started down the rickety metal ladder, and Thorn burst through the window.
He sprang over me. Before I could so much as blink, he’d dropped from the second-floor platform to the ground with only a huff and a smack of his feet against the pavement.
Flesh mashed. Bone crunched. I fled down the ladder as fast as my limbs would allow, Ruse following just as speedily. Thorn let out a strangled noise, and there was a thwack that I would bet was a smaller body slamming into the wall below.
The second my feet touched down, the warrior grabbed my wrist and hauled me toward the street. He was limping—a jagged tear gaped open in his trousers just below his knee.
Shadowkind didn’t bleed the way we did, as Thorn was demonstrating very vividly right now. Rather than liquid spurting, wisps of black smoke unfurled from the wound hidden by the fabric. The thicker darkness of the night swallowed them up.
I caught a glimpse of two bodies, one slumped by the wall spilling a lumpy mess of brains from its head, another sprawled nearby with its back wrenched to an angle that made my stomach churn. The smoke alarms were wailing above, gray billows streaming out the open window.
It wouldn’t be only our attackers descending on this place soon. I ran with the shadowkind toward the street, thanking the heavens that I’d worn flats with this dress.
Get out of here—now, now, now. The urgent cry in my own head propelled me onward. Could I really outpace these hunters—or whatever they were—in my current state?
We sprinted down the street, my stomach roiling as much from the drug still in my system as the gruesome scene Thorn had left behind. My backpack battered my side. Then up ahead I spotted a veritable gift from the gods: a bike leaning against the fence outside a house on the other side of the street, not even chained.
I might not be licensed to drive, but I could sure as hell pedal with the best of them. I veered across the road, yanked it from the fence, and hopped on.
A startled yelp reached my ears—the bike’s owner must have had it in view—but I was already flying along the sidewalk, the wheels whirring. My mind had narrowed down to one thing amid the lingering haze: get as far away from the attackers at my apartment as was humanly possible.
The buildings and streets whipped past me in a blur. My thighs burned, but I kept pumping my legs as fast as they could go, even as my balance wobbled. This late, hardly anyone was out and about. When a stream of traffic lights showed up ahead, I swerved down one side street and another until a perfectly timed green light gave me a chance to bolt across the busy road.
I’d lost all track of my supernatural companions, but at this hour, the city was more shadow than not. They might not be able to match a truck’s speed, but I hoped they were keeping up with my bike by the means only they could use. Better they traveled in ways no mortals could see them anyway.
Every now and then, I shot down an alley or cut across a parking lot—taking routes no larger vehicle could use in case I’d picked up less welcome followers. After several of those and an ache that had expanded all through my legs, my panic eased off. I pedaled on for at least another ten minutes before I finally coasted to a stop at the corner of a block of low-rise apartment buildings.
The back of my dress clung to my skin, damp with sweat. The night air stung as I sucked it down my raw throat. My breaths and my pulse gradually evened out. In my purse, Pickle squirmed and let out a mournful-sounding squeak.
I still had him. I had my wallet and my phone and other purse essentials—I had my cat-burglar-esque equipment in my backpack. Everything else…
Three forms emerged from the shadows around me. As the last of the adrenaline drained away, the full impact of what I’d left behind—left behind in flames—hit me too hard for me to acknowledge the trio.
Luna’s CD collection. Her fairy dust shoes and her scrunchie. I didn’t give a shit about my own clothes—those I could replace—but the few fragments of her life I’d been able to hold onto…
The pearly box with my parents’ letter. That realization came like a punch to the gut. I nearly doubled over as