“Des!”

I scan the school hallway to find Jordan and stumble into Mike.

He shoves me into the steel lockers. I catch myself with my forearms and push myself off before the pain registers. The iron in my bangles burns me enough.

Mike’s “Watch where you’re going!” contains his usual vulgarity.

I want to mutter a correction about actual bitches, not that Mike would recognize a wynwolf if he saw one, unless she had one of those ‘Will Change for change!’ signs. But he isn’t worth my time. I clutch my backpack’s shoulder strap and give him a needlessly wide berth as I head over to Jordan, one of the few nice girls who doesn’t mind a sullen goth kid.

There aren’t many fifteen-year-old high school juniors by the time spring break looms. My youth means the snobs refuse to accept me, my sullenness makes me unwelcome in chess club, and I’m barred from the emo gang by my good grades and job.

That drops me with the few people in the weird crowd willing to see past the ‘leave me alone’ façade I’ve stuck myself behind for everyone’s safety. Most of those kids are Magiks and therefore used to seeing the magical reality beneath the veneer of mundanity: the Darkworld. Jordan has the best protection in case my past comes to haunt her, so I hang with her the most.

My back hurts, so I slouch against the wall beside Jordan and let my schoolbag slide to the floor. I pick at one violet-painted nail and let the werewolf’s daughter speak first. Jordan’s dad is the area alpha, a widely-known fact that perhaps a sixth of the city actually believes and the rest thinks a creative marketing ploy to help his merc business. When it’s too tense for cops’ comfort but not bad enough for SWAT, they call him. I don’t think he’s bothered to let a target escape him since he’s gone public about his furry hide.

I rent a room from one of the pack members, but I’m not sure if that’s common knowledge. I follow pack protocol anyway and let the alpha’s daughter speak first. That doesn’t take long.

“Hey. You okay?” I shrug. Jordan frowns. “Des, you look exhausted.”

And I am. But that you’ve been stalking a pair of mated werewolves to check on the baby isn’t something you confess. I shrug again. “You know Missis Gambrel. That history project is a killer.”

History class itself gives me the worst trouble. History is different between Magiks and humans. Heck, even the US legal system is, thanks to the Magiks of the South not actually losing the Civil War. States have more individual sovereignty, and slavery isn’t always illegal.

Okay, so it’s usually legal. But knowing that is something else you don’t confess. Jordan may not even know; her dad keeps his pack civilized.

Jordan scoffs at my claim that the history project has caused my fatigue. “I have the same homework you do, and I have fun on the weekends instead of moping around.” She pauses. “I mean, I know you work; but that’s, what, five hours a week?” More like twenty-five. “You can afford to come hang out on Fridays.”

One reason not many people keep me company is that I respond with yet another shrug. Another is that I sometimes body throw whoever who taps me on the shoulder. Like now. Fionn yelps as he lands unceremoniously in the hallway in the gap habitually left by passerby.

“What the—” Jordan shoots Fionn a look, and he gulps down the curse. He collects himself and glares at me. “What is your problem?!”

I don’t apologize.

Jordan speaks, instead. “Back off, Fionn. You know she does that when you startle her.” At least once a week.

He plows onward. “You’re, like, completely freakin’ paranoid about being touched—”

“So she dislikes surprises and happens to know a bit of self-defense.” Jordan’s glaring at Fionn. You’d think anyone with reason to believe her about her father would have the sense to avoid irking her, but Fionn always surprises me with his poor sense.

I yawn and look at my watch, my black metal bangles tinkling as they hit each other. “Spanish class in eight minutes,” I comment.

That’s one class where my previous life makes less work. Italian’s not the same as Spanish, but I’ve managed to slip into the third year class readily enough. Señora Garcia lets me speak whichever I like, as long as she gets my gist. She nearly had a heart attack in her surprise when the new middle-of-the-year student (me) walked up to her and started speaking fluent Italian. Goths tend to dabble in dead languages.

The señora‘s ensuing confusion when I told her I’m Greek was fun to watch. I’m sure it would be even more fun to see her reaction to learning what, exactly, taught me Italian—but I’m already suspected of being a mite unhinged and don’t need to add that confession to the strikes against me. Belief in magic is on the upswing, again, but it still isn’t chic.

“You aren’t even listening to me, are you?” Fionn demands.

I glance at my watch again. Seven more minutes ’til the last class before lunch. “No.”

He proceeds to curse me out until Jordan socks him in the jaw. That’s a common enough sight that not even the hall monitors blink. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jordan’s dad was who taught her how to do that so well. She never shakes or blows on her bloodied knuckles, either.

A too-familiar tingle on my upper back keeps me from paying attention to whatever Jordan says. I quickly stop my widening eyes, but I know I’ve paled. I force my breathing and pulse to stay as close to normal as I can. I scan the hallway with what I hope looks like boredom and not panic.

A lot of things can trigger a bind-rune, I remind myself as magic flares along the lines of the magic-filled sigil tattooed on my upper back. An unfamiliar Magik can do it just by passing by. Fionn did, the first several times I was near him. His sealskin is probably dark brown if not black, judging from his platinum hair and pale green eyes. Selkies’ eyes complement both forms, and their pelts and hair never match.

I swallow, praying that it’s just an unfamiliar Magik that’s awoken the bind-rune and not—

“Ah, Signorina Fuller!”

Jordan looks towards the voice calling her. I stare blankly.

An Armani-clad Ambrogino Romazzo can’t be in the middle of this average US high school walking my way, unimpeded by the teenage crowd thanks to his six feet and a few inches. He can’t. I shake my head. I pinch my arm.

He’s still headed my way, so he is here, unless I’m hallucinating. If he’s seeking Jordan, at least he’s not here for a snack. He’s fond of high schoolers, claims we taste better. Cleaner than adults but riper than children. His words, not mine.

