Celia

Sometimes I didn’t get a single break my entire shift in the emergency room at Mission Hospital. This was one of those shifts. In Mission City, flu season raged like a tornado in the bitter winter months, taking out everyone in its path. No matter how many flu shot clinics we set up, not enough residents had the money or the time to get the vaccine. This year it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. The shot was the wrong strain.

Mission was sick to its gills.

I was in charge of intake, and I’d taken to wearing a surgical mask. All I could do was chug a lot of Airborne and hope and pray I didn’t get sick. I couldn’t afford the time off, and most of all, the hospital couldn’t handle the strain from sick staff dropping like flies.

The little boy standing in front of me with his dad was five and thin. His frail body shook with fever, forcing his teeth to chatter. He didn’t even look at me, only stared straight ahead, probably half out of it as his body waged war with the virus inside his forty-five-pound body.

“How much longer?” the boy’s father asked, and to be truthful, he didn’t look so well, either.

“I’m sorry, sir.” I tried to enunciate better so they could hear me from behind my mask. “The doctors are working as fast as they can. Do you need water?”

He shook his head and squeezed his son’s shoulder. “We have some, thanks.” He scanned the emergency room and his body sagged as he took in the packed room. “Come on, buddy. We have to wait our turn.”

The boy followed his father obediently, probably too sick to argue. I wanted to watch them go, make sure they got a seat, but another patient stepped up, blocking my view. This one was bleeding. I put my head down and got to work.

An hour later a hand landed on my shoulder as I finished filling out an intake form for a woman with abdominal pain. I glanced up to see my coworker, Landon. He smiled at me and I lowered my mask to smile back. “Hey.”

“Shift’s up, Celia,” he said. “Time to head home, wash off the germs, and get some rest.”

I stood up quickly, and vertigo hit me like a shot. I braced myself on the desk while Landon gripped my arm to keep me upright. “Whoa, hey, you okay? When did you eat last?”

“Eat?” I mumbled. “I had lu—” I stopped. No, I hadn’t had lunch. In fact, I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, which was…I squinted at the wall clock. Nine hours ago. “Shit,” I whispered.

Landon didn’t let up on my arm as he called over his shoulder. “Pete, cover the desk for a minute, will you? I’m going to take Celia to the café.”

“No, I’m okay,” I protested, but it was weak. I really wasn’t okay. My blood sugar was dropping, and I felt like an idiot.

We were moving now, Landon holding my bag in one big hand, his other still holding on to my arm. “It’s no problem. I have a couple of minutes until my shift starts. I want to make sure you get down to the café okay.”

I knew I should just accept his kindness. But everyone had ulterior motives. No one actually cared about my well-being unconditionally—I’d learned early on that I was the only person I could trust.

Dr. Yamael had whispered to me before that she thought Landon had a crush on me, that he’d been talking to others about asking me out. Seeing as I’d maybe said less than fifty words to him in my lifetime, it surely couldn’t have been that he was dying to be on the receiving end of my amazing charm and wit. He wanted to get laid, and surely lonely Celia was hard up.

I suppressed a growl in my throat. Why was I like this? Why did I assume the worst out of everyone? Actually, I knew the answer to that. I just wished I could be someone else sometimes.

I stole a glance at Landon. He was handsome, and his ass filled out his scrubs nicely. He was a good foot taller than me. Everything about him screamed nice.

But people said Charles Manson and Ted Bundy were charming, too.

See? There I went again. This was why I wasn’t fun at parties.

“I heard your shift was nuts,” Landon said.

Oh, great. Small talk when my blood sugar was reaching coma levels. This would be stellar. “Yeah.”

“Got any plans after work?”

Plans? What was that word? “I’m working on this cross-stitch pattern for my kitchen. It’s a knife with the words chop it like it’s hot.”

Yeah, I said that. Out loud.

Landon blinked at me for a solid ten seconds before opening his mouth full of perfect white teeth and laughing. “I didn’t realize you were so funny.”

