Authors: Bethany Frenette
“Oh, come on. Winter’s not that bad,” Gideon said.
I made a face at him. “You bike in the snow and wear shorts when it’s twenty degrees out. Your opinion is invalid.”
He just grinned. “Minnesota born and raised, baby!”
“So am I,” I retorted. “Guess I just missed out on that extra dose of crazy.”
Tink sniffed.
Gideon shook his head in disgust. His entire family thought the snowstorm was fantastic. His sisters were stringing Christmas lights, his grandmother was searching online for eggnog recipes, and his father was actually out on the porch barbecuing.
I asked if this meant something new was on the menu.
“You like egg rolls,” he replied.
That was undeniable. It was really the microwave part I objected to. “I like them better without soggy middles and freezer burn,” I said.
“We could maybe make an exception.” He paused to turn and give me a stern look. “But not if you keep trying to set me up with your cousin.”
Gideon wasn’t a big fan of my St. Croix relatives. I’d dragged him Christmas shopping with my cousins recently, and at the end of it, he’d declared that Iris was creepy and Elspeth insane. He seemed to think this meant I was once again winning—or perhaps losing—the weird-family competition. I decided not to mention that his father was, at this moment, cooking steaks in a blizzard. Instead, I asked, “What’s wrong with Elspeth?”
“She’s just so … cheerful,” he said. “She makes Tink look like a pessimist.”
“Hey,” Tink said, then paused, as though uncertain whether or not this was meant as an insult. She settled for blowing her nose.
I looked at Gideon. “You’re just worried that going out with someone would ruin your ability to pine tragically.”
Brooke Oliver: the one subject guaranteed to make Gideon bring out his grumpy face. Or the closest thing to a grumpy face he could manage, which usually involved squinting. This time he threw in an insulted stare. “Remind me again why I put up with you?”
“’Cause you sold me your soul for five bucks, and now you must submit to my will?” I still had the sheet of paper, written in his untidy fifth-grade scrawl. Gideon David Belmonte. One soul.
The rest of our conversation was put on hold by Tink’s insistence that we start the movie already.
I tried to relax and focus on the film. Tink had picked it out, which meant lots of hot guys, explosions, and hot guys dramatically walking away from explosions—plus a few half-naked girls, as a concession to Gideon—but I couldn’t seem to follow the plot, if it even had one. My mind was too busy.
Gideon noticed my distraction and looked wounded that I wasn’t enjoying my party, but I assured him I was having a fabulous time, I was just a little tired. At least, I thought I assured him. Later that night, Tink called to inform me otherwise.
“We have a problem,” she said. “Actually, you have a problem.” She had to repeat her words twice; she’d called me from work and was whispering into the phone while hidden in the employee bathroom.
“Aren’t you sick?” I asked. She worked at the Caribou Coffee a few blocks from her apartment, and though a snowstorm wasn’t likely to deter the truly devoted coffee drinkers, I couldn’t imagine anyone wanted to see a barista with a runny nose.
“Sick and miserable,” she affirmed. “But I like money. And that’s not what I called you about.” Someone knocked on the bathroom door, and she yelled at them to give her a minute. She lowered her voice even more, so that she was almost hissing into the phone. “Gideon asked if I thought something was going on with you. I think he’s smarter than we give him credit for.”
I took a breath. “What did you tell him?” I asked.
“I said it was probably PMS. That shut him up pretty fast.”
I figured I deserved that one, after the anemia incident.
I hesitated. Tink didn’t like to talk about Kin matters—but she was the one who had brought it up. “Do you know much about what’s going on? The attacks, I mean?”
She let out an angry sigh. “No, and I don’t want to know. That’s the point of this conversation. You need to stop thinking about it.”
“Because, clearly, that will make it all just go away.”
“Worrying about it isn’t doing you any good, either.” She made a little noise—possibly of annoyance, possibly of frustration— then told me she would say no more.
After she hung up, I sat on my bed, considering her words. It wasn’t as though I wanted to worry, but I didn’t see how ignoring the problem would help.
