Shipwrecked & Horny: A What Could Possibly Go Wrong Bad Boy Romance (Bad Boys After Dark Book 10) by Gabi Moore (28)

There had been times—many of them—when Aurora had typed in “darkness dreams” or “dreams of total darkness” just to see what Dr. Google had to say. Rarely did everyone’s favourite physician have anything helpful to add.

Darkness is symbolic of incomprehension, the unconscious, of malice, death, and concerns about the unknown.

To dream that you are lost in the darkness indicates a sense of loss, uncertainty, or despair.

But Aurora always forgot this advice when the dream was upon her. Tonight, it began as it always did.

Darkness. On every side. Below, above, pressing against her skin like a physical thing. It felt soft, smooth, like satin; something that filled her with such dread should have felt cold or clammy. But no. She was adrift again in satiny darkness, having no way out, not knowing which way she even came in.

Her real body in the bed twisted about, tangling slim legs and slender fingers through the sheets. In her dream, the darkness began to move. It was gradual, like something long-dead taking its first, hesitating breaths. It felt wrong, like something that should not be. And as the darkness flowed and whirled around her, the fear began. It was the hot-blooded fear of a roller coaster and the racing-heart excitement of a first kiss, not all bad but completely terrifying. And Aurora was, as always, completely terrified.

Then, the darkness began to tighten its noose, as it always did. Closer and closer, spinning in smaller circles until Aurora felt certain it must be about to strangle her. It never strangled her, though, not even tonight.

In the waking world, her muscles tightened painfully, twisting together in anticipation.

Through the darkness, a hand reached. Aurora felt it more than saw it. Whether it was to save her or harm her, she never knew, but it grasped for her through the depthless, endless black night.

A cell phone blared a clanging alarm and Aurora snapped awake, panting. Sunlight filtered in through her curtains, slanting through the city buildings outside, finding its way here to where it was most needed. Nothing would have been half so welcome as the sight of sunlight after another one of the darkness dreams. They had been recurring all through her childhood, for as long as she could remember. Her mother had never had money for a psychiatrist, but whenever Aurora went to the school councillor the dreams were labelled as manifestations of abandonment anxiety.

Wasn’t that something. Abandonment anxiety. Why ever would Aurora have that? It surely wasn’t her father walking out when she was little, no, definitely not that.

Of course, Aurora reasoned as she fought out of her tangle of bedsheets, who didn’t have abandonment anxiety? Was there anyone in the world who liked being left high and dry?

In the soft rays of sunlight, dust motes hovered and danced; realistically, it meant their apartment was old and musty, but they were strangely beautiful in the morning light. Aurora watched them float for a moment, still drowsy, wrapped in her quilt.

“You up, baby?”

“I’m up, Momma,” Aurora replied. An enormous yawn began halfway through the small sentence. She smiled and turned towards the door. “I’m up.”

Never once in her life had Aurora woken before her mother. When she was in grade school, this had seemed natural. Why question it? That was just the way things were, and had always been. Aurora had just assumed that she didn’t need to sleep. The way children often do, Aurora had shrugged it off, seeing no need to worry.

When she was in her teens, Aurora found out the truth of things; Ramona Potier was an insomniac, afflicted severely with an inability to fall asleep or even to stay asleep. She’d always made use of this handicap to work extra hours, as many as three jobs at once, to provide for herself and Aurora in New York, where even three jobs was sometimes not enough. It had cost her, in the end, and eventually Aurora had returned home from school senior year to find her mother curled up and shivering in the bathtub—she’d had a nervous breakdown. Overworked, the doctor said. Take a break. And here’s the bill.

So at seventeen, Aurora had to assume responsibility for both of them. The last few months of high school had been terribly close, but she’d graduated and moved straight into the work force, taking up her mother’s mantle to keep a roof over their heads.

That was five years ago. Five years of waitressing, bartending, shop keeping, running newspapers or pizzas (as circumstances demanded). Her high school friends had moved away to college, careers, their futures. And Aurora was here. Making ends meet. Stuck in an exhausting limbo where one day bled into the next and there was an endless need for another paycheck.

Ramona wasn’t able to work anymore; something had seemed to break inside her the day she had her attack. Now curiously quiet and reserved, she rarely left the apartment. Her days were spent obsessively cleaning and obsessively looking after her daughter, to the point where Aurora sometimes felt no less than suffocated.

Aurora snapped her sheets back into place just as Ramona’s voice sounded outside her door.

“Aurora, sweetie—do you want me to bring you your cereal in bed?”

Aurora rolled her eyes; most days, she could keep her exasperation to herself. “No, Momma, I’m going to come out and eat with you.”

Rubbing sleep and the last bits of the dream from her eyes, Aurora opened the door to her room and joined her mother in the kitchen. A tiny table was squeezed in the corner by the window; Ramona was sitting here, and it looked like she’d been sitting there for hours already. Her skinny frame was settled in her usual chair, hair up in a scarf, gazing out the window absently.

“What’cha thinkin’ about?” Aurora asked cheerfully from the kitchen. She poured a bowl of cereal (Cinnamon Toast Crunch) and splashed in some milk. Her mother still hadn’t answered by the time she put both box and carton away and took her seat at the table.

“Oh, nothing,” Ramona answered finally, dreamily.

Aurora swallowed the sharp reply that came to mind. She already knew what her mother was thinking about. The same thing she was always thinking about this time of day, in this still hour, when another sleepless night had passed. Aurora’s father. Where the daughter was plagued by fitful dreams and simmering resentment, Ramona only ever seemed to remember him wistfully, lovingly, as if she had forgotten the part where he walked out.

As if he’d never done anything wrong. That, more than anything, made Aurora angry.

But she had grown a talent for holding her tongue when those feelings arose. Ramona knew it made her daughter mad to talk about her absent husband, so she never did anymore.

Aurora sighed as she gulped down her cereal. “Well, much more of this, and I’ll be late to work.” She leaned over and kissed her mother’s forehead, then retreated to the sink to wash her dishes.

There wasn’t much threat of Aurora being late; it was only a twenty minute commute (if she caught the train) and she still had another thirty minutes to get to the station. She walked into the bathroom and ran a shower; the water a slightly brown at first, and as she waited for it to clear, Aurora caught sight of herself in the mirror.

The first thing she noticed was the dark circles under her eyes. Again. She’d often wondered if insomnia was genetic, and if she, too, might end up sitting up in a kitchen chair all night. For all that she worked, Aurora didn’t seem to sleep enough, and today her face showed it. Her dusky skin was winter pale, and her speckled hazel eyes gleamed. Those must have come from her European father. Ramona Potier had dark skin, dark hair, dark eyes, and Aurora really only took after her in bone and facial structure.

If she had her own way, Aurora would have been content to get her father’s hair, too, but since hers was curly and thick, she worked conditioner through it before stepping into the water.

Without meaning to, Aurora started to imagine all over again what he had looked like. She tried to work backwards, taking her features and subtracting everything that was Ramona. What was left? The remains of some Louisiana man who her mother had fallen in love with? Aurora could never finish the picture. It kept falling apart every time she got close to his face.

It was a beautiful morning—at least, as beautiful as it ever got in New York. In February, the air was bitter cold and sharp as razors going down Aurora’s throat to her lungs when she drew in a breath, flaming out in puffs of icy white when she exhaled. She was bundled in layers, leggings under her jeans, two sweaters under her coat, and thick socks under her boots. She still felt the cold grasping for her skin through all the clothes.

Five days a week, she went to Mme. Moreau’s boutique downtown to sell designer clothes. That simple sentence isn’t quite the whole of the story; it’s a simplified explanation. What Aurora did at the boutique more resembled a finely-planned performance than simple customer service. There were five girls employed at the store, and for the six hours that the boutique was open, Monday through Friday, all five showed up to fawn in synchronised perfection over each client, each appointment in the book. Moreau’s was a highly exclusive, much coveted brand. Aurora couldn’t explain why; apart from being French and snobby, Madame Moreau was little different than any other woman, her clothes elegant, but not particularly more so than any other store.

But it paid well, and Aurora was the senior employee, so it was worth her time to stay. After her most recent raise from Moreau six months past, she’d been able to drop her third job at Wal-Mart. If only for this reason, Aurora was thankful enough to stay loyal.

The raise had come when Aurora became the senior employee, when her predecessor had married and bowed out of working for Moreau. With it came certain perks, of course, foremost being that Aurora possessed a key to the store. She used it now, as she climbed into the elevator and had to unlock the 24^th floor, which belonged to Moreau. The Madame wasn’t here yet, which was strange for a Friday. Usually she got here early to make sure everything was in order to be wrapped up for the weekend. No flimsy excuses or late orders from this shop.

Strange, but not unheard of. Aurora put it from her mind as she walked in to the boutique, lit softly in early morning’s colors from the naked windows.

The cleaning ladies were still there when Aurora walked in, and she greeted them warmly; it had been the same service for her entire career at Moreau’s that came in just before opening to see to it that the place was spotless. They did excellent work, or else Madame Moreau would have replaced them years ago.

The boutique opened at ten, and stayed open until four. This was not accidental. Moreau believed part of her image was excluding customers that worked, that had other places to be at two in the afternoon other than spending money. Aurora tried not to think about that; it always inflated a hot little balloon of fury in her chest, and it was better to just flatten that down. This was her main job, the biggest source of her income. No need to blow it over social injustice, especially not for someone as petty as Moreau.

Instead, she let herself in to the back room, into the cavernous back hall full of racks and hanging clothes bags, all their inventory. Only a few displays were set out on the actual floor; this was why all five employees were there every day, to run back and forth with possible outfits for their guests. It was a little exhausting at times, Aurora had to admit, but there were worse ways to make a living than pandering to spoiled housewives and mistresses.

Part of the back room was a sort of locker room for the girls who worked there. Good pay or not, none of them made half enough to afford to dress in Moreau’s styles themselves. One of her dresses could pay Aurora’s rent for half a year! She could never afford it on her own. But neither could they show up to work dressed in something they bought at Target, so Moreau had a few styles set aside for the girls to wear as their uniforms. Nothing too showy. Just expensive enough to impress the clientele.

Being the first there, Aurora had her choice of the lot. New outfits always came in on Friday, to be prepared for arrangement on the show floor over the weekend. The sales girls got a crack at them first, and today several new dresses waited on the ‘borrow’ rack, still in their fresh plastic sheaths.

Aurora had never told anyone this—not that she really had anyone to tell—but her work outfits were one of the biggest perks of this job. The other girls were silly and twittery, and Aurora hated to agree with them on anything; when they oohed and aahed about Moreau’s fashions, Aurora tried to pretend she was indifferent, focused on work. But here alone, she could admit to herself. She got an odd and fluttery thrill to dress up in pretty clothes, no matter how stupidly expensive they were.

Today she picked out an olive green dress, which matched her hazel-green eyes wonderfully. It was dripping with floral embroidery and tiny precious stones. Probably Swarovski crystals, glimmering from the centers of tiny wildflowers. The dress came with a short cap-sleeve jacket, a shade and a half darker than the dress, that curved around Aurora’s back and shoulders perfectly. Maybe that was why these clothes were so expensive. They always seemed to fit as if designed just for the wearer.

Aurora looked over her choice in the mirror and was not disappointed. She was skinny (overwork and poverty will do that to a body) but still strong and young and the dress made her look much more refined than she ever felt on her own. Moreau believed clothes were the key to success; there were times when Aurora had to agree with her, at least privately.

To finish the outfit, there was a vanity and a jewelry box of baubles to pair with the work uniforms. No one had ever been dumb enough to try and steal from the jewelry cache in a long time. Moreau was like a falcon, or a hound dog. She knew how to read people, and she knew how to sniff out a lie. Aurora had never even considered stealing from her, although some of the pieces to borrow cost much more than the clothes.

Today it was diamonds, simple, tiny drops for each ear that picked up the glitter from the thousand crystals sewn into the dress. Tasteful and spare. Perfect. A pair of soft green-satin pumps and the outfit was complete.

Aurora put her own things away, neatly folded, into her locker and walked back out onto the floor. The housekeepers were gone, leaving the floor empty and silent. Aurora turned the show lights on and walked to the counter. She barely had time to open the appointment book to review their schedule when the elevator opened and Mme. Moreau and two of the other girls entered.

“Good morning, Madame Moreau,” Aurora greeted automatically.

Madame Moreau looked a little like a Halloween decoration dressed in designer fashion. Although she sold only the newest and finest styles (and her own brand) in the boutique, Moreau seemed to have picked out a decade and stuck with it, always in black. Over her snappy black dress suit and heels, she blustered into the store today spewing French, doffing her black-fur coat as she went.

“Je suis… parce que… ne peut pas espere… cette ville… tout le monde... gens ne sais pas…” Aurora didn’t speak French, but she’d developed an ear for certain words, and it seemed that Moreau was in no better or worse mood than usual.

The Madame was at least eighty and frightfully thin, like a great pale, skeletal bat done up in thousand-dollar make-up. Her perfectly white hair was flawless, as if even the winter wind outside couldn’t touch it.

“Terrible, just terrible, everything’s terrible,” she rattled on as she shambled across the floor. “Aurora, get the book. We have to inventory before open.”

Aurora snatched up the order log from under the counter and jogged to catch up with Moreau. While the other girls changed, it was time to inventory the arrivals in the back. It would take most people an hour or two. At Madame Moreau’s pace, it would be done before the store opened.

Careful not to get ink on her borrowed dress, Aurora jotted down Moreau’s endless stream of commentary. Numbers, notes, complaints—there were always complaints, with Madame Moreau—all went in the boxes and margins. Aurora was having a much easier time keeping than usual. She eyed Moreau suspiciously.

The Madame had paused, rubbing the black sleeve of a garment between her fingers. Her heavily made-up face seemed to be concentrating fiercely. On her four-inch heels, Mme. Moreau seemed to totter a little.

“Madame!” Aurora almost dropped the book, ready to catch her if she fell. Moreau steadied herself and shook her head.

“Where was I? Ah, oui, we received three of this style, but I specifically asked for five, one in each of our main sizes…”

And on she went, as if nothing had happened. Aurora continued to scribble notes, looking up every now and then. Moreau still seemed to be moving slower than usual, and making occasional mistakes in her English.

They had finally wrapped up inventory (with minutes to spare), and Aurora was jotting down the last few lines when Moreau stopped suddenly.

Aurora had been waiting. She set the book down instantly and took Moreau’s arm. Maybe it had been the shock of finding her own mother in a panic attack all those years ago, but there was something wrong with the Madame. The old woman had a hand gripped around the edge of a rack, knuckles white, and Aurora had to gently pry them loose to lead her to a chair.

“Kylie! Madison! Help! It’s the Madame!”

The chatter from the changing area snapped off and the two other girls came rushing through the racks. Between the three of them, they guided Moreau to the chair in front of the vanity.

“Call an ambulance,” Aurora told Kylie firmly. The little redhead nodded, her big eyes watery and fearful. She had to dig her phone out of her locker (Moreau did not tolerate cell phones on the show floor), but within a minute she had gotten dispatch on the line and was explaining in a tearful voice what had happened. Aurora had to feed her the address and the details, but at least an ambulance was on the way.

“Aurora.”

Moreau’s hand gripped her arm, and Aurora leaned closer. The other sales girls had arrived, and Madison was fretfully explaining what had happened. Kylie was still on the phone to 911. They were alone, for the moment.

All of her fierceness seemed to have slipped away as Moreau looked up at Aurora, dark eyes full of the fear of the unknown. Aurora didn’t have any idea what was going on, but Moreau was very old, and rarely admitted how frail her age made her. Doubtless it was some heart problem, something the Madame had kept hidden from them all. Either way, as she looked up now, Aurora wished she had some comfort to give.

“The ambulance is going to be here soon, Madame,” Aurora promised. “They’ll know how to help you. Just take it easy.”

“I’m so sorry, Aurora,” Moreau whispered. Her voice was strained and small. “I… I thought I had more time.”

Panic lurched up Aurora’s throat. “Of course you have more time, Madame, you’re going to be all right. The ambulance is going to take you to the hospital, you’ll be okay. You’ll see.”

But Moreau didn’t respond. She lapsed into silence, staring through the racks of clothes.

The paramedics came soon after, making impressive time. They bustled through the boutique with their uniforms and their stretcher, and soon bustled right back out again with Mme. Moreau bundled up between them. Aurora was forced to admit that she didn’t know who to notify, since as far as she knew, Moreau had no family. She ended up accepting the hospital name and contact information, and then they were gone.

After that, Aurora wasn’t given the luxury of time to reflect over what had happened, or what might happen next. She had a store to run, now, since management fell to her in Moreau’s absence. It was too terrifying to think what might happen tomorrow, or next week. What if Madame Moreau was seriously ill? Would she be all right? Would the store close? Too busy to think about that now, because minutes after the paramedics left, the first customer arrived.

The day’s first two customers were regulars that visited often, at least monthly. Aurora knew them both well, and so did the other girls in the shop. Although they asked after Madame Moreau (she’d never missed a day of work in her life, as far as Aurora knew) things ran smooth as usual without her. Bringing in outfits from the back, helping the customer try them on, making adjustments, trying accessories, so on, so forth.

Aurora had never had to take over for Mme. Moreau before, so was thrown into the role of management rather abruptly. Still, she was able to roll with it, getting the hang of Moreau’s position without any major slip-ups. The first two customers, married women with their noses on the ceiling, left happy with the purchases, and by the time the third guest arrived, Aurora had begun to feel pretty sure of herself.

This was good, because she needed all the confidence she could get.

The moment he walked in the door, he demanded attention. The appointment book had him listed as a Mr. Fredericks, but the name didn’t fit. For someone so tall and exotic, he needed a more fascinating name—James Bond came to mind as Aurora watched him approach the counter. Six-foot-something and dark as polished oak, he was dressed in a sharp suit and held himself like a businessman. Aurora wasn’t the only one to take notice; her fellow sales associates were watching him closely.

“Bonjour, Mr. Fredericks, and welcome to Moreau’s,” Aurora greeted. She’d said it a hundred thousand times; she never meant it so much as today. His ink-drop eyes were intense, although his face was friendly. “How can we help you today?”

“Yes…” His voice sent shivers down her spine. Gravelly, but not too deep. “I’m here shopping for a… lady friend.”

Aurora hid her disappointment like a champ, her smile never even flickering. “Of course.” She stepped out from behind the counter and led him towards the first of the waiting displays. “These are some of this week’s pieces. What, in particular, are you shopping for?”

This display was an assortment of evening wear; Aurora’s own dress would be shown here next week, if she had time to come do the display for Madame Moreau. Mr. Fredericks twisted his mouth in a light frown as he looked them over.

“Not quite what I had in mind.”

“Well, we do have a selection of lingerie, if that’s more your taste,” Aurora replied. She forced herself to smile teasingly, although inside her head she couldn’t believe she’d actually said those words to a customer!

Luckily, he seemed open to the suggestion, so Aurora led him back to the intimates, beneath envious stares from Kylie, Madison, and the others. The number one reason why employees left Moreau’s was with a new husband or boyfriend. Some girls even sought out a job here in the attempt to snag a rich man to support them. For herself, Aurora couldn’t see how so many men shopping for their wives could end up available to take on a new girlfriend, but discretion was part of her job, as well.

In the intimates section, cordoned off by a lacy pink curtain, Victoria’s Secret looked like a Costco cashier. Some of these items were thousands of dollars; out of the corner of her eye, she caught Mr. Fredericks wince a little when she mentioned the price.

“I have to admit, it’s a lot to pay when I haven’t even seen it worn,” he pointed out.

Aurora felt heat creep up her neck; those black eyes of his were fixed on her face. Not for a moment did they drop to scan the curves of her body, or to the low neckline of her dress, but in his voice was an unmistakable blush of flirtation. Her head felt light. Back here, in the privacy of the lingerie section, Aurora almost let herself believe in the desire he exuded.

“It is a premium price, but Moreau’s only sells the best,” she replied. “Maybe you could have your… lady friend… come in and try something on herself? We’d be happy to accommodate her.”

“Maybe that would be best,” Mr. Fredericks agreed. He took a last look over the display, and reached up towards his coat. Aurora really must have been feeling silly; for a wild moment she thought he was going to take his coat off, and his shirt, too. He looked to be all muscle under the suit. But no—he reached up to his pocket and pulled out a business card.

He drew a pen from his pocket, and without breaking his eyes from hers, scribbled something on the back of it that looked a lot like a phone number. Not that Aurora could look; she was having a hard time breaking their stare.

He took her hand; Aurora had never been so electrified by a customer. It was a fight to keep her face straight. Mr. Fredericks put his card between her fingers and smiled.

“If you could contact me with open appointments next week, I’d be most grateful.”

Aurora swallowed hard and nodded her head quickly.

He smiled, perfectly white teeth against his dark skin. “Excellent. Now, I think I’d better get a move on. I’d hate to use up any more of your time with my poking around.”

And he let himself out of the lingerie section, back out onto the floor. Kylie showed him out with a purring farewell, and then the elevator door closed, and she turned to Aurora.

“How mean!” she complained, joking. “You kept him all to yourself.”

“What was happening back there?”

“Did he try to put on the moves, Aurora?”

“No, that’s ridiculous. Besides, you were listening in, anyway, I don’t know why you’re bothering to ask.” Aurora hustled back behind the counter to busy herself with the appointment book. And to slip the card out of sight.

The next three hours blurred past. If Moreau had been well and present, Aurora surely would have been at least reprimanded, if not fired for dazing off. But the stranger, supposedly Mr. Fredericks, stayed in her mind consistently. In the end, Aurora backed off and let the other girls handle the afternoon’s customers. She was sure to bungle it up, with her thoughts drifting out the window every few seconds.