He continued to walk, shaking his head and chuckling to himself. It hit me that he thought I was kidding. I wasn’t kidding. I was currently on chop, which I’d had to redo because I messed up the “p.” That was my life. Those were my plans. I didn’t know what was wrong with him that he couldn’t see what everyone else saw. Which, namely, wasn’t me. I’d developed an uncanny knack for blending into the background. I was a perpetual movie extra in life and I liked it that way.

We entered the café and Landon made a beeline right for the cheeseburgers. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was—it was like my stomach went past hungry and had just given up on me. But now that I was surrounded by yummy-smelling grub, my stomach had woken up and was banging its silverware up into my ribs.

Hospital cafeteria food got a bad rap, but I didn’t grow up on home-cooked meals, so this was better than I was used to. I preferred my own cooking, but the café wasn’t bad.

Landon grabbed a tray. “What are you hungry for?”

“Cheeseburger with fries and a pickle. Chocolate chip cookie.” They put magic in those cookies.

He loaded it up and even swiped his card to pay for it. I didn’t argue. If he wanted to woo me with an eight-dollar cafeteria meal, more power to him.

He sipped a hot coffee and watched me while I ate. I was pretty sure I was supposed to make small talk, but other than thanking him for the meal, I didn’t say much. My mouth was full of food. That was my excuse.

“You doing okay, by the way?” Landon asked, his fingers lightly tapping the linoleum tabletop.

“What do you mean?” I licked a drop of pickle juice that dripped down my thumb.

Landon tracked my tongue. “Uh, I don’t know. You’ve just seemed tired lately, I guess.”

I wanted to ask him why he was observing me so closely. I shrugged. “I haven’t been sleeping well.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, just…” I shoved a bunch of fries in my mouth to stall. How did I tell him that I’d had dreams lately that scared the ever-loving piss out of me? Dreams where I ran through a forest surrounded by trees dripping blood? That I woke up smelling iron and clutching my throat? I’d Googled what the hell that could mean, but all I could figure out was that running away from something in my dream meant I was avoiding an issue in real life. I couldn’t think of anything I was avoiding to the extent that my subconscious had me sprinting past bleeding trees.

Landon was still waiting for me to finish talking. I swallowed my mouthful of fries. “Just bad dreams, I guess. I’m all right.” I’d recently ordered all kinds of tea that was supposed to help me sleep, as well as coughed up a fortune on some essential oils my neighbor was selling. If that didn’t work, maybe I’d turn to narcotics. Kidding. Maybe.

“I make a pretty good lasagna. I could cook for you, give you some wine. Bet you’d sleep great after that.” He winked at me.

That was it. That was how he segued from my bad dreams into asking me out. By offering to put me to sleep with pasta and fermented grapes, capped off with a cheesy wink. Ay yi yi.

I pushed my empty plate away, a little disgusted at how fast I ate. “Thanks for the offer, Landon, but I don’t think dating coworkers is a great idea.”

“Dating? It’s just lasagna.”

I gave him a look.

He shrugged. “Can’t blame me for trying.”

“Guess not.” The fatigue was setting in now, deep into my bones. I needed to get home before I passed out in my Jeep. I yawned. “I better go. Thanks again for making sure I got some food. That was nice of you.”

“Sure,” Landon said with a less enthusiastic smile. “Hope you sleep well tonight.”

Yeah, me, too.

In the break room, I shuffled toward my locker, still yawning, and just a teensy bit worried about driving home. I spun my combination, took out my bag, and grabbed a water out of the fridge. I sank down into a seat at the break table, eyeing a container of brownies someone had brought. Holding the water bottle to my heated forehead, I decided it had been a bad idea to sit down. Very bad. Now I had to get back up. How was I going to do that when my limbs were protesting any movement?

The door opened and Monica stepped inside. “Hey,” she said. “I thought I saw you come in. You off?”

