Chapter 1

Raleigh Douglas hung her gun belts on the nail outside the kitchen door the way she always did. She leaned her crossbow against the wall and pushed open the door. It creaked on its hinges. That squeaky voice spoke to her out of the distant past and called her home.

She stepped into the warm kitchen, and the fire tingled her skin after the chilly mist outside. She sank into her old chimney corner and extended her hands to the flames.

This old place comforted her aching heart like no other. How could she stay away so long—and for what? To explore unknown places and see unusual things? Were all those curiosities worth the price of a home?

She leaned her head against the chimney corner and closed her eyes. This was the only place for her. She could rest here from all her wounds. She could forget.

She didn’t want to think. She didn’t even want to think about forgetting. That would remind her. It would make her think that dreaded word. She couldn’t run the risk of thinking about it again. If that word wormed its way into her thoughts even once, she would collapse and never put herself together again.

A familiar footstep thumped down the stairs behind her, but she kept her eyes closed. The fire put her to sleep. She didn’t realize until right now how exhausted she was. She hadn’t slept in weeks—not very well. Ghosts and nightmares kept her awake, not to mention worries about the future.

She could put them all aside, now that she relaxed in her old home. The farm welcomed her with open arms. She knew every brick and every clod of dirt. She understood the weather and the crackle of sap in the flames.

All those elements knew her by name, too. They didn’t threaten or malign her. They supported her, and she belonged to them.

The steps coming down the stairs stopped, and a deep male voice broke the silence. “Raleigh? What are you doing here?”

She opened her eyes to behold her father standing in front of her. He hadn’t changed, either. The craggy lines of his face washed all the heartache out of her mind, and she smiled for the first time in many long days. “I’m home, Papa.”

He frowned. “I can see that, but why? Don’t you have a job to do?”

She looked away into the flames. “Not anymore. I quit. I’m home for good.”

He regarded her for a long time, but she refused to look at him. She couldn’t bear the accusing scowl on his face. She understood that scowl only too well. He sent her to the big town of Perdue to work, and now here she was, running home with her tail between her legs.

She wouldn’t back down, though. She made her decision to leave her working life behind and come home. She wouldn’t let her father talk her out of it.

He couldn’t know what it was like, living in that house without Bishop. He couldn’t know how every stick of furniture in the place screamed Bishop at her morning, noon, and night. She couldn’t go anywhere near his office, let alone work, with her heart in pieces on the floor.

She couldn’t even sleep in her old room without his shade haunting her. His presence visited her at night in her dreams. She tasted his sweetness and felt his arms around her once more, only to wake in the morning to the cruel reality that he wasn’t there at all. He was gone, and he wasn’t coming back.

Her father didn’t argue with her about her decision. He was too smart for that. He never argued. He went about his business and pretended she never went to Perdue in the first place. He puttered around the kitchen like she never left, like she just came in from checking her xreerk traps.

Raleigh didn’t look up. She pretended the same thing, but that silence nagged her worse than any words he could say. She failed. That’s why she was here. She couldn’t hack the slayer’s life. She went to Hinterland. She saw Hinterland. She fought the forces of Hinterland, and here she was cringing in defeat at her father’s fireside.

He got his breakfast and brought her old bowl to her. He set the steaming portion of porridge into her hands before he took the chimney corner opposite her. They ate in silence for a long time. Only the fire’s companionable muttering disturbed the silent house.

After he ate, Benjamin Douglas set his bowl aside and folded his hands in his lap. “Now, Raleigh. It’s time you told me what’s going on. Why did you leave Perdue?”

She didn’t look up from the flames. She knew this was coming. She prepared a thousand explanations. She reviewed the events surrounding Bishop’s death again and again, but she couldn’t make sense of them.

One thing she knew for certain. “You should have told me, Papa.”

“I should have told you what?”

“You should have told me Ethan was still alive.”

He didn’t answer. He scowled into the fire.

She expected this, too. “I understand why you didn’t tell me about Hinterland and the Guild of Martial Arts and all the rest of it, but you could at least have told me he was still alive. You didn’t have to tell me he went to join the Guild. I wouldn’t have understood that even if you had told me, but you didn’t have to let me live all these years not knowing if he was alive or dead. How could you do that to me?”

