To my mother – You don’t have to wait a hundred years for the world to change. You already changed mine.

THIS book is a work of fiction.  Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.  Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

NO part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.  Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.  Purchase only authorized editions.

Bad Bloods: November Rain

Copyright ©2016 Shannon A. Thompson

All rights reserved.

ISBN:978-1-63422-190-0

Cover Design by: Marya Heiman

Typography by: Courtney Knight

Editing by: Kelly Risser

For more information about our content disclosure,

please utilize the QR code above with your smart phone or visit us at

www.CleanTeenPublishing.com.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

About the Author

Acknowledgements

Execution day was the best day.

While most fought, screamed, and cried, I welcomed our only escape. Death would be the easiest part of my life. The eight children I shared my expiration date with might understand that soon, but I was different from the beginning. A bad blood didn’t live to be seventeen by pure luck.

The police suspected I was in a flock, and they were right, not one of those fake ones made up of four kids who were inevitably caught either. A real one. The Southern Flock. But I didn’t break no matter what. Now, I would die for it. It was for the better. Robert already believed I was dead anyway.

I tried not to think of the others, but their faces crept through my memory when I stared at the kids around me. Catelyn. Melody. Steven. Ami. Huey. Briauna. Justan. Timmy. Jake. Even Niki. The fact that my flock would continue brought me the peace I needed today. Or tonight.

By the murky blue flooding through the jail cells, my best guess said it was seven—AM or PM—but I couldn’t be sure without a clock. I wouldn’t even know what hour I would die. The government didn’t think we were deserving of time.

“Alan. Frank. Jesse. Marcus.”

The boys went first. The girls were next.

“Anne. Harriet. Linda. Rosa. Serena.”

My sigh felt like my last breath, but I stood up. The tapping is what forced me to raise my eyes. Through the metal bars, a woman stared at me. Her black hair poked out beneath her hat. She would probably be the last person I ever saw alive. When she asked me if I was Serena, I nodded.

I didn’t try to run when she cranked open the gate. I was done running. When she latched onto the chain holding my hands together, the metal cut into my wrists. I bled, but it didn’t matter. The woman would escort me to the electric chair and it would all be over. There were no drugs involved. Only pain. Only suffering.

The woman yanked me forward, slow but sturdy. The rest of the girls were ahead of us, and the way my cop wobbled, I could see why. I only worried about seeing the others ahead of me die first. I envied Alan, the bad blood scheduled first for execution, and I wondered if he was already dead.

“You need to listen to me.” The woman’s whisper was harsh. “You listen to me good, yah hear?”

“Wha—”

Her glare silenced me. “Don’t talk.” She rattled my chain to bury her drawl, but she had touched me. It wasn’t a mistake. I understood now. My powers forced me to. I could sense bad bloods whenever we touched, and she was one.

“Those kids are dying today, but you’re not.” When she spoke, her decaying teeth jutted out. “You’re getting out of here, and you’re going to live.”

Before I could ask how, the woman’s feet glued to the floor. In the depths of her russet stare, determination flickered. It was the look someone had when she knew she would die.

Everything changed in that moment. The officer ahead of us turned around, and he called out, “Charlotte.” Other than her name, the only sound I heard was the snap of my chain and the single word spilling out of her mouth.

“Run.”

And I did.

Old Man Gregory scanned my items without studying my arrangement of over-the-counter medicines and bandages. The owner didn’t care who I was. He only cared about two things—money and booze—and that’s why I returned to his convenience store.

Acquaintances weren’t necessary. Medicine was.

When the door opened, the entrance bell rang. “How yah doing, Gregory?” The newcomer wobbled until he found an equally wobbly seat at the countertop, a.k.a. the bar. I could smell the whiskey on him. Definitely a regular. “I’d sure appreciate it if you turned the news on.”

Gregory swung around, and the television lit up at his touch. Two faces appeared—a woman and a man—with a solid line separating them. Another political debate was on.

“What could Henderson be thinking?” the male anchor shouted into his clipped-on microphone.

My stomach twisted. The upcoming election had Vendona on the verge of a revolt—a violent revolt—and my kind was the center of it all. Alec Henderson was the first government official to be pro-blood, and he had a real chance at becoming president. Joshua Logan II was his opponent. He wanted to establish required identification testing to expose bad bloods for earlier execution. At this point, Vendona was torn. Even I couldn’t tell who would win, but the election would be over within the month. For bad bloods, it was life or death. It was merely politics for everyone else.

“This isn’t the Civil Rights Movement,” the man continued. “This isn’t even the Separation Movement.” The war demonizing bad bloods—something Vendona called a movement—happened twenty years before I was born.

“But that is exactly what Henderson is trying to do,” the woman argued. “He’s beginning a movement. He’s creating a movement.”

“He’s abolishing the Separation Movement, something elected by the people and for the people,” the man corrected. “No one asked him to change it.”

“His voters are asking for change.”

“These are bad bloods we’re talking about,” the man interrupted. “Violent, incompetent creatures—”

“These are children we’re talking about,” she returned his interruption with one of her own.

“Children that contribute to over half of our growing crime rate, including the murder of innocent civilians,” he retorted. “Do you think the government can change that?” His biased beliefs never changed. “Even if we save them, the two remaining flocks will kill each other.” The Northern Flock and the Southern Flock were notorious for hating one another. “How can we trust a species that hates itself?”

“Maybe they wouldn’t have to kill if they weren’t forced onto our streets.”

“And maybe you can write that on all of our graves.”

“Money.”

I forced myself to turn away from the debate to meet eyes with Gregory. His palm stuck out, nearly touching my chest. “Money,” he repeated.

I laid the cash in his hand before I shoved the items into my backpack. When I slung the bag over my shoulder, I ignored the heated ramblings. Other than being disgusted, I didn’t have the luxury to listen. Vi was waiting at Calhoun’s house, and being late wasn’t an option.

I pushed open the exit door, and humid air slammed into me. It was later than I thought. The sun was gone, but a murky glow stretched over the crowded buildings, evidence of the Highlands. The early evening was the only time the outskirts could see the murky light from ground level, but that didn’t mean we forgot its existence. The richest part of Vendona was iridescent, separated from the outskirts by one large gate, but tonight, it was brighter than ever. It pulsated against the purple sky. Even then, the sight didn’t hold my attention for long.

The warning lights lining our streets were flashing. We had three settings: yellow, orange, and red. Ever since the pre-election votes had been polled, the lights had been yellow, a minor warning, but they were orange tonight.

I leaned back into Gregory’s store. “Why’s the light orange?”

The owner glanced over, but the customer was the one to point at the television. The debate was replaced by a reporter’s ramblings, “All are advised to find immediate shelter.” Behind her, Western Vendona’s largest blood camp loomed. “Escaping from here only moments ago, the bad blood is believed to have fled through the western part of town.”

“Escaped?” Gregory cursed. “That’s a first.”

The reporter continued to rant out scripted directions, “I repeat, all are advised to find shelter and report any suspicious activity immediately.” A phone number scrolled below her. “This is considered a high-risk situation. Red lights have been turned on, and curfew is in effect.”

Blake. The youngest in my flock flashed in front of me. Michele. Vi. Adam. Tessa. Peyton. Floyd. It could be any of them.

I had to go.

“The light’s red,” Gregory shouted at my back, but it was too late.

I ran.

The muscles in my legs burned, and I weaved through the panicking crowd with ease. Voices flew by, and faces blurred together, but no one paid any attention to me. They were too busy fleeing. Rushing through the splitting crowd was almost too easy. I didn’t have superhuman speed—that would be Adam’s specialty—but I felt like I did. I would get to the bad blood before the police if it killed me. That was the duty of a leader.

I was only a block away from the depths of the western part of town, but a block was enough time to figure out where they would be. Any bad blood would head straight for Shadow Alley, the only street Vendona’s government avoided. It was a thin road, cut in half by an old fence, and remarkable shadows masked the worst crimes. It connected the condensed northern part of town with the southern countryside, and it blocked out where the Western Flock’s house once stood. It was notorious for crime and even more notorious for being a bad blood itinerant. No human would go near it, not even a cop, and that hesitation would be what the escapee would rely on.

I had to be right.

When I saw Mulberry Street, I prepared to turn. It led to Shadow Alley, and I was all too familiar with the paved walkway. I grabbed the side of the brick building to help me spin around the corner, but my dexterity failed. I crashed straight into a body—a person smaller than me—and I bounced back to stay on my feet. The other person fell. As their body smacked against the concrete, a high-pitched yelp escaped their lips. I would’ve kept running if they hadn’t leapt back up and attempted to hit me.

My adrenaline froze.

