Henry drew a syringe full of morphine and sank the needle into Phillip’s functioning arm. His cursing trailed off and his head lolled to the side, the pain and tension finally going out of him.
“This cannot stand, Henry,” said Leo, a smudge of Phillip’s blood along his jaw. “We have suffered enough insult. It is time to—”
“Not now,” snapped Henry as he pulled on a pair of surgical gloves and set to work. August looked down at the wreckage of Phillip’s shoulder, the slick red pool spreading across the metal table, and felt ill. Under the glare of the lights, Phillip looked suddenly young, delicate. Humans were too fragile for this fight, but the Sunai were too few to do it alone, and even if three could wage a war on thousands, the Malchai and Corsai weren’t foolish enough to get close, opting instead for prey they could catch, and kill. And so the Sunai focused on hunting sinners in order to stem the flow of violence, and the slaying of the monsters fell to the humans, and the humans, invariably, fell to them. It was a cycle of whimpers and bangs, gruesome beginnings and bloody ends.
August’s gaze traced the claw marks. Messy. Brutal. This was a monster’s work. The lingering scent of the Corsai—fetid air, stale smoke, and death, always death—still clung to the torn flesh and turned his stomach. Leo was right. August was nothing like the thing that did this. He couldn’t be.
“August,” said Henry a minute later. “You can let go now.”
He looked down and realized he was still pinning Phillip’s limp body to the table. His hands slid off, and he went to wash them in a nearby sink while Henry worked.
Blood ran into the sink, and August looked away, trying to find something—anything—else to focus on, but it was everywhere, on the wall, and the counter, and the floor, a trail leading back through the doors to the steel elevators marked with a 19.
The nineteenth floor of the Flynn compound had been nicknamed the Morgue by some of the more morbid members of the FTF. Even though it was the second highest floor in the building, directly below the Flynns’ own apartment, there was no view. The windows had all been bricked up, the furniture removed in favor of sterile space. The nineteenth floor housed two essential things: a private interrogation chamber (the rest being on the sublevels with the cells) and an emergency medical suite.
“Where is he?” asked Henry, looking up from the wreckage of Phillip’s shoulder. He was referring to the traitor. The man who’d sold the information to Harker. He was a cousin of someone in the FTF, and after he’d sold them out, he’d tried to escape across the Seam and claim some kind of sanctuary in North City. But Harker didn’t keep rats, so he’d thrown him back. A squad had hunted him down and hauled him in, but not before he put two bullets in their captain. Two minutes with Leo, and he’d confessed to everything.
Leo stood before a mirror, wiping the bloodstains from his face. His black eyes went to the scar through his brow and glanced off, the way August’s had around the blood, as if disgusted by the sight.
“Cell A,” answered Harris dully, all trace of his boyish humor gone. Taken.
“He’s guilty,” added Leo evenly, and they all knew what he meant. A red soul. A reaping.
“All right.” Henry nodded to his wife. “Go get Ilsa.”
The man in Cell A looked rough.
His nose was broken, his hands were bound behind his back, and he was lying on his side, chest hitching in a wounded way. August stood, staring, trying to understand what made men break like this. Not in a physical way—human bodies were brittle—but heart and soul, what made them jump, fall, even when they knew there was no ground beneath.
He felt a gust of air, and then the soft warmth of Ilsa’s hand in his as she looked through the Plexiglas insert in the cell door.
“Can you feel it?” she asked, sadly. “His soul is so heavy. Who knows how long the floor will hold. . . .”
Her hand slipped away, and she made her way barefoot into the cell. August shut the door behind her but did not leave. It was a rare thing to see another Sunai reap a life. And Ilsa had a way of making everything beautiful. Even death.
Steps sounded behind him, heavy and even. Leo. “Henry is a fool not to let her out.”
August frowned. “Who? Ilsa?”
Leo lifted his hand, brought it to rest against the door. “Our sister, the angel of death. Do you know what she is? What she can do?”
