink. The fixed stare was a little . . . well, it was a little worrying, and Ruby’s relief turned to ice trailing lightly down her back, little trickles of electricity. “I would not have . . . I burned the collar. I burned it. Why did you leave?”

Burned? It made no sense. “It’s okay, Gran. It’s okay.”

“Forgive me . . . Katy, I would not have . . . I spoke in anger.”

What? She patted Gran’s hand, gently, trying not to touch the heplock. It looked like a nasty growth on the back of Gran’s familiar hand. “It’s all right. It’s okay.”

“Forgive me . . . Katy, forgive me. . . .”

Ruby swallowed, hard. “I forgive you.”

Gran’s eyes slowly closed. She muttered and mumbled, falling back against the pillows, and her fingers were slack and cool.

There was no way Ruby could tell her anything. She was on her own.

Katy. Katrina. And a collar.

I burned it. Why did you leave?

Was this Katy alive somewhere else? Was that why she wasn’t spoken of? Was she taboo? Had she just left?

You have other problems. Ruby exhaled, sharply. Gran was still sick. She was alive, and talking, but she wasn’t . . . well, she wasn’t herself.

Which meant Ruby was the only rootfamily who could give orders at the moment. She didn’t have Gran’s iron will, though. The Oncles would probably just laugh at her.

Then you wipe that laugh right off their faces, Ruby. You’ve got to.

But how?

Her shoulders slumped, her schoolbag sagging against her. She hesitated, halfway between sinking into the chair and standing up, her thighs aching and every inch of her crawling with fear-residue and air-dried rain.

Imagine you’re Gran. Imagine you’re Ellie. Imagine you’re anyone, just get it done.

She laid Gran’s hand back down, ever so gently. “Okay. You . . . you rest and get better, Gran. I’m going to fix things.”

How, I have no idea. But I’m gonna.

A few moments later, the room was empty, except for the old woman’s steady breathing.

THIRTY-SIX

HEAD HELD HIGH, SHE SWEPT DOWN THE CORRIDOR and braced herself. If Gran was down here, there was probably a waiting room somewhere, and her nose told her there were kin about, musk and the aroma of dark, comforting Woodsdowne earth.

Further down the hall, opposite the nurse’s station, was a collection of chairs welded together with tables too small to do anything but rest a tabloid on, a fishtank full of brightly colored ambulatory sushi, bright glaring light, and a half-dozen kin. Ruby stopped dead, nostrils flaring, her greeting dying in her throat. The choco beechgum turned to ash, and she almost swallowed it.

Oncle Efraim, his mouth a thin line as usual, had his head in his hands. All the kin present were male—a couple of the older cousins, Brent and Jackson Beaudry, and the tall, laconic Oncle Vidalis, his silver-sprinkled hair slicked down with rainwater. Old Oncle Dean, and Oncle Tach, and a few more, the heads of the major branchfamilies.

Sitting right next to Efraim, with his hand solicitously on the older kin’s shoulder, leaning in to murmur what could have been condolences, was Conrad Tiercey. He looked just the same, in a white T-shirt and jeans, his boots worn in by now and freshly brushed, and the clan cuff on his wrist had continued to rub. The rash had spread halfway up his forearm, and it looked painful.

Ruby ducked aside, hoping the angle of the wall would hide her. Conrad was right there, and it was a group of Oncles. Brent would be disposed to listen to her, maybe, and Oncle Tach always heard anyone out. But Efraim, who had once muttered that Wild girlkin should be collared to keep them from wandering as a matter of course? And Jackson, who had chased her like Thorne and Hunter for a while, until she’d embarrassed him in front of the whole clan at a barbeque? If it was a group of Tantes, it would be better, but it wasn’t.

She didn’t need a weathervane to see the way the wind would blow, with Conrad standing right there. Why was Oncle Efraim shaking his head? Where was Tante Sasha? She was head of her own branch, and so was Tante Jeanette.