Only a bad blood would hit someone, but this person wasn’t Blake. This person wasn’t Michele or Tessa, but she was a girl, a teenage girl with wild eyes. Blood dripped down the side of her face, and her hair was browned with soot. Because of her sunken cheekbones, she resembled a dirty skeleton more than a living being. She wasn’t a member of my flock, but she was definitely blooded, and she was in trouble.

“Let me help you—” I began, but she dodged to the left.

I cut her off.

She stepped forward, leaning too far to the right in a limp. “Get out of my way.”

I didn’t respond. The police would catch her if she kept running, and I wouldn’t lose another blood to Vendona’s massacre.

“I will kill you,” she promised, baring her teeth.

“I know.”

She paused at my words, and her hesitation was the only weapon I had.

Before she could react, I stepped forward and raised my arm. When she ducked, I swung my leg out and my foot collided with her injured leg. She hit the pavement with her head.

I cringed but bent down to haul her up. She was a rag doll in my arms—an angry rag doll—but a rag doll, nonetheless.

She screamed as she reeled back to hit me, but I dragged her into Shadow Alley and pushed her against the bricks. “Shut up,” I ordered, kneeling down to put my lips near her ear, “and you might live through this.”

Her eyes darkened, but her screaming subsided. I turned my back to her, counting on her pain to prevent her from attacking me, and I made a decision. I rushed back to the main square through the neighboring alley and grabbed my hair as I stumbled into the receding crowd.

“That way,” I shouted, pointing my finger in the other direction. A cop appeared as if he had been waiting for someone to scream out of terror. “That way. She went that way.”

He didn’t question my integrity. He ran where I pointed, and other cops followed him like the obedient officers they were. I had to fight the smile forming on my lips. The girl they were after was only a few feet away.

Before I returned to her, I caught my breath as the red lights flashed over the emptying streets. The chaos would disappear with the sunset, but it wasn’t gone yet. We weren’t safe, and it’d probably be up to me to find shelter.

I ducked back into the alleyway and jogged around the corner, half-expecting to see the girl wobbling away with a makeshift crutch but she wasn’t. She stayed where I left her, sitting against the brick building as if it were the only thing holding her up. Which, it probably was.

As I approached, her gray gaze focused on the sky without really focusing at all. “Are you going to kill me?”

Ignoring her question, I winced as I examined her damage. Her scalp was torn, but her leg was worse. Her ripped pants exposed shredded shin. I could see the bone. It wasn’t broken, but I had to prepare myself.

“You’re going to be okay,” I said, reaching out to touch her leg.

She shot forward, but I pushed her back. “Calm down,” I said. “I’m trying to help you.”

I was a bad blood after all, and I healed people. The only fault in it came with the exchange of energy. Anytime I healed someone, I was hurting myself. It was the only time I felt pain. It also exhausted me.

Her face drained of color. “Don’t touch me—”

But it was too late. I laid my finger on her skinned leg, and the electricity in my veins vibrated into her blood. That’s when it happened. My muscles burned, my head spun, and my tendons tensed. Everything in me pummeled until she squirmed away. When my vision blurred, she was all I saw. The slit on her brow began to close, and in what seemed like seconds, her massive injuries died out with her unsteady stare. Her wild eyes lost the fire in them. I had seen the look once before. When I couldn’t control my healing abilities, my powers killed a person I touched. Healing everything drained all the energy from their body. I’d only done it to one person before. Twelve years later, I was seeing the same expression on this girl’s face.

I caught her before she slumped over. “I didn’t do that.” Panic forced my words out. “I didn’t heal you that much.”

“You’re a bad blood,” she managed through a shallow breath.

That’s when I understood. She had healed herself with my abilities, and now that she had them, she didn’t know how to control it.

“Concentrate on something else.” I told her how to restrain the power, but she looked past me. “What’s your name?” When I grabbed her face, she found my eyes. “What’s your name?”

“Serena.” The healing slowed down. “I’m Serena.”

I kept my fingers locked around her chin. “Just hold on, Serena,” I repeated her name, hoping she would continue to concentrate elsewhere. “You’re going to be okay,” I promised, and as if she could defy my promises, she went limp in my arms.

***

I shifted Serena’s weight from my right shoulder to my left. Despite my lack of energy, I managed to carry her two blocks. She didn’t weigh much. I tried not to think about what had happened to her in the blood camp. Torture and all kinds of heinous things. Everyone knew the rumors, but the rumors were her reality, and carrying her made the rumors too real to ignore.

“You can do this.” I talked to myself as I concentrated on my pain instead of hers. My shoulder burned. Over a decade had passed since my injury and it still ached up a storm before it rained.

When Calhoun’s crooked apartment finally came into view, deep relief filled me. Until I saw it. Shadows twirled around the lamppost and curled off the ground. Light didn’t affect it. The shadow, existing on its own, camouflaged into the dark alley masterfully. The only difference between this shadow and the rest of them was one thing: she had a name.

“Vi.” I stared at the crevice where she attempted to hide. It reminded me of the first time I had found her. “I know you’re there, Violet.” She didn’t move. “On the count of three—”

“All right. All right.” The girl’s voice rose from the ground as the shadow split into two arms. When it spun, it formed a preteen girl. Her feet were hazy, and her long hair flew around her shoulders like shadow-clad snakes. Even then, her pale skin mimicked the moon against a night sky.

“What are you doing?” I scolded her presence. The red lights were still on. It was more than illegal to be out, and Violet knew it. In the least, she should’ve been inside with Calhoun…or working harder at hiding from me.

“And what are you doing?” Her dilated pupils pointed to Serena.

“You know the rules, Vi.”

“How do you expect me to follow the stupid rules if you don’t?” Her skinny arms worked her hair into a ponytail. “I stayed close.”

When I stepped forward, Vi followed me, her footsteps never making a sound. “Is she—?”

“She’s alive,” I said, although I didn’t know how alive Serena was.

“I was going to ask if she was the one who escaped.”

My muscles tensed as I neared Calhoun’s door. I had broken his rules, and until I confronted him, I couldn’t tell Vi a thing.

I made my way up the steps one at a time. “Go home, Vi.”

“But—”

“No arguments,” I interrupted. “Go home, tell Michele I’m fine, and I’ll see you tomorrow night.” Michele was the mother figure of our flock. She had premonitions, but they weren’t clear. She might have seen the trouble I was in but not how it turned out, and Vi was among the ones I trusted to travel safely at night, even if she was thirteen.

“Don’t mention her.” I gestured to Serena. “Don’t even hint at it.”

“Fine.” Vi bit her lip before her face melted into shadows, looking like a skull before she was gone. Her darkness disappeared, and the rain began to pour. Gloom and doom, it always followed Vi. And for once, I wasn’t concerned about the kid or the sudden storm.

I adjusted Serena and stared at Calhoun’s door. The man who had saved my life by taking me off the streets was a father to me. He taught me everything I knew, and he made sure I taught the children in my flock the same lessons. I may have been the designated leader of the Northern Flock, but Calhoun was the real leader—the one who began it all. I owed him my life, so, naturally, I thanked him often by breaking his rules.

Act like you belong; then, make yourself belong. Don’t stick out. Don’t think irrationally, but always make sure you’re thinking. Be prepared before you prepare yourself more. Above all else, be safe, and don’t risk everyone’s safety for one.

Before I had the chance to knock, the door swung open and smacked against the brick wall. An enormous man filled the entrance. The muscles in his left arm were hard to ignore, but the sleeve that should’ve been tightly wrapped around his right arm was dangling at his side, limbless. Despite his injury, Calhoun wasn’t troubled one bit. A shotgun swung outside and pointed toward my chest.

I cursed. “It’s me.”

“Daniel?” He cursed back. This was how we said hello. “Why are you standin’ out here like a stranger?”

I didn’t budge because I knew he had seen Serena. His eyes had adjusted to the night by now. He didn’t curse this time.

“She escaped,” I managed.

Before I could explain, Calhoun propped his gun against the wall inside and helped me up the stairs. He closed the door behind me, and I heard the deadbolt lock into place as I laid her unconscious body on the couch. Cal didn’t have to order me to check the two layers of curtain. They were always closed and tacked to the walls, but it didn’t hurt to double check the clips keeping the outside world outside. There was nothing quite like lights in the middle of the night to raise neighborhood suspicions.

“What the hell happened?” Cal asked as he stomped into the kitchen.

I didn’t have to ask him to grab a Diet Coke for me. He tossed me one before he even shut the fridge. I opened the drink and gulped it down. When I was young, Calhoun explained how the chemicals in the soda combined with my bad blood’s gene. It boosted my immune system almost instantly. Most days, I couldn’t survive without it.