This wasn’t lost on her co-workers, who teased her lightly. It was rare that Aurora lost focus, Aurora who usually kept her head level, Aurora who never flirted with even the most eligible shopper. Madison in particular seemed to find it hilarious; she’d worked here with Aurora the longest, and knew how long her history of detachment stretched back.

And then, when the other girls weren’t looking, there was Aurora’s constant flipping through the orders book, where she had stashed Mr. Fredericks’ card. It was still there, still real.

And what are you going to do with that? she wondered to herself. Was she going to call up the rich married man and set a date? A date to squeeze in between this job and the next? Was she going to show up in a twenty-five dollar dress and well-worn heels? Or maybe bring him home to meet her recluse mother at their cubby-hole apartment?

She couldn’t call him back, Aurora knew that for certain by the time four o’clock arrived. It was a disappointment. It really was. She’d forgotten for a minute how limited her options, her very life, was, and it had felt wonderful and free. But the reality was that she wasn’t going anywhere with a rich guy like that.

Aurora kept the card, anyway. Not to use. Just to look at, and remember a moment where she’d forgotten all her responsibilities and been a normal twenty-three-year-old. One that had time for dates, and for whom the future was a blank page.

The girls closed up shop and changed back into their street clothes, back into normal working women with too little sleep and not enough money. They filed out, Aurora last, carrying the order book with her; she had to stop by one more place before she was done for the day.

Bundled back into her many layers, Aurora set off into the growing dusk, darkness that fell early between the city streets. She stopped at a Chinese place that sat between Moreau’s and the train station. Their egg rolls were divine, and on days when she worked both jobs, it was comforting to at least have this little bit of reprieve on her way from here to there.

Then it was on to the subway, to take the five o’clock train to Mr. Cheng’s.

Their story had never been made completely clear to Aurora. How rich French actress-turned-designer had ever met a humble, friendly old Chinese shopkeeper was difficult to explain in full. It sounded like an excellent story, but Aurora had never asked. All she knew was that when Moreau’s customers needed an alteration or a repair, the garment was taken to Cheng’s, and he fixed it. Simple as that.

Somehow, Moreau had helped him immigrate from China, that much was sure. His warehouse was set up in the next burrow, less high-end than Moreau’s and the other boutiques like it. Aurora had to admit she felt more at home here than among the well-to-do, but she still clutched her purse tightly on the way from the train to Mr. Cheng’s front door.

She let herself in; this was a part of the work day that she was familiar with. Madame Moreau had often had her take the orders to Cheng, and the routine never changed. She’d find him on the floor with his employees, probably helping someone with a seam or a button or a hem. He was short and old and extremely kind, and when he looked up and saw Aurora descending the small flight of steps into the warehouse, he smiled hugely.

“Oh! Aurora!” he called, handing the trousers he’d been picking at back to the woman next to him, sitting with several others under a set of bright lights. “You have today’s repairs?”

“Yes, right here, Mr. Cheng,” Aurora smiled as she answered, unable to help herself. He had such a good nature, and such an infectious smile. She pulled the orders out of her purse, careful to take the business card out and stash it in her pocket before handing the book over.

“Is so cold, today, no? You should wear hat, too cold for your ears,” he chattered as he looked over today’s notes. Aurora grinned, but didn’t bother pointing out that he himself only wore plain jeans and a button-up shirt, despite his warnings of the weather.

“I’ll be fine. Thank you, though. It is very cold, but hopefully not for too much longer.” She shouted just a little; Mr. Cheng was hard of hearing.

“Hopefully,” Mr. Cheng replied. He was looking over the book. His hands turned the pages precisely, wrinkled and spotted with age. Still, he was as sharp as ever with a needle and thread.

Aurora was about to ask how he’d been, but he was off all on his own, darting into the back to fetch the finished tailorings. She didn’t have to wait long; he might have had them already set out and ready, for how fast he returned with them.

“Great, great,” she nodded as she thumbed through the fabric, comparing them with the original orders made. “These look perfect, Mr. Cheng. The truck will be here in the morning to get them. Thank you so much.”

“No problem, no problem,” he insisted, grinning. “Always happy to help Madame Moreau.”

Aurora hesitated. “Have you… have you heard about what happened?”

Mr. Cheng’s smile dimmed. “No. Something happen?”

“Mr. Cheng, Madame Moreau is in the hospital,” Aurora explained gently. “I think she had a—a heart attack, or something. She was awake when she left in the ambulance, just very weak.”

Mr. Cheng was very still. “She in hospital now?”

“Yes… I can give you the hospital and her room number, I called about an hour ago—”

“This bad…” Mr. Cheng murmured to himself. “This—this very bad!”

Trying to calm him, Aurora set a hand on his arm. “Hey! It’s going to be okay! The doctors are taking care of her. She’ll be back to normal in a couple days—”

He snapped his head towards her suddenly, so suddenly that Aurora cut off her sentence in surprise. Mr. Cheng’s smile was gone now. He looked serious, more gravely serious than Aurora had ever seen.

“You—go home. Go home, now!”

“Home? I can’t—I have another job—”

“Doesn’t matter!” Mr. Cheng ushered her towards the door. He dug through his pants pocket and pulled out a roll of bills; he crumpled a fifty into Aurora’s hand. “Take taxi. Get home, right away. Not safe. I can’t explain now, but please—go home.”

Aurora stood in the doorway, staring at him, as Mr. Cheng opened the outer door to the drawing night and let in a blast of icy wind. He’d never been anything other than friendly and passive to the world’s troubles. It seemed out of place, completely out of place, that he should be so upset now. Aurora knew that he was close to Mme. Moreau, but what was this about ‘not safe’?

She tried again, calmly, willing him to listen. “Mr. Cheng, please… could you tell me—”

“No!” he cried suddenly. “Not now! Now—go home! Go!”

And he shut the door in her face.

Stunned, Aurora stood rooted to the spot. She was shivering. Her nerves were on edge. It had already been a long day, and here she had this, now. Maybe it was Mme. Moreau’s episode, or Mr. Cheng’s unusual behavior, but mechanically Aurora walked to the street and hailed a taxi. She rarely rode anywhere in a taxi—too expensive. But she gave the cabby her address numbly, and watched Mr. Cheng’s factory slip away in the back window.

But after a few minutes’ drive, the shock wore off a little, and she was able to think. Mr. Cheng was obviously upset; Mme. Moreau was one of his oldest friends in this country. They’d been working together for decades. Of course his reaction to her illness would be extreme. Maybe he had some sort of superstition about this sort of thing. Who knew?

The years of hard work and showing up day after day, no matter how sick or upset she may be, reminded Aurora that the warnings of a possibly-confused old man were no reason to miss work. Chip didn’t accept call ins for Friday night. With Moreau in the hospital, Aurora’s future at the boutique was uncertain—she couldn’t afford to lose her other job, as well.

“Sir? I’m sorry, but I need to change the destination…”

“You’re late, Potier!”

“You’re lucky I got here at all. Traffic was a disaster.” That was the God’s honest truth; Aurora had changed her destination with the driver, only to get caught in a jam for twenty minutes. Only Mr. Cheng’s fifty had kept her from stepping out of the cab and walking the whole way. She had hoped she might have a little left over, but that was a forlorn hope.

“Your shift started at 8, Aurora,” Chip reminded her, crossing his arms. He was standing by the door in the locker room, watching her change—not really a problem, since he was about as gay as it got. Tonight, in neon-orange fishnet and leather pants, he was dressed and ready for the weekend rush.

Aurora only worked four days a week at Chip’s bar, Witching Hour. When she first started, she worked seven, but in recent months she’d whittled down her schedule to the most lucrative nights, Thursday through Sunday. Whoopee.

Chip himself wasn’t terrible, but he was a hard-ass on his employees. To be fair, his other girls were used to working as slummy waitresses and strippers—it was fair to say that Aurora had the best work ethic, but he didn’t keep his staff under control by being nice. He was thirty-something and good-looking, but to run a bar in New York you had to have some of the street attitude going for you.

“Look, my other boss had a medical emergency,” Aurora explained, pulling off her own clothes. Her work uniform for Witching Hour was in the chute—the laundry chute, that is. Leather and metal accessories were tough to clean, so Chip deducted laundering from their pay-check and took care of it himself. He’d been going to the same dry cleaners for leather and other… specialty materials… long before he bought the bar.

Chip rolled his blue eyes. “Save me the story.”

“I’m the senior employee there. I had to see to it that the orders were finished up in time.”

“Why didn’t you call to tell me?”

“I told you! I didn’t expect the traffic!” Aurora dug through the chute, dressed in only her bra and panties. She paused. “Well? I need to know, Chip. What’s it going to be? Am I hosting tonight? Or do I need to find another job?”

Aurora tried to hide her nerves. This was a bluff, but she didn’t usually test Chip’s patience, so she felt like she had some slack to pull on. He’d fired girls for being late before, first offenders, too. But Aurora had a long history of being his most reliable, most hardworking. Hopefully that was enough.

For a long time, the only sound was the pulsing bump of the bass in the main room. People were already crowding in, and it wasn’t even nine o’clock. Tonight was going to be busy, and they both knew it. Finally, Chip sighed.

“You don’t have to look for another job,” he sighed.

Aurora breathed again.

“But you’re not hosting tonight.” Her relief soured a little as Chip went on. “I already put Jeshaylah on hostess. It’s behind the bar for you. And be happy that you’re not fired. I don’t want any more surprise lates or absences from you.”

“Definitely not,” Aurora assured him, but Chip was already heading out the door. A blaring hip-hop/EDM hybrid nearly blew the door down, but then it closed, and Aurora was alone with the crate of clean uniforms.

“By the way,” Chip added, sticking his head back in the door. “Katrina borrowed your jacket.”

“What?”

But Chip was already gone.

Well, she would have preferred hostess, but better bartender than fired. And either of those was better than waitressing—Witching Hour wasn’t high on the respectable gage, and the last time Aurora had worked waitress, some asshole had nearly ripped her booty shorts trying to grab her ass. That was the waitress uniform: fishnet tights or well-ripped-up black ones, high-heeled boots, and either leather shorts or miniskirt. Witching Hour had a dangerously risqué theme of part electronica, part BDSM, like vampires on dubstep. Weird as hell, but it paid bank in tips.

Hostess was considered the cush job, hanging out right next to security all night and seeing to the VIP list. Definitely preferable, but bartending wasn’t bad. At least the bar was between herself and the clients, except for the most rowdy. There had been a couple brawlers tossed right over the bar, but that wasn’t a normal happening.

And the bartenders wore more. True, their outfit wasn’t exactly something she could walk out on the streets in, but at least her legs were covered. Full-length leather pants and boots, lots of metal buckles, and a top that qualified as a bralette, or maybe a very small crop-top. That was why she liked having the jacket, so she felt a little more like she had clothes on, but there was nothing to do about it now.

Lastly Aurora pulled on elbow-length fingerless gloves. They’d be soaked in alcohol by night’s end, but Chip insisted they matched the look. And so they did.

There was a large mirror across the back wall of the changing room, and Aurora looked over her uniform one last time. This morning, she’d gotten dressed for work in a multi-thousand dollar outfit, complete with diamonds. By night, she poured for the riff-raff and spent hours drowned in electronic beats and cigarette smoke.

At least, sometimes it was cigarette smoke.

She sighed; this was her life. Both jobs gave her something she needed, but not everything. There was always something missing. Aurora was beginning to suspect that she’d never find it.

But nine o’clock was rolling nearer, and the bar was already bouncing. She waded into the fray and joined her coworkers behind the bar. Katrina and Amy were both rushing to put glasses and bottles in hands, so busy that Katrina didn’t even have time to notice the stink eye Aurora gave her over the jacket she’d borrowed (Really, my name is stitched on the back, for Christ’s sake, Aurora thought to herself, annoyed). With a third set of hands, they managed to get on top of drink orders, and things behind the bar settled down long enough for them to catch a breath.

“Smoke break?” Katrina asked breathlessly. Her long brown hair was done up in a tight ponytail, with heavy, dark make-up around the eyes. Aurora shrugged; she didn’t smoke, and they all knew it.

“I can hold things up here for like, ten minutes,” Aurora told them.

“All right, all right.” They excused themselves without much fanfare, retreating out the back door in a burst of cold wind. Aurora didn’t envy them one bit—it felt like a freezer outside.

She did, however, begin to wonder where they were when the rush returned. Aurora was a great worker and great bartender—anything else would have been buried as a mob of the night crowd came to riot around the bar. Handing out beers, pouring shots, mixing drinks, ringing tabs, and making tips fell into a steady rhythm. Snapping selfies, orchestrating belly shots, specialty booze pours, and the occasional ice bucket into the increasingly rowdy crowd—Aurora felt like she was batting against as tsunami. The DJ saw her distress and was trying to lure people onto the dance floor to give her a break, but there was only so much she could do from her booth. Aurora was good, but this was too much. Where were Katrina and Amy?

She’s just served up a round of three hurricanes and a hot saucer when the first scream hit.

Aurora spun around. Amy was back. Most of her, anyway.

Witching Hour and the panicking crowd tilted at a funny angle as what she was seeing sunk in. Aurora leaned a hand against the bar; her head felt hot. So warm… and so dizzy.

Amy had managed to wander back in from her smoke break, mumbling nonsense around what was left of her tongue. Blood gushed from her mouth, and from the sockets where her green eyes had been, blood matting into her red hair, down her neck, down her shirt, everywhere, everywhere…

An hour passed, but Aurora would have been surprised to hear it. Her mind kept taking unexpected leave, blanking out like a merciful white cloud, letting her body go through the motions. Calling Chip. The ambulance, the second ambulance today, arriving to find Aurora still holding a washrag to Amy’s eyes. It was sopping with blood. So much blood. But Aurora didn’t remember the worst of it, and when Chip was sitting with her outside some time later, reality began to catch up, and she began to cry hot tears that steamed in the biting cold.

“Breathe, honey, just breathe. The medics said to focus on taking deep breaths.”

That was Chip. He’d never sounded so caring. Aurora felt an arm around her shoulders, and knew it was his.

She looked down at her hands, the fingerless gloves gone. They’d been gone a while; the EMT had taken them off when she helped Aurora clean the blood off her fingers. There had been so much of it… Aurora could still feel it on her skin now, burning and thick and catching the light like rubies.

She felt a little sick, and gulped in frozen February air to stifle the nausea. Aurora hated vomiting ever since she was little. Besides, there was nothing left to throw up except bile and the sips of water she’d forced down.

The world was coming back into focus, a little at a time. She was outside Witching Hour, and a crime scene had been established. She and Chip were seated in the open back of a police van. Amy’s limp body had been loaded hastily into the back of an ambulance and shipped to the nearest hospital; her outlook wasn’t good. Two other ambulances waited on the scene, the medics and EMTs making rounds through the club staff and the club patrons who hadn’t run off at the sound of police sirens.

No one knew what had happened to Amy, yet. There were no witnesses, at least none that had stuck around to speak to police. Some psycho in the alley, probably. High on meth or PCP or some crazy street drugs. That was all the police could guess so far, when Chip asked.

“It’s going to be all right, Aurora, it’s going to be fine.”

First Madame Moreau, and now this? How much was one girl supposed to be able to handle?

Aurora struggled to sit upright. She seemed to be succeeding when an officer approached.

“You the owner? Christopher Henson?”

Chip’s real name; he answered in the affirmative.

The officer sighed. “Sir, do you know an Aurora?”

Both Aurora and Chip stiffened and exchanged a glance. “Well… yes.”

Another sigh. The officer, also, seemed to be having a long night, and looked truly sorry when he said, “There’s no easy way to tell you this, but I’m afraid we found her body in the alley behind the bar.”

Aurora forgot to breathe again. Chip looked at her, then at the officer. “That’s not possible. Aurora… well, this is her. Right here.”

The cop stared at Aurora for a moment, and frowned. “Well, we got an adult female, probably twenties, eyes and tongue missing, lying dead in the alley behind your establishment.”

Confusion, then realization. Aurora’s eyes welled up again and Chip closed his eyes. In a whisper, Aurora voiced what they both knew.

“Katrina.”

The interrogation room wasn’t like the gray metal and stone ones Aurora had always seen in Law and Order. The table and chairs (and the two-way glass) were about the only parts in common. It was getting on towards eleven and Aurora was feeling extremely tired. If she were to venture a guess, her adrenaline and the terrible shock of seeing Amy and hearing about Katrina had wiped her of energy. She sure felt wiped of energy.

The officer sitting across from her was a middle aged black woman, overweight and plainly dressed and slacks and a polo, more resembling a DMV clerk than a plainclothes detective. She looked fully uninterested in being at work at eleven on a Friday, or perhaps any day, and she asked Aurora a string of questions in a deadpan tone that suggested obligation.

“How long did you know the victim?”

“Which…?”

“My apologies, Ms. Potier. Ms. Katrina Gersham. How long were you two acquainted?”

“Uh…” Aurora was having the hardest time pinning down dates, hours. “I only met her when I started at Witching Hour, about a year… and… a half ago?” Had it only been that long? Aurora felt like she had been bartending for Chip forever. What would happen to the bar now?

“Ms. Potier?”

“Yes! I’m… I’m sorry. It’s been a long night.”

“Did you hear the question?”

Had there been another question? Aurora felt like she could put her head down on the desk and fall asleep, and they were here asking her questions. Worse, they were mostly the same questions she’d answered for the police on-scene. Was there anyone suspicious in the bar tonight? Did you notice any strangers out front or out back when you arrived at work? Your boss informed us you were late—could you provide details of that, please?

“No, I’m sorry,” Aurora replied, dry-mouthed. “What did you ask?”

The officer nodded her head slowly, neither annoyed nor sympathetic, and repeated, “Please recount the last time you saw the victim—Ms. Gersham—alive.”

Aurora bit her bottom lip, thinking. That was a tough thing to do, although she remembered it clearly, as if it had only happened a moment ago.

“I arrived at work late, and joined Amy and Katrina behind the bar, probably around 8:45—PM. There were a lot of customers at the bar right then, so I jumped right in to help. We hardly spoke for the first half hour, we were so busy. And then, when it slowed down a bit, they wanted to go out and smoke before the real rush arrived…”

Aurora’s throat closed. Tears welled up in her eyes. “I don’t smoke, see… They know I don’t… They… knew… That’s why they kn-knew I could w-watch—the bar—while they—” Unwelcome, images of Amy stumbling back without eyes, without a tongue, came rushing in. And Katrina—poor Katrina—she’d gotten engaged last month…

If only she’d told them no! Aurora cleared her throat, trying to compose herself. If only she’d refused! If only she’d been on time, then maybe someone else, another smoker, would have been behind the bar and they wouldn’t have been able to agree on who to stay—something, anything!

“Oh, God,” Aurora coughed miserably. The officer waited, face softening for the first time that Aurora had seen. Here she was, answering a police inquiry in her bartending outfit, recounting the events leading up to the death of one coworker and the maiming of another. They still hadn’t found Amy’s tongue or eyes.

No, Aurora stopped herself. Don’t think of that. Anything but that. Determined, she put her mind in the office outside. It had looked like a normal government office space. It could have been an accounting office, or the back room of the IRS. Cubicles, computers, suits and ties and office casual. A man and woman flirted over a cubicle wall. Papers and files were being run, work was being evading with varying degrees of success. Everyone seemed ready to go home, some more than others.

Movement. Action. Life. Aurora focused on it, refusing to be sucked back into the empty holes of Amy’s missing eyes.

“Ms. Potier? Was that all you remember?”

Aurora nodded, still focusing on the hustle of office work she was envisioning outside the interrogation room.

The officer blinked slowly, as if she had all the time she could ever need, and leaned forward. “You failed to mention that Katrina Gersham was wearing your jacket when she died.”

Shocked, Aurora snapped out of her daydream. “Well… yes. She’d borrowed it before I arrived.”

“Without your permission?”

“Yes, I hadn’t gotten to work yet,” Aurora repeated. She was beginning to hear something like suspicion in her interrogator’s voice. “How much longer is this going to be? I’ve told you everything I know.”

“Almost finished, Miss.”

But for the next minute, she said absolutely nothing and proceeded to write what looked like pages of notes on her notepad, leaving Aurora to try and remain calm. The clock seemed to grow louder with each tick. Why was she still here? Aurora smoothed her hands over her leather pants anxiously. She’d answered all their questions, hadn’t she? Why was she being kept here? Why?

She watched the officer jot note after note, never once looking up. What was she writing? Aurora had the sudden and unwelcome thought. Was she a suspect? Why had they asked about Katrina and the jacket?

Without warning the door burst open like an explosion and slapped flat against the opposite wall. Aurora nearly jumped to the ceiling. In strode a second officer, this one looking even less the part than the one who’d finally paused her writing to look up in annoyance.

This officer was younger, perhaps in his late twenties. White and with a wide, obnoxious smile, his short blondish hair was cropped like he still thought N’Sync was a thing. He was wearing jeans instead of slacks, and a blazing red-patterned button-down shirt. His holster was still over his shoulders, weapon and all, though he wasn’t wearing a coat to hide it.

“Hey! How’s the interview?”

Aurora had no idea if he was asking her or the other officer. She just sat there, staring open-mouthed. The older officer glared, mouth thinning into a sharp line.

“Officer Milo, please have a seat.” She sighed heavily. “You have been asked repeatedly to please dress according to code.”

“Aw, don’t be like that, Dora. Jeans are more comfortable.” He said this as he pulled up a chair on the table edge between them. “And they flatter my legs better.”

He did have a nice body. Aurora wasn’t really in a position to admire officers’ physiques at the moment, but the jeans suited him nicely. Sort of a Wild West feel. She was relaxing, which was a relief, because a moment ago her skin had been threatening to leap right off her bones. Her breathing was settling back into a normal rhythm; Aurora hadn’t realized she’d been breathing any differently until she’d gotten back to her usual rate.