Footsteps. A shadow in the door behind the nurse’s counter, another low laugh. Someone would step out and see her standing right here, and probably sing out a Hello there, can I help you? All the kin would look. Already Brent’s head was up, and he took a cautious sniff, as if he could smell her, rain-dipped and dirty as she was.

At least I know where Conrad is. He’s not at the cottage. He probably drove my car here.

Which meant she could go home, maybe pack some clothes, and take a look at that duffel bag of his. If there was any proof, she could bring it to the kin, especially the Tantes, and have it not be her word against a guest’s.

It was a plan worthy of Ellie, but she didn’t have time to congratulate herself. She took off down the hall, away from the nurse’s station, toward the stairwell door.

A few seconds later, when the nurse on duty stepped out with a fresh cup of coffee and settled behind the counter with a stack of paperwork, glancing over the men in the waiting area with a practiced, compassionate eye, the stairwell door was already closed.

THIRTY-SEVEN

IT WAS NO GREAT TRICK TO FIND HER BABY IN THE underground parking lot. The extra key, in its charmsealed magnetic box under the back bumper, was gone, but her own keys were in her schoolbag where they belonged. A few minutes later, she pulled out onto Stiltskin Street, the Semprena running a little rougher than she liked but okay enough. There was a crumpled dent in the bonnet that filled her with weary anger. As fast as she drove, she’d never so much as nicked the car.

It is an heirloom, Gran’s voice whispered in her memory, and now Ruby wondered just who had driven it before her.

The backseat was full of drive-through wrappers and damp clothing, and it reeked. She had to roll both windows down and breathe through her mouth, that rusted-red smoke and rot scent overlaying everything along with the fume of his rage making her eyes water. His anger had soaked into the seats, for God’s sake, and there was a long rip down the passenger’s seat, stuffing and springs poking out. He’d slashed it with something, she could just see it, his face that snarling mask as the blade cut. . . .

Had he been imagining someone sitting there? She squirmed uncomfortably at the thought. How had he trashed the car in so short a time? It was phenomenal.

It probably wasn’t the best idea to stop in the driveway, but at least she backed in. She could be out of here in a hot second. Granted, she’d only thought of that after the garage-door opener hadn’t worked for some reason, but better late than never. She couldn’t be smart as Ellie, but at least she learned.

The drizzle was icy. You couldn’t tell that a week ago it had been hot enough to roast turtles in the shade. She ran for the front door, her keys jangling, head down against the rain, but she needn’t have worried with the keys. The doorknob turned easily, and as soon as she stepped inside she coughed, rackingly, her eyes watering afresh.

It smelled awful, and there was that terrible brassy depth to the reek she wouldn’t have been able to place if she hadn’t been in Woodsdowne Park yesterday. Was it only yesterday?

Oh, Mithrus. No.

She hesitated, torn between looking for the source of that smell or going up to the second floor to find something, anything, that could serve as proof.

It didn’t matter, she realized as she raised her head and took another few nervous steps into the living room. The smell, as far as she could tell, was coming from upstairs.

The living room was a shambles. The tapestry had been torn down, the couches and overstuffed chairs sliced and shredded, Gran’s careful arrangement of pictures and candlesticks on the mantel a shattered jumble on the stone hearth, her charming supplies scattered. Lamps knocked over—the curtains were drawn, probably to hide the state of the place.

Again, the scope of the damage he’d been able to cause in so short a time was nothing short of fantastic. Just thinking about how she would have to somehow clean it all up was exhausting.

For a moment, she stared at the fireplace’s dark cavern. The metal screen, worked with enameled decorations—a hummingbird, a swan—had been pulled loose and lay crumpled under the front window. Gran’s rocker was also smashed to flinders.

I burned it. . . . I spoke in anger. . . .

What had happened between Katrina and Gran? What had Gran burned?

Forgive me . . . forgive me. . . . Experimenting with live flame and a Beaudry’s charm . . .

It didn’t matter what Gran had been burning. She could think about it later.

