Bloomsbury Spark Chapter Sampler by Bloomsbury Publishing

21 Stolen Kisses by Lauren Blakely…………………………………………………….3 A USA Today Bestseller about forbidden love that refuses to fade. Inked by Eric Smith………………………………………………………………….…36 A fast-paced fantasy adventure, perfect for anyone who has dreamed of being different…only to discover that destiny is more than skin deep. The Sound of Us by Ashley Poston…………………………………………………..71 The hilarious and heartwarming story of a classic-rock girl and a pop-star boy. Pride’s Run by Cat Kalen………………………………………………..……………106 She's the perfect killing machine, until the boy she is sent to hunt becomes her only chance at freedom. Hollywood Witch Hunter by Valerie Tejeda………………………………………..142 From the moment Iris first learned the truth about witches she knew she was born to fight them. City of Fae by Pippa DaCosta……………………………………………………….171 This New Adult urban fantasy is packed with action, suspense, and forbidden fae romance.

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21 Stolen Kisses Lauren Blakely

Chapter One

Kennedy

The champagne bubbles tickle my nose. I don’t taste the drink I’m holding. I don’t even bring my lips to the glass. Not because I’m too young to drink, but because I don’t drink. I’d rather be in control, and so, instead, I raise the crystal flute in a toast. I am always toasting because everything is grand in the land I live in. Everything is sparkly. Everything is fabulous. Even when it’s not. But my mom’s TV show was just renewed for another season, and everyone who matters is here at our home off Central Park West, drinking and nibbling and laughing and chatting. Like my mom, for instance, who holds court in the living room, perched grandly on her cranberry-red couch. Her raven-black hair is glossy and gorgeous, and her green eyes glitter with happiness as the head of the network toasts her. “To Jewel! A gem among showrunners,” he says, looking every bit the shiny, gleaming suit that he is. He’s polished so brightly, and he always knows exactly what to say at these moments. I’m pretty sure he once tried to spend the night with my mom. I’m pretty sure she rebuffed his advances. Every once in a blue moon, it happens—her rejection of a suitor.

“To LGO! The best network there is!” she says, holding her glass up high. She doesn’t even try to feign embarrassment at being the center of attention. She’s not embarrassed. She adores her role in the spotlight. She might as well have been bred for it, like a prized poodle. She’s smiling as she always is because she has everything she wants. Her new man, Warren, is by her side, fawning over her. My mom’s petite friend Bailey, also a publicist for her show, clinks glasses with me, then downs half her champagne. I drink none, and instead I run my finger absently along the rim, wanting one thing, wishing I could want nothing. But I can’t. I want him. I’m wearing my best jeans, a pair of black heels, and a silvery-gray top. I like to look good. I like to look good for him—that guy on the other side of the room, leaning casually against the wall, not drinking either. Watching the scene unfold. Part of it, but separate. I wonder what he thinks when he looks at me. If he still feels the same pull. The same damn longing. His eyes meet mine. His are dark blue, the color of the dawn before day takes over. They give me my answer when he doesn’t look away, and my heart tries to spring free of my chest and bound over to him. Being in the same space—even with him so many feet away—is hard. So hard. But I wouldn’t have it any other way. “And what about you?” Bailey’s voice jars me. Reminds me that we’ve been having a conversation while I’ve been drifting back to him. “Hmm?” I ask furrowing my brow. “What about me?” “Boys? Guys? Are you dating? Anyone special?”

My cheeks burn red. Heat spreads over my face. I’m not seeing anyone. “No,” I say, even though inside I’m saying It’s complicated, it’s complicated, it’s complicated. That’s what I told my cousin Anaka in Los Angeles when she e-mailed me earlier this week asking me if there were any hot guys on the scene. We chat more, making small talk, the skill I’ve been schooled in the art of since I could utter my first words. Then Bailey snaps her fingers, her face lighting up in recognition. “I almost forgot! I have a script for a friend I want to get in front of Hayes,” she says then makes a beeline for the man who makes things happen. I watch for a moment, cataloguing the expression on his face as she makes her pitch, the shift in those dark-blue eyes to his business look. He nods, and I can just make out him saying, Sure, send it over, and it reminds me once more of everything between us. I have to excuse myself from this party and my mother and her friends and all these people. When I reach my room, I text him. Because I can’t resist. One word. It’s all I can manage. It’s all I can’t manage without. Hi.

After midnight, they are all gone. Every last one of them. The brownstone is eerie and still, as it should be after hours. I pad quietly to the kitchen, find an apple in a basket on the counter, rinse it off and take a bite, rewinding a few hours to the party, to that moment when we locked eyes. To the charge I swear raced through the air, connecting us. Tethering us, like we’ve been for so long. I shudder, remembering kisses. Remembering his touch. His soft voice whispering in my ear. The music we listened to together. The stories he told me. It’s a dreamlike state, being back in time. Then I hear footsteps and snap open my eyes. My reverie is broken cruelly when I realize I’m about to learn something I’d rather not know—the answer to whether my mom's latest boyfriend wears boxers or briefs. Because Warren wears white boxer briefs. He walks through the hallway, across the living room, and past the dining room table before he notices the daughter of the house leaning against the kitchen counter. “Honestly?” I say as I crunch into the fruit. Even in the dark I can see his face turn red as he stops short at the kitchen. “I’m so sorry, Kennedy.” But he’s not moving. Perhaps his bare feet are stuck to the floor of the entryway. “I had no idea you were going to be in the kitchen,” Warren says, stumbling on his words. “That much is self-evident. Now, do you need me to pour you a glass of milk, or do you think maybe you can get through the rest of the night without one?”

He’s flustered and fluttery and his belly is saggy and it’s just the sort of stuff that would make a lesser girl scream or cringe or cry. But this is par for the course. I had to get over the silly idea that I might actually walk around my house without running into a mate of my mother’s a long, long time ago. They are always underfoot; ingesting coffee at the table in the morning, draped across the couch in the evening, foraging in the fridge after hours. If I didn’t have my own bathroom, I might never stay at my mom’s place on her half of my fifty-fifty nights. Not that I have much say in the matter. I have no agency. I have no choices. I’m too young. Warren somehow finds the strength to retreat to the cave of dark and sordid late-night festivities—my mom’s bedroom; though it’s more like an opium den. I finish off the apple in the silence, return to my upstairs bedroom, and fiddle around on Instagram, checking out a new collection of found hearts in nature—wild red fireworks forming a heart, a drawn heart on a sandy beach, a heart-shaped stone. I save them and send them to a special folder on my phone as I settle into bed. The pictures help me forget the kitchen run-in. I check my text messages one more time. I’m still waiting to hear back from him. I’ve heard nothing. Maybe it’s all in my mind.

Noah

The elevator dings on the sixth floor, and the doors slide open. I’m still clutching my phone, and I could justify with a million reasons the way I stare at the screen. Responding to clients. Writing back to producers. Dealing with my boss. All that is true. But all that is a lie because one little text has me right back where I know I shouldn’t be. But I gave in long ago. With my free hand, I unlock my apartment door, then drop the keys on the table. I turn on the light, rub my hand over my eyes, and sigh heavily. I’ve already gone through all the reasons to ignore her. I’ve already tried to fight this for far too long. I’m not winning any awards for resistance. I never did. I threw in the towel many moons ago. Besides, one text won’t kill me. One. One. One. The word echoes through my skull like a temptress. Only one text. Only one kiss. Only one date. It’s always one thing that leads to another. I know this. Even so, I reply. There’s nothing magical about my words. The only thing magical is her. And the hold she still has on me. Then I add a picture because I know what she likes. I know what makes her happy. If I can’t have her, at least I can make her smile. I attach an image I uncovered online of snow fallen on twigs in the shape of a heart.

Kennedy

I slide into bed, under the covers. I place the phone on my pillow, just inches from me. I touch the necklace I wear every day, feeling the shape of the three different sparkly charms that hang from it. I close my eyes, but sleep is so far away it might as well be in Indonesia. Then my phone buzzes. I hold my breath for a second, making a wish. I open my eyes and I slide my thumb across the screen. Hi to you. Three words. Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re enough to get me through another night of wanting him back but knowing I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have him. Then I see a picture, and I could die of happiness.

Chapter Two

Kennedy

“Did you know that only fourteen percent of twelfth graders know why the Korean War started?” This is how my good friend Lane greets me in the lobby of the shrink’s offices the next day. We don’t share the same shrink; just the same practice. Yes, I am that girl. The messed-up, mixed-up seventeen-year-old child of well-to-do divorced parents who sees a shrink in Manhattan. It’s a bit of a caricature, and caricature is something I aim to avoid in life. Especially because, unlike many other teenagers in New York City seeing shrinks, I actually enjoy my weekly visits to Caroline. They’re perhaps the only times when I can be in the presence of an adult and not feel an instinctual need to lie. “I did not know that. But I do know why it started,” I say to Lane as he drags a miniature rake through a Zen sand garden on the table in the lobby. This is where we met many months ago. In this lobby. We’re both seniors, but we go to different schools on different sides of the city. “Why?” “I’m guessing a bunch of people didn’t get along with each other and they came to fisticuffs.” Lane touches the tip of his index finger to his nose. “Bingo.” He rattles off other random facts, party chatter we call it. Lane checks out a new big book of facts from the library every week and endeavors to memorize the most interesting tidbits about human nature. “Never be without a little conversational nugget,” he likes to say.

He never is. He informs me that snakes don’t live in Ireland, Iceland, Greenland, New Zealand, or Antarctica, then his shrink opens the door down the hall, and the patient ahead of Lane leaves. Lane stands up, salutes me, and says, “Because they can’t migrate long distances over water.” A minute later, I walk into Caroline’s office, shut the door, and sink down into the black leather couch. “How are you?” I ask. “Did you fix anyone today?” She waves a hand in the air dramatically. “Everyone. I have wrought miracles between these four walls.” “You don’t want to be too good. You’ll run yourself out of business.” She nods, then flashes another small smile. “That is true.” As I hand her the monthly check from my dad, I check out her shoes. She’s wearing a pair of her trademark ballet flats, which I want to tell her not to wear because she has gigantic feet, and women with gigantic feet only look like they have bigger feet when they wear flats. But I don’t ever manage to get the fashion critique out of my mouth. I don’t need a shrink to tell me why I stay mute on this point. I like Caroline far better than any other adult. With Caroline, I don’t feel like a cat crouching in the corner as the family dog struts by. “The current Public Enemy Number One wears white boxer briefs,” I say. “Warren?” I nod, and draw in a deep breath. “He didn’t even have the decency to, oh, say, grab a bathrobe before he wandered into the kitchen last night,” I say, then tell her about last night. The funny thing is, or really, the ironic thing is I didn’t come here in the first place because of my mom’s affairs. I’m here because of a love letter.

Not the kind with hearts and lipstick marks, but the kind that takes your breath away. I wanted it to have that effect on him, and so it was the story of how we fell in love told through our kisses. Both kisses we’d had and kisses I wanted to have, and places I wanted to kiss. Places like Paris and Amsterdam, along the river or by the canal, or Kauai under waterfalls. It was an epic love letter, and it was all I’d ever wanted in my life—to feel that kind of epic love. But my dad found the letter before I even sent it earlier this year. Or rather an imprint of a sentence or two. My father isn’t a snoop, and I’m not careless enough to leave something like that lying around for discovery by anyone. But I learned a valuable lesson nonetheless—even if you’re writing on a beautiful, fresh, crisp sheet of stationery, don’t press too hard with a purple pen while using a legal pad of paper as a sturdy surface. Some of the words might seep through onto the legal pad. My father deciphered some of the letter that night, and he declared me too young to tell someone that I’d love him for the rest of my life and then some. But what does he know? He isn’t an expert on big love. He is quite the authority in getting royally screwed over by the person you love—my mother—so I understand why he reacted the way he did and sent me to a shrink. “And this all transpired in the kitchen last night? After the latest party?” I nod, then add, just for emphasis, “Warren is married, you know. He takes his ring off when he’s over so they can pretend.” Caroline doesn’t ask how this makes me feel. Caroline knows how it makes me feel. Horrible. Angry. Frustrated as hell. “She made him breakfast this morning. Frittatas with mushrooms and cheese. She served them on her best china, of course.”

“Did you join them?” “I had coffee and left. I can’t even sit with them. I just hate him.” Because that’s what I do. I hate my mom’s boyfriends. Lovers, I should say. I hate that she has them, that they have breakfast and dinner at our house, that I lie to her to get away from them, that she lies to everyone about them, that she lied to my dad about them for years, and that she made me lie to my dad for years too. I will never forget how my life has been measured by the men my mother has kept. Her lovers are the reason I can’t be with the man I love. She ruined my father for love, and then, in some misplaced act of retribution, he took away the love in my life. “Have you ever thought what it would be like not to hate them?” “Ha. Not possible.” “I’m serious, Kennedy.” “That would require removing my brain. I’m not ready for a lobotomy.” “Hypothetically,” Caroline posits, turning her hand over, palm side up, holding it like there’s an invisible plate and she’s a waitress, practicing her craft, “What if you got a lobotomy that only removed the lover-hating portion of your brain.” I consider such an operation for a few seconds. I contemplate the potential results. But it’s as if someone proposed transplanting my green eyes with blue ones. What’s the difference, really? “I don’t know.” “Because it’s not them you hate,” Caroline says. “It’s about the role you feel you played back when your parents were married. That’s what you hate.” I wait for her to say more.

“Are you familiar with twelve-step programs?” “Sure. I mean, broadly speaking.” “One of the vital elements in any twelve-step program is making amends. It may actually be the most important step because it’s about change. Changing your behavior, reversing the damage, saying you’re sorry, living in a new way,” she continues. “I’m not talking about you. What I’m saying though is that the concept may apply. Amends is about making direct amends to the people you have harmed.” I flick back to my dad, to the ashen look on his face the night I spilled all three years ago, to the way his life capsized when his only child told him that his only wife had Hester Prynned him for years. He hasn’t even dated since they split up three years ago. I think his heart may still be too bruised. Mine too. Because the reasons are still under my nose, in my face, and in my kitchen late at night; the reminders, everywhere the reminders, just like this brick, this heavy weight of anger, always inside me. “What I think,” Caroline continues, “is that amends could be a useful exercise for you. It might be the type of thing that helps you let go of the way you feel about all your mom’s lovers.” I like the sound of that. “How should I do amends?” “I’m not sure. But I trust you will find a way.” Because I’m not one who does anything halfway—I don’t drink, smoke, swear, eat meat, or beg off lacrosse practice when I have a headache, and I hardly ever miss a day of school—I know I’ll find a way to make amends. Not for things I did. But for the things I didn’t do. I didn’t stop my mom. I didn’t say No, mom. I won’t tell lies for you.

Noah

Jonathan raps on my door with his knuckles. “Come in,” I say, but it’s perfunctory. Of course he’s coming in. He’s the boss. He runs this talent agency. Runs it with an iron fist and a pin-striped suit and the sartorial perfection of Don Draper. Gotta give it to the guy; he looks the part of the agent shark. “How’s it going?” “Great,” I say, because that’s all he wants to hear, and besides, work is great. Work has always been great. Work has never been the problem in my life. “I hear The World on Time is blowing critics’ minds,” he says, miming an explosion with his hands. “Yep,” I say, because I’d have to be an idiot about the entertainment business not to know that. The darkly comic TV show about an ex-CIA agent gone undercover premieres this Thursday night. Word on the street is the writer-creator, David Tremaine, isn’t happy with his agents and is looking for a new ten percenter. Tremaine is a genius; I’ve been following his career since he wrote a humor column for a local paper. “I want Tremaine,” Jonathan says, as he sinks into my leather couch and crosses his legs. “Who doesn’t want Tremaine?” I toss back. He points at me. “Get me Tremaine, Hayes. You’re my top man. I need you to woo him. There’s a charity shindig event this weekend at MoMA. Some art and literacy thing. He’s going. Bring a date, so you don’t seem like you’re just there to schmooze him,” he says, raising his eyebrows and pointing at me.

I wince inside, but show nothing. Finding a date isn’t hard. It’s just hard when you don’t give a crap about the woman on your arm because you’re still hung up on the one not on your arm. “Sure,” I tell him. “Are you still dating Mica? I haven’t seen you with anyone in a while. Did you start batting for my team?” I shake my head and laugh, glad he inadvertently let me avoid the issue of why I haven’t been seen with anyone in a long time. “I still like girls, sir. Mica and I split up a year ago. She’s a nice one though.” He waves his hand in the air dismissively. “Whatever. I don’t care if she’s nice. I just care how it looks at the party. Make sure she’s pretty, your date. Not that you’d bring a cow.” “No cows on my arm, sir,” I say drily. He laughs. “Love that sense of humor, Hayes.” Later that night, I’m thumbing through my contacts, trying to figure out who to invite to the shindig, when Kennedy’s name appears in a text. My chest goes warm. My heart thumps. This is why I don’t give a crap. I already gave everything I have to someone else. Listening to 42nd Street and thinking of you. I flash back to the time I took her to see the revival. To the way she threaded her hands in my hair and kissed me in the alley outside the St. James with the marquee still lit up from the show. She loves Broadway musicals and their big, showy, over-the-top declarations of love. We had that in common. We had everything in common. It was almost too much to bear. I run my thumb over the screen, picturing her with her earbuds in, so I cue up the soundtrack too and start playing her favorite tune.

Some other time, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll figure out who to bring to MoMA this weekend. I write back: Which song? In seconds, she replies with the name of the one Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m listening to, and I might as well be lost in that kiss outside the theater one more time.

Our Stolen Kisses

We’d just seen 42nd Street, and you were humming “Lullaby of Broadway,” and I told you you had a good voice. You laughed, and claimed you couldn’t hit a note if you tried. “I’m terrible at singing.” I said, “You’re great at kissing though. And just in case, you doubt me, let me remind you.” Then I ran my hands through your hair. God, I love your hair. How it feels in my fingers. I kissed you outside the theater, and in that moment we didn’t care if anyone saw us even in the alley. We didn’t care because the only thing that mattered was your lips on mine. The feel of your breath. The way you curled your hands on my hips, bringing me near, but keeping a distance too, in case we got too close in public. Like it mattered. Like anyone who saw us couldn’t tell how we felt.

Chapter Three Kennedy

Technically, lacrosse is not a contact sport. If you looked in the rule book for girls’ lacrosse, you would see all sorts of warnings to keep your hands and elbows and sticks to yourself. But that’s not how I play. In my rule book, lacrosse is a contact sport. Life is a contact sport. You’d better woman up. I make my way downfield, determined to pummel the ball into Keeland Prep’s waiting net. Their top defender tries to slam into me and keep me from scoring. I turn my hand in and my arm out, fashioning my elbow into a weapon. She plants her feet in front of me, so I jam my right elbow hard into her side. She loses momentum and lunges a bit, her white-blond ponytail swinging out sharply to the side. She’s fast and recovers quickly, and now she’s an angry bull and she’s chasing me down because she’s a ferocious player. But so am I and I plow ahead, then fling the ball into the net. The Agnes Ethel School for Girls’ crowd erupts. I raise a fist in the air and shout a loud, “Yes!” My teammates high-five me, and I’m flying, soaring, laughing into the sky as everything good rains down. “Woo-hoo! Go, Kennedy!” My mom calls my name from the stands. I wave to her then return my focus to the field and hammer two more goals into the net as we hand Keeland Prep a 12 to 6 defeat. She’s the first

one to greet me when the game ends. She’s already on the field, pumping her fist in the air. “You. Were. Amazing,” she declares. “Thanks, Mom.” “And if memory serves, only three more wins for the division.” I’m impressed she remembers. It always surprises me that she remembers these details, but she always does. “Don’t jinx us.” She waves a hand in the air. “Jinxes? Who believes in that? Now, shall we celebrate tonight? I can get us a fabulous table at Sushi Ko like that,” she says, snapping her fingers, her sapphire ring glinting in the sun. “And they have absolutely delicious vegetarian rolls.” Every victory, small or large, requires a celebration—a swank dinner out, a new pair of shoes, a decadent dessert. “I have to go to Dad’s exhibit tonight. Opening night,” I say, wishing for the old days when my mom and I would have gone to the gallery together. When my mom would have waltzed into the gallery, kissed my dad on the cheek, and then delighted in his work. When the three of us would have all gone to Sushi Ko together. We did dinners out exceedingly well. Nobody could rock a restaurant visit like the Stanzlingers. We were New Yorkers; dining out was a mandatory skill in this city. “I’m going to say good-bye to my teammates.” I run back to the other girls in green-and-gold lacrosse uniforms. “Slasher Girl!” My teammates call out my nickname. It’s a joke because I don’t slash. I don’t hit uncontrollably. When I hit it’s with impeccable control. “Slashing? Who slashed in this game?” I say as I high-five each and every one, because I get along with all of them. Even though prep school can be a wild beast in Manhattan, I’ve both survived it and thrived in it by following a

few key guidelines—I keep my own secrets, I focus on schoolwork, and I kick ass on the field. That triple combo has been my road map, and I’ve followed it to the letter. It’s also allowed me to have the life I have after school, where I flit in and out of the adult world, and no one here at school has a clue about my family or my own love affairs. I clasp hands with Amanda last, and she grabs my arm to pull me aside. “I have to tell you something.” A drop of sweat drips down her face. She brushes it off. “My dad came to the game.” I give her a quizzical look, like she can’t be serious. This is front-page news. “Your dad never comes to games. What’s the deal?” “My mom lit into him the other night. She was all over him about not showing up for my brother or me at any of our stuff.” “And he listened? I thought he didn’t care.” “She told him all the other parents were there. She told him she was going to cancel their vacation to Tokyo if he didn’t show up and he loves Tokyo.” “Wow, that’s big time,” I say because Amanda’s mom wears the pants in the family. Her dad lost his banking job a couple years ago and hasn’t found a new gig since then. Her mom is CEO of an advertising tech company, so she’s doing just fine and she sets the rules and books the vacations and generally dictates what they do, where they go, and where they spend her money. Amanda points to the stands and her dad is still sitting in the bleachers, his head bent down over his smart phone. “I bet one of his stupid college friends just e-mailed him and was like ‘Hey, I know somebody who knows somebody who might know somebody who’s looking

to hire,’ so of course he had to answer it right away. Do you know he spent the entire game on his dumb phone?” Then Amanda snorts. It’s a derisive snort and I know this not just because I’ve heard it many times before, but because Amanda and I once made a list of all the varieties of her snorts. She is a champion snorter and has mastered imbuing them with a range of emotions: her laughmy-ass-off snort, her this-lunch-food-smells-nasty snort, her this-is-the-lamest-assignment-I’veever-gotten snort, her derisive snort, her comical snort, her embarrassed snort, and her isn’t-thatguy-across-the-street-hot snort. Her dad stops typing, takes out a tissue and blows his nose, then glances down at the field and nods to Amanda. I bet it’s the first time he’s noticed his daughter. Then he walks down to the field. But the world’s most fascinating e-mail must come through, because he’s now answering another message on the way, so he manages to bump into my mom and they begin chatting. My pulse races. My shoulders tense as the dangerous possibilities bob and weave before me. The last thing I need is to have my mom start flirting with my best friend’s father. I grab my sports bag with the speed of an express train and say good-bye to Amanda at the same pace, then extract my mom from the conversation. I breathe easily again once we’re away from the field. I listen to my mom do her usual recap of the game as we slide into the cab that shoots us away from the lacrosse field on Randall’s Island and back into Manhattan. She acts out every great play, mimes every moment of glory, and I laugh and I don’t even pretend she’s ridiculous, because I don’t think she’s ridiculous. I think she’s actually kind of awesome for never turning her phone on during a lacrosse game. Ever.

I want these moments to be the defining ones in our relationship. I want to erase all the other moments, like the ones involving friends’ fathers, and wallpaper them over with these instead. When we walk inside the brownstone the three of us used to share, my mom tells me she has a surprise for me. She covers my eyes and walks me to the foyer. “Ta-da!” And Joe, my sleek, sexy, silver fixed-gear bike, is waiting there, glistening and gleaming, the broken chain fixed. “I picked him up this evening for you. And I went ahead and got the works. A full tuneup.” She presses the handlebar brakes. “See! I even had them tune the brakes too. And shine the frame.” “He looks awesome.” I run my palm over the frame and it feels like steel silk. I give her a kiss on the cheek. “You’re the best, Mom.” “Anything for you, my darling.” This is why I can never hate her. This is why my hate is reserved only for them—her lovers. Never for my mom, who I love like crazy. I head for the fridge, for my postgame ritual of a cold Diet Coke. I crack open a can, savoring that first sip. It’s then that she turns her phone back on. It starts buzzing instantly. The messages must have piled up. I hear her call her agent back, and my face flushes momentarily when she says his name. Hayes. That’s what everyone else calls him. Everyone but me. I imagine Hayes in the office being all agenty and business sexy in his colorful shirts, the red, the purple, the dark navy blue, and most of all I picture the way they fit his tall, strong, sturdy frame so well.

“I was quite productive today and wrote three smoking-hot scenes for the upcoming story arc,” she says to him. Lords and Ladies is the top-rated nighttime soap opera she birthed several years ago and still pens to this day for TV’s hottest premium network LGO. As the showrunner for Lords and Ladies, she created it, she controls it, and she writes the smoking-hot scenes. Sure, she has a whole staff of writers at her beck and call over at LGO’s West Fifty-Seventh Street studios, but the story line is hers, the intrigue, the affairs, and the double crosses are all courtesy of the mind of Jewel Stanza. It’s a pen name, shortened from her married name. I stare out the kitchen window, this time hearing bits and pieces of his sexy, strong voice on the other end of the conversation. The voice I want to keep just for myself. Only he belongs to so many people. He belongs to her, and to his clients, and to the business, and to everyone who wants a piece of him. Most of all, he belongs to the eight years that separate us. “Let’s have you over for dinner and we’ll chat about the scenes then,” she says casually to him, as if this is a mere suggestion. But it’s not optional to disobey. “We’ll invite the usual suspects.” She rattles off the names of LGO’s chief publicist and her husband, the studio’s international distribution head, and the show’s head writer and his wife. “And Warren, of course. I’ll call Warren and we’ll make it a party.” She ends the call and turns to me. “Could you do me a huge favor? I need you to read three scenes. I know you usually read before bed, but I really need your feedback. I’m terribly nervous. Especially because of the”—she stops to sketch air quotes—“content.” She waits for my reaction. She wants me to be eager to read the scenes with content in them, like I’ve just won a prize, an advance early screening of what any Lords and Ladies fan craves the most. My mom, the woman who single-handedly brought back the power of the

nighttime soap to TV, who rejuvenated a once-dormant media form with her twists and turns on Victorian Englishmen and -women and their machinations over life and love—is known for her weekly cliffhangers, her shocking reveals, and the show’s wicked-hot sex scenes. This—the show’s rep for causing hotness under the collar—pleases my mom the most. The last thing I want to do is read the scenes her own sex life inspired. But I know where telling the truth leads to. It leads to splits and splinters and a fifty-fifty life. “Of course. I’ll read right now.” It’s just easier.

After I shower and scrub off the remnants of the lacrosse game, I pull on my favorite skinny jeans and a fitted T-shirt, then lace up my Converse sneakers. As usual, I wear my charms necklace. I position it just so—he won’t be able to miss it if I see him. I want him to know I wear it all the time, that he’s with me, next to my heart, even when I can’t be near him. I sent a silent wish to the universe that he arrives early. That I’ll catch a glimpse of him. A smile, a twinkle in his eye, a look just for me. I grab the script pages my mom left on my pillow, close my eyes so I can’t see a single word, and move each page behind the next. When I’ve counted to fifteen I open my eyes, confirm I’m back to the start and that the pages look read, and head downstairs. “The scenes are just totally absolutely splendiferously amazing, Mom,” I say loudly, as I slap the pages on the counter, then open the fridge and crack open another Diet Coke and take a big gulp.

“Tell me everything.” She nods to the pages in my hand as she wields a fat blade and chops carrots into fine slices. She’s changed too, her bleacher-wear cast aside for a low-cut magenta blouse, the color so blazingly rich she looks like royalty. She’s paired her top with trim black slacks and four-inch black leather pumps. “What did you think about the scene? About what Gerard does to Pauline in the stables? Tell me what you liked.” No. God no. There is nothing at all I can tell you about what Gerard does to Pauline in the stables. Especially not when I heard what Warren did to you the other night, which was surely the inspiration for the characters’ romp in the stables, and I had to play the soundtrack to 42nd Street the rest of the night to drown out the sounds. “Hot. Just totally hot,” I say, unspooling the exact words my mother longs to hear. “And sweet too. It was like this perfect mix of sexy and sweet, and the viewers are going to love it.” She smiles deeply, like a weight has been lifted from her shoulders. “Thank you. I don’t want to disappoint any of the viewers.” “They love your show, Mom. They love all the lords and ladies,” I say, reassuring her properly, because I’m steeped in just the right words, said in just the right tone, to reassure her. Because I love her, even though I hate so many things about her. My love is stronger than my hate. It has to be.

