“Are you trying to make a statement?” Mom asked when I came downstairs and plunked myself on the couch in the living room to wait for Leon. “Or is this some new form of passive resistance?”

“Mosquitoes find me very attractive. I’m attempting to discourage them.”

She snorted. “You’re not going to discourage them. You’re going to vaporize them.”

When Leon appeared in the room, he just started laughing.

Mickey arrived a few minutes later. He didn’t have any groceries with him tonight. Instead, when he stepped into the living room he handed me a small paper package, tied with twine.

“It’s a belated birthday present from my mother,” he said.

I’d met Mrs. Wyle all of twice, so I thought that was rather nice of her—though I was a little perplexed by the gift, which turned out to be a rose-colored woolen scarf that was taller than I was.

“She knitted it,” he explained.

“It looks really…warm,” I replied.

His eyes crinkled. “She’s going through a phase. Last year it was pottery.”

“She didn’t knit me anything?” Mom asked, somehow managing to sound both relieved and offended.

“I believe you’re next.” He leaned down and kissed her.

Mickey no longer appeared as rumpled and weary as he had when I’d first met him, but he still had a brooding look about him. His gray eyes always seemed slightly sad. I knew he was still troubled by his experience Beneath, and I didn’t blame him. I had been Beneath myself. I could remember the chill that had crept up my skin as I wandered through the void, that sense of something watchful in the emptiness. Something hunting me. Hating me. I had felt its craving. And my own stay had been brief, only a matter of hours. Susannah had kept Mickey Beneath for days. Being held captive by a deranged demon bent on ending the world would be enough to give anyone nightmares—and that was before having been forced to shoot his girlfriend. Mom had spent the past few months trying to convince him that it wasn’t his fault, but it still weighed on him. Maybe it always would.

He was typically open, easy to read, and though he was smiling, I sensed it in him now. A sort of quiet he carried. The memory of cold.

Mom must have sensed it, too, because she took his hand and squeezed it before hustling us all out the door.

The air outside was muggy, but it was at least cooler than it had been, and the sky was clear, with only a few wisps of cloud marking the blue. There was a hint of breeze, which sent clumps of dandelion seeds billowing upward like tufts of cotton. All along the avenue, the twilight had turned the trees black. Leon caught my hand and laced his fingers through mine.

Powderhorn Park was already crowded by the time we arrived, but we were able to find an open spot near the water with relative ease. I figured it helped that Mickey, while dressed casually in jeans and a black T-shirt, still looked every inch the detective. And even though he was sort of the opposite of scary, some little boy who ran into him let out a squeak of dismay and then scurried away at just under the speed of light.

“And that’s why I never had kids,” Mickey sighed.

It was another twenty minutes before the fireworks started, and while Mom and Mickey got into a lengthy discussion of whether or not it was acceptable for her to leave a mugger duct-taped to a tree—she said yes, he said no, and I merely hoped they were speaking in hypotheticals—Leon and I sat back in the grass, watching the city lights hit the water.

Leon hadn’t been in Minneapolis for the previous Fourth of July. He’d spent most of the month up north in Two Harbors, taking care of his grandfather, who had died of leukemia that August. Though Leon didn’t speak of his grandfather often, he was on his mind now. “He hated fireworks,” Leon told me. “Said they were a waste.”

I tugged off my sandals and slid my toes into the edge of the water, scattering ripples across the smooth surface. “Too bad he never met Gram. That would’ve been an argument to see.”

Leon gave me a crooked grin. “Oh, they met. He said he’d never known anyone who spoke so much nonsense.” He ducked away as I smacked him on the shoulder with one of my sandals.

“Then I bet he was just thrilled to have you guarding her granddaughter,” I said.

“He was thrilled, actually.”

“Tell me about him,” I said, watching Leon’s face. The dusk had darkened his eyes, making them appear more black than blue. His smile had softened. “What was he like?” I knew a little about his grandfather already, but I was curious. After Leon’s parents had died, his grandfather had been the one to raise him. I’d never seen any pictures, but I could form an image in my mind, pieced together from bits of Knowing and Leon’s occasional mentions. A tall man, hair touched with silver; a warm smile; a tinge of sadness. When Leon was growing up, his grandfather had brought him to the Cities for a few days each summer, to visit the lake where his parents had exchanged their wedding vows. And to the cemetery, to visit their graves.

Leon plucked a blade of grass and twisted it between his fingers. “Smart. Stubborn. Always convinced he was right.”

I arched my eyebrows at him. “Sounds familiar.”

He grinned again. “He usually was right. He was right to train me.” That was true, I supposed. Leon hadn’t wanted to be a Guardian and had resisted his grandfather’s attempts to prepare him. When he’d been called to protect me, he’d fought against it for months. “I told him that, when I saw him,” Leon added. “I told him about you.”

“What did you say?”

“That you were a pain in the ass, but I liked you anyway.”

I rolled my eyes. “You could’ve let me in on that little secret.”

“Which part?”

“The liking part. I knew the other half.”

He laughed, leaning forward and tilting his forehead against mine. “You know what he said to me? He said I told you so. Those were his actual words. He was pretty smug about it, too.” Then he shrugged, looking away. The blade of grass dropped from his hands. “He also said my parents would be glad.”

Leon’s parents had died when he was only two years old. What memories he had of them were few and foggy. Now and then, I caught a hint of Knowing from him, an impression that was frayed and distorted, as though viewed underwater—the image of a toddler waiting at a door. Wide blue eyes that never learned to stop worrying.

He’d hated his parents for a long time, he’d told me once. For dying together.

They had died fighting Verrick.

I shifted uneasily, drawing away from Leon. That was a topic better avoided. “Well, it’s a good thing you like me, since you’re stuck with me.”

One corner of his mouth quirked upward, but he didn’t answer.

The fireworks started then, interrupting our conversation. Light and color exploded overhead, flares of green and gold, vibrant blue, glittering white that left trails smoking in the sky. Their sparks fell to earth in dizzy arrays. I watched the reflection of the light wrinkling on the water, and between the blasts I heard the chatter of the crowd. Most of the stars were hidden, but a few stray gleams pulsed through, shy glimmers against the blaze of colors that split the horizon. Directly above, three were shining now. Bright red. Crimson bleeding into the night around them. Fireworks, I thought—but they didn’t burst into shimmers, and they didn’t fall.

I blinked, my chest feeling suddenly tight. The air in my lungs seemed to burn.

Beside me, Mom swore.

“We have a problem,” she said, turning.

I felt it a second later, as Leon’s hand closed on mine.

Somewhere out there in the crowd, there was a sudden shift. A change in the atmosphere. The night came into sharp focus, dividing into separate elements. Within the clamor of murmurs and laughter, a silence formed. Under the scents of sweat and beer and garbage, I smelled blood. There was something else here. A presence I knew.