“I’m guessing she caused the red lights,” Cal said.

This time, I nodded.

“And you?”

“I had nothing to do with it,” I promised. “I just saved her.”

“That means you had something to do with it.”

I stooped down to Serena and pressed the cold can against her face. She didn’t react, so I laid my forefingers against her throat. I held my breath until I felt it. Her heartbeat. It was weak, but it was there.

“She’s alive.”

Cal’s expression didn’t budge. I knew he was disappointed. Everyone in Vendona saw the newscast, and I could only imagine what he was thinking. He was far from naïve. He had fought in the war following the discovery of bad bloods, and he had encouraged the Separation Movement from the human side. Back then, he was a high-ranked official, and his goal was to destroy the gene, including any child who held it. It all changed when he saved me. My life altered his. Cal fought for our side now. Even then, he had firsthand experience in a blood camp, and he knew what every citizen did. No one survived a blood camp. Not until today.

The government wouldn’t let Serena go without a chase and a fight. I risked my flock by saving her life.

“I thought it could’ve been one of the kids,” I said, accepting my panic for what it was: foolishness. None of my kids had been taken. Not ever. But I was quick to assume it was their fate.

“I know.” Cal tilted his head toward the single hallway in his cramped apartment. “Get some sleep.” My bedroom was waiting. “We’ll figure this out in the mornin’.”

“But—”

My gaze landed on Serena. When I first saw her, I thought she was a brunette, but her blonde hair blazed beneath the soot in the murky light.

I didn’t know anything about her. I didn’t know where she came from, and I definitely didn’t understand her powers. All I knew was how much I had risked and how much I didn’t regret it, even though every part of me wanted to. I didn’t understand, but Calhoun always seemed to understand more than I did.

“Daniel,” he interrupted my thoughts without hesitation. “Go to bed. I’ll take care of her.” His military tone was impossible to ignore, but I couldn’t budge. I couldn’t leave.

“I won’t kill her,” he added.

I looked over at the man who could’ve easily killed me years ago, and I saw the same gaze he held when he realized what I was. He would save her like he saved me, but we didn’t know if she would save us in return.

We would have to wait until she woke up to find out.

My eyelids were the only part of my body I could move, but I couldn’t control them. I pried them open, blinking a dozen times before my vision focused on the ceiling. The bumpy plaster mimicked the storm clouds I had seen last night, the ones I lost consciousness to. His touch still burned through my veins.

A bad blood.

I sprung up, and my spine squeezed as I remembered everything. Charlotte. Her russet stare. The gunshots. The way my legs pumped as I ran. The children’s screams. The way the boy’s green eyes narrowed right before he kicked me. My voice as I spoke my name one last time. The world was black when my mind slipped away beneath his touch.

I created chaos, and I had lived through it.

Somehow—in some way—I was alive, and I had no idea where I was. The congested room was dusty and dim, but the shadows couldn’t conceal the golden-brown walls. The only light came from a small television. It was old, probably older than I was, and I tore my eyes away from the bright static. It would only obscure my night vision.

When my eyes adjusted to the dark, I held my breath. No one was around. I was alone, but the curtains were pinned to the walls. Not the best sign.

I stood up on shaky legs as lightning flashed, revealing the rose color of my new prison’s cloth, and my toes dragged across the shag carpet before I realized my shoes were gone. I told myself I could handle running away barefoot. I told myself I could do anything.

I focused on the nearest door, knowing it was my best exit, but I needed a weapon first.

I tiptoed through the living room, across the wood floor, and moved into the kitchen. Careful not to bump into the four iron stools on the end of the island, I swerved around the fridge and found a knife set on the far countertop. It was in my grasp before I heard the floorboards creak.

When I spun around, my heel smacked the cabinet, but I kept my focus on him. He stood in the doorframe only a yard away.

“You don’t need that.” The guy’s voice was as crisp and clear as the sound escaping the soda he popped open. He even took a sip.

My fingers tightened on the blade’s handle as I prepared for a fight. A deadly fight. But nothing happened.

“You don’t,” he repeated, his gaze leaving my weapon. Apparently, the sight of an insane girl bearing a knife in his kitchen wasn’t frightening.

I recognized him as the one who stopped me in Shadow Alley, the bad-blooded one. His eyes were impossible to forget. The emerald color was unnatural against his olive-colored skin. Even though his mop of curly hair casted a shadow over his face, his stare radiated through the dark. Unlike me, if you looked at him close enough, you could tell he wasn’t human. Not completely anyway.

A knife didn’t scare him. He had seen worse. Most of us had.

I kept my weapon in front of me. “You attacked me.”

“To save you,” he countered like a parent would to a naïve child. “You weren’t making it out of there alive.” He gestured to the front door with his soda in hand. “And you won’t live if you leave.”

My toes pressed against the floor. “Are you going to stop me?”

“I guess you can find out.”

He would. I could hear it in his tone.

“Look at it this way, Serena,” he drew out my name. “I wouldn’t have risked myself just to kill you.”

He had to be lying. If he waited a day, there would be an award for my capture. In our broken economy, I wouldn’t forget what desperation did to a person, but his casual shrug said he knew nothing of desperation. Or, at least, that was how he wanted to appear.

“I’m just helping someone who is unfortunate. Is that a crime?”

“Technically, yes.” I found my voice, rendered rough by weeks unused. “You could turn me in.”

“And risk exposure?” He smirked at my suggestion. “You and I both know that bloods run from attention, even good attention.”

The boy—whoever he was—had a point. He was like me. I knew it the minute his fingers contacted my bare skin. But I expected him to lie, to hide behind my insanity. He could easily turn me in and claim I was delirious. He didn’t. He confessed.

“You’re a bad blood,” I accused, waiting for him to change his mind, wanting him to make sense.

“I prefer blooded. Bad blood has a negative connotation,” he spoke like a politician, emotionless and monotone, and he never averted his eyes from mine. “I want you to trust me, so I have to trust you.”

My palms were clammy, but my grip didn’t subside. Trust. The word thundered inside of me as the cramped house rumbled from the real thunder outside. Trust didn’t exist in a world filled with hate. Even then, his relaxed expression tempted me to believe in trust again.

We were silent in that moment and the muffled lull of the rainstorm consumed us. It was November, but it hadn’t snowed in Vendona in twelve years. I was five the last time I witnessed snowflakes, and the house moaned like it could sense my memories. The boy sipped his soda as he looked away for the first time. He fixated on the curtains, but his lips bent down. He was no longer concerned with me. He was somewhere else entirely, somewhere dark, somehow stuck. He had memories, too.

I peeled my bony fingers off the handle and placed the knife on the countertop. It took another kind of strength to step away from it. When I looked up, he was watching me again.

“Where am I?” My voice trembled. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answer, but I had to ask.

“Calhoun’s house.” He didn’t explain who Calhoun was. “My name is Wilson by the way.” His brow furrowed. “Daniel. My name is Daniel.”

“Daniel,” I repeated, wondering if he’d change his name again. This time, he nodded. “Why’d you lie?”

He glanced down, revealing thick eyelashes. “Would you tell me your real name if you hadn’t already told me?”

I wouldn’t have. A name wasn’t just a name. It was a trait, an identity. It was personal. It was traceable, proof of your illegal existence, and he’d given his to me willingly.

Openness and honesty didn’t exist outside the Southern Flock—only risk did—but Daniel was demolishing that notion.

Thunder rattled the foundation, and the knife clattered against the counter. Rain pummeled the house so harshly the smell of moisture flooded the kitchen. I hugged myself, but still shivered in the uncanny temperature. It was heavy but cool, and a part of me had adjusted to the deadly warmth of my cell. Freedom was cold.

Daniel shook off his plaid jacket, but when he started to cross the room, I stepped back, smacking into the cabinet again.

He flinched like he hadn’t expected my reaction. “Take it,” he offered the jacket from a distance. When I didn’t reach out, he tossed it onto the island, and it landed in front of me.

I kept my eyes on him as I snatched it. He didn’t try to get close again. He only watched me as I shrugged it on. The warmth was comforting, but the size wasn’t. He was bigger than I was. Much bigger. And I hadn’t realized it until his sleeves dangled over my fingertips. I had to be a foot shorter and a hundred pounds lighter, although my current weight wasn’t my norm. It would take weeks to build my strength back up. Still, I recognized his muscular vigor. It was a trait of the streets. Whoever Daniel was, he didn’t live in this house.

“You’ve been out for an entire day,” he offered the information before I realized I wanted to know.