“Did Dora ask you about the victims yet?”

Aurora nodded. “Yes. I told her everything I know. I was inside at the bar when it happened.”

Officer Milo looked at her closely; his wasn’t exactly an intimidating face, so the effect was more comical than anything, like Ace Ventura. This, she judged, would not be a good time to point that out.

“So you deny any connection to the assaults?”

“Milo!” Dora hissed warningly.

“What?” he asked, turning to her in confusion.

Aurora blinked. She didn’t understand at first. “Of course I didn’t have anything to do with them. That’s… that’s sick, what happened to Amy… to Katrina.”

Milo swiveled back to face her. “So you didn’t commit, or have any knowledge of, these crimes?”

Understanding began to dawn on her, and Aurora’s breath huffed out in an incredulous hiss. She had been so anxious just a few minutes ago—where had all that gone?

“Are you suggesting that it was me?” she asked flatly, raising her eyebrows.

“Well, the victim was wearing your jacket—”

“That she borrowed from me, without asking, before I even arrived,” Aurora snapped, cutting Milo off. She glared at both of them. “Should I call a lawyer?”

Not that she could afford it. Maybe she could find someone to defend her pro bono; how did you find someone like that? How did people go about procuring lawyers? It came up all the time in Law and Order and CSI—which Aurora loved to watch when she had a split second off work—but really, how did you find one in real life?

“I don’t think that will be necessary, Ms. Potier,” Officer Dora replied. “You’ll have to forgive my partner. He was dropped on his head as a child, and many times since.” The last she drawled with a level stare at Milo, who barely looked sheepish.

“Yeah,” he added. “We’re just having a conversation, right?”

“There were dozens of people in the club,” Aurora continued, unconvinced. “I’m accounted for—the entire time that the crime must have happened. I was at the bar when Katrina and Amy went out to smoke, and I didn’t leave until… after.”

“The witnesses at the club have all vanished,” Dora replied. “Many disappeared into the night the second that poor girl made it back behind the bar. The rest are claiming they weren’t even there.”

Aurora stared, dumbstruck. “The… the cameras. Chip has cameras…”

Dora shook her head. “It seems Mr. Henson had been having some technical difficulties with the security cameras. He says it’s been going on for a day or two—hadn’t gotten around to having someone out to look at them just yet. We’ve checked his contacts; the company has an appointment for Witching Hour on Monday, but trouble always happens when you aren’t ready for it, doesn’t it?”

“Well, I didn’t do it,” Aurora insisted. “That’s crazy! Why would I? I’d have to be nuts to want to hurt either of them like that.”

“Honestly,” Milo shrugged. “We’re just low on suspects.”

Fury welled up Aurora’s stomach like a fireball. “That’s why I’m being given the third-degree? Because you’re low on suspects?”

Milo exchanged a look with Dora, who looked at him with the same flat expression she’d been wearing for most of the interview.

“So, you don’t have any proof—or—or whatever?” Aurora snapped. “You don’t have any reason to suspect me at all? Just, there’s not really anyone else?”

“Well, it’s not—”

“Are you even allowed to hold me here?”

Dora stiffened, and Milo shook his head. “Now, don’t get too excited. You’re involved in a violent crime investigation, Ms., and we’d appreciate it—”

“No,” Aurora slammed to her feet. “If I’m not under arrest, I’m leaving. I’ve told you everything I know. Don’t contact me again without a warrant.”

And with that, she snatched her purse and stormed out the door of the interview room, heart pounding in terror and triumph. She couldn’t believe she had just done that. Nerves twittered over her skin like ruffled feathers as she walked with her chin up out into the office.

“Hey, wait up!”

Aurora didn’t even turn around. It was Milo, of course, catching up with her. But she’d had a long night, and a long night is even longer in heels, and she was in no mood to mince any more words with this particular nuisance.

“What’dya want?”

“To apologize.”

The nerve! Aurora spun around furious, but before she could say a word, Milo pressed on. “Look, we wanted to push you a little, make sure it wasn’t you. We can learn a lot from how someone denies an accusation. It takes a little acting, but you passed. You weren’t involved.”

“I told you that from the beginning!” Aurora almost yelled it in his face, but she was painfully aware of the room full of cops that she was standing in. They had nothing to indict her with, at present. Even strung out on adrenaline and horror, she had the sense not to hand them a sentence.

Milo looked down at her, not in wariness or anger, but in sympathy. That made Aurora even more furious.

“I’m sorry for all you’ve gone through tonight, but we needed to be as sure as possible that you weren’t the killer before we let you walk out.”

“Well, it’s not me. And I’m walking out now.” Aurora spun on her clunky boot heel and stomped out into the freezing rush of a New York winter night.

Immediately, Aurora felt foolish. Her own clothes (and her sweaters) were in her locker at Witching Hour. Well, it was a crime scene, now, so there was no point in trying to go back and get them. She’d been lucky to snag her purse before she was driven downtown. And now, she was standing in front of the police station, her purse over her shoulder, dressed like a hooker, or a dominatrix, out alone on the streets of New York. And home was a long way away.

Had any night ever dragged on so long? Aurora dug her phone out of her bag. Maybe she could get an Uber. Then again, with Madame Moreau sick at one job and Witching Hour closed for the foreseeable future, maybe it would be better to save her money. The next few weeks were going to be pretty slim.

Thoughts of rides and money dropped from her mind when Aurora opened her phone and saw the notifications.

You have 7 voicemails

All from her mother.

It had been one shock after another from this morning to now, and it is a testament to Aurora’s character and sanity that she didn’t panic. After all, has any good news ever come from seven missed calls? But Ramona worried, sometimes excessively, and had a small inclination to overreact.

Aurora called her back immediately. If she waited, she’d lose her nerve completely.

“Aurora?”

It was her mother’s voice, shaky and frail on the other end of the line. Soothing, Aurora answered in the affirmative. “Yes, it’s me, Momma. How are you? Is everything all right?”

“You’re all right, baby? I was watching the news, and I saw your work—where are you? Do you need me to come get you?”

She was very upset, then. Aurora hadn’t ever been a troublemaker, but she could remember often in her school years when her mother would swoop in and save her. If she was ever ill at school, or injured at softball. From fights with friends and bad dates, and everything in between. But they had sold the car years ago, and Ramona seemed to have forgotten that she hardly even owned any clothes except pajamas now, and hadn’t ventured farther than the stairs in the hall for months.

“No, Momma, I’m all right,” Aurora insisted. “Everything’s… I’m safe. I’m on my way home now, so don’t you worry.” No, Aurora wasn’t about to explain what had happened at the club. No, she wasn’t about to explain about the police station, how they tried to get her to confess. No. None of these things; Ramona Potier was not in any condition to handle such information.

It wasn’t fair. Aurora was so shaken herself, she felt like a snow-globe, with all her myriad pieces flying in every direction, nothing going right. When had it become her job to look after her mother? She knew, of course. She could name the date and time. But it still wasn’t fair. None of it.

“Aurora?”

She sniffled and tried to settle her voice. “Yes, Momma?”

“I love you, Aurora. More than anything. Anything, anybody in the whole world.”

A choked sob ripped out of Aurora’s throat; she managed to pull the phone from her lips just in time. It wasn’t only the stress of the day turning her head, squeezing her heart. In her gut twisted the guilt of her thoughts, of how badly she wished she was free of her mother and yet how terrified she felt at that wish ever becoming real. What would her life be without Ramona? Everything, and nothing.

“I love you too, Momma,” Aurora replied finally, and it was the truest thing she’d ever said, ever felt. Nothing was ever simple, not when the cost of freedom was the person most precious to her. Not when the weight holding her down was the person she loved the most, who had given up everything on Aurora’s behalf. No fairness here. No ease.

“I-I’ll be home soon, Momma,” Aurora told her. “I’ve got to go, now. I’m going to be home soon. Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

Aurora hung up and took a deep breath, then another. The air was cold on her skin, but it stabbed her lungs as she filled them. She breathed deep anyway. For a moment, she could pretend that her world wasn’t a cage.

Her phone was out and the Uber app open when a car pulled up to the sidewalk, just beside her. Aurora moved away from it automatically, but the window rolled down and Officer Milo’s face grinned out.

“Howdy, Sunshine.”

“What do you want?” she snapped.

“Don’t be like that. We caused you a lot of trouble on top of everything else you’ve had to go through tonight. I want to get you home, as quickly as possible.”

Aurora eyed him suspiciously. He was driving a dark sedan, probably black, but details were hard to make out in the dim street light. He didn’t seem threatening, but then, crazy people who kidnapped you and left your body in the sewers probably didn’t seem threatening at first, either.

There was the fact that he was a cop, at least, and Aurora wanted very badly to convince herself that it was safe to accept the offer. Money was always tight, and in New York, Uber surge pricing was out of this world. Hell, standard fare was astronomical.

“Okay, fine.”

She stepped carefully through the snowbank around to the passenger side of the car. Milo leaned over to push her door open (somewhat gentlemanly, Aurora guessed) and in she climbed, in to the relative warmth of Officer Milo’s car. She shivered; at least Milo had a coat.

“So where’re we going?” he asked, although he’d already started driving in the right direction. Aurora snorted.

“You mean you didn’t do a background check and research where I lived and work and what sort of ice cream I like? What kind of cop are you?”

“Well, I did all those things, but I was so hung up over the fact that you like mint chocolate-chip, I completely forgot your home address.”

Aurora laughed reluctantly, although it was a little odd that Milo had managed to guess her favorite ice cream. She shook it off and gave him her address, and they cruised off through the quiet streets.

“So. That’s quite a uniform they have you in at Witching Hour.”

“It fits the theme, or so Chip says. I tell him it’s going to scare women away, and a bar without women is a bar single guys don’t care much about. But he’s held on this long. At least until now. I don’t know what we’re going to do now.”

Aurora fell silent. She hadn’t meant to touch on her real fears with this total stranger, especially not this total stranger. She was getting sleepy in the warm car, and now it was a bit of fight to keep her eyes open. Quickly, she added, “So how long have you been a cop?”

His voice was proud, and maybe a little amused, as he answered. “Twelve years.”

“Twelve—?” Aurora stared at him. There was no way he was that old. Unless he was counting his years in the police academy. Yeah, that must be it. If he joined at eighteen, he could be a youthful thirty.

“I know, I know. How does a guy like me survive in this city for twelve years?” He asked it in complete sincerity, which led Aurora to believe that he’d mistaken her shock. Fair enough. “I’ve been with Dora for four. She’s a damn good cop. She’s got a poker face for Vegas, I tell you.”

Aurora snorted. “Honestly, neither of you look much like cops, sorry to say.”

“Hey! That’s done purposefully,” Milo protested, grinning. “We work together, you see. Different interrogations require different techniques. In your case, we had to play a little ‘smart cop, dumb cop’.”

“You’re performance was stunning. You must be a method actor.”

He looked at her, surprised. “You’re almost as snarky as she is.”

Aurora had to laugh at that. “Give me a few years, and I’ll be a real terror. I just have to finish my English theatre studies so I can earn my merit badge for Shakespearean insults.”

“That was impressive! Do you think these up ahead of time?”

Aurora was still laughing when they pulled up to her apartment. She couldn’t help it; Milo was infectiously humorous, easy-going and yet sharp. Much sharper than he’d acted in the police station. Her conversation with him had been her best in a long time, and Aurora wondered whether she’d ever get to speak with someone like that again between fluttering foolishness at Moreau’s, pumping EDM at Witching Hour, and the timeless, catacomb-quiet at home.

She stepped out of the car, and movement overhead caught her eye. Aurora looked up toward the clear February sky, and felt her chest tighten in fear.

A curtain was billowing out a broken window several floors up. It was her living room window, her mother’s curtains.

No. No, this was too much. Aurora shut Milo’s car door, not hearing at all as he called after her to stop. After everything else today, this was too much, surely. Aurora punched in the door code and started running up the stairs. About halfway up, the lights in the stairwell were broken, one after the other, but she didn’t notice, just kept running up through the darkness.

Milo was shouting after her as she climbed the stairs three at a time. She tripped more than once in the cumbersome boots, but that didn’t matter. She had to get upstairs. She had to get to her apartment. She had to her to her mother.

On her floor, none of the lights were on, and filtered street lamps threw deep shadows across the hall through windows at either end. Aurora didn’t even stop to be afraid. She reached her door in three large steps and snatched the door handle, forgetting that it was locked, that she’d need to dig her keys out of her purse.

But the door swung open. It hadn’t even been shut all the way.

Cold air pressed out through the door, but Aurora didn’t feel it anymore. Tears were blurring her vision, terrible tears of expectation, dreading what she was going to find inside. She walked in slowly, not ready. Milo had caught up, and entered the apartment behind her, gun drawn.

Something bad had happened. It was clear at once, with one look at the splintered kitchen table, the shattered living room window. Deafening silence beat against her ears like waves of the ocean, relentless and bigger than Aurora could have ever imagined. It was so, so still, and cold, and dark.

Her mouth opened to call for her mother, but no sound came out. Numb, Aurora moved through what was left of her apartment, not knowing at that moment that truly, she was walking through the wreckage of her old life. She didn’t know it, but she felt it, and sat down heavily on the old lumpy sofa in the living room. There was a gash in the back, as if it had been cut with a sword, or several swords. Or claws.

Milo scanned through the apartment as Aurora sat alone, staring at the wall. It seemed he didn’t find anything, because he returned minutes later to find Aurora lying in a ball on the couch, with an old flannel blanket pulled up over her shoulders. Her eyes, large and dark in the cold light of the street outside, didn’t seem to see him standing there, and he had to shake her a bit to get her attention.

“Aurora. Aurora. There’s no one here. Your mother is gone.” He shook her until her face turned in his direction. “Here—sit up. We need to leave, okay? It isn’t safe here.”

Safe? Where was safe? The only place Aurora had really felt safe was with her mother, and Ramona wasn’t here. Where was she? Where had she gone?

Aurora let herself be coaxed into a sitting position. Part of her felt like it wasn’t healthy to endure this many shocks, one after the other, but mostly she just felt sleepy. She pulled the flannel closer. Maybe it was time for a nap.

Then she looked up at the open doorway.

There was a shape standing there; he was tall, almost touching the doorframe with his head. Out of the light of both the hall and the apartment windows, he was nothing but a shadow, a mass of muscle in the darkness, filling the space of the door without a sound.

Milo swung his gun around the second he saw the horror in Aurora’s eyes.

“Jeez, man,” he breathed, dropping the weapon. “You’re going to give me a damn stroke.”

The figure stepped into the apartment, his dark face solemn. “I was too late. I tried to chase them, but I lost their trail three blocks over. They took the mother.”

Aurora had heard that voice before. She looked up at the figure, trying to focus on this one thing. One thing at a time. There was no way she could bear to handle more than one thing at a time.

“Shit!” Milo hissed. “How long ago?”

“Minutes. If you arrived five minutes earlier she’d have been right in the middle of it. It’s better than you arrived too late. If she showed up right then, we would have been trying to fend off a horde on our own, with sunrise hours away. This way, they ran instead of fight me.”

“Cheng is going to blow his lid,” Milo sighed. “He knew this was coming. Dammit, if Moreau would have just seen a doctor, like we told her—”

“Moreau?” Aurora spoke up suddenly. She’d heard a word she knew, and struggled upwards through the thick, sluggish current of her thoughts. She realised where she’d seen the stranger before. At Moreau’s.

“Mr. Fredericks?”

The stranger cringed as Milo threw him a surprised look. “Mr. Fredericks?” he asked thinly.

The stranger from Moreau could hardly have looked more different, now. Instead of a suit, he was dressed in tight jeans, sneakers, and a thermal shirt. It hugged his corded arms, broad shoulders, burly chest, and narrow waist much better than the suit ever could have.

“Mr. Fredericks?” And now, even in her shocked state, Aurora couldn’t fail to hear the humour in Milo’s voice. ‘Mr. Fredericks’, in question, was looking very uncomfortable, more uncomfortable than a six-something black man built like a wall of muscle was expected to.

“Look, she was… I couldn’t give my real name.”

Milo chuckled harshly. “Moreau told you not to go there at all.”

“Well, it’s good that I did, isn’t it?” the stranger replied with a snap. “Cheng and I both felt something… off, but he didn’t want to upset things—if we’d leapt straight in, none of this would have happened.” He gestured to the apartment around them, and at Aurora, who was sitting on her couch in the ruins of her life, watching their exchange as if through deep water.

Nothing they were saying made any sense to her. How did they know Moreau? And Cheng? What did they have to do with anything? What did they have to do with her? She was just a sales girl. A bartender. A nobody. And now, perhaps, an orphan. Alone.

“Oh…no…” she whispered. Her voice sounded far away in her ears. “No… no… Momma…”

“We can’t stay here,” the stranger insisted, glancing down at Aurora. “We’re sitting ducks. Much better to be on the move. Cheng wants us to all meet at the hospital. The sooner, the better. I think it’s time.”

Aurora wanted to ask, ‘time for what?’ Milo seemed to know; he looked very grim as he nodded. “All right, let’s get moving. Same hospital?”

“Same one as always,” the stranger replied, holding out a hand to Aurora.

She looked at it as if she didn’t know what it was, and honestly, at the moment, Aurora wasn’t sure she did know. He world had turned several full loops in the last few hours, and she didn’t have any secure footing, anymore.

She’d gone from one horror to the next today, and Aurora wasn’t sure she could take another one. What was there left to be tossed into her lap? She was afraid to ask, but as she looked around her old apartment, the kitchen table where her mother had always sat reduced to a pile of wood shards in its corner, she realized that she had already stepped into the next act. Whatever it was, she was already in it, now. There was nothing for Aurora to turn back to, so she took the stranger’s hand and let him help her to her feet. She needed more help than she’d realized.

“My real name is Lucian,” he told her in his perfect, rumbling voice. “Lucian Hemming.”

“Aurora Potier,” she replied automatically. A simple introduction—she was still able to handle that without a disaster. But the stranger—Lucian—smiled slyly.

“I’ve known you for much longer than you realize.”

His words sent a thrill of both eeriness and excitement down Aurora’s spine. Just today she’d been thinking that she’d never be in this man’s league. Between then and now, she felt as if an eternity had passed, and anything was possible. It was a joyous, and a terrible, sensation.

“Let’s go,” Milo rushed them out the door. The three of them retreated back into the dark stairwell, after Aurora grabbed a jacket from the hall. Milo and Lucian were both eager to get on the move and wouldn’t hear of letting her stop to change. They obviously feared the return of whoever had destroyed the apartment; looking around, Aurora found that she, too, didn’t want to be here if they came back.

But she stopped in the front doorframe anyway, just to glance back. Even in the dark, even wrecked, this had still been her home all her life. Her heart hammered in her chest; it was all she’d ever known.

A hand settled on hers, a large, warm hand. Lucian’s voice spoke softly, “There’s no use looking back. You aren’t headed that way.”

Deliberately, Aurora turned from the old apartment. She looked up into Lucian’s dark, dark eyes, surprisingly soft and understanding. She nodded.

“Okay. Let’s go.”

Down the stairs they fled. Aurora had a hell of a time in her boots, but they all managed to reach the bottom in one piece; every time she’d been close to falling, it seemed that Lucian was there by magic, lifting her effortlessly back onto her feet. She knew she was still not her normal self; everything had taken on a surreal quality, and she felt nothing, as if her emotions had simply been shut off. Aurora wondered how long this blessed numbness would last, if maybe she could make it last all her life. But even so, there was no way for him to be so quick. She wasn’t frazzled enough to misjudge physics, or time.

And the street level , Aurora found herself being ushered back in to Officer Milo’s car, back into the front seat. Milo was already behind the wheel. She turned to Lucian, about to ask if he wanted, shotgun, but he was gone.

“Where?”

“Get in!”

Without another word of protest, Aurora leapt inside and slammed the door. Not for the last time this night she wondered she wasn’t just being caught up in an elaborate kidnapping scheme. Then, of course, back would float the memory of Lucian’s strong arms around her, the heaving muscles of his chest, lifting her as though she weighed nothing… There was no need for them to trick her.

The windows fogged as they drove, but Aurora wasn’t really seeing the world as it passed. She was quite a distance away by the time they pulled into a parking spot and Milo climbed out. She followed, not seeing which hospital they were at. Not wondering why they were at a hospital. In fact, Aurora found herself blissfully un-curious, and unconcerned, as Milo led the way through the parking garage and into the hospital proper.

She hadn’t even stopped to wonder why Lucian hadn’t ridden along with them.

Aurora hadn’t been in a hospital in a very long time, not since her mother’s panic attack some five—was it six, now?—years ago. Needless to say, the memories of white hallways and scrub-clad hospital staff were not happy ones for her, but Aurora was still deep in a state of semi-trance, distantly aware of her surroundings, but unaffected by them, as if she were watching from the building next door.

Milo led her in through the front lobby, which was not so scary. Neat furnishings, soft lighting, and friendly front-desk staff. Well, as friendly as you got in New York at one in the morning, anyway. Milo and Aurora were directed to the elevators behind the information desk, and travelled up to the fifth floor.

As the elevator hauled upward, Aurora watched the numbers without interest. She barely noticed the strange looks she was getting from the staff and few late-night visitors. After all, under her jacket she was still dressed for work at Witching Hour. But Aurora didn’t pay that much attention, and when the elevator stopped and the doors opened, she followed Milo out and to the right, tracking the turns of a hallway that led into a med-surg unit.

Milo was following the room numbers, but Aurora was following some invisible tracks, some sixth sense down the hall. In better times, she might have wondered why she knew for certain which room they were going to; at the moment, she walked blandly down the hall, ignoring looks from the nurses at the station. Busy with room numbers, Milo didn’t even notice her behavior, and dived into the right room seconds before Aurora reached it.

