Noah has a rule about asking permission. You don’t fix what someone doesn’t want fixed. You don’t upgrade without explaining what you’re upgrading. You definitely don’t go poking around in someone’s files just because you can.
Lightning still crackling under her skin. She stood in the center of her apartment, staring at her palms. Dark with blood. His blood. She’d been too hungry, too angry, and it had been—
She pressed both hands flat against the wall above her writing desk. Left them there. When she pulled them away, the prints remained. Perfect. Damning.
Eira’s boots had worn through at the heel on the second day. By the third, they were walking on bloody socks.
The forest smelled wrong. Green clung in a film to the back of their throat—thick, cloying, like wet leaves. Birdsong stuttered and looped. Light slanted through at strange angles, sharp and disorienting.
Celinda found her in a packed-dirt alley off Broadway, three blocks from the theater district. The girl sat against brick still warm from the day’s sun, staring up at the slice of sky visible between buildings. Not reading the book in her lap—just holding it. Dracula, spine cracked from repeated readings.