Ruby eased for the stairs, moving quietly even though there was nobody here. At least her nose wasn’t running, although it would be really nice if she didn’t have those images of splayed limbs and brackish, rotting blood flashing through her head, along with . . .

She stopped, head upflung, on the stairs. Sniffed cautiously, little tiny sips through her nostrils to untangle every thread. A familiar musk, full of fierce silence and dark eyes, quick graceful movements and a coolness against her nape, a smell that filled her with unsteady, vaporous hope.

“Thorne?” she breathed, and ran up the stairs.

It was a faint fading thread, as if he’d been damping his scent like any kin could, and the upstairs was empty.

Well, mostly empty.

Her room hadn’t been torn apart too badly. Her dresser had been rifled, and her mirror was broken, but that was it. Thorne had been here, too, but only briefly. She followed the thread of his scent to the spare room, bracing herself as the smell of death and rotting thickened, and peered in.

Thorne had spent a while in here. Had he been looking for proof too? Where had he been hiding? When kin wanted to find you, they found you, unless heavy-duty charm or fey was covering your tracks. Thorne wasn’t a charmer, so . . .

The spare bed was made, neatly. Burnt-out candles stood in built-up wax everywhere, and the mirror over the dresser was starred with one large chunk of breakage, as if a fist had crunched into it but not shattered the glass completely. On the spare bed, with its dusky rose comforter, was Conrad’s duffel bag, opened and ruthlessly scattered. Thorne’s scent was very, very strong here, and if there was anything to find he probably would have found it.

Still, Ruby looked. An empty leather wallet caught her eye, amid the tangle of clothes. Two books, ripped to small shreds and impossible to identify, and a thin silver chain holding a fluidly twisted medallion.

The key to the collar. She grabbed that, stuffing it in her pocket as well, where it clicked against the lone luckcharm from her broken maryjanes.

She turned in a full circle. The dresser drawers were empty, the closet door half-ajar and showing a few lonely hangers. Nothing else.

Why hadn’t he unpacked? He’d been here long enough. Or was he planning to leave, once he’d . . . once he’d what?

You’re my way out!

She stood, hugging herself as drizzle beaded on the window. Thorne’s scent was fresh. If she’d gotten here earlier, could she have caught him? Told him she believed it wasn’t him? He was smart as Ellie, even if he was difficult; he’d have an idea or two. She wouldn’t feel so . . . alone.

She shook herself, and checked the bathroom. Nothing in there, but the mirror was broken too. Had he broken all the glass?

Maybe he didn’t want to look at himself.

The master bedroom at the end of the hall had a tightly closed door. Gran usually left it open; even as a child Ruby would rarely dare to step over the threshold unless invited. Gran wasn’t mean, but she gave scrupulous privacy—and expected it in return. It was different at night, when the childhood terrors came.

Ruby twisted the knob, bracing herself.

There was no bracing for this.

The body lay on Gran’s antique cherrywood bed with its high posts and red curtains. Opened up like a meat flower, white chips of bone showing through rent skin and torn muscle. Arranged as if sleeping, her dyed-red hair spread on Gran’s crisp white pillows, her head turned to the side and the internal architecture of her neck bared because the skin was hanging in a loose flap over her chest. The remains of jeans and a bright red T-shirt, cheap cotton probably bought at a discount store, because the dye had bled onto her wet skin.

Ruby backed up, her hand clapped over her mouth. Gran’s dresser stood closed and secretive as always, but the full-length mirror across from the antique spinning wheel lay in shards on the floor. The wheel, draped in sheer fabric to keep the dust off, hunched in the corner, Gran’s old stool behind it. Sometimes, late at night when Ruby was very young, she would hear the hiss-thump of the wheel, just like a heartbeat.

Oh Mithrus, Mithrus please . . .

Dim alarm spilled through the roaring. It had come back, unwanted companion, filling up her head with static like the space between stations. What was that?

Car door slamming.

Someone was here.