“Milo! What took you so long?”

Aurora froze. That was Madame Moreau’s voice; they were visiting her at the hospital. What were they doing visiting her in the hospital? Aurora’s wonderful numbness was being disturbed, and the dreadful pang of reality was creeping closer. Her boots were stuck in place in the hallway; Milo stuck his head back out in the hallway.

“Get in here. It’s not safe for you anywhere, so you’d better be in here with us.”

With them? With who? Milo and Madame Moreau?

“I… I don’t think I… want to…” Aurora’s voice spoke up.

Milo frowned at her. “What? What are you talking about?”

Over his shoulder, Lucian peered out into the hallway. He looked even better in full light than he had half in shadow.

Aurora’s heart bumped. “How? How did you get here so fast?”

But Lucian’s face closed off, which left Milo to coax her into the room. More confused than ever, Aurora reluctantly let herself be drawn in through the hospital door, which Lucian shut behind her. She lurked near the sink, uncomfortable, and took in the scene within the room.

Madame Moreau was hardly recognizable. She’d only been at the hospital for a day; Aurora didn’t know what they’d been doing to her, but it looked like a month. Without her dramatic black furs, meticulous hair, and glamour wardrobe, she was just a frighteningly old woman. Aurora doubted she weighed more than sixty pounds, once she was in a simple hospital gown. Not to mention the lack of make-up; a specter was peering out of the huge mechanical bed, deprived of foundation, blush, mascara, eye shadow, lipstick.

The specter was looking straight at her, and Aurora found she could not break the gaze. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Milo and Lucian, of course. But it wasn’t until he stood up on the other side of the bed that Aurora saw the room’s fifth occupant.

Mr. Cheng smiled grimly. “It’s good you here, Aurora.” His usual jovial tone was missing, missing like Madame Moreau’s make-up. He just wasn’t quite right without it. Aurora stayed near the sink, as if thinking of making a quick escape. “There is much we need tell you.”

Stubbornly, Aurora refused to budge much farther than the vestibule. Her aching feet notwithstanding, there was something going on here. Something she did not like at all.

Earlier today, she would have been angry. She would have demanded to know the meaning of all this. How do they all know each other? What’s been happening here? But it had been such a long day… Aurora was so tired. She felt as if she might fall over if she stood too close to the air vent. Much too tired to do anything but wait for them to speak.

Mr. Cheng seemed to guess at it, or at least part of it. He sighed and nodded.

“You are tired. Come, sit down.” He waved at the couch under the window, near him and Moreau.

Aurora didn’t move.

Milo sighed. “Come on, Miss. Nothing ever came from standing around in the doorway. We aren’t going to bite you.”

Hesitantly, Aurora looked at the couch. Her weight was leaning on the sink counter, and suddenly, she wasn’t even sure she could make it all the way across the room.

Lucian was at her side, like a flash, like a blink. She almost fell down in shock. “Can I help you?” he asked, setting a hand on her arm questioningly.

Aurora nodded shortly, and allowed herself to be guided around the big hospital bed to the seat near Mr. Cheng. Once she was seated, Lucian retreated back to the other side, watching with silent black eyes. Aurora tried not to stare back.

“Now, Aurora, there are things you need know,” Mr. Cheng started gently. He and Moreau were both looking at her in a way that made Aurora most uneasy: proud, and affectionate. Like distant relatives who had only seen you once, when you were a baby, who suddenly reappeared when you were sixteen. You didn’t know them at all, but they’d heard all about your life as you grew, unaware. Familiarity without connection. Aurora tried not to feel utterly creeped.

Madame Moreau spoke up now. Her voice was a pale shadow of what it had been, creaky and hoarse. There was an oxygen cannula looped under her nose, and the edge of an IV peeped out from under her sleeve. The more Aurora looked at her, the less this woman resembled the Madame Moreau she had known all these years.

“Aurora, Mr. Cheng and I have known you for… a long time. Not… not just since you began… working for me. I hired you partic—particularly to keep a closer… eye on you.” She paused, taking deep breaths. “Damn lungs, giving out on me… now of all times. Anyways… What I mean to say, is… that we’ve known you… and your mother, too, all your life.”

Well, just a little while ago, Aurora had wondered if she could weather another shock. This one was not so jarring compared to the others, though, and a thinning layer of numbness allowed Aurora to absorb this information without much of a reaction.

“When your mother… came to New York, it was because… your father asked her to, but she… she stayed because we all thought it would be… safest.” Huffing, Moreau looked between Cheng and Milo and Lucian. She was having obviously difficulty breathing and speaking so long. “Well, those of us who were… there at the time. Lucian hadn’t… appeared yet, and Milo was still… fairly new to the cause.”

Okay, Aurora thought. That one was a bit heavier. They had mentioned her father. Aurora held up a hand to stop Moreau, something she had never imagined doing before this minute. She opened her mouth to try and ask, but no sound came out. Aurora cleared her throat and tried again; success, even if her voice was not as clear as usual.

“You knew my father? And my mom?”

Moreau and Cheng exchanged a glance, and Cheng set his hand over Moreau’s frail, shaking one. “Yes, and yes,” Mr. Cheng replied. “We know your mother. We see her often over the years, as we watch over you. We have not spoken to her in many year. Too dangerous.”

“And my father?” Aurora pushed.

“That is more complicated,” Moreau sighed.

“But you knew him?” They had known him. There was someone else; he was real, not a phantom of her mother’s imagination, not a vague name on Aurora’s birth certificate. “You knew him?”

“We… know him. He’s here in New York,” Moreau replied softly.

“He’s here? In the city?” Aurora took a deep breath. Somewhere, she’d sort of expected this. It was true, then, that he’d simply walked out. He’d been here in New York all the time and had never wanted to see her. He could have visited, but didn’t, even while Ramona pined after him.

“Yes, which is problem,” Mr. Cheng agreed. “He is close to you, Aurora. Close to finding you. That cannot happen.”

That didn’t make sense. Aurora shook her head. “Why not? Why would he be trying to find me? He knows where to find me. The same place he left me.”

Moreau and Cheng were both shaking their heads. “No, no,” Moreau said. “Not at all. We moved your mother… to a new hiding place when… it happened. I’ve been hiding you… ever since. But, my girl, you have… no hope of understanding any of this… until we explain more… about who we are.”

That didn’t sound good. Aurora looked around between them. “And that would be..?”

“More than we look,” Lucian replied quietly from his corner.

“Let’s see, where to begin…” Moreau looked around the room. “Cheng, you and Lucian… had better not show her. Milo… I’m afraid I have… little enough left… and your gift isn’t so… well difficult to hide… from the hospital staff.”

Milo nodded. “All right, Aurora. Think of a number between one and infinity.”

Aurora stared at him. “What?”

“Just do it.”

Aurora did; yesterday, she would have done it rolling her eyes. Today, she was more suspicious.

Milo grinned a thin-lipped grin. “178,444.”

It wasn’t even surprising, after all that had happened. “Let me guess, you’re a mind-reader?”

“Well, they used to call guys and gals like me seers, but I guess modern times can call me whatever fits.”

“So what, you’re a bunch of psychics?”

“No, Milo is the one… psychic in the bunch,” Moreau replied dryly. “I guess you would call me a witch.”

Aurora sat there, in this room full of crazy people, wondering if she, too, was quite insane. Moments like this, she was feeling it, because a part of her believed every word out of their mouths.

“Well, at least part of you believes it,” Milo muttered.

“A witch?” she hissed, as if to prove how skeptical she was. Aurora hated to seem gullible; that was New Yorker in her.

“Yes, my girl,” Moreau replied in a tired murmur. “I’ve been… hiding you… and your mother… from him.”

Aurora stared at her. “Him? My father?”

“Yes.”

She swallowed down a dry lump in her throat. Of everything she’d heard since she stepped into this hospital room… “He’s been trying to find me?”

They all looked at her then, eyes steely. “Oh, yes, Aurora,” Mr. Cheng answered for Moreau, who had started to struggle for breath. “He’s been scouring the city for you. But as long as Moreau was well, he could never find you.”

Disbelief, anger even, was building up in Aurora’s chest. “Why? Why would you keep him from me?”

“So you believe us?”

Aurora paused. The answer, of course, was yes, as ridiculous and out of reach as it all should have been. Maybe she was just in a state of mental upheaval, completely overwhelmed by the events of the last twenty-four hours. Maybe she just really needed some sleep. But Aurora did believe them, without reservation.

“Let’s say I do,” she said. “If what you say is true, then you’ve kept my father from being with me and my mother all this time.”

“No, not from being with you, we wanted him to be with you,” Milo spoke up. “Look, I’d only just gotten started with all this when it happened, but I swear, these two and old Mathers wanted to see you all happy together. But your dad wasn’t going to let that happen.”

“So what, it was like, an intervention? What, was he abusive?”

“In a way, yes,” Moreau wheezed. “There’s more… still to tell you. Cheng—he’s a shapeshifter, and your father—I guess he’s… what you would call a… a vampire.”

For the first time, Aurora wondered if she was not the victim of a prank.

“You’re not,” Milo said at once.

“Stop doing that,” Aurora snapped. She turned to Moreau and Cheng sharply. “A vampire? Really?”

“Not like in movies,” Cheng answered, still holding Moreau’s hand carefully. “Not like Dracula, not like Twilight. Your father feeds off blood, yes, but mostly energy. In the city, there is plenty.”

“So I’m, like, a half-vampire?” Aurora had to roll her eyes at that.

“No, you will be… a full one,” Moreau replied. “That’s the problem. Your father… Ian… he sired you… thoughtlessly. He didn’t think… of the consequences…”

“Before you go on about unexpected pregnancy, just listen,” Milo warned Aurora, before she could say just that. He was leaning against the wall opposite the hospital bed, seeming to listen to Moreau. Aurora glared at him.

“I mean it, stop that,” she hissed.

Milo nodded apologetically.

“We are five,” Moreau breathed. She paused and took a deep, staggering inhale. “Cheng and I, Milo… Ian… and… one other, Ylessa. She is… a fairy, I suppose… you’d call her. We form a pentacle, Aurora, a complete… set.”

Now, ‘pentacle’ is a buzzword for anyone who’s ever watched the news in America around Halloween, and Aurora cringed a little to hear it. “What does that mean? A complete set for what?”

“To protect the city,” Moreau replied. “To protect… people. There are dark forces… in this world… and when he couldn’t… have you… your father joined them.”

“Why?” This was all too much information, but Aurora couldn’t budge that one thought. Why?

There was a knock at the door just then, and Lucian crossed to it warily. Everyone seemed to hold their breath; Aurora did too. Through a crack in the door, they could hear someone speaking, and Lucian opened it wide to admit a sixth guest, a teenager who rushed and picked up Moreau’s other hand at once.

He was probably a senior in high school, middling height and Hispanic. He was dressed in jeans and two sweaters, but didn’t seem to care about overheating at present. He had a blocky face, but it was kind, and at the moment, it was scrunched up in grief.

“Miss Estelle,” he sniffed. “I came as fast as I could. How are you feeling?”

Estelle? Aurora wondered. She’d never heard Moreau’s first name.

Moreau herself looked more maternal, more calm than Aurora had ever seen. “Lester. The time has… come, I think. I’m getting… weaker every minute…”

Lester shook his head, face reddening. “Not yet.”

Moreau nodded her head sadly. “I’m… so tired… Let me rest.”

The poor boy sobbed horribly, and Aurora felt it right down in her spine. Why wasn’t that her? Why couldn’t she be upset like that? Moreau was fading, and her mother was gone. Why wasn’t she dissolving?

Lester nodded, biting his lips together, and clutched both of Madame Moreau’s hands. Above the bed, the room lights flickered.

“What was that?” Aurora asked in a whisper. She wasn’t sure why she was whispering; it seemed appropriate.

“Shh,” Milo nodded his head toward the bed.

Madame Estelle Moreau was lying flat against the raised back of her bed, breathing deeply. Her white, white skin had turned almost pearly, translucent. Her face turned to Lucian and Milo.

“Stay… out of trouble… you two…”

“We’ll try, Ma’am.”

She made an unconvinced sound in her throat, and for a moment seemed like her old self. Then she turned to Aurora, who stiffened.

“There’s… much more to tell…” Moreau sighed. “Cheng will have to do it. We’re… both getting too old. You… young people… have to take over…” She smiled slightly. “You’re an excellent… employee… I’ll give… you that.”

Lastly, she turned to Cheng. They didn’t exchange words. Mr. Cheng just took both her hands in his, and kissed each. On his face was a profound sadness, deep as the sky in winter, but he didn’t make a sound. He leaned forward and kissed her cheek. Moreau murmured something in French, and he smiled and nodded.

And then, with the lights flickering again, Moreau returned her hands to Lester’s grasp, and closed her eyes.

“You’ll have… to try your best… to set a new ward…” Moreau murmured, eyes still closed.

Lester nodded, too fast. “I’ll do my best, Miss Estelle.”

“Good, good. Now, let’s go…”

Now Lester was turning a glimmery off-shade, as if his reddish skin were beginning to glow. Aurora blinked; were they glowing? The lights in the room flickered yet again, and the answer was yes, they were. Faintly, the strongest light shining up their arms, at their conjoined hands.

“What’s happening?” she asked, standing. The lights blinked out finally, and did not return.

“Madame Moreau is passing her office on to Lester,” Lucian replied quietly. He hadn’t moved at all since Lester had arrived, leaning against the wall in the far corner without a word.

Aurora glanced at him, then back at the glowing spectacle. “Her office? What does that mean?”

“She was the witch in our circle. Now, Lester will be.”

Aurora watched with wide eyes as Moreau’s glow dimmed, dimmed, and Lester’s grew stronger. It was over in less than a minute, and the lights in the room snapped back on as if someone had flipped the switch. And in the large hospital bed, gray and cold, lay the body of Estelle Moreau.

“Oh my God,” Aurora breathed.

“So passes the Witch, Estelle Moreau,” Milo murmured, bowing his head.

“We should go,” Lester coughed. He looked up at them all. “Her ward is totally gone now; I’ll have to build a new one, but I can’t do it here. I’ll need time—we need to all get somewhere safe.”

“Safe from what?” Aurora asked, her hazel eyes still locked on Madame Moreau’s still face.

Out in the hall, someone shrieked.

Mr. Cheng turned to Lucian. He’d never looked so grim, never, and at that moment Aurora wouldn’t have wanted to be in his way.

“Take them to your home,” Cheng instructed. “Get them to safety. I’ll buy you time.”

Lucian nodded and stepped away from the wall. “I’m on it.”

Mr. Cheng opened the door of the hospital room; outside, there was chaos. It sounded like a high wind had begun ripping through the hall, and the lights were flashing like a series of electrical surges.

As she watched his back, Mr. Cheng began to change. It began as a rippled through his thin shoulders. At first, Aurora thought it was the flashing lights, but then he began to grow, madly, like an accelerated film. His spine lengthened and fur sprouted from his skin. In a matter of seconds, a Bengal tiger stood in the door where Mr. Cheng had been, its shoulders only a little shorter than he’d been upright.

Aurora’s legs folded under her and she was suddenly sitting on the couch again.

“He’ll can only give us a few minutes head start,” Milo told her, holding out a hand. “We gotta go!”

Go? Oh, boy. That was a lot to ask. But Aurora’s hand took Milo’s without her telling it to, and he pulled her to her feet. The tiger was gone, and the chaos in the hall was reaching a fevered pitch. Lucian helped Lester to his feet and herded them all out.

In the hall, a series of sharp growls and hisses welcomed them from the right, where the elevators were. Aurora looked, and felt quite crazy to see what she did; the tiger, surely bigger than a real one, was locked in combat with a pair of creatures that defied description. They seemed part shadow, not fully physical, and with the lights going mad it was impossible to get a look at them.

A second later, she was being rushed to the left. “The emergency stairs,” Milo told her. “I think this counts as an emergency.”

They burst into the stairwell, to find the lights flashing here, too. The going was treacherous in her heels, but Aurora had been wearing heels a long time and managed to keep up with the boys in their flat-soled shoes. Their steps clattered and echoed around them, and when they were turning the bend between the second and first floor, the door upstairs slammed open.

“Go!” Lucian bellowed, and they blasted through the door on the first floor.

“The parking garage! We can all fit in my car!”

“What about Mr. Cheng?” Aurora asked, her voice much higher than she’d meant it to be.

“Believe me, he can take care of himself,” Lucian replied as they rushed through the ground floor of the hospital. “He’ll be trying to hold them back and keep them from following. They haven’t hurt him, and he knows where to meet us.”

Aurora had to take his word for it, because they were already in the parking garage and booking it towards Milo’s car.

“Where are we going?” she panted, swinging into the front seat without asking.

“My apartment,” Lucian answered from the backseat. “It’s well-hidden. Lester will have time to build a new ward once we get there.”

Milo started the car and screeched out of the parking spot the second Lester—the last one in the car—had his door shut. He wheeled on out of the parking structure like a bat out of hell, still wearing his gun and police badge under his jacket, which Aurora found oddly amusing.

“What if you get pulled over?” she asked, smiling like a lunatic. “What’ll we tell them, we’re running from shadow monsters?”

Milo glanced at her. “Keep with us, Aurora. I know this is a lot all at once, but we were hoping… well we were hoping we’d be able to wait as long as possible before having this conversation.”

“What, that my father is here in the city? That he’s been looking for me all this time?” Aurora asked, suddenly angry. “My mother has been wasting away waiting for him to come back, and you tell me you all kept him from finding us?”

“We were protecting you,” Lester piped up from the back. “Your father doesn’t want to claim you—”

“He wants to kill you,” Lucian finished, leaning back in the shadows of the rear seat. “Or turn you to his side. Either way, he’s not looking out for your best interests.”

“His side?” Aurora spun in her seat to face him, careful to brace herself against Milo’s mad driving. “What side is that?”

Lucian stared at her intensely, angrily. “The side that only cares about him. He’s looking out for his interests now.”

“Why would he need to kill me?” Aurora asked, half hysterical, half furious. “He’s ignored me long enough—”

“This isn’t about custody or child support,” Lucian interrupted. “It’s about succession. You just saw what succession means in this group. One day, I’ll take Cheng’s place, just like Lester and Moreau. Most of the time, we can choose our own successor, but when you bring a child into the world, you make a successor. Whether he likes it or not, his power is going to you, whenever you can claim it.”

“Power?” Aurora squeaked as Milo took a turn at thirty miles an hour. The car wheels skidded on some ice before righting. “What power? What am I supposed to do with it?”

“Protect the city,” Lucian answered patiently. “We told you already. That’s what we do. It’s why we’re grouped together like this. And your father is screwing things up by looking out for himself only.”

“So he thinks I want to kill him?” Aurora was dumbfounded.

“You will kill him,” Lucian insisted. “Either all at once or over time, the longer you live, the more of his strength you take. As your star rises, his is falling. If he kills you, he can stop it forever.”

To this, Aurora had nothing to say. What could she possibly say? She flopped back down in her seat, facing forward. This was unreal. She’d always thought her father must be a Class-A jackass to leave her mother, but this…

No one spoke for the rest of the drive, except the occasional sob from Lester. Aurora wished she knew what to say; someone should say something to the poor kid. Madame Moreau had been Aurora’s employer and nothing more, whether or not she had been some kind of secret guardian. All Aurora had known was that she better show up to work on time, and that if she and Moreau ever passed on the street, the old woman probably wouldn’t even look at her.

Obviously, to Lester, the lady had been much more dear. He was as quiet as could be, but every now and then, a sharp cry that was almost a cough would slip out. Aurora had spent all her adult life comforting her mother, and bizarrely, she found that she didn’t have even one scrap of comfort to give at the moment. Her own life was nothing to be envied, if half of what these people said was true. And after she had seen Mr. Cheng transform into a tiger, right before her eyes, she was inclined to believe more than half of it.

They crossed a bridge, although Aurora wasn’t sure which one, and soon found themselves in a river of slow-moving cars. In the middle of the night, they were stuck in traffic. Milo tapped his foot nervously.

“You should get out and walk from here,” he told Lucian. “The two of you—you can move faster with just two. The sooner we get her warded, the better. We’ll park and be up there as soon as we can.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Lucian opened his door and leapt out as Milo was coming to a stop. Aurora’s door opened a moment later, and Lucian’s large hand was offered to help her stand.

It had been one of the longest days of her life, but Aurora took Lucian’s hand and let him lever her up to her feet. They were in the middle of traffic, so the two of them had to fast-walk out of the road, over the snowbank and onto the sidewalk. Aurora had ever been thankful for her heeled boots before, but at least she wasn’t running around February New York in pumps.

It occurred to her as they moved up the street that she should have grabbed sneakers from her apartment. She had only one good pair (the other pair was full of holes) but even the old pair in her closet would have been better than spending all night in heels.

Luckily, Lucian’s building wasn’t far away. He punched in the entry code to a respectable-looking tenement building that stretched upward towards the high moon, and they climbed into an elevator up to the seventeenth floor. Here was a hall with several doors, the last of which Lucian unlocked and ushered Aurora inside.

At first it was almost completely dark, and Aurora put her hands out to avoid bumping into a table or a couch or some such incident; when Lucian closed the door, the darkness was like pitch, endless and thick.

Thankfully, he hit the lights a moment later. When he did, Aurora stared around, uncertain all over again.

It was a nice apartment, sure enough. And in a decent part of town, too, which didn’t come cheap in New York. But in the soft light of several lamps were thousands of charms. The lined the walls. They rustled from the ceiling. Strings and ribbons and lengths of twine, binding together beads and feathers and notes and bits of metal, hung in ropes. Under the charms, the walls were papered in handwritten wards, one taped over the other, like the scales of a fish, almost fully obscuring the paint behind them.