I cringe and glance at Fionn. From his frown, he can tell Signor Ambrogino is a fellow Magik; he just hasn’t yet figured out that the signore‘s a creep even by Darkworld standards.

So Signor Ambrogino is the one making my tattoo go wonky. I didn’t have it when I knew him, so it’s adjusting to his magic.

Oh, merda. Does that mean his magic’s noticing it, too?

I flinch as I look up to meet the gaze set a good foot above mine. I swallow uncomfortably. His kind are creeps, but he’s passably friendly. I shove myself off the wall and turn away, biting my lip.

Please don’t let him recognize me, God. He’ll find out what’s happened, track down my owner, and… Things get bad when his kind and my owner’s kind get mad at each other. And Hollywood likes to think that it exaggerates.

Signor Ambrogino takes Jordan’s hand. “Signorina Jordan Fuller, daughter of the pack.”

Thankfully his attention stays on Jordan, so he doesn’t notice my shudder at his proper phrasing to call Jordan the alpha‘s daughter and not merely a werewolf’s daughter. That distinction tends to remain unknown to people outside of werewolf packs. Jordan doubtless finds his knowledge surprising and reassuring; I would, except I’m pretty sure Ambrogino knows what he does about werewolves because he’s eaten them.

He bows over Jordan’s hand. “Ciao, signorina.”

“Ciao,” she returns calmly, as if unknown and potentially dangerous Magiks often walk up to her in the middle of her ordinary school day for a chat. In Italian. “My friends: Fionn Dillan, Destiny Walker.”

His dark caramel-colored eyes pass over us with enough of a glance so as not to be rude and for him to remember us until we can be forgotten for our irrelevance in a few weeks after he’s back in Rome. “Signor Dillan, Signorina Walker.” He bows to each of us.

Fionn smiles and nods politely, obviously still trying to figure out which type of Magik the signore is. Funny; I would’ve expected the Italian to give Fionn the right idea.

I just stare blankly at the signore for a couple of seconds then look at my watch. I shove myself off the wall and slouch. “Class in four minutes.”

“I’ll walk you.” Signor Ambrogino takes Jordan’s bag and offers to take mine. I give him another dull look. He smiles faintly and pulls it from me. “It would be improper for a gentleman to allow you to carry your own bag, signorina,” he explains politely, as if I’m a normal teenager without a trace of etiquette training.

My voice doesn’t tip him off, which makes me feel better. I’ve wondered how helpful all this goth getup actually is. That I’ve messily lopped my hair off and dyed it a nearly black green probably helps the disguise. I was always neat and well-kept in Rome, in the white that labeled me as not-for-meals, and my hair an only mildly abnormal coyote-brown color.

I sense Signor Ambrogino stiffen slightly, and I risk a sidelong glance at him. I’d think his narrowed gaze hungry, except he’s eyeing up my profile and not my arm. He reaches for my face, then lowers his hand. “You have an… interesting… jaw,” he says quietly.

I freeze, my heart clambering up my throat. He’s said that you can tell if a woman’s had a baby by her jawline. He’s also claimed you can often tell if a girl’s had sex by how she naturally walks, so I’ve never put much stock in either one.

I concentrate on walking… normally… and on not calming my thundering heartbeat, since he already hears it.

He stiffens in surprise that I evidently know he meant my jaw matches a girl who’s had a baby. He’s said artists tend to know about that. Do I look like an artist? “Forgive me, signorina,” he continues quickly. “I did not mean—that is, I meant…”

He glances at Jordan and Fionn, obviously guessing that they don’t know about the baby. He just as obviously guesses from my reaction that I have good reason to be freaked out by adult male attention. “It was a compliment,” he finally ‘confesses’, pointedly adding a bit more space between us and not looking at me directly. “I meant nothing untoward by it.”

In other words, he wasn’t hitting on me. I nod sharply and stiffly continue toward class, not trusting my voice. He knows it well. Sure, it’s matured in the past few years, but he could still ID me if he considers it. And with him noticing me now as more than Jordan’s inconsequential friend, I don’t need him to have more ammo to figure me out.

“Des?” Jordan asks. I’ve never mentioned what happened to the baby she knows I had. “You okay?”

I shrug—yes, again, fancy that—and resume my feigned sullen nonchalance.

Signor Ambrogino has gotten into trouble at Court more than once for his lack of tact, so it really shouldn’t surprise me when he draws a quick breath and asks, “You didn’t keep the child?”

I flinch, the action an admission that keeps Fionn from flipping out at the question’s implication that I fool around. “T… Took after his padre,” I say, then flinch again when I realize I’ve just used Italian.

Thankfully, it’s the same word in— “Here’s our class. Spanish. Thank you for the escort, signore.” I grab my schoolbag from his lax grip and dart into the classroom and to my desk. It’s a few seconds before Fionn and Jordan follow me, but Signor Ambrogino doesn’t. He doesn’t.

As the bell rings and Señora Garcia begins class, I breathe a deep sigh of relief and slouch into my chair. He didn’t follow me. He doesn’t recognize me.

Thank God.

Shrieking pleas and screams awoke Kismet like He meant them to, giving more than enough time for fear and revulsion to clench in her gut and make her feel sick. Not that illness would grant her any reprieve if He’d decided she was to hurt tonight.

Blinking back tears from the acrid smoke that had wormed its way into the dirt-floored little hut, she shimmied on her elbows over to the relief hole. He’d had an earth sorcerer put it in for the times she was too battered to leave her hut for days on end.

She crawled because she couldn’t walk for the shakes. The newly-usual vomit joined in, dredging up her fear from her bowels and sending any betrayingly strong emotion with it down the hole.

Kismet blocked the scent from His nose from the start. She hadn’t let vampires cow her into submission, after she’d accidentally killed the Chancellor’s favorite trio of revenants. Some of Kismet’s lack of fear had been due to a six year old’s ignorance, but the principle remained: admitting weakness admitted defeat.