Twenty-four hours had passed. I wasn’t sure what the time meant other than I was still alive. I wasn’t dead. I had a future. The realization was difficult to accept.

“What time is it?” I refused to look around the room for a clock.

Daniel’s eyes darted above my head. “Late, really late.” When his eyes flicked down, he studied my face. “Do you have somewhere you need to be?”

To him, I was a bad blood on the loose, not exactly a person expected to have priorities, but I did have somewhere I needed to be.

Home.

Of course, the average bad blood didn’t have a home. They only had the streets and death, but I wasn’t the norm. The Southern Flock was home to me. Just the thought of Catelyn’s suffocating hugs made my heart lurch. I had forgotten the basics—what their voices sounded like, what they smelled like—but their faces were melded into my mind, their love sewed deep into my veins. No one could ever truly forget love. But I wasn’t about to admit that to Daniel. I had already told him too much.

He cleared his throat to garner my attention. “Are you all right?”

“I am,” I managed. “Physically, I mean.”

“You’ll be all right, you know,” he said. “Mentally, I mean.”

“Thanks.”

He turned his back to me, and I could see where sweat had collected on his undershirt. Despite that, his hair wasn’t matted. He hadn’t slept, and if I wanted to attack, this was my chance.

I lifted my hand toward the knife only to drop my hand to my side. “Why’d you help me?”

He kept his back to me, still, as if listening for my actions. “I’m not sure.”

The silence following his honesty was painful. He could’ve been killed. We both knew that.

I didn’t reach for the knife again. “Thanks.”

Daniel’s back rose as he half-laughed, half-grunted. “You shouldn’t thank a stranger for doing the right thing.”

“A lot of people wouldn’t say you did the right thing.”

“A lot of people are wrong.” When he turned around, his expression locked into a glare meant for someone else. “What they did to you—to all of us—is wrong.”

I swallowed his words, unable to argue.

“Look,” he paused as his forehead furrowed into a series of lines that would wrinkle with age. “I’m leaving.”

“What?”

He walked to the front door. “I have somewhere I have to be.”

“But—”

“You’ll be taken care of,” he promised, swiftly giving me the once-over. “You’re safe here. Calhoun will help you.” When he nodded behind me, I turned around.

An older man entered the room from the same hallway where Daniel had appeared. He was broad and bald, but his right sleeve dangled at his side. It fluttered as he walked into the kitchen and flipped the lights on. His face might as well have been sculpted from stone. That is, until he smiled. His goofy grin didn’t suit his military body.

I leapt toward Daniel to avoid the unpredictable man. “I—I can’t trust him,” I whispered, even though it was pointless. Calhoun had heard me.

Daniel smiled for the first time, a dimple appearing on his right cheek. “You can,” he said, “and quite frankly, you don’t have much of a choice.”

“The red light is still on.” Calhoun’s baritone voice, unlike his grin, fit his exterior. “The streets are flooded with officers.” Officers still looking for me.

I stared at Daniel. “Then, why are you leaving?” Anyone could be arrested during a red light. It was the law. But he didn’t care. He grabbed a black jacket off the coatrack.

“I’m not the one they’re searching for.” The only semi-familiar face I had was about to leave.

“I have a home,” I blurted out, hoping my words would entice him enough to stay.

He froze as though they did, until Calhoun chuckled like my words had no effect on him at all. “Doesn’t change the fact that they’re after you,” the old man said. “It won’t be safe to travel until tomorrow mornin’. They’ll create a lie by then.”

“You’ll be safe here.” Daniel emphasized his last word. “I won’t be coming back, so Cal can take you wherever you need to go.”

“Are you going to see Michele?” Calhoun mentioned a girl’s name I hadn’t heard yet.

Daniel nodded once as he put on the jacket he had grabbed. It must have been Calhoun’s because it was too big for him, but Daniel didn’t ask me to give his back.

“Be safe out there,” Calhoun continued on, his accent growing thicker. “In the meantime, I’ll get Serena home.” He knew my name, too. “You hungry?”

My paranoia surrounding my identity disappeared at the thought of food, and my stomach grumbled. The hunger was borderline nauseating. I had to lay my hand on the wall to keep myself from lunging across the counter and fighting the man for food.

“Calm down,” he said, recognizing the desperation in my stare. “I’ll whip something up for you.” He opened the food cabinet, and various cans caused my vision to blur.

“Really?” I squeaked.

“Really,” he called over his shoulder. “Just sit.”

Daniel moved in my peripheral vision until I saw what he was pointing at. The four barstools I had avoided out of fear now looked like the front seat to heaven. I sat down before I could convince myself not to.

“See?” Daniel tried to muffle his laugh, but failed. “You can trust him, too.”

Blood rushed to my cheeks as I nodded, but I didn’t look away from Daniel. He was a little older than I was, maybe by a year or two, but he was capable of laughing. I wasn’t. His smile was the first smile I had seen in weeks, and the single expression churned my insides with comforting nostalgia. His expression calmed me, but his next move caused my panic.

He opened the door and left without as much as a glance back.

I leapt off my chair and rushed to the front door. “Daniel.”

He turned around, one foot on the pavement, the other one on the last step. Rain dripped off the ends of his hair, but it didn’t stop him from looking at me. The red lights moved across his cheekbones. “You’re okay, Serena.” I had lost count of how many times he had said it.

“Do you have to leave tonight?” I wanted to stop him, to save him from the streets in the same way he had saved me, but he put his other foot on the cursed roads of Vendona.

“I don’t get caught.”

“I didn’t either.”

Daniel surveyed the street. He was still, as if he had forgotten how to breathe now that he met me. The reality of being caught was something else entirely.

“I won’t,” he said with a sigh, but he didn’t sound like he meant it. “Get yourself home. Take care of yourself.” In his words, I heard what he didn’t say—Don’t worry about me.

My hand curled around the doorframe. “Goodbye, then.”

Daniel’s emerald eyes trailed back up to me. “I don’t say goodbye unless I think it’s final.”

With that, he spun toward Shadow Alley and walked away. I didn’t follow him. I was too shocked at his words, at his expectation to see me again, and by the time I focused, I knew it was too late. He had disappeared into the protective darkness of the bad blood lane.

He was gone, and I would leave in the morning. Either way, I was safe, and safety was all that mattered. I could only hope the shadows would keep Daniel safe, too.

My footsteps sounded louder on the wet pavement than the dissipating thunder. The chaos was clearing out with the clouds, and the air barely held any recognition of the previous day. It was quiet, but my mind was loud.

Shadow Alley was empty, but I remembered how I met Violet on the street. She was six then, and the Northern Flock already had five members. At the time, we didn’t need more mouths to feed, but I fought Calhoun. She was the same age I was when I was kicked onto the streets. I saw myself in her. Seven years had passed since Vi’s membership, but not much had changed. Only our numbers. There were twelve of us now, and they were waiting for me.

I walked for thirty minutes, barely breathing, slowly moving. The only noises I dared to make were ones I couldn’t control. Raindrops clung to my hair until they succumbed to gravity and splashed against the puddled ground. No matter how carefully I stepped, the wet gravel shifted beneath my feet, but the distant thunder masked the echoes. The stormy night was my best aid.

Shadow Alley was black aside from the warning lights, which only brightened the parts connected to side streets. At the openings, I paused, pressing myself against the corners of the buildings. The echoes worked both ways. If an officer were near, the tunneled alleyways would expose him as much as they exposed me, but the storm would help him cover his tracks too.

I had to listen to the pattern of the rain, to the howling wind, and separate those sounds from everything else—the pitter-patter of paws, too loud to be a cat, too small to be a large dog. The chirr of a swinging window caught my attention before the voices did. Someone was watching television. Then, I heard the hum of an engine.

A car.

Only two types of people owned cars in Vendona: the rich and the government.

I held my breath as I pressed my back against the brick wall, sheltering myself from the connecting street. A beam of light washed over the wooden fence in front of me. Patrol. The tires rolled over the pavement and passed within seconds. As nerve-wracking as the encounter was, I knew the police wouldn’t get out of their cars to check Shadow Alley.

Over a decade ago, the street was another rocky road, but I couldn’t remember the original name anymore. Not after the fence was put in place. Even though the government wanted us to forget what happened to the Western Flock, no one could. Shadow Alley changed. All of Vendona had.

I shook my head as I continued to walk with the moving storm. Fifteen more minutes passed, and the pavement slowly meshed into mud. Once I trudged over the hill, a series of homes appeared. The northern part of town was the most populous, but only a few lights remained on. My home. Michele only kept the light on when she was worried, but I wish she wouldn’t do either. I was their leader. I would never leave them, not even in the time of death.