“I have an idea,” said August dryly.
“No, you don’t, little brother.” Within the cell, Ilsa sank to her knees beside the traitor. “Henry would keep you in the dark, but I think you deserve to know what she is, what you could be, perhaps, if you let yourself.”
“What are you talking about, Leo?”
“Our sister has two sides,” he said. “They do not meet.”
It sounded like a riddle, but Leo wasn’t usually one for talking in circles. “What—”
“Do you know how many stars she has?”
August shook his head.
Leo’s fingers splayed. “Two thousand one hundred and sixty-two.”
August started to do the math, then stopped. Six years. Six years since Ilsa had last gone dark. Six years since something ended the territory war.
Leo must have seen the understanding register. He traced a circle with his index finger. “Who do you think made the Barren, little brother?”
Beyond the door, the traitor was confessing in a broken whisper. Ilsa took his face in her hands and guided him down to the concrete floor. She lay on her side, stroking his hair.
Somewhere in the city was a place where nothing grew.
“That’s not possible,” whispered August. The last time he’d gone dark, he’d taken out a room of people. The idea that Ilsa could level a city block? Leave a scar on the surface of the world? If that was true, no wonder Henry didn’t want the truce to break. The FTF thought Flynn had a bomb.
And they were right.
Behind his eyes, August saw the stretch of scorched earth at the center of the city. Did she . . . did she mean to do it? Of course not—he hadn’t meant to hurt anyone, either—but things got lost in the darkness. When Sunai went dark, lives ended. There were no rules, no boundaries: the guilty and the innocent, the monstrous and the human—they all perished.
A culling, that’s what Leo called it.
How many had died that day in the square? How many innocent lives lost among the guilty? It wouldn’t come to that again. It couldn’t. There had to be another answer.
“Her confinement was part of the truce,” continued Leo. “But memories are short, and it seems our Northern half needs to be reminded.”
The way he spoke of her made August’s skin crawl. “She isn’t a tool, Leo.”
His brother looked at him with those terrifying black eyes, their surfaces too flat, too smooth. “We are all tools, August.”
Inside the cell, Ilsa began to hum. The sound barely reached him, a muffled song that still sent a tremor through his bones. Unlike August, who relied on his violin, or Leo, who could make his music with almost anything, Ilsa’s only instrument was her voice.
August watched, a dull hunger rolling through him as the red light rose to the surface of the man’s skin and spread through hers like a flush. He’d just fed, and still it ached, his constant need, a hollowness he feared would cease to exist only when he did.
Twin tendrils of smoke rose from the man’s hollowed eyes as the last of his life escaped. The corpse went dark.
“One day you’ll see,” said Leo calmly. “Our sister’s true voice is a beautiful, terrible thing.”
Beyond the Plexi and steel, Ilsa ran her hand along the man’s hair like a mother putting a child to sleep.
August felt ill. He backed away, turned, and retraced his steps to the medical wing, where Harris hadn’t moved, and Henry was still working on Phillip’s shoulder, and Phillip looked halfway to dead. Suddenly, August was unbearably tired.
He almost asked if it was true about Ilsa, but he already knew.
Instead
he said, “We have to do something.”
Henry looked up from the table, exhausted. “Not you, too.”
“Something to stop the truce from breaking,” said August. “Something to stop another war.”
Henry rubbed the back of his arm against his eyes, but said nothing. Harris said nothing. Leo, now standing in the doorway, said nothing.
“Dad—”
“August.” Emily brought a hand to his shoulder, and he realized he was shaking. When she spoke, her voice was low and steady. “It’s late,” she said, wiping a smudge of blood from his cheek. “You better go upstairs. After all,” she added, “it’s a school night.”
A strangled sound clawed up his throat.
He wanted to laugh at the absurdity of this life, with all its farces. He wanted to take up his violin and play and play and play until all the hunger was gone, until he stopped feeling like a monster. He wanted to scream, but then he thought of his sister’s voice turning the city to ash, and bit his tongue until pain filled his mouth in lieu of blood.