Chapter Four

Noah

Two seconds after I step off the elevator in my office building, the doorman calls me over. “Hey, Mr. Hayes. I have something for you,” he says from his post at the gleaming black desk in the lobby. He waves me over like he’s got a secret to share. “Hey Randy. What have you got?” The mustached man in the navy-blue uniform lowers his voice to a whisper. “My cousin Joey has a script. New action series centered around a group of coworkers, and each one has special powers. It’s gonna be epic. I’ll bring it to you tomorrow,” he says with a wide smile. I flash a smile back. Not because I’m eager to read yet another script. But because this is par for the course. Everyone, everywhere, it seems, has a TV show in them, and they’re always asking me to read them. To do to their show ideas what I did for Jewel’s. Make them soar to the top. “Sounds great, Randy,” I tell him, then give a quick nod good-bye as I head out into the warm May evening. Then there’s a clap on my shoulder. I swivel around to see my buddy Matthew. He’s a critic for a top-notch music magazine and he works in the same building. He’s never once asked me to read a script for a friend, a cousin, a neighbor. I like that about our friendship. “Superhero coworkers?” he says, raising an eyebrow. He must have been behind me and heard the whole conversation. I shrug as we walk uptown. “You never know where you might find the next big hit.”

He laughs, tossing his head back. “You’re far too nice. What are the chances you’ll find a gem in some random script thrust your way?” “What are the chances you’ll find the next great band in the files record companies send you?” I fire back. “Touché, mate. Touché. Though, speaking of the next great bands, Jane and I are going to see one tonight at Roseland. It’s not nearly as exciting as seeing a cancan show on Broadway, or what have you, but want to join?” I roll my eyes as a bus rumbles by, spewing a plume of exhaust. “Ha-ha-ha. Mock my job, why don’t you?” “It’s not quite mocking your job though, is it? Since I’m pretty sure you go to those Broadway shows for fun, not work,” Matthew says, as we near the avenue. “What can I say? I’m the straight guy who likes Broadway musicals,” I say, owning it. So what if I like theater? “I’m just messing with you. Are you on for Retractable Eyes?” “What time?” I ask, glancing at my watch. “Late. Ten. Do you need your beauty sleep?” “I can handle it. I’m heading to Jewel’s house now for dinner and to go over her script.” “When are you just going to get down on one knee for her?” I scoff. “That’d be a never.” There’s a strange silence between us, and then a clearing of his throat as we near the subway entrance. “Right. I nearly forgot. It’s not her you’re keen on,” he says quietly, his voice serious for the first time. He’s the only who knows about Kennedy. “Is that why you still go there?”

“No,” I say, answering quickly and truthfully for the most part. Of course, I like seeing Kennedy. Though like isn’t truly the right word. Crave would be more accurate. But that’s all complicated by the fact that I actually care about her mom, and not only because she’s my biggest client. Jewel Stanzlinger is the reason I’ve earned the regard I have and the client list that came after her. Our business partnership is one of the rare Hollywood-style stories of loyalty and faith. I started working with her back when I was an intern in college, and she was looking for her first break. She was the long-suffering-last-on-the-totem-pole writer for several middling daytime soaps that have since gone off the air. She told me her idea for Lords and Ladies and I quickly landed her a better writing gig on another soap, then pushed hard and fast to make her head writer. She upped the spice factor, boosted the intrigue, and tossed in even more sordid affairs. The whole time she refined and reworked and rewrote Lords and Ladies until it was unpassable. Then I sold it to LGO mere weeks after I graduated from college. It’s one of the biggest TV shows in the country, and I now have one of the most enviable client lists of any TV lit agent in the country, let alone any agent my age. I owe it all to Jewel. Which probably makes me the biggest idiot in the world for falling in love with her daughter. Four months after it ended, those feelings for Kennedy show no signs of dissipating. Zilch. Nada. Goose egg. I really should go see the band tonight. Just to get my mind off her. “See you at ten,” I tell Matthew when he reaches the subway entrance. “See you then. And be careful,” he adds, because he likes to look out for me when it comes to the hornet’s nest of my romantic choices. “I will.”

I make my way to Jewel’s, and along the way I spot a burst of yellow and white at a bodega across the street. I stop in my tracks, then glance at the crosswalk. The closest car is fifty feet away, and even though I don’t have the light, I race across anyway, slowing my pace as I come closer to what caught my attention in the first place. A bouquet of daisies tucked amid a stuffed assortment of flowers, of roses and tulips and lilies and daffodils. The eye of one of the daisies almost looks like it’s in the shape of a heart. She would love it, so I buy it. As I turn onto her block, my heart starts beating faster and my palms are sweating, and this chemical response pisses me off. I should be able to manage my reactions better. Hell, I saw her the other night at the party. I’ve seen her plenty of times since she ended our relationship four months ago. I should be able to get a better grip. But seeing as how I just bought her flowers, I doubt I will. Or can. Or want to. Somehow, as the brownstone looms into view, all four stories of its Central Park West splendor, the home befitting a woman of Jewel’s stature, I manage to get my emotions in check. I hold the flowers in one hand as I ring the bell. Kennedy answers. Her brown hair is wavy and lush, and I know how it feels sliding it between my fingers. They itch to touch those soft strands. Her green eyes light up when she sees me. Her lips quirk up in a smile as she holds the big door, keeping it open only so far. Creating a shield. A temporary five-second cocoon. She eyes me up and down, and I can tell she’s lingering on my shirt. It’s purple, tailored perfectly, and tucked neatly into my charcoal-gray slacks. She’s obsessed with my shirts. I don’t have a problem with this. I like this obsession. More than I should.

I am a lost cause to her, and now as my heart thumps harder, it doesn’t piss me off. It reminds me of everything I once had that was pure and perfect and true. “Purple,” she says in a breathy voice, like it’s a dream, like it’s a word that has wings and breath and can fly away, far from here. It transports me back in time, reminding me of a night from many months ago. The night she tried on this shirt. She looked stunning in it, and my breath catches from the intensity of the memory. I am surrounded by memories of her, and I can’t let them go. I don’t want them to fade. Ever. “Purple,” I repeat, low and soft, like it’s our insider secret. I say it so low it’s almost unspoken. But she can hear me. “How was your day?” “It was good,” I say. “How was yours?” “It’s not bad.” “I heard you can’t stay tonight.” “No. My dad has an art thing.” “Art thing. Sounds like fun. If you like art,” I say, with a wink. I know she likes art. I know so many things about her, and I want to know so much more. “I like art.” “I picked up some flowers. You can pretend they’re for the house.” Then I whisper, as I point to the eye of the flower. “But they’re not.” Her eyes widen and her jaw falls open. “I love it.” “Me too.” She grabs her phone to snap a picture of the eye of the daisy. “For my collection,” she adds.

“I know, K.,” I say, and she presses her teeth into her lip as I call her by that name. As if she’s holding inside all the things I store tightly in me too.

Kennedy

I don’t want to move away. I don’t want this moment to end. My heart is still doing a wild tap dance in my chest because he’s early. My wish to the universe came true, and even though I’ve seen him countless times, I can’t tear my eyes away from him. His brown hair is thick and messy, and right now he’s five-o’-clock-shadow-stubbly. I have to hold my hands behind my back so I don’t reach out and run a thumb along his jawline, then thread my hand in his hair, letting it slide through my fingers as I line my body against him. I resist, staying rooted to this spot so I don’t give in to all that I want. His dark-blue eyes twinkle. He looks only at me, and my skin heats up in an instant. No one has ever looked at me like he does. I doubt anyone ever will. Noah Hayes is the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen. Inside and out. In every way. Every now and then, I wonder why my mom never went after him. Considering his looks and her appetite, he’d be obvious prey. But all I can figure is she needed one man who wasn’t disposable. And maybe that’s why he’s the only man who’s been a constant, because he’s the only man my mom’s never had a fling with. He is her best friend, her confidante, and for all intents and purposes her business partner. More than that though, she thinks of him like a son. His own mom is gone, so my mom watches out for him. She loves him in some sort of protective way. Which makes the situation all the more messed up.

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Chapter 1 Three Days, Three Bells Three days. My thin leather shoes slapped softly against the dirt leading away from grandmother’s cottage as I made my way across our stretch of farmland located at the edge of Frosthaven. With a gentle breeze tickling my skin, I passed through the brambles and bushes full of berries, then to the wide array of fruit-bearing trees in the orchards at the edge of the land. I couldn’t help but be aware of the plumes of hazy brown dust as they floated about my feet, wisps circling my ankles as my weight shifted the soil, leaving a trail of dusty clouds in my wake. I was running away. The weather was perfect, with the comforting smell of the cool dry air still lingering in the breeze, the wind pushing me forward. I stopped and watched the ribbons of dirt around my feet wither away. I took a deep breath and buried my face in my hands. It was the smell of autumn, a season that any other year I’d welcome with open arms. It was still warm enough to explore the wilderness, venture outside into the fresh sharp air, but cold enough that few did the same, leaving me to my own devices, alone in the woods with the rushing freezing streams hidden beyond them. There were plenty of other upsides too though, in addition to the vibrant color of the forest. There was the warmth of the hearth in my grandmother’s kitchen on frigid evenings, and the joy of picking and tasting the final harvest before the Glacialis. These were the things I looked forward to the most, and I couldn’t bring myself to enjoy any of them. Not with my Inking looming.

There was no time for good-byes. I didn’t care if I was about to come of age or not. I didn’t want to be Inked. To have some magic tattoos telling everyone who I was, what I was, what my future would hold. I packed some supplies, and set off. Inside the medium-sized leather satchel, I carried a bundle of necessities for the road. Dried food from my grandmother’s cellar, enough dehydrated berries, jerky, and seeds to last me over a week, but not so much to cause trouble with the stores come the winter. Other necessities included a few tunics crammed into the bottom of the bag, a leather canteen, and a couple of trinkets to remind me of home. Just because I had to go didn’t mean I wanted to leave. I grabbed my father’s broken pocket watch from deep within the dresser in my bedroom, the gears and springs resting silently inside their shimmering bronze case. I also took one of my grandmother’s scarves, a fraying, trailing bit of fabric, the bright shades of berry dye long since faded into pinks and violets. I walked to the edge of the farm, stepping over the roots of the enormous, ancient trees that jutted out of the earth; the woods were thick, old, and intimidating. There was no gradual rise in foliage, changing from farmland to small shrubs, little trees, and then to wild forest. Instead it was as if one of the Gods had hurled thousands of million-year-old oaks at the ground from the sky, hammering them into the soil like thick stakes at the edges of Frosthaven. At the border, I looked up at the tall trees, beams of sunlight slicing through the canopy, the light glimmering through the fading leaves like ripples on water. Then I peered into the woods where Dreya and I spent much of our childhood, running, and exploring. Would she understand? Would I ever be able to come back?

The idea of striking out on my own, venturing somewhere new, didn’t bother me all that much. But disappearing without Dreya, and without saying farewell to my grandmother, that gave me pause. I’d at least left Dreya a letter. “Caenum!” I jumped back and tripped over a broken branch, then went tumbling to the ground. Dreyalla jumped out of nowhere from within the woods, a bundle of flowers packed into a basket slung over her arm. Her tangle of long hair danced madly around her shoulders as she charged toward me while I did my best to scramble away. “Well, well, look who was about to get lost in the woods,” Dreya said, smirking while arching an eyebrow. “What are you doing here?” I asked. I stood up and brushed the dirt off my pants. “What are you doing here?” she insisted, eyes curious, hands on her hips. “Did you forget what today was?” The Ink tattooed on her arms reacted to her question, the petals and vines twisting upward, as if the flowers wanted to listen. Her Ink was beautiful that season, with white honeysuckle petals dripping with dew, multicolored nasturtiums that made their way down her forearms, all of which rustled when a breeze licked at her sun-kissed skin. In nature, ivy doesn’t really inspire awe as it creeps along forest floors or climbs up trees . . . but on Dreya, it demanded attention. The red and purple veins twisted up her arm toward the sunlight, stretching up her neck and tucking gracefully behind her ears. Even then, with Dreya standing there, looking at me curiously, her vines and ivy moving and rustling, I couldn’t help but wonder what flowers and greenery would bloom on her next

year, or the year after that. Oftentimes, whatever began to bud was the best choice for her family’s greenhouse that season. Ink was like that. Always suggesting and nudging, always spot on. Which is exactly why it scared me. I wanted to know myself first. And as she stood in front of me, glaring at me with that look of playful accusation, I felt the smile vanish from my face. “Seriously, what is it?” she asked, taking a step toward me. “It’s nothing,” I grumbled, “I was just heading out to get some more kindling for grandmother.” “Caenum, I know you,” she said, taking another step. “You can’t lie to me.” “No really,” I said, trying my best to maintain an honest tone in my voice, whatever that might be, “it’s nothing. Just you know, out for a walk, clearing my thoughts . . .” “Clearing your thoughts?” She took another step, and I moved back, almost tripping over a root growing out of the dirt path. “First it was getting kindling, now it’s clearing your thoughts?” “What is this?” I asked. “Are you the Citadel Guard all of a sudden, come to interrogate me? Oh, please, Captain of the Guard, I don’t know anything; please don’t throw me into the fights . . .” “Fights!” she exclaimed. “Now that—” “Oh, please—” I started. “Is a great . . .” she continued, her voice trailing off, hands outstretched, fingers out like claws. There was a look of playful menace in her eyes, one that I’d seen way too many times.

The ivy on her forearms inched up her wrists, eager to decorate her fingers, as if it were going to shoot out and ensnare me. “Dreya seriously, don’t.” “Great idea!” With a roar she lunged at me. I reached out and grasped her shoulders as she leaped onto me, and we wrestled down onto the soft dirt road, as the dust kicked up into the air. The vines on her arms even seemed to jump in the battle, twisting and curling around on her skin, as if they were trying to grapple with me as well. I made some attempts to push her off me, but there was something . . . something about having her pressed against me on the ground. “All right, that’s enough!” I said, trying to push her off me, my heart racing. Dreya pushed my hands off her shoulders and pressed me down to the ground, her full weight on top of me, straddling my waist. With her knees planted firmly into the dirt, she slid her hands to grip my forearms, pressing them to the earth. “Do you yield?” Dreya asked through gritted teeth, a faux anger in her voice, as if we were soldiers on the field of battle, each of her furious fingers a dagger or a sword. Her thick locks of hair hung over her face, and I sputtered to keep the thick strands out of my mouth as clouds of dirt stung my eyes. “Never!” I said, attempting a playful snarl while thrashing about, trying to avoid her piercing amber eyes. I looked off to the side, toward the rolling fields and farmland, and tried to will my heart to beat slower. She let go of my arms and pushed down on my shoulders.

“Do you yield, sir?” she shouted. I turned and looked up at her, and met her gaze, her dark yellow eyes looking intently into my dull brown ones. These kind of moments had become all too frequent. Especially lately. “I yield!” I yelled, breathless. I made my move and grabbed her waist, ready to throw her off me. And then, I stopped. There’s a pause, an awkward lingering between us. With her on top of me, hands pressed down against my shoulders, my hands on her waist . . . I could feel her breathing. Her firm muscles under her tunic. We stared at each other for a second, before I broke the silence. “I-I yield,” I stammered. “Good,” she says, pushing herself off me and standing up. She brushed the dirt from her clothes and took a deep breath, tucking a rogue strand of hair behind her ear. “Now then,” she said as I slowly stood, her arms crossed, the vines tightening along her forearms. “As written in the treaty of your surrender—” “There was no—” I started. “As written,” she pressed, and I immediately shut up. “The defeated party,” she glanced at me, “the defeated party being you, will be subject to the following. One: getting himself up immediately, as the victor would like to spend some time with him. Two: discussing, at length, his feelings regarding his upcoming Inking. And three: quit being the biggest whelp in the Realm starting right now.” She stopped and looked over at me. “Do you agree to these terms, sir?” “That sounded like more than three terms—” I started. She stepped toward me, hands outstretched and ready to do battle once more. “Do I have a choice?” I asked.

“You most certainly do not,” she said. She picked up the wicker basket full of plants off the ground, and cradled it under her arm. “Now get yourself together and meet me at your house. We’re getting something special ready for you.” She glanced down at her basket of flowers and herbs, and I tried to peek inside. “Ah-ah, I don’t think so,” she said, shielding the contents of the basket with her other arm. “You’ll ruin the surprise. Finish up whatever you’re doing out here and I’ll see you inside.” And with that, she darted out up the dirt road toward my grandmother’s cottage, leaving me alone with a racing heart, aching ribs, and the tall trees of the ancient forest. With the Glacialis approaching, Dreya spent most days out in the fields around Frosthaven, collecting all of fall’s final flowers and herbs, rescuing them from death by frost and ice. Her tattoos had her marked as a florist and herbalist, just like her mother. While the Glacialis meant a lot of different things to many different people, it had a particularly unique effect on Dreya, one that I had been dreading this year. As someone Inked with floral imagery, her tattoos reacted to the freezing wind, wilting and dying. She took it hard year one, and I was worried about this year. To our families, who relied on the farmland for our livelihood, the Glacialis meant harvesting as much as we could, from our farms and from the wilderness. So on days when there wasn’t much for me to do on the farm, I’d join Dreya, chasing after her through the tall grass, and rolling hills spreading out beyond our families’ land. Much to my annoyance, however, my grandmother always welcomed us back with a smug look on her face, her smile warm, teasing the two of us about how we were destined to be together. This was certainly a nice change from how Dreya’s mother and father, treated me and

my grandmother. There was always this . . . this air of disapproval when it came to the two of us spending time together, glances that told me that my small, broken family wasn’t good enough. But I didn’t care. Growing up as “the orphan with the mysterious past,” I’d become accustomed to those kind of looks, and the whispered bits of gossip, surrounding me and my grandmother, just two outcasts living on the outskirts of town. Whatever. I needed only two people: my grandmother and Dreya. According to my grandmother, Dreya was actually one of the first people to meet me, right after my long-gone parents. Long gone indeed. I pushed forward a few steps into the woods. There, among the towering, ancient trees, sat a small pile of stone with a younger tree growing at its base. The small tree looked like a sapling surrounded by the thick older trunks, but I know it’s exactly ten years old. Some driedout flowers are nestled among the rocks, and it’s there that I stopped and squatted down, running my hands over the smooth surface of the stones. “Hi . . . ,” I started, in a whisper. Whenever I visited here, I tried my best to keep it together, but that empty pit in my chest always made itself known, something shouting from the hollow space inside. “Hi, Mother,” I finish, after exhaling and clearing my throat. I sat there for a moment, hidden just beyond the edge of the woods. I stood up, clenching my fists, looking deep into the wilderness. It was now or never. This was my life. This was my choice. I tried to push down all the doubt and swirling emotions rising in my chest, and took a step deeper into the woods. “Caenum!”

I turned around and between the trees I spotted my grandmother, a cauldron dangling from her garden-weathered hands as she peered out from the back door of our cottage. Despite feeling as though she was almost a league away, I could definitely spot a smile on her tanned face, her bright-white teeth impossible to miss. I hurried out of the woods and waved at her, attempting a smile of my own. “What are you doing over there? Come on in!” my grandmother yelled, beckoning me back to the house. “Lunch is almost ready, and you’re not going to want to miss this!” She held up the cauldron and then walked back into the house. Trying to leave during the day had been a bad idea. I took a step back into the thick forest, bending past around a wide tree, back to the site of my mother’s grave. I breathed in the smell of the sweet decaying leaves on the forest floor. I dug out a nook in one of the small rocks, pushing leaves away, their fading texture crumbling in my hands. I wedged my satchel in the rocks and covered the small space with twigs and branches. “Watch this for me, would you?” I asked. I turned to walk out of the woods, and then back to the small tree, its branches stretching toward the sky, as if it were desperate to catch any glimmers of sunshine that streamed down through the thick, dark canopy. “Don’t be disappointed in me, please?” I asked. “I’m . . . I’m sorry.” I stepped out of the woods and back onto the farmland, marching my way toward the cottage. I could wait until nightfall.

“Are you almost ready? I’ve got a little surprise for you,” Grandmother called. She peeked through my bedroom door, clutching a ceramic black soup bowl in her weathered hands. I leaned over and tried to see what was inside, and my grandmother took a step back, grinning. “Nope,” she said, teasing, a smirk on her face. “Finish getting ready and meet us in the kitchen.” She disappeared beyond the door. “And hurry up!” Dreya shouted from inside the house. I peeked out of the window, the bright autumn afternoon greeting me as I willed the sun to lower itself toward the horizon. Lingering would only make things worse. I made my way into the kitchen. My grandmother was fussing over the table setting, messing with the spoons, cloth napkins, and the giant pot in the middle of the table, and Dreya stared impatiently at her bowl. I bit my lip as I walked over, the impatient look on her face strangely attractive. I wanted to let her wait a little bit longer, but the smell of beef, barley, celery, onions, carrots, and . . . something else I couldn’t quite put my finger on, the secret spice my grandmother always used, wafted through the air and caught my attention. Immediately, I knew what was inside that giant pot sitting on the table, made of black ceramic, etched with patterns of the meadows outside. Grandmother had made her legendary stew. “There he is!” Dreya exclaimed, looking up from her soup bowl. “About time. Still sore?” She winked. “Please,” my grandmother said, smiling, “you’ve got to eat something.” I walked over to the table and sat down. Dreya made a quick move at me, her hands outstretched, and I flinched. Scowling at her, I inched my chair closer to my grandmother, who promptly filled up a bowl and handed it to me. The bowl was warm in my palms, and the soup gave off an aroma so powerful

that I could already taste it in the back of my throat. My grandmother reached out and tucked a piece of my black hair behind my ear, and I flinched, looking between her and Dreya, irritated. “Would the two of you stop grabbing at me?” I muttered. “Okay, okay,” my grandmother said, backing off, beaming. I grabbed the wooden spoon and stirred the broth, eventually taking a slow careful sip, as it was piping hot from the fireplace. “Thanks,” I said, and sighed, staring down at the bowl, watching the steam rise slowly off it. While they were fussing with me, I had kicked off my shoes and started messing around with the dirt floor at my feet. “Caenum?” I looked up to spot my grandmother giving me her telltale stare, her head tilted, her eyebrows raised. “Sorry, I’ll stop,” I muttered, digging my toes firmly into the ground. My grandmother always kept a perfectly clean house, despite the dirt floor, thatched roof, and rickety, generally broken, wooden furniture. A seemingly impossible task, but she managed somehow. “Caenum, look . . . ,” my grandmother started. “Not now.” I said, looking over at Dreya, who immediately returned my look with a gaze that insisted I talk, her amber eyes wide and welcoming. “I don’t want to hear it. For the next three days, I just want to be left alone.” Never mind that I was planning on getting out of there once the sun went down. What was the point in talking about how I felt when I was going to be far away from it all tomorrow morning? “Caenum . . . ,” Dreya started. Don’t, I thought to myself, closing my eyes tight.

“So, Grandmother, will you finally tell me your secret ingredient?” I quickly asked, eager to change the subject. The steam from the soup bowl rose in front of my face, my grandmother’s grin, wavy in the heat, told me she had no intention of revealing her recipe. Instead, she reached over and placed a hand on my shoulder. This time, I didn’t flinch. “I was scared too when the time came for my Inking,” she said, her face warm and kind. I looked at my grandmother’s hand, where dark lines extended from her fingers down to her wrist, cascading in swirls up her forearm and disappeared into the sleeves of her shawl. The lines were raised, like tracks one might sow while planting seeds in a garden or on a farm. She shook her arm a little, tightening her hand on my shoulder, which caused small Inked grains to tumble onto her unmarked skin, creating tiny, blackened freckles. In the spring, the tattooed tracks of earth on her arm would start to show bits of green, which would grow into thicker, vibrant lines in shades of sage and hunter. And as the days turned to weeks, the weeks into months, the green lines would blossom and burst with other Inked flowers, fruits, and vegetables. She even had an enormous apple tree on her back that bloomed white at the base of her neck. It was one of the few pieces she had that didn’t change seasonally, as the orchards regularly produced apples. If I stayed until it was time for my Inking, would I too end up a farmer like my grandmother? Or like my parents, also bound to the land? “What,” I began, stumbling to find the words, “what if I don’t like what I get?” “Oh, sweetheart,” Grandmother said, smiling warmly. “Everyone worries about that. I know I did. But in the end, the Ink knew exactly what was best for me.” She looked down at her tattoos and ran her hand over one of her arms.

“You always wanted to work with plants? With food?” I asked, swirling the wooden spoon around in the bowl. “In a way, yes,” she said, tracing the lines on her arm. “It was something I always had a knack for. You should have seen your father and me . . .” She paused while mentioning him, and looked out the foggy glass window and toward the meadows. As if he were going to be out in the fields someplace, sweat dripping down his brow as he tilled the land. I glanced over at Dreya, who squirmed uncomfortably. Her vines tightened up around her arms, the flowers closing. My father was a touchy subject, and I was always careful when he was brought up. But if I was truly leaving that night, I at least wanted a little more information about him. “He wanted to farm too?” “In a way, yes. He really didn’t have much of a choice. He was gifted.” She wasn’t smiling anymore. Inked pebbles and dirt scattered as she ran her fingers across the tracts of land that decorated her arms. “But what about his Ink?” I continued to prod. “That’s a story for another time, Caenum.” “But what if . . . ,” I started to stammer. I felt the panic rising in my voice. “I don’t even know what I want to do with my life. How are the Scribes supposed to know? They don’t know me!” “Caenum—” The urge to get up and run out of the room, out of the house, across the farms, through the meadows and into the ancient woods, far away from Frosthaven, was suddenly more than I could bear. I looked from Dreya to my grandmother, my breath grew short and my chest grew heavy. There it was, the panic I had been trying to avoid.

“I don’t even know me!” My grandmother touched my chin, turning my face so I was forced to look at her again. Tears welled up in my eyes and my chest constricted as I fought to keep it all buried down, not wanting Dreya to see me cry. My grandmother spoke, stressing every single word as she did so. “Your Ink isn’t who you are,” my grandmother said. “Remember that.” Bong! The sound of the large brass bell in the town square was loud and clear, reverberating all the way to our small house on the outskirts of Frosthaven. Bong. A second bell. Two more and it would be an emergency. It’d been a while since the last major incident, when several horses trampled a family on a narrow path leading into the village. Anticipating the worst, I closed my eyes and felt Dreya’s soft hand wedge itself into my closed fist. I looked at her soft eyes staring back at me, awash in concern, filled with a promise that everything would be all right. And for a moment, I believed her. Bong! Three bells. I knew what the third bell meant. Three bells signaled their arrival. I tightened my grip on Dreya’s hand, and for the first time, I wished for tragedy. I couldn’t help myself. Let that fourth bell sound, let it welcome in a tornado, a monsoon, a plague, or even a dragon to descend upon the land. I just wanted to hear the sweet sound of that fourth bell, welcoming in the destruction of the world. Any disaster would be better than letting the third bell echo in my mind.

Please ring. Please ring. Please ring. I could feel my lips moving as I repeated the chant in my head. The third bell continued to resonate with a seemingly endless tone, and my chest constricted tightly. As it faded Dreya nodded her head at me, squeezing my hand. We were left alone, frozen in the kitchen as the soft din of the bell faded away, quickly overwhelmed by the sounds of the crackling fire and the breeze rushing through the window. I glanced down at the vines and flowers on her arms, all of which were wilting, mirroring our mutual disappointment. “Caenum, it’s time to get ready,” Dreya said, squeezing my hand tight. “They’re here.”

Chapter 2 The Canvas and the Ink

Dreya and I had watched the Scribes come into town over the years, as they always arrived in their wagons at the peak of every season. But we had never really watched them, not even the year she came of age. However this time around, they practically commanded my attention. I knew that inside the caravan was a set of scrolls listing the citizens that were coming of age that season, orders delivered straight from the Citadel. Only two carriages rode into town that day, both pulled along by a pair of enormous horses, each with Ink that shimmered with each powerful step, covered with images of hard work, in the shape of pistons, gears and levers. We ventured over to the rumbling carts, and once we were close enough to touch them, I found myself strangely transfixed by the wagon tents, supported on strong wooden platforms by brass beams and stilts. All my life I had watched those wagons rumble by, and the dark beige tents looked just like that . . . a solid color, normal even. But now that we had gotten so close, I noticed intricate markings that moved up and down the entire length of the tent. “Do you see that?” I asked Dreya. I let go of her hand and pointed at the tents “Looks like even their tents are Inked,” she said, and moved her head in for a closer look. “Just . . . ,” Dreya muttered as we walked, her voice muffled by the neck of her tunic that covered her mouth, “don’t let them see you or anything.” “Come on,” I said and squeezed her hand, “we’re just following them into town. What’s the worst that could happen?”