In the Darkworld, admitting defeat was never good for your health. Not if you wanted your life. That childhood lesson was what kept her alive as a slave, now.

Nida’s screams shifted into the after-sobs sometime during Kismet’s vomiting. She pushed herself up and fumbled blindly for the water bottle, and carefully rinsed out her mouth with a single mouthful. She spat that down the hole, too.

Kismet dragged herself over to her books. She consciously sat facing away from her hut’s entrance. She lit a candle and used it to read her well-worn copy of the Bible—well, to reread Judges. All those lines about ‘And everyone did what was right in his own eyes, for there was no king in those days’ shouldn’t have been so comforting. She disturbed herself, whenever she thought about… things.

So she didn’t think about herself much, didn’t think about how much she was actually worth at auction if they ever learned what kind of Magik she actually was, nor how her parents sold her rather than be persecuted by the local pack.

She wasn’t exactly hurt that her parents had been willing to hand her over to a group of sadists to save their own hides. They’d originally become a couple to smuggle her father out of Greece. That her parents had liked each other enough to stick together afterwards must’ve come as a surprise to both of them.

No, their abandonment didn’t hurt. Her inability to help Nida, courtesy of the sigil tattooed on her upper back, did.

Her hand slipped on the pages of her Bible, accidentally falling to Genesis. Her gaze fell on chapter 39 before she flipped back. She swallowed. Joseph fled his mistress when she ordered him to sin.

Kismet shivered and took a deep breath, settling herself so she’d look as calm as she ensured she smelled. She smelled of resignation and a few other things she preferred not thinking about. It was another self-disturbing thing, that Kismet was willing to let Him think her a masochist so He would keep the others off her for fear that she would like another’s abuse more than she ‘liked’ His.

For an insane someone with centuries’ worth of experience brutalizing young girls, He could have been worse. Nida just stared at her, disbelief a little more deadened by the dullness, each time Kismet told her that.

Kismet had seen what some of the other sadists in the pack did to their own girls, when Kismet wandered farther than she was allowed and therefore farther than Nida was physically able to go. The bind-rune’s magic didn’t allow it.

But Kismet could ignore magic. Unfortunately, her tattooed bind-rune didn’t inherit her body’s magical immunity. Ignoring commands brought pain worse than a vampire’s venom, along the tattoo lines on her upper back, but Kismet could do it.

Of course, her wandering also meant that she could see that most of the pack didn’t hurt women. It was one such civilized werewolf who overheard Kismet babbling what little of Psalm 23 she could remember to herself one bad night, therefore finding her beyond His prescribed limits.

Instead of turning her over to Him for due punishment, that young man had actually kept a hand on her tattoo and coaxed the magic into not torturing Kismet for the minutes she had needed to collect herself. Then he’d escorted her back to His bit of camp, using his own advantages so she could slip in unnoticed.

At the border of her master’s piece of camp, the kind werewolf had handed her the Bible she read now. “May God comfort you and bring you through this trial,” he’d said softly, sadly. He would’ve done more for her if he could.

Kismet hadn’t seen him since. He had risked his life to shelter her from His magic for even those few minutes; she knew by sight the few who were allowed to challenge Him, and her helper wasn’t one of them. Her helper hadn’t known that she could keep his aid from being noticed, from being smelled.

Magic didn’t affect scents. Kismet had carefully hid that she was an exception to that particular rule. She certainly wasn’t the only freak, with how often Magiks interbred with immunes. But He didn’t need to know she was one. Werewolves killed scent magicians.

Kismet longed for escape, yes, but she didn’t want to die.

Freaks like her only happened when bloodlines mixed with magical immunity. Normally a Magik could only take after a single parent or grandparent in abilities, even if all four grandparents were of different kinds. But once magical immunity entered that mix, magical genetics went haywire. And no two of Kismet’s grandparents had been the same kind of Magik.

Kismet’s immune father had been forcibly sired by a werewolf on his immune concubine, which was fairly normal; her druidess mother had come by a yurei mother and druid father. That major of a messed-up bloodline was why this pack had demanded Kismet as protection payment: you never could be certain what would come of breeding like hers.

She suspected He was disappointed that she demonstrated no abilities beyond her sigil-sabotaged magical immunity—no skills that she let Him see, at least. She stared at the latrine hole and wondered how long she could hide His quickened seed within her before He noticed.

Her bind-rune tingled and air brushed the bare skin on her back as He stepped in. “Kismet.” He didn’t bother to lower His tone for the night. He wanted Nida to hear this, to hear how Kismet took her own handling.

She sat perfectly still, despite her too-small camisole that would have served better as a sports bra beneath a proper shirt. She would have done crossed her arms over it, but that would have confessed that she preferred hiding her figure, and admitting preferences to a sociopath was something she had never been stupid enough to do.

Just like she’d never been stupid enough to flee while she was young enough that most people would send her back to her parents. But she didn’t exactly have a choice, now. Kismet didn’t let her arms wrap around her belly.

He took her Bible from her and put it away with the textbooks she studied to keep herself sane. He never looked at any of it—she suspected he couldn’t read English. He snuffed the candle with his thumb and forefinger. And that was when Kismet’s own session began.

CHAPTER TWO

“Sara, do you have something to share with the class?”

Sara stops giggling and ducks her face behind her perm that’s mostly russet but has enough of the rufous to remind me of the hummingbird. Her shyness solidifies that comparison.

“I…” she tries. I glimpse a definite flush on her normally pinkish face. “I was just confused by something, Missis Dayes.”

With a few years under her belt as a high school biology teacher, Missis Dayes is already used to students’ confusion and having to drag the actual questions out of them. She frowns in an attempt at sternness that doesn’t suit her petite frame and wrinkle-free face. If she added glitter hairspray to the gold-and-white eye shadow, she would readily pass for a student. “What?”