“You’ll be safe here,” Lucian said, taking off his jacket. In the living room, as if unaware of the mad-looking oddments strung around his house, Lucian had a very modern leather couch set around a simple entertainment center. He tossed his jacket across the back of the couch and headed into a back room.

“I’ll be right back. Make yourself at home.”

Home. As Lucian disappeared into his bedroom, Aurora felt the word echo into her chest like a shout down a cave. Home. She felt sharply that she had lost hers tonight, that her old life was fully gone. Her mother was missing, her apartment destroyed, her jobs as good as lost. What was going to become of her now?

And what about her father? Was that the real reason that he had left her and Ramona—because the others made him? Because they were afraid he might try to hurt Aurora in the attempt to keep his power? She didn’t feel powerful; nothing strange or unusual had ever happened to Aurora, nor had she ever done anything remarkable. Maybe they had it wrong. Surely, they did. She sat down on the couch, determined to tell Lucian exactly this when he returned.

But when Lucian can back into his living room, it was to find that Aurora was asleep on his couch, laying sideways with her feet on the floor as if she’d simply tipped over.

The dream was different.

That had never happened before in her life, so Aurora didn’t recognise it begin. It felt more like a memory than a dream, a very old memory from when she was small. She was colouring, drawing something in huge, clumsy strokes. It felt like summer, with bright white sun glowing in through the windows. Her mother was humming somewhere nearby. The world was small and safe.

And then it started changing. The sun was setting, and the dusk outside moved into the apartment. Ramona’s humming quieted and vanished as night drew on, but no lights were turned on, and outside the world was black. By the time Aurora realised how dark it had become, it was complete, no moon, no stars. Not even street lights. She looked down at the picture she’d been drawing.

It had been a picture of her father’s face, but of course, she couldn’t see it, now. Lost again.

The table disappeared. The chair disappeared. And though she tried to hold on to it, the picture, too, vanished straight from her hand as if it had turned to smoke. Aurora was floating in the dark, and recognised at last the dream she’d known so well for far too long.

She twisted and thrashed in the dark; it felt more alive than ever. It felt like a real palpable thing, and it terrified her. Like the coils of a great snake that could constrict around her, suffocate her, any moment. She had to get out.

And then, there it was. The hand, as always. More felt than seen, it filled Aurora with dread. So much dread, in fact, that normally she shocked herself awake at this point. But this time, the dream persisted, and Aurora was carried along with it, towards the hand, and she had a choice before her. Should she take it?

Meanwhile, in the dream, Aurora put out her hands hesitantly. If she took the offered help, she would be pulled out of the darkness, that much was clear to her. But to where? To somewhere better? Or somewhere much worse?

She wasn’t able to make the choice. Long before a decision was reached, Aurora found herself being shaken by the shoulders, shaken back into the world of the living.

“Aurora. Hey! Wake up!”

She blinked awake, surprised to find herself not in her bed, and in fact, not even on furniture. She was on someone’s floor, someone leaning over her now, worried.

It was Lucien. She was in his apartment. Her own apartment was destroyed, besieged by the shadow creatures. Mr. Cheng. Madame Moreau. Her mother. Her father.

Aurora’s breathing grew shallow.

“Hey, calm down,” Lucien told her, helping her stand. She was still in her clothes from yesterday. She might have been out partying all night, complete with the outfit; Aurora had never been out partying all night, but she guessed this was what it felt like. Long before she managed to get back on her feet, she realized the boots were still on.

“Ahrrgh,” she moaned, sitting back on the couch. Time to take off these boots, since she’d already made herself comfortable. What had she been thinking? She was acting like someone who was dying to get raped and murdered. Since when did she fall asleep alone in a total stranger’s house? Her mother had taught her better than that.

Of course, Ramona Potier was gone. Aurora pulled off her boots as tears crept into her eyes. Gone, without a trace.

“Hey, do you have a bathroom?” Aurora asked.

Lucien was kind enough not to point out the redundancy of that question, and instead directed her down the hall at the other end of the living room. Aurora shut herself in the, and looked in the mirror.

Her hair was bent like a deflated basketball. Her S&M clothes were creased and dull and had left red lines on her skin where they’d folded together. Her make-up from yesterday night was a disaster. She looked like a coked-up hooker, and she only felt a little better.

Aurora thought about asking to take a shower, but she didn’t have anything for her hair, or any clean clothes, so she contented herself with scrubbing her face and neck the best she could. For a guy, Lucien kept his bathroom pretty clean, with fresh towels and a laundry basket. Impressive.

She had her make-up in her purse, if she wanted to apply more, but by the time she scoured last night’s mask off, Aurora wasn’t in the mood to slather more on. She was barely able to tame her hair into an agreeable plait. Barely. Not much to look at, and less to smell, but at least she didn’t look like someone’s drunken mistake.

By the time she left the bathroom, Lucien was in the kitchen. Smelled like coffee, which was fine with Aurora. She walked over to the window, which was covered in blinds, drapes, and yet more charms, and started to push them aside to look out.

“Don’t do that,” Lucien called from the kitchen. “It’s about noon. We have to leave the windows covered, though, or else the wards on them won’t work.”

Aurora dropped her hand, suddenly feeling claustrophobic.

“So… you never open the windows?”

“Nope.”

From behind her another voice spoke up casually. “That would defeat the purpose of a ward.”

Aurora jumped and spun around; it was Milo, sitting at the kitchen table with his head back on his shoulders and his eyes closed. She’d walked practically right past him without even noticing in the gloom.

“Turn on some lights! Jesus!” Aurora hissed, her heart pounding. These people were determined to give her a heart attack!

“The switches are over there,” Milo waved at the wall behind her. “Don’t turn them all on. I’m still trying to get just a little more sleep…”

Aurora fiddled around with the light switches and managed to get the light over the table on. Milo groaned and slunk off to the couch instead. “Too bright…”

“If you want some coffee, there’s a pot ready,” he told her. He was carrying his own mug, and sat down in Milo’s vacated seat at the table. Already, snoring from the couch told her that Milo was asleep again. On the love-seat opposite, Lester had his legs folded over the arm and was passed out peacefully.

“Thank you.” Aurora found herself a mug and the sugar. She liked coffee, but it had a bad affect with some of her mom’s medicines, so they never kept it in the apartment. She’d only bought it on the way to work once or twice; no time for it at Witching Hour, and Madame Moreau disapproved of them keeping drinks in the back near the clothes.

At the thought of Moreau, Aurora sighed. She was gone, and Aurora hadn’t even known anything about her. She’d been part of this—whatever this was—for so long, keeping the secret, and then she’d passed away before Aurora could understand who she really was. With all her other losses, it wasn’t top of the list, but it made Aurora sad all the same.

With her coffee, she joined Lucien at the table. He looked a little less intimidating sitting at his kitchen table, surrounded by magic charms, drinking coffee from a mug that had the logo of for the Red Sox on the side. Aurora smiled.

“Red Sox fan?”

Lucien snapped his attention to her; he’d been thinking of something else, obviously, miles away. But he grinned again, that wide white-toothed grin, and looked down at the mug in his hands. “Yeah, since I was a kid.”

“So you’ve lived in New York since you were young?”

“All my life,” Lucien agreed.

Aurora paused, trying to imagine how to phrase this next question. “So, uh… when were you… like… when did you get… bit…?” It was a terribly personal (not to mention a terribly odd) question, but Aurora couldn’t help it. He’d said he was going to take over for Cheng, who was a shapeshifter. Unless she’d just imagined all of yesterday in a great fit of psychological shock. Not impossible.

She was sort of expecting anger from him, but Lucien just smiled a small smile and asked, “Bit? Like, howling at the moon, bit?”

Aurora reddened. “I didn’t—I mean, I thought that’s how… Sorry.”

He laughed. “Don’t be. You’re not completely wrong. There are those sorts of shapeshifters out there. Legends and myths always have some seeds of truth. But I was born this way. It’s genetic, for me, although no one in my family’s had it for a long, long time.”

Aurora’s eyes were wide. “Do you turn into a tiger?”

“My most natural shape is a big wolf,” Lucien replied, taking another sip of coffee. “I’m learning to adopt others, though. Cheng can turn into quite a few, but he’s had a long, long time to practice.”

“How old is he? Like, seventy?”

Lucien shook his head. “Try two hundred fifty.”

Aurora stared. “That’s… not possible.”

Lucien snorted into his coffee. “After all you’ve seen, you’re still going to think about what’s possible and not possible?”

Aurora couldn’t argue that. She sat and sipped her coffee for a while instead; everything had happened in a whirlwind. This time yesterday she had been handling the store, thinking with a little nervousness about the future, whether she’d still have a job at Moreau’s, and how she would pay rent if not.

A horrible though occurred. How on earth was she going to afford to fix the apartment? She had never been able to afford renter’s insurance.

Her heart began palpating. Perhaps it seems odd, after all she’d been through, to be so terrified over such a simple thing, but to explain, Aurora had lived all her adult life with the threat of the money running out just over her head. There had been late fees that she had had to crawl out from under. Short term loans that had nearly set them on the streets. It had taken years to reach a level of security in their finances, and that sort of long-lived stress is not forgotten in one night of extraordinary events.

The figures were piling furiously in Aurora’s head, and her grip on the coffee mug had gotten very tight. And this—when she was going to miss work from both her jobs for the foreseeable future!

Meanwhile, her face had gone sickly pale, and Lucien was watching her, worried.

“Hey,” he tried to soothe her. He set a hand on her shoulder gently. Aurora jumped and looked at him with wide eyes. “Hey, don’t be afraid. I know it’s a lot to be dumped on you at once, but we’re here to protect you.”

Aurora, who had forgotten all about the supernatural events of the previous night, looked at him in anxious confusion.

“What?”

He repeated himself, slower. Aurora shook her head. “No, that’s not it. I just… oh God, I don’t know how I’m going to pay for the apartment. I’ll never be able to rent again if I don’t pay for the repairs… and next month’s rent is due in a couple weeks. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

She rubbed her face, and her heart continued to thrum out of time in her ribcage like a discordant song.

Carefully, Lucien took both her hands. “Aurora. Look this way.”

She shook her head, too full of anxiety.

“Aurora.”

She glanced one hazel eye up at his face. Lucien took a deep breath and squeezed her hands. “Aurora, that’s gone, now. Your bills are gone. Your apartment—gone. We’ll get it cleaned and taken care of. You’re not going to be living there anymore. It’s not safe. You’re in this now, and we’re going to take care of everything.”

Aurora hardly dared to breathe. “What?” she whispered.

Lucien let her hands go. “This coven has existed for centuries, ever since humans settled here permanently. Moreau and Cheng have had guardianship for a hundred years—and we have accounts set up for this sort of thing. We had to be hands-off before, to keep secret. But you’re one of us, now. You don’t have to worry about money again.”

Dazed, she stared at him, not really comprehending. Aurora could not imagine a life without worrying about money, not at all. It had been on her mind constantly for five years, and often enough before that. They would take care of it? She’d never had anyone say that to her.

“What do I have to do?” she said finally. That was the only possibility. What on earth could they want of her to make such an offer?

Lucien shook his head. “Only what you had to do, anyway. Ian—your father—wants to see you, one way or another. We’re going to be with you constantly, from now on. Lester managed to rebuild some lesser wards around you; it will take him some time to sort through Moreau’s magic and make sense of what she gave him.

“But all you have to do now is stay alive,” Lucien told her. “If your father manages to kill you, we will have lost our chance to get rid of him, and another one might not come around for a while.”

“Get rid of him?”

Lucien nodded. “Our circle is incomplete. Not only is Ian refusing to cooperate, he’s taken Ylessa. She’s the fifth member, and very fragile. He managed it when Moreau first started getting weak.”

“Ylessa is… what did she say… a fairy?”

“You would call her that. She’s life, and earth. Opposite to Ian’s death. He was only able to capture her because she’s frail, but without her, we’re only three.”

“Three? But… you, Milo, Cheng, Lester… and you want me to join—”

“It’s more complicated than that,” Lucien reminded her patiently. “There are five openings, and Lester just took Moreau’s. I will take Cheng’s place when the time comes. Like you have to take your father’s place. That’s what you have to do, whether we help you or not. We might not get another chance like this to take him down.”

“So you want me to kill him?”

“Yes,” Lucien agreed flatly. “He’s too dangerous to be running around loose, and we can’t have a fifth until he chooses one. Thankfully, he already chose you, whether he meant to or not.”

And that was that; Aurora gazed into her coffee mug, disquieted.

They expected her to do to her father what Lester had done to Moreau? When her father was some sort of… vampire? Probably not like in the movies, but surely it wasn’t an easy thing, what they were asking. How did they think she was going to get near him?

And then… was she going to kill the only parent she had left? She had waited all her life to meet him, angrily, resentfully, but always hopefully. And now, suddenly, it was upon her to end him.

“Why five?” Finally Aurora had to ask. This whole business was so mysterious, and so outrageous. Maybe if she could just start to figure out what the hell was going on…

Lucien was mid-way through a sip of coffee, and thought about his answer before giving it. It wasn’t lost on Aurora that over on the couch, Milo had ceased snoring. Almost as soon as she realized, the snoring began again, but she didn’t comment. “There are five points of the pentacle,” Lucien began, intoning, with the sound of a story many times told. “And there are five guardians in a circle. We aren’t the only ones; these circles are all over the world.”

“For what?”

“Protection.”

“Protect who? From what?”

Lucien rotated his huge shoulders, stretching. “To protect humanity, from itself.”

Aurora’s face must have given away her bafflement, because Lucien smiled and nodded his head. “To be more specific, to protect what it good of humanity from its own evil. Evil has a natural advantage: it’s easy. Usually wicked things lead to personal gain, or at least personal enjoyment. As a result, entire religions have been constructed, laws written, governments raised, just to the purpose of keeping humankind from devolving into a mass of semi-civilized martial chaos.”

“You take a dim view of things,” Aurora pointed out coolly.

“You get that way after a few years of this,” Lucien answered with raised eyebrows. “That’s where we come in. You see, there’s a balance of energy—magic, electricity, energy, feng-shui, whatever—and it has the capability of influencing humankind one way or another. A long time ago—like, biblical times—it was discovered that between some, special people, a sort of… well, they call it a center, but it’s like a filter, a place where energy is drawn in and purified, and then sent back out again.”

For this speech, Aurora had sat with her mouth hanging open, her eyebrows drawn together. She was still sitting this way now as Lucien looked her over, examining her face for signs of skepticism or maybe even belief. He saw neither, so he continued.

“But the human population has multiplied since this system first began, and industrialization clogs the energy paths further. We have more to do and a harder time doing it, and for the last twenty years, here in New York, we haven’t even been able to do our job right. Ian ran off when he realized he’d screwed up royally, and until we get our numbers back, we’re basically just sitting around.”

Aurora closed her mouth. “So New York is like it is because you haven’t been able to… clean the energy paths?”

Lucien waved his hands in the air and rolled his eyes. “New York is gonna be New York no matter what we do. But unless we’re able to filter the energy like usual, negative auras will collect here. It’s inevitable as hair going down a shower drain.”

“Nice analogy.”

“I try.”

Hesitant, Aurora tried again. “So it’ll get… worse?”

Lucien leveled a steady stare at her and took a long drink of his coffee. “Worse and worse. And bigger, too. It will spread like a hurricane, over New York state, over New England. Over North America. That would take hundreds of years, but for every filter that fails, it gets easier, and the world gets darker.”

“Don’t let Lucien scare you too bad,” Milo said from the couch.

“We should all be scared,” Lucien replied gravely. “Humanity invented pollution, nuclear war, mustard gas, torture. What else will we come up with if the energy paths are left unchecked?”

This was all sounding too freaky for Aurora’s liking. She’d heard a lot so far, and not much of it had made her very hopeful. If she hadn’t seen so much with her own eyes, she’d think they were all crazy. Not too late for that, she thought wryly. Maybe I’m crazy, too.

“So what are we doing today?” she asked. Might as well find out, before another panic attack hit. Or worse… she could sink back into the pleasant, molasses-slow numbness of last night… feeling nothing… Aurora shook that thought off quickly and waited for someone to answer.

When Milo said nothing, Lucien sighed. “Mr. Cheng would have come here by now if he could, so I’m going to go look for him. And I’m thinking if Lester wants to try and put a ward on me and get some practice, that couldn’t hurt.”

Lester was still sleeping soundly on the loveseat.

“Where did he come from?” Aurora asked, genuinely curious.

Lucien smiled sadly. “He used to work on the delivery truck for Moreau’s. The year before last. He lied and told them he was eighteen and had been working under the table—it turns out, he’d ‘helped’ himself look a little older when he applied, so the company didn’t ask questions. Moreau caught whiff of his magic right away. I guess he’s strong, but he… he really needed more time.”

Lucien shook his head. “Moreau was a hard-headed woman,” he muttered. “She wouldn’t hear of taking a successor on for the longest time. She should have picked someone years ago. But it’s been hard, without Ian… without Ylessa… harder to do what he have to. It took its toll on her, all right.”

“You mean this… filter thing… killed her?”

“It kills all of us,” Lucien replied, as if it meant nothing. “So does life. She held on too long, and she put us all in a terrible position, when we were already weak.”

“One more knock and we’ll fall apart,” Milo sighed. “We can’t keep this up without five. If you don’t off your old man soon, we’re done.”

“That’s putting it bluntly,” Lucien murmured around his coffee. He looked grim as he spoke. “But that’s pretty much how it is. He made his choice, and we’ve got to make ours. And there’s a job to get done.”

“All right. Let’s try this.”

Lucien rolled his eyes. “You’ve been saying let’s try this for twenty minutes. Time to actually try it.”

They four of them were standing in Lucien’s living room amongst his thousand warding charms. Aurora was still uncomfortably aware of her Witching Hour attire, but none of the boys had said anything—not that she expected them to. There weren’t a lot of men who would complain about a woman in tight black leather.

“Okay,” Lester said for the hundredth time. “Just… Just stand really still. Here goes…”

Aurora took an involuntary step back. She wasn’t really sure what it was going to be like, but this whole magic being real scenario was still surprising to her, whatever form it took. She circled around the back of the couch in three smooth steps. Of course, Milo (who was standing without a care just beside Lucien) still noticed her move.

“It won’t harm you. It’s not even aimed at you.”

“It’s just crowded over there, all right?” Aurora snapped.

Lucien had pitched the idea of casting a ward to Lester after the teen woke up, which was sometime after one in the afternoon. At first, Lester had been rather eager. As Aurora watched, she guessed he was eager to prove that he was able to fill Madame Moreau’s shoes, though, perhaps not her literal black stilettos. Now that the time came to actually perform the spell, however, he was nervous and uncertain as a snake in a shoe store.

The teen closed his brown eyes. He held his hands out, palm up, as if catching rain, and stood there for what seemed like a very long time. Aurora was watching intensely for some glow or shine or glimmer—or anything really. She had already seen a little of the magic last night. After all they’d claimed, she was in a hurry to see more.

Through it all Lucien stood there calmly, hands out at his sides. This, too, was something Aurora was eager to see. Lucien’s change. Her concern for Mr. Cheng and grief over her mother and Moreau were sharp, but her damn curiosity was eating her up.

Finally, something happened, although it wasn’t something to be seen. The air in the room began to thicken with static, tight like cord, as if it might snap. Aurora held her breath.

“Careful of the existing wards,” Lucien murmured, not unkindly. Lester nodded and moved his hands in an arc over Lucien, as if throwing a blanket over his head. The sensation of the air in the room being a little too tight began to ease, and then to disappear.

Lucien clapped Lester on the shoulder. “There. You did good.”

Lester grinned and nodded, and took a deep breath.

“So I’m just going to go back to the hospital,” Lucien repeated, one last time. “I’m going to go as a dog—no one will notice me that way.”

To Aurora’s disappointment, he stepped out the door as a human and shut it behind him. Milo chuckled.

“That eager to see him naked?”

Aurora blushed. “No! That’s vile. You should be ashamed.”

Milo rolled his eyes. “Please. But that’s not really important, not right now. Miss, I think it’s time we start showing you what your father really gave you.”

Aurora stepped back involuntarily. “What are you talking about?”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

Why bother denying it? Milo could read minds. Aurora exhaled the breath she had been holding and looked down at her hands. Magic.

“What do you want me to do? Levitate the table? Light some candles with my thoughts?” These suggestions came out sharply and without sincerity—and even Aurora found them a little spiteful. Denial was a form of survival for humankind, and in this situation, even that little respite had been taken from her. She flexed her fingers and sighed. “Look, I… I don’t know if we should.”

Milo sat down on one end of the couch and gestured at the other, his meaning crystal clear. “We won’t know what we should do until we’ve crossed over into what we shouldn’t.”

“That’s a terrible saying. I hope you don’t live by that kind of logic.”

“Of course I do,” Milo replied, smiling a little. Lester had quietly, half-unnoticed, taken a place across from the couch on the loveseat. Milo’s smile widened wickedly. “That’s the only way to really live, when you think about it.”

“That doesn’t make much sense,” Aurora retorted, but she was already sitting on the end of the couch that Milo had indicated. Against the leather couch, her pants grated and made an obnoxious creaking sound. “I have got to get some new clothes.”

This time, Milo didn’t argue, but nodded in agreement. “Absolutely. Any preferences?”

Aurora thought about what Lucien had said this morning. You’re one of us, now. You don’t have to worry about money again. A shiver went down her spine. It sounded too good to be true. She’d never been free of debt, free of bills before. She believed in witches and shapeshifters and magic before she truly believed that she would never worry about her bank account again.

“Jeans,” she said finally.

“Skinny jeans? Boot cut?”

“I… I like skinny jeans.”

“And a warm coat—”

“Two lighter ones would be better,” Aurora admitted quietly. “And sneakers. Something without a heel. Please.”