“Could you not say that? Ever? People always say that,” she said, and I felt as though I could almost see the grimace behind the tunic that covered her mouth, “right before everything goes wrong. You know that, right?” “I wonder . . .” I reached out to touch the tent. “Caenum, don’t!” Dreya shouted, taking a lunge to snatch my hand away. But she was too late. I reached out and ran a finger along the patterns on the tent, and kept pace with the cart as it slowly lumbered along the road. When my finger brushed across the crosshatched canvas, the patterns pulsed and sent a soft white light rippling across the fabric, like small bolts of lightning. I jumped back, surprised, and Dreya let out a shriek. “It’s okay!” I shouted, and picked my pace back up to follow the wagon. I held my hand up and waved at her as I walked. “Nothing happened, it’s just—” The back of the tent flipped open. “Hey!” A young man with fiery hair shouted. I scrambled over to Dreya as he yelled inside the tent to an unseen person. “Some Canvas is trying to peek into our caravan!” Canvas? His head poked back outside the tent, glaring at me with fierce green eyes that emitted a challenge. I stood back with Dreya and watched the wagon teeter along the road until it entered the town, where it quickly became absorbed by a crowd of onlookers that poured out from their houses, clearly curious about who was up for Inking that season. As we walked into town and squeezed around the milling crowd, Dreya and I stepped over a number of knickknacks and offerings strewn about the dirt road. Preserves, food, spices, even bits of gold and silver, were lying next to the wagon treads. I tried to grab some pieces, but Dreya promptly slapped me away. It was a nice gesture, I suppose, trying to offer up gifts in

hope of gaining some sort of favor, but these gifts were always left behind, as they clattered beneath the wagons, leaving a sad trail of lost wealth and broken hopes smashed into the loose, soft earth. None of these little offerings ever worked. And if they did, no one ever said anything about it. “We’re lucky we don’t have any Unprinted in this town,” Dreya muttered as we stepped around the discarded and ignored gifts. “Prime pickings for them, really.” I felt a shudder rise through me at the thought of them. Unprinted were those who escaped their Inking, either due to running away or committing any number of serious crimes. With bare arms and legs, empty chests and backs, they were the dregs of society. Sometimes they tried to get regular tattoos, to blend in, but this seldom worked. Plain tattoos didn’t move. From what I heard, some managed to scratch out a life for themselves, something I was counting on. Supposedly, most of the Unprinted spent their time in alleys of bigger cities. They lurked outside of homes, stole from shopkeepers, and kidnapped individuals or even the Scribes themselves. Frosthaven was free of them, thankfully, though I wished there was at least one I could talk to. Once they reached the town square, the Scribes stopped their miniature convoy of wagons. I gingerly nudged and pushed my way through the crowd of townsfolk that gathered along the outskirts of the square. “What do you think they are doing in there?” I whispered to Dreya, nudging her with my shoulder. A hush had fallen over the crowd, and the Scribes’ wagons remained strangely still and unmoving.

“They probably aren’t crushing their best friend’s hand with their hairy paws,” she whispered back, wriggling her arm. “Oops, sorry,” I muttered as I let go of her hand. We smiled at each other and turned back to face the wagons. The horses dug their hooves into the ground anxiously, with Ink of pistons and pulleys faded to match their black and brown coats. The wagons began to rock ever so slightly, and the townsfolk muttered loudly to one another, a hum raised over the square. The horses, which had been quiet for a moment, snuffed and kicked their feet at the ground, as the Scribe I’d bumped into moments ago popped out of the back of the tent. “What’s up, Canvas?” he said with a wink as he jumped out of the tent and into the square. I couldn’t help but notice that his red hair was strangely vibrant, his bright, gleaming green eyes unusually vivid, almost like the Ink on Dreya’s arms. His face, long and narrow with a sharp nose, was dotted with freckles, large patches of them spotted around his cheekbones, and unlike every other Scribe I’d ever seen, his skin was empty. Most Scribes had swirling patterns of splashed Ink, blots and blooms of black that flecked their skin, chaotic, yet meaningful. This Scribe was just as unprinted as I was. He surveyed the crowd as if he was sizing them up and then settled on my face. Was he sizing me up as well? I tried to look at him as intently as he stared at me, and I took some comfort in the fact he was a little shorter than I am. His eyes glinted as his mouth turned into a grin, wide and broad, before he opened it to speak. “So . . . ,” he started. His mouth twisted up into a snide smirk and he stepped away from the wagon and walked toward me. His body movement oozed confidence. He lifted a hand up

and inspected his fingernails, and flicked at his fingers with his thumb. I saw the knowing grin on his face, and tightened my grip on Dreya’s hand. She squeezed back and nudged me with her shoulder. “I, um,” I stammered between gritted teeth, “shouldn’t have been messing around near your wagons. I was just kind of—” He flicked out all his fingers. “Just kind of stupid?” he interjected. Dreya squeezed my hand. “Yes,” I said through my teeth. It was hard to swallow my pride like that. “Just kind of stupid. And curious. I didn’t know that the tents were Inked too.” I cleared my throat, and tried to lighten the mood. “How does it—” “Yeah,” he interrupted, “to someone like you it must seem that way.” He took a step back toward the wagon and pressed his hands down against it, the cart moved just a little with the pressure. He looked around again, surveyed the crowd, and set his eyes on Dreya. “Are we done here?” I shrugged. “I suppose. I don’t want any hard feelings or anything—” “Relax, Canvas,” he said. “I’ve got no qualm with you or your little friend there.” He brushed us off with a gesture. “Just go back home. In three more days, you’ll get the Ink of your dreams.” I sighed and felt a rush of relief wash over me. Even though I wasn’t planning on letting this kid give me any Ink, I still didn’t want to cause problems for the town. Maybe this guy wasn’t so bad, and this had all been just a misunderstanding. I loosened my grip on Dreya’s hand.

“Waste disposal, right?” He snapped a finger at me and grinned. “No, no . . . you’re hanging out with a—” he looked Dreya up and down in a way that made me feel angry, hot all over—“what are you, doll, a florist or something?” Dreya nodded. I ground my teeth a little, and tightened my grip on Dreya’s hand. Doll. Who did he think he was, talking to her like that? “Not much of a talker is she, Canvas?” He grinned. “Good, that’s how it should be.” He twirled around and started climbing back into his wagon. “Yeah, sanitation worker. Probably in the Citadel, though. I mean, look at this place. Do you even have plumbing here?” “Hey, listen—” I began. He silenced me by holding up his hand, a stern look on his puckish face. “Don’t make me give you something worse. There are such things, believe it or not. After all, isn’t this the hole that Molivar is from?” I stopped myself from gasping, but the townsfolk who had been listening let their muttered whispers fill the air. Molivar. The first citizen to be Inked as an assassin. No one had ever seen anything like it that year, or ever since. I’ve heard his job is to hunt and kill others who fled their chosen futures. This included any number of Citadel enemies: the violent Unprinted, notorious criminals, small patches of rebellious exiles, and worst of all, Conduits. People say his Ink forces his hand. Makes him do unspeakable things. But people say a lot of things.

I looked up at the Scribe and his wagon, the tent tarp fluttered lightly in the passing breeze, the Inked illustrations unmoved by their soft touch. He stared at me hard, his eyes with that same challenging look frozen into them. “Caenum, we should leave,” Dreya said, her voice soft. Her eyes darted back and forth from the townsfolk to the Scribe. “You’re only going to make it worse.” “You should listen to her, Canvas,” the Scribe said, his voice cold. “I mean, with all those welcoming floral images . . . she might even be taken for a courtesan. Isn’t she here to entertain us while we’re visiting your town?” A pause lingered in the air as I felt a rush of heat flow through my body. A furnace of anger slowly burned in my chest, and I took several deep breaths to try and maintain my composure. “What—” I started, and paused, “what did you call her?” “Caenum . . .” Dreya pressed. “Call who, Canvas?” asked the Scribe with a grin. “Oh, her? Courtesan. It’s a fancy word, something you small-town people might not understand. It means whor—” Before I could even tell what had happened, I had balled my hand into a fist and punched him in the face. I heard his teeth snap in his mouth as my fist connected squarely with his jaw. His body lurched against the wagon and he collapsed onto the ground. A thick silence hung over the townsfolk in the square like a blanket. My hand, still balled in a fist, shook violently as he pulled himself to his feet. He wiped a trickle of blood out of the corner of his mouth and spit a thick red glob into the dirt. “You’re going to regret that,” he snarled, and climbed back into the wagon.

A wave of heat flushed through my body and my mouth went dry. I turned to Dreya, her mouth agape and eyes glistening. That was it. I had sealed my fate. At this point, there were really only two options. One, I could run. Leave the town now. If I decided to change my mind, to get marked by this Scribe, there was no telling what he would do. And then there was option two. I gritted my teeth and reached out for the tent to follow him. “Caenum!” Dreya screamed. She grabbed my hand and wrestled back my arms. I struggled against her, pushing toward the wagon. “Let me go!” I yelled as she tugged against me. I turned back to glare at her, and the ivy on her arms sprouted thorns. I squirmed to escape her grasp to no avail, but there was something comforting about the embrace. When we were kids, whenever I would be on the verge of a tantrum or a meltdown, full of something I couldn’t express this was her thing. Her arms around me while I breathed in deep. “Remember this?” she asked, as she pulled me closer and whispered in my ear. I could feel her warm breath tickling my ear, her long hair brushing against my neck. I inhaled sharply and felt my body tightening. “He isn’t worth it, Caenum. Come home with me.” “Just . . .” I huffed and tried to catch my breath, which had suddenly gone missing. “I just wanted to talk to him.” “What’s left to say?” She eased up a little, and I took a step away from her. I wanted to take a step forward, hold my palm against her cheek. But her Ink gave me another message, as her flowers had tucked themselves away, as though prepared for an assault. “I don’t know!” I flung my arms out, agitated.

“Look where we are!” We both looked at the tent. Silence. “Come back out here!” I yelled, my body shaking. “You owe her an apology!” Silence. “Come on, you ass!” Dreya barked at me. She grabbed my arm again and pulled me away. “You’re not doing anything by staying here, and I’m not a princess who needs you to defend my honor. The whole damn town is watching you.” I turned away from the wagon and as we walked through the crowd, people turned away from us. Had I turned us into pariahs, just like that? As we crested over the small hill, I turned and looked back. In that split second, I swear, I saw the Scribe peek his head out of his tent and point at me. The Scribe and his green eyes. His pointed nose. His damn smirk. His freckles. They all had mocked me. I wanted to punch him all over again.

Chapter 3 Change of Plans

The Scribe loomed over me as I lay flat on a bitterly cold stone table. The air around him seemed warm, like on one of those rare sun-drenched autumn afternoons, yet I saw my own breath, and my body shivered violently against the frozen rock. I couldn’t move. Leather bracers held down my arms and legs, and wouldn’t budge no matter how hard I tried to pull away. The Scribe leered, large and overbearing as he brandished the pointed tips of menacing brass instruments. Sticking out the back of the horrifying devices were long tubes of multicolored liquid, which pumped like living veins. He smiled a snarling grin and flicked a finger at a needle that protruded from one of the instruments. A strange blackish goo trickled from the tip, despite the array of colorful liquid that had been pumping into the device. I’d never seen a shade like that before, darker than night, absorbing the other colors around it with a blurred haze, like I had been gazing into the sun for too long. He gave the needle a final tap and rather than poking me with it gingerly, he lifted the brass instrument into the air, and brought it down like an ax or a sword. I screamed as the needle pierced my arm and he pressed a button on the end of the device. I thrashed as the multicolored fluid pumped into the needle. It poured and pushed itself into my skin. I glanced over at the braces that held down my body and watched terrified as the Ink crept its way through my skin. It swirled and morphed, changing shapes and patterns and strange runic symbols that only a Scribe could understand. Suddenly, the smile faded from his face, curled into a bitter frown, and then, slowly, morphed into a look of terror. He ran out of the room and yelled something I couldn’t quite make

out, then returned with Citadel Guards. He pointed at my Ink, which had grown thicker and darker. The patterns disappeared and congealed into a solid mass, my skin turning to onyx. I tried to move my legs, and discovered they were impossibly heavy. The guards drew their swords. I tried to scream, but nothing came out. The Citadel Guards took their weapons up—their blades were upon me . . .

“Caenum! Caenum, wake up! Are you all right?” I awoke in a cold sweat, my breath short and choked. Dreya sat next to me, her hands gripping my shoulder. She shook me hard, her eyes awash in concern. “Yeah just . . . just another dream,” I said, and wiped my forehead. I shifted uncomfortably, feeling the sweat pressing against my back and under my knees on the straw mat Dreya had laid out for me on her living room floor. My tunic and pants were balled up next to me, and I pulled a fraying blanket up around me, feeling awkward in my pants-less state as Dreya crouched next to me. My wrists ached, and I could have sworn there was a light red bruising on my arms. Everything felt far too real. “Didn’t I come here last night so I could avoid this kind of stuff? Can we just relax and forget about it, please?” “Relax?” Dreya asked, a singular eyebrow arching as she stood. “I don’t think so, buddy. I didn’t sneak you in here under my parents’ noses for nothing.” She winked and walked out of her living room and toward her bedroom, a small open door that I could see from my place on the floor. “Get ready. You’re coming with me to gather herbs and flowers.”

“I don’t really think I’m up for it, Dreya.” I protested, rolling over onto my side on the mat as she started to get ready for the day. “I let you stay here last night, didn’t I?” she asked, and peeked at me from her bedroom as she fussed with her clothes. “Sure, but I slept on the floor! My back is killing me!” I exclaimed. “All right look,” she said, disappearing into her room again. “Maybe we can take a nap by the woods, as long as you promise not to have any more scary dreams. We can pack you a stuffed animal if you need it. I think I have a rabbit around here somewhere. Maybe a sheep?” “Hey!” “Now, you either come with me,” she continued, “or I’m not talking to you until after the winter.” “What? That lasts for months. We live next door to each other. Who will you talk to?” Dreya stepped out of her room, wearing a dark-green tunic. “There’s always Weir down at the stables on the edge of the valley,” she said with a mischievous smile. My face flushed. Weir had long chestnut hair that matched the manes of the horses he tamed. His Ink was lined with dark silhouettes of stallions, rampaging through meadows, fields, forests, all wild with puffs of steam pushing out of their nostrils. Last time we saw him, he was trotting by to visit the farm to pick up some old apples from my grandmother for his horses. He stopped and nodded to Dreya and me and pulled out a canteen. Opening it, he doused his body, shaking his hair back and forth, the water streaming over his muscular chest, as steam rose off of his skin. Steam. Dreya’s mouth went slack, her pupils dilated.

I’ve hated him ever since. And she knew it. “Fine,” I grumbled. “When do you want to go?” “Right now!” She stormed off into the depths of her house, and returned with a beaten up fabric satchel that clinked as she swung it to and fro from the thick glass jars for transporting her flowers. With only two days left until my Inking I was not in the mood for any sort of adventure. I was busy brooding, and I was getting good at it. She walked towards the front door and pushed it all the way open, and turned around, fixing her eyes on me. “So are you coming or what?” I scowled at her. “Can I finish putting my pants on?”

“I love it here in the fall,” Dreya said as we approached the end of my grandmother’s farm. “The colors . . .” She sighed and ran her fingers along her arm, up and around her own neck. I reached for her hands, bringing us to a stop, and smiled. I knew what she was thinking. Soon her Inked flowers would wither and fade. Glacialis was almost here. I lifted our entwined hands and held them up to my face, and peered over them to look directly at her. “It’ll be okay,” I said. “You made it last time, with the roses.” Dreya winced a little at the mention of the roses. A full year had almost gone by, and it was still too soon. Why did it hurt so

much to watch a couple of images fade away? Maybe if I got my Ink, I’d understand her a little better. “Look,” I tried to reassure her, “you’ll pull through again.” She looked up at me from behind her impossibly long eyelashes, her eyes watering, and smiled softly. We sat down at the edge of the farm, the singing of the trees all around us. Dreya fiddled with something in her pack and slowly revealed some bread, cheese, and crackers stashed away in a small fabric satchel. I looked at her and grinned, about to say something. “Wait. I’m not done,” she said with a smirk. With that, she plucked out a small canteen, fashioned out of some sort of animal hide, brown with white spots. She loosened the top and tossed it over to me. I caught it and took a sip. Wine. I looked at the canteen quizzically. “What’s with the picnic?” She snatched the canteen out of my hand and took a swig, splashes of red dripping from the corners of her mouth. “Oh, shut it, Caenum. I just wanted to get you away from all . . .” she made a sweeping gesture with the canteen, “all that. I was planning on dragging you out, even before our run-in with that jerk in the wagon.” She threw the canteen back to me. I took another careful sip, the wine sweet and strangely floral. It was different from anything Dreya and I had ever stolen a swig of at a party in the town square. I looked at her questioningly. “Rose wine,” Dreya said. “Something new my mother and father have been brewing up. With Glacialis approaching and all the leftover dried roses in storage we’ve got from last season

. . . well, we’re going to need something to trade. Dried flowers are great when people still want decorations and are concerned with their homes smelling nice, but you know how it gets in the last months. Thought I’d take a little, see what you thought.” “It’s really good.” I held out the canteen and she put a hand up, shook her head, and started slicing up the bread and cheese. I sighed and fell back onto the grass, feeling content. But still, something stirred inside my chest. “Dreya, what if I get Inked with something that takes me away from here?” “Didn’t I just tell you to shut it?” she asked, giving me a shove. “Seriously,” I said, looking up at the tall, ancient trees. “Caenum—” Dreya started. I could tell she knew where this was going. “Away from you?” I interrupted. There it was. The mix-up with the Scribe, the panic over what my future would hold, where my destiny would take me—none of that really mattered if it kept me in Frosthaven. If my Ink could keep me here, then maybe, just maybe, I’d get it instead of running away. We sat there quietly for a while until I broke the silence. “Dreya?” Dreya stood up without a word and darted off toward the farm, to the soft golden fields. “What are you doing?” I called after her. “I was asking you a—” “You think too much!” she hollered back, her hand hovering above the strands of grain as they rustled in the wind. I bolted after her, and as I approached, she took off again, making me chase her through the thin golden wisps. Growing up, I couldn’t be bothered with any other friends, and whenever I saw Dreya out running through town or in the fields with someone else . . . well, it was the only time I ever wrestled with what had to be jealousy. She’d call me over, invite me to play along, and I’d

retreat back into my grandmother’s cottage or hide somewhere in the strands of wheat. I’d rather be alone, than share her with anyone else. A silly thing, really. Just because I wanted to be alone didn’t mean she had to be. I chased after her, careful not to trample the thin stalks of grain, zigzagging along the short, narrow rows my grandmother and I had made in the fields. It was actually kind of impossible to catch someone while running through the grain, without running through all of it and crushing the plants, that is. Unless one of us stopped or jumped though, you just couldn’t catch up. So I ducked down. I sat, hidden among the tall stalks of grain, their thin beige stems jutting up toward the sky, and I listened. Mixed in with the sounds of the wind rustling the grain and the autumn leaves skittering across the ground, I could hear Dreya’s footfalls as she ran about. “Caenum!” I heard Dreya shout from somewhere in the fields. I stifled a laugh. “Caenum? Oh, come on, where did you go?” I held myself still, alone with the soil and the plants. “Where are you?” Dreya asked out loud. And suddenly, her searching and her questions weren’t funny anymore. How would it be, when I was really gone? I jumped to my feet, just in time for Dreya to run right into me, sending us tumbling into the wheat. “You all right?” I asked, looking her up and down, brushing the dirt from my shirt. “I’m fine, I . . .” Her arms wrapped around me, and I decided, then and there, that I couldn’t leave.

“Dreya . . . ,” I started, placing a hand on her cheek. “You know I—” “No.” She stopped me, and reached her arm up around my neck. “You know you don’t have to say it. I know.” “But I—” “I know, Caenum.” Her amber eyes wide, we leaned in toward one another, my hand on her cheek, her hand grasping the back of my head. And then a flash of light nearly blinded us. The whole world went solid white. A loud, angry, roaring crash sounded with it, then everything was a blank canvas, stark, empty. We jerked back from one another, startled. “What was that!” I exclaimed. I shook my head, quickly blinking my eyes and rubbing at them. I couldn’t shake the phosphorescent spots that darted in and out of my vision as the world came back into focus. “I don’t know,” Dreya said, rubbing her eyes. And that’s when we heard the screaming.

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The Sound of Us Ashley Poston

THE DEATH OF ROMAN HOLIDAY John Birmingham The Juice, June Issue #327 Even if you haven't heard of Roman Holiday, you have. Multi-platinum and awardwinning, the trio of young bright things―Roman Montgomery, Holly Hudson, and Boaz Alexander―have made a name for themselves with breakout hits like MTV's Video Music Award winner "My Heart War" and the Billboard-crushing "Crush On You." At their last concert in San Antonio over a year ago, fans stood in line for three hours to snag exclusive tickets to the venue, and their Madison Square Garden gig sold out in twenty minutes flat after fans stood in line for two days in the sweltering New York City summer heat. There seemed to be no stopping Roman Holiday. Then, tragedy struck the former pop rock sensation when one dark June evening last summer, Holly Hudson was found dead in her LA apartment. "[Holly's] death took us all by surprise," says musician friend and punk heartthrob Jason Dallas at a recent show in Albuquerque. "We lost the best of us that day. There was no justice in it. It should've been Roman, and where is he now?" Lead guitarist and back-up vocalist, Roman Montgomery had been living with Hudson in the modest West Hollywood apartment where he discovered her body, and what pursued was an avalanche of speculation that it was not suicide at all, but murder. In court, Roman Montgomery refused to state where he had been the night of her death, and without any witnesses to attest to his whereabouts, an LA judge ruled her death accidental. Hudson had allegedly been taking prescription pain medications for a sprained ankle and a coroner reported alcohol in her system at the time of her death as well. After Hudson's funeral in her small hometown of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, both Montgomery and Alexander disappeared without a trace. The award shows were very quiet last year without Roman Holiday, and while they were nominated for both Best Music Video and Best Pop Song of the Year, they went to Jason Dallas. A year later, Roman Montgomery and his wingman are yet to be found. Muse Records has issued a last offer for the duo to return to their contracts before they become void in August. The fans of Roman Holiday―Holidayers―have pitched tents in front of Muse Records, pleading for an extension. They haven't given up on this star-crossed band, but perhaps it's finally time. The last shot for Roman Holiday was their pre-scheduled event at Madison Square Garden this July 27th. According to the band’s manager, this was Holly Hudson's dream gig. Now, Holidayers around the world hold onto the last vestiges of hope that Montgomery and Alexander might reemerge to claim their rightful place. Will Roman Holiday reunite for one last gig in the name of America's late sweetheart? Or will the gig―and Roman Holiday―be left for dead?

Chapter One

The only thing I hate more than Saturday night shifts at the bar are dentist appointments, and you have to be a sadist to like those. When I'm working them without the manager, my mom, it's worse, but she's been MIA every weekend since the wedding. I squat down behind the speakers onstage, gathering up the plethora of beer bottles tonight's band stashed there, and dump them into the trashcan beside the stage. The sound guy whistles Queen's "Killer Queen" as he cheerfully flicks off the soundboard and drains the last of his strawberry mojito. I wish he'd choke on an ice cube. "Mike three was hot again tonight, Danny," I tell him, wiping my hands on my jeans. One of the bottles was sticky. Gross. "Rock Your Mouth ruined another Slipknot cover." "I can only do so much with this equipment, sweetie," Danny retorts. "And they just sucked." "It's Junie, and they would've sucked less if you did your job instead of texting." I hop off the stage and begin collecting the empty bottles scattered across the bar, and tossing them into the trashcan. "I mean, they made me want to slipknot a noose and hang them from the rafters with it. And I usually never have a problem with Slipknot." Danny spits through the gap in his front teeth. I inwardly cringe. He says it's a nervous habit, but I think he does it to get on my nerves. "Hey, sweetie, leave it to the professionals. Danny's got the big-boy sound stuff under control." "Because you can text and push a slider at the same time, obviously." "I've been doin' sound a lot longer than you've been alive, sweetie." Sweetie, sweetie. I'm not sure what gets on my nerves more, his condescending tone, or the fact that he thinks he calls me by a pet name. Danny is twenty years older than me, so it's

probably the pet name. Tossing a half-empty Coors Light bottle into the trash can with more force than necessary, the neck pops off as it rings the lip of the steel can, before finally teetering inside. "I'm just trying to help." "Sweetie, maybe you should start worryin' about your own life, and not this shithole." For a moment, all I can do is stare. Then something inside of me snaps. In two quick strides, I pick up his backpack and shove it into his chest, knocking him back in surprise. "Get out of my shithole." "That's cute, sweetie." "No, if you think this place is a shithole then I want you to fucking leave!" "Jesus, calm down." "Leave. And don't worry about coming back." "You firin' me?" He sounds genuinely incredulous. "Who else are you gonna hire? I'm sorry sweetie, but you can't do it." "I think I can manage. Hal!" I call over to the bouncer at the bar. "Escort him out, please?" The bouncer, a burly guy with knuckles the size of pancakes, abandons his beer, and saunters up with the graceful ease of an ox to tower over Danny. Watching the sound guy squirm gives me a tiny, itty-bitty bit of satisfaction. Just enough to make Saturday night bearable. "I'll mail you your last check," I tell him. "You need me, sweetie—" "And don't" —I interrupt, flipping my pink hair over my shoulder— "call me sweetie, asshole." See, I'm a classic rock kind of girl. Born and raised on knee-buckling guitar solos and rifts

that slice your soul in two. I'm the kind of girl who head bangs to Meat Loaf and air-guitars to "Bohemian Rhapsody." I'm the kind of girl who knows every word to Elton John's "Tiny Dancer" and can pinpoint The Eagle's "Hotel California" on a map. I'm not the kind of girl you call "sweetie." Danny can thank my dad for that. In high school I didn't wear Sublime or Halestorm t-shirts. I didn't do road-trips to Warped Tour. Led Zeppelin and Jon Bon Jovi always weaseled into the crevices between dateless Saturday nights and late shifts working at The Silver Lining. The bar's a dive of a place with cheap two-dollar beers, and halfway decent cover bands. It was Dad's baby before he took the midnight train too early. Mom was the first of us to rebound from his death. She remarried her high school sweetheart, an architect named Charles Conway, only three months after his funeral and became the black widow of Asheville. And I was known as the black widow's daughter. It didn't bother me until the day before high school graduation when someone wrote in red lipstick on my locker, 'YOUR MOM'S A SLUT.' "Forget about those dickheads," my almost-boyfriend, Cas, told me. "You'll never see them again after graduation." "You won't," I argued with a sob. We were huddled in the back room at one of his friend's house parties. Over the last semester, we'd make out in the back rooms because the beer tasted like piss and the music was shit, and neither of us wanted to be a part of the drunken karaoke in the living room, but we didn't make out that night. Probably because I was crying so hard I could blow snot bubbles. "You'll be gone to college." "What happened to you going to tech, baby?" He wiped a tear away with his thumb and

tucked a strand of my dishwater blond hair behind my ear. I laughed ruefully. "If I leave, the Lining will sink faster than the Titanic." "Your mom can't take care of it?" "Between going on her and Chuck's monthly honeymoons to Charleston? That's funny, Cas." He frowned. "You'll get out, babe." No, I wouldn't. I knew I wouldn't. The Lining still stands because I give a damn. Mom doesn't, and a part of me thinks that she'd rather have it burn down because it's too much trouble, and it needs a lot of work, and sometimes the refrigerator door sticks and sometimes the air conditioning goes out. They're things we can't afford to fix because we're already scraping rock bottom. But someone had to keep Dad's soul alive, and since Mom's too busy in her postwedding bliss, that duty falls to me. Illegally, of course, but what eighteen-year-old is lucky enough to run a bar? At first, I didn't think I would mind... Until a sudden moment of clarity while looking up the dirty nose hairs of Danny Burke. Danny opens his mouth to retort, but Hal punches his fist into his other hand menacingly. Getting the hint, Danny pulls his backpack over his shoulder and stalks to the front door. When he throws it open, it ricochets off the wall and almost slams him back inside as he leaves. "Dumbass," I murmur and make my way over to the bar where Maggie, my best friend, is spinning herself around in one of the swivel chairs. She stops when I come over, and puts up her fist. "Great job! You sack acely." "You have no idea how long I've dreamed of doing that." I hop onto the stool beside her, and fist-bump her hanging fist. "Your new hair must make you bold. It's totally cute on you BTW. Who did it?" She winks.