I nodded. “Yes, my shift is over and I made the grave mistake of sitting down. Now I might just sleep here.” That was funny to me because sleep? Yeah, sleep was not something that was coming easy to me lately.

Monica immediately dipped her dark brows in concern and then took a seat next to me. I admittedly wasn’t close to a lot of people—it had always been hard for me to make friends, and I had quite a knack for sabotaging any burgeoning friendships. I had gotten used to being a loner. Working with my patients was what fueled me, what made me happy, and gave me the small human interaction that kept me sane.

Monica was different, though, as she was a force. She hadn’t let me pull back or retreat. She’d claimed me as a friend, and I’d found I loved being Monica’s friend. She was a nurse in maternity, and her husband was a janitor at the hospital. They had a son, a little boy named Charlie, who I loved, loved, loved. Loved more than I loved myself, which was why I wished like hell I could take the cancer ravaging his body and take it for myself, just so he could live happy and pain-free.

I felt like a shit seeing Monica’s concern. She had enough to worry about with Charlie.

“I’m worried about you—” she started to say.

I cut her off. “I’m fine.”

“You always say that.”

“Because I am. You know how flu season is. It’ll get better.”

She pursed her lips together and tossed her dark, curly hair over her shoulder. Her hair was incredible, and I was envious of it—full and thick, inherited from her Dominican mother. Amusement lit her eyes. “I saw you sitting with Landon in the cafeteria.”

I moaned. “Are you spying on me?”

She grinned. “Maybe.”

“You worry too much about me.”

“I like worrying about you. You do so much for Tim, Charlie, and me…” Her voice trailed off, and she looked away, blinking rapidly. I felt like an asshole all over again.

I reached out and squeezed her hand. “Hey, I like doing things for you, but it’s not much.”

“You visit him. Most of his friends are too busy now, but you still visit him.”

“Well, I think a twenty-something woman is a bad substitute for another boy his age but if he likes it, I’ll keep coming.”

Monica laughed. “You know he loves you.”

“I’ll be by tonight,” I said.

“Are you sure? You’re so tired.”

“I’m sure.”

“Tim’s home. He can let you in.”

I pointed at the brownies. “Did you make these?”

She shook her head. “Vivian.”

I wrinkled my nose. I didn’t like Vivian’s brownies. I mean brownies were brownies. I hadn’t thought it was possible to screw up brownies until I met Vivian.

Monica laughed. “I’ll make some of mine next week.”

“These will still be here because no one eats them. I don’t get why she keeps making them.”

“Because Landon tells her he likes them to be nice, then throws them away so she thinks people ate them.”

“See, that right there is why I can’t date Landon. He’s contributing to brownie torture.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“I’m delirious,” I muttered.

“Then go, see Charlie, and go home and get some rest.”

I stood up and slung my bag over my shoulder. “Okay, Captain.” I took a step toward the door. “Have a good night. Deliver lots of babies.”

Monica’s soft laugh followed me out the door.

I walked out of the hospital to the employee garage. It was after dinner, so the waxing moon was rising high in the sky, casting a slightly eerie glow over the cars.

Even as tired as I was, something felt off as I walked past the rows of cars on the way to my parking spot. My scalp tingled, and my blood heated. There was someone here in this garage with me. I slipped my hand into my purse and closed my fingers around my pepper spray. The hair on the back of my neck rose, and my skin pricked. I glanced behind me, picking up my pace, but saw no one.

A shuffling sound came from the far corner and I whirled around, searching the shadows with my pepper spray held up. But I saw no one, nothing, and I wasn’t about to venture into the darkness. Just get to your car, Celia.

A door banged open, and I shrieked.

“Celia?”

That was Landon’s voice, and then there he was, jogging toward me with a cellphone in his hand. His face was lined with concern. “Sorry I startled you. Are you okay?”

I was not really okay, but I chalked it up to delirium. There was nothing in here with me, nothing that planned to do me harm, right? It was just my dreams haunting me when I was awake.