Milo nodded, leaning back a little into the couch; it was a soft piece of furniture, and the cushions molded around his body. “I’ve told Lucien what you need.”

Aurora stared. “Just like that?”

Milo shrugged. “He might not be able to get it just now—when they transform, they lose their clothes, and he’ll have to stay in dog form until he gets back, but he might be able to arrange something sooner. He’ll probably want to look for Cheng first—”

“Of course,” Aurora blurted. “There’s no rush. Whenever it’s… convenient. I suppose. Thank you.”

“Aurora, Lucien told you the truth,” Milo leaned forward again, out of the couch. “We’re going to take care of you now, because like it or not, you’re one of us. Our lives are stuck together. So yes, we’re going to take care of you, like you would if our roles were backwards.”

Oh, there it is, Aurora thought to herself. The catch, finally. I knew it was here, somewhere. Of course they weren’t going to just take care of her. That… that would be too simple.

Yes, actually it would be. Aurora thought of how her mother had just taken care of her, until it had destroyed Ramona Potier and driven her mad under the weight. Another, fresher, stab of guilt pricked Aurora in the chest, so raw still from the heartache of yesterday. And then what had happened? Aurora had taken it upon herself to do what her mother had done, fighting for years, alone, to stay afloat.

Nothing was ever that simple, and by now, Aurora felt that she should know that lesson through and through. You didn’t get something for nothing; these people were convinced that they were part of her life, now. And she was part of theirs. They didn’t want her enslavement, not like she’d been a slave to keeping her mother. No… they wanted her to be on a team. Part of a… a different kind of family.

Aurora looked up at Milo and nodded. She understood.

“Great!” If Milo had been listening to her thoughts, he didn’t show it. He made himself comfortable on his side of the couch, leaning closer to Aurora. Lester watched in eager silence. “So what I want you to do I just to touch the power. Just… get in contact with it, and see where we go from there.”

Aurora watched him suspiciously. “How do I do that?”

With a sigh, Milo scratched his head; with a start, Aurora realized his gun was still in the holster, which he wore even without a jacket as cover. It just seemed such a part of him that she’d forgotten to notice it. “There’s a problem. I’m not a vampire. I’ve never been a vampire, so I don’t know exactly how to access your powers.”

Aurora shook her head. “Don’t say that.”

“Say what?”

She exhaled impatiently. “The ‘V’ word.”

“Vampire?”

“Yeah,” Aurora agreed, annoyed. “That would be the word I asked you not to say.”

“That’s a bad strategy,” Milo warned. “That, my dear, is called, denial, and it will never, never, never help you. Not once.” He looked at her, intent, for several minutes. Aurora stared back, wondering if he was trying to read her mind. “I’m serious. It will blind you to truth. It will take reality from you. It will leave you helpless. The moment you decided to deny what is real, the power to see it for what it is flies out the window.”

“Maybe I don’t want to see it for what it is,” Aurora hissed. “Don’t you think I’d find it a little shocking to have someone suddenly tell me I’m a vampire? I’m not! I’ve lived a normal life for twenty-four years, without a speck of magic—”

“Because we hid it from you,” Milo interrupted, his voice a coaxing murmur. “Come on, Aurora. We had to. If you discovered your magic, your father would have found you long before you were strong enough to threaten him.”

“Well, that’s convenient,” Aurora replied.

“It’s not wild, things flying off the shelves, lights flickering, storms coming out of nowhere, magic. Your power is much more subtle—even if we hadn’t hid it from you, it’s possible you would have never noticed.”

“So, what do you want me to do?” Aurora asked again, sharply.

Milo held his hands out. “Try to feel my energy. My life force. Take my hands—or don’t, suit yourself; you don’t have to give me that look—and just… feel.”

Hesitant, Aurora held her hands near Milo’s. She didn’t feel anything, and she told him so. Milo rolled his eyes.

“Did you expect it to jump out and bite you? You have to meditate, a bit. Focus.”

“On what?”

“Your breathing, or something. I don’t know. Breathing always worked for me when I was learning.”

With a small growl, Aurora took a deliberate inhale. Still nothing. Slowly, she pushed out the breath through her nose, feeling her nerves settle a little as she did so. She could definitely do with less nerves, so she took another breath in, and another breath out.

“Concentrate on feeling the air circulate through your body.”

“That’s not what happens—”

“Don’t get scientific on me. Just focus on the feeling of drawing in life with each breath, and exhaling the stress and negativity.”

“Don’t get meta on me, now,” Aurora muttered, but she did as Milo said, envisioning the air circle through her. But then, in her mind, it wasn’t really air. That isn’t what it felt like, after all. When she focused, it felt more like particles, dust motes, glowing and living, that she drew in with each breath. And when she exhaled… it seemed as though she was expelling ash.

Shocked, Aurora blinked. The vision in her head had been so vivid. She closed her eyes and tried again, not even noticing how closely Milo had begun to watch her.

It came easier this time, the glowing particles and dark ash spots clear in her mind’s eye. Aurora followed their progress, watched the golden specks gather in her chest, and the black ones swirl into the room and dissipate. Fascinated, she had no idea how long she watched, when she realised all of a sudden that she wasn’t the only one with the glowing dust motes.

They flocked around Lester and Milo, in much greater density than Aurora. She kept her eyes shut, but in some abstract way she could see the two of them sitting there, glowing.

“Whoa,” she murmured, hardly daring to breathe. The particles filtered in and out of her with the air the moved with her speech.

Milo’s hands were still outreached; Aurora inched her own hands closer to them without even a thought for what might happen. She watched, amazed and enthralled, as the gold particles in Milo’s skin began to creep towards her, like metal shavings to a magnet. Her fingers grew nearer and nearer until his hands were just below hers; still the particles snailed up to the surface, as if they were survivors hailing a plane.

Aurora had no idea what all this meant, but she took the next obvious step. She lowered her hands to rest on top of Milo’s, as he had asked.

Immediately, the gold particles seeped into her. Aurora gasped; it felt like summer sunlight, after a long winter. Wonderful, full of hope and promises of better days. Tears welled up in her still-shut eyes. It had been a long, long time since she had ever felt something so warm.

Take more. The voice in her head was unfamiliar; it wasn’t even a voice really. It was something primal, like the need to sleep and eat. It wound through her brain over and over, with the same two words. Take more take more take more take more…

It seemed a thrilling thing to do, and Aurora couldn’t figure out why. Yes, these light drops, like snowflakes, were beautiful and filled her with contentment and wellness. When they absorbed into her skin, she felt rested and whole, as if she would never need anything again. She knew she didn’t need more, but she called for it anyway, summoned it instinctively from Milo’s body, just because she could.

A sharp cry jolted Aurora out of her meditation, and her eyes snapped open.

“That’s probably enough for now,” Milo said hastily. He’d already withdrawn his hands.

Her heart punched a beat against the hollow of her throat, terrified. “What was that?” she asked. If her voice was higher and shriller than usual, no one mentioned it.

Milo went through several facial expressions, a grimace, surprise, hesitation, then resignation.

“That… well, that was a taste of your powers.”

“That was…” Aurora’s voice failed her, and she flopped back against the couch. “That was… amazing! What—did you see the lights, too? What was that?”

“It was how your father beat me the first time,” Milo muttered.

Aurora froze. She dropped from her cloud like a stone, and looked at Milo, really looked at him, in the light of the lamps. His young face seemed to have aged a few years in just seconds—or had it been minutes? Aurora was no longer sure. She felt bright and vibrant, which was the exact opposite of how Milo looked. His skin was grayish and his hands were shaking. His blue eyes were sunken and ringed in dark bruises.

“Oh my God!” Aurora leapt forward and put out her hands to help, although she had no idea what she was going to do about his condition.

Milo flinched back. It was clearly a reflex, but it stung nonetheless.

“I’m sorry,” Aurora snapped—and felt sorrier still for snapping. What had she done?

“You did what you’re designed to do,” Milo answered her thought. He closed his eyes and leaned his head against the couch. “You took some of my energy. I can regain it the normal way, sleep and food, but I can only recover so fast. Don’t worry, I’ll be all right… eventually. And hey, can you check to see if Lucien has anything to eat in that fridge? Shapeshifters are always hungry, I’m sure he has something…”

Aurora leapt up in her socks (she still hadn’t put her boots back on) and hurried into the kitchen. Like the bathroom, Lucien kept his kitchen neat and clean, and she dug out a can of loaded baked potato soup from the cupboard and threw it in a bowl. All of this she jammed in the microwave and hit buttons until it roared to life.

“What was that?!” Aurora asked again, even less calm now than before. “Milo! Did I just suck the life out of you?”

From the couch, Milo looked at her, eyes glittery bright in his sunken face. And that was answer enough for Aurora. She stood there, breathing as if it pained her, feeling the euphoria of Milo’s life force that she’d stolen right out of him. The microwave beeped before she spoke again, and then Aurora was able to busy herself in retrieving the sizzling canned soup stirring it frantically to hide her fear.

“Here,” she set it on the table in front of Milo. “Careful. It’s hot as hell.”

Milo gave an unimpressed snort and scooted towards the bowl. Indeed, it was still sending up wafts of steam where it sat. He sighed.

“Look, don’t get upset,” he told her. But even as he told her this, his voice was scratchy and small, like a lesser version of what it had been just minutes ago. Aurora rubbed her face.

“Don’t get upset? How can you say that? Could I have killed you, if I kept it up?”

Milo shrugged. “Of course. You could have taken all my life force—the coroner would have said I starved to death and wasn’t getting enough oxygen at the same time. The cells of my body were straining to support me on nothing, and finally, everything just shut down.”

“And you tell me not to be upset?!”

“Yes, Aurora.” Milo picked up the spoon and tried a tiny bite of soup. “Mmm loaded baked potato. Anyway, yes, I’m telling you not to get upset. It’s not like this is some uncontrollable thing. You chose to take more of me than you needed. Next time, just don’t.”

At the mention, Aurora grew uncomfortable. She sat back down on the couch. “You know?”

“Of course I know. We were connected for a minute.” Milo took another bite, and blew madly on the soup until he wheezed. It didn’t work very well; the bowl still steamed. “But you’re learning. You had to learn what could happen, and it’s better that it was with me than with someone who doesn’t know to pull away, believe me.”

“I don’t think it’s better,” Aurora pointed out irritably.

“It probably is.” Milo shrugged. “Just look at yourself. You look almost back to normal. The energy did you good.”

“Yeah, by taking it from you.”

He made a frustrated sound in his throat. “You’ve been doing it without realizing for a long time,” Milo told her, exasperated. “Years. Your ability to draw people’s energy has grown with you, and believe me, it’s driving Ian crazy. It’s really a huge help. As your abilities grow, he gets weaker. Eventually, you’ll kill him without even meaning to.”

“What?” Aurora shrieked. How could he just say this, like it was nothing? Seeing Milo’s face, she took a deep breath and tried again. “Look, I get it that you’ve been at this for years, but I just found out my father is alive, I just found out he’s in New York, I just found out he wants to get to me, and I just found out about all this stuff that’s been happening for years behind my back. Do you even understand how it feels when you tell me I have to kill him?”

Aurora mentally shook herself. Of course Milo knew; he was probably the only one out of all of them who knew precisely what she was going through because he could read her mind. He was watching her now, probably listening to all this play out, but it didn’t show on his face.

Finally, he sighed. “I’m sorry we’re all being so callous. We aren’t trying to be—you’ll just have to believe that we aren’t.

“BUT,” Milo held a finger to silence her. “But. Keep in mind that you’ve never known your father. You’ve never met him. You don’t know how he is. But we were all friends before he left… so if you think it’s cruel for us to talk so openly about killing your dad, try to think how long it took for us to accept killing our friend.”

“I’ve only got one father, though,” Aurora pointed out. He was right and she knew it. But damn if she was going to own up to that—not when it forced her to consider the reality that was coming her way. That they were all right. That eventually, she was going to do exactly what they expected her to. “You all still have each other.”

“And you have us, too,” Milo insisted, stirring his soup. “You’re going to have to get used to us butting in, now. You’ll love and hate us as much as a real family in no time, believe me.”

Aurora sighed and watched him poke at the soup—she hadn’t eaten since the eggrolls yesterday. When she’d been shaken awake by Lucien, her appetite had been gnawing out the inside of her belly. Now, however, she was barely interested. Her hunger was gone. It was a disconcerting thought.

“I’ve never had a real family,” she realized suddenly. Milo had a mouthful of baked potato soup, so she rambled on. “It’s been just me and my Momma for… all my life. I guess I have grandparents in Louisiana, but they didn’t approve of her running off with my father, so I’ve never spoken to them. I’ve never even seen pictures of them. We don’t have any at all in the apartment.”

Milo chewed thoughtfully. “Your mother always used to say she didn’t look back because she wasn’t going in that direction.”

Aurora smiled. And then, she looked at Milo sharply.

“How long ago?”

“I haven’t spoken to Ramona in… what… twenty years?”

Aurora frowned at him. “How old did you say you were?”

Milo poked at his soup coyly. “I didn’t.”

“You’re really old, aren’t you? I mean, like Mr. Cheng and Madame Moreau were way too old to still be alive. You are too, aren’t you?”

Milo gave a gasp of mock offense. “I’ll have you know I’m not a day over sixty.”

“Sixty?! What about Lucien?!”

“Now, Lucien hasn’t joined the actual circle yet. He’s in the… outer circle, I guess you would call it, so he’s still aging at almost the normal rate. But he’s about forty-two.”

Aurora’s mouth dropped open. Lucien didn’t look a day over thirty! But then, he’d mentioned it, hadn’t he? He’d claimed to have been there when Aurora’s father went rogue. That would have to put him over forty, at least.

“You’re slowing down, too, though you’re too young to really notice it,” Milo went on. “Lester, too.” Aurora had almost forgotten Lester was there; he’d been quiet as a mouse through the whole conversation. At the mention of his name, Lester stood suddenly.

“I’m going to get a shower in,” he announced, even as he was walking out of the room. “Those clothes I left here should still be under Lucien’s counter…”

“You’ll have to forgive him,” Milo told Aurora as the bathroom door closed. “He was very close to Moreau. Even before… he’s always been on the shy side. When he manages to come to grips with it all, and when gets to know you, he’ll hardly shut up.”

Come to grips with it? That sounded familiar. Aurora sighed and leaned back into the couch. Her mother disappearing, her father being alive, herself being some sort of energy vampire. She had a lot of ‘coming to grips’ to do on her own.

The afternoon was wearing quite thin by the time Aurora got Milo to admit that something might have gone wrong.

Shut up in Lucien’s apartment, it was easy to start feeling cabin fever. The first time she’d restlessly brought up the time to Milo, he’d pointed this out gently. He convinced her that she was just unaccustomed to being shut up inside all day, and that with everything happening over the last thirty-six hours, it was normal to start thinking disaster lurked around every corner. So Aurora settled down a little to wait.

It had been a whole day sine Lucien left, now, and the cabin fever argument was wearing thin. Milo wouldn’t let any of them leave, but even he couldn’t pretend that Lucien shouldn’t have been back by now.

“He might have run into trouble,” he admitted, reluctant.

He might have run into trouble. Those were terrifying words to Aurora, who already felt as if all her control had been stripped away. Her life was in these peoples’ hands, and now he might have run into trouble?

“What do we do?” Aurora asked urgently. What she wanted to ask was, ‘What can I do?’ or ‘What will you let me do?’ or ‘Please, for God’s sake, let me do something!’ But this was all so new. Was there anything she could even offer in the way of help?

Milo had quite recovered from being partially drained. His skin had regained color, and he looked quite as young as ever. He paced slowly around the apartment, frowning.

“This is a pickle,” he sighed. “Moreau gone, now Cheng and Lucien gone. I can’t really leave you and Lester, can I? Besides the fact that my powers aren’t really offensive. Well…” he smirked and shrugged. “Not in the fighting sort of way.”

“Let me go,” Lester piped up; it was only now that Aurora realized his voice still had a squeaky quirk to it. Just finished changing. He really was young. “I can fight better than you can.”

“Sometimes,” Milo replied grimly. “Other times, you still freeze up. You need some practice before I throw you out alone.”

“You might not have much of a choice,” Lester pointed out.

Milo didn’t answer that. Aurora guessed that he didn’t have a ready reply—after all, Lester had hit the nail on the head.

In fact, it looked like Milo was about ready to give in altogether when the apartment door slammed open.

Aurora jumped out of the way as Lucien and Mr. Cheng stumbled into the apartment. She was so shocked, her brain took a while to process what she was seeing—both of them were naked. Mr. Cheng was wrapped in what looked like an old blanket, staggering along, but Lucien wore nothing, not even shoes.

Heat rushed up Aurora’s face and she spun away, torn between helping Mr. Cheng to the couch and desperately not wanting to see him without clothes. Lucien wouldn’t have been so bad—except that Milo was right there, probably with an eye on her mind, and she’d rather not have him in her head when looking at all of Lucien’s bare skin.

At least Milo seemed too busy to notice at the moment as he dived across the room, grabbing one of Mr. Cheng’s arms to help guide him to the couch. “Easy there, Cheng. Close the door! What happened?”

“There were a lot of them, more than we expected,” Lucien replied, still naked, as he shut and locked the door. “When they lost our trail, they all went back and converged on Cheng. He’s been fighting all night—you should have seen the mess by the time I got there. He’s going to need some sleep, but I’m not sure this is the place for it.”

“What do you mean?” Lester asked. He was in the kitchen, throwing food in the microwave.

Aurora was still turned away, but she heard the grim tone as Lucien answered, and could imagine his face. “They followed us here. They can’t get in yet, but Ian knows where we are.”

Silence fell in the apartment, broken only by the tiny chiming of Lucien’s many wards. There was no air current, no breeze inside, but some of the charms were moving, now, as if stirred by forces unseen. A chill went down Aurora’s spine.

“What about Lester’s ward on you?” Milo asked, breaking the eerie silence.

“Still there,” Lucien replied. “But it seemed to falter once I changed. And it doesn’t extend to Cheng.”

“Dammit,” Lester muttered. “I didn’t think of that.”

“What now?” Milo asked, urgent.

“I don’t know!” Lucien exclaimed. “Without Moreau we can’t move around unseen for long. We could make it to another safehouse, probably…”

“I… know where we… must go.”

Every eye in the room (even Aurora peered back over her shoulder) turned to Mr. Cheng, who had managed to sit up unaided on the couch. He blinked and looked around the room, still in a bit of a daze. He shook his head a bit, as if to clear it.

“There is a… safehouse,” he continued. His voice seemed odd, and if he was having trouble speaking. Immediately, Aurora was worried. How badly had he been injured? “Moreau and I… kept it secret. In Manhattan.”

“We have a safehouse in Manhattan?” Milo asked, bewildered.

Aurora looked at Milo. How had they kept a secret from him?

“Yes,” Cheng replied. “For years. Near Moreau’s home.”

It didn’t surprise Aurora at all to hear that Madame Moreau had lived in the Upper East. What was shocking was knowing that they had managed to procure an extra property there, an auxiliary base, pouring money in property taxes and upkeep into real estate that most of them didn’t even know about. Just how much extra income did they have?

“Let’s get you two dressed,” Milo suggested. “How long will we be safe for?”

Lucien shrugged. “Probably no more than a few hours before they narrow our location down. All the charms have this entire building in a fog, but they’ll figure out where it’s coming from sooner or later.”

“Then we can’t waste time.” Milo gestured to Lester. “Get these two some food—the faster we can get them recovered, the better. I’ll grab Cheng’s extra clothes.”

Aurora didn’t dare mention the extra clothes Lucien was supposed to bring for her; he’d obviously been a little preoccupied. Still, sneakers would have been nice. It was another hour before they were all gathering to head out the door, clothes and all. Again, Lester went through the process of warding them each—with many curses and staring over again. Aurora felt for him, feeling new and unprepared for what the situation needed. Not to mention overwhelmed. Overwhelmed was a sensation she was really getting accustomed to.

Through it all, Mr. Cheng was rather silent. Aurora hadn’t had a chance to speak with him, but he managed to dress (covering a large, beautiful tiger tattoo on his back that Aurora just got a glimpse of) and eat the food pushed at him without difficulty. Afterwards, he really did look much better, but Aurora couldn’t stop thinking of the way he’d kissed Madame Moreau’s cheek just before she died.

Her heart squeezed. She had never imagined… Moreau had never been married, and she had never showed an interest in one man or another. Aurora had never seen her and Cheng together, but no doubt Moreau would have hidden any feelings for him then, too. It didn’t fit in with her glamorous image, loving a humble old Chinese-American dress-maker.

But there had been a time when they were young, and far from here. She could picture it, just barely, Estelle Moreau as a mademoiselle instead of a madam. Mr. Cheng, young and strong. What a strange love story it made, but then, there were much stranger things.

When it came to Mr. Cheng’s turn to be hidden by magic, Lester seemed to have an especially hard time. Frustrated, he dropped his hands after several tries.

“It’s like there’s something in the way,” he complained.

Milo didn’t reply, but he frowned; his eyebrows were furrowed together, as if he were concentrating. Mr. Cheng waved a hand.

“Not important. Ward her,” he gestured at Aurora.

“But why can’t I—”

“Hide her, first,” Mr. Cheng insisted stiffly. He was easily the shortest member of their group, but he drew himself up straight and set his jaw. “No need to worry about this old man so much.”

“What if they find us through you?” Lucien asked, crossing his thick arms.

“They will not,” Cheng replied firmly. “Besides. Lester will hide you well. They will not see you, even if they come for me. No time to worry.”

“Isn’t that the truth,” Lucien muttered. “All right, then. I guess get Aurora cloaked, too, Lester. Your best ward—she’s the most important right now.”