I shrug casually, twirling my finger around a lock of neon pink. "Just some totally awesome best friend." "Aw, you flatter me!" I grin before glancing back at the door. "You don't think I was too harsh?" "Too harsh? That sleaze-ball totes deserved it. He always looked at my tits. I know they're perky and everything but ugh!" She shivers, pulling her phone out from between her breasts. "Totes gross." I chuckle. "Yeah, totes." Maggie and I met in second grade. She was the new kid. I was the weird kid. A match made in heaven, really. On the first day of school, Mrs. Eller teamed us up for an in-class writing assignment—Who is the Most Influential Person In Your Life? The idea was to help each other write our own responses, but I took one look at her paper and was appalled. To be honest, I had never heard another kid call Bruce Springsteen the Boss—or even know who the rock legend was to begin with. All they talked about Britney Spears and Beyoncé. To say I was shell-shocked was the understatement of the year. To say that I wholeheartedly disagreed with her came in close second. "No way, Bon Jovi. Bon Jovi all the way!" I argued. "Most influential? You even know what that means?" She sniffed indignantly. "Yeah, Bon Jovi totally changed my life." Dad had taken me to a Bon Jovi concert half a year before. We had seats in the nosebleed section, but it was still the best night of my life. I refused to wash the cigarette smoke and concert sweat out of the t-shirt after. It resides in the top of my closet now. Whenever I start missing Dad, I pull it down and take a big whiff. It doesn't smell like him, because he constantly smelled like beer and stale Cuban cigars, but it smells like the memories of him. And that's just as good.

Maggie and I became inseparable after that essay, since she wanted to be a journalist; she kept diaries like I kept music collections. We were like Velcro—she was the sticky, I was the spiky. But then, five years ago, Roman Holiday came along. I bet you've heard them, though probably not by name. You can't really distinguish their songs from Justin Timberlake and Maroon 5, although the front man, Roman Montgomery, does try a little ingenuity every now and again. Sad to say, I doubt he can think his way out of a paper bag, much less come up with something memorable. Nevertheless, no matter how much I fought to get her to listen to other bands—The Format, the Darkness, or even Motion City Soundtrack for God's sake! —she became obsessed with Roman Holiday. She went to the concerts, bought the posters, and wore the t-shirts. It was worse than herpes. I thought it was a phase. Like N*Sync and Hanson. But it wasn't. It got worse when Holly Hudson died, and the band dropped off the face of the earth. Now, Maggie's obsession is a plague on both our houses. Every tabloid headline, every newspaper snippet, and every photo on the internet she consumes like a vacuum. There's a paparazzo she follows—I try not to pay attention. He actively stalks Roman Montgomery like he has some sort of vicious vendetta. I thrum my fingers on the fake marble countertop at the bar. I wish we could afford real wood, at least. "Oh my God," Maggie gasps, staring down at her phone, "they're in Montana! They bought groceries!" "Yay, groceries."

"No, this is legit! Look at this. Look!" She spins her phone over to show me a blurry image of a dark-haired guy bending over a mound of lettuce. "It's RoMo!" "He eats healthy at least," I remark. "I really don't see why you stalk a murderer on the internet." "He didn't kill her, okay? Roman Montgomery couldn't hurt a fly." She rolls her eyes. "Why does everyone think he did?" "A guy with no alibi? Getting off scot-free?" "He has an alibi. He was out." I quirk an eyebrow. "Out where? Or was he fucking some roadie again and didn't want to admit it?" She rolls her eyes, "Smartass," and returns to her phone, rattling off other news—their contract is running out, their album Like Thunder, which came out a month prior to Holly Hudson's death, is about to go platinum, blah blah blah... "So when are you leaving for Dirty Myrtle? Tomorrow?" "Yeah. In the morning. Are you sure you can't go with me?" I try to put as much whine in my voice as humanly possible. "It's going to be hell without you." "You've gone every year without me so far," she says, not even sparing a glance up from her phone. "But this is different! That was with Dad and Mom, not Mom and the step-idiot. He'll ruin it. All of it. How will I survive?" Of course, she wouldn't understand the condo was something between Mom, Dad, and me. It was our vacation. And now Chuck—Charles—is going to poison it with his expensive shampoos and lavender-scented aftershave.

"Better question," she replies, "how will the bar survive without you?" I deflate a little. "I'm prepared to come back to a smoldering ruin." "You have so much faith in the bar staff." I eye Geoff, our head bartender, schmoozing up a broad-shouldered hunk in the corner of the bar. Behind Geoff, the faucet is running. I take a bobby pin out of my hair, letting a chunk of pink hair fall into my face, and throw it at him. "Hey, earth to Major Geoff!" He jumps when it hits him square in the ear. "Ow! Sorry. Was, uhâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;" "Yeah, I know. Faucet." He jumps to turn it off. "I swear I'm not a space cadet, Boss," he replies with a chuckle. "Nice hair though. Is that fuchsia or electric pink?" "It's called My-Mother-Will-Kill-Me." "Sounds about right. Got that whole Lolita thing going on." I snort in reply. Geoff tsks, turning back to flirt the pants off of another patron. Geoff's a twenty-four-yearold horn-dog from New Jersey, so he has the whole Jersey Shore dark hair and tan thing going on, which only makes the pale mountain men of Asheville, North Carolina, notoriously jealous. At least they don't have to compete with him. My bartender only swings one way, and it's not toward anyone with tits. He says over his shoulder, "You're turning into such a heathen, boss." "Ugh, I know." I mock-roll my eyes. "Now all I need is to go clubbing and bring home a guy with tattoos and a bullring." "Well..." Maggie bites her bottom lip thoughtfully, "if you're not doing anything tonight, a few college guys playing a Quidditch match down at Pack Square Park. They're probably still there. Wanna go? Most of them don't have bull rings, but I totes think you can find a tatted

Malfoy." "Tempting. Do I have to run around with a broom between my legs?" “Well, yeah.” “Then that's a deal-breaker.” “Muggles,” she scoffs, sliding her phone into her back pocket, and twists her long dreads up into a bun behind her head. She fans the back of her neck with a drink menu. "Just means I'll have all the Nevilles to myself. Dear fuck, it's hot. Are you ever going to get the air conditioning fixed?" I shrug apologetically. "Eventually?" "Eventually, eventually. Well, eventually you'll regret not coming with me to the Quidditch match." Normally, I would cave and go with her, just to be a good wing-woman, but I'm just not feeling it tonight. "Eventually, I might." Before she can rebuke, I ask my bartender, "You closing tonight?" He gives me a salute and quirks a teasing eyebrow to the hottie in the corner. "I'll take my time," he replies coyly, more to the patron than to me. Maggie and I slide off our stools together. She holds the door open for me as we exit the bar and split our separate ways. "I'll make it up to you?" I offer. "We both know that's a lie!" She calls over her shoulder, waving goodbye with her middle finger.

Chapter Two

What I don’t tell Maggie―and what she doesn’t know, and probably never will―is that while she’s pretending to fly around with a broom between her legs, I'm not going home to pack for vacation tomorrow. Not yet, anyway. I find the number I'm looking for in the backlog of my phone, and call it as I get into the station wagon. The phone rings three times before a soft, liquid voice answers, “Yeah, this is Caspian, how can I help you?” “Hi, Cas,” I squeak. “Junie?” He sounds surprised. “Hi baby, is everything all right?” “Can I come over for a while?” I ask, trying to not sound too hopeful, glancing at the clock on my dashboard. It blinks 2:09 AM in ominous green numbers. “Yeah, come on over. I just got in.” Ten minutes later, I park behind the barn at the rear of his house, and sneak through the bushes to the side of the yard so the security cameras won’t see me. His dad is a pilot, so he travels a lot, and his mom is one of those investment bankers, so she takes frequent trips to Bora Bora with her girlfriends and leaves the house to Caspian. It’d be lonely, I think, to be in a huge house like this with nothing but the best security system money can buy, but he says he doesn’t mind. During the few times I’ve been over to his house, he’s had either the radio or TV on. I think he’s scared of silence, and when I retrieve the key from under the back porch doormat and let myself into the kitchen, silence sounds a hell of a lot better than what’s playing on the radio. I cringe. Roman Holiday.

“Don’t tell me you’re listening to that, too,” I groan, dumping my purse down on the inlet counter. He looks up from a bowl of leftover Chinese, and outstretches a half-eaten egg roll to me between his chopsticks. “Food?” “Not really hungry,” I reply, tugging my hair out of its ponytail. His perfectly tweezed eyebrows shoot up in surprise, as if he just notices the color. "What did you do to your hair?" "Do you like it?" I ask. Cas’s eyes are this crazy sort of cornflower blue that remind me of a summer sky, accented by a strong jaw and a thick head of straw-colored hair, tonight pulled back into a small ponytail with a rubber band. It's hard not to blush when he looks at me. We’re less than a couple but more than friends. We don’t use each other. We’re just…I dunno. We just run into each other. First, it started as harmless cat-and-mouse games at house parties, a kiss here and there, but then it escalated into making out in back bedrooms as the year progressed. So, sort of like the buddy without the fuck in it. He tilts his head, as if gauging his words, before saying, “It looks sexy.” My heart rises like it’s tied to a helium balloon. “Really?” He laughs, a sound like velvet. He outstretches his hand, and when I take it he pulls me around the counter to where he's sitting. "Really," he replies, kissing my neck. It takes a lot of self-control for me to not melt into my Converses here and now. I lean into him, closing my eyes, so welcomed to losing myself for a while. “How does your bartender like it?” he asks.

My eyebrows furrow. “Geoff?” I sigh, rolling my eyes, and turn around, pressing my palms against his hard chest. He’s still wearing the clothes he must’ve went out in, a blank V-neck shirt and boot-cut jeans. “Oh, I doubt he noticed. He was flirting with another mountain man. Like he always does. Where was the party tonight?” “A bonfire down at Matty’s,” he replies, distracted, and kisses my cheek. “You’re so tense.” I pout. “Not everyone can have a good time all the time like you. Some of us have responsibilities.” He snorts, pulling away. “Sure, but we can have a good time right now.” I study him. There’s a mischievous glint in his eyes that begins to twist a grin across my lips. I pull my arms around his neck and hang on him. “I’m listening…” “We could have a great time, baby.” To demonstrate, he runs his fingers up my arm so gently, goose bumps ripple up my skin, and he traces his thumb along my lips. My heart leaps into my throat so I can’t breathe, and my head begins to buzz. I jump, startled, as “Rock of Ages” fills the kitchen, and pull away from Cas to read the caller ID on my phone. It’s Mom. Probably worried sick over where I am. I’m usually home by now, or if I’m not I tell her I’m with Maggie. It slipped my mind tonight to tell her anything at all. I hesitate for a moment. If I answer it, it’ll ruin the mood, but if I don’t she’ll burst a blood vessel and keep calling. “Sorry,” I mutter, ashamed that I’m eighteen and still being babysat by my mom. I answer the call. “Yeah, Mom?” “Where are you?” she snaps. Cas moves away to the kitchen sink, and squirts a small bit of hand sanitizer into his hands,

rubbing it all the way up to his elbows. “It’s two-thirty in the morning,” Mom goes on, “and you’re not even packed yet! I called the bar and they didn’t even know where you were! What if something happened to you? I would’ve never found you.” “I’m at a friend’s,” I reply, trying to restrain my impatience, twirling my hair around my finger. “Do I know her?” Him. “Uh, no. It’s someone from…school.” “At two-thirty in the morning?” “Yes…” I reply, no matter how unlikely it is that she’ll believe me. She sounds like she can smell my bullshit from four miles away. “Well, we’re leaving at nine o’clock sharp―so you better be packed by then.” Couldn’t I just stay home? But I knew that wasn’t an option. Family vacations, even without Dad, still required my presence. I hang up and heave a sigh. Cas looks up from picking at his cuticles with a raised blond eyebrow. “I’m so sorry,” I say. “Mom’s a little…” He shrugs. “At least your parents care.” I can’t argue against that. “But trust me, you wouldn’t want to meet them.” “What, don’t want to introduce me?” he teases, closing in on me again, and grins. “How long has it been since we started this?” he asks, bemused. “Six months,” I say before I realize how spot-on I am. Six-months to the date, almost, and only seven months since Dad… He must read the crumbling look on my face. “Don’t think,” he whispers against my lips.

So I don’t. I reach up on my tiptoes and crush my lips against his. He makes a surprised noise, but then he catches himself and fights back, aggressive and passionate, like he can’t get close enough. I dig my fingers into his chest as his lips migrate to my cheek, to my ear, to my neck, wanting to coat every bit of me. The heady scent of AXE aftershave fills my lungs as I breathe him in, caught up in the way he tastes―like beer and cigarette smoke―and the way his tongue runs across mine, and how teasingly he bites my bottom lip. Mom has her vacation starting tomorrow. But tonight…tonight is mine. He lifts me onto the counter, and presses his hand against my breast. My heart thunders in my ribcage faster than a Led Zeppelin drum solo. We’re breathing heavy, and my face is flushed, my lips throbbing. A lock of hair has fallen into his face, but I push it back behind his ear, looking down at him, our eyes connecting. There’s an understanding there, one that reminds me of the first night we met, but so much heavier, like we're about to forge a path we can't ever undo. “Do you want to?” It’s my voice, crazy enough, that asks the question. He nods. “Bedroom?” “Yeah―do you have a condom?” “I think so, but aren’t you on the pill?” He helps me off the counter. “What is this, an interrogation?” Chuckling, he kisses me one more time before asking me to hold on a moment. He has to clean off the bed. The second he’s out of the kitchen, I tear off my LINING IT UP? bar shirt, shoving it into my purse, and take the tissues out of my bra. Despite the wonders of push-up

bras, they don't do wonders for me. Carpenter's Dream―flat as a board. “Did you get lost?” Cas yells impatiently from his bedroom upstairs. "Hold on!" Looking around, I try to remember where the trashcan was―“Pantry!” I whisper to myself, throwing open the pantry door and shoving the tissues into the garbage “Baby!” he calls, almost whiny. “Coming!” I snap, looking at my reflection in one of the hanging frying pans over the inlet. I muss up my pink hair, hoping it looks bedhead sexy instead of barmaid greasy, and wipe away the smudges of eyeliner in the corners of my eyes. “One thousand and one…” he starts and I roll my eyes. “Fine!” Spinning toward the stairs, I take them two at a time. It’s not until I get to his bedroom door that I realize I still have my socks and Converses on. Is he the type to leave his socks on? Does he care, either way? Should I pee before…before whatever the hell’ll happen in there. It feels like I’m about to go into a black hole, where no one has gone before. There are manuals for everything―except how to lose your virginity. The closest things I can think of are classic rock songs. You can practically throw a dart blindfolded and hit a song about sex, but tonight isn’t “Love in an Elevator” or “Pour Some Sugar on Me.” I’m at a loss of what it is, and my heart is beating so hard it feels like it’ll rip out of my chest any minute. When I reach the top landing and turn into his room, my mind drops a blank. Cas is lying on his side, facing me, leg crooked up to display his born talent, in nothing but a…a tie. A purple tie. But I’m not looking at the tie. My throat constricts. “C’mon, baby,” he purrs, shifting back on his elbows, and all I want to do is jump on top of him. That’s not weird, is it? Oh who cares, I’m on birth control.

And a virgin. He knows that, right? I can’t remember whether or not I ever told him I’ve never actually done the nasty with another guy―or girl, if I swung that way―but I can’t really stop thinking about that tie. That long, thick, hard tie―I mean―Stop thinking Junie. Swallowing my heart back down into my throat, I take a tentative step into his darkly lit bedroom. Posters of Harleys and European cities are plastered on his walls. Somewhere downstairs, Roman Holiday’s “Crush On You” echoes through the entire house in a sick sort of sadistic irony. My ankles wobble, but I keep my cool, trying to slip out of my Converses on the way to his bed. “I even have mood lighting,” he adds, thumbing back to the flickering electric candles on his headboard. “They're...nice…” I get one shoe off halfway to the bed, and dig my toe into the back of my other shoe right when I hit a silky pair of underwear on the ground. I catch myself on the edge of the bed. With my Converses successfully off. Score. He gives me a wide-eyed look. “Baby, you okay?” I flip back my hair, trying to play it off. “Oh yeah,” I say, trying to sound aloof and sexy, because I didn’t fall and bust my ass on his silky underwear. I lean back on the bed. “I’m perfe―” But my hand meets complete air. With a cry, I pinwheel my arms forward, grappling for anything I can to keep myself from falling back. What I manage to grab a hold of his tie. “Wait!” he yelps a second before his words are strangled out of him, and we fall into a heap

at the foot of his bed together. He gasps, clawing the tie loose from around his neck, and coughs. “You choked me!” “I was falling!” “You could’ve fallen alone!” He snaps, crawling back up onto the bed. I frown, untangling my legs out from under me. This is a disaster. “I’m sorry, I just ruined everything.” After a moment, I feel a tap on my shoulder. He outstretched a hand to help me back onto the bed before his eyes flicker down to my black polka-dotted bra. “Is that Victoria Secret?” “My only one,” I offer meekly. “Any other night would’ve been Target.” He reaches over me and kisses the skin between my breasts, as if he's accepting my apology. His lips travel down my breasts to my navel, his fingers curling around the belt loops to my shorts, before they begin to undo the button and zip them down. We take them off together, and he kisses my hipbone, and the splotch on the side of my waist where a birthmark never quite faded. I shiver, unable to take a full breath, feeling his lips move their way up my body again, his hands undoing my bra. His naked body presses against mine, skin on skin, the connection so startling it’s like there are live wires just under the surface, and every touch sends a jolt to my center. It disrupts me, interferes with my thoughts, my signal. What bar? What sound guy? Who’s Junie? It doesn’t matter. I’m not her for the moment. I’m not anyone, lost in the dark, and the thought is so frightful and so relieving at the same time, because there’s no expectation, no plans, no plots. Only the traces of his fingers against my skin, like a sculptor creating Venus, and his

lips on mine. He slides on top of me, and the only thing separating us is my thin black underwear. My hands wrap around the tie instinctively, but then on second thought, I undo the knot and slide it from around his neck. “Just in case,” I tease. “I hope not,” he replies, and I help him tug down my underwear, and throw them somewhere across the room. Then he takes out a condom from his nightstand, and tears it open. I’m not sure when I started to like Caspian, or when I began thinking that these moments could be something more. But couldn’t they? It’s crazy, but isn’t it possible? That he likes me as much as I like him? It’s like serendipity, meeting over all these months, wherever I was he showed up, or wherever he was I happened to be, too. We’ve always found each other. For six months. Do I like Caspian? Or is that even the question anymore? He plants his hands on both sides of my head, his shoulder muscles rippling in the light from the electric candles, and kisses me. “Ready?” “Yes,” I say against his mouth. He kisses me again as he slides into me, the movement so orchestrated he must have practiced it with other girls. How many other girls? Why am I thinking about this right now? Why― He eases deeper, and pain shoots through my stomach, straight up my spine and into my scalp. I gasp, blinking the tears out of my eyes. He pauses for a moment. “You okay?” In reply, I grab both sides of his face and kiss him again to make the pain go away. It almost does, and it lets him keep going. I stare into his face, so close to mine, but I’ve never felt

so far away. His eyes are closed like he’s concentrating, in and out, in and out. It feels uncomfortable and too quick, and all I can hear is Roman Holiday echoing up from somewhere downstairs, howling “I want to crush, crush, crush on you. I want to crush on you like back, back, back in high school.” God, he could’ve at least turned off that stupid radio. I close my eyes as he grunts, and try to imagine what we might look like. Sexy like in the movies? All bed sheets and lavender throw pillows and close-up blurry shots of arms and legs and me throwing my pink hair back as I come in ecstasy…but this isn’t good sex. This is terrible. Robotic. But the worst thing is, in my head I don’t imagine Cas. Not his blond hair or dimples or chiseled abs. I try, but every time I do―every time I think about how he kisses me and how he touches me―all I can hear is that fucking radio. His shoulder muscles seize, and then he rolls off me without so much as a sigh. “Crush On You” fades into another pop-rock ballad as he brings my hand to his lips and kisses my knuckles, one at a time. “Happy six months,” I whisper, finally opening my eyes to stare silently up at his dark ceiling, but he's already snoring.

Chapter Three

The condo has a new paint job this year. Guess the sea-foam green didn't cut it anymore. There's a new pullout couch too, and a new TV to replace the one from the Stone Age that kept losing reception last year. The bedroom is a drowning blue to match the sailboat picture hanging above the bed, and the kitchen has new tile in the pattern of a checkerboard. The only thing the renovation hasn’t touched is the bird-shit yellow bathroom Dad hated. “I feel like I should be following the yellow brick road every time I lay a brick in here,” he used to complain. Of all the things to keep, it was that god-awful yellow? Staring around at the condo, I realize that I don't remember a lot of the other smaller details of our yearly beach week. Like who gets the ice for the cooler? Who checks us in? Who unloads the suitcases and who make coffee in the mornings? It isn’t two minutes after we’ve walked in the door with our suitcases before our loud neighbor Darla pays her cordial visit. She doesn’t knock. She never knocks. She's loud, smokes a pack of Marlboros a day, and downs tequila as if it’s low-calorie soda. In other words, Dad loved her. Picking up my Vera Bradley duffle, I haul it into the bedroom before she sees me. Not that I don't love Darla—because I do—but she couldn't wait another ten minutes before barging in with her big hoorah? I press my ear against the crack in the door to listen. “Knock knock!” Darla trills, her flip-flops making slapping noises against her feet as she prances inside. Mom squeals in excitement, throwing her arms around her. “Oh, Sherry,” Darla says. “I’m so sorry about Willy, dear. I’m so, so sorry.” That sobers Mom up quickly. “It’s all right. He would've wanted me to move on.”

I disagree. Wrenching away from the door, I fling myself down on the bed and clench fistfuls of duvet in my hands. How could she know what Dad would've wanted? Did he tell her to marry her high school sweetheart three months after his death? Everyone thought it was just so convenient that he died. Thought she had been cheating on Dad with Chuck. They looked at me with a mixture of pity and leprosy, as if infidelity was catching. I haven't been very subtle about how I feel about her new husband. At the wedding, I boycotted the bridesmaids’ dresses, showed up late to the ceremony, and skipped the rest of the reception where I think I was supposed to give a speech. At school, I started writing lyrics to my favorite songs instead of essay papers. At Prom, I spilled my punch all over the DJ's turntable when he wouldn't stop playing Usher and Jay-Z. I wasn't a bad apple. I was just sick and tired of not being heard no matter how loud I screamed. I unwind my earphones from around my iPod, and put it on shuffle to drown out their voices, shoving handfuls of shirts and shorts from my suitcase into the top drawer. I reach back into my suitcase for my underwear. My hand comes out empty. I pat down the rest of my suitcase, but all I find are socks and bras. "Fuck. It's official. This vacation can't get any worse." “Junie! Darla wants to see you! Why don’t you come out and say hello?” Mom calls from the kitchen. I've been summoned. I stand, pulling out my earphones and dropping my music player into my suitcase, before I open the bedroom door and force a smile. "Darla! Didn't even hear you come in!" Lies, all lies. Darla gives an overly theatrical gasp when she sees me. “Oh my gosh, what the hell did you

do to your hair?" Keep smiling, I remind myself. "I dyed it." She rakes me over with a studious look, pursing her pink lips together. "It's definitely a change." "And she will be going to the beautician as soon as we get back," Mom adds, giving me a meaningful look. "I like my hair," I defend, even though it is a little bright. Out in the sun I look like a walking bubblegum lollipop. "But think about what everyone else thinks," she chides. Like she can talk. I clench my jaw to keep from saying as much. Darla notices the tension and eases in with a wave of her hand. "Girls just want to have fun, Sherry. Let her experiment and find herself. It's not like she has a tattoo," she adds. "She's eighteen," Mom tells her, as if that will finalize the argument. Yeah? She's forty-two. That didn't stop her from making poor life choices. "Well, I think she looks gorgeous. It brings out her gray eyes," Darla replies, finally pulling me into a rib-crushing hug. “I’m gorgeous too,” Chuck jokes, pulling the luggage cart into the condo. He parks it in the kitchen and wipes the sheen of sweat off his wrinkled brow. "In fact, I'm damn near beau-teeful." "For a Hobbit," I mutter so only Darla can hear, and her cheeks balloon as she tries to keep from laughing. Chuck is short like me, but stockier, with an angular jaw and some pretty hairy feet. I really hope Mom convinced him to Nair them last night. Grabbing my purse from the kitchen counter, I pull it over my shoulder. “I’m going to the store.”

“For what?” Chuck asks. “Underwear!” I call exasperatedly over my shoulder and slam the front door behind me before Mom can say, "I told you so." CherryTree Ocean Club is a condominium on the north side of Myrtle Beach. It's a nice place if you overlook the peeling tan and peach paint and the tarnished railings. The parking lot has potholes, and the palm trees planted by the entrance droop like soggy sponges, but that doesn't stop the tourists. Overlook the smell of diapers and chlorine and you might have yourself a really good time. It's definitely not Chuck's kind of place because it's no five-star resort, but Dad loved it. He said, "Places like these have character!" Sort of like the Silver Lining. One of the toilets might not work and you might find gum on the bottom of a chair, but it's a place where everyone knows your name. Like in Cheers. The store is farther than I remember, four blocks down Ocean Boulevard on the right. I walk along the tiny sidewalk, passing pancake houses and new towering hotels with neon signs and twenty-story balconies. Dad hated that the old beach houses were getting sold off and torn down to make way for these vacation towers, but I always thought they were pretty at night, and that the view from the rooftops must be spectacular. Halfway there, my cell phone vibrates. I dig through my purse. "'Ello," I greet happily in a British accent so bad I make myself cringe, "you've reached Junie Baltimore, barmaid and best friend to the sweetest, most kick-ass pal in all the—" "You forgot gorgeous," Maggie interrupts. "I felt a disturbance in the force. Although that might just be my lady parts stirring from seeing hunk-a-licious Caspian Gardener washing his car on my way to work. So sexy." "Yep."

Maggie doesn't even know about Caspian, so she definitely doesn't know I gave him the hymen high-five. "Sorry I missed the sight." I pause at the red light and wait for the walk sign. The store is across the street, beside the Ice Cream Emporium, a family-owned joint. It's busy tonight, and it's only six-thirty. Tourists crowd the picnic tables with their white sneakers and fanny packs. At least half of them have on pink SAVE HOLIDAY t-shirts. "Is there something going on this week or something with that Crapidayer shit?" "Um, yeah, the memorial. Where've you been living, under a rock?" She doesn't let me answer. "Never mind, you're out of the loop. There'll be a memorial on Thursday at St. Michael's cemetery in Conway—hey, that's your last name!" "Chuck's last name," I correct. "I'm still a Baltimore." "Whatever—to celebrate Holly's life and raise awareness of teen suicide and all that jazz. Supposed to be a super big deal. MTV's gonna be there and everything." "Because MTV is such a premiere news source." "Oh shush," she scolds. "If I could be there, I totes would. Are my people there in droves?" "You have no idea." I stare at the tweens nose-deep in their cell phones, pink peacock feathers in their hair to match their t-shirts. "In fact, a few of your people are eating ice cream as we speak—I hate ice cream." "Which is stupid. Ice cream is the frozen nectar of the gods. I think it's so silly you hate it because some kid body-checked you with your own ice cream." I roll my eyes. "It's just a bad memory, okay? I just hate ice cream. It's bad for my figure anyway," I add jokingly. She laughs. "Right, because you're obviously ginormous." "I am!"

"Junes, I can smuggle you into Mexico in my cleavage alone." "Oh! Speaking of that, guess who forgot her underwear?" "Ha-ha! Karma, bitch! For not going with me last night!" Averting my eyes away, I make a break across the street as soon as a purple hatchback passes, to hell with walk signs. "Oh, shut up."

Chapter Four

Dad used to wave his hand in front of automatic doors as they opened, beam at me with that big dopey grin of his and say, “Master Will uses the force, he does!” like a drunk Yoda. I flick my hand in front of the automatic doors to the stop-n-shop—I hope it just looks like a spasm— and try not to grin too widely as they glide open on my command. Darth Vader, eat your heart out. I make my way to the back where a small selection of clothes surrounds an even smaller selection of underwear. Crap. What's worse, wearing Roman-Holiday-themed underwear, or granny panties? "Cas had his shirt off while washing his car," Maggie prattles on. "Ugh, remind me next time I do a car wash for charity, hire him to wash all of them. Oh, those abs." Maggie, along with being my clichéd beautiful best friend, is also a guyaholic. She's pretty enough to never reuse the same guy, so she is perfectly capable of catching any guy she sets her sights on. It's been Caspian for a while, and to my silent delight, he's as interested in her as he is a rock. "Too bad he's going away for college in the fall," I say, shifting between the granny panties and Roman Holiday underwear. "Which is worse? Roman Montgomery's face on my crotch, or saggy granny panties?" "Granny. I'd love RoMo's face there." I wince at the mental image. "Oh, I really didn't need to see that." "So not sorry! I have so much pent-up sexual frustration—gah! Maybe if I show up at Cas's tonight in nothing but my housecoat...you think that'll work?”

