“Almost. What does that mean?”

“Means almost.” Zee scrunched up his face. “Blood never lies, Maxine.”

I gave him a long look, suspicions and theories rumbling through my head. But before I could ask, Dek lifted his head and froze. All the boys did, staring at the door.

I was up in moments, out of the bathroom, running down the hall. Grant and Winifred were still seated in the living room, talking softly, but they stopped when they saw me. Grant did not need to hear my warning. He braced himself on his cane and rose in one smooth movement, knuckles white around the carved oak handle.

“Winifred,” he rumbled quietly, still staring into my eyes. “You need to come with us now.”

The old woman paled. No arguments, though. She stood, swaying, and Grant steadied her with his free hand. I moved ahead of them, Dek and Mal settling heavily in my hair. Red eyes winked at me from the shadows of the long hall. I listened hard, heard nothing.

The door loomed. Grant and Winifred lingered behind me. I held out my hand, gesturing for them to wait as I crept forward. From the shadows of the closet, Zee whispered, “Clear.”

And it was, when I opened the door. Nothing there.

We left the apartment without incident, and took the elevator down to the first floor. Winifred watched me the entire time, with such intensity my skin crawled. So many stories in her eyes, so much she knew that had not been spoken. I hated secrets. I hated the mysteries in the past that no one, even if they tried, would ever be able to explain. To understand something you had to live it—or live something so close that the empathy was second hand. What this woman had gone through—the events chasing her now—was beyond me. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try.

As the elevator doors opened I said, “You have ten seconds to tell me why you’re being hunted. No riddles. I want answers.”

“We were children,” Winifred said tightly, still evading my question. “We didn’t know what we were doing.”

I noticed she clenched that tightly folded square of linen in her hands, a hint of human leather peeking out from beneath the edge of cloth. I stuck my foot in the elevator door, holding it open. “Right. Because taking that from a dead woman is morally ambiguous. Try another one, Ms. Cohen.”

Winifred gave me a haunted look. “She wasn’t dead when we took it.”

And then, almost at a run, she rushed past me into the lobby. Grant began to follow, and stumbled. I grabbed his elbow, clinging tight, feeling as though he was holding me up just as much as I was holding him. I stared at the old woman’s rounded shoulders and whispered, “What is this?”

“Something worth killing over,” he replied, voice strained. “She wouldn’t say much to me, but whatever happened when she was a child left a black stain in her aura. Almost like a…handprint. I saw something similar in Ernie, but I didn’t think much of it at the time. He was dying. He might have shot someone. Any of that would cause a shadow.”

“I don’t believe in coincidences,” I muttered, and let go of him to hurry after Winifred, who had stopped by the glass entrance and was looking back at us with those old dark eyes. We were alone. No one around to hear more confessions. I reached for the old woman, intending comfort, strength—something, anything, that would reassure her that it was safe to tell me the truth.

Before I could reach her, the glass in the door shattered. Winifred staggered into my arms, collapsing against me. I gasped, stunned, falling down with her—and my fingers touched wet heat. Came away red. She had been shot in the back.

A roar filled my ears, deafening and cold. Grant began talking into his cell phone. I hardly heard him. Winifred was still breathing. I slid out from under her, trying to keep my hand on her wound. Pressing down with all my strength.

Save them.

Blood seeped past my fingers. Winifred’s breathing was rough, little more than a strangled hiss—but except for that and the quiet persistence of Grant’s voice, silence seemed to press around us. Such terrible silence, as though what little sounds we were making meant nothing to the crush of empty air surrounding our bodies.

A strong hand covered mine. Grant whispered, “Go. Find who did this.”

I shook my head. “Not safe for you.”

His lips brushed my ear. “Justice, Maxine.”

I tore my gaze from the blood spreading through Winifred’s clothing and gave him a sharp look. Found nothing in his eyes but that old grim determination; and deeper yet, anger.

I stood, and his hands replaced mine, pressing down on the wound. My fingers snapped at Raw, who was peering at us from around the ruined remains of the door.

“Protect them,” I snarled.

And then I was gone, kicking out the remains of the glass to run into the street, searching for a shooter.

It was a cool Sunday night in New York City, and while this particular street was quiet, I heard the growling hum of cars and people rumbling through the night. No screams, though. No fingers pointing. Just me, and windows across the street, a mixture of light and dark. I stared, searching for movement, anyone watching—but found nothing except for a handful of people strolling across the intersection toward me. No sign that any of them knew what had just happened. I heard their careless laughter.

I began walking in the opposite direction. Zee flitted through the shadows, appearing briefly in nooks between brownstone stairs and garbage cans; leaping from the branches of slender shade trees and then reappearing moments later in the darkness beneath parked cars. I kept waiting for him to say something, but all he did was give me brief, uneasy glances that made my stomach hurt.

“What,” I finally asked,” did you find?”

“Nothing,” he rasped. “Gone.”

“You can find the shooter. Don’t play dumb.”

Zee fell backward into the shadows. I kept walking, scanning the street. Trying to let my instincts do what my demons would not. But ten minutes later, I had no answers. Nothing. Nothing, anywhere. Winifred’s attacker had escaped. I had known it the moment I stepped free of her apartment building.

Zee peered at me from beneath another parked car. I gave him a long hard look. He ducked his head, fading away. But not far. Close as my own skin, if anyone threatened me. The boys felt those things. My life was sacred. They would have known a gunman was close. They had known. But the threat had not been for me, or Grant—who they protected almost as carefully. And so they had let the bullet go.

But that failed to explain why they did not want the killer found.

Winifred was being loaded into an ambulance when I returned to the apartment building. A crowd had finally gathered. I was trying to push through them when my cell phone rang.

“Stay where you are,” Grant said, as soon as I answered. I found him by the ambulance, staring at me.

I stayed. I lingered, watching like everyone else. Grant was helped into the ambulance with Winifred, and when they left, I walked away, rounded the corner, and headed toward Central Park. Headlights dashed through my vision, warm fetid scents blowing over me, briefly. It was easy to get lost, to feel lost, to lose my thoughts to bullets and demons, and question what the hell I was good for if I could not protect one old woman.

I’d been having that conversation a lot with myself over the past several months. People always seemed to get hurt around me. It was why I had been raised to be a nomad, to never linger in one spot for long; to avoid making ties, roots, relationships that mattered.

I was such a bad daughter.

I walked for a good twenty minutes until my phone rang again.

“We’re at St. Luke’s. Tenth and Fifty-ninth,” Grant murmured, and in the background I heard voices chattering, shouts, metallic clangs. “Police coming to question me. Winifred’s in surgery.”