By now, Sara’s face is comparable to a lobster—one of the red ones, not blue. She looks like she’d prefer detention over the mortification of proclaiming her question aloud. At my three rows over and five seats back, it’s a strain for me to hear her, never mind the humans in the class.

“I…” She swallows. “I was wondering why pregnant young teenagers require C-sections. I mean, didn’t a lot of girls start having kids at thirteen a century ago?”

Longer than that, for ‘Western’ humans in general, but her point’s clear enough.

Missis Dayes’ expression in the meantime clearly says she could have gone without knowing that question. (Gossip says she taught sex ed by setting up videos and taking long smoke breaks.) She fiddles with her favorite cross necklace that always makes me wonder why no one’s ever alerted her that gold and yellow-toned complexions do not mix. “I’m not sure exactly; I’ll have to look it up and get back with you. But a lot of women did die in childbirth, back then.”

A lot of women die now, too; it’s just not as widely advertised thanks to its limitations to the underworld, Third World, and Darkworld. The media likes salacious tales of vampire madams and military werewolves. The enslaved women and children? Not so much. Not even for human sex slaves.

My stomach twinges. I really should’ve eaten lunch, but after the incident with Signor Ambrogino, I knew it wouldn’t have stayed down. Weak stomach. Comes in handy when I get food poisoning or the stomach flu. Not so handy when stress or morning sickness say ‘Hi’.

“Younger girls’ hips often aren’t fully developed yet, are often too small. Not flexible or wide enough yet for the kid to pass through the birth canal.” The words have escaped my mouth, so I finish. “Makes birth complications and hemorrhaging more likely.”

People are staring at me. “She speaks,” someone mutters.

She bites, too.

Sara, once past the embarrassment from her original question, is willing to ask another. “Wouldn’t the, um, too-small thing also affect… you know…” No one does. “Sex?”

Missis Dayes gulps, her neck starting to redden from the pull on her necklace. “W—well, I’ll have to get back to you on that one, as well… Unless Miss Walker knows that answer, too?”

A few classmates smirk with self-satisfaction at their own ability to answer the question. I shrug. “That’s more birth canal than bone structure, but it does tend to hurt like Hell at that age.” I drop my gaze to my violet nail polish, but I feel the weight of my classmates’ collected stares, some of their owners quick-witted enough to be horrified. Others are mortified, and at least one idiot’s leering at me across the aisle.

I pick my nails to stifle the urge to slam the perv in the face. He’s human; I’d likely kill him. “Worse than vampire venom.” Of course that had to slip, with Ambrogino on my mind.

But my slip actually helps. People relax, start shifting in their seats. The evidence that I’m what skeptics call a myth whore lets my classmates avoid taking me seriously. The would-be voyeur slumps with enough disappointment that I’m tempted to ask my flatmate to punch some sense into him—until I remember that she’s stronger than me in human form, never mind when she gets ticked.

Missis Dayes even smiles a little while dropping her hand from her necklace and asking, “Vampires?”

Still focused on my nails, I jerk a thumb towards Jordan. “Her dad’s a werewolf.”

“You believe in vampires?” She dodges my point, making me suspect she’s one of the city’s one-sixth of werewolf believers, which makes her refusal to believe in vampires more obtuse than rational. Vampires have been public since they made that treaty with the Vatican in the Middle Ages, though not all eras since then have commonly believed in them.

I look at my teacher directly and lift my hands, palms forward and fingers spread to refer to my fingertips. The pinprick scars freak out anyone halfway educated about fingerprinting who I let see them. “No, I grew fangs and bit myself a couple dozen times, then filed them off,” I say pleasantly, then drop my hands behind my back so she can’t prove that anything’s there.

Missis Dayes approaches my desk. “Miss Walker,” she says, her attempted firmness tainted by her knowledge that I don’t cave to pressure. What are they going to do, call the judge who emancipated me? Been there, tried that. The teacher who tried it wasn’t even a Magik, so Judge Jillian Giovani didn’t fry him for bothering her unnecessarily.

The classroom door creaks open, drawing everyone’s attention. Jordan’s parents stand in the doorway beside an office aide. I restrain my cringe when Mister Fuller glances at me while entering. The werewolf alpha must’ve heard all I said.

“The Fullers are here to pick up their daughter,” the office aide says as she follows the Fullers in, brushing her few loose locks back and twisting them around her bun. Missis Dayes leaves my side to speak to the aide.

Jordan hesitates a few seconds in surprise before quickly packing her bag up. Missis Fuller straightens Jordan’s collar, then checks her own impeccable royal blue skirted business suit. Her bobbed hair is a chocolate brown that compliments the rich blue.

“You look nice.” Her husband’s jeans and red T look ratty in comparison.

Missis Fuller doesn’t react to what I said until Jordan pokes her mother’s arm. “Mom, Des said she likes your outfit.”

Missis Fuller turns to view me with the startled stare of someone uncomfortable with compliments. “Thank you, Miss Walker.”

So Jordan’s told her parents about me, because Missis Fuller didn’t get my name from shopping where I work. I don’t quite hide the flinch.

I pull out my homework, like I always do in the moments when the class isn’t working on some group activity. The teachers used to protest, but when I made it clear that my grades didn’t suffer for it and that some people have to pay rent, they backed off.

A werewolf-warm hand grabs my wrist and turns my hand up to view my fingertips. “She will come with me, as well.”

The office aide is apparently part of the city’s one-sixth who believes what Mister Fuller is. Even so, she hesitates, glancing at me. “Sir…”

Mister Fuller straightens and glances at Fionn. “Both Magiks will.”

I react to that before Fionn does. “I’m not a Magik!”