Gravity guided me down the slick slope as water seeped into my jeans. When I reached the asphalt, I jogged to the house that had sheltered us for a decade. It was under Calhoun’s name, but it managed to fit us all. Uncomfortably.

The front door opened before I even had a chance to knock. A boy with gangly limbs blocked the entrance. “Great of you to show up.” His lips stretched too far. Every part of him did. It was what made him blooded. He thought it was brilliant. I thought he was an idiot.

I ducked beneath his arm and strode into the house. “Shut the door,” I ordered.

Floyd obeyed, but he spoke like he hadn’t. “I was going to anyway.” Despite being twenty years old and the oldest in the flock, he was a child in my eyes. Ever since the pre-election results poured in, he acted like he should’ve been the leader. I almost regretted taking him in two years ago. “Where have you been?”

I shook off Cal’s jacket and draped it over the nearest chair. “Out.”

“With a girl?” The soft voice floated through the room as she came out of the kitchen. The glowing room behind her lit her up even more. Michele already knew about Serena.

“Vi told you.”

“I did not,” the hidden preteen shouted from Floyd’s shadow, but I focused on Michele. Even though Michele was a year younger than I was, she kept the youngest children in order. Without her, I couldn’t take care of everyone. She taught the kids to cook and clean, but most of all, she cared for all twelve of us equally.

Her snow-white hair was blinding as she moved into the lamplight. “Vi didn’t tell me.” Her gray eyes flashed yellow. “I saw.” Her premonitions were impossible to avoid.

Floyd grunted. “Shows how much you care about our safety.”

“Enough,” Michele snapped, but even her anger was delicate. With limp hands, she gestured to the basement door, and it clicked as it shut. The younger kids were eavesdropping. Michele sighed at Floyd. “Go make yourself useful.”

His shoulders shook, but he listened—again—and disappeared down the basement stairs without another word. I waited a minute before I looked at Michele. When we made eye contact, her nimble hand whisked to the table by the front window. “We need to talk.”

***

“You can’t go randomly running off like that.” Michele shook her head as she fiddled with the lamp by the stairs.

It was a gift from Calhoun, but I had begged Michele to get rid of it. Over the years, it had stubbed three toes, jammed two fingers, and twisted four ankles, but she insisted it would come in handy one day, so it stayed, and I avoided it. The tiny scratches around the rim reminded me of snowflakes.

When it was finally turned off, Michele walked across the hallway and sat down at our crooked table. I slipped into the chair across from her. “First off,” I began, “it wasn’t exactly random. The red lights went off before I could meet up with Cal.”

“So, you took in a stranger?” she retorted as her eyes flashed yellow again. Her eyelids snapped shut, and she rubbed them like she could make it go away. I knew she couldn’t. She couldn’t even decipher them. Her premonitions weren’t controllable, and she lived with the pain of the future, somewhat known but still as much of a mystery to anyone else.

“What did you see?” I asked after a minute.

“What time?” Her voice strained against her throat, powerless in her powers. “When you disappeared or just now?”

“Both.”

“I saw you carrying her.” Serena. “That’s all.”

“And this time?”

“We’ll get around to that.” Her pale cheeks flushed at her snap. “I’m sorry,” her mutter dropped to a whisper. “It’s nearly impossible to keep everyone from panicking right now, especially when you’re not here.” Her lips opened, closed, and then opened again. “Floyd doesn’t help.”

“I know, but we need supplies.”

She looked me up and down. “Where are the supplies anyway?”

I cringed. “Cal’s.” In my haste, I had forgotten what was most important.

“I sent Adam out to get some anyway.”

“Explains where he is.”

Adam wasn’t the quiet type, and he definitely wasn’t the type to hang out with Floyd in the basement. On a normal night, he would’ve been at the table with us. Maggie, too.

“Maggie’s with him,” Michele answered my unasked question. “I couldn’t let him go out alone.”

Adam was the first member of the Northern Flock, but he was also Calhoun’s nephew. He understood the streets, but he didn’t take after his militarized uncle. He was loud and careless. He was also my best friend. Maggie kept him in check.

“They’ll be fine,” I tried to ease Michele’s worry, but she laid her forehead in her hands.

Her fingers threaded through her white hair. “The election is getting closer,” she said. “If you keep going out like this, you’ll get caught.”

“Is that a premonition or a concern?” I asked.

Michele lifted her chin to rest it on her palm. “Concern.”

I laid a hand on my chest and mocked a happy sigh. “That’s a relief.”

She smacked my arm. “This is no time to joke,” she said, even though she half-laughed.

Laughter was a strange but necessary aspect of our existence. We knew our chances were poor, but we couldn’t forget to feel. Vendona could succumb to negativity, but we wouldn’t. We had to stay positive if we were going to survive.

Still, Michele’s laughter tapered away. “You have no idea what happens to the kids when you disappear.” She didn’t hold back. “Ryne and Kally fight. Peyton cries. Blake won’t even eat.”

Blake, the youngest, had been with me since birth. He was practically my son.

“I got him to eat some cereal,” Michele clarified before I could panic. “He’s sleeping now, but it was a fight.”

“I’m sorry,” I sighed. “I am, but I had a good reason.”

“One girl?” She shifted away from my touch. “You don’t even know how she escaped that blood camp.”

“It shouldn’t matter,” I countered. “She’s one of us.”

“And they’ll chase her until she’s dead.”

“How’s that any different from what they’re already doing to all of us?”

My words silenced Michele. This time when I touched her hand, she didn’t pull away.

“She’s important, Michele,” I managed to speak as my gut tightened. Just the thought of Serena was overwhelming. “I can feel it.”

Michele’s hand flipped around to latch onto mine. Her heartbeat drummed against my palm. “You asked me what I saw earlier,” she said without looking at me. “I saw her. And it goes further than that.”

“What?”

Michele was silent.

“What is it?” I pressed. “What did you see?”

“I’ve seen her before. Not in a vision but in a dream.” She only pulled away from me to touch her sternum, as if to hold her heart in her chest.

“I don’t understand.”

“The dream, I think, came from a bad blood, a long time ago,” she struggled over her words, as if even Michele—the girl of visions—couldn’t understand another’s foresight. “She’s important, Daniel,” she said. “I can feel it, too.”

After I had eaten, barely able to consume anything at all, Calhoun had directed me down the hallway. The bedroom on the right had a shower, and the man trusted me to walk through his house. I could’ve stolen something. I could’ve found another weapon. But he knew I wouldn’t. Not after Daniel. It was Daniel’s bedroom that had the shower. I only knew because Calhoun told me.

His room reminded me of a sea—something one could only see from certain sections in Eastern Vendona—but it somehow comforted me. The blue walls mimicked the afternoon sky I yearned to see, and a dark swirl twisted across the ceiling in the same way the shag carpet moved like waves. The plain bed could’ve been a white boat floating across the world, completely separated from the land I stood on.

I had to force myself to cross the room instead of stare at it, but I found myself frozen next to the bathroom. A small desk rested in the corner, revealing the only photos I had seen since entering Calhoun’s house.

The first was of children—about fifteen kids—and it was ripped at the edges. The colors were already fading too. It was old, and it didn’t hold my attention for long. The other one did.

I recognized Calhoun first. He was still bald, but he was younger, and a boy—no older than six—sat on his lap. While Cal smiled, the boy didn’t, but I doubt he could’ve even if he wanted to. One of his green eyes was swelled shut, and bandagers wrapped around his torso. A sling held his right arm against his chest, a deep-seated bruise smearing across his skin. Bloodstains poked through the cloth that covered his shoulder. It was Daniel. And even now, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

“Serena?” Calhoun’s voice tore through my thoughts, shattering my memory of the previous day. We were no longer in his apartment. We had spent the past hour walking to the southern part of town, and I only stopped because Cal reminded me to. He knew the address. After all, I had told him, and he had stayed with me, even though we had arrived.

A large, white house with red trim and brown shutters sat at the end of the cul-de-sac. It glowed in the sunlight, and I blinked to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. My home. It was right in front of me.

“Are you okay?” Cal asked when I didn’t walk up to it. “If you’re family turned you in—”

“They didn’t,” I clarified, knowing exactly what Cal was thinking. Most bad bloods were turned in by their relatives. I was an exception. “They know.”

“Well, then.” Calhoun raised his hand like he was about to pat me, but I shrank away. He dropped his hand and cleared his throat, turning back to my house. “We’re here.”

I rubbed my hands together, feeling my clean skin for the umpteenth time. I wasn’t covered in grime, and my clothes were washed, borrowed from Daniel’s dresser. If the pants hadn’t had drawstrings, they wouldn’t have fit.