And with that uncomfortable comment, Aurora submitted uneasily to standing perfectly still and having a spell put on her. She’d never in her life imagined this happening; she’d never been a huge fantasy fan, preferring crime fiction and mystery novels, herself. Her daydreams usually included police work and private investigation, not magic. She didn’t know what to expect.

“And don’t screw it up,” Milo added playfully. “We need her in one piece.”

Well, Aurora hadn’t been terribly nervous until that comment. She swallowed and grit her teeth. Her face probably looked most frightened, because Milo was wearing a smirk and Lucien smiled uncertainly at her.

Lester stood in front of her and rubbed his hands together. She’d never really looked closely at his face, since he usually stayed out of the way and avoided her. “Okay. Let’s make a ward.”

Her nerves were reaching a pitch; in the attempt to distract herself, Aurora shut her eyes and tried to watch it all through the strange second sight she’d discovered earlier. Milo had said she had control of it—it would be safe to use while Lester was casting a spell, surely.

Again, in her mind, Aurora saw the shadowy second world draw forward. It was much easier this time. Maybe it was easier this time because she knew what to look for, but she slipped into the second sight without a moment’s hesitation. There were the glowing motes of energy again; Aurora was careful not to draw them to her consciously.

The others appeared as conglomerates of light in her mind. Millions of tiny specks made them up, giving a clear impression of their form and place. Milo was just the same as he had been. Lucien radiated light like a sun. Lester, too, was a mass of light dots; Aurora watched in awe as he cast the spell, which she could also see in the form of weaving energy constellations, like stars. They wrapped around her and ordered to her form, like a suit of magic from head to toe, like the ones he’d made for the others.

But when Aurora looked at Mr. Cheng, she paused. His body was filled with motes of light, too, but not nearly as many. The others (and Aurora herself) were burning with energy; but amid all the light motes in Mr. Cheng, there were specks of darkness, like pieces of ash.

Death. The voice was far too clear in her head. Frightfully clear.

Aurora snapped out of her second sight as Lester finished the spell. She didn’t mention the darkness in Mr. Cheng, although it did not leave her mind. When she’d taken Milo’s energy before, she had also exhaled ash specks just like that, leaving her rejuvenated and refreshed. What were they? Why were they gathered in Mr. Cheng? Was he sick? Was Mr. Cheng… dying?

That would have been too much to face, on top of the rest, so Aurora followed the group as they filed out of the apartment. There would be a time to ask about it later. Mr. Cheng was probably just tired from his fight, she convinced herself. It was nothing to worry about.

Down the elevator they travelled (a relief to Aurora, who had to struggle back into her high heeled boots) and several blocks over to where Milo had parked his car. In daylight, it was actually a dark, dark maroon color. Nice.

“Where to?” Milo asked Mr. Cheng. They had all piled in, Aurora squished in the back between Lucien and Lester. Mr. Cheng was sitting up front; she sighed, but it wasn’t too surprising that they should refuse to let her have shotgun. They were treating her more carefully than the president’s daughter.

“Head to Manhattan. I’ll tell you more when we cross over the bridge,” Mr. Cheng answered.

Sitting in the back, Aurora eyed him closely. She’d never heard him use contractions before, but none of the others seemed to notice, so she shrugged it off. He’d probably played up his Chinese accent when acting like a simple dress repair man all these years. Hell, if he was over two hundred years old, he probably spoke a few more languages than just Chinese and English.

As far as car rides go, this one was particularly unpleasant. Aurora didn’t spend much time in cars (she almost always took the train) and she couldn’t remember ever being packed like sardines into a sedan like this. Not much fun, and having both Lester and Lucien glance awkwardly at her leather pants every now and then was not helping her mood. She really needed a change of clothes.

Traffic sucked, as usual; it was evening before they got over the bridge to Upper East Side. Moreau’s shop was less than an hour walk from here, Aurora recalled with a pang. At least she didn’t have to worry about being late for work, apparently ever again. Still… she would rather be headed to an overtime shift right now.

When prodded, Mr. Cheng provided more directions, left, right, two blocks up, so on so forth. Aurora wasn’t familiar with this part of town, but Milo seemed to be, and without trouble they reached a parking structure.

“Twenty bucks for parking,” Milo muttered, handing over a couple bills to the bored-looking attendant. “That’s highway robbery.”

“Move along,” the attendant snapped. The bar rose, and Milo pulled them into the garage.

“Is there anything nearby?” Lucien asked from the back.

Milo hadn’t even managed to park yet, but he seemed to think about it. Aurora wanted to tell him not to telepath and drive, but before she got the chance he shook his head. “Not that I can tell. Usually cement makes psychic energy reverberate like sound, so if there’s something in here, I should hear it. Nothing. Not even those pesky little shadow brats.”

Shadow brats? Aurora didn’t like the sound of that at all.

Even for twenty dollars a pop, there seemed to be nowhere on the first three floors. Finally an empty spot appeared once they reached the fourth, and Milo slipped the car into it far too fast for Aurora’s liking; she almost screeched at how close they came to the cars on either side.

“Worried?” Milo asked her, turning back with an innocent grin.

“It’s your car, do what you want!”

Milo was laughing as Lester and Lucien both opened their doors and squeezed out on either side; it was a small parking spot. Aurora scooted out of Lucien’s side, but Mr. Cheng hadn’t budged.

“Mr. Cheng?” she asked. Lucien frowned.

“Hey, old man,” he called. “You coming with?”

Cheng’s reply came after a long pause. Aurora glanced at the others, trying to decide if they were as worried as she was; honestly, they all looked pretty concerned, but she still hadn’t bothered to share what she’d seen with the ash fragments in Mr. Cheng. Did they have a reason to be worried?

He finally looked at them and nodded his head. “Yes.” And then he crawled from the car, shut the door, and the five of them stood together in the cold, cold parking garage. “This way,” he said before anyone could ask, and led them to the stairwell.

If the car ride was tense, the walk was worse. It was getting dark, and Aurora felt eyes on her. On the rich side of the bay, most of the people on the street were bundled in expensive coats, unconcerned about muggers or anything else, for that matter. No one else on the street, outside their out-of-place group, seemed to share the feeling of dread. The peculiar feeling that there was something hiding nearby.

“Well, this is nice,” Milo muttered.

“Don’t remind me,” Lucien muttered back.

They were walking together as inconspicuously as possible—as inconspicuous as a bizarre group of comrades can look. Aurora, by far, was drawing the most attention, even after she’d zipped the coat up to hide her scanty top. Leather pants just don’t blend into a crowd well, even in Manhattan.

Lucien’s nose twitched. “Smell that, old man? There’s something dead around here.”

“Something dead?” Aurora hissed.

“Nothing for us to worry about,” Mr. Cheng replied. He was walking at the front, leading the way towards a skyscraper that reared towards the blossoming stars against the skyline. Lights were burning like Lego blocks up and down its sides, and Aurora wondered strangely if one of them was the room they were headed to.

Just to test, she slipped into her second sight again. It was strange and exhilarating, something that seemed so close. It was shocking that she had never accessed it by mistake, it was so easy. The world disappeared in a curtain of gray as she closed her eyes, and then the lights! The people on the street became clusters of golden stars, walking past. Some brighter than others, some scarce. A muted glow showed through building walls, showing people just on the other side.

And again, Aurora looked through Cheng, and saw speckles of floating black. Now wasn’t the time to mention it, though, not if Cheng was determined to ignore it. When they got to the next safehouse would be a much better time—Aurora would wait just a little longer.

The darkness was nearly full by the time they walked into the lobby of the building; it was a condo complex, from the look of the inside. Mr. Cheng didn’t stop at the desk—or at all. Pushing through the crowd (almost rudely, which Aurora thought strange) he made a beeline straight for the elevators and jammed the ‘up’ button. The others were just behind him. Milo, Lester, and Lucien were watching the lobby, eyeing everyone nearby, scanning faces. Aurora, still watching in her second sight, had her eyes on Mr. Cheng.

“Mr. Cheng?” she asked softly as they waited. “Are… are you okay?”

“Fine,” he replied curtly, not quite a snap. Like someone who is afraid their voice will crack if they try to speak. Aurora didn’t try to press. He was obviously still upset, she reasoned. There would be time later.

The elevator dinged, and the doors sighed open, smooth as grease. That’s what money bought you, Aurora could only guess. The building she’d lived in with her mother hadn’t even had an elevator, just a whole lot of stairs. New York had a wide price range, but the Potiers had always been close to the bottom.

Aurora hid her admiration at the beautiful elevator interior as the doors closed them all in. Mercifully, there was no one else with them. No one had bothered to step into the same lift as their strange group.

Mr. Cheng started to reach for the floor buttons, but his hand shook so badly. Lucien and Milo exchanged a glance; they seemed to silently ask each other whether they should help, or let it be. Finally, Cheng hit the access request for the penthouse.

Silence fell in the elevator. Shocked, Aurora saw the dark particles had converged on Cheng’s arm. His arm—the same one he’d used to press the button—was black with them. Like… they were forcing him along.

Meanwhile, in the penthouse, someone had approved their request.

Mr. Cheng fell in a heap on the elevator floor, motionless. Lucien cursed and dived to catch him; Milo punched every other button on the panel, but the elevator moved relentlessly upward. Lester’s brown eyes were wide.

For her part, Aurora was trying to remain calm. If she understood right, the person after her was the same who’d made her mother disappear. The same who had been hunting her for years. The same who had gouged out Amy and Katrina’s eyes and tongues, thinking they might be her.

Fear closed her throat. Aurora backed into the corner of the elevator like a bird in a cage, feeling them all hurtle upwards to none knew where. Furiously, like a bullet under pressure, it seemed the elevator was shooting through the shaft, falling upwards impossibly fast.

“Stop this thing!” Lucien hissed, trying to shake Cheng awake.

“The panel’s off!” Milo snapped, still slapping buttons. He even tried the emergency stop—nothing, nothing but relentless ascension. “Can you—I don’t know, can’t we crawl out through the ceiling or something?”

“While the elevator is moving?”

“Lester, can you stop this thing?”

Wide-eyed, Lester shook his head. “If I even try, I could snap the cable. I don’t have the skill to do anything about it safely, not when we’re moving like this.”

Milo punched the elevator panel again and cursed through his grit teeth.

“Mr. Cheng!” Lucien called, smacking his face carefully, gingerly, as if afraid to hurt him. Indeed, Cheng looked frailer than ever, more fragile than when he’d staggered in the Lucien’s door a few hours past. What was going on? What was happening? Aurora had no answers. Her mind was blank, with no thought except the numbers ticking up… up… up…

“Dammit, Ian,” Milo muttered. “He must have done something to Cheng. Some kind of—shit, it was that trippy mind-magic he can do. Since when is he so good at that?”

“Aurora,” Lucian turned to her at once. “Look at Cheng—can you see anything strange about him?”

Why now, when the elevator was reaching the penthouse? Aurora knew what Lucien meant, and slipped into her magical sight immediately. The black ashes were gone from Cheng’s body, replaced by golden particles of life, although they were fewer now. It pieced together in her head as her eyes flipped back into normal vision.

“Not now, but earlier there… there was like… ashes, in him. I don’t see them in you or Milo or Lester, or anybody else.”

“Not in you?”

His face was intent—he already knew. Aurora shook her head. “No, I see them in me, too. Am I…”

“In danger? Not from this.” Lucien looked up at the numbers on the dial. “But soon, we’re all going to be in a tight spot.”

“Will my father try to kill us?” she whispered.

“Not us. Just you.”

Just as she had feared. “What do we do?” Aurora was willing her voice to be calm, and was even succeeding a little. Considering the numbers on the elevator dial were beginning to make her hysterical, this was an accomplishment. Two out of three ain’t bad.

“You stay back,” Milo told her firmly. “Stay back, and let us handle it. Ian will want to get you alone—and who knows, maybe he wants to off us, too. But I doubt it,” Milo sighed and rubbed his eyes. “I can’t believe we walked into this… No, he won’t try to kill the rest of us. Being a part of the circle is what gives him immortality. You and he aren’t true vampires, after all, and he can’t live forever without us.”

“So you guys will be fine, at least,” she heard herself say. There were eighty-seven floors, and they had passed eighty-five. It seemed like they should have been at five hundred, by now, they had seemed to be going so fast. But knowing the others were not in danger, Aurora felt oddly… calm. For her, Katrina had been killed and Amy mutilated. For her, Ramona had vanished in the night. Cheng had been injured. Moreau had passed on.

This time, at least, no one was interested in hurting the others. Only if they got in the way.

Only if they try to stop me.

The voice sent ice into her very bones as the elevator came to a halt at the penthouse. It was the same one from before, the one she had heard in her head when she’d first entered the second sight. The one that had told her to take more energy from Milo.

Aurora shivered. Dad?

The elevator doors opened. Aurora and Lester watched from the back as Lucien and Milo exchanged a dark look and sighed. Not much choice. They could camp in the elevator, but that would only delay; eventually, someone would come looking for them. So with resignation, Lucien draped Mr. Cheng (who hung like a limp doll) over his shoulder and the four of them stepped cautiously into a fine, wood-paneled anteroom.

They’ve lied to you.

The voice seemed to echo into her ears, swirl around the room. Aurora thought for a moment that they could all hear it, but no. In her heart, it was plain that this voice was for her only.

Dad? Aurora asked again, frozen in place.

The voice grew softer, warmer, like a fleece blanket after an afternoon of snow. They kept me from you for twenty years. Do not trust them. They will betray you, too.

Carefully, Aurora watched the others, trying to gage if any of them might have caught even a hint of what she’d heard. They followed the door across from the elevators, which was cracked open, into a finely furnished den. A cheery fire roared in the hearth (probably gas-fed and hooked up to a switch somewhere), throwing crimson light and black shadows between the pools of lamplight scattered around the room.

“Who you gonna call?” Milo muttered.

“What?” Lester hissed.

“Shh,” Lucien shushed them, nostrils flaring. Aurora watched him warily; he was smelling for her father, or for anyone. Sniffing out danger.

They’ve come to kill me and put you in my place. The voice sounded just within her hearing, and nothing Aurora did could make it louder or softer. Wherever she moved, it went. Disembodied, attached to her ear, or perhaps truly inside her mind. Anxious though it made her, Aurora held her breath, hoping to hear again. This was the voice she’d wanted to hear all her life, finally come back to her. They’ve even told you that you must do it, so that the blood need not be on their hands. I’m sure they have.

She followed the others slowly, and ear to the room, another to the words speaking inside her, either of wisdom or treachery. Who was to say? After all, he was correct. Killing her own father was exactly what this group wanted her to do. It wasn’t a secret. They’d told her as if it were the most natural thing.

“Which door?” Lucien asked. “This whole place reeks of him. I can’t pin down his scent from one place to the other in here.”

Milo was standing in the middle of the room. He closed his eyes, surely listening.

He cannot hear me, the voice whispered. There was no need to whisper; clearly, Milo truly could not hear. But he will tell you that he can.

“I can hear him this way,” Milo said, opening his eyes. He pointed to one of the two doors that waited, closed, at opposite ends of the room. “Through there.”

I am not there. I am here. Come this way.

Aurora looked at the other door.

Lester cupped his hands around his ears. “What’s that sound?”

It took a moment to distinguish precisely what sound he was talking about. The only thing Aurora could hear was he crackling fire and her own trotting pulse in her ears. But then, not a sound, but something washed over her skin. And Lester was right—it did leave a sort of ringing in her eardrums, but it was not a real noise. It was magic.

“More of the same old tricks,” Milo muttered. In her second sight, the door at the opposite end, the door the others were facing, was writhing with the specks of dark ash, just like Cheng had been.

And suddenly, she understood what the ash was. If the gold light drops were life and vitality, then the black ones were clearly the opposite. They were flakes of death, and they were in her when she looked down at herself. They had been in Cheng, controlling him. And they were foaming about that far door. Even if the others couldn’t see them like she could, Aurora knew they felt them, smelled them, sensed them.

Come this way. They will not see. Soon, they will not notice anything but what I send their way.

That didn’t sound good. The physical door bent outward under the weight of a sudden, sharp blow from within. And now, there was a sound. It was the low, gurgling growl of something that was definitely not any mortal animal. Aurora could feel her father’s power pressing through the door, now, as if the room beyond were filling with water and the door would soon burst open.

And she began backing towards the other door.

Milo noticed her moving, and for a moment she was terrified that he had seen her thoughts; then he turned back to the door that threatened to break and nodded. “Just stay behind us,” he told her. “You and Lester. Lucien and I will handle this.” He had his gun out, whatever good it was going to do him. Aurora didn’t know what was on the other side of the door, but she wasn’t so sure that bullets were going to harm it.

Lucien had put Mr. Cheng down on the couch near the fireplace. The old man was still semi-conscious, sleeping a fitful sleep and muttering in Chinese. His face was the only one turned her way as Aurora felt the wall behind her back, feeling that at any moment, Lucien or Milo would notice her.

The door had fallen open; Aurora hadn’t see it happen, but she saw the open black doorway to her right and scooted inside. Waiting for Milo or Lucien to notice, and dreading that they would.

But instead of them, Mr. Cheng opened his eyes suddenly, weakly, and saw her face as she disappeared into the doorway. His alarm—and his despair—was plain in the split second before the door swung itself closed.

The darkness was complete for a matter of seconds; soft lights began to burn, stronger and stronger until the room before her was perfectly lit, not a smidgen over-bright.

It was a… throne room.

There was no other way to describe it; on a dais at the far end was a great, carved-wood chair with resplendent burgundy cushions, almost the color of wine… perhaps a little too red for that. The floor and walls were paneled wood, just like the rest of the penthouse. An entire wall of windows looked out over New York, far below.

But that didn’t matter to Aurora at the moment. Because in the middle of the room, several paces in front of the chair, there was standing a man, a man she had only ever seen in the mirror when she tried to imagine her own face without the pieces that were her mother.

Ian was his name. Ramona had told her daughter that from time to time, and the new friends she had made called him that name. Somehow in her mind, Aurora’s father had always been a good for nothing, a slob of a man with half a head of hair and a beer gut. Small, stupid eyes, a white tank top, a bottle in one hand. Ramona’s many stories had only impressed her daughter for a little while. The older she had grown, the less flattering her expectations had become.

The creature before her could hardly have been more different. He was something European, that was for sure; his skin was pale but rosy, with hair as fine a gold as spring daffodils. He was dressed in a black suit, theatric and exactly what Aurora had expected a vampire to be wearing, but he was standing there, grinning mildly, as if he hadn’t unleashed some dark forces in the next room.

The eyes were what really struck Aurora. Even from ten paces away, she could see they were hers, slate green with chips of brown, like an agate stone.

The word stuck in her throat. Father.

Ian didn’t wait for her to speak. He took a long, admiring look at her. Admiring! There was pride shining in his eyes as he appraised her, took stock of the woman that had grown from the child he’d fathered. With a sigh he smiled again.

“I’ve waited so long for this day.”

Those words resonated like a bell right down to Aurora’s soul. She’d never expected to see her father again, truth be told. As far as she knew, he’d disappeared and left an anxious young woman in an unforgiving city with a young child, a child that wouldn’t even remember what he looked like. Aurora had been angry of that for a long, long time. She’d grown cynical and distant, seeing her father in everyone, seeing the possibility of being left alone in the snow in every friendly invite and kind word.

And here he was. Against all odds, she had finally met him. And he was nothing like Aurora had pictured—no matter how many times Ramona swooned over his handsomeness, his grace, Aurora had stopped believing. She could never imagine his face because she had never been able to picture a face ugly or horrible enough to abandon them.

“Why?” Aurora asked finally.

This was obviously not what Ian was expecting. He crossed the floor, closer, closer. “Why, what?”

“Why did you kill her?” Aurora asked. Tears were glassing over her eyes. “Why did you have to kill my mother?”

Shock took up Ian’s perfect face, and he frowned. “Aurora, I didn’t kill her. I brought her here.”

They stood, looking at each other over the shined wood floor. Aurora didn’t speak, didn’t respond at all for almost a minute. She couldn’t make sense of what he’d just said. He brought her here? Where, here? As in, here, where they were right now?

“Where is she?” Aurora asked finally, confused.

“Ramona?” Ian called. “Come out! Aurora’s here!”

“Aurora?” At the sound of her name, Aurora’s heart lifted; that was her mother’s voice, or similar. It sounded younger, happier, than it had in far too long.

And then out of another door, from what looked like a spacious bedroom, out came a lovely stranger, a beautiful older black woman with her hair styled and her make-up perfect. Aurora stifled disappointment and nerves; she’d thought for sure it would be her mother who came walking out. The voice was so similar. This stranger was wearing a red evening dress, although it seemed to hang on her a little. She was terribly thin.

Aurora blinked in surprise and suddenly recognized her own mother. “Momma?”

“Aurora!” Ramona Potier swept across the room in matching red heels, a huge smile on her face. Aurora couldn’t move, couldn’t even lift her own arms to hug her mother back as Ramona enveloped her warmly. In heels, she was as tall as Aurora, although she’d always seemed shorter. She was standing up straight, now, that was it. For as long as Aurora could remember, her mother had always stooped a little, as if under a great weight.

“Isn’t it wonderful, baby?” Ramona sighed, pulling back and looking at Aurora from arm’s length. “Your daddy’s back. He’s staying with us, this time. We’ll all live together again—oh, I can’t wait! I’ve been waiting so long to have our family together again!”

Aurora’s head spun like a planet in orbit, and she looked up at Ian. Ramona had looped a red-sleeved arm through his, and they stood together in delight, both smiling madly, like a prom picture come alive.

She couldn’t stop staring at her mother. When she’d seen her yesterday morning, Ramona Potier had been an old skeleton in worn pajamas, gazing like a dream out the small window, spending late nights recalling memories and pretending they were real. She hadn’t worn make-up in years. Hell, she hadn’t even put on shoes since last spring, much less heels. Ramona Potier looked like she’d been given an Oprah makeover, but in her gut, Aurora knew it was much simpler; her mother had simply gotten what she’d been holding her life in pause for all these years. Ian was back.