“I’m not one, either.” Fionn’s brave front falters when Mister Fuller takes a nice, long sniff. Fionn swallows. “Oh, bull.” He shoves his things into his backpack. “She ain’t one, though.”

“No?” Mister Fuller smiles and tightens his grip on my wrist.

“Ebenezer,” Missis Fuller says quietly, putting a hand on her husband’s wrist. “Let her go. She isn’t one of yours.” Yours, not ours? The missis doesn’t consider herself part of the pack hierarchy?

“She is a Magik.”

“No. She swims,” Fionn insists, as if that alone means I can’t be a closet Magik. It does limit the options. And, since he’s a selkie, he is hypersensitive to detecting other kinds while swimming.

Unfortunately for his attempt to exonerate me, selkies’ peculiar ID technique works best for the carnivorous types of Magiks. Like werewolves, though I have my doubts about werewolves’ ability to swim.

Mister Fuller doesn’t bother mentioning that problem. “Vampires don’t waste their time punishing mundanes. They eat them.”

Glaring, I yank my hand from his grasp and grab my lead pencil. Missis Fuller’s smile has the sad edge of apology for her husband’s actions.

Mister Fuller’s smile widens. “And mundanes aren’t so comfortable around people like me.”

“You’re not the first wolf I’ve met.” I fiddle with my pencil as I seek a way out of this. Even with Jordan’s Seventeenth coming up—the legal age for pack children in the Darkworld—I hadn’t expected Mister Fuller to be this… thorough with the celebrations. Calling every single Magik in the seventeen-kilometer radius to celebrate a Seventeenth is usually treated as more of a theoretical ideal than an actuality.

I also hadn’t expected Signor Ambrogino to show up to honor Jordan. Just how powerful a werewolf is Mister Fuller? I know some werewolf named Dickens rules the States; maybe Mister Fuller’s one of his top guys? That’s probably it.

“You believe what I am.” Mister Fuller’s amusement doesn’t relieve me. I’ve experienced firsthand what some powerful werewolves find amusing.

“So does she.” I nod at the office aide.

Mister Fuller pauses, glancing at my scarred fingertips. “Vampires are… fastidious… about who they train.”

I shrug. “Sneak through servant passageways into a room, find corpses on floor, knock over lantern in surprise, lantern lands on corpses, corpse-vampires catch fire, and…” I smile cheerily. “Presto! Vamp fang, meet finger.” I wave my forefinger, then rewrap it around my pencil before Missis Dayes can grab my hand to check the fingertips for herself. “What you need a bunch of Magiks for, anyways?”

My attitude and story confuse Mister Fuller. Ignoring the difference between vampires and revenants helps ‘prove’ my ignorance. Only a fool or a masochist intentionally equates the two, though both drink blood. Ambrogino’s mother, General Ludovica, has a habit of having revenants made of anybody who calls her a revenant to her face.

Mister Fuller steps away. “Very well.” But he’s not entirely convinced, his mien says, as he turns to Fionn. He even takes a little sniff to accent his point. “MacDillan? Shall we?”

Fionn shuffles as he sidles towards the door, but he obviously knows what’s going on. He just didn’t expect the summons, either.

Mister Fuller takes my hand and bows over it. “May you have an excellent day, Miss Walker. My apologies for the mistake.”

Before I can frame a suitably blasé response to that, they leave. I manage to wait ’til they’re out of even werewolf earshot before I slouch slowly into my seat, exhausted. From others’ looks at me and the whispers that start, I know they’re wondering what the heck actually is the story with me.

I turn back to my homework. The words spin on the page, and my pencil snaps in two. I stare at the plastic and graphite in my trembling hand for a few seconds in dull surprise that I just did that.

I. Hate. Werewolves.

One arm clutched her Bible to her chest over her too-small, too-tight excuse for clothing, and her other elbow rested against that arm while Kismet thumbed for a ride.

Seven wasn’t a very popular time of night for drivers, not in this stretch of Nowhere, England, but that meant fewer witnesses. Her skin crawled from the cold, but her inadequate clothing did make it obvious that she couldn’t possibly have a gun or anything dangerous. She hoped her obviously overyoung and underfed body might help her catch a ride with someone more interested in what he could provide her than what services she had to offer.

Her self-assessment proved accurate enough when an ordinarily beat-up car stopped, driven by an ordinary middle-aged woman. “Get in,” the lady said, swiping some lank brown hair back from her face. What hair didn’t fall behind her ears returned to fore, since the rubber band holding the ponytail was rebelling.

“I hope you’re not in the habit of picking up hitchhikers.” An ordinary Magik she could understand taking that kind of risk. This woman was human normal, even in her pudgy physical unfitness. Nida would’ve been able to beat her up, assuming the thirteen-year-old djinn could have worked up the energy to even care to do it.

The lady gave Kismet an odd look at that comment. “I hope you’re not in the habit of hitchhiking. Are you getting in or what?”

Kismet climbed into the passenger seat, welcoming the wave of heat that greeted her inside and ignoring the pain that buzzed in her body from the metal surrounding her. The lady didn’t react to how Kismet reeked beneath how she made herself smell, so the woman wasn’t even an immune. The lady swapped the brake for the gas pedal.

Silence followed for several seconds. The lady reached over and pulled an old towel from the back seat. “Cold?”

Kismet shrugged, but she gladly wrapped the towel over the evidence of her slave status that was tattooed all over her upper back. At least He liked girls based on age and not type, so no one could ID her as an immune by her bind-rune’s owner. “Thanks.”

“Keep it. I’m Helen.”

“Kissy.” The nickname fell easily from her tongue, reminding her of better times, times when she wasn’t chattel to have her independence crushed from her.

Kismet rubbed her fingertips together, looking wistfully at the pinprick scars dotting them. Life had hurt so much less, then.

“So, ‘Kissy’. What you running from?”