He lifted his wrinkled old face to gaze at her. “I’m sorry, dear girl. Maybe I made a mistake in that. I know you loved Ethan more than anything. I should have at least put your mind at rest by saying he went away.”

Raleigh’s chin sank onto her chest. “It doesn’t matter now, because he’s dead.”

Benjamin frowned and his eyes flashed at her, but he said nothing.

Raleigh sighed and shook herself. She looked around the kitchen, but she didn’t see anything different from the last time she was here. “Anyway, that’s all over and done with. I’m not going back, so I can get started running the perimeter tomorrow morning. I expect you’ve been overrun with infestations of kataracts while I’ve been gone.”

He looked back at the fire. “Actually, the kataracts aren’t so bad these days.”

Raleigh’s head spun around. “They’re not?” If she couldn’t earn her keep hunting monsters around the farm, she wouldn’t be as useful to him as she once was.

“Tell me what happened to make you leave your job as the apprentice to Knox Bishop.”

She let out a shaky breath. “If I’m the apprentice to Knox Bishop, then that’s why I left Perdue. I’m nobody’s apprentice anymore. We attacked the Guild of Martial Arts to get back the twen he was hired to find. That’s how I know about Ethan. He was there, and he set off an explosive device to stop us taking the twen. Bishop is dead, too. They both died in the explosion.”

“And I suppose the twen was destroyed in the explosion, too?”

“No, we got the twen. We’ve got it back at Bishop’s house.”

Benjamin frowned. “Who’s ‘we’?”

“Me and Dax.”

“Who’s Dax?”

“He’s a young kid who was working for Bishop, but I found out he’s really a hybrid. Bishop brought him here to protect him from the Guild of Husbandry.” Raleigh flapped her hands. “It’s complicated.”

Benjamin’s eyes flew open. “Really?”

“He helped us attack the Guild of Martial Arts. I don’t know what breed of hybrid he is, but his mother is a shapeshifter and he’s a born fighter. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Guild bred him to be some kind of super warrior.”

Benjamin’s face darkened even further, but he said nothing.

“If Dax hadn’t dragged me out of the Guild building in time, I would have been dead, too. We brought the twen back to Bishop’s house.”

“So what’s the problem? You can hand the twen on to the client who hired Bishop in the first place.”

Raleigh shook her head. “I don’t know who the client is, and I don’t care. I’m finished. I quit, and I’m not going back.”

“So what’s going to happen to the twen?” Benjamin asked. “Who’s taking care of it?”

“I got a batch of blue mussels from the Hinterland market. Dax is feeding it.”

Benjamin arched an eyebrow at her. “So you’re just going to leave it there with some kid feeding it? Really, Raleigh, I’m surprised at you.”

Raleigh looked up at him. “Why?”

He fixed his flashing eyes on her. “You took a job, Raleigh. You have to finish it. You have to go back, at least long enough to hand over the twen to whoever hired Bishop to find it. I understand you’re upset about what happened, but you can’t just walk away. In the first place, it’s not fair to the twen. I expect the Guild of Martial Arts took good care of it inside their building.”

“Oh, they did. They had a huge set-up with dozens of Guildsmen on duty around the clock.”

“And I’m sure your young friend isn’t capable of giving the twen that kind of treatment. The two of you together couldn’t do justice to a creature as rare and delicate as that. No, I don’t care what you say. You took on a job, and you have to follow it through to the end. You have to go back and find out who hired Bishop. Once you hand on the twen, then you can decide whether you want to continue working as a slayer.”

Raleigh stared at her father, but her heart sank into her shoes. Somewhere in the bottom corner of her heart, she already knew this. She didn’t want to go back to Bishop’s house. She wanted to wipe Knox Bishop out of her memory, but she couldn’t. She stole the twen from the Guild of Martial Arts—no one else. That made the twen her responsibility.

Unstoppable gravity dragged her down into her seat. She couldn’t raise her arm in front of her face, much less get up. She couldn’t face this cruel world. She couldn’t go rifle through Bishop’s desk to find out who hired him, or even the agent who contracted the anonymous job.

Raleigh closed her eyes against the flame’s heat. It made her sleepy, and her head hung down, but the terrible reality oppressed her more than ever. She had to go back. She had to finish what Bishop started. Only then could she crawl into a hole and forget.