Had she been lied to? Aurora looked at them, happy as could be. They wanted her to be a part of that happiness, to take her place with them so they could all be a family. Why had Madame Moreau, Mr. Cheng, Milo and Lucien, too… why had they all tried to convince her that her father was evil? The way he looked at her mother was out of a fairy tale, and Ramona hadn’t looked so alive for as long as Aurora could recall. If this was what her father wanted, why had they tried so hard to stop him?

“What… what now?” Aurora asked eventually. What else could she say? Yesterday, she’d met some people and they’d told her many frightening things. She’d seen many frightening things. And today, her parents were together and life was what it always should have been. And yet, they were all standing around, as if waiting.

Ramona looked up at Ian, still grinning, and shrugged. “Nothing, I guess. You and I will have to get used to being taken care of, Aurora.”

We’re going to take care of everything. That was what Lucien had said. You’re one of us, now. If he was lying, Lucien was the best liar Aurora had ever seen or heard of. She’d felt the truth of his words in her soul, and his great brown eyes had shone with honesty. They wanted to take care of her, too. They claimed they were family, too.

And in the other room, they were alone. She’d left them alone. Aurora swallowed and looked up at Ian, her father.

“What did you set on them?” she gestured to the door behind her. Did she sound angry? Aurora hoped not. She wasn’t even certain she was angry; but she did want to know. What could possibly make such a sound, such a guttural growl…

“Oh, that,” Ian waved his hand and laughed. “Just some of my pets. I’ve been lonely here without your mother, without you.” He sighed. “I made myself some companions to keep myself sane.”

“You made…?”

“Not a difficult thing to do, really.” Aurora’s father patted Ramona’s hand, looking at Aurora, unblinking. He started to lead Ramona over to the window; Aurora followed, not really knowing what else to do. “I’ll have to show you, sometime. You’ll have to give my magic back first—I don’t know if I have the strength to make any more creatures with all my power that’s flown to you. Easy to fix.”

Aurora tried not to let the cold feeling in her gut show on her face. “Powers?”

“I’m sure you’ve noticed,” Ian shrugged. “That funny sight you have now, the energy song and dance. Maybe you’ve been poking around in some mind tricks. It’s not a big deal, and I’m not angry. It’ll be easy to reverse that, give my magic back so we can live together. We’ll live here, and you won’t even have to work anymore. You’ll have everything you could ever need.”

Shakily, Aurora set a hand on the table running in front of the window. She looked out over New York. This view was fully unfamiliar to her. Being at the top looking down was not something she had ever experienced, not once in her life. Usually it was the other way around.

Could this really be her new life? Somehow, all she’d heard since she stepped into this room had seemed more surreal than anything else that had happened over the past days.

There was one more thing that she had to ask. “What happened at Witching Hour? Why were Amy and Katrina attacked?”

The lights seemed to dim a little; Aurora tried to ignore it. That wasn’t possible. But she couldn’t deny the stiffness in Ian’s smile. And she certainly couldn’t ignore the look Ramona shot her way… oh no. That look, of shock, of fear, seared into Aurora’s heart and would never leave again.

“That was Kemandry,” Ian said finally. He turned back to the room and whistled. “Kem! Here, girl!”

Girl? Aurora frowned and turned back into the interior of the room. Her stomach turned.

How had she possibly missed it? Aurora must have walked directly past the thing. She had stood just beside that wall—how had it never made a noise? It was too—too big not to make some sort of sound coming and going!

And what a thing! It had four limbs like dog, but its legs ended in hands—all four. Long, thin, grayish, clawed hands. Kemandry was a ghoulish conglomerate of things Aurora couldn’t quite name, with pieces that didn’t look quite right. Its—her—body was elongated and supple. Even now, she was curled in the corner of wall and ceiling like a dog curled up on the floor. A miasma of shadow seemed to cling close. Her head was long and skeletal like a horse skull, with eyes that shone white, like a ghost moon.

How had it gotten there without Aurora noticing?

And then it vanished.

Aurora jumped and shrieked. The creature appeared just to her right, crouched like a goblin, peering up at Aurora with those spectral eyes. If it stood upright, Kemandry would be taller than Aurora, but the thing didn’t seem inclined to do that. It sat on its haunches—her haunches, Aurora had to remind herself—and surveyed the newcomer curiously.

“Kemandry is one of the creatures I’ve made to keep me company,” Ian explained. He reached around Aurora, and the thing butt her head against his hand affectionately. “There are a few other like her, but she’s the most developed. She’s my special one—the others are… entertaining the guests in the sitting room.”

All this time, Aurora hadn’t heard a sound from the den. It was not a good sign.

“I’m afraid she has a taste for… eyeballs,” Ian sighed. “Some pets just like to chew shoes. Go on, Kem,” Ian told the thing in a high, friendly voice. A voice used for golden retrievers and beagles, the sort of pets for which chewing shoes was the epitome of bad behavior. “Go back and guard your friend. Go keep Ylessa company.”

And Kemandry vanished. Aurora tried to still her thumping heart, but that was a tall order. “Where’s she going?” Aurora asked. Her voice even managed to sound calm, which was certainly not accurate.

Ian turned back to the window. “One of my former comrades, Ylessa, sleeps in the other room. Kemandry guards her—she’s much too fragile to be left without protection. She’s in a coma, you see… I take care of her here.”

Aurora kept her face placid as she looked out over New York. What had Lucien and Milo said? They’d claimed that Ian kidnapped Ylessa. They hadn’t mentioned her being in a coma, although if they were being fair, how much did Aurora remember? She’s been upset and overwrought continually. Surely, the others—Cheng, Moreau, Milo, even Lucien and even Lester—were the mad ones. They were the ones talking about killing people, about killing her father.

“Could I see her?” Aurora asked. “They mentioned that she was a—a fairy. I’ve never seen one.”

“Of course.” Ramona still on his arm, Ian turned and indicated the room in the back, the room Ramona had come out of. The door stood ajar; something soft yellow-green glowed within. “Go on back. Don’t mind Kemandry, she won’t bother you.”

He didn’t make a move to stop her, or go with her. Aurora waited for a moment, and then crossed the room alone, glancing back to see if her parents followed. They didn’t. In an eerily still pose, they stood together and watched her cross to the other door, and into the far room, keeping an eye out for her father’s pet all the while.

Kemandry was easy to spot, this time. She lurked on the ceiling over a small bed posed in an alcove. It was a child’s bed, with fresh white sheets and a big down comforter. Even the demon hanging above couldn’t distract Aurora completely from what she saw lying there.

The glow came from her. Ylessa’s skin was pale, but the exact color was impossible to tell because it was also translucent and emanating an earthly light, green and golden at once, like sunset through forest leaves. She was no bigger than a child, and looked much like one, if you didn’t count the glowing. Someone had dressed her in a frilly nightgown, the kind girls wore in the 1890’s.

And she had wings.

They were fibrous and yet still delicate; veined, bony frames supported soft membranous panels of vermillion and green. Stunned, Aurora reached out and caressed one gently. Kemandry chittered overhead. It was a terrible sound, like when your nose is stuffed and you try to breathe through it anyway, or some sort of twisted horse whinnying. But Aurora’s father was right. She didn’t move to intervene.

Still… Aurora looked up and met Kemandry’s gleaming white eyes. Somehow, Aurora knew that everything Kem saw, Ian saw. She looked back down at Ylessa.

That was why he didn’t need to be in here. Because Kem was watching over things.

Yet another chill ran down Aurora’s spine, and she knelt by Ylessa’s bed. From the floor, she looked up at Kemandry.

Curious, Aurora slipped into the second sight, and saw the world in gray, with floating motes of life dotted about. But not on Kemandry. Nor did specks of black, or death, flit back and forth from her. Her form was solid black, like a splotch of ink, with her two white-moon eyes still watching.

Ylessa was the polar opposite; Aurora had to squint when she looked down at the fairy, lying on her clean white sheets with her eyes shut. Light stuck to her like a magnet, and she resembled a little sun, laying there on her bed.

Aurora let her vision sink back to normal, and sat back on her heels. What was she supposed to do now?

Ylessa’s tiny hands rested, folded over her chest as she slept. For some reason, Aurora reached out and set her large hand over the fairy’s miniature ones.

It’s good you’ve come, Aurora.

Aurora froze, more because Kemandry became agitated all of the sudden than anything else. The voice in her head was clear and honey-sweet, and could only have belonged to Ylessa. It was too fae to belong to any human. But whether Kemandry heard the voice or simply sensed something amiss, she scuttled down the wall and hovered over the bed across from Aurora. Her long snout snuffled Ylessa’s feathery brown hair, and Aurora watched in dread.

Do not fear her, Ylessa’s voice spoke in her head. Kemandry is a good monster. Her master gives her too much leeway, but she has taken good care of me, and has a good heart.

Aurora stared in disbelief as the creature chittered her eerie sound and retreated a little out of the fairy’s light, her white eyes a-gleam.

But there are more important things. You must listen. Ian is the liar, do not doubt. I heard what he said to you, and it is false. Your mother is ensorcelled—she cannot help you.

Aurora didn’t dare reply out loud. Good or not, Kemandry was giving Ian an ear into the room, and probably eyes, too. Aurora tried to appear indifferent, or fascinated by the strange fairy creature. What she was feeling more than any of these things was fear, pure fear, but it wouldn’t do for her father to see that now. His game was becoming clear, much though she hated to see it.

He keeps me in this state, Ylessa continued softly. In her sleep, her child’s face seemed sad. Maybe it was just an effect of the light. This body is frail, and he keeps me locked within it. But he is overconfident, and has obviously forgotten what I can do.

The others are in great danger. I am useless as I am. We are all in your hands, Aurora. I’ve waited a long time to wake up—the time is here.

Keeping her face still was not easy, but Aurora managed; it was the practice learned through years of customer service that even made it possible. She squeezed Ylessa’s hand, but the fairy didn’t give any further instructions, any further prodding. It wasn’t necessary. Aurora already knew what she had to do.

Kemandry had disappeared and reappeared over the alcove, and watched Aurora with baleful eyes as Aurora walked out of Ylessa’s room, back into the throne room with her parents.

Ian was sitting on the wooden chair, Ramona perched on his lap.

“So that’s a fairy,” Aurora commented as she joined them. “It’s amazing. I never imagined all this… all these things that existed right in front of me.”

Ian and Ramona laughed congenially. “There’s so much to show you,” Ramona told her daughter. She was ensorcelled. “I’ve been wanting to tell you for years, baby. But those others wouldn’t let me. They told me it had to be a secret.”

“Estelle Moreau and Liu-Fen Cheng have forcing me to leave you in poverty all these years,” Ian hissed, displeased. “Where I come from, a man takes care of his family. They prevented me from even doing that.” He kissed Ramona on the cheek. “Not anymore.”

“It’s so wonderful to be back,” Aurora’s mother giggled.

And yet, Aurora wondered. How hard did Ian have to work to enchant poor Ramona? Aurora’s mother, who had been dreaming he’d return for half her life?

“There’s one thing, though,” Aurora reminded Ian. Her pulse was beating in her mouth, and her knees were weak, anxious. “I-I need to give you your magic back.”

Ramona froze, staring at Aurora. Ian looked over in surprise, one arm around Ramona’s waist. “Already? I’m surprised you’re so eager. I figured you might want to keep some of it. It gets a little addicting, I’ll admit.”

His eyes—the eyes he’d passed on to Aurora—were sharp. Aurora swallowed dryly. “I thought I should give them back sooner, then. It’ll be harder to let them go if I get used to having them, and the magic belongs to you, right?” She smiled brightly. At least, Aurora put on her best sincere smile, the one she could force for a customer when what she really wanted was to walk away and never come back. It was harder with her mother sitting there like a statue, her face fixed in surprise and alarm.

Why did her mother look so alarmed?

Meanwhile, Ian had a look of thoughtfulness on his pale features. “I was thinking of waiting a little while before taking them back…”

Unexpectedly there was a loud boom, a thunderclap crash against the wall behind Aurora, back from the direction of Lucien and the others. It sounded like someone had tried to punch a hole through it. How long had they been in there? A half hour? Aurora kept her thoughts off her face.

“Maybe we could still wait,” Ramona suggested. She smiled breathlessly. “There’s time for business later.”

But Ian, whose eyes had jumped to the wall at the crash, no longer looked as calm and cool as when Aurora had first walked in. Not at all. In fact, he looked rather nervous. Ramona was still sitting on his lap, but he seemed to have forgotten her, because he didn’t react to her suggestion.

He held out a hand to Aurora and forced a smile. “Let’s get it done with, then.”

From alarmed, Aurora’s mother had seemed to grow nearly frantic. Aurora might not know why, but she took note. To Ian, she reached out her own hand, trying to act natural, to smile, to look trusting. To look inconspicuous.

But she was remembering Milo, when she’d taken too much energy from him. He’d instantly aged ten years and several sleepless nights, and all she had had to do was will it. Ian had been doing this much longer than Aurora. And in her second sight he swelled like a nova, not at all like Kemandry, who was black and static. Ian swirled with darkness and light, light he had taken from others, and darkness that grew inside him, like it did Aurora.

“Please,” Ramona murmured to no one; no one was paying attention to her. “Please… just wait. Just wait a little…”

Ian and Aurora’s hands touched.

There was no sound; Aurora felt like she’d suddenly been sucked underwater into a vacuum. The room was the same, and she was still staring into Ian’s greenish hazel eyes. But when she took his hand, the air crackled with energy.

She knew, now, that his plan was the same as hers. They weren’t going to fight. They were each going to simply try and drain the other. The world narrowed into a slit, just him and her, and as Aurora clutched his hand—she couldn’t have let go if she wanted, like grabbing an electric fence—she felt her own life start to slip away into him.

Panicked, she pulled back. His eyes widened in surprise. Not at her actions—no, Aurora knew Ian suspected her intentions from the minute she walked in. He was no fool. But he’d counted on being able to overpower her. Unfortunately, his power had chosen a new master.

Aurora dragged on the line between them, and the light motes blew her way easily. Ian’s hand was crushing hers. He couldn’t let go either.

Ramona’s voice was somewhere outside their small world, but close. Perhaps even closer than she realized. Was that her mother’s hand on her other arm? Trying to stop her?

Pain welled up in Aurora, but it was too late to stop for anyone. She didn’t have to hear what Ramona was saying to know what she wanted; her own mother wanted her to stop, to spare Ian. After all, she had been waiting so long for him to come back to her.

Overhead, a shadow lurked. It was Kemandry, and she was part of their little world, too. Aurora tried to ignore her as she crawled upside down over the ceiling. Just above them, she stopped, considering.

In this gray world of power—their shared power—Aurora knew Ian was trying to tell Kemandry to attack. He was looking up at her desperately, even mouthing the words. He was ordering her to kill Aurora, just as she’d been sent to do at Witching Hour, at her own home. But Kemandry just watched curiously, and Aurora realized that she no longer knew who her master was. Too much of Ian’s power was in Aurora, now.

Terrified and thrilled, Aurora bore on, beckoning. Ian’s life force seemed to extend forever, like pulling a chain from the ocean, but it lifted from his body easily. He was trying to fight; if anything, his struggles only seemed to hurry the process. This was the natural order of things. She was younger, and stronger, and meant to take his place. She was his daughter.

The end was in sight, and Aurora fell out of her magical vision, and looked at Ian with her own eyes. He looked half-mummified, with wide, staring eyes. Horror was plain on his face, and Aurora realized that he was looking at her with all that horror. She had come here uncertain, and she would leave a killer, a killer of her own father.

With an audible snap, it was over. Aurora dropped Ian’s limp hand, and he fell back into the throne. He was dead.

And at his feet lay Ramona.

There was another crash behind her, but Aurora didn’t notice. She was brimming with magic. She felt like a burning star, better than her best day, as if she was full of possibility and promise. But all the magic in the world couldn’t un-break her heart. Aurora dropped to the ground with a cry and pulled Ramona into her arms. All the magic in the world couldn’t undo what she’d done.

Like Ian, Ramona was sucked dry of her life. The pieces fell together as Aurora held her mother and cried, as Kemandry bolted into action, unnoticed. Ramona had tried to stop Aurora from killing Ian. Perhaps she had really wanted them all to live together. Maybe she had believed Ian’s promises. That mattered little; she’d still gripped on to Aurora at the wrong time, and her life, too, had been drained.

There was a snarling growl, and many of Kemandry’s terrible sounds, rushing and crashing together behind her.

“Stop it, Kemandry!” Aurora sobbed. “Stop!”

Miraculously, she did. Aurora looked over her shoulder; Kem was just behind her, tilted her oblong head, snuffling.

She was horrible thing. Just to look at her was frightening. The way she moved, the way she sounded. What she was capable of. But Aurora was her master now, and she didn’t the heart to yell at the creature, not for simply being what she was.

“Go away, for now, Kem,” Aurora said hoarsely. “Just go for a while.”

And Kemandry was gone, just like that. Like a shadow when the lights are turned on.

Still Aurora held her mother, thin and frail and dead, sobbing.

A low growl echoed behind her. This time, Aurora turned her whole body so she could look, bringing Ramona with her. It was a wolf, a large black one. It was closer to the size of a bear; Aurora doubted any wolf in this millennium had ever grown so big. Blood dripped from its fur, and its eyes were wide and dark as they looked at her.

“L-Lucien?” Aurora hiccupped.

The wolf shambled closer and sniffed her face, as Kemandry had done. In this form, Lucien looked bigger than a car, and yet he was still there, behind those wolf eyes. Aurora couldn’t even be afraid, not after what she’d done. She looked down at Ramona.

“I killed her, too,” Aurora whispered. “She was holding on to me, and I didn’t even feel it… She’s gone…”

Aurora leaned over her mother’s body and wept. A part of her had known all along, Ramona was only missing, not dead. But now that part was dark and silent, like her mother’s lifeless eyes. Sorrow and loss were twisting Aurora’s insides, wringing her out like a rag.

A hand—a human hand—rested on her shoulder. “Just go ahead and cry,” Lucien told her softly. “I know it hurts, don’t try to fight it. Just let it go.”

Aurora looked up at him. He knelt beside her, naked, of course, but at the moment nothing could have seemed less important to Aurora. His face was bruised and bleeding. In fact, most of him was bruised and bleeding. But his eyes were kind, and he left his hand resting on her shoulder. In the wrecked wall behind him, Milo stood, watching from a distance.

“Thank you, Aurora.”

Aurora froze and spun toward the other door. When Ian died, his spells had snapped, and now Ylessa stood in the doorway, rubbing her eyes like a sleepy child.

Her wings furled and unfurled gently, as if she was testing their strength, but the fairy picked her way across the floor on foot until she stood over Ramona. Hope fluttered in Aurora’s chest.

“Can you…?” Aurora couldn’t even bear to finish the question. Ylessa was already shaking her head.

“Call her back to this form? No. Your mother has already moved on to new life, to a better life. One where she isn’t waiting, endlessly, for the likes of Ian to return to her.”

It was all Aurora had expected, but still, disappointment was almost worse than the loss itself. She looked around, and there was Lucien, there was Milo, there was Mr. Cheng and Lester through the broken wall, all watching her. This was going to be her new life, her new family.

She looked down at Ramona Potier in her arms, lifeless, but finally at peace. No more waiting, no more worrying. No more long nights at the kitchen table, staring out the same window.

Aurora settled her mother gently on the floor and cried.

Her voice echoed against the walls of the townhouse; Aurora had never been in such an expensive house.

“Madame Moreau lived here all alone?” she asked, incredulous.

Lester nodded. “Yeah. She deeded everything to me when she passed away, but my family doesn’t know about… well, all this. The magic and stuff.”

It had been a week since Ian and Ramona had died. Mr. Cheng and Milo were taking care of that entire mess; there were police to deal with (“Right up my alley,” Milo announced cheerfully), and the funerals to plan. And Moreau’s will to settle, which, as it turns out, was not such a big problem.

“Who’s going to run her company?” Aurora asked anxiously. “Did she have a plan for that?”

“Don’t worry about that,” Lester waved her off as they strolled through yet another huge and empty room, furnished expensively for no one. “She had an army of people taking care of the business side of things. We all thought she wasn’t preparing, but, well…” Lester trailed off with a sigh and a sniffle.

Aurora wrapped her arm around his shoulder protectively. “I know.”

“Anyway, she has a few properties, all paid off, and they’re mine now,” Lester pushed on. “And I think you should live here. Someone should.”

Aurora looked around at the hollow space. “All by myself? What about your family?”

“How am I going to explain why a rich white lady from France left all her money to me without admitting to the magic?”

He had a point.

Aurora already knew what her answer was going to be. She couldn’t refuse; there was nowhere else for her to go, anyway. Lucien had told her three days ago that her old apartment was settled, and everything from there that could be salvaged was in storage, waiting for her to find a new home. Only, Aurora didn’t have anywhere else. She had family in Louisiana, but she’d never met them. She doubted her grandparents wanted to see her, anyway. They’d disowned Ramona for leaving with Ian.

“I guess,” Aurora sighed. “It is a nice house. I don’t know how I’m going to pay the property taxes.”

“I told you not to worry about that sort of thing.” From the hallway, Lucien strode across the wood floors to join her and Lester. “We’ll take care of it.”

“So you said,” Aurora rolled her eyes.

Lucien leaned down and kissed her on the cheek. “You should learn to trust people a little.”

Aurora smiled, but didn’t answer. A new life was opening up at her feet. The price had been everything she loved most about her old one, but there was no going back. The only direction was forward, with her new friends, into a future that was uncertain and unfamiliar.

And if Lucien thought that was going to make her more trusting, he had another thing coming.