Helen was normal, undeniably and ignorantly human. She likely scoffed at what stories she’d surely heard of the Darkworld. That made it difficult for Kismet to tell her much.

“A man,” Kismet said quietly, once she’d mentally collected a decent story. She swallowed, knowing that if she handled this wrong, Helen would try to take her to the police station to be returned home rather than help her flee. “He…” She pulled her hair away from her neck so Helen could see the bruises.

Helen hissed at the sight. “Do your parents—”

“Left me with Him.” She flinched once the words escaped her mouth. People tended not to take such frankness very well; preferred ignoring the nightmares that were some people’s lives and didn’t want to be reminded of them.

Helen took it better than most, though there was a long pause. “You pregnant?”

Kismet didn’t answer that. She stared out the car’s passenger side window and pressed one arm to her stomach.

“Where you running to?”

“Does it matter?” Hide. She needed somewhere she could vanish in humanity’s sea long enough to have and hide the baby so He’d never find His child. She flexed to stretch taut muscles while Helen’s silence said that yes, Kismet’s destination did matter. “London.”

“What’s in London?”

Kismet kept her own silence at that question, letting Helen know that, regardless of her car, keys, and adulthood, Kismet wasn’t cowed by her. “Do you have some old clothing to spare?” She tightened her arms over her bosom. “An old T, some sweats, maybe? Something… decent?”

Helen’s response was more of a grunt than a promise, but Kismet noticed how the woman’s poise grew pensive. Helen was a nice normal woman; she wouldn’t leave a teenage runaway in her sorry excuse for clothing.

And Helen wouldn’t deliver her to the cops. Kismet didn’t know that Helen wouldn’t try, but she did know that the woman wouldn’t be able to. If things started looking wrong, Kismet could survive a jump from a moving vehicle.

She had her inhumanity to thank for that, and a fair amount of stunt training. Yet another thing that she would have to thank the vampire court for teaching her if she ever got the chance. If she did somehow end up free from Him instead of dead, she’d have to remember to do that.

Kismet pulled her Bible up and thumbed back to Judges; then paused and decided to switch to Ecclesiastes. She flipped on the car’s overhead light to read. Helen did a double take and scowled.

“Christian?” Helen asked.

Kismet nodded without looking up from her reading. “Humanist?” Humanism counted as a philosophy rather than a religion, strictly speaking, but its adherents were do-gooders, too.

Helen grunted and kept driving.

CHAPTER THREE

I‘m nodding off in the middle of Missis Gambrel’s lecture on Harriet Beecher Stowe’s lack of credentials for writing Uncle Tom’s Cabin—a claim that a substitute teacher directly contradicted yesterday—when she calls on me.

Of course. Embarrass the sleepyhead and maybe she’ll stop snoozing in your class. The theory assumes that the victim considers peer pressure an adequate motivator. It also ignores that anyone who acts out to get noticed will only be encouraged by the tactic.

I jerk and shake my head sharply. Sleep deprivation worsens stress, stress increases sleep deprivation. Nasty cycle. “Che?” The standard twitters start when my ‘What?’ comes out in the wrong language.

Her frown hides how much she’s going to enjoy docking my grade for flunking class participation, today. “I asked why the abolitionists sought to vilify the citizens of slave states by claiming they countenanced certain atrocities.”

I’m pretty sure she didn’t use quite that many big words on the first go-around. If she’s doing that to confuse me, she obviously hasn’t bothered to check my ACT score.

My hand tightens around my pencil, but I remember that I already broke one, today, so I force myself to drop it and clutch the sides of my desk, instead.

“Which atrocities?” I ask, fighting to keep fury out of my voice. People like her are why Nida won’t be able to flee Him before she dies—He’ll kill her before she’s old enough that nobody’ll try to stick her in mundane foster care.

Missis Gambrel’s frown deepens into a scowl. “Obviously, Destiny hasn’t been listening,” she says tersely. “Mike—”

Which ‘atrocities’ are you referring to, witch? “You mean the splitting of families, the brutalizing of girls, or what?”

“All of them,” she replies lightly, her tone revealing how little she believes the claims that both were—are—common.

I remember cute little Nida, her good humor and cheer strangled a little more each day of His abuse, unable to use such a basic djinn ability as shifting into her element to help herself heal. And me unable to help her without revealing my freakishness and getting myself tortured to death.

My arms burn where the metal bangles and my watch adorn them. The pain flares, and the wood of my desk weakens beneath my fingers. I feel a smidgen of magic draw into me from the wood, leaving brittleness behind.

I stare at the desk for a moment. I hadn’t meant to do that.

The surprise keeps me from doing something stupid, like using what combat training I remember to strike the disbelieving frown from my teacher’s face. Yeah, that would keep me from Mister Fuller’s notice.

The desk’s edges crumble in my fingers. I rub my fingers gently to wipe off the shards and avoid splinters. My hands shake with the need to do something, anything to keep from ripping off Missis Gambrel’s sneer. I’ve not been in trouble for fights before; I’m not about to start now.

I grab my schoolbag. I carry a book with me in case I need to wait before entering the parking lot to avoid Mike’s gang. By God’s grace, my current book is something that needs to get slammed in Missis Gambrel’s face.

I pull the little book out and twirl-toss it to land dead center on her desk. “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. It’s what you call a ‘primary source’, written by an actual slave in that era. If that isn’t enough for you, I can find more—heck, I can write one for you if you want. ‘Chronicles of a—”

I yelp and cringe as pain erupts behind my right ear and the air blossoms sawdust. My neighbors and I cough. I hunch away from the source of the pain, my arm raised to deflect another blow.

My desk’s top is essentially gone, and a book that isn’t mine sits in the remains. I poke at it. A school library book?

After a pause, I tentatively turn to see who struck me. And stare.