"You're ridiculous." "You know you're jealous. Go with the grannies. You'll be right at home in them." "Screw you." "Oh Juniper, if I swung that way..." Rolling my eyes, I jerk the Roman Holiday underwear off the hook and shove the package under my arm. “You’re useless. How was that Quidditch match last night?” She quickly loses interest in my non-boyfriend. “Fan-effing-tastic!” “Score any Potters?” “Gave some guy my number," she replies flippantly, "but he was such an über Goyle after he invited me to the after-party.” “You went?” “Duh, Goyle is always better than nothing. You should've been there. I could've helped you score a Neville.” “You know Malfoy is more my type." I glance over at the men’s underwear curiously. "How come guys get the cool underwear? I'd rather wear Batman than a pop star." Her earrings jingle as she shakes her head and sighs. Maggie loves her jewelry, big-hooped earrings and beaded necklaces and hairpins with sparkling cubic zirconium. She's beautiful in an exotic, geeky sort of way—flaming crimson dreads, caramel skin, and graphic tees out the wazoo. Everything from "Who's your Doctor" Doctor Who shirts to red "It's blue if you run fast enough" Trekkie shirts to "BAZINGA!” Everyone in high school accepted her nerdiness wholeheartedly, which in turn made her vomit-inducingly popular. Me, on the other hand, everyone ignored because I wasn't nerdy, cool, athletic, or smart enough. I was never enough of anything.

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That probably sucks the most. In the end, I graduated best known for the death of my bar-owning father, and my mom's marriage three months later. Not for my own accomplishmentsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;not that I had any, anyway. Maggie sighs over the phone. "You're probably the only person in the world who hates Roman Holiday." "Then I'm the only sane person left." "You should go to the memorial for me. Maybe it'll enlighten you." Even though we're best friends, I'd rather eat an entire plate of suicide wings. I pick up a pack of gum on my way to the register. "I love you and all but...dream on." She heaves another sigh. "You just don't get it. If there was any chance I'd see him...he just needs a big hug, you know? Someone to tell him it'll be all right." "Maggie, his best friend died and everyone blames him. If you died and everyone blamed me, I don't think a hug would really make a dent." "Or I can serenade him with my favorite song..." My stomach twists. "No really, that's okay." She starts howling, "I'm gonna crush, crush, crush you like back in high school, I'm gonna crush, crush, I've got a crush, crush on youâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;" I hang up. "I'm never getting away from that song, am I?" I mutter to my phone, and shove it into my back pocket. The only register open has four people in line already. I resign myself to wait, because it's not like I have anything better to do tonight than stand in line to buy Roman Holiday underwear. The guy in front of me has hair so bright it matches the orange soda cradled in his tattooed

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arm. The tattoo is pretty amazing, though, a phoenix and a tiger fighting tooth and claw, a spiral of oranges, yellows, greens, blues, and purples up his well-defined bicep. There is an Isla Lona tattoo laced across the top of his right arm, half-covered by the black V-neck that fits snuggly across his shoulders. He's not a big guy by any means, but his shoulders are broad and his butt— not that I looked, I swear—is pretty fantastic. His black jeans are frayed over scuffed red Vans that match his suspenders. Maggie would take one look at him, flip back her dreads, and ask if he was doing anything later tonight. Sometimes, I wish I had her gumption. But all I have is a secret relationship with the star player of the lacrosse team. An upbeat song rattles across the speakers mounted in the ceiling. I recognize it instantly. "Rattle You Like Thunder"...another one of Roman Holiday's hits. I groan aloud and mutter to myself, "What did you do to deserve this karma, Junebug?" "I was wondering the same thing," the guy with the tattoos replies after a moment. Is that bitterness in his voice? A kindred soul. "On every radio station. It's a plague." "It's like an apocalypse, but worse. Instead of zombies, everyone's a Holidayer," I agree. "Instead of groaning and eating brains, they're spreading terrible music. I'd rather have the groaning. And killing them wouldn't be frowned upon then." He turns around, pushing a lock of orange hair away from his face, and looks me square in the eyes. They are the most beautiful shade of green I have ever seen, like melted emeralds. They remind me of someone, but I can't quite put my finger on it. His emerald gaze drifts down to the pack of underwear in my hand. His grin reminds me of the cat from Alice in Wonderland— cheshire. "Big talk coming from a fan." I. Am. Mortified.

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"Are you kidding?" I gape, staring down at the underwear. "It was these or granny panties!" "Sure." He sounds amused as he quirks a brown eyebrow. He obviously forgot to dye them with his hair. "No hard feelings, really." I roll my eyes. "Whatever." I elbow past him to the cashier, quickly relinquishing my hold on the underwear. I hand her a five and dump the change in my bag. "Hey, I didn't mean to offend," he snickers, because obviously he did. "I'm sure Roman Montgomery would be grateful to represent your...womanhood." "That sounds like sexual harassment," I bite back. "You're just embarrassed." I set my jaw. "I'm leaving. Nice...meeting you. Whatever. Asshole." I turn to leave out the automatic doors when I collide into what feels like a brick wall. I stumble. "Shit, excuse me—" The brick wall scowls and looks at his camera to make sure it isn't broken. He's tall, with tan skin and dark hair pinned back into a gray fedora. There is a white feather—eagle?—twined into his braid. He shoots a look into the store, and I follow his gaze, but the tattooed jerkface isn't there anymore. Did I imagine him? "Look where you're going, yeah?" he grumbles, annoyed. "I'm sorry." "Won't help me much, doll." He almost knocks me down as he shoves past me into the grocery store. This week can't possibly get any worse...but that's where I'm wrong, because when I get back to the condo, Chuck's playing tonsil hockey with Mom on the living room couch. Where I will have to sleep.

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Now I'm going to have nightmares.

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PRIDE’S RUN

Cat Kalen

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Chapter One

California Wine Country August 23rd. Six days until full moon.

The click of the lock at the top of the stairwell is my only indication that morning has arrived. My ears perk up and I listen for the coming footfalls. The weight on the stairs combined with the creaking of each wooden step will let me know which handler has come this time, which unlucky puppet has drawn the short straw and is stuck with letting us out. He might come sauntering down the stairs sporting a brave face and looking at me with cold, dark eyes meant to intimidate. But the animal inside me can smell his inner fear. Despite the fact that I am the one caged, underneath the handler’s cool, superficial shell, he’s the one who’s truly afraid. A long column of light filters down the stairs and I blink my eyes to focus as the bright rays infiltrate the pitchblack cellar. I don’t really need to blink. Not with my vision. But I do it anyway because sometimes I simply like to pretend I’m a normal eighteen-year-old girl, one who can’t see in the dark. The door yawns wider and before the first heavy boot hits the top step, soiled with old blood that he’ll pass off as wine stains, my senses go on high alert. A breeze rushes down the stairs ahead of the handler, carrying the aroma of the grand estate with it. I push past the metallic scent of dried blood to catch traces of grape juice in the air, a common smell on the majestic vineyard—

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that and concentrated ammonia, a compound they use to make illegal drugs, the estate’s real source of income. Going beyond those familiar fragrances, I breathe deeper and get hints of fresh bread baking in the upstairs kitchen. It must be Thursday. Mica, the estate’s cook, always bakes on Thursday. I roll onto my side and lean toward the smell. Wistfully, my tongue darts out and brushes over my bottom lip. There is something about that scent of bread that always entices me and before I can help it I envision myself eating a warm slice covered in rich creamy butter, crispy on the outside, moist and tender on the inside. My nostrils widen, but I know the bread isn’t meant for me and not even one delicious crumb will ever pass over my dry lips, unless Mica sneaks it to me. As much as I’d love to taste her offerings I don’t like it when she takes chances for me. Disobedience is far too risky for the aging housekeeper. Despite that, my stomach growls in response to the aroma and I fight off the cravings. I can’t hope for bread when it’s unlikely that I’ll even be given a scrap of food today, especially if I can’t please him. My master. A boot hits the second step—the handlers always descend slowly—and as I stretch my legs out on my dusty mattress I hear the waking groans of Jace and Clover stirring in their own cages beside me. I glance their way, and that’s when my attention falls on the one empty cage in the cellar. My mother’s. I breathe deep and fight off a pang of sadness that I can’t afford to feel. I turn away from the empty den and stare at the gray cement walls. The sight of that vacant cage only reminds me of how they killed her and how all the little ones were forced to watch—to learn that disobedience comes with a

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price. Guilt and sorrow eat at me, remembering that she died trying to free me. When the fifth step creaks, I diligently try to shake off the memories. The handler is close which means I can’t think about my mother right now. I push all thoughts of her aside, knowing that right now I have to harden myself and think about my father and what he taught me before the master killed him. Never let them see your fear. I harden myself. Prepare. Before the handler even reaches the bottom step, I know it’s the one they call Lawrence, the one I hate the most. He has a weak mind, strong back, teeth like baked beans and beady eyes that fit his ugly rat face. He likes to call me kitten. I have a few choice names that I’d like to call him in return, but I always bite the inside of my cheek to resist the urge. Partly because I’d be whipped and partly because Miss Kara educated me and taught me all about manners. I realize that an educated tracker with manners might sound laughable. In my line of work, however, education and manners are as lethal as a bear trap to those I hunt. That’s how I lure my marks, how I bait my prey. A pretty face and good grace go a long way for a trained killer like me. My glance wanders to my leg, the one peeking out from beneath my ratty blanket, and my eyes are drawn to the long jagged scar tracking the length of my calf. I grimace. Even with my education and manners, I never forget what I really am. I’m never allowed to. “Hey kitten,” Lawrence says. Most would think the nickname is a play on my birth name, Pride. But I know it’s the handler’s way of cutting me down, to find control

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where he feels none. My parents called me Pride because I was their pride and joy. It wasn’t intended to be twisted by lecherous men. He tosses a collar and chain into my cage. “Leash up.” I take note of the gun in his holster before my glance locks on his. As I give him a good hard stare, he flinches. The movement is slight, but I notice. Dressed in my knee length nightgown, long hair loose around my shoulders, I might look like an average eighteen-year-old girl— harmless and innocent—but we all know I’m not. Even though Lawrence keeps his face blank and stares down at me with those dark eyes of his, he reeks of terror. The scent is like a mixture of hot sweat and rotting compost. Nevertheless, the animal slumbering restlessly inside me feeds off his fear, thrives on it, so I inhale and draw it deep into my lungs. Without taking my eyes off his, I slowly leash up. My movements are slow and deliberate as I position the collar. Metal grinds metal and the sound cuts the silence as I secure it around my neck. The handler winces. So do the older, more obedient trackers that I bunk with. Locked in his own cage, Jace cuts me a glance, chocolate eyes now milky from old age warn me to behave. I realize he’s doing it for my own good, but this morning I’m cold and hungry and in no mood for Lawrence’s insults. Clover makes a noise to draw the handler’s attention away from me, and all sets of eyes shift to her. As Clover tries to pacify Lawrence, averting her gaze in a show of respect and making small talk about the weather, Lawrence opens my mother’s former cage and pulls out her cot. He gives it a good hard shake and the breeze stirs the dust on the unfinished boards masquerading

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as our ceiling. The particles dance in the stairwell light before falling to the cold, cement floor. When Lawrence tosses the cot into a corner I stiffen. It can only mean one thing. My mother has been gone for a little over a year now, and I know the master rarely keeps a cell empty for long, which makes me wonder when and how he’s going to fill it? Who will he breed? I cringe at the thought of bringing children into this world, but know it’s not something I have to worry about. The master would never breed a tracker like me. My mother always said I was a survivor, the only one out of three to make it, but hey, a runt is a runt. Thanks to Darwin and his theory of ‘natural selection’ a runt is a heritable trait that a pack can do without. Deep in the bowels of the estate’s basement, the master keeps other trackers, or as he likes to call us, ferals. It’s his cruel way of reminding us that while we might look like humans on the outside, inside were nothing but undomesticated animals. But he’s wrong. We are Luphers, or lunar pull shaders, to be technical. We can transform, or as my species call it, shade, at any given time during the lunar cycle. We just have no choice in the matter when the moon is full. When we shade, our senses are heightened, our strength is amplified, and our animal hunger is stronger. The skin on our torso also thickens, making it near impossible to slay us, save for a shot between the eyes. Basically we’re perfect killing machines. But it doesn’t mean we necessarily want to kill. Some of us have better control over our animal. The master likes to separate the strong and young shaders from one another. I’m smart enough to understand that he distances us so we can’t conspire against him or

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speak telepathically. Most of us can only use telepathy when shading. Except for Stone. When I lock eyes with him, we can communicate no matter what, but that’s different…. At the top of the stairs I hear the master bark out an order to one of his other handlers. Lawrence’s fingers quiver in response as he slides his key into the padlock securing my cell, a clear indication that shaders aren’t the only ones afraid of their keeper. I look past his shoulder at the streak of light filtering downward and illuminating a path to the grand mansion up above. “Going somewhere?” he taunts. I glare at him and his expressionless mask shatters for a brief moment. I make a noise, a mixture of a human moan and an animal growl, and his hand slows on my lock. Escape from the compound might be impossible, but it doesn’t mean I don’t think about it. I like to exercise my mind by trying to find holes in the security system. Most would think I’m simply daydreaming but what I’m really doing is watching, listening, learning and absorbing everything about the estate and the people who run it. The compound is huge and so far I’m unable to figure out a way to get through the electric fence. Even if I do overcome that first obstacle and make it to the other side, I can’t forget about that pesky microchip beneath my skin, a tiny transponder with a permanent radio-frequency identification. I could try to run while out on a job, like my mother did. But capture came swiftly for her as she tried to make her way toward the Canadian border, to where she believed other Luphers could live free. I’m not sure if that’s true or not, or even if they would have helped her if she’d found them.

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As I think about escape I wonder how far I would get before another trained tracker from the compound found me and brought me back. Or would the Paranormal Task Force—an elite group of officers who hunt things that go bump in the night—catch me first? The hinges on my cell groan like a wounded animal as Lawrence pulls open the door and makes a grab for my chain. I know better than to shade with the collar on. One of the kids broke his neck that way. Another lesson compliments of our master. Lawrence yanks on the chain and jerks me to my feet as his gaze rakes over my dusty floor. With that grin still on his ugly rat face, he uses his stained boot to brush away the picture I drew in the thin layer of dirt. I won’t let him see me flinch, I won’t give him that power. I hate how he takes pleasure in erasing the one thing that gives me joy. Drawing. I once saw the master’s wife— I think it was his third wife—using watercolors to paint a picture of the vineyard and I thought it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I stretch my leg muscles as I exit my cage and wait for him to release Jace and Clover. Then, with three chains in his hand, Lawrence leads us all up the stairwell. The windows are open and a warm breeze blows over my flesh, rustling the hem of my nightgown. He herds us down a long walkway until we reach the kitchen. I keep my head down as I walk past Mica, not because she looks at me with pity, she doesn’t, but because I don’t want her to see my animal hunger. Hunger for her bread. Hunger for her blood. Like every other morning we leave the kitchen and step out into the vast outdoors and prepare for our daily run

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and agility training. With the warm, sun-kissed grass tickling my bare feet I stand there for a moment and inhale the bouquet. The masterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s estate is on the west coast, smack dab in the middle of wine country, and if I listen really hard, way off in the distance I can almost hear the Pacific waters lapping lazily against the sandy shoreline. My ears perk as I listen to the soothing sound. Something about the translucent blue ocean with its rolling surf and unpredictable waves reminds me of freedom. I stretch out my limbs as I once again commit the courtyard to memory, glancing at the extreme obstacle course and noting the additions that now make it that much more challenging. We have everything from ropes, walls, hurdles, zigzags, tunnels and low rails, fences, cargo net climbs, cargo net descents and parallel bars. Every obstacle is designed to test and increase our endurance, speed, ability and balance. I take my time to glare at the men looking down at the dozen or so shaders walking the yard. From their perch, high on top of a sturdy brick wall surrounding the courtyard, they keep us in line. Same as always, six men, guns aimed and ready to shoot us in the head should we try to escape. On a distant hill a propane-fired cannon blasts and loud squawking follows. The cannon is used to startle the birds and scare them away from the vineyardâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s berries. I turn my focus back to the immediate task before me, and like the others, I begin to strip. Clothes hinder our ability to move, and they become overbearing as our body temperatures soar, so the first thing we do before shading is get rid of them. I pull my nightgown over my shoulders, and stand there stark naked. Modesty is not a privilege we are gifted with, though Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve gotten used to over the years.

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As the runt of the family, I still have the body of a twelve year old, boy–flat and gangly in all the wrong places—so getting undressed in front of others doesn’t bother me. Fully exposed beneath the glaring sun, I fold my nightgown carefully and place it on the grass near the house. Oddly enough, taking care of my belongings gives me a sense of normalcy in a world where none exists. I look over the grounds and stare at the other, mature shaders. A half a dozen or little ones are still inside, coddling in their nurseries. My heart squeezes as I remember those days. But I quickly tamp down those feelings and focus on the others. Who will the master pit me against today? My glance settles on Stone, who, like me, was born in the compound. I’m not sure why there is telepathy between us when we’re not shading. From what I know we’re the only ones, and it isn’t something either of us want anyone to know. At twenty, Stone has grown into a powerful, dominating alpha. It was only a few years ago, right around his sixteenth birthday, when the master finally broke him. I’m not sure what it took. No one is, really. But we do know that Stone is a bit of a wild card. Ever since the master gained control of him, Stone has become increasingly aggressive toward me, forcing me to block him from my thoughts. I have no interest in communicating with him now. Our eyes meet across the yard and his ruthless silver orbs glare back at me. I used to wonder if his parents named him Stone because he was as dense as one. I don’t wonder any more.

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Stone doesn’t like that my brains match his brawn, and I don’t like his rumors that I’m ‘doing it’ with the master for extra food. Extra food feeds the brain, but that’s not why I’m smart. I’m smart because of my breeding. I have learned my lesson; someone of my size needs to fight with their head, not their heart. A high-pitched yelp pierces the air and I tear my gaze from Stone’s. I spin around in time to see the master’s leather strap slice open Sandy’s back. Rivulets of crimson trickle down her peachy flesh and spill across the grass, turning it a coppery shade of red. Like an air freshener, the sweet scent of warm blood catches on a breeze and fans out. Soft, hungry growls sound in response. My fingers curl into fists and the taste of blood fills my mouth as I bite the inside of my cheek. Guilt that I’m unable to help her churns inside me and I hate how powerless I feel. The master barks out an order and cuts the air with his strap. Sandy is just a girl, a few years younger than me and she hasn’t learned to play the game yet, hasn’t learned when to push and when to back off. My nostrils flare and I try not to react, to show emotions as the deafening snap of the strap punctures the barriers shielding my emotions. I should help her. I want to help her. In fact, I want to tear the master’s head clear off his neck and feed it to his ferals. Instead, I desensitize. It’s the only way I can get through another day. But it doesn’t stop me from stealing a look at the bulging purple mark tracing my leg. We might have regenerative abilities to heal ourselves and close our own wounds, but the scars always remain, inside and out. Her whimpering stops and the master leaves her. I look at her but she doesn’t return my gaze. She reaches for him. Him. Her thin fingers wiggle hopelessly in the air,

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begging for forgiveness and approval, but he turns his back on her, discarding her like she is nothing more than yesterday’s newspaper. It’s a form of punishment, a proven way to train and break our species. Most of the shaders want to please him after they’ve been broken. I’m not one of them. I won’t be broken. The master, of course, insists he’s doing our kind a favor by confining us and likes to point out that he keeps us alive, protected from the PTF, and allows us to feed on the one thing we love most. Humans. I still wonder how he found out about us, and how he was able to first trap our species. Rumor has it that his second wife was killed by a shader and he witnessed it. Then he went hunting, not to kill us, but to use us. Key in hand, Mario, one of the three handlers in the courtyard, comes by to remove my collar. With cognactoned skin, his dark hair is long and tied into a ponytail that reaches the middle of his back. I put him around his midthirties. Unlike Lawrence, Mario is always nice to me, but he’s still one of them and I never let myself forget it. “You’re up against Stone today,” he says and looks at me, his glance avoiding my eyes. “You both go first.” I nod, and then something flickers in his eyes when he sees the way my pale, stringy flesh stretches taught over my protruding ribs. I let him look and don’t try to make it easy for him. If they all hate what he does to us so much, why don’t they do something about it? I don’t ask. I already know. They can’t. I once heard a few staff members whispering about illegal immigrants. The master likes to collect people in much the same manner as he collects animals. His entire

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staff is made up of these immigrants, men and women who’ve come to this country looking for a better life. Should any of them question his orders punishment would, undoubtedly, come in the form of deportation. Perhaps even worse. As my mood darkens, clouds move across the sky, eclipsing the summer sun and giving us a break from the dry heat. “Have you looked over the course?” Mario whispers quietly, his dark eyes darting around nervously. I know what he’s talking about, and I know he’s taking a risk in even hinting at it, but I don’t respond. Instead, I turn my focus to the master who commands the attention of all those around him as he moves through the imprisoned courtyard, examining his pets. Since I’d like to eat today, I use that time to gather myself and get my head into the game. It will take all my intelligence and concentration to match Stone’s strength. Bones crack in protest when I turn my head from side to side, stretching my neck. As I call on my animal side, the pain of shading pulls at me and I focus on it fully, using it to fuel my blood and power my body. My body begins to shake, air rushes from my lungs as my animal comes alive. Deep inside my body my blood burns hotter and my skin thickens, every one of my senses growing sharper. I run my tongue along my teeth as they sharpen, and crack my knuckles as my fingernails lengthen into deadly weapons. I briefly close my eyes and when I open them again, they glow with enough pewter brightness to light up a forest. Pain seizes me and I fear my heart is going to stop as my animal claws at my insides. My agony filled cry

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mingles with the inhuman growls of those shading around me. Soon the pain fades, and while I still look like an eighteen-year-old girl, I know I’m not. I shake the buzz from my head and take in the shining eyes all around me. With shading complete, the animal inside me is wide awake. A gunshot sounds and a hush falls over the courtyard. Head held high I walk to the beginning of my course, Stone beside me facing his own obstacles. I steal a sideways glance at him. He looks good. Strong. Well fed. Maybe he’s the one ‘doing it’ with the master. Fit and muscular, he has at least a good forty pounds over me. He grins in an attempt to intimidate me. I ignore the grumble in my stomach and stare back. Intimidation is not an option. A bird of prey squawks loudly overhead and flies toward the grapevines. I don’t look up, it will only make me long for that kind of freedom, and right now I need all my wits about me. A second gunshot cracks the air and as the smell of sulfur penetrates my senses, I take a look at the soft ground below and sprint forward, Stone easily keeping pace beside me. Just then the clouds split open, the sun peeking out in time to catch the action. Panting beneath the glaring rays, my legs eat up the ground and I hit the first wall running. Concentrating on the rasp of my own breath and the pounding of my heart, I tune Stone out. The silence of the crowd is broken by a chorus of frenzied howls at my rear. The sound of the others cheering us on makes me think of Jace and Clover and I push harder. They need me to win this. They need the nutrition I’ll receive as a reward.

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I scale the first wall. Easy. Then bolt toward the next obstacle, Jacob’s ladder. With instincts guiding me, I begin my ascent, fully aware how the rungs get farther and farther apart. I coach myself. Easy, Pride. Slowly. Carefully. Don’t look down. When I reach the top platform, I clamp the knotted rope and bear down. My legs push off the ledge and I swing low, my feet mere inches from the ground as I cross the mud pit. An adjustment has been made and my light weight causes me to overshoot the sand by a few inches and I land with a thud onto the hard ground. I curse under my breath, determined not to make that mistake again. Blinking back the pain, I climb to my feet and shake it off. I don’t bother to check on Stone. I can hear him panting and know he is closing the gap. Up ahead is the net and I know what they’ve done, what Mario had been hinting at. This next obstacle could very well decide the outcome. Logic assures me that since Stone is big on strength and light on brains, he’s bound to miss it. I catch a flash of black hair as Stone runs by me. If he spots the flaw, I could end up going on scraps today. I can go on scraps. I’ve done it numerous times before. The aging Jace and Clover are another story, and thoughts of them prompt me to dig in harder. Stone bares sharp white teeth and glances at me over his shoulder as he takes to the outside edge of the net, where the netting hasn’t been tampered with. Shocked, I open my mouth, but no sound comes. He’s already at the top of his net by the time I reach mine. He looks down at me and using telepathy he taunts, “What’s the matter, Pride? Cat got your tongue?”

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I briefly note the way his aging bunkmates, Cruz and Star aren’t cheering him on. Why would they? Greedy boy that Stone is, he never shares his victor’s reward with them. Not that we’re allowed to share, but I don’t let that stop me. Getting my head back into the game, I scramble up quickly and drop to the ground on the other side of the net. Stone doesn’t bother to look back as he takes the lead. Determination renewed, I look at the strategically placed orange cones, and bolt forward. He hasn’t won yet. I move in and out of the zigzags, my small size and agility giving me an advantage over his larger, more muscled frame. I catch up with Stone and rage flashes in his pewter eyes as he angles his head to see me. That split second of inattention gives me the advantage. Wanting to drive home the fact that my brains have beaten his brawn, I grin and gesture toward the soft ground right before Stone sinks into the trap, seconds before it’s too late for him to do anything about it. When he stumbles, collective cheers ring out behind me. I jump over the man-made mud hole camouflaged by patches of green grass as the sound of Stone’s teeth crashing together reverberates through the air. I push forward, tackling the hurdles with ease and a few minutes later I reach the end. I turn to see Stone, now knee deep in mud. His nostrils flare, his teeth flash, and his eyes darken when he looks at me. In a swift movement that takes me by surprise, he leaps from the mud pit. He exposes his fangs in challenge and instantly the air charges. He turns feral on me—living up to the name the masters have slapped on our kind. As I watch him, my mother’s familiar warning words come rushing back. Trust no one but family.

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Despite the fact that we are hybrids, the animals inside us are still primal beings, ruled by instincts and survival of the fittest. I can never let myself forget that. I can feel the rage unfurling inside him as he lunges with lightning speed. He swipes at me, his long nails catching the fleshy part of my cheek. I strike back, clamping my jaw around his jugular and dragging him to the ground. He proves too strong and within seconds he flips me over, promptly trapping me belly up between the ground and his powerful body. He flattens himself out along my length and puts his mouth near my ear. “I’m going to enjoy breaking you, kitty-cat,” he murmurs. My heart races faster, and even though I don’t want to be afraid, the anger I see in his eyes is beyond frightening. I open my mouth to speak, but suddenly I can’t push my words past my tongue. Tension hovers like a black cloud, and as I struggle to breathe, he throws his head back. The deep sound coming from the depths of his throat sends a flock of birds into the blue sky. That gives me the opportunity to pull my legs out from beneath him and secure them under his stomach. With every ounce of strength I possess I push, sending him hurtling backwards. His howl stabs the air as he lands with a crash. I climb to my feet and crouch low and note how much stronger Stone is getting. When he learns to fight with his head and not his heart, I’m going to be in big trouble. Stone quickly rights himself and stalks toward me. As we square off again, guns cock above our heads and the master blows his whistle. Obedient as Stone is, he halts his forward momentum and stops shading. I watch him circle

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around and saunter off. I don’t, however, miss the gleam in his eyes before he turns away What does he know that I don’t? I quickly stand up straight and when I stop shading, the hot blood pumping through my body cools as my heart regulates. My tongue slides over my teeth as they shrink back, and as my nails shorten, I do something I haven’t done in a long time. I touch Stone’s mind and the instant I do his dark, chaotic thoughts hit me like a sucker punch. My stomach twists in response and a hot wave of nausea rolls through me. Determined to figure out what he knows before I break the connection, I push past the confusion. When I hear him erratically reciting a sequence of numbers I struggle to make sense of what he’s doing. I go deeper and catch flashes of his cage, flashes of silver in a dark cellar. I hear footsteps followed by an ear-shattering gunshot. Then I see blood trickling between his lips, which not only alarms me but also confuses me even more. I press my hands over my ears to mute the thunderous sounds, and try to puzzle things out. None of it makes senses. If Stone had fought with a handler, I would have heard about it—news spreads quicker than a virus in the courtyard. But Stone would never fight with a handler. He’s in tight with them and they give him way more leeway than the rest of us, which makes me wonder what is going on. Then another more disturbing thought hits. Is this what happens to a mind that has been broken? My chest tightens and I can’t help but feel a pang of sympathy for him. Stone had been a good friend when we were younger.

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A burst of sadness is quickly replaced by a cold shiver when Stone’s hard eyes lock back on mine. He knows. He knows I’ve been inside. When I feel him searching, pushing his frenzied thoughts into my head, I go back on the defensive and immediately close off my mind. I summon my composure and turn away in time to see the next two competitors line up for their test. I move off to the side and spot Mario walking along the perimeter of the brick fence. He steps up to me, puts my collar back on and hands me my nightgown. A gunshot rings out as I pull it on over my mud-caked body. “He wants to see you,” he says and gestures with a nod. I don’t need to look up to know who he is talking about. I can smell his expensive cologne and hear the squishing sound of his leather shoes on the ground as he approaches. I look up anyway. My master… I might be kept in the dark about most of the master’s business dealings, but it’s common knowledge amongst our kind that he is deeply involved in the drug cartel. I smell it all over him. A tracker like me is called into action when something goes wrong. No one crosses my master and gets away with it. If you try, I’m brought in to make an example out of you, usually around the throat area. I know what I’m doing is wrong. But I can’t contain the raging hunger gnawing at me. I’m sure it would be different if I’d been taught discipline. But that’s not part of my education. The master wants me wild. However, it does give me some measure of comfort to know that the men I take down are no better than my master. Beneath their expensive cologne I can smell the greed, the deceit, the drugs.