THIRTY-EIGHT

SHE MADE IT TO HER ROOM JUST AS THE FRONT DOOR creaked open. The sound of breathing filled the cottage, or maybe it was just that her ears were straining past the roaring, past even a kin’s sensitive hearing. Her window slid up, letting in a drench of chill night air laden with rain and the smell of wet leaves. Autumn filled her nose, the season of harvest.

Summer had lingered, but it was gone now.

“Don’t.” He was in the doorway. “Don’t run.”

She swallowed, hard. Turned from the window, balanced on her toes in case he came for her. Stared at him.

Conrad stood easily, feet braced, the collar dripping and twisting from his left hand. Some speckles of drizzle on his hair—it was longer than when he’d arrived at the train station, but just as black. His eyes were just as golden, and the faint shadow of stubble on his cheeks made him look just as sharply handsome and dangerous as ever.

Now Ruby could see the abyss behind those compelling, aching eyes.

Her throat was dry. “Why are you doing this?”

Now there was a flash of expression crossing his face. Puzzlement, perhaps, or pain. “I . . . you’re . . .” A deep breath. “You’re my way out, Ruby. When you’re with me, really with me, I’ll have everything.” A slight twitch, the collar swinging, chiming flatly to itself. “We’ll go away. To a different city, or into the Waste. You’ll be perfect. Once we get this . . . this little thing done.”

“You want to collar me and take me out into the Waste? Are you insane?” Stupid question, Ruby. He’s obviously insane. “You’ve killed people! You’ve killed kin!”

“I solved problems!” he shouted. “I’ve solved every problem! Nobody’s between us now! Nothing can stop us!”

“Nobody’s between . . .” The roaring in her head got worse. Was that what he thought he was doing? Solving problems?

What had happened to the boy who was a problem, just like her?

“I was only going to stay the night. Each day I thought, well, today’s the day they’ll get news. But I couldn’t leave. Because of you. You’re beautiful, you’re perfect, and you were meant to be his.”

“Meant to be . . .” She couldn’t get enough air in. That empty gaze swallowed everything, burrowed inside her head. “What? Whose?”

“I had a brother.” He was moving forward, one slow step at a time. Her school uniform, still tangled on the floor, was crushed again under his boots. The rash spreading up from his clan cuff, angry red, had begun to weep a little. “He had everything first, and best.”

“And always,” she managed, remembering. How could the two of them—the boy who had hunched next to her on the front step and this . . . this thing . . . live in the same body? Why didn’t it explode from the sheer incomprehensibility of its own existence?

“Until I solved that.” Conrad took another step forward. He was at the end of her bed now. “And then I saw you.” The collar jangled, musically. “You’re mine now, and we’ll be together. You want it, your grandmother wanted it—”

“How do you know?”

He actually stopped, cocking his head. Stared at her. “She wants what’s best for you.”

Ruby opened her mouth to reply, but there was a sound from downstairs. Her breath caught, her pulse jackrabbiting in her throat and wrists, ankles and temples, her entire body a shivering heartbeat.

“Mithrus Christ, look at this.” Ellie’s voice, a soft breath of wonder. “What the hell?”

“Ruby?” Cami, sounding worried. “Ruby? Are you here?”

“The pendulum says so.” Ellie’s footsteps crunched on something broken. “Careful, Cami.”

“Ruby!” Cami’s voice cracked halfway through the word, and Conrad’s face distorted into a thick, congested snarl. The shift rippled through him, glossy black fur sprouting and muscles bulking, his tallness turning a little stooped as his spine lengthened. Except it was somehow wrong. Ruby had seen kinboys shift all her life, especially at fullmoon, but something in Conrad’s slumping growth was off, and nausea slammed hard into her midriff.

“Problems,” the beast growled, and he whirled with fluid grace. He bulleted out the door, taking a chunk of the wall out with one of his clawed hands as he spun.

Heading for the stairs. The downstairs.

And her helpless, vulnerable friends.