Sara, seated a chair back and a row to the right, bites her lip and holds another library book ready to toss, which startles me out of cringe mode. “I—I think you were saying more than you wanted to.” The dust settles in her russet perm, and she’s about halfway into lobster mode. She sneezes.

I rub my head, paling when I realize what I’d been about to blurt. “…Thanks.”

Bad enough that others now know about my vampiric childhood. Nobody needs to know about my werewolfized adolescence. Least of all a roomful of humans who might institutionalize me for it.

I draw a deep breath and cough from the dust.

Okay.

I poke a bit of the remaining desktop and watch it collapse into sawdust, too. Merda. “What’s up with my desk?” Maybe it’s a manufacturing defect and not anything I did.

And while I’m making wild wishes, maybe I was hallucinating and didn’t see Signor Ambrogino earlier.

Missis Gambrel must be a myth whore, because my crumbled desktop doesn’t phase her. “Answer the question asked, Destiny.”

Fine, stronza.

“The abolitionists didn’t exaggerate,” I say with enough restraint to almost sound polite. “Primary sources like Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl verify their claims. Miss Mitten said as much when she subbed yesterday.”

A few murmurs back me up, but the class remains still or squirms from my outburst and the sawdust. Most of those seated near me are fighting coughs. Missis Gambrel ignores it all. Don’t ask me why.

My answer isn’t what Missis Gambrel wanted to hear, but it also puts the bulk of the contradiction on Miss Mitten. I doubt Missis Gambrel will let herself be distracted, but at least I have witnesses that I’m not the only one saying such ‘outrageous’ things about the slave owners.

“You’re a Yankee, aren’t you?”

I blink. Wrong accent. “…Greek.” Sort of.

“Don’t get smart with me! You’re from the North.”

I stare at her. “Born in Greece, raised in Italy and England, and immigrated here last year through Atlanta.” Would that make me a redcoat? I mean, my mother’s a US citizen, but I have no idea what part she’s from. She called herself a navy brat.

The bell rings, interrupting the unpleasant conversation. Classmates rush to pick up their stuff and get to their next classes. Missis Gambrel scowls and reminds everyone about the homework for tonight… which is double the reading she told us earlier and has written on the board.

I sit at my broken desk, staring at the damage and wondering if I should bother reporting it. That office aide who’d escorted Mister Fuller had seemed reasonably sympathetic to freaks.

Sara touches my shoulder. “You okay?”

My stomach tightens. “No.”

She shifts her weight. “It was werewolves, wasn’t it?”

I look at her. The shy, very human Sara who just had the guts to throw a book at the class freak’s head to break a bout of hysteria. I should return the favor, trade her something that’ll help keep her safe.

Signor Ambrogino does prefer high schoolers. I could warn her to wear some white until after Jordan’s Seventeenth. Ambrogino’s polite, meticulous. He doesn’t pull the oh-so-sorry-I-didn’t-notice crap.

I open my mouth to warn her as I stuff my schoolbag, but something twinges in my stomach. The memory flashes of Ambrogino gaily enjoying tea with his sister Calandra and me, good-naturedly teasing us and tweaking our hair.

He brought pizzelles to have with tea, I remember abruptly, when he realized I loathe cake. I can’t think of anyone else who knows that about me.

“If a Magik ever offers you a tattoo,” I say instead, “run.”

After I limp back to my flat at the end of the day, I couldn’t tell you how I got there or what I did during my three hours at work. Obviously banged or twisted my left knee, and must’ve pulled something wrong in my back. Hopefully nothing to make my boss mad at me—not that Chrys ever gets mad, weird lady, not even when I accidentally insulted a government inspector—but it’s so distracting. The itching, I mean.

I have homework, always do, need to get it done before morning, but…

I’m shaking as I drop my schoolbag before the bathroom door, turn on the shower to scalding, rip off my clothing, step under the spray to scrub myself clean. But I can’t, can’t scrub hard enough, can’t feel clean.

I scrub ’til it hurts, past hurt, past the water running frigid. My fingernails are blue beneath the red, and the goosebumps and other bumps are rigid from the chill.

I jump at the front door’s slam. The self-assured step, click of stiletto heels, and particular jingling of keys I recognize as my flatmate, home from her own job as a cashier at one of the better supermarket chains in the area. I’m too young for that, so I work at a Magik shop.

“Des?” Alexis only asks once. She sees the backpack, hears the water.

Her bracelets and jewelry jingle as she pulls them off and stacks them on the counter. The sounds come fast, and there’s a thud and a muffled curse as she apparently bangs against a cabinet. Nothing sounds like it breaks, though.

Alexis enters the bathroom, turns off the water, and steps into the wet tub to wrap me in a large fluffy brown towel. Brown hides the stains better, we’ve found, hides the blood now dripping from my nails and scratches. I’ll need another shower to get it off.

But now Alexis just holds the shaking me in the towel. She doesn’t murmur any ‘It’s all right’ or ‘It’ll be okay’ nonsense. She knows better. She remembers what it’s like, to hope, to pray that He’ll weary of you and leave you alone.

She has a bind-rune herself, now inactive thanks to the sigil burned into her skin between her collarbones. Her master’s magical charm burned itself into her skin to deactivate the tattoo. Alexis had to kill her master to get it after he tracked her down last month. I told her to separate herself from me, after that. She refused.

She insists that if she has to, she‘ll kill my owner for me. She doesn’t get that her willingness to kill is much of what makes me uncomfortable with her around. A runaway slave turned vigilante could pose enough of a political problem that even the vampire court might get involved, and that—

I know too much about how they handle perceived problems. My fingertips burn in memory. And the vampire court liked me. I was clever, amusing. A self-declared pacifist. If Court messenger Ambrogino Romazzo finds out what’s happened to me…

World War I started thanks to the petty assassination of an heir; a nutty dictator or four spawned World War II. I refuse to enter history books as the cause of World War III. My bind-rune’s owner isn’t exactly a ruler, but He’s not a mere muscleman, either.