“Go on,” urged Emily, nudging him toward the elevator.
And he went, following the trail of blood, like bread crumbs, through the door.
“Rough night?” asked Kate, climbing the bleachers.
Freddie’s head was bowed over a book, but she could see the shadows under his eyes, the tension in his jaw.
He didn’t look up. “That obvious?”
She dropped her bag. “You look like hell.”
“Why, thank you,” he said dryly, raking a hand through still-damp hair.
He kept his eyes on the book, but never turned the page.
Questions swam through her mind, each one trying to surface, but she held them under. She started rapping her fingers, then remembered Dr. Landry’s observations and forced herself to stop. She was going to bring up the violin, but he didn’t have it with him today. She tried to see what he was reading, or pretending to read, but the words were too small, so she sat there, trying to re-create the feeling she’d had the day before, the comfortable quiet they’d shared. But she couldn’t sit still. Exasperated, she dug her earbuds out and had them halfway to her head when Freddie spoke.
“What did you do?” he asked, turning the page.
Kate tensed a fraction, glad he couldn’t see. “What do you mean?”
Finally, he put the book aside. Plato. What kind of junior read philosophy for fun? “To get kicked out of another gym class.”
“Oh,” she said, touching her abdomen. “I have a terrible stomachache.”
Amusement flickered in his pale gray eyes. “Is that so?”
“Yeah, I hope I’m not coming down with something,” she said, slumping back against the bleachers with a smirk. “But you know what they say.”
“What do they say?”
“Fresh air is the best medicine.”
It would be too generous to call his expression a smile, but it was warm enough. She tucked her hair behind her ear and felt his gaze go straight to the scar. It wasn’t the first time he’d noticed, but it was the first time he asked. “What happened?”
Weakness invites a knife. But the words rose up before she could stop them. “Car accident.”
Freddie didn’t automatically say sorry, as if it were his fault. (She hated when people did that). He only nodded and ran a thumb over the black lines on his wrist. “I guess we all have our marks.”
She reached out and brushed her fingers over the nearest tally, feeling him tense under the touch. “How many days sober?”
He pulled gently free. “Enough,” he said, tugging the cuff down to cover the skin.
The questions rattled in her head.
Who are you?
What are you hiding?
Why are you hiding it?
They were trying to get out, and she was about to let them, when Freddie spoke.
“Can I tell you a secret?”
Kate sat forward. “Yes.” The word had come out faster than she’d planned, but he didn’t seem to notice. His eyes found hers, and there was something heavy about his gaze. Like she could feel it weighing on her. “What is it?” she pressed.
He leaned in. “I’ve never seen a forest up close.” And then, before she could say anything, he was pulling her down the bleacher steps and toward the trees.
“They smell like candles,” said Freddie, kicking up leaves.
“I’m pretty sure candles smell like them,” said Kate. “What kind of guy hasn’t seen trees?”
He lifted a crimson leaf, twirled it between his fingers. “The kind who lives in the red,” he said, letting it fall, “and has very protective parents.”
Kate’s pulse ticked up at the mention of family, but she kept her voice even. “Tell me about them.”
Freddie only shrugged. “They’re good people. They mean well.”
What are their names? she wanted to ask.
“What do they do?”
“My dad’s a surgeon,” he said, stepping over a fallen log. “Mom grew up in Fortune. She was just on the wrong side of the border when it closed.”
“That’s awful,” said Kate, and she meant it. It was bad enough that the Verity citizens were trapped inside; she often forgot about the foreigners. Wrong place, wrong time, a life erased because of bad luck.
“She doesn’t let on,” he said absently. “But I know it weighs on her.”
The mention of weight pulled Kate’s thoughts back to the iron pendant and the black ledgers.
Where did you get your medallion?
She swallowed. “So, only child?”