I dropped my pepper spray back in my purse. “I’m fine. Just fine.”

He held up my cellphone. “You left this at the desk.”

I took it from him. “Oh, wow. I would have been so mad if I got home and realized I left it. Thanks for bringing it out to me.”

Landon glanced around the garage, his lips pulled down into a frown. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah, my car is”—I pointed toward the end of the row—“down there.”

He nodded. “I’ll walk you.”

“You don’t have to—”

“It’s not a big deal. It’s midnight and you’re tired. Let me walk you.”

This was always when I balked. I’d been alone so long and depended on myself for everything. Parents? What were those? I’d grown up in foster care. And foster care in Mission City was a joke. Siblings? Mine had never been related to me and treated me with nothing but scorn. Friends? Everyone in Mission was looking out for themselves. Wow, I was full of puppies and rainbows.

Except, I was scared and exhausted and for once, it was nice to let someone do something nice for me. Still, I had to grit my teeth to accept Landon’s offer. “Okay, sure. That’s nice of you.”

He gave me a small smile, then walked me to my car with a light touch on my elbow. I hoped Landon found a nice woman to date. He was barking up the wrong tree with me.

When we reached my blue Jeep, he waited until I was safely inside, and even motioned for me to lock my doors. I rolled down my window. “How about you? Will you be okay?”

“Door’s right there,” he said with a grin. “And I take Krav Maga. I can defend myself.”

I didn’t know what Krav Maga was but it sounded angry. “Okay, thanks again, Landon. You’re a good friend.”

He seemed pleased by that. His smile broadened. “I guess being friend-zoned isn’t too bad.”

I laughed. “You’re a big boy. You can handle it.”

He tapped the roof of my Jeep and backed away. “ ’Night, Celia. Drive safe.”

“Good luck on your shift.”

I backed out of my parking spot and made my way to the exit. Right when I turned the corner to leave, my headlights shone into the shadows, and reflected off two small dots. Eyes.

I gasped and slammed on my brakes, but whatever my lights had caught was gone. “It had to have been a raccoon, right? A cat. A dog.” I was now talking to myself in my car like a lunatic.

With a screech of my tires, I roared out of the parking lot and sped home like I was being chased through a forest of bleeding trees.

And in every streetlight, I saw those eyes reflected back at me.

Idris

Roxy blinked at me, and then rolled her eyes to Dru, her look so human in a can you believe this guy? way that I nearly smiled.

She turned back to me, her eyes still a little wide. “They really need to give you guys human classes or some shit.”

I didn’t say anything. Roxy’s apartment in Mission was similar to Celia’s. She’d moved recently, according to Dru, her boyfriend, and so the place she lived in now with her brother was bigger, nicer. I knew Dru was helping to finance that, and I also knew he’d do just about anything for her. I was surprised he agreed to let me talk to her, but he also knew how much my mission meant to our clan.

“So let me get this straight,” she said. “You saw her put a heating blanket on her stomach and you want to know why.”

Was that what it was called? “It was a square bit of fabric with a cord—”

Roxy waved her hand. “Yeah, yeah, I’m telling you it’s a heating blanket.”

I let it go that she interrupted me because she was Dru’s. “What is the purpose of a heating blanket?”

Again with that stare. She looked to Dru, but apparently, he had no intentions of helping her, because his lips were pursed shut.

Roxy sighed heavily and placed her palms flat on the table. “She probably had cramps.”

“Cramps?”

“Yeah, stomach pains.”

I straightened in my chair where I sat at her kitchen table. “Pains?”

Roxy’s face softened. “It’s okay. It’s a human thing. Well…female human…” she floundered for words and then cocked her head to the side. “Do you really have no idea what I’m talking about?”

I shook my head.

