“Now you’re just being obnoxious—”
“—with sugar-free whipped cream. Put it on my tab.”
“You don’t have a tab.”
“Aw.” Teo gave an exaggerated sigh as he withdrew a crumpled bill. “I asked you to start one for me.”
“And in the interest of not getting fired—again—I didn’t.” As she took the cash, her gaze flicked down to the tablet. She caught the edge of a headline—A NEW CRIME SCENE—and her pulse ticked up. This, this was the high that killers and coffee-addicts hunted for. “Go sit down.”
Teo obediently withdrew and as soon as the line was clear, she made his damn drink and ducked out from behind the counter.
“I’m going on break,” she said, tearing off the apron and heading to the corner booth where the motley crew of Wardens had taken up residence.
She slammed down the macchiato and dropped into an open chair. “What are you doing here?”
“Manners,” said Bea, who’d gotten her the job.
“Macchiato!” said Teo cheerfully.
Liam was busy counting out chocolate-covered espresso beans and popping them into his mouth one by one. “Relax,” he said, “it’s not like anyone’s gonna figure out you have an alter ego.”
“Please stop talking.”
“Bad barista by day,” said Teo in a stage whisper, “badass monster hunter by night.”
This was why Kate worked alone. Because the only thing worse than having a secret was letting other people in on it. But the Wardens were like quicksand: the harder she fought, the deeper she sank. They took her standoffishness and rolled with it, even seemed to find it endearing. Which only made her prickle more.
Once, just to mix things up, she’d been obnoxiously sweet, called them nicknames, and thrown an arm around Liam’s shoulders, returning all that affection.
They’d looked at her in horror, as if someone else was wearing her face.
“I only have ten minutes,” she said. “Show me what you’ve got.”
Teo offered up his tablet. “Check it out.”
A photo of a smiling businessman was printed below the headline: OWNER FOUND MAULED BEHIND EATERY.
Kate scanned the text.
Police are still trying to determine the cause . . . speculating whether . . . intentional or foul play . . . no witnesses . . . animal attack . . .
“Animal attack—who buys that?” said Bea. “We’re in the middle of P-City.”
Kate looked to Teo. “Morgue file?”
“Riley said there’s no autopsy yet, but there’s a pretty decent hole in his chest, and the heart is missing from the organ inventory. That part’s not public knowledge, of course.”
“Wouldn’t want to scare anyone,” said Kate dryly as she scrolled down, looking for more details.
She passed a brief mention of the explosion on Broad, and then her hand stopped, hovered over the next article, the familiar face staring up at her, blond hair curling into dark blue eyes.
THE VILLAIN OF VERITY
She held her breath, caught by the sudden blow of meeting her father’s unflinching gaze. His voice ground through her head.
Katherine Olivia Harker.
“Kate?” pressed Bea.
She forced herself back to the coffee shop, the table, the Wardens’ waiting stares, and flicked her fingers so the page scrolled back up, the article vanishing.
“We’ve been talking,” said Teo, “and Bea and I, we want to help.”
“You are helping.”
“You know what he means,” said Bea. “We could go with you. Provide backup.”
“Yeah!” said Liam.
“Not you,” said Teo and Bea at the same time.
“Not any of you,” said Kate.
“Look,” said Bea, leaning forward. “When this all started, it was a theory, right? But because of you we know it’s real, and it’s not going away, so maybe—”
Kate lowered her voice. “You don’t know the first thing about hunting monsters.”
“You could teach us,” said Teo.
But the last thing Kate needed was more people to worry about, more blood on her hands. “Send me the location of the crime,” she said, getting to her feet. “I’ll check it out tonight.”
The members of the FTF Council stood in the command center, talking over and through one other, their voices tangling in August’s ears.
“Every person we take in is another mouth to feed, another body to clothe, another life to shelter.” Marcon brought his hand down on the table. “My allegiance is to the people we already have. The ones who chose to fight.”
“We’re not forcing any of our troops across that Seam,” said Bennett, a younger member, “but the fact remains that what we’re doing now, it’s not enough.”
“It’s too much,” argued another, Shia. “We’re running out of resources—”
“This isn’t a war, it’s a siege—”
“And if you would agree to attack instead of defend then maybe—”
August stood silently against the wall, his head resting back against the map of the city. He might as well have been a picture; he wasn’t there to speak or even to listen. As far as he could tell, he was there only to be seen, to serve as a warning, a reminder.
There is power in perception, observed Leo.
Not Leo, he corrected himself. Not real. Only a voice. A memory.
Not-Leo tsked.
At the head of the table Henry Flynn said nothing. He looked . . . tired. Shadows permanently stained the hollows under his eyes. He’d always been slim, but recently he’d started edging toward gaunt.
“We tried to take a fridge last night,” said Marcon. Fridge, that was what they called the buildings where Malchai and Fangs were keeping prisoners. Fridge—a place to store meat. “And we lost five soldiers. Five. For what? Northerners who didn’t give a damn about us until they had no choice. And people like Bennett and Paris who think—”
“I may be blind but my ears work fine,” sniped the old woman across the table. The first time he’d met her she’d been dripping cigarette ash into her eggs in a house two blocks north of the Seam, but she looked right at home in her council chair. “And everyone knows my support for those across the Seam. Easy to say what you would have done if you were there, but you can’t fault them for wanting to live.”
The quarrel started up again, the volume rising. August closed his eyes. The noise was . . . messy. The situation was messy. Humanity was messy. For the majority of his short life, he’d thought of people as either good or bad, clean or stained—the separation stark, the lines drawn in black and white—but the last six months had shown him a multitude of grays.
He’d first caught a glimpse of it in Kate Harker, but he’d always thought of her as the exception, not the rule. Now everywhere he looked, he saw the divisions made by fear and loss, hope and regret, saw proud people asking for help, and those who’d already sacrificed determined to refuse it.
The FTF was divided—not only the Council but the troops themselves. Tens of thousands of soldiers, and only a fraction of them willing to cross to the North.
“We need to protect our own.”
“We need to protect everyone.”
“We’re buying time with lives.”
“Have we gained any ground?”