Not my friends, you bastard. Not . . . my . . . friends!

Ruby bolted after him. The shift burned inside her, silverglass spikes, and she realized she was snarling too, a low musical note of bloodlust.

THIRTY-NINE

HE WAS SO FAST.

She leapt from the top of the stairs, colliding with him halfway, the cracking of the rosewood banister lost in the noise they were both making. Rolling, the side of her head blooming with wet warm pain, his claws burning as they striped fire up her arm, and both of them fetched up in a tumbled heap at the bottom.

He shook off the daze first, his sleek head snaking back and forth as he rolled to his feet. The sound he was making scraped over Ruby’s skin, sandpaper fury and wirebrush rage, and Cami’s scream was lost under the scratching, roaring rumble.

Ruby fish-jumped, her entire body exploding up from the floor. She sidled a few steps, the wrecked living room opening up behind her, and didn’t have any time to reassure her friends or say anything, because Conrad was already streaking forward.

Besides, the shift was burning all the way through Ruby, a glow no longer silver but red as sunset. Bones shifted, her skin twitching madly, kingirls didn’t get furry like boys did. But the claws were just as sharp, the teeth were just as white, the eyes just as keen—and the hide just as tough.

She backhanded the Conrad-thing, a jolt smashing all the way through her. He was heavy. If he’d been regular kin she could have tossed him all the way back into the wall.

He wasn’t. She didn’t have time to think about why he was so much stronger, because he only slid back a few feet.

There was a popping zing, a crackle, and a bolt of blue-white arced from behind Ruby, splashing against Conrad’s hide. Smoke and steam rose, a horrible scent of roasting, and under the flayed jeans—he was shifted so far even his clothes were bursting—and torn T-shirt Ruby could see boiling blisters erupt.

Looked like Ellie had enough presence of mind to throw a charm or two. Which was good, it was flat-out great, but if her aim was off she could fry Ruby just as well.

Doesn’t matter. She coiled herself, sinking down, palms slapping the hardwood floor and her claws slicing like an iron knife through pale feybutter.

He snarled, and she snarled back, both deep grinding noises.

His said, I will kill.

Hers replied, I am rootkin, and you will not have my friends.

Could he understand that? Or was his mind, just like hers, a wasteland now, the low umber and charcoal of a forest fire’s aftermath, glowing coals and sparks still plenty capable of burning but nothing even approaching a coherent thought?

She knew only that she had to protect.

He scrabbled forward slightly, and she responded, sidling again. Couldn’t afford to circle, they were behind her, if she could drive him out the door and—

He sprang, claws grinding as he launched himself, and Ruby uncoiled a half-second later. Her claws went in, piercing hide and grating against ribs, and she pulled him down from the height of his leap, crashing into the couch. More smoking, roasting smell, he clawed at her, bloodscent rising. Stripes of fire along the outside of her leg, her cheek, she kept twisting so he couldn’t hook into her guts and splash them all over the floor.

Get out get out—

If they ran, she could keep him occupied long enough for them to escape. It was worth it.

A terrific smashing. The wreck of a chair, brought down across the Conrad-thing’s back. A flash of Cami, blue eyes glowing and her canines lengthened into sweet, wicked little fangs, her face a mask of effort as she grabbed another sharp chunk of the coffee table, lifting it high.

Ellie, her platinum hair rising on a breeze from nowhere and her hands alive with silver-spitting charmlight, tossed a complex, flashing charmsphere straight into Conrad’s face. It burst, and blood burst with it, spattering Ruby as she squirmed desperately, her claws slicing deep in his hide.

He bellowed, a massive wall of sound, and Ruby was the only one who could hear the agony in that cry, the boy behind the monster.

She rose from the remains of the couch, shaking him off like water, and kicked him. He curled around the force of the kick, sliding back along the floor, and fetched up against the fireplace’s bottom with a sickening crack.