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“Good morning, Pride,” the master says as he closes the distance between us. He smiles, but it doesn’t reach his dark, piercing eyes as they rake over me. Confidence oozes off his tall, powerful body, demanding the respect of those beneath his stature. Dark shiny hair frames a firm face, wrinkled and aged from too much time in the sun. With his dominant manner and well-groomed presence, if he were one of us, he’d undoubtedly be an alpha. My stomach growls and I wait for him to signal the handler to come back and take me to the kitchen. I won the race, which means I get to dine on the freshest food, not scraps or leftovers, and I always make sure to put some away for my bunkmates. At their age, even when pitted against their peers, they rarely win the race. He’s not signaling a handler, which makes me think he has a job for me. He likes me hungry when I hunt. He thinks it gives me an edge. “Master,” I say. He slips his finger under my chin, and I try not to flinch. I don’t like to be touched, especially by him. My mother’s touch was the only one I didn’t shy away from. If I close my eyes real tight, I can almost remember what it feels like to be held in her strong arms, to be pulled into her embrace. I remember the way she had the uncanny ability to make me feel safe, even though I knew I was anything but. The master’s dark gaze moves over my face, assessing me, and I lower my eyes. I might not be broken but I do know how to play the game. “It’s time, Pride.” My stomach clenches and my mind races. I really, really don’t like the sound of this.

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“Time for what?” I ask and stare him straight in the eyes, something we aren’t allowed to do and I wonder if my disobedience will come with a price. Instead of answering he gives me that confident smirk of his and says, “Get yourself something to eat, then get prettied up. I have a surprise for you.”

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Chapter Two

A surprise? The master snaps his fingers and gestures for Mario. A second later he pivots and steps away and I twist around to watch the handler’s slow, careful approach. That’s when my glance lands on Stone standing some twenty feet away. Looking hard and dangerous and dressed in nothing but a pair of worn jeans, I take note of the way he’s watching me, the way he always watches me. He has a smile on his face—smug, cocky and full of secrets—and it’s all I can do not to cross the courtyard, and swipe it off. My animal bristles as I get the sneaking suspicion that Stone isn’t quite as stupid as I always thought he was. Hardening myself, I offer Stone a look of cool indifference. The last thing I want is for him to sense my fear. With my heart crashing against my chest, I take a step toward him, but when Stone manages to break through my mental shields, my legs stiffen beneath me and I gasp for air. He’s in my head. I can feel him. He’s doing something. But I can’t tell what. I try to read him but his words are hurried, cryptic. As numbers ping around inside my brain, my throat tightens and I try to push him out. But he’s too strong, too determined. Before I can figure out what’s going on, Mario steps up to me and his presence severs Stone’s fierce hold over my thoughts. As I shoot the alpha a poisonous glare, hating his ability to fracture my barriers, he shoves his hands into

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his pockets and turns, leaving me standing there staring at his back as he saunters away. I spin back around to face my master, to demand answers, but only manage to catch a glimpse of his broad shoulders as he disappears into the house through his private entrance. “Easy, Pride,” Mario warns. He hooks a chain to my collar and gives it a good hard jerk. “Let’s go,” he says and I somehow manage to put one foot in front of the other while he leads me through the courtyard toward the kitchen entrance. Once inside the estate a blast of cool air helps clear my rattled brain. I’m led through the kitchen to a windowless bathroom near the pantry. Mario waits outside and I close the door tightly behind me. As soon as I’m alone I let loose a long slow breath and wrap my fingers around the pedestal sink. . I tip my head and spend a long time staring at my reflection in the vanity mirror. Not only am I too thin, my lips are too big, my cheekbones too high, and my dark eyes, which showcase unattractive smudges of sleeplessness beneath them, look so stark against my light hair. I stand there well past my allotted time, and when I hear Mario growing restless in the hallway, I turn on the tap and splash my face with icy cold water. After washing up, I pull open the door and follow my handler back into the large, modern kitchen. The scent of coffee teases my nostrils as we approach. We’re not supposed to have caffeine but sometimes Mica slips me a small cup. I drop down into one of the hard chairs, plant my elbows on the long oaken table and stare straight ahead at Mica. Dressed in a flared floral skirt and crisp white blouse

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tucked at the waist, she stands on the other side of the spacious room with her back to me as she fusses about with a loaf of stubborn bread. She gives the metal pan a good hard tap with her wooden spoon, and I watch Mario flinch as the sound echoes that of the starting gun outside. A burst of warm air rushes inside when the side door opens and both Jace and Clover are led into the kitchen. Looking worn and tired they keep their heads down as Lawrence herds them back to the cellar. Once they’re out of sight, Mario steps up to Mica. They exchange a few words, keeping their voices low to prevent me from listening in with my exceptional hearing. A moment later Mica brings me a feast of fresh bread, butter, fruit, and bacon and eggs cooked the way I like them. Too bad I no longer have an appetite. Manners aside, I tear off a piece of warm bread and force myself to eat. Lacking her usual cheeriness, Mica moves about the kitchen and I don’t question the peculiar way she’s avoiding me. Clearly, she knows what my master’s big surprise is and if it’s upsetting her this much, then I know it can’t be good for me. “Pride?” I lift my head at the sound of Mica’s voice. “Yes?” I ask. She looks at me long and hard. I can tell she wants to say something but when Mario clears his throat, like he’s giving her some unspoken warning, she seems to change her mind and asks, “Would you like another slice?” I follow her gaze to my palm and spot what used to be a slice of bread. Now it is nothing more than a ball of dough. Squished by my own hand. I nod, then grab a napkin and fill it with fruit and bacon. Mica hands me two more slices of bread and as I

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add them to the pile I turn to Mario. “I’d like to go to my room now.” “My orders are to take you to Miss Kara.” I force a smile and show my compliance by saying, “I just need a minute to drop off my breakfast so I can eat it later.” For good measure, I wipe the back of my palm over my forehead. “I think the heat is messing with my appetite.” He hesitates. He knows it’s a lie because I’m always hungry. He also knows what I’m doing and even though sharing food is against the master’s orders, he gives a curt nod and leads me downstairs. I’m suddenly grateful that it’s Mario handling me today and not Lawrence. Lawrence would never have let me distribute one tiny crumb to my bunkmates. Moving quickly, I rush down the stairs. Both Jace and Clover rise from their cots when they see me. “Pride,” Clover rushes out, her eyes wide with apprehension. “What happened out there between you and Stone?” I pass the napkin through the cage and as she gratefully accepts it, I briefly think about Stone’s strange behavior. I don’t want the elders to worry about me any more than they already do so I say, “It’s nothing I can’t handle.” Jace grasps the metal bars and squeezes until I see bone. Not that it would take much for the whites of his knuckles to show through his thinning skin, considering how underfed he is. There is a hitch in his voice when he says, “You need to stay away from him. He’s up to something.”

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I look at Jace and could sob at the sadness I see on his face, the utter sense of helplessness in his milky white eyes when they meet mine. A pang of sorrow cuts me deep at how broken the elders are, how defeated they feel. Jace and Clover have shown me both empathy and compassion. I chalk it up to the forty or so years they’d spent living in the real world before their capture. “I don’t like the way he looks at you, Pride.” The saggy skin under Jace’s jowl tightens as he clenches down. “And he’s growing strong. Too strong.” Apprehension curls through me and my heart thuds against my chest. “I’ll find a way to get us out of here before I allow anything to happen.” Clover gives a worried shake of her head. “Pride—” When Clover’s words fall off, Jace reaches through the cage and touches her shoulder. He gives a gentle, reassuring squeeze and the gesture is so warm and loving my throat tightens. I swallow against the lump forming in my throat. “I’ll find a way. I promise.” Clover wrings her boney fingers. “You can’t make that promise.” “I can and I will.” Worry washes over her once pretty face, now worn from years of abuse. “But your mother—” When I hear a boot scuff on the stairs, I lean close and try to keep my voice from wavering. “My mother died trying to save me. While she couldn’t give us freedom, she did give us knowledge and I need to do this for her as much as for us.” “But the PTF…” she says, the fear in her voice reminding me we had more than our master to worry about.

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As I think more about the Paranormal Task Force, I remember the one rule they are governed by: shoot first and ask questions later. Like others of our kind, my mother used to be a productive member of society, secretly working side-by-side with humans, living a normal life in a small community and taking to the woods during the lunar pull to avoid killing anyone. But to the PTF we Luphers are all monsters that need to be killed. My mother gained a lot of knowledge before her capture some twenty years ago, and from what she explained, the PTF are specially trained to spot shaders. They are educated at the best graduate schools, where they obtain master’s degrees in sociology, studying everything from social relationships to species interactions and deviances. “I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it,” I say, hoping I sound more confident than I feel. The lines on Clover’s face soften and I’m not sure if she’s placating me or not when she says, “You always were strong, Pride.” When Mario clears his throat, I step back. My chain clangs on the stairs as I take them two at a time to reach him. He doesn’t speak. Instead he just grabs my leash and leads me to Miss Kara’s suite on the second floor of the estate. Once there, he pushes open the double doors and the sharp tang of floral perfume assaults my sensitive nose. Warm rays of sunlight stream in through the large window and fall over the massive mahogany desk, and the piles of paper strewn across the top. A grooming station— or at least that’s what I like to call it—complete with enough makeup and brushes to supply an entire town, fills the space on the opposite wall. A colonial door to my left leads into the bathroom. Miss Kara’s suite looks more like an office/beauty salon than an estate bedroom. This is

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where she educates us, and teaches us all about manners and good grace. I often wonder if she came to this country to be a cosmetician. I’m sure, however, she wanted a better life than this. Dressed in a fitted business suit, Miss Kara rises from her plush recliner, spreads her arms wide and starts toward me. “Pride, come in, come in.” She dips her head and her big brown eyes scrutinize my curves, or lack thereof. Her nose crinkles in distaste and her painted lips pucker as she makes a tsking sound. “We have so much work to do.” She efficiently claps her hands, then points to the bathroom. “First let’s get you showered. Now hurry.” I do as I’m told, but enjoy a few extra minutes beneath the hot steam, taking pleasure in the needle-like spray on my muddy body. With my flesh practically rubbed raw, I climb from the shower, wrap a big fluffy towel around myself and exit the bathroom. Miss Kara guides me to the grooming station, running her fingers through my hair as we walk, and I take notice of the new white dress draped over her recliner. The master often puts me in pretty clothes to lure my mark, especially when they’re a difficult target. Perhaps there is nothing more to his surprise than that. A difficult mark in need of extra persuasion. As Miss Kara seats me in front of the mirror, I try to engage her in conversation. With a nod, I gesture toward the dress and work to keep my voice light when I say, “It must be a challenging assignment if the master is putting me in something so pretty.” Dark lashes flash quickly over brown eyes and she keeps her expression blank I get the distinct impression that

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she, too, is keeping something from me as I study her in the mirror and will her to look at me. But there is nothing I can do to make her meet my eyes. Close to an hour later, after I’ve been plucked, perfumed and prettied up, Miss Kara unzips the delicate dress down the back and I climb in from the neckline. As it drapes my body I notice how easy it is to get in and out of. It’s those little things that make a big difference on a mission, especially if I need to shade in a hurry. I stare at my reflection and also notice how it accentuates what little curves I have and how the pretty diamond-like stones glisten in the overhead light. As I run my hands over the fake jewels I consider all the weapons I could make with them if only they were real. When Miss Kara spins her finger, I twirl in front of the mirror. The dress is beautiful. “You look gorgeous,” she assures me, a look of satisfaction crossing her flawless, coffee-colored face. A few minutes later she gives Mario a nod and the next thing I know I’m being led back downstairs and into the master’s office. Mario pushes open the door and ushers me inside. The second I step through the threshold and spot Stone sitting in one of the leather chairs facing the master’s desk my stomach plummets. My master waves a hand, an indication for me to sit in the empty chair next to Stone. At first I don’t move, I don’t think my legs will allow me to cross the room, but Mario nudges me from behind and it sets me into motion. I tug on my collar which suddenly seems to be cutting off my air supply and work to keep my emotions in check as I pad softly across the cool marble floor.

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The master gives an appreciative nod. “You look very pretty today.” When I don’t answer, he hardens his voice and says, “Have a seat, Pride.” My master stands, walks to his mahogany bar and pours a generous amount of amber liquid into a small glass. I wish he’d get straight to the point, but instead he takes a hearty sip of alcohol, then pulls a gold lighter out of his suit pocket and lights a cigar. “Pride…” the master begins before taking a long hard pull of his cigar. “Yes?” I ask. A long pause and then, “I believe the time has come for you to take a mate.” Mate? My stomach clenches, bile punches into my throat and I blink, sure I’m hearing him wrong. As he stands there waiting for a reaction, my mind races, sorting through matters and doing a quick run through of the morning’s events. I do a tally: the removal of my mother’s empty cot, Stone’s erratic behavior along with his talk of breaking me in, and the master’s unexpected surprise. My stomach churns faster as my thoughts come to a screeching halt. Flames race through my veins like aggravated fireflies, the flashes boiling my blood and fuelling the anger inside me. Feeling slightly off kilter, my hands grip the chair, and I have to take short breaths to keep myself from vomiting. This can’t be happening. I suck in a sharp breath and consider that for a moment. I must have heard him wrong. I must have. “Did you hear me Pride? I said it’s time for you to take a mate?” “No!”

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A strangled cry crawls out of my throat, the room fades in and out of existence around me and I jump to my feet so quickly I nearly send my chair hurtling backward. I cup my head and shake it hard. “Tell me you’re not serious.” I look at Stone. “Please, tell me this isn’t happening.” My master looks past my shoulder and I barely hear Mario’s quiet approach over the rapid pounding of my heart. I feel him move in close, ready to intervene should I get out of hand. “It’s time for you to breed, Pride.” I look back at my master and everything in the way he’s staring at me tells me it’s not a suggestion, it’s an order. As my worst nightmare comes true, the entire room closes in on me and I lean forward to grip the edge of the master’s desk to help stabilize myself. “Why?” Stone shakes his head in disbelief and the delight in his eyes as they trail longingly over my dress makes me shake with outrage. “You have no idea, do you Pride?” he asks. “No idea at all.” No idea? What’s he talking about? “You will take him as a mate,” my master insists. “I won’t,” I shoot back, and the master gives me a warning glare, clearly angered by my defiance – a defiance that won’t go unpunished, I’m sure. At this point any harsh punishment would pale in comparison to mating with Stone. “I’ll fight him.” Ignoring my outburst the master says, “You will be placed in Stone’s cell in six days.” Six days? Why six days? I struggle to think, then understanding hits.

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In six days the moon will be full. I will be at my most fertile and Stone will be at his strongest. “I won’t do it,” I say. The master drops his cigar into the ashtray and with two determined strides he crosses the room. He captures my face between his strong fingers and squeezes hard. From the corner of my eye I notice Stone toying with his collar and shifting in his seat. He has a strange expression on his face. It’s one I’ve never seen before and can’t quite identify. The pain exploding in my jaw forces my focus onto my master. Even though his frame dwarfs mine, I jerk my head and stand my ground. His hold never wavers. His fingers bite into my flesh, but I know he’ll never leave a mark on my cheek and risk disfiguring me. He needs my face unmarred and attractive if he wants me to lure his enemies. I continue to defy him by staring straight into his eyes. “Why?” I demand. He laughs and eases off. “You’re a smart girl. I thought you would have figured it out by now.” “Figured what out?” “You’re too wild, Pride, and don’t for one minute think that I haven’t noticed the way you’re always listening and watching.” He releases my face and steps back. “Motherhood is just the thing to tame you.” My animal stirs, begging me to let her free so she can go for his throat. He stares at me long and hard, like he’s daring me to try. “A child will calm you down. If it doesn’t then I’ll be forced to kill you, like I killed your mother.”

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Rage surges up inside me and it takes every ounce of strength I possess to fight it down. I avert my gaze and draw on my inner strength to help me shake off the anger. Deep in my gut I know that someday, somehow his time will come, but with Mario standing so close behind me, a loaded gun in his holster, I know it isn’t going to be today. With the distinct knowledge that my master is still holding all the cards, I take a calming breath and glance around. It’s clear that I have to do something. It’s also clear that I only have six days to figure out what it is I have to do. “That’s much better, Pride.” I lower my head and stare at the cold marble floor beneath me and decide, for the time being, that I’ll let him think I’m playing it his way. “Good girl,” he says and twists on the balls of his feet to pick up his cigar. “I knew you’d come around.” The master snaps his fingers and Mario steps away and opens the door for him. “Stone,” the master says as he tosses him a glance. “Since you were so efficient at disposing of the evidence after your last kill, I’ll give you those five minutes alone with her, like you wanted.” The master grins at me. “I’m sure you have a lot to talk about before the big day.” After he leaves the room, Mario takes up his post by the door and keeps a watch over us. The sound of Stone climbing from his chair pulls my focus and I turn to him. “I knew you’d look gorgeous in a dress.” He gives me a wolfish smile as he stalks toward me. I take a step back and snarl. “So you’re the one who wanted me in this?”

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“Yeah, I want you to wear it for our first mating.” He darts a nervous glance toward Mario, then wets his lips as he focuses back in on me. Once again I feel him surfing the outer barriers of my mind, trying to push his way in. To say I’m enraged is an understatement. I use every bit of strength I have to drive him back. I will not let him invade my privacy and the last things I want to hear are his erratic thoughts. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you that it’s bad luck to see the bride in her gown before the wedding?” I shoot back. When Mario clears his throat, Stone’s body stiffens and I can’t help but think how odd he’s acting. “Come on kitty-cat, it won’t be so bad.” He casually rolls one shoulder and laughs a little too loud. “Who knows, you might even like it.” At least he’s right about one thing. It won’t be so bad. Because as I watch his gaze move over my face, I make a silent vow to do whatever it takes to stop this from happening. Not only does the thought of him touching me make me sick, no way, no how am I about to bring children into this world, only to let them suffer at the hands of the master.

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va l e r i e t e j e da

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Prologue

The Witch Hunting Book of Stories

Once upon a time, in a land not too far away, a beautiful witch named Belinda arrived in Hollywood in search of fame and fortune. Although Belinda was considered royalty among her kind, this witch longed for more. She wanted to be an actress on the silver screen. But on one gloomy night at a glamorous after-party full of stars and starlets, Belinda lost her dream role to a younger woman. Humiliated and hurt, Belinda’s once tender heart turned to icy stone. Consumed by bitterness and rage, she cast a curse upon her species, requiring each and every witch to steal the youth and beauty of mortal women through ritual sacrifice, or rapidly age and die. She remained in Tinseltown to become the ruler of the Hollywood Coven, recruiting ever more witches from the far corners of the world to join her sinister plan. But these witches didn’t fly on broomsticks or wear pointed hats. No, these witches used their powerful spells to control minds, time, and even the weather. And although the mortals continued their day-to-day lives, Belinda’s incessant demand for sacrifice had placed the entire town in danger. But one day, everything changed. An army of men who called themselves “hunters” came to The City of Angels determined to protect humans from the witches’ wrath. And with that, the rivalry between the witches and the hunters began—a secret war that would cost many innocents their lives and continue for decades.

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Through the years, Belindaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s struggle for youth, power, and beauty has been repeatedly foiled by the ever-persistent Witch Hunters. But the evil witch remains as clever as she is beautiful. While some things change, one truth will endure: never trust a witch . . . especially in Hollywood.

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One

There are two types of people in Hollywood: the hunted and the hunters. Iris Maria Bently was born to be a Hunter. She always knew her family was different. Not just because they lived in a lavish mansion in the Hollywood Hills, or because they were always rubbing elbows with the rich and famous. But because of the many secrets surrounding her family’s business. What kind of secrets exactly? Nothing she could pinpoint. Just lots of whispers behind locked doors, echoes of screams, and the occasional lifeless body marked with a silver star that would have left most children with nightmares. But not Iris. She was not only noticeably faster than every other child at her elementary school, she was stronger too. Iris was always told her dad came from an ancient line of knights and that the men in her mom’s family had been famed Colombian boxers. While that was indeed mostly the truth, even Iris’s stout genetics couldn’t explain why she saw heavy fog and rain, even when her schoolmates and teachers swore it was clear and sunny. But on her sixteenth birthday Iris's eyes were opened. The fog no one else could see? The random downpours that only hit her family? The dead bodies with the silver markings? All the work of witches. And if she could see these things, that meant Iris carried the Hunter gene, just like her father and her older brother Knox. She wanted to become a Hunter, and no one, witch or human, would be able to stop her.

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But of course, becoming a Hunter would be no easy feat. She was told she was crazy, and was even forced to spend several days in UCLA’s psychiatric ward. Several months went by, and she continued to push for answers. “Dad, why can’t I be on the Hunter team?” she asked, almost daily. “I mean, Knox gets to do it!” “I told you, honey, there’s no team. Those things you think you can see are just in your head. There are no witches, or Hunters. No fog. And the only team your brother’s on is his competitive soccer team. That’s it.” Iris refused to believe him, especially since she’d never seen Knox so much as touch a soccer ball. So she kept an eye on Hollywood. She learned all the signs, including bruma, a magical fog that indicated a witch was near, which always seemed to crop up at popular shopping spots like The Grove, Rodeo Drive, and the Hollywood and Highland Center. Iris was finally fed up with the lies, secrets, and false claims of insanity. She followed a trail of bruma to a senior prom at Melrose Academy—the richest and most exclusive private school in Beverly Hills. The closer she got to the auditorium at Melrose, the more she felt the music move through her body. This always happened to her. It was as if the sound pulsed through her ears and flowed all the way down to her toes. The bass resonated with her heartbeat, and the higher the melody climbed, the more it excited her. Like a battery recharging from a nuclear reactor. When she stepped inside, the flashing lights blinded her. The room was filled with a sea of sequined dresses and teens sneaking liquor. There was a couple making out in the corner, and she couldn’t take her eyes off a group of girls dancing like they were in an R&B music video.

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Their elation was contagious and Iris let out a laugh as she walked toward a table filled with C-grade finger foods and candy-red punch. Then, she stopped. In the center of the room stood a girl with platinum hair. She shot shards of ice from her fingertips that clung to the ceiling, forming a circle of needle-sharp icicles above the partying teens. No one seemed to notice except for Iris, who shivered from the sudden cold. “What are you doing here?” a girl said, appearing out of nowhere. “I didn’t expect to see you, so soon.” Iris didn’t know the girl but was immediately stunned by how pretty she was. Her lavender eyes burned through the darkness, outshining even the blinding strobe lights. She was wearing a short, fitted white dress, which complemented her golden locks and what appeared to be tanning-booth skin. Iris assumed she was one of the school’s seniors, or possibly the child of some big-name celebrity. “Excuse me, do I know you?” Iris asked, as she examined the girl’s face. “Technically, no.” She smirked, flipping her long hair. “Okay,” Iris huffed. “What’s that supposed to mean?” “Well, I’ve been watching you for freaking-ever. At least it feels that way. And I have to say . . . I’m kind of bored with you, Iris. I guess I just thought you’d be a bit more interesting by now.” Iris flinched. “How do you know my name?” “Wow.” She giggled. “Let’s see, how do I put this?” She cleared her throat. “I’ve been watching you because you’ve always seemed . . . different.” Iris rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. “Different, how?”

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“Just. Different.” The girl slowly circled behind Iris. “You see,” she whispered in her ear, “I know you can see the icicles the ‘Elsa reject’ is making on the ceiling. I also know you can see the bruma in the auditorium and floating down the halls. And, I know that if you were honest with yourself, you’d want to kill her.” Iris’s breath caught in her throat. Her body tensed and she felt a flurry of hives creeping up her neck. “You don’t know anything,” she snapped, turning around to face the girl. “Who are you?” “That’s not important. See Miss Bratty Prom Queen over there?” She pointed to a girl on the dance floor who was wearing a sparkling crown, sandwiched between two very eager guys who looked like Chihuahuas in heat. “The witch is going to make that prom queen her supper.” “Supper?” “Uh, yeah. She’s about to sacrifice her, duh? Maybe supper was a bad choice of words .” “So it’s true. She really is a . . .” Iris paused as her heart raced against her chest. “Say it, Iris.” The girl’s eyes rolled in the back of her head. “Say my favorite little five-letter word.” “She’s a witch.” “Freaking. Bingo.” The room started to spin and Iris firmly planted her feet, stopping herself from falling over. She watched the prom queen exit the dance floor. Seconds later, the witch followed suit. “Better keep an eye on the prom queen, Hunter. That witch is up to no good.”

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Hunter. Iris wasn’t a Hunter. But she followed the witch anyway, out the school’s doors and to a secluded corner of the parking lot. The bruma was overpowering and Iris could barely see through it. She clutched the gold knife hidden in her jacket pocket, the one she’d stolen from her father’s desk. She steadied her step and cautiously approached the witch from behind. “Don’t move!” Iris ordered the witch. She drew her knife and pointed it toward her. The gold blade glimmered in the moonlight. The witch was inches away from the intoxicated high schooler. “Oh my god!” the prom queen screamed. “Are you like a total psycho?! Why do you have a knife?” She shot Iris a confused look and slowly stepped forward. “Wait. Are you related to my maid Consuela? I get the impression her kids are into some really bad stuff.” “What? No. I’m not related to your maid!” Iris fumed. “I’m trying to save you from her.” She pointed to the witch. Her voice was shaky. “You need to get out of here, now!” “Oh, I don’t think so.” The witch snatched the prom queen’s wrist with a firm grip and the young girl froze. Literally. Her stiff body turned a dark shade of blue and moments later she fell to the ground with a resounding clunk. “No!” Iris yelled, falling to her knees and scooping up the body. A silver star appeared on the girl’s right shoulder. Iris stared in awe. “This can’t be happening,” she mumbled to herself. “Oh. It is,” the witch said, a wicked smile spreading across her face. Her body now glowed and her skin seemed softer than before. Her platinum hair was brighter and her eyes were clear as crystal. “And I don’t know how you can see my freaking spells, but I’m sorry to say, you’re next.”

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The witch pounced on top of Iris, knocking her to the pavement. Gusts of snowflakes exploded from the witch’s body as they rolled. She seized Iris’s neck with an icy grasp and squeezed. Iris choked, shivering violently as an arctic chill seeped into her bones. Her neck burned and her arms and hands started turning blue. But Iris fought against the pain and the fear. She was a Hunter. And Hunters killed witches. With a surge of adrenaline, Iris gritted her teeth and stabbed the gold knife into the witch’s side. The witch let out a cry as a river of black blood spilled from her wound. She released her grip and stumbled backward, swaying slightly before finally collapsing. Iris rose to her feet, her trembling body still numb from the cold. “I . . . I killed her,” she said with a gulp as she stared at the witch’s dead body. “Yes, you did. Bravo, by the way.” Iris jumped. It was the girl with lavender eyes. “And you saved me the trouble of having to do it myself. That witch has been bothering me for weeks.” “How did she do that? Turn things to ice and make it snow in L.A.?” “She’s an Ethas witch. She has spells that allow her to freeze things. Or at least she did anyway. I always thought it was a totally boring spell, to be honest.” The girl paused. “Look, you better get out of here before people see you near the body.” “You mean bodies?” “No. You take the witch’s body back to your house.” “Back to my house . . . why would I—”

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“Because you killed her, all by yourself,” the girl interrupted. “Show the Hunters you know what they’ve been hiding from you. Do what you need to do.” At that moment a fire glowed inside Iris, thawing her from the inside out and fueling a growing anger she’d been feeling since the first time her father lied to her. “And, Iris. Tell your dad if he’s not going to play by the rules, neither am I.” “What does that even—” Before Iris could get out another word, the girl stepped back and vanished into the bruma. * Carrying the witch’s body on her shoulder, Iris kicked open the front doors of her home and headed toward her father’s office. He sat in an oversize, leather chair smoking a cigar and reading The Art of War. Her dad leaped to his feet and gasped when Iris walked in the room. She dropped the dead witch to the ground and wiped her hands on her shirt. “I killed a witch,” Iris confessed. “I see the signs and I have the gene. That makes me a Hunter.” His jaw dropped as he stared at his daughter. “Iris. There’s no such thing as—” “You can’t lie to me anymore!” she shouted. “I know what I am. I know what we are.” Iris reached into her pocket and pulled out the gold knife. It was stained black. She looked her father dead in the eyes, her hands still shaking from the thrill. “I’m a Hunter, Dad. And I want in.”

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Two

Five Months Later

The vision always started the same way: a dark Hollywood cemetery. Bitter cold. Fog. Rain. Cracks of lightning and booming thunder. Quaking ground and torrential wind. She cried for help, but no one could hear her. Then, a shadow of a woman stood before her. She grabbed her by the throat, threw her against a tombstone, and crushed her skull in the process. The vision came again this morning and Iris wondered where it came from. Was it a witch casting a spell? Some horrible daydream she couldn’t shake? Or just a side effect of being a Hunter in the field?