“I’ll return everything in a few days,” I started, but Cal shook his head.

“It’s fine.”

When his eyes moved over the house, I followed his stare. The front door had opened, and a little girl ran out. Her laughter soared over us as an older boy chased her out. Steven. He caught Melody in seconds, flipping the four-year-old over his shoulder like a doll. As he tickled her, her giggles grew, and when they went back inside, the laughter disappeared.

I couldn’t breathe.

That’s Melody and Steven, I imagined myself speaking to Cal. I never thought I’d see them again. They look great.

They do, Calhoun would agree. I didn’t know you had siblings.

I wouldn’t be able to tell Calhoun they weren’t related to me, but I would tell him about my sister—the one my biological parents had seven years ago. I still went to their house sometimes. They lived on the western part, two blocks away from Calhoun’s apartment. I was on my way to visit them when I was caught.

“Tell Daniel to stop helping people,” I said before I thought it over, and I continued once my mind caught up, “That’s how I got caught.”

It was Alan I ran into—the boy they executed first. He was hiding in Shadow Alley. When he ran into the main square, I chased him. The police were waiting for him. His parents had turned him in.

“I already have,” Calhoun admitted, slight amusement taking over. “He doesn’t listen.”

I remembered the photograph. “He isn’t your son, is he?”

Cal fiddled with his empty sleeve as I studied him. He didn’t confirm it, but he didn’t deny it either. The crease on his forehead told me I was right, but it also told me I was wrong. Cal loved Daniel like a son. I could see it in the photograph.

“I saw the photo in his bedroom,” I admitted, desperate to understand the two westerners I tried to run away from. “The streets almost killed him, didn’t they?”

Cal’s eyes darkened into onyx jewels. “How do you know it was the streets?”

“When you live on the streets, you know the injuries they cause.” I stared at my house, the one we had for seven years. Before that, Robert and I lived beneath a bridge. I had to tear my eyes away from Cal to speak to him. “You saved him, right?” If he had saved Daniel, Cal had indirectly saved me, but he wouldn’t speak. “Thanks for helping me, too.”

“You won’t tell?” The man didn’t trust me, but he wanted to. I could hear it in between his words. I promised to keep them a secret, and he grinned his goofy grin. “You take care of yourself, Serena.”

He turned to walk away, but I grabbed his empty sleeve. “Wait.” I released my grasp as he froze. “You should know something.”

He faced me once more, and I searched his face, trying to find some resemblance of Daniel in his stare, but I found none. They weren’t related. Not by blood.

“The police didn’t know I was a bad blood when they arrested me.” I found my voice. “They forcibly took my blood at the station.”

“They can’t do that,” Cal said through a frown.

“Well, they did.” I wished the needle marks were still on my arm, but my skin had healed. Everything but my insides had. “They tested it, and that’s how they knew I was a bad blood.” I hesitated to tell him the rest. “Logan’s technology already exists.” If he won the election, everyone would be killed. “Let Daniel know that.”

Cal’s jaw locked. He didn’t nod or speak, but his eyes lit up with an internal fire. He would tell him, and my knowledge was the only way I could repay them. It was a warning I wish I had previously known, a threat I had to tell my leader about and soon.

This time, I was the first to turn around. I didn’t watch Calhoun leave, but I listened to his footsteps as I walked in the opposite direction. As my feet moved toward my home, I concentrated on my breathing, and I dug my fingers into Daniel’s jacket to prevent my hands from shaking.

The Southern Flock had to think I was dead. They had probably already mourned my life, yet my heart pounded. Every inch of me pounded, including my palm as I grasped the doorknob and twisted.

Before I comprehended what happened, the door sprung open. It was unlocked, and the entryway faced me, familiar but surreal. I couldn’t move, speak, or step back. I could only stand in the doorframe, listening to the buzzing voices rise into gasps.

A few pairs of eyes met mine before they turned into faces, whole bodies of people I had lived with for years.

“Sissy!” Melody was the first to run up to me, and she was the first person I hadn’t pushed away. She wrapped her arms around my legs before I even realized she was touching me, and I laid my hand on her back before I knew I was capable of returning her touch.

“I knew it.” Another girl—a fourteen-year-old—spoke from the stairway she was now clutching. She had to peel herself away to rush toward me, and her arms wrapped around my torso like chains. Her tears prevented me from stumbling away. “I knew it was you. I just knew it.”

Ami. She smelled like lilacs. I remembered now.

“Come to the front,” Steven shouted as he rushed over to shut the door behind me. “Everyone, come here!”

Within seconds, footsteps were rocking the foundation of our home, and faces were popping out from various rooms. Squeals of delight followed, and embraces consumed me. Little kids yelped, teenagers hollered, and the ruckus threatened our exposure.

Huey was missing a tooth, Niki was holding scissors, and Justan stood by her with his hair half-cut. Everyone had grown, but—most of all—I could feel myself growing into them.

A single shout shattered it all.

“Quiet down.” The older boy’s voice was loud, clear and practiced, the voice only a leader could have. In one echo, it demanded everyone’s attention, and people dispersed like he controlled them.

“What’s with all the noise?” When he entered the room, I only saw his brown eyes. “Serena.”

I nodded, unable to say his name back. Robert. The leader of the Southern Flock, the boy who took me off the streets when I was five. Back then, he was scrawny, short, and pale. Now, he was broad, and his jawline settled against his angular face. Back then, it was just him and me. Now, there were twelve of us. The Southern Flock was whole again.

“Serena,” he said my name again as he crossed the room and swooped me into his arms. My face buried into his shoulder as he picked me up and spun me around. When he placed me back down, the world continued to spin.

“Serena.” He laid his fingers on my face. His thumbs dragged across my cheekbones the same way his eyes moved over them. “I can’t believe it’s you.”

I didn’t want to think of what he saw. I had avoided my reflection. Even when I took a shower, I kept my back to the mirror until it fogged up. I imagined I looked nothing like I had before. Weak. Thin. I wasn’t me. I knew that. I just didn’t want to see it myself.

“She’s the one who escaped,” Ami spoke over the crowd.

“Escaped,” Robert repeated, but he never looked away from me. He never let me go, but he didn’t say my name again.

I gripped his shirt before he could step away. “I’m alive,” I managed, knowing the thoughts consuming him. “I didn’t tell them anything. They don’t know I was in a flock—”

“Was?” Robert’s lips curved down before they bent up. “You still are.” He wouldn’t abandon me, even if all of Vendona were after my life.

My eyes burned with tears for the first time since my capture, but they disappeared before they ever had the chance to fall.

“Get dinner ready,” Robert called out to no one in particular, but everyone rushed to the kitchen as if he had spoken directly to them. “We’ll eat.”

“I can’t,” I admitted, knowing I couldn’t consume more than the little amount of food Cal had given me. My stomach had shrunk. “Not now.”

Robert laid his hands on my shoulders. “You can.”

I reached up and grabbed his hands. “Okay.”

“Come on,” he said, directing me over to the couch, but he didn’t wait for us to sit down to start talking, “How’d you escape?”

The interrogation was necessary. I knew that. He was the leader, and he couldn’t risk not knowing, but my stomach twisted. Daniel never asked me how I escaped. He only asked me how I was.

I swallowed my nerves. “A woman. She helped me.” I would never forget Charlotte. “I took shelter in the western outskirts. A boy took me in.”

Robert’s eyes lowered to my clothes. “Whose jacket is that?”

“He didn’t follow me here,” I promised Robert, and I kept my promise to Calhoun. I wouldn’t tell. Not even Robert. “He doesn’t know where we live or even that I am in a flock. He didn’t ask questions.”

“People don’t help our kind.”

“He did.”

Robert’s back pressed against the couch, but his hands curled into fists against his sweatpants. His knuckles were white. He glared at the wall. The air became hot, and I knew his powers were consuming him.

I squeezed his arm, careful not to touch his skin. He would burn me if I did. “I was careful.”

The air sizzled down. “I know.”

His tone gave him away. He may have been glad I was alive, but his excitement was dead. He was already refocused on the flock, acknowledging the repercussions of accepting me again. I was a risk. From now on, I always would be.

I buried the tears inside the same hole I kept my memories from the blood camp. It burned between my ribs as I searched the house. The red furniture was the same. Catelyn’s tabby cat hadn’t budged from the loveseat.

“Where is she?” I asked, knowing I didn’t have to clarify. She was practically my sister, and some days, I felt closer to her than to Robert.

“She’s working.” Catelyn somehow managed to get a job as a hairdresser without identification. “She’ll be back in an hour.”

Without warning, Steven appeared from the kitchen and made his way into the living room. He opened his mouth, but he shut it when he read the tension in our expressions.