He’s probably best comparable to Queen Elizabeth II—his leader caves to his whims, but He has very little actual power in and of himself. If the Court gets mad at him, it gets mad at a whole lot of other people, too. You don’t survive despite your insanity for as long as He has without allies.

I’m dizzy, gasping for air. “Breathe,” I hear Alexis murmur in my ear as she rocks me like a scared little kid.

The thought reminds me of the reasons I have to be a scared little kid. I don’t want Him to find me; I don’t want to seek help and thereby trigger WWIII, either.

A knock at the door startles us, makes me give a short scream before I bury it in a mouthful of towel. Alexis gently leans the shaking me against the wall, then goes to the door. My scream broke the mental wall I held against the tears, so now the sobs come, too.

Voices in the main room only make my shaking worse. Alexis has let someone in, someone not our landlord—it’s a girl’s voice, not our landlord Birger’s rough Norwegian man-voice. I whimper.

Jordan’s suddenly in the doorway despite Alexis’s attempt to intercept. She stares at me, aghast. “Des?!”

I can’t stop shaking. Or sobbing, for that matter.

My skin crawls with grime. I have to get it off—

“No!” Alexis, cursing and berating Jordan for bothering me, grabs me in a bear hug to restrain my arms.

She draws a deep breath and calms her tone. “No, Des. You’re clean. You just got out of the shower, remember? You’re clean.”

It takes me far too long to compose myself, too long to look up at Jordan and make sense of her expression. Jordan has composed her face into a mask of blankly polite concern.

Jordan enters slowly, quietly, squatting a few feet away to give me space, keeping her hands clearly visible. “I guess you won’t want to come to my birthday party, then,” she says in a valiant attempt to lighten the mood, her small smile faltering almost as soon as she manages to don it.

I can only stare, shivering and blinking back tears, teeth chattering. This isn’t right. There’s a reason she shouldn’t be here, why Jordan shouldn’t see me like this, but I can’t remember…

Alexis holds me stiffly, doubtless glaring at my intruding classmate. “You’re not welcome.”

“Des is my friend, too,” Jordan insists quietly, gently, not entirely managing to hide the shock in her eyes as she studies me. “Can I get you anything?”

“Does it look like you can get her anything?” Alexis snaps in reply.

Jordan stiffens, but she restrains herself from responding sharply. Those raised by werewolves learn young to watch their tones, especially as the moon fills.

“Go!” My half-choked word is barely intelligible, and the order surprises me. I don’t remember how to speak on purpose. “Just go,” a hoarse voice insists. Me, I think, but it might be Alexis.

The shivers threaten to turn back into shakes as Jordan reluctantly does. Go. As she does, I resist the urge to scratch away at the grime that I still feel clinging to my skin.

Remembering the mess I’ve made of myself brings back the tears. I was doing so much better!

Not anymore.

“Something in here should fit you,” Helen said briskly as she led Kismet into a back room and flicked the light on.

Kismet blinked against the abrupt change in illumination, then processed the clothing collection strewn around the room, somewhat organized in boxes and on racks in an attempt at neatness, but Kismet obviously wasn’t the first to pick through it. “Looks like a charity shop.”

“Doesn’t it, though?” Helen nodded. “Freecycle. I pick up things people give away against the times I pick up strays.”

Kismet supplied “Like me” before Helen could do more than hesitate over her potentially insulting choice of words. Kismet fingered a white polo shirt. “It’s okay. I know I’m not ‘That nice girl next door who can watch little Timmy while we’re out’.”

“You do drugs?”

“What? No.” Kismet frowned at Helen, then followed the woman’s look to Kismet’s scarred fingertips. “Oh, these.”

“Yeah. Those.” Helen watched Kismet for a few seconds. When she didn’t elaborate, the woman sighed. “I guess you’ll say you’re clean now if I press you.”

“They’re not tracks. I’ve never used drugs.” Other than some alcohol, which had been legal in Italy and wasn’t any of Helen’s business.

Helen warily glanced Kismet’s way. “Right.”

Kismet studied her fingertips and wondered what they actually looked like to someone who didn’t believe vampires actually existed. They definitely weren’t tracks. “They’re bite scars.”

“From what, piranhas?”

Kismet stared blankly at Helen until she realized Helen was honestly that unfamiliar with animals. “Fangs.” She then stared at the white polo shirt in her hands. She’d worn things like this while at the vampire court. She needed to hide, now.

Kismet swallowed. She slowly released the polo shirt and reached for a crimson T. Before she could pick it up, she was dizzy and shaking with a sour taste in her mouth. No, she couldn’t wear red. If a vampire caught her in it, he’d… consider that permission.

She let knees give out to land her sitting on the floor, and forced herself to consider what she needed to do about her appearance. Her scent, she could change—but the vampires knew that, and they didn’t need to know what a werewolf had been doing to her.

“You okay, kid?’

Kismet blinked at Helen for a moment before she remembered the woman. She shivered. “Sorry. I… Red…” She shook her head and swallowed. “I need to change my appearance,” she whispered, “so I don’t get recognized.” But to what? What could Kismet possibly wear that would hinder recognition from both the vampire court, who knew her and her abilities, and the northern European werewolves, who had seen more of her than she could stand thinking about?

“You think they’ll hunt you?”

Kismet’s chuckle rang hollow to her own ears, and she wrapped her arms around herself. “I know they will.”

Her new position put her at eye level to see some black jeans peeking out from one of the piles her size. Kismet pulled them out and stared at them.

Black. Kismet swallowed. Black would give any vampire who recognized her permission to snack from her, but she could live with that if she had to. Better a snack than found.

She didn’t look at Helen. “May I have some bleach?”

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