The Hunt - Megan Shepherd Page 0,80

think it can be scratched off with enough pressure. I clawed Roshian and some of it came away with his skin. So try not to get into any fights. And think about how they walk so stiffly and solemnly, like you’re in church.”

Leon looked at her. “Uh . . .”

“How you think people act in church,” she clarified. “I’ll be with you the entire time. On the off chance there are still any guests there, they’ll be uncloaked and only concerned with themselves. And here.” She tucked the gun Mali had swiped into his uniform’s holster. “Even if it’s just for show.”

Leon stared at himself in the mirror. “This is a really bad idea, you know that, right?”

Cora patted his shoulder. “Let’s go.”

He stood up, trying to move like a robot. It wasn’t a bad transformation, Cora had to admit. Physically, Leon’s size and strength were nearly the same as most Kindred’s, and the shimmering lotion and black eyes completed it. It unnerved her, seeing a Kindred with the face of her friend. Then he spit on Roshian’s floor, and Leon was Leon again.

Lucky handed him a revival pod. “Anya will probably be drugged. You’ll need this to revive her. Mali and I will head back to the Hunt; we’ll see you in the morning, assuming everything goes well. Good luck.”

“There is one more thing,” Mali said, eyeing the pod. “In her drugged state, Anya will probably not be able to tell that you are human. She has used mind control to attempt to murder every one of her Kindred owners. If you revive her, she will probably attempt to take over your mind and murder you too.”

Both Leon and Cora stared at her.

“I thought you should know,” Mali clarified.

“Thanks,” Leon said. “I really needed that.”

33

Lucky

BACK IN HIS CELL, Lucky couldn’t sleep.

His mind juggled a dozen different thoughts. Worry that Cora and Leon would get caught, which was hardly an irrational fear given Leon’s track record. Worry that Anya would end up dead and the whole plan would fall apart. Worry that they wouldn’t be able to get Nok and Rolf out. And then worry that he’d completely screwed up everything by kissing Cora.

He cursed under his breath. That kiss had been a mistake. He should have stopped her right from the start. Hadn’t he learned anything? Cora was practically hypnotized by Cassian, despite what she said, and she always would be. How exactly was he supposed to compete with a guy who was mix of a billboard model and superhero? Besides, even though he’d told Cora that he wasn’t that same guy who’d gone crazy in the cage, he didn’t trust himself sometimes. The memories were too fresh of that awful night when he had led her up the stairs to their bedroom, taken her dress off slowly, and all the while thinking what they were doing was right.

Right. Well, he wouldn’t make the mistake of kissing her again, even if his thoughts did keep circling back to how soft her lips were.

He quietly dug through his few belongings until he found the notebook Dane had given him, and flipped through the pages haphazardly. He’d filled most of them with his worries. It helped to put them down on paper, night after night, when he couldn’t sleep.

His eyes skimmed over his last entry, from two days ago:

We repaired a hurt antelope today. Jenny and Christopher dragged it in around midday; it had been shot in the shoulder. The whole animal was quivering, its eyes darting back and forth. It was a new animal—I hadn’t seen it before. Pika said we should name it Sunflower, because when Jenny first let it outside, it stood in the sun with its head tilted toward it, and smiled a little. I told Pika that antelopes don’t smile. Pika said Sunflower does.

Now, he flipped to the very beginning. When Dane had given him the notebook, he’d noticed that a few pages were ripped out, but he hadn’t given it much thought. Everything in the Hunt was in disrepair. It hadn’t been until that morning, when they had framed Dane, that he’d found those missing pages in Dane’s cookie tin, stuffed between pocket squares.

Now he unfolded the pages, tilting them toward the faint light of the nearest wall seam, and read them again.

Manual Override Codes, Dane had written. In Case of Animal Emergency.

Lucky scanned through the list of codes and instructions. The Kindred had entrusted Dane, as Head Ward of the backstage area, with keys