“What is it?” Robert asked, half-agitated.

Steven pointed to the kitchen. “Niki needs you.”

Robert got up and left without another word. Steven sat across from me, placing his elbows on his knees. His limbs melded into one another, a sign of his bad-blooded nature, but he lifted his arms as if he could hide it.

“How are you?” I asked.

He chuckled. “I should be asking you that.”

I didn’t respond.

“Catelyn will be really happy,” he said. Ever since he had joined our flock four years ago, he had been attached to Catelyn. Their romantic relationship wasn’t a secret. “She’s been a wreck. Almost quit her job.”

My heart squeezed. “You stopped her, right?”

He nodded. As close as I was to Catelyn, she listened to him above anyone else. Sometimes I forgot they were separate people. Steven knew just as much about me as Catelyn did. Whenever I confessed anything to her, he was there, and he kept my secrets, even when he shouldn’t have. Other than Catelyn, he was the only person who knew I spied on my biological family. Robert didn’t even know. It was against the rules. The Southern Flock was supposed to be my only family.

“I was trying to see them,” I whispered, knowing I didn’t have to tell Steven it was how I was caught.

“I didn’t tell him,” Steven muttered back, but he watched the kitchen door. “Catelyn didn’t either.”

My fingers curled against Daniel’s jacket as I nodded. Even when they thought I was dead, they let me take my secrets to my grave. I opened my mouth to thank him, but his hand rose to silence me.

“Don’t.” His mouth formed a crooked line. “We never gave up on you.” His words slammed into me. “You’re home now. That’s what matters,” he paused, “even if Robert can’t see that.”

“He can,” I defended our leader. “But he has others to worry about.”

As Steven searched my face, his hazel eyes reminded me of Daniel’s bright irises. “Worry about yourself right now. Okay?” When he stood up, he gestured to the stairs. “Get some sleep if you need to.” My room. It was still mine and only a staircase away. “Everyone will understand.”

“Thanks,” I said, standing up to go to my bed—a queen mattress I shared with Melody, and sometimes Catelyn too.

Steven went to the kitchen to explain, but when he opened the door, I paused on the stairs. All of their voices—squeaky and low—traveled over me, and warmth radiated inside the darkest hole I created. I was finally back.

Home. That’s what utopia is.

***

I didn’t dream of utopia that night. I saw the blood camp. I felt the officer’s fingernails push into my scalp as he tried to drown me. I tasted the dirt in my mouth when they slammed my face against the ground. My mind went blank. I fought back only for them to knock me out.

When I woke up, he was still on top of me, and I scratched him across the face.

“Serena!” Robert’s voice. He was damp, but he smelled like a fire. Still, his fingers were cold against my forehead. “It’s me.” His palm moved to my cheek, and I felt him wipe my tears away. “It’s just me.”

It was dark, but his gaze caught the moonlight from the window. It was open, and the cold air blew across us. His bangs fluttered.

When I inhaled, my breath seethed down my throat. A gasp escaped me, “Robert.”

“Yeah.” He collapsed next to me. Somehow, I had fallen onto my bedroom floor, and Robert was there. He rolled onto his back and laid his forearm on his forehead. Sweat dripped down the side of his face as his chest moved up and down.

“You were screaming,” he finally managed.

Whatever had happened in my sleep, it had taken a while to wake me up.

“The cops—”

Robert flicked his hand, dismissing me. “Just breathe.”

He didn’t care about getting caught. Not yet.

I took another breath and realized my body was shaking. It died down to a vibration I couldn’t control. My heart was pumping, even though I wasn’t in the blood camp anymore. I had to tell myself I was home to believe it. I had to stare at it to feel it.

My bedroom ceiling was a gray mist in the night, but it was purple during the day I had slept through. I yearned to see the color again.

“Where’s Melody?” I asked, knowing the four-year-old slept in my room.

“With Catelyn and Steven.” Their room was next to mine. “She’s okay,” he said, but he didn’t say what I wanted to know until I stared at him. “You didn’t hurt her.”

My sigh felt like the first, real breath I had taken, but I only moved to get closer to Robert. He tensed when I touched him, but his chest sunk when I laid my ear against his ribs. When he didn’t move away, I closed my eyes. His heartbeat was as steady as it was when we slept beneath the bridge as children. His powers meant he was always warm, and his warmth was what I needed to survive those winter nights.

Back then, I curled up to him to prevent hypothermia, but tonight, my only comfort rested in my past. I had to go backward before I could go forward again. My past would allow me to sleep.

Robert rested his soothing hand on top of my head, and his fingertips brushed my hair out of my face. “You’ll be okay,” he whispered, but he didn’t sound like he was talking to me. “Just rest for now.”

The rain cooled the air, but that didn’t stop me from fishing. Even in November, the fish would bite, and that meant free food. As long as I didn’t take too much, it wasn’t even illegal.

My line cast across the water before landing three yards in front of me. Ripples drifted across the once-still lake, and I let the bait sink with my thoughts. Despite Michele’s complaint, I couldn’t stay home for long. I never could. I always had someone to feed, someone to talk to, and something to buy. I was always looking for jobs I could get with my fake ID, but it wasn’t easy during winter. Summer work was simpler, more straightforward. Most indoor businesses had scanners. Caution was my only lifesaver. Fishing was my go-to meditation. But the lake wasn’t calming my nerves today. I saw Serena’s gray stare in the waves.

She had a home, a family, people who took care of her. She was safe. But my stomach twisted when I thought about her cheekbones. They stuck out too far. Her eyes were too wild. Despite being able to heal her outer wounds, her damages on the inside would remain intact. I worried her family wouldn’t take her back when they found out. If they rejected her, I doubted I could save her again. I wouldn’t even know.

I reeled in the bait a few feet before I paused. When the line pulled, the string shot a line through the surface, and the sun sparkled against it, but it was the footsteps I concentrated on. Someone was behind me.

“How’d I know you’d be out here?”

I didn’t have to look to know who it was, but when Adam sat down next to me, I gave him a sidelong glance. The black-haired teenager was eating an apple, something we didn’t have at the house, and he hummed like it was the source of his happiness. Knowing him, he had stolen it.

“Fishing’s cheaper than grocery shopping,” I muttered, but I couldn’t focus on the bait any longer.

“So’s stealing.” I hadn’t seen Adam in a week, but I felt like I’d seen him yesterday. His dark eyes and pale skin were identical to Calhoun’s. They were related, after all.

Adam took one more bite out of his apple before laying the core on the ground. “You can’t feed a village with one fish.”

“I don’t plan on feeding Vendona.”

“Who do you plan on feeding?”

I caught his lit up eyes, followed by a smirk. Calhoun had the same look when he was provoking me. They would’ve been twins if they weren’t separated by a generation.

“What did Michele tell you?”

Clearly, Adam’s joke had been directed at Serena.

“Not a lot.” Adam placed his hands under his armpits to keep his fingers warm. He never wore appropriate clothing. “She doesn’t want to scare the kids.” Talking in front of the younger members was something we avoided. Too much crying caught the neighbors’ attention.

“Her name’s Serena,” I drew my words out. “Ever heard of her?”

One of Adam’s eyes squinted. “Why would you ask me that?” He was a terrible liar.

“I know you spend time with the gangs.”

Bad bloods weren’t the only ones discriminated against. Pockets of poor people grouped together, and many of them were teens just like us. They formed gangs and took shelter in the numerous abandoned buildings lining the edges of town. Adam had met with a few of them, and he returned enough that I realized what was happening. Why he did it when he had a flock was beyond me, but I trusted he had a reason.

“You can hide it from Cal, but you don’t have to hide it from me.”

He turned his squint to the water. “Do you know what it’s like to have your own uncle make someone else the leader?”

Even though years had passed, he had never asked the question before. When I straightened up, Adam raised his hand. “Relax,” he said. “I know I’m not leadership material.” He cracked a smile. “I’m just a sidekick.”

I didn’t like his vocabulary. Despite being the leader, I saw Calhoun as the true king and Adam as the heir, but for now, I was a face for the children, someone they could relate to and believe in.

“You’re not a sidekick,” I said, but Adam was already speaking.

“I like to see myself that way,” he defended. “Sidekicks are important, too.”

“You’ve been reading too many comic books.”

“At least I can read,” he chuckled, but his laughter died in seconds. Many bad bloods couldn’t read. Adam was one of the lucky ones who attended elementary school before he met the streets. When his parents found out he was a bad blood, they killed themselves instead of killing him. Calhoun found him two days after. We had the Northern Flock’s house later that month, and Cal lived with us until he trusted us to be on our own. That didn’t stop him from coming by every week.