“And that’s why you shouldn’t be a Hunter,” her brother Knox said, jolting her back to reality. Whatever “reasons” he was listing, Iris didn’t catch a single one. Between today’s creepy vision, and the natural stress that came with being a Hunter, Iris had gotten very good at drowning Knox out. He made a habit of trying to convince her to get out of the field and get back into school. He meant well, he really did. But Iris had made her decision and her overprotective brother wasn’t going to change her mind. The two of them were standing on a remote rooftop in Hollywood, drenched in black leather and blending into the darkness like a pair of ninjas. It was a dry October evening and a creamy wedge of moon hung in the sky, bathing the city in a pale light whenever it managed to peek through the passing clouds. It could have even been considered a beautiful night, if there wasn’t an ancient evil lurking in the nearby

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shadows. Five months ago, she brought her father the body of a dead witch. He couldn’t lie to her anymore, although he did try. But Iris wouldn’t have it. She gave him an ultimatum: kill me or let me on the team. “You know,” her brother continued. “You could always just wait till you graduate from high school, and by then, who knows? You may not even want to be a Hunter anymore—” “Knox!” she interrupted with a firm tone. “It’s been five freaking months,” she said with a sigh. “Can’t we be done with the ‘brotherly love’ crap? I’m in the field. It’s not changing.” Iris appreciated her brother’s concern, but it was too late. From now on she would spend her days hunting witches, not on the cheer squad. “Fine,” he huffed, slumping his shoulders. “Let’s get to it, then.” Iris flashed a menacing grin and got into position. Like a hungry lioness stalking its prey, she was itching for a kill, and tonight, she wanted to make the Hunters proud. She was lying prone, preparing to take her final test: the sniper rifle. The thought of this weapon always made her giddy. It was so powerful but also completely undetectable. The best part? The Hunter’s rifle couldn’t kill a human, but for a witch, it was the deadliest of poison. The strangest thing about her test tonight was that she had already completed the sniper training course. Twice actually. Yet her father insisted she train again before being allowed to hunt on her own. She settled in behind her rifle with an ear-to-ear grin, steadied her breath and waited. Her brother Knox stood beside her and kept a watchful eye for any movement.

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“Iris, we’ve gone over this, you need to relax your shoulders,” Knox ordered in a quiet but firm tone, lowering his binoculars. “And make sure you’re ready to fire on my command.” “I think I’ve got it,” Iris snapped in a low whisper. It’s not as if she didn’t know what to do. “You do know this isn’t my first time behind a sniper, right?” “Yes. But we just have to be sure.” “Sure of what? No one else had to do the training twice.” “I know. But Dad said you have to do it again because you’re a—” “Let me guess . . . a girl?” This was a common side effect of being the first female to carry the witch-hunting gene—always having to prove herself. And frankly, Iris was getting a little sick of it. “Hey, I don’t like it, okay?” Knox assured her. “But it’s Dad’s orders.” “Well, last I checked, Dad left you in charge when he up and went to Wales—” “On business,” Knox interrupted. “And you know he calls constantly to check in. So for now, what he says still goes.” Iris was thrilled when her father left for Wales and put Knox in charge. Not that she didn’t miss her father, because she did. But Iris and her brother had always been in sync and she was hoping things in the witch-hunting world would change for the better with Knox as their fearless leader. But they hadn’t, at least not yet anyway. Iris let out an exasperated sigh and flicked off the safety with an audible click. She steadied her frustrations, taking in a deep whiff of California air filled with exhaust, honeysuckle, and sea salt.

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Knox grinned and returned to his binoculars. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?” he asked with a playful tone, peering into the city’s darkness. “Knox, I swear to God, if you don’t leave me alone—” “You’ll what?” Iris growled but maintained her position, catching her brother crack a smile out of the corner of her eye. She was used to Knox being a dick and she had learned he didn’t mean a thing by it. Behind his tough-as-nails persona and intimidating brawn, there was a big soft teddy bear waiting to come out and shower people with hugs and kisses. He just preferred to keep his fluffy side in chains and let the devil on his shoulder reign free. Pretty much every woman at the Bently Fortress made a point to constantly remind Knox he looked like a Spanish god, or a Thor-meets-Bond remix. And because he spoke with actions and not words, he was mysterious too. Girls literally fell at his feet. It was disgusting. But despite the constant bumps to his ego, Knox was completely levelheaded and constantly knew what to do. Iris always thought she looked like Knox in a girl-suit. Her dark wavy hair fell past her shoulders and her coffee-colored eyes burned with fiery intensity. They both had a smattering of freckles atop their creamy pecan skin and their athletic physiques were perfect for intimidating people, something Iris liked to do whenever she had the chance. She peered through the lens of her thermal scope. Anything with a high heat signature showed up white against the flickering green background. The hotter the object, the more intensely it glowed. But there was still no sign of their mark. Iris was starting to feel uneasy.

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“It’s been over half an hour.” Knox checked his watch. “Maybe our intel was bad.” Iris, still lying on her stomach with her rifle pressed firmly against her shoulder, looked up with a snarl. “Well, Dex said she’d be here and his intel is never wrong, so . . .” She paused. “She’ll be here.” Another minute passed and Iris wondered if she was on the right rooftop. She desperately hoped she was. Her stomach wrapped itself in knots and her heart thrummed like a well-tuned racecar engine. “I’m not so sure about that, kiddo,” Knox said, still scanning the streets below with his binoculars. “But for your sake, I hope she is. I don’t want to have to tell Dad we didn’t get her.” Iris agreed. The last thing she wanted to do was to be forced to go through the grueling training course again. “Hey, guys,” a voice crackled in their inner ear coms. It was their cousin Dex, who was also a Hunter, and a good one at that. Like Knox, Dex was tall, dark, and terrifying. Definitely someone you don’t want to mess with. “Dex. Hey,” Iris quickly replied. “Please tell me our intel wasn’t bad.” “Well,” Dex started, “it wasn’t bad per se. But it was planted there for us to find. It looks like we may have ourselves a mole.” “What?” Iris jumped to her feet. “Are you serious?” “That’s not even the worst part,” Dex said, his voice slightly unsteady. His voice was never unsteady. Iris swallowed hard. “Dex, just tell us what’s going on already,” Knox demanded.

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“Well . . . a huge celebrity was murdered this afternoon. And I mean huge. We’re talking a twenty-two-year-old Oscar winner here. And it looks like it was the work of the witches.” Iris’s body went numb. The ground beneath her was spinning. “No. That can’t be right,” Iris said, almost pleadingly. “We had protection details in place all day.” “Well, that’s what I wanted to tell you,” Dex said. He paused. Iris could hear him breathing heavily through the com. The anticipation set her nerves on fire. “Iris.” He paused again and took a long breath. “She was killed on your watch.”

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Three

“That’s impossible!” Iris shouted, clinching her fists. "I wish that was the case. I really do,” Dex said over the com. His voice cracked. “You know I always have your back, chica.” Iris looked at Knox, hoping he had some answers. Knox stared blankly back at her, furrowing his brows and scratching his chin. His silence was driving her crazy. She took a moment to retrace her steps: Iris had spent the entire day slogging through the typical assignments—responding to a possible sighting at the Dolby Theatre, (AKA the Kodak), keeping watch at a rom-com movie premiere which was teeming with Hollywood Alisters, and then, the protection detail at the young actress’s home. She was a part of a team of four, led by one of the best Hunters in the business, Gerald Wexler. After the perimeter around the home was secure, Gerald left and did the unthinkable—he put Iris in charge. She was ecstatic, of course. Especially since she’d never been in charge of anything. And even though it was just for a few hours, Iris led her team with pride. She was certain a witch couldn’t have gotten past her. This had to be a mistake. "Knox, you know this can't be right,” she said with a stark tone. "Let's just go to the crime scene and check it,” he suggested. “I’m sure there’s some way to explain this.” The knot in Iris’s stomach loosened slightly. She quickly disassembled her rifle and stuffed the pieces into her backpack before slinging it over her shoulder. Without looking, she leaped backward off the rooftop, grabbing hold of a section of pipe on the side of the

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building and nimbly sliding her way to street level. A moment later Knox followed suit, jumping from the rooftop and plummeting nearly twenty feet. He landed with an audible thud. “Show-off,” Iris said snidely. Knox shrugged his shoulders and grinned. Her brother was never one to hide that he was a superior being. Hence, jumping off a four-story building like it was merely a sidewalk. The siblings marched back to their car parked several blocks away on Hollywood Boulevard. Known to the Hunters as “The Armada,” their custom Hummer was black with accents of gold on the door handles, the front bumper, and even around the wheels. Both the driver’s and passengers’ doors were inked with the Witch Hunter symbol—a gold circle with WH fused together inside the loop as if they were one letter. Just on top of the W was a small star representing their sector’s city—Hollywood. Iris settled in the passenger seat as Knox turned the keys. The engine let out a quiet rumble before roaring to life. Glowing buttons cut through the darkness, filling the cabin with a soft, amber glow. Each light represented a deadly Hunter weapon or countermeasure. The Armada was completely decked out and protected with spells making it undetectable to the human eye. Knox stabbed the gas and the tires let out a high-pitched chirp. The beast of a vehicle lurched forward and sped toward the house of the murdered Hollywood A-lister. Iris nervously tapped her foot. She was anxious to get the star’s home. She wouldn’t believe she was dead until she saw the body for herself. “So what do you think we’re in for?” Knox asked, keeping his eyes on the road. “What kind of spell do you think they used to kill her?”

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“I don’t know.” Iris let out a heavy sigh as tension danced in her stomach. “I’m hoping it wasn’t any spell and this was all just some big mistake." “You and me both.” They pulled up to the mansion to find the area swarming with cops, paparazzi, and bystanders. The outside of the home was elegant and chic, with brick walls and large doors reminiscent of an old storybook. The front lawn was a deep green and lined with cherry blossom trees that seemed more pink than usual, even in the evening light. The crime scene was already cordoned off by yellow tape. Iris felt a jolt of nausea. “I can’t believe this,” she said, peering out the window. She was just here a few hours ago, and was absolutely certain the coast was clear. Apparently, it was not. “Here,” Knox said, handing her their usual faux IDs. These tend to come in handy when you’re a teenage Hunter trying to protect humanity. No big deal or anything. “Thanks.” Iris slipped the badge around her neck and put on her aviator sunglasses, even though it was night. “Hopefully we won’t get the ‘Aren’t you too young to be FBI agents?’ or ‘I’ve never heard of your branch before,’ crap again. Not being questioned for once would be nice. But at least they’ll forget about us once we leave,” Iris said, motioning to her glasses. But the aviators were more than just fashionable, they were embedded with a powerful Idas spell, courtesy of a rogue witch that was captured and interrogated some years ago. Iris took a steadying breath and followed her brother as they paced toward the officer guarding the home. The cop had massive arms, a shiny, bald head, and stood tall even though he was just about the same height as Iris.

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The brother and sister flashed their badges in unison and Knox cleared his throat. “I’m John Richardson and this is my partner Kelly Graves. We’re with FBI Sector Eight.” “FBI Sector Eight?” the cop said, his eyebrow shooting up. “Never heard of that branch before.” The officer scratched his face. “Hey, aren’t you a little young to be working for the bureau?” “Unbelievable,” Iris muttered, pursing her lips into a hard line. She silenced a giggle before putting her game face back on. “Well, looks can certainly be deceiving,” Knox said with an air of condescension. “So. What’ve you guys got so far?” “What is this, some kinda joke?” the cop snapped at Knox. A large vein popped out on his forehead and his cheeks started to turn pink. “You kids better get the hell out of here before I charge you for interfering with a police investigation.” Iris looked at her brother. He nodded. It was time for her to step in. “Excuse me, sir,” Iris said with an inviting smirk. “Would you mind looking at me for just a second?” The cop ignored Iris and instead waved over another officer, who took out his handcuffs and was approaching fast. “All right. I warned you two,” the cop said, turning his gaze to Iris. “Gotcha.” Iris tapped the side of her aviators and the cop went mute and couldn’t move a muscle. Finally.

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“Okay, so you remember us: John Richardson and Kelly Graves from Sector Eight. We go way back. And you’re going to let us go in the house and do whatever we need to do. Got it?” The cop blinked twice and slowly nodded before returning to reality. He threw up his hand and dismissed the other officer, who let out an exasperated sigh as he put his handcuffs away and returned to his post. “Hey, John. Kelly. How are you guys?” the officer said, reaching out to shake their hands. His smug demeanor softened to warm and inviting. The Idas spells never fail. Iris smiled. “We’re great. Thanks for asking.” She wanted to laugh, but that wouldn’t have been professional. “Can you tell us what’s going on here?” Knox interjected, getting back to business. “Well, I couldn’t believe my eyes, you know?” The cop scrunched his forehead as he recollected the events. “She was so young and talented and seemed to be healthy, but it looks like she had a stroke. From what I can gather from the cleaning staff, the actress just dropped dead as she was walking down the stairs. No injuries we can see, and no suspects. Nothing stolen either.” “Well, where’s the cleaning staff?” Knox inquired. “Inside. You’re welcome to go check it out.” The cop motioned toward the door. “Thanks, man,” Knox said with a smirk. “I appreciate it.”

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Iris exhaled slowly before walking through the front door. The luxurious home was filled with a wispy haze that crept along the hardwood floor and slithered beside the walls before making its way up to the high ceilings. “Great,” Iris said as the bruma brushed over her face. She couldn’t deny it to anyone—there was magic here. She slowly knelt down beside the actress’s lifeless body. The corpse lay motionless at the foot of the stairs, the cheeks stained crimson as if she’d cried blood. Adjacent to the steps was an ornate glass case displaying an Academy Award, two Golden Globes, a couple of SAG Awards, and a handful of MTV Movie Awards. The case also contained an autographed book from a bestselling author whose movie the actress starred in last year—a movie that launched her career. Iris felt the injustice deep within her bones. She was devastated. This young actress should be preparing for her next film, not lying dead on the ground because of a scum-ofthe-earth witch. “You gonna do it or should I?” Iris groaned. She always hated this part. “I’ll do it,” her brother said. “But try to shield me a little so these cops don’t see me and think I’m some perv.” “You mean find out you’re a perv,” Iris said with snark, scooting in closer to conceal the body. Knox huffed and tugged at the actress’s collar, revealing the top portion of a bright red, lacy bra, and more importantly, the Cicatrix—a silver-gilded five-point star burned into the skin just above the actress’s right shoulder.

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“Yep. Definitely a witch,” Knox said flatly. He pulled a flashlight from his pocket and shone it in the actress’s open mouth before prying open one of her eyelids and flicking the beam across her pupils. “Moderate capillary damage. No postmortem reaction to light. What do you think, a Matas witch using one of their diseased bugs?” Iris shook her head. “Nope. Look at the burn pattern. See how it’s inconsistent? And how the points of the star are slightly blunted?” She traced her index finger over the raised mark. “Judging by the texture, I’d say it was a telepathy spell, and a rushed one at that, like she was interrupted. And since it’s telepathic, it looks like we’re dealing with a Protas witch.” Every witch used a unique spell to sacrifice their victims, and while most Hunters struggled to interpret the subtle differences, Iris had a knack for identifying them. It came easy to her. “It just looks like a star to me.” Knox shrugged his shoulders. “How can you tell all that?” Iris, lost in thought, ignored the question. “There hasn’t been a Protas sacrifice like this in years,” she mumbled. Sure, there’d been a few telepathic or telekinetic spells here and there; mainly witches ordering victims to kill themselves or giving them delusions to go mad. But other than that, nothing. Only a small number of Protas called Hollywood their home, though no one really knew why. “That’s a super high-level spell. I haven’t seen one since I started. But Dad said he dealt with a couple of high-level Protas back in the seventies.” Knox paused. “Maybe there’s a new witch in town?” Suddenly, out of the corner of her eye, Iris caught a glimpse of a Hispanic man and woman talking to the cops. She could hear them speaking Spanish and the officers didn’t

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seem to understand a word of what they were saying. But thanks to the many summers she spent traveling Colombia with her mom and grandma, Iris could. Knox missed these trips. He was usually on some secret excursion with their father. Iris was never allowed to go. “Hey, Knox, I think I found the cleaning crew,” Iris said, pointing to the man and woman. “Seriously, Iris?” Knox said, turning to look at them. “Why, just ’cause they’re Hispanic? That’s so racist.” “No, you idiot, I’ve been listening to their conversation.” She shook her head. “And besides, douche, we’re half-Colombian.” Knox laughed. “I’m just messing with you . . . jeez. Touchy much?” Iris clenched her fists. She usually enjoyed her brother’s humor, but today was not the day. Not when an actress was apparently killed on her watch. “Um, yeah. Thanks.” “All right, all right. I’m sorry. Okay?” he said, holding up his hands in surrender. “Why don’t you just go talk to them and figure out what they saw.” “Fine.” Iris could sense the fear of the man and the woman as she walked toward them. The man’s eyes were wide and the woman’s lower lip was quivering. She shot them a warm smile, explaining in Spanish they were not in trouble but that she needed to know what they saw. Both of them seemed to think the actress was murdered and when asked if they noticed any strange activity before the starlet died, they said they saw one of the most beautiful women they’d ever seen. They described her as tall and thin, yet possessing a curvaceous frame that was perfectly proportioned. This mysterious woman had long, golden locks that cascaded ever so gently down her face and back, perfectly illuminating her distinctly lavender eyes. The

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man commented on her alluring lips—plump and perky and the shade of the most delicate red rose—and the woman jabbed him in the side. Iris’s stomach dropped to her knees. There was only one witch she knew who matched that description: Belinda, the queen of the Hollywood Witch Coven. “Gracias,” Iris said abruptly. She returned to her brother, relaying the information. “It was Belinda. No question.” “And you’re sure?” “Did you hear what I just said? Who else do you know with lavender eyes, huge jugs, and a twenty-two inch waist?” “Unfortunately, no one,” Knox said, wryly. “Come on. Let’s head back.” Iris stole one last glance at the actress, lowering her head as she and Knox stepped outside. The sorrow hit her hard and her chest heaved as she walked down the driveway under a trail of cherry blossom petals. The once gruff cop guarding the door waved amicably as they walked back to The Armada. Knox threw the car in gear and peeled out into the street. A moment later his phone buzzed and he swiped at the screen. He smiled as he tapped out a message before slipping the phone back into his pocket and abruptly pulling a U-turn. Iris wondered what he was up to. “Lost much?” she said. Whoever was on the other end of that text seemed to be sending them in a different direction. “Hunters don’t get lost, they get temporarily disoriented,” her brother said with a grin. “Okay, well then, care to tell me where we’re going?”

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“I’m going—” Knox’s phone vibrated again and this time he put it to his ear. “I said I’m on my way, dude. Chillax.” His face suddenly turned somber. He sat up straight and cleared his throat. “Yes, sir.” His eyes darkened. “No, sir. I’m sorry. I thought you were—” Knox stopped talking. Iris knew there was only one person in the world, witch or otherwise, who could instill such fear in her brother: their dad. “Yes, sir. I’ll make sure it gets done.” Knox grimaced as he ended the call. A split second later he was back to his typical composed self. “What was that all about?” she asked. There was a part of her that didn’t want to know. However, Iris felt it was important to stay in the loop. The actress’s death was a game changer. “Dad,” Knox spit out quickly. “Oh really?” Iris said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Well, what did he say?” “He said the Hunters in San Francisco found a new recruit. He should be arriving at LAX within the hour.” “Wow,” she said pensively. “You guys haven’t had one of those in, like, forever, right?” “Something like that. Yeah.” “Well, let’s go to the airport.” Knox sucked his teeth. “Actually, you’ll be going alone on this one.” “What? I thought I’m ‘not allowed to take on assignments alone,’” Iris said with air quotes.

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“It’s just a pickup at the airport. Besides, Dex and I have some very important business to attend to.” Knox pulled into an empty, dimly lit parking lot near Coldwater Canyon Park and craned his neck upward, searching the sky. “What could be more important than picking up a new recruit?” Iris asked. “And what are you looking for?” She stared above her. Knox smiled, and that’s when Iris detected the faint but familiar sound of an approaching helicopter. Seconds later, a blacked-out chopper bearing the Hunter symbol was hovering above The Armada. Dex leaned out from the cockpit, keeping the chopper steady with one hand and waving excitedly with the other. “Iris! Hey!” Dex yelled from above. “Thanks for taking care of the pickup! We’ve been wanting to do a nighttime base jump downtown for like, weeks now. You rock!” Iris glared at Knox. “Really? You have to be freaking kidding me.” Knox casually shrugged his shoulders. “Thanks, sis,” he said, tossing Iris the keys and giving her a hearty slap on the back. Dex dropped a length of rope and Knox grabbed hold, giving a thumbs-up. The helicopter rose and flew off, disappearing into the darkness. “Unbelievable,” Iris grumbled, catching a whiff of exhaust as the helicopter flew away. She jammed the keys into the ignition and set off toward the airport. “This new recruit better be freaking worth it.”

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City of Fae Pippa DaCosta

The Trinity Law ~ Est. 1974

Look, but don’t touch. Touch, but don’t feel. Feel, but never ever love.

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Chapter One

I should have let him die. Had I known what saving him would mean for me, perhaps I would have. I hugged my bag close and pulled my coat tighter as the train I’d stepped from clattered out of the subway station, blasting me with hot, dry air in its wake. After the day I’d had, I didn’t want to go home; that much I knew. Lingering on the platform, alone but for a few late-night stragglers and a homeless guy slumped on the floor against a billboard, I checked my cell phone: searching for a signal: No notifications. What did I expect? For my boss to e-mail and say he’d made a mistake? That I actually hadn’t just been fired, and that it was an office prank? Haha. Seeing as nobody had gotten in touch with the punch line, I figured I was out of luck, and out of work. I checked the digital display above the platform: 22:15. Next train in three minutes. While tucking away my cell my gaze lingered on the homeless guy. Something about him gnawed at the part of my thoughts reserved for forgotten things. Steel-buckled boots climbed lean rippedjeans-clad legs. A long tattered coat covered the rest of him. Expensive, I assumed, from the tailored cut. Clothes designed to be disheveled. His scruffy, unkempt dark hair could have been styled that way. Maybe not homeless, I thought; probably wasted. Recognition darted through my thoughts. Could it be I’d seen him before? Many times in fact. Like any reporter in London, I knew him by reputation. I ambled closer, feigning interest in the billboard. If I could get a good look at his face, I’d know for sure. A wave of warm air signaled an arriving train, ruffling my coat and rifling through his hair. His eyes popped open. His gaze flicked to me, locking on with ruthless intensity. For the briefest of

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moments, three distinct coronas ringed his dark pupils, flecked with sharp filings of light. He blinked and his eyes softened to a less dazzling hue. Thousands of fans regularly swooned at the sight of those tricolored eyes. Sovereign, the infamous rock star fae, with a penchant for provoking the press. But this wasn’t right. He shouldn’t be here, slumped alone on a platform. Where was his entourage? Where were the groupies, and hangers-on? I glanced on either side of us. Nobody paid us any attention. My gaze landed on the EXIT sign, and I considered leaving. I really didn’t have the energy to humor a wasted celebrity, much less one of the toxic fae. Unless . . . unless I could use this, use him. I inched closer still. His eyes tracked me, flitting from head to toe, analyzing, brow pinched with suspicion. The next train to Leytonstone thundered in and screeched to a jarring halt behind me. My thoughts whirred. His being here could be the break I needed. Clearly something had happened, and given his reputation, whatever it was would be newsworthy. Sovereign’s fans would fall over themselves to read about his latest escapade. Instead of another reporter getting the scoop, it could be—no, it would be—my name on the byline. “Are you okay?” I crouched down, fumbling with my bag as it tried to slip off my shoulder. “Do you need help?” His earthy eyes narrowed. His face had the sort of fine angles that would have made him beautiful if not for the hard slash of a smile. Up close, there was no mistaking him. Curiosity fluttered my heart. The notorious London fae had landed in my lap. His hand shot out from beneath his coat and clamped on mine. A yelp lodged in my throat as a sharp pins-and-needles sensation rushed up my arm. “Hey!” I tugged, but he jerked me closer, almost yanking me off balance and into his lap. The sweet smell of autumn berries—and

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a darker scent, something lusciously male and intoxicating—filled the air as he whispered against my cheek. “Help me.” His voice grated, the sound strangled. “Let me go.” Turning my head, I locked my glare on his. The multifaceted colors were back; green to blue to violet, but beyond that, deeper, something hungry and wild peered back at me. His grip tightened and he blinked, erasing all traces of what I thought I’d seen. “Not yet.” “Let. Go.” The fae are quicker, stronger than we are, but it was his touch I feared. Look, but don’t touch . . . The numbness spread to my shoulder, and with it came a gut-churning wave of nausea. I tugged again, but his cool fingers clamped tighter still. “Just a few seconds more,” he growled. “Let me go right now or I’ll scream,” I hissed. “And I don’t think you want that kind of attention, do you?” A muscle twitched in his jaw. “Just help me onto the next train.” “To Leytonstone?” “I don’t care where. They’re too close. I have to . . .” He flinched, and a swathe of numbness wrapped around my arm. “Sovereign, damn it, let go.” Seconds passed. He searched my face, looking for what I have no idea, but he seemed to find it. His fingers released, and a tingling warmth spilled into the void left by the numbness. I stood, rubbing feeling back into my hand. I could have walked by him the first time I’d seen him. I should have walked away then, for the second time. Or maybe the choice was never mine to make. “Asshole.”

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His hard smile twitched. “Nice to meet you.” He held out a fine-fingered hand that hadn’t seen a day’s hard labor in its life. “Help me up.” “I’m not helping you up. You just assaulted me.” He moved slowly, languidly rolled on his side and onto a knee, as though it pained him. Was he faking it? The fae weren’t like this. They were all catwalk grace and acute control. He looked like he’d been run over by a bus. With a frustrated growl, I clasped his sleeve and pulled. He stumbled to his feet, leaning into me. The Trinity Law was very clear when dealing with the fae. Look, but don’t touch was the first level of protection. I shoved him back and shot him a scowl. He straightened to his impressive six-foot-plus height, rolled his shoulders to work out the kinks, and checked the platform around us, eyes darting. He fixed his gaze on the exits. Looking for crazed fangirls, perhaps? Commuters filed onto the subway cars, oblivious to my altercation with a fae. Was it fear that had him on high alert? What on earth could spook a fae like him? I found myself checking the exits too; his anxiety contagious. “You got a problem with the fae?” he asked. Who didn’t? “No. It’s just . . . I’ve never seen one up close before.” I’d interviewed plenty of their victims, though. “Congratulations. Now you have.” His sneer was back, masquerading as a smile. He dipped his chin, and those gorgeous eyes widened, three colors blooming. “I’m sorry I forced the touch. Will you accept my apology?” I snorted. “Save the sweet talk. I know who you are, and I’m not falling for it.” “Fine.” The magic pooling in his eyes dissipated. “Could you at least help me onto the train?”

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This was my chance to wash my hands of him. I could have looked back on the encounter and thanked lady luck I’d walked away. He’d already broken the first law. A woman smarter than I would have told him exactly where to go. But I needed my scoop if I was going to fight for my job and in terms of newsworthiness, he was hot. “Sure.” I tried out my most genial smile and swept my hair back, hoping he didn’t notice my hand tremble. He seemed to buy it. With seconds to spare, the door-closing alarms beeping a warning, we stumbled into the empty train car. He collapsed onto one of the seats, managing to sprawl lean limbs and commandeer as much space as possible. Movement outside the train caught my eye. Three men spilled onto the platform. All tall, slim, quick as whips, with the same fine bone structure and impossibly perfect conformation. But beneath their long coats I caught a glimpse of polished weaponry. Fae daggers and short swords; blades as lethal as their wielders. Only the elite Fae Authority were permitted to carry blades in public. Well, wasn’t this a night full of surprises. They spotted Sovereign and surged toward our car. “Friends of yours?” I asked. Sovereign turned and spat a vivid curse. The faces of the FA darkened with intent. One Authority warrior pointed and barked an order, but our train jerked into motion and pulled out, plunging into the tunnel and away from Reign’s pursuers. It didn’t take a genius to figure out he was in trouble. Standing by the closed doors, I ran my gaze over him once more. Usually preened and styled to rugged perfection on TV, his polished persona had tarnished. Dirt, and what looked suspiciously like splashes of blood, stained his clothes. Look, but don’t touch. Not to be trusted, self-centered, manipulative, only after one thing; the touch. That was the fae. “What’s your name?” he asked, opening his eyes and fixing them once more on me.