“Okayyy,” she said slowly. “Once a month, if there is no baby in a woman’s uterus—” Her cheeks flamed a bit and she muttered under her breath, “Can’t believe I’m doing fifth grade sex ed with a damn vampire.” Then she cleared her throat. “Then she will bleed—”

“Menstruation,” I said with impatience. “I know what the fuck that is.”

She threw up her hands. “Then what is with the cramps question?”

“I didn’t think it hurt,” I snapped back.

She jolted in her chair, then her eyes narrowed slightly on me. I didn’t like the way she was studying me, but I held her gaze anyway.

“Sometimes,” Roxy said. “It does hurt. We get cramps. We get headaches. We get cranky. You can ask Dru. My PMS can be a rager.”

Dru just shrugged.

I didn’t even bother to ask what PMS was.

“So yeah,” she went on. “A heating pad helps cramps. Was she lying on her couch? In bed?”

“Couch,” I said. She’d thrown a blanket over herself, and she had a mug with the small little bag in it that she liked at night. That had been a week ago.

Roxy nodded. “Then yeah, she had cramps. She used the heating blanket. That’s all.”

“She’s not unwell.”

“Well, no. No, she’s not unwell. I mean, this is just me guessing it was over cramps, but that’s why women usually use heating pads.”

I nodded and began to stand. Roxy’s mouth opened, and I knew a question was coming. All I’d told her was that I had a question about a human female.

“Roxy,” Dru said, her name a gentle warning.

She closed her mouth with an audible clack. She knew we didn’t hurt humans, but still I predicted it was on the tip of her tongue to ask if I intended this woman harm. Roxy’s eyes were shadowed, and she was biting her lip as she followed me to her door.

“If you need anything else, let me know,” she said. “Happy to help out a fellow woman.”

That was it. That was her small warning. I heard it, and Dru heard it. His back went a little tight, but I knew it was to make sure I didn’t do anything stupid in response. I might not be the king, but I was still a member of the ruling family. Dru worked for me.

Instead all I said was, “Thanks, Roxy. I appreciate your time.”

She nodded, and then I walked out her door and down the stairs of her apartment into the moonlit Mission night.

Celia would be getting home from work soon. She’d be there by the time I arrived, so I headed in the direction of her apartment. It’d been three weeks since I’d begun watching her. One week since that night at Bite when my brother had questioned my motives.

I’d built up the moment in my head when I would first lay eyes on her. I imagined the anger surging through me, the hatred. Her father was head of the vampire clan who’d managed to convince my father to go against everything he’d raised my brother and me to be. The same father who’d been happy to see me a pile of ashes rather than defy him.

I ran my thumb over the short tip of my finger, burned off to the first joint by my father’s guards—on his orders. I walked briskly through the streets of Mission City, my long overcoat brushing my calves, collar up to hide my face.

With every day that went by, I learned a lot about Celia Valerie. And none of it was making me hate her. I wanted to hate her. I wanted to loathe her with every part of my being.

Because while I had no intention of harming her physically, I would still harm her. I’d kill her father, wipe out her clan, and who knew where her loyalty lay.

When I saw her in the parking garage, my lips had curled as I imagined the moment when I’d get my hands around her pale throat, look into her eyes, and tell her that I’d use her as a pawn to punish her family for all they’d done to mine. For all they planned to do if we let them.

She’d been scared—I’d inhaled the bitter scent of her fear with relish.

And then it’d all changed as soon as that man emerged and touched her.

He wanted her. I could tell by how he looked at her, spoke to her. She hadn’t wanted him back, but it hadn’t mattered to me. I’d wanted to slit his throat. The protectiveness and ownership of her had risen inside me like a tidal wave. I hadn’t seen her with another person before that—she kept to herself, and certainly no one had ever touched her before like that when I was watching.

But that man…he’d touched her. And I hadn’t liked it.

She was mine to question, to interrogate. Soon as Athan gave the word. Of course, I didn’t really want to wait. I was sixty-five years old and just now realizing I was the most impatient vampire alive.