Run! She wanted to yell it, but her mouth was full of sharp teeth, her jaw the wrong shape for speaking. She snapped a glance at the two girls, Cami holding the heavy chunk of oak table aloft like an ink-haired barbarian princess in a rumpled St. Juno’s uniform, beautiful and wild. Ellie’s eyes were wide and silvery, and Potential sparks flashed in an odd pattern over her head, her platinum hair ruffling on her own personal breeze as her lips moved slightly, her long fingers spinning out threads of Potential.

They were so beautiful it made her heart hurt.

“Ruby look out—” Cami’s scream, choked off as something hit Ruby, hard, the wall smashing behind her. Red, pulsing unconsciousness swallowed her whole.

All the pinches, the squeezes, the little insults masquerading as affection. Taking her car. Putting the backpack in Thorne’s room. Holding Oncle Efraim’s shoulder as if he was true kin, as if he was a help and support.

And the bodies. Girls he didn’t even know, and how had he gotten them into the woods? Just torn up and discarded.

Because of me.

What happened next was a confused jumble. Snarling rage, the shift a sweet wine-red pain all through her, the world turning over and her bones full of flame. Shattering glass, the crackle of live Potential as Ellie screamed something, everything around Ruby smearing like ink on wet paper.

She bulleted through the gaping hole that used to be the front window, into thin fine soaking drizzle. The curtains, shredded by whatever had happened, flirted unsteadily on a cold breeze full of blood, anger, and the exhalation of an autumn night on the cusp of fullmoon.

A long trail of bloodspatter ended at a horrible, uneven shape.

FORTY

THE CONRAD-THING SNARLED, NOWHERE NEAR BASEFORM or shift, now. It was a black hulking thing, its paws having lost opposable thumbs and its mad golden eyes still terribly empty. It favored its left front paw, blood dripping from its thick pelt, its hide steaming and scorched.

It was what the Tantes and Oncles warned of, why they helped with the shift when you were young. Why you didn’t do taboo things, even if you were Wild. The Moon’s gifts had teeth and claws, and if you did not use them well, She would take Her blessings back.

With interest.

The shift fell away from Ruby, the hurts and claw-marks healing as it retreated. Her T-shirt flapped, sticky with cooling blood. Her own, and . . . and his.

The smoke had swallowed his smell. Red and ash, burning blood, a reek that meant taboo. He’d gone too far into the shift. He’d become what the Wolfhunters thought kin always were—mindless appetite, destruction, revenge.

Did I do that? She stared at the thing. Mithrus Christ.

“Ruby!” Cami, scrambling through the hole behind her. “Look out! He’s—”

“It’s okay,” Ruby heard herself say, dully. She’d been far gone in the shift herself, and she could have killed him.

She could even do it now. She could let the rage take her, all the hurt and pain and frustration and fear, and she’d be unstoppable. For all Conrad’s bigger size and greater weight, he just didn’t get that she was the dangerous one.

Because she wouldn’t just kill him. She’d tear his body apart like he’d torn up those girls, and Hunter.

And then she would be what he was.

For a bare second she trembled on the edge of it, her gaze clear and steady, locked with the twin gold-ringed holes that were the beast’s eyes.

She could be exactly like that.

“Careful. Broken glass.” Ellie, practical as ever, a thin-thread whisper over the buzz and crackle of Potential. “I think he’s getting ready to tango again.”

“It’s fine,” Ruby murmured. The dominance in her swelled. It held the beast pinned, like a butterfly on a specimen board. Cami had cried during that Science class at Havenvale, when Mr. Rambling had explained the killing jar and the pins through gem-bright wings, and Ruby had given Binksy Malone a filthy look when the bitch sniggered.

She’d shut Binksy right up, thank Mithrus.

The memory helped, a little. There were others crowding inside her—Cami, pale and barely breathing on a hospital bed until a silver medallion was torn away. Cami sobbing in her arms, while she and Ellie held her and tried their best to soothe.