“Inquisitor?” he shot back, and then, to her relief, he said, “Youngest. You?”
She liked that he asked, even though he had to know.
“Only,” she answered.
In the distance the lunch bell rang, and Kate hesitated, but Freddie showed no signs of turning back. Instead he slumped down against a tree, his back against the trunk. Kate sank against its neighbor and mirrored the pose. Freddie dug a crisp, green apple from his bag and held it out.
Who are you?
She reached for the fruit, fingers purposefully brushing his, and again she relished the small shiver that went through him, as if the contact were something foreign, something new.
She took a bite and handed the apple back. He rolled it between his palms.
What are you hiding?
“I wish the rest of the city were like this,” he said softly.
“Empty? Green?”
“Peaceful,” he said, passing her the apple. He never took a bite.
She traced her thumb along her own teeth marks. “Have you ever seen a monster up close?”
Freddie chewed his lip. “Yes. You?”
Kate raised a brow. “My father keeps a Malchai as a pet.”
His eyes narrowed, but all he said was, “I prefer cats.”
Kate snorted and tossed the apple back. “So do I.”
Their voices trailed off, and for a second it was there, that glimpse of easy silence. A gust of wind rustled the branches overhead, sending down a shower of dying leaves, and between the fruit in his hand and his colorless eyes and the golden leaf stuck in his black curls, Freddie Gallagher looked more like a painting than a boy.
Who are you? she wanted to ask.
Instead she reached for the apple, and took another bite.
All afternoon, the questions ate at her. The longer they’d stayed in the forest, the louder the doubt. About him. About her. Maybe there was a simple answer for the alias. Maybe he didn’t have a choice. Maybe sometimes people had good reasons to hide. To lie.
But Kate wanted to know the truth.
She was halfway down the hall when she heard the violin.
She’d gotten out of her last class a few minutes early from a test and was killing time until the final bell. Her steps slowed as she listened, assuming—hoping—it was Freddie. A glimpse of truth among the mysteries. The music was coming from a classroom down the hall; as she reached the
door, it stopped, followed by the screeching of chairs and equipment. She peered in through the glass insert and saw the orchestra students packing up. The bell rang, and as they poured out, she scanned the class for Freddie, but she didn’t see him.
“Hey,” she said to a guy hauling what looked like a cello. He blanched a little when he realized she was talking to him. “Is there a Gallagher in your class?”
“Who?”
“Freddie Gallagher,” she said. “Tall, thin, black hair, plays the violin?”
The guy shrugged. “Sorry, never seen him.”
Kate swore under her breath, and the cellist took the opportunity to escape.
The halls were thinning, and she backtracked to the lockers, reaching them in time to see Freddie packing up his bag. She shot a look at the student one locker down and the girl fled. Kate leaned her shoulder against the metal.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” he said, shuffling his books. “I keep finding pieces of forest stuck to my clothes.”
“I brushed myself off,” she said. “Wouldn’t want to give anyone the wrong idea.”
He stared at her blankly. “What do you mean?”
She stared at him. He stared back. And then a streak of color shot across his cheeks. “Oh.”
She rolled her eyes, then remembered her purpose and nodded at the locker. “No violin?”
“It’s at home.”
“I figured you were in orchestra.”
Freddie cocked his head. “I never said I was.”
“Then why bring it?”
“What?”
She shrugged. “Why bring the violin to school, if you’re not in orchestra?”
Freddie closed the locker, not with a crash like everyone else, but with a soft, decisive click. “If you really want to know, I can’t play at home because the walls are too thin. Colton has music rooms, the soundproof kind. So, that’s why I brought it.”
Kate felt her conviction slipping. “Okay,” she said, trying to keep her voice light, teasing. “But if you’re not in orchestra, when am I supposed to hear you play?”
A wall went up behind Freddie’s eyes. “You’re not.”
The words landed like a blow. “Why not?” she asked, temper rising.