Not that anything else I’d done had helped. Mom was finally being more open with me, but there was little I could do with the information. Earlier that week, I’d suggested I use my Knowing— maybe I could get some idea of who Tigue’s accomplice was, or definitively connect him to the bleedings. It hadn’t gone over well. Mom had given me a look of such severity, I was afraid she’d re-ground me purely on principle. I hadn’t brought it up again. And even if she’d agreed to my suggestion, I didn’t know where I’d start. I’d never met Tigue; I couldn’t do a reading on him. I told myself to take Tink’s advice, to just forget about it.
But that night I lay awake thinking of girls lured out into the sweet night air, the darkness that awaited them, vanishing lights and a rising wind. Tricia and Kelly and those other nameless girls, bound to me by a shared ancestry and by the cuts above our heels. And when I slept, my dreams were filled with blood.
With Tink unwilling to discuss the Kin, and Gideon unable to, I found myself spending more time with Elspeth.
She knew every last detail of Kin life, and she was always ready to talk, without trying to drill the information into my skull the way Esther did. Elspeth’s world revolved around being a Guardian— though, as she informed me one evening, she was considered too young to be fully involved in their day-to-day operations. She had a curfew to contend with, and Esther required that both she and Iris maintain straight As. That put a few restrictions on being a teenage superhero.
“High school never really got in Mom’s way,” I mused. “She’s been Morning Star since she was barely sixteen.”
“She’s Lucy,” Elspeth said, as though that were the only explanation required. “It doesn’t matter, though. I’m joining H&H as soon as I graduate, no matter what Grandmother says.”
I could imagine what Esther would say. She probably already had Elspeth’s Ivy League school picked out.
I took a sip of my cocoa. Elspeth had badgered me into doing more Christmas shopping, applying a heavy dose of guilt over Gideon’s rejection and following it up with a pleading look that almost, but not quite, rivaled Leon’s Hungry Puppy. After taking the bus to downtown Minneapolis, we’d spent an hour or so wandering around Nicollet Mall, then ventured to less crowded streets. We’d spotted a little café well away from the usual commotion of the city, and while I sat stirring the marshmallows around my cup of cocoa, Elspeth was on her second latte.
She was also still stuck on Gideon.
“I don’t see why he won’t go out with me,” she said, running a finger along the rim of her glass. She wore the most perfect pout I’d ever seen, but she sounded sincere, so I didn’t laugh.
“He’s sort of a lost cause,” I told her. I refrained from mentioning the number of times he’d called her insane, or that he’d offered to set her up with Stanley, one of his friends from the baseball team. Though Stanley was cute, only mildly obnoxious, and arguably the best pitcher in school, I doubted Elspeth would find the suggestion flattering. “You wouldn’t rather go out with another Guardian?” Esther would doubtless prefer that—though, since Iris was already dating within the Kin, perhaps Elspeth was off the hook.
“There aren’t many Guardians my age,” she said. “I’m the youngest. There’s this guy a year older than me, but he’s, well …” She grimaced. “And after that it’s Leon. And after that—”
I laughed. “Okay, got it.” And then I steered her on to nonGideon topics.
Though she didn’t yet work closely with the other Guardians, Elspeth knew a great deal about their business. She told me there hadn’t been any confirmed bleedings in the past few weeks—but that may have been due to Guardian vigilance. They still weren’t certain how the Harrowers were locating their targets, but they’d taken to patrolling in shifts, reporting any signs of demon activity, and they were trying to establish their own system for detecting potential victims.
“Lucy’s sort of a loner,” Elspeth said, when I mentioned that Mom didn’t seem to work closely with the others. “Grandmother says that Morning Star always had to go her own way.”
Except for having her very own sidekick, I supposed.
Dusk had faded into a cool blue darkness by the time we headed back to the bus stop. The air was chilled, and my breath formed little puffs as we walked. The storm had spent itself two days earlier, and most of the roads were clear, but bits of ice clung to barren branches along the streets. We’d wandered farther than I realized. Though the lights of downtown were bright around us, the streets felt unnaturally deserted. Empty cars sat silent and dark. The biting wind sliced against me. Elspeth, being a Guardian, didn’t seem to notice the cold.
“We should’ve asked Iris to pick us up,” I said, pulling my coat tight against me. Though she’d declined to come shopping with us, she did have a car.