Ellie on the staircase of a slumping, sliding house, turning away from the spider-shadowed thing above her, the thing that had almost robbed Ruby of her friend. And finally, Ellie hanging between her and Cami like wet washing, sobbing Let me go, and Ruby’s own reply, ringing inside her like only the truth could.

Not now, not ever.

They’d come here to find her. They hadn’t hesitated at all, just leapt in on her behalf, just like she’d always jumped in on theirs.

They’d seen her shift, too.

The Conrad-thing strained, lunging against Ruby’s will. But there were other sounds in the dark now, too. Whispers and movement, and other gleams of eyes.

Woodsdowne kin melted out of the shadows, leaping the low stone wall around Gran’s garden, flowing around the corners of the house, clambering over the roof and dropping down to land with soft authority. There was Oncle Efraim and Tante June and Tante Sasha, and Brent and Carissa and Harper and Joel, Oncle Zech and Oncle Tod and Oncle Barry and others. There was Hunter’s mother, Tante Alissa, her lip lifted in a snarl as she scented the foulness that was the creature.

And there was Thorne, wet clear through, his dark gaze fierce and hot, his hair slicked down. He’d lost weight, but it just made the essential fire in him shine so much brighter.

He was alive.

The relief that hit her made her stagger, and her hold on the thing slipped a fraction. It scrabbled, but it was too late. The Oncles descended on him, snarling, but it was the Tantes who ripped his limbs free with heaving cracks, giving mercy as only the Moon’s daughters could. They gave life, like the Moon—so that mercy was theirs to give, and they granted it.

The cousins clustered around, a solid wall blocking the awful sight, their voices lifted in savage song.

Later, she heard that when they ripped the clan cuff away, the rash turned out to be from a long, thin spiraling wound on his wrist. As if he’d wrapped a thin jangling silver thing around and around it, and pulled the clan cuff tight enough to make the collar cut his skin.

Ruby sagged. Thorne was still coming, stepping through the hollyhocks, crushing the dying marigolds, paying no attention to the rosebushes, just walking right through them, straight for her.

But it was Ellie who grabbed Ruby and spun her around. She shook her, once, twice, hard. Then Ruby was enveloped in a hug full of ice and wildness, Potential and Ellie’s peculiar blue-tinged smell, sort of like the scented markers they gave you in fourth grade.

Cami flung her arms around them both, and it was her preternatural strength that kept them upright when Ruby’s legs turned to noodles. She crumpled, and they held her in the rain, Thorne hovering anxiously an arm’s-length away, smelling of worry and cinders.

The dam inside her broke again, and Ruby began to sob.

FORTY-ONE

THIS BLUE-WALLED ROOM IN THE FLETCHER CHARMCLAN mansion was familiar, if only because little marks of Ellie’s personality were scattered all through it, from the shelf of heavy-duty tomes on charming theory to the cerulean scarves draped over the headboard of the wide, soft bed.

“It was Thorne.” Cami hovered near the small, obviously antique, white-painted vanity, watching Ruby’s face, anxiously. Her skin glowed in the warm golden light, and there was no trace of the sharp canines she’d shown earlier.

Ellie rubbed at Ruby’s hair with the towel, gentle and brisk. “It was kind of a shock to get a call from him, and he was so furious nothing made much sense. Livvie did some locate-charming—”

“Only because you were going to do it yourself if I didn’t.” Livvie Fletcher, Avery’s mother, folded her arms and gave Ellie a stern look. When she did that, you could see that she was older, and you could also see an echo of Avery in her high cheekbones and soft dark hair with its stubborn curl over her forehead. “Though I couldn’t get a lock on Ruby until this evening. Which distresses me.”

“I was hiding,” Ruby said blankly. In Juno’s boiler room. Nobody could have found her behind those walls.

She tried not to look in the mirror. She’d never shifted in front of them before, and uneasy relief warred with fresh worry. Ellie had shoved her into the scrubbed-clean white bathroom, and a hot shower would have been heavenly, except Ruby cried, softly, all through it. Not sobbing, just . . . leaking. Again.