When my father was grooming me to be king, I’d been able to convince myself I could be a leader. That I’d mature. That I’d shape up when the time came for me to lead my clan. That I was born to be king, so everything would be okay.

Now that I’d learned it had all been a big lie—that I was never meant to be king, but only a pawn my father could manipulate—I had a lot to discover about myself.

All the promises, all the training, all those years, only to learn my father saw me as the weak brother.

Fuck that. I wasn’t weak. But I was impatient as hell.

I was also a little lonely, something I hadn’t thought I’d be when I took this mission. I’d been raised to not only be king, but also to lead our Gregorie soldiers. We had a contingent back at the Gregorie compound, vampires who trained for our defense…and offense if needed. They were my men, and I’d worked hard to earn their respect. Athan had said I’d still be in charge of them when I returned, and I looked forward to that. That is, if I made it out of this alive.

I scratched my beard as I turned the corner down an alley on my way to Celia’s apartment. I didn’t like to go long with her out of my sight. Athan had told me to observe her. Pay attention. And I had. The last week her appearance had changed a bit. I’d noted the bags under her eyes, the lines of fatigue around her mouth, and the stiff way in which she walked. She was tired, and with a low growl, I told myself not to feel bad for her.

Athan said she might not know about her parentage or that she was human/vampire hybrid. I found that hard to believe. Why would the Valarian king keep his daughter in the dark about her heritage? It didn’t make sense. I thought he was hiding her in Mission as a human to protect her. He should have hidden her farther, then, because horrible things lived in Mission—including me.

Most humans were not aware of our existence, with only a privy few who had the knowledge of us in select government positions. It was a truce our elders had made with humans centuries ago, and our clan—along with many others—honored that. The Valarians did not. Which seemed at odds with the king’s fondness for his half-human daughter. Why hadn’t he turned her yet? Athan and I had been born dhampirs, as well, and our father had turned us when we were teenagers, like most dhampirs. Celia was twenty-five. Waiting this long to turn a dhampir was just not done—as the vampire within began to eat away the mind until the dhampir lost it.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I held it up to my ear. “Yeah.”

“Idris,” Athan’s voice rumbled in my ear. “You didn’t call today.”

Right. I was supposed to check in, because he still didn’t trust me not to fuck this up. He was mostly right not to trust me, so I didn’t fault him. I had a penchant for acting before thinking. Also, I wasn’t going to do what he said. He didn’t know that, though. “On my way to her apartment now.”

“We’re close. Another couple of days. The Valarians seem to have settled, and we have a line to her father to get a hold of him.”

Ever since we’d thwarted their plan to overthrow our clan and force humans into lives as blood slaves, the Valarian clan had been in hiding. I leaped over a fence and landed with a thump. “I’m ready when you are.”

“Quellen are still mobilized,” Athan muttered. “I feel something coming, brother.”

I knew enough to trust his new sense. “I hear you.”

“Be safe and alert. Check in tomorrow.”

“Will do.” I hung up the phone.

Athan had always been the one who listened to his gut, who paid attention. Who knew things. It should have been glaringly obvious all along that Athan was to be king. We were both born to different human mothers, raised by our common father, Connell—the king of the Gregorie vampire clan. We’d always been told our roles. As the oldest son, I was to be king, and the prophecy was that a human—the tenth of her generation—carried blood in her veins that would make me the most powerful vampire alive. Athan, as the youngest, was to be her bodyguard.

Except, when Athan found Tendra and traveled with her to our compound outside Mission, they fell in love. When Athan became injured, he had to feed from her to stay alive. And despite the prophecy that said only I would be affected by her blood, Athan grew wings, and developed immunity to the sun.

It was then our father confessed that he’d groomed us from birth, killing our mothers and lying to us. Athan was the older brother, the one destined to be king. As the younger—and what he saw as the weaker—brother, I was manipulated by our father in an attempt to let the Valarians overthrow us, and live in a world where humans lived as our slaves.