“I think she’s busy,” Elspeth said. There was a little catch in her voice. She was still taking Iris’s school transfer hard. I didn’t fully understand the dynamic between the pair, but I knew that, despite being the tall, gorgeous Guardian, Elspeth idolized her older sister.
I gave her a smile. “Well, next time you drag me out somewhere, it had better be warm,” I said lightly. I was terrible at navigating the skyway, but as soon as we reached it, I intended to head directly indoors.
Beside me, Elspeth had stopped. “Audrey, can we—”
I didn’t hear the rest of her words. As I turned back toward her, I felt a sudden change in the air.
It wasn’t like it had been at the Drought and Deluge, but it wasn’t precisely different, either. There was no noise, no whisper crawling along my skin. No urgent, unrelenting alarm that ran through my veins. But the air around us had altered. A hush had fallen across the empty street, and the glow of lights from the surrounding buildings appeared muted and distant. Even the drone of traffic seemed to come from far away. My heart pounded in my ears. I heard the wind blow.
“Elspeth,” I said. “Something’s here.”
A Harrower. I Knew one was near.
An echo of Esther’s words came back to me. They revile the Kin, she’d said, when I asked what the demons wanted. And yearn for what we are. Which meant either it planned to bleed Elspeth —or it wanted us dead.
I didn’t intend to make an easy target. Not like last time. I might not be a Guardian, but I remembered my mother’s words. The throat. I would go for the throat.
Turning, I scanned the road, watching for movement.
“We’ll be all right,” Elspeth said. She sounded different. Gone was the funny lilt she sometimes affected, the giddy laugh that came so easily. Her voice was sharp, authoritative. “Stand back.” She took a step forward.
And then something strange happened.
The change in the air became a change in her. Everything stilled. The light clung to Elspeth, the air around her shimmering. But it wasn’t just the space around her. It was her face. It was her eyes, suddenly lit from within. It was her hair, waving around her as though it had come to life. And it was her hand.
The fingertips of her left hand began to glow. Softly at first, and in different colors. Her index finger was tinted lightly blue; red shone beside it, and a gentle color like lilac, and the yellow of honey, and the green of blooming summer grasses. I saw her veins through the skin of her palm, down her wrist, trailing toward her elbow. The colors pulsed and moved, blended and merged.
Leon had said Guardians had other resources, a weapon they carried with them. I hadn’t understood what he meant.
Elspeth glanced at me, her eyes strange and ethereal. “We’ll be okay,” she repeated. “Just let me handle it.”
The demon rushed forward.
It wasn’t like the one that had attacked me at the Drought and Deluge. I didn’t see just blinks and impressions: I saw it clearly. At first it appeared merely human. A woman, pale-haired, thin of figure, features nondescript. Then, as I watched, something shifted. The woman-image blurred. I saw blank eyes staring, long-nailed hands grappling for Elspeth. It moved quickly, contorting, bending, standing high above Elspeth and then slinking low as she repelled it, her left hand held in front of her as both weapon and shield. She went for its throat, but it evaded. There was something reptilian about the way it moved.
Then the Harrower stepped out of its skin.
Its movements were rapid, but in motion I caught the blur of silver, rippling flesh, scales that flashed with a deathly gleam. Clawed fingers slashed toward Elspeth, and as it turned I saw the arc of jagged red teeth.
The Harrower paused and was human again. Just a woman with a wave of blond hair, hiding a secret beneath. I watched as it took a wary step back.
“You picked the wrong girl for a fight,” Elspeth hissed. “I thought you guys would’ve known better by now.”
The Harrower lunged for her and caught air. Elspeth was on the ground, crouching, her left hand stretched out before her, even brighter now. The Harrower screeched, an inhuman sound that sent chills down my spine.
“You just don’t know what’s good for you, do you?” Elspeth panted.
Then she was on the offensive.
She moved quickly, so quickly she became nothing but a streak of black hair and long limbs, the glow in her hand flashing through the dark street. The demon retreated, then ran forward, its hands curving into talons again, abandoning its skin for scales.
I cried out a warning, but my shriek was cut off. An arm reached out from behind me, pulling me backward into sudden dark.
My first instinct was to scream as loudly as possible— but a hand clamped over my mouth, silencing me.
I struggled blindly until it registered that someone was saying my name, and the voice was a voice I recognized, and the place I stood in was my own kitchen.