“Hiding so well none of our clan could find you?” Mrs. Fletcher’s tone was a question, but she didn’t push. “Ellie took the charm-pendulum when it started twitching.”

“I stole it,” Ellie supplied, almost cheerfully. “I knew something bad was going to happen, and I left a note. But I suspect I’m grounded for it.”

“We’ll talk about that later. Avery’s furious you didn’t take him.”

“He was asleep. He was out all night looking for Rube.” Ellie didn’t look like the prospect of being grounded filled her with dread. She started combing Ruby’s wet hair with gentle, efficient strokes. “Cami picked me up, and we just followed the pendulum. It’s a good thing, too.”

“I’m sor—” Ruby began immediately, but Ellie tugged at her hair. Very gently.

“Stop that. Why didn’t you say something? We knew something wasn’t right, but you wouldn’t talk.” Ellie’s eyebrows had drawn together, and she looked almost fierce.

“F-for a change.” Cami shrugged when Ellie rolled her eyes. “Do you know how s-scary that was?”

Ruby hunched her shoulders. “I was trying . . . Gran wanted me to be . . . different.”

“Are you kidding? She’s so proud of you.” Ellie finished combing, stepped back to examine her work, and nodded once. “Okay, let’s get you some clothes. You can’t go anywhere in a bathrobe.” She bounded away, across the room, toward a cherrywood wardrobe that looked big enough to hide a small country in.

“It probably wouldn’t matter,” Ruby muttered.

Livvie Fletcher’s gaze was kind, and worried as Gran’s sometimes was. “Your uncle—Efraim, I think? He’s downstairs waiting to take you to the hospital. That’s where Thorne is, I gather. He’s a nice boy, very polite.”

Since when? She hadn’t had a chance to talk to him—they had whisked her away, Cami piloting the Spyder through slackening rain while Ellie huddled in the back with Ruby, hugging so hard Ruby could barely breathe.

I need to go home, she’d moaned, empty of everything but shock and the idea that she had to start cleaning up.

No you don’t, Ellie had replied, fiercely. You need help, and you’re going to get it. Don’t argue.

“Ruby?” Cami, shyly. “C-can you . . . what was that?”

That was the question she’d been dreading. “Conrad,” she whispered. Even the name raised gooseflesh on her arms, under the soft, comfortable indigo bathrobe that smelled of Ellie and comfort. “He . . . he was sick. Taboo. He . . .”

“Don’t.” Mrs Fletcher was suddenly right next to her. She bent down, and the hug was awkward even though Ruby could tell she meant to help. “Now isn’t the time. I’m going to go tell your uncle you’re getting ready. The police will be at the hospital. You’re going to be all right, Ruby.”

Ruby nodded, and the silence that fell when Livvie Fletcher left was full of awkward edges.

“Thank Mithrus.” Ellie grabbed a handful of clothes. “Cami, you want something to wear? That’s all wet.”

“I’m f-fine.” The Vultusino girl wouldn’t look away from Ruby’s face, which felt strange. Twitchy, as if she was shifting. “I’ve n-never seen you l-like that, Ruby.”

Ruby shut her eyes. Of course. What were they going to—

“Me neither.” Ellie padded toward her. “It was beautiful. I mean, scary as fuck, but beautiful.”

“Gorgeous,” Cami said firmly, and when Ruby opened her eyes she met Cami’s blue gaze squarely. “I loved the way your eyes glowed. Don’t you ever d-do that again, R-Ruby. We were scared. W k-kept trying to figure out how to help you—”

“She was trying to protect us.” Ellie, matter of fact, held up a thick black jumper. “I’d loan you panties, but that is just . . . well, I mean, unless you absolutely need—”

Ruby’s mouth twitched. A slow, delighted grin spread across Cami’s face.

It was no use. She couldn’t hold back the laughter. It spilled out, a little screamy and breathless, but with her friends laughing too, you couldn’t hear it, even with a kin’s ears.

All you could hear was love.