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“Alina.” “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Alina. I’m Sovereign.” He said it as though expecting applause. I arched an eyebrow. “I know.” A broad self-important smile cruised across his lips. “Reign to my friends.” And he made it sound like an honor to speak his name. “You have friends?” “Ooh.” He clenched a hand over his chest and exaggerated a wince. “Sticks and stones.” A wild little smile curled my lips before I could shoo it away. “You’re American?” he asked. “Yeah . . .” I hesitated. I’d lived in London almost a year, and at first I worried my accent might mark me as foreign, but London, with her web of ancient streets and forgotten avenues, embraces lost souls. I was just another anonymous face among thousands. “American, huh . . .” Reign remarked, holding my gaze as if he could stare me into telling him more. I certainly had no intention of telling him anything I didn’t have to, especially considering he’d touched me and broken the law. He’d obviously been weak, and a weak fae is a dangerous thing. “Relax,” he drawled, noting my scowl. “I just took a little of your draíocht. It won’t have any lasting effects.” When my scowl pinched into a glare, he frowned. “I didn’t have a choice.” He paused, giving his next words gravitas. “I am in your debt.” My draíocht; the aura of energy all living things exuded. He pronounced it as dree-ocht, and curled something of an accent into the word, lending it an exotic flavor. The fae needed it to live. It just so happened we had enough for them to tap into, and could replenish our reserves. I

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shifted from foot to foot. One single touch wouldn’t be enough to cause any lasting damage, if the leaflets and public service announcements were anything to go by, but I still felt peculiar; exposed. A tingling numbness skittered beneath the palm of my hand. Perhaps I could treat this experience like research. I’d written my fair share of fae-victim stories. Well, now I had a little firsthand knowledge. I’d been in the midst of a fae bespellment story when I’d been let go from my internship, and while I had no desire to be this fae’s victim, I wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity to get closer to him. “Someone else might not have been so forgiving . . .” I trailed off as he planted both boots on the floor and leaned forward. His gaze dug deep, seeing through me, into me, sending a flight of tremors beneath my skin. Rocking with the motion of the train he tilted his head and studied me. I glared right back at him. If he thought I was going to wilt underneath that gaze, he was in for a surprise. “Do you believe in fate?” he asked. Fate? I could have laughed. I wanted to, if only to ease the unexpected tension. “No.” “No?” “You do?” “No.” “Wait, what? Then why ask?” “Because there are worse things than fate.” Okay, was he high? I shook my head and crossed my arms. “Is this something to do with the FA following you?”

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Wincing, he snatched his gaze away. “Yeah.” When he eventually faced me again, the intensity had vanished. “If you hadn’t have helped, they’d have found me, and in the condition I was in . . .” He bowed his head, thoughts obviously wandering. This sorry fae specimen, beaten up and soul weary, had the kind of weight on his shoulders that would crush him over time. This wasn’t the Sovereign who exuded sex appeal and played to the cameras. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of him. “What did you do to upset them?” “There’s a list.” Lifting his head, he blinked. “A very long list somewhere with my name on it, and the crimes I’ve supposedly committed.” “Ah, so really you’re innocent.” His grin was a sly thing, it didn’t reach his eyes. I suspected those wicked smiles, designed to seduce an audience, had no real substance behind them. “Until proven guilty.” I could see why some fell over their own feet to know him. He certainly had the looks, and a sharp wit to complete the desirable package. But Sovereign, like all fae, was too dangerous to touch. Too easy to fall for. And before you knew it, you’d broken the Trinity Law and had no hope of escaping him, and no desire to. As if reading my mind, he asked, “You ever broken the rules, Alina? Maybe done something you shouldn’t have?” He didn’t wait for my reply, but instead gave his head a dismissive shake, “Of course you haven’t. I’ll tell you this for free, American Girl, fate’s a bitch that’ll bite you whether your choices are right or wrong.”

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The car groaned and complained as it hurtled down the tracks while I stood, clutching the upright pole, letting his words and their gravity settle around us. He didn’t look much older than me, and yet his words dragged a lifetime of experience behind them. “Well? What mistakes have you made?” he asked. I wondered if I should tell the arrogant fae to mind his own business or lead him on, lure him in. It went against my better judgment to lie, even just a little, and yet I had a twitching sense of panic when I considered I’d have to leave him at the next stop. Just how far was I willing to go to discover more about him? Why was he here? What had he done? He watched me, waiting for my reply. At least his eyes were honest. There was something else though. Some niggling sensation, like an itch I couldn’t scratch, or the unsettling sensation of knowing I’d forgotten something important, that I was missing the obvious, as though his being here was significant and I should know why. His question sidelined, I asked, “Have we met before?” He leaned back and cast his gaze about the empty car. “Don’t think so. I have a good memory for faces, and yours is new.” The train slowed with a shudder and the screech of brakes. If I got off at the next station I’d probably never see him again. A tiny jolt of panic skipped my heart a beat. As though sensing it, Reign drew his gaze back to me. That was how the city worked. So many people, so many opportunities. At that very moment, as much as I hated to admit it, I needed him. Maybe there was such a thing as fate. Maybe that was the disjointed sensation crawling beneath my skin. Maybe if I walked away, my career, my life in London, would be over. What if he was the one opportunity to get things back on track? Perhaps more important, could I walk away?

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“Are you going to be okay?” I asked, raising my voice over the sound of the grinding train cars. He flashed what could have been a genuine smile but it didn’t linger long. “Thanks to you.” The train halted. He rocked in his seat, settled back and flicked me a parting salute. “Have a good life, Alina.” The doors hissed open. This was my stop. And this was good-bye. I smiled a reluctant farewell, wracked my thoughts for an excuse to stay that didn’t make me sound like a desperate reporter, and turned toward the door. A figure blocked my way, so close I could smell the warm leather scent of his coat. Jerking my head up, I recognized telltale tricolored eyes of the fae, but that was where the similarity to Reign ended. These eyes were gray, like thunderclouds, and just as angry. Thin, bloodless lips stretched over sharp fae canines. “Hey, you wanna move?” I grumbled. He grabbed my wrists—hands like steel—whirled me around, and shoved me away. “Stay back, girl,” he snarled, fixing his glare on Reign. “Hey!” Who the hell did he think he was? I considered offloading a verbal assault when he produced a dagger from inside his coat. Curved like a grin, light glanced off the notched blade and sparked in the trail of tiny gems inset into the guard. The train lights flickered, licking off half a dozen daggers and knives strapped flush against his leather-clad body. FA, and clearly not to be screwed with. The doors shut and the train shuddered into motion.

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Reign sprang to his feet and backed down the aisle. Head down, glare up, he smiled and beckoned the fae with a curl of his fingers. “Nice knife, General, but size isn’t everything. Care to impress me?” The general’s thin lips rippled in a snarl. “Sovereign. By decree of the Fae Authority, I hereby revoke your roaming rights. You will submit, and obey, or deadly force will be employed.” Reign flipped him off, baiting the general into action. He shot forward, tackled Reign, driving a shoulder into his chest, and rammed him through the closed doors as if they were made of paper. Reign clamped his arms around the general, narrowly avoiding being chewed up between the train cars and spat out onto the tracks. The car shuddered, thundering through the tunnel. Reign brought his knee up somewhere sensitive. The general oomphed over, leaving himself exposed for the elbow Reign thrust into the back of his neck. They fought dirty, up close and personal, snarling and grunting, more like animals than men. This was personal. As the general sprawled forward, Reign pinned him down and drove a fist into his side, but it didn’t seem to have much effect. The general bucked, twisted, and brought the knife around. Reign caught his wrist, blocking the slash before it could cut across his cheek. The fae thrust his head back, cracking his skull against Reign’s chin, whipping the rock star’s head back. I had a hard time tracking their brawl, torn between wincing and watching. The general grappled with Reign and the dagger, shoving the rock star into a window. Glass smashed and tunnel-air ripe with city smells of dust and ozone blasted into the car. I had to do something. This wasn’t some insignificant brawl. They were out for blood. Someone was going to get killed. “Hey . . .” I couldn’t stand by and watch. “Stop.” Neither paid me any attention. I scanned the car and found the Break This If Serious Shit Happens alarm.

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Punching through the plastic, I snatched the handle and yanked. Brakes wailed, the car locked, and I went flying down the aisle. Pain blasted through my skull. The sharp coppery taste of blood on my tongue only worsened with the imminent threat of either throwing up or passing out. Through a murky haze, Reign’s outline blurred. Sparks of light flared off sharp edges, growls resounded, but I had no desire to watch. I could maybe take a nap, right there, on the sticky floor of the car. Maybe I wouldn’t even see tomorrow. A hand scooped my languid body upright onto jellified legs. Without an explanation or warning, we were outside, on the bitter London streets. A bus thundered by, splashing through a puddle, drenching me. I wanted to ask how it was possible we were aboveground, but couldn’t muster the strength to speak. “Where do you live?” Reign’s colorful eyes were all I could see. So beautiful, like butterfly wings. He gave me a shake and muttered a curse. “Alina . . . Just tell me where; say the words. I can get you home.” “Mile End.” I mumbled something like an address, possibly mine, and stumbled forward, pitching into him. In a blink and with the smell of sweet forbidden things briefly raising questions in my head, we were moving again, or were we? The street tilted. Colors bled into one another, yellow streetlight danced with the red taillights of passing cars. Reign’s arms closed around me, drawing me against him. “It’ll be okay . . . You’re safe with me, for a little while,” he said, and I almost believed him. In the next stomach-flipping moment we were standing in the dark, in my tiny apartment, dripping dirty street water onto my floor. An “Oh,” whooshed from my lips before the darkness rushed in.

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Chapter Two

There was a fae in my kitchen. I was still asleep, wasn’t I? I’d dreamed the crazy events on the tube, because there was no way any of that could have happened. If I’d dreamed that, perhaps losing my job had been a figment of my imagination too? The faucet in my kitchen spluttered. I jerked out of bed, almost falling over my own feet. Okay, so I had a tee on, and panties, and for some reason socks, but I had no memory of getting into bed or removing my clothes. And there was definitely a fae in my kitchen. At least, I assumed it was him—Reign. Smug-ass “you-should-know-my-name” Reign. Although, the intruder could have been the FA general. What if he’d followed me back? Weapons. I needed a weapon. Snatching the hair straighteners from the dresser, I crept toward my bedroom door and peeked into the one room that made up my living room and kitchen. The trespasser rattled a few things and slammed cupboard doors. Whoever it was, they weren’t concerned with letting me sleep. I eased the door open a few more inches, just enough to get my head through. Oh yeah, that was Reign. His back to me, head down, the cut of his black tank top revealed a kiss of a spider tattoo where his shoulder muscles flexed. I deliberately flicked my meandering gaze higher, to where the disheveled cut of his dark hair revealed the elegantly pointed tips of his ears. Fae. A real-life celebrity fae was raiding my kitchen cupboards. He reached for a glass, and I got a good look at the sinewy ripple of corded muscles in his arm. Considering he probably spent more time partying than working out, he had a predatory physique, muscles molded by

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survival and honed to the pinnacle of evolution. And we thought we were the top of the food chain. That was until the fae “came-out” and dashed our fragile human egos. “You plannin’ on attacking me with hair straighteners? Should I call my stylist?” Busted. I threw the straighteners onto my bed. When I turned back, he’d moved to stand in front of me, close enough to see the oil-on-water play of color in his eyes. A few scuff marks marred his cheek; the only outward sign he’d been brawling on a subway train. I gulped, and silenced my runaway thoughts. “You actually pay someone to make you look like that?” “I don’t pay for anything,” he purred, dropping his gaze to where it had no right to roam. “Hey, pal.” I tugged my T-shirt down and threw my shoulders back. “I didn’t ask you to come back here. I should call the police.” He took a step back, his smile skewing to one side, as though it might slip from his lips at any moment. “You were about to pass out on the street.” “And whose fault was that?” I touched my head and winced. Reign’s smile wasn’t helping. I glared, trying to inject some genuine threat into it, and retreated to my bedroom, closing the door on him. I wasn’t going to argue with a stranger in my apartment while half-dressed. Throwing on some skinny jeans and a loose shirt, I raked my hair back and tied it up, muttering to myself the whole time. Okay, calm down. Think about this rationally. He’d been hurt, I helped him. He was attacked by the FA. Or, more accurately, the FA general attempted to arrest him. I tried to help, hit my head, and somehow we ended up back here. Sounded simple. But there was a lot more going on. Why had he been hurt? Why were the Fae Authority after him? What happened to the general? Questions were my profession. At least, they would have been, had I not been fired. I was about to turn my luck around though. We make our own fate, and

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whatever Reign had done, the story would surely get a second-page slot, maybe even front page. He could make my career. I shook my head at my reflection and frowned at the bruise over my right eye. It could have been much worse. The FA didn’t mess around. The general could easily have gutted Reign right in front of me. I might not like him, but that didn’t mean I wanted to witness his death. How had Reign spirited us away from the general? He hadn’t exactly been bright eyed and bushy tailed when I’d found him. A curious tingling danced up my tight arm. I shook it out. Reign had taken my draíocht. It took more than one touch for the fae to bespell their victims, but that single touch was enough to seed suggestion in weak minds. The Trinity Law had been drummed into me since I could remember. Look, but don’t touch. Touch but don’t feel. Feel, but don’t love. Three levels of protection. If you failed those safeguards, you could essentially wave good-bye to free will and throw yourself at the feet of your new fae master. Fae bespellment wasn’t nearly as rare as the government wanted it to be. Hence the TV campaigns, press adverts, and election promises. “Do you need help?” Even his smooth voice held a smirk as it drifted below my closed door. Opening the door, I stepped around his tall, languid self, propped against the wall. Cats had that “you must step around me” attitude. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kick you out right now.” “You’re curious.” “No . . .” My tone amped up, undermining my lie. Damn it, he already had me pegged. Maybe he wasn’t just a pretty face. Or I was just easy to read. “How did we get back here?”

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“After absorbing your draíocht, I jumped us out of there.” He made it sound perfectly reasonable. “You jumped us? I didn’t know fae could do that.” What a thought that was. Fae who could appear and disappear at will. They were already twice as strong as us, fast too. He smirked, probably catching the concern on my face. “They can’t. I’m special. Add it to my exceedingly long list of talents.” I’d be sure to do that once I’d submitted my story. His devoted fans would love that little tidbit of information, especially if he’d used it to rattle the authorities. The fae weren’t meant to use their abilities in public, like stealing draíocht. If reported, the FA revoked their roaming rights, essentially putting them under house arrest. Was that why the FA were after him? Had he been flaunting his “special” attributes? Clearly, Reign was either looking for trouble or running from it, and I was going to figure out which. “Risky . . . ?” I baited. With a shrug, he pushed off the wall and toured my tiny apartment. “It’s not something I make a habit of doing. It quickly exhausts me.” He paused by the cold fireplace and braced an arm on the mantelpiece, bowing his head. “Have you lived here long?” he asked. “A year.” “You don’t get out much?” “Huh?” “Your home is sparse.” He gestured at the room. “Cold. No photos. Nothing personal.” I followed the tracks of his gaze with my own. Sure, my place was functional. A couch, a TV, what else did a person need? I shrugged a shoulder. “It’s a place.”

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“Boyfriend?” “That’s none of your business.” Wasn’t I meant to be the one asking the questions? “You just say what you want, don’t you. You can’t go around asking people personal things.” “Why?” His eyes sparkled. “It’s . . . personal. I don’t know you.” “We should change that. Ask me anything.” Finally. “What were you doing on the platform last night?” “Trying not to die. You?” “I got fired. That’s why I was out so late. I needed to clear my head.” I stopped myself before I could say too much. “Were you really dying?” “Yes. We can’t replenish draíocht like you can.” He stooped at the coffee table and flipped through a copy of Hello magazine. “I should point out, that in all other areas, I excel.” A soft little curl of laughter escaped his lips as something in the magazine caught his eye. “They always get the facts wrong. If they cared to ask me, I’d tell them the truth. I didn’t sleep with her. I remember her though . . . Her disgusted expression when I said no.” “Good for you,” I mumbled. “And the fae with the dagger? The general. Is he dead?” He straightened, article forgotten, and frowned, ruining the proud lines of his face. “Unfortunately not; the FA are formidable. The general even more so. He’s not someone I’d have picked to piss off.” He rubbed his neck, brushing over the spider tattoo. “At full strength I could beat him, but not as I am. I don’t suppose you’d like to help with that . . . Share a little more of yourself?” He smoothed his voice, and asked with a purr, “Top me up?” I dipped my chin and glared. “I’m not one of your doe-eyed fangirls.”

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“Didn’t think so.” He’d made his way around my living room and returned to my kitchen to resume his search of the cupboards. “I need food. Do you have anything to eat in this barren place?” “Wow, you just say what you think, don’t you?” “It’s a talent.” He opened the fridge. “Among many other extraordinary talents I exhibit. Ask me what I can do with my tongue.” “No, thank you.” “C’mon, I see questions burning in your eyes, American Girl. You’re curious about me, about what I can do. I have more talent in my little finger than most humans can exhibit in their entire lifetime.” “I guess modesty isn’t one of them?” “This is me being modest. If I turned on my charm, you’d forget your own name and beg me to tell you it.” I rolled my eyes. Arrogant. Smug. He probably had no idea what real life was like. Did his stylist pick his wardrobe? His PA probably paid his bills, attended to the mundane so he didn’t have to. Did he have someone stroking his ego 24/7? No, he clearly didn’t need any help with that. “What job do you do, Alina?” My thoughts stumbled. I mentally groped for a lie. Teacher? No, where did that come from? Nanny? Kids—yikes! Think of a normal job and quickly. Zookeeper. Oh, for heaven’s sake. I couldn’t lie to save my life.

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“Shall I ask an easier question? I know it must be difficult to have a celebrity of my caliber standing in your flat. I’m afraid I forget the effect I have on your kind.” He threw a playful look over his shoulder, the kind of look that shouldn’t be used in public; a private sideways glance, laden with salacious intentions. It was real. It might even have been the first real look he’d given me since we’d met. And it occurred to me that Reign knew exactly what stereotype he played to, and he played it well. It was an act. All of this. The swagger, the ego. A stage act, designed to disarm and play on my preconceived ideas. I’d fallen for it, played right into his hands. Deeper, behind the teasing, the quick wit and cheap smiles, Reign was something else, someone else. Oh, he was so much smarter than I’d realized. He’d shown me a glimpse of the truth in that look. So I gave him a little truth in return. “Reporter,” I replied, clearing my throat. “Well, sorta . . . I was an assistant with the Metro, but . . . that’s over with. Austere times; the Internet squeezing out the press, blah-blah . . .” He stilled and for a few seconds I wondered if I was about to witness a less-than-charming side of Reign. Swinging the refrigerator door closed, he turned the full weight of his stare on me. “You’re a reporter?” He chuckled and raked his hands through his hair. “Of all the people. . . ..” “Ex-reporter.” His eyes narrowed in a decidedly unfriendly way. “So, you’ve read all about me. You think you know me, don’t you.” “I know enough. You’re the lead singer from that band . . . Oh, what’s its name? Touché?” He rolled his eyes. “You’re clearly incompetent. I can see why they fired you.” I clicked my fingers. “Tatiana?”

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His brow arched. “Is this your attempt at humor?” I’d rattled a fae, and I liked it. “Well, you’re not that famous.” “Tell that to my agent. It’s Touched.” He made a dismissive pfft noise. “Don’t get any ideas, American Girl. I am not your story. I have enough to deal with without you selling my secrets to the tabloids.” “Are there secrets?” I picked at a nail, feigning disinterest. “I’m in your pokey flat, in the asshole of nowhere, when I should be wrapped between silk sheets in Kensington, accompanied by a fine redhead, mentally preparing for my concert at the end of the week. You’re the reporter; you figure it out.” He looked at me hard, drilling his stare into me, daring me to rise to the challenge. Yes, there really were secrets. But while he might look relatively harmless, he wasn’t. Seductive, mysterious, aloof, and any reporter would give her right arm for the inside scoop on Sovereign, lead singer of Touched. He knew it too, hence the hard-as-nails stare. “Will you sell me out?” he asked, working his jaw around a bite of anger. “Nothing really happened.” Yet. “What’s to sell?” Several knocks rapped against my door. I flicked my gaze to it, then back to Reign, who certainly didn’t look any more pleased than he had a second ago. “Miss Alina O’Connor? Could you open the door please? It’s Detective Andrews and Detective Miles, from the Metropolitan Police.” Reign invaded my personal space with all of his overt faeness. If I’d had time to react, I’d have pushed him away, but before I could blink, he bowed his head and whispered against my cheek. “You think you know me. You don’t.” I planted my hands against his chest, but his words

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locked me down before I could push. “You believe you know what’s happening here. You don’t. This isn’t my story Alina, it’s yours.” The thin veil of air between us wobbled, rippling my focus, and then snapped back into sharp clarity, minus Reign’s looming black-clad presence. He’d vanished, leaving the ghost of his words whispering in my ear. The detectives knocked again. “Miss O’Connor? It’s in your best interest to let us in. It’s regarding the fae-at-large you were seen with yesterday evening.” Fae-at-large? Damn it, Reign. What was I supposed to say to the police? What the hell had Reign meant when he said I didn’t understand what was happening? What exactly had he done? I steeled myself with a few deep breaths, repeated the mantra “I have nothing to worry about” in my head, and, plastering what I hoped to be an innocent smile on my face, I opened the door.

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Chapter Three

The plainclothes detectives made themselves at home, accepting my offer of coffee as they settled on my two-seater couch like crows on a gate. Due to an unfortunate habit of appearing guilty, even if I hadn’t done anything wrong, I kept my back to them as I fixed their drinks, chewing on my lip. You believe you know what’s happening here. You don’t. This isn’t my story, Alina, it’s yours. Reign’s words rattled about my head. “Do you know much about the fae, Miss O’Connor?” Detective Andrews asked in a syrupy voice, which neither peeked nor dropped. The type of voice designed for radio. A trust-me voice. “A little. The usual.” A tingling skittered up my right arm, giving me another excuse to silently curse Reign. “Been in London long?” Andrews’s partner, Detective Miles asked, his cockney accent spikey in comparison. He jerked his head, birdlike, and narrowed his beady eyes on me. Miles had to be twice as old as his partner, maybe late forties, and yet the much younger Andrews commanded the authority in the room. Perhaps it was how Andrews sat, as though hanging on my every word. He looked at me in that raw way cops do, reading everything, assuming nothing. His eyes held a steady intelligence, warning me not to test him. “A year,” I replied. Miles dipped his chin and rummaged inside his oversized coat, before plucking free a pen and notepad. “A year, huh . . . You’re American? Are there many fae in the US?” He didn’t look up, and didn’t seem to care much for the answer.

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“Some.” Andrews blinked, and for a few moments we held our gazes before he scratched at his chin and cleared his throat. “What do you do, Miss O’Connor, for employment?” I told him, neglecting to mention my recent departure, and peeked over my shoulder while pouring hot water into their cups. Miles scribbled something on his pad in tight chicken-scratch marks. “Is there something I should know?” I asked. “You mentioned about this chat being in my interest?” Andrews shifted forward and cleared his throat. “You were at Chancery Lane Underground Station last night?” “Yeah.” I handed their coffees over. With nowhere to sit, I loitered around the kitchen bar, trying not to fidget, but the more I fought to stay still, the more I wriggled. I really had no reason to worry. So why is it getting hot in here? “You saw the fae known as Sovereign?” How much to tell them? How much did they already know? “I helped a guy onto a train, if that’s who you mean?” “You didn’t recognize him?” Andrews asked, tasting his coffee and wincing. “Sure. He kinda stands out—” “Did he touch you?” He placed his coffee down and pushed it forward, like poking roadkill. “Excuse me?” “It’s a simple question,” he said easily, but the answer wasn’t simple. If the detectives knew Reign had touched me, skin-to-skin, they’d assume I was tainted by the fae. Marked. And my words wouldn’t be trusted. “I helped him up, so yeah, I guess.”

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He scratched at his chin and settled his astute gaze on me once more. “Miss O’Connor, you do know not to touch the fae?” He wasn’t much older than me, and yet I bristled, feeling as though I was being chastised. “Yes, I know that. I didn’t touch his hand, or anything, just his sleeve.” The lie came easier than I’d expected. I crossed my arms and attempted to smile sweetly while my palm itched. Andrews gave me a neutral, nonjudgmental, innocent-until-proven-guilty look. I bet he still looked as genial and unruffled when he slapped the cuffs on the bad guys. I pushed a lock of hair away from my face. “I just helped him up; it’s not a crime.” “Uh-huh.” He glanced at his partner who continued to scratch his way through the paper. “Did you linger at Chancery Lane Station long?” Wow, his questions cut like knives right to the heart of the matter. No small talk from him. “No, a few minutes. Just until the next train came in.” “You didn’t explore the station?” There’s not much to explore, I thought. Where on earth was he going with this? “No. We got on the next train, traded a few comments, and I got off. Why would I explore the station?” “Were you aware there are some disused tunnels adjoining Chancery?” Andrews asked, ignoring the sideways glance from his partner. “No, I’m not an engineer. What does this have to do with anything?” “Where exactly did you get off?” Andrews pressed, not in the least perturbed. “Huh?” “Where did you disembark the train, Miss O’Connor?”

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I blinked: if he was trying to confuse me, he was doing a damn good job. “Mile End. Look, should I be worried? I haven’t done anything wrong.” He blinked, gave me a second to think he’d let me have room to breathe, and then asked, “Did you touch your card out?” “My what? Oh, my travel card. Um, well, yeah, of course I did. I mean, I must have.” If they checked, they’d know I hadn’t. My shoulders bobbed in a shrug. An awkward silence descended. “I haven’t done anything wrong.” “We’re not implying that you have. These are just routine questions while we try to establish a timeline of events.” Andrews blinked, so unassuming. “Did Sovereign say anything unusual?” I swallowed. The entire conversation with Reign in the train car had been unusual, from fate to mistakes. “I, uh . . . No, small talk mostly, ya know, the weather.” The British liked talking about the weather, so he’d buy that. “How did he look?” It sounded like a simple question. All his questions did. But there were layers behind his words. Meanings I didn’t understand. So relaxed, so polite. Maybe I should trust him. Tell him everything. Clearly Reign was in serious trouble if the Met were searching for him too. And yet, if I told Andrews all the details and Reign discovered I’d talked, he’d never trust me enough to tell me why he’d been sprawled on the platform. My story would be dead in the water. Miles tapped his pen on his notepad: Tap-tap, Alina . . . We know you’re lying . . . tap-tap. “He uh . . . He . . . looked like a fae?” Andrews’s unimpressed frown said, Try again.

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I licked my dry lips. “I don’t know, untidy, I guess.” The dark splatters on Reign’s clothes had probably been spilled wine. Yes, wine, definitely wine, and not blood. “He didn’t get off at your stop?” “No. I left him on the train. Is he in trouble or something?” “You could say that, yes. Whilst we can’t officially arrest a fae—they have their own method of operating—we do have permission to investigate his whereabouts. He is deemed a danger to the public; we’re trying to locate him sooner rather than later.” “A danger to the public?” I snorted, and then remembered how Reign had held his own against the general. Had I not pulled the alarm, only one of them would have walked away from that fight, and I suspect it would have been Reign. “What did he do? Upset some love-struck fan? Trash a hotel room?” Stony faces peered back at me until my smile withered and died. “We’re not at liberty to release the details.” Andrews dug into his pocket, withdrew a wallet, and plucked free a Metropolitan Police card. “I strongly advise you call us if you see him again.” I got a glimpse of a photo in his wallet, of him with a young girl, early teens, and an older guy with the same eyes as Andrews, his arm looped around the girl’s. Easy smiles all round. Older brother and younger sister perhaps? He flipped his wallet closed and placed the card neatly on my coffee table. He stood, and Miles followed. They thanked me for the coffee and headed for the door. That was it? Had I missed something? I followed after them, eager to shut them out and Andrews turned. “You don’t recall seeing a fight break out? The train didn’t stop suddenly? There was nothing remarkable about that journey home last night?”

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My shallow smile wriggled as I fought to keep it hooked on my lips. “Nope. Like I said, I was pretty whacked-out after a long day.” He knows. “How did you get the bruise?” He gestured lightly at my forehead. My hand reflexively shot to the bruise. Don’t say you walked into a door, don’t say it . . . “I . . . it’s stupid really, kitchen cupboard, door open . . . I’m a klutz.” A smile cracked Andrews’s neutral face, softening the stalwart detective. It was a gentle smile, but honest. “Give me a call, Alina, if you think of anything, anything at all. Or if you see Sovereign again.” “Sure thing, Detective.” I closed the door behind them and sighed. They knew I was lying. Probably saw the whole thing play out on CCTV, complete with Reign’s vanishing trick. So why didn’t they call me out on it? Whatever this had been about, it wasn’t over. The arrival of the Met confirmed what I already knew. I needed answers. I gave the cops ten minutes to get clear, grabbed my coat and left my apartment. There was one place I’d get the lowdown on Reign. The Metro offices in Kensington. I needed to clear out my desk; while doing that, I could do a little investigating of my own. Whatever crime Reign may or may not have committed, the Metro’s database would have it. There was information in their network that would make politicians blush. I was about to discover everything Mister I Don’t Pay for Anything had to hide.

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