Athan defeated our father, killing him, but what was left in his wake was confusion and anger. Scratch that; I was fucking livid. I didn’t want the crown anymore—I wasn’t sure I ever wanted it. Athan was twice the king I’d ever be. But while he found his purpose, I floundered. What was my destiny? What was my role in his burgeoning war?

As I approached Celia’s apartment, I scanned the parking lot for her car. It wasn’t there, which meant she wasn’t there. But I had a pretty good hunch where she was. I quickly made my way to an even dingier part of Mission, where the apartment buildings looked one step away from condemned. There, I spotted her car outside a five-story brick building.

I scanned the side, spotting the window I knew would be open a couple of inches.

A little boy lived in that room. Charlie, Celia called him, and she visited him at least once a week, sometimes twice. I didn’t know why he was there, or what connection Celia had to him. I knew he was unwell, though. I’d crept up the fire escape one time, and I could smell him. Something was off, ravaging his body. He seemed to be fighting it, but I didn’t know much about human diseases.

Celia talked to him a lot. She told him about the cat she fed outside her apartment. She told him about her job, and the boys and girls she saw in the emergency room. They talked about video games—something called Minecraft.

His parents lived there, too. And Celia talked to them sometimes. She seemed friendly with the mother. But she went there for Charlie. She visited the sick boy no matter the weather, often bringing him gifts and treats.

Tonight I decided to listen in. I crawled up the fire escape and crouched down under the window.

“Next time I’ll bring one. I promise,” Celia was saying.

“Mom said that you’re busy and I should tell you that you don’t have to come every week.” The boy’s voice lowered to a whisper. “But I want you to come every week.”

Celia laughed, the sound pretty and musical. “Of course I’ll come every week. Don’t be silly. You’re my friend! I have to come and visit my friend.”

“What are your other friends like?”

There was a beat of silence that stretched longer than it seemed appropriate. Finally, Celia said, “They’re not quite as much fun as you.”

“You’re just saying that to make me feel good!”

More laughter, and a ch-ch-ch sound. I peered inside. She was…tickling him. He was rolling and laughing and her face was split into a wide grin. “You better not be calling me a liar!”

“No, no, uncle!” the boy cried.

Celia stopped tickling him, and he sputtered, red-faced and giggling. “Okay fine, so I’m your favorite friend?”

“You are.” She yawned. “I gotta get going now, though. Okay?”

“Okay, Celia, and next time—”

“I know. I know! I promise I’ll bring him.”

I tucked down just as Celia stood and turned to grab her bag off the chair she’d been sitting on.

I leaped back down onto the street floor and made my way back to Celia’s apartment to wait for her. Every time she visited Charlie, my chest got tight. This was the woman I’d be taking away from Mission. A nurse and a woman who visited sick little boys. But she was also half Valarian. This could all be a cover.

I slipped through a hole in the wire fence and hid under a staircase opposite her apartment. She hadn’t drawn down her blinds, so I could see inside—right into her living room. The couch with the blanket, a small TV, and a stack of books on her coffee table. When I first saw her apartment, I’d been struck at how sparse it was. Not that I lived surrounded by many possessions, but I saw how other humans lived. Roxy, who didn’t have much money, had an apartment full of…things. Pictures on the walls, a calendar full of appointments taped to the inside of her cabinet. Papers and magazines and receipts lying around. Celia’s apartment was bare. No pictures on the walls. Her books were always stacked neatly.

It was like the place she was staying wasn’t home, like she could pick up and leave any minute, like she wasn’t letting herself settle, grow roots. That made me suspicious.

A figure moved in front of the window. She’d changed into a tank top, which fit snug against her breasts. Her arms were over her head as she pulled her long hair into a ponytail. The dark strands brushed her freckled shoulders. I swallowed, content to settle down and wait for her to turn out the lights.

And I didn’t miss the fact that when I looked at Celia—I felt like I had purpose. What worried me was that I wasn’t quite sure where that purpose would lead either of us.