“I haven’t heard of her, though,” Adam added. “Not once.”

“I thought you’d say that.” It meant she really did have a family. It meant she didn’t have to suffer on the streets. It meant my job was over. It meant I had to let her go, even though I refused to say goodbye.

“Hey!” The girl’s shout caused Adam and me to jump, but we calmed when we saw her. Maggie’s curly red hair was impossible to miss, and the two kids with her were harder to ignore.

Blake stumbled like a young colt as he crossed the grass. He was crawling into my lap in minutes. “Whatcha doing?”

I picked him up only to adjust him. When he was still, I laid my hand on his blond head. “Hey, kiddo.”

He leaned back to look up at me. His eyes were bluer than the lake’s water. “Can I try?” His little hands latched onto the fishing pole, too big for him.

“Sure.” I wrapped my hands around his and reeled the line in. “But be careful,” I said, casting it out. “This pole is expensive.”

“Okay.” Blake’s face scrunched as he turned his focus to the water. His hand rotated the handle only to freeze. I felt my mind spin as he asked, “What’s an election?”

Blake, despite his young age, could read minds, but he had yet to understand anything. He could only repeat what he saw, and I couldn’t remove my touch before he saw more, “Oh,” he exclaimed as he looked back up. “I dress up and talk, too.”

Laughter escaped Adam. “You’re one smart kid.”

“Thanks,” Blake chirped, remarkably serious, as the other child sat next to us.

Ron was indefinitely silent, in the same way he was drawn to Blake. He was deaf, but he didn’t have to talk for Blake to hear him. He only had to think. It was the way I had insight on Blake’s abilities. He didn’t only hear thoughts; he saw images, too. His age made it dangerous. Blake didn’t know how to keep others’ thoughts to himself.

When Maggie approached, she plopped down next to Adam. “Any luck?”

“Not a single bite.”

Maggie’s face turned as red as her hair. “Maybe I’m a good luck charm.”

“Not with that hair,” Adam mumbled as he grabbed the back of her hood and yanked it over her curls. He wasn’t wrong. Any trait that stuck out was a danger to us all. Maggie always kept her fire-red hair covered in public, but she had obviously forgotten.

She muttered an apology. Her freckles reappeared as her blush died down, but she scooted closer to Adam when she could. Somehow, in the seven years she had been with us, her flirting had actually gotten worse.

I stood up to catch the girl’s attention. “Can you watch them?”

She blinked. “Sure.”

I gestured to Adam, but when he stood up, I spoke to Blake, “We’ll be right back.”

He nodded without looking away from the water. This time, Adam was the one to pull me away.

“Have you talked to her?” I asked Adam as we walked out of earshot.

Adam leaned against the only tree near us. “Talked to who?”

“Maggie likes you.” It was a conversation we’d had a dozen times.

He frowned, but his eyes were on her. “Doesn’t matter.”

“Why not?”

“Who has time for girls right now?” Adam cocked a grin like it proved how much it didn’t matter, but I couldn’t mirror his image.

In a way, he was right. There was no room for love in our world, but I found a way in the Northern Flock. When Blake was dropped off as a baby, when Maggie saved Ryne, when Tessa snuck her way into our hearts. We risked everything for everyone. That was love. It was the same desperate emotion I felt when I saw Serena near Shadow Alley.

My stomach twisted.

“Did that chick really screw you up that bad?” Adam’s question sliced through me.

“Huh?”

Adam cocked one brow. “You were thinkin’ about her again, weren’t you?” He didn’t have to say her name.

“She told Calhoun something,” I fumbled over the confession. “It stays between us. No Michele. No Maggie. No one. Not even the gangs. Got it?”

“Got it.”

I shoved my hands into my pockets. “Logan’s technology already exists.” When Adam didn’t respond, I clarified what I meant, “They can test our blood. They found the gene.”

Adam’s bottom lip hung open, snapped shut, and fell open again. “That only matters if Henderson loses.”

“Not necessarily.”

Adam didn’t speak.

“If Henderson—” I didn’t have to finish my sentence. Adam watched the elections as much as I had. Vendona was already questioning his reasoning, and some had accused him of being a bad blood himself. The accusation was fine until it could be proven.

“Henderson is too old,” Adam concluded.

“They discovered the first one twenty years ago.”

“She was a child—”

“She would be thirty if she was alive today,” I pointed out. “Henderson is in his fifties. That’s not far off.”

Adam’s jaw locked, and he rubbed it.

“Genetics don’t change in one generation,” I spilled out. “They changed over time.”

We were silent as Blake shouted, “I got one!”

Adam and I glanced his way as Maggie fell over, grabbed the rod, and reeled the fish in with Blake. They squealed as the fish flipped and flopped onto the shore.

Adam brought his hands up to his mouth and breathed warm air on them. “You really think he’s one of us?”

I thought of Alec Henderson, the balding veteran I listened to speak countless times. His powerful voice resonated his speeches, and I clung onto his every word, just like I had done to Calhoun when I was young. Henderson was everything I wanted to be and everything I couldn’t be at the same time. Human. But if he weren’t, it would shatter his façade I believed in. The façade Vendona believed in.

“Why else would he fight for us?” I mustered the words. “If the news comes out—” We were dead. I didn’t have to say it. “They’ll find a way to test him before the polls open.”

“We should run while we can.” Adam straightened up onto his tiptoes like he would take off at any moment. With his speed, he really could get away, but he stayed by the Northern Flock’s side. “We’ll leave Vendona, start somewhere new.”

I looked over at Blake, thinking of how impossible it would be to cross the borders with a child, let alone a dozen of them. Plus, no one knew what lay beyond the gates. “We can’t escape.”

Adam’s heels hit the ground with a soft thud. “Why not?”

“The Eastern Flock tried that, and look what happened to them.” After the Western Flock massacre, the Eastern Flock ran, and they were killed. All fifteen of them. I was sure of it.

“That’s a rumor.” Adam wasn’t wrong. The story never made the public news stations, but it was whispered on the streets. I found street news more accurate.

“They don’t exist,” I said. “How’s it a rumor?”

He folded his arms, and for a moment, I wondered if Calhoun did that before he lost his arm during the Separation Movement. “I’ve never met someone in the Southern Flock, but you insist they’re real.”

I scowled at the ground because Adam didn’t deserve it. “I’ve met one.”

I didn’t have to tell Adam which one. Robert. The leader. Even though Adam said what he did, he knew as well as I how real the Southern Flock was. He also knew why Robert and I didn’t get along. Only three people did, including him. Michele and Calhoun were the other two. It was the one thing I refused to discuss with my flock.

Adam cleared his throat. “Do you know where they are?”

I shook my head. “But I know they’re alive for the same reasons we are.” Robert and I had the same training, after all. “We don’t run. We stay, and we fight if we lose.”

Adam scratched his temple, but didn’t argue.

A current of cold air passed between us as I changed the subject. “How bad is it when I’m gone?”

“Floyd.” He didn’t bother hiding the annoyance in his tone. “We should consider kicking him out.” At that, he smiled. Being serious was not his forte.

“We can’t.”

“He’ll be fine on his own,” he said, but the words held faint conviction. “He was fine for eighteen years.”

“Until he showed.” Floyd’s limbs didn’t start stretching until he was older. Not all bad bloods developed abilities during adolescence. Logan used that fact to convince citizens of standardized testing. Giving up rights meant nothing if it guaranteed life. Unfortunately, in my case, it guaranteed my death.

“He could hide it,” Adam continued his absurd daydream. Floyd couldn’t conceal anything; he couldn’t even control his ego. “I don’t see why he left his family in the first place. He had money, a job—”

“Don’t focus on what others have,” I repeated one of Cal’s tough love lessons. Jealousy only destroyed.

“Do you think others can hide?” Adam missed my point. “Like wives and teachers and kids?”

I looked away without really looking at anything at all. I didn’t repeat what little we knew about genetics through Calhoun’s teachings. Many had died in the Separation Movement, a war that took place on our very streets, the same war that demolished the outskirts to our rusty ruins. Bullet holes still rested in the brick walls. Supposedly, the amount of blood staining the streets was how we obtained our name—bad bloods—but proof of that had long since washed away. Anyone who had money and power lived in the Highlands, which remained gated off. The excuse? It was a private community, a luxurious neighborhood for the elite. The truth? It was larger than all the outskirts combined. Still, I doubted any amount of money could protect them from their secrets.

“There has to be older ones,” I decided. And rich ones.

“Floyd is the oldest one I know,” Adam said.

I agreed, even though Floyd was the same age as Robert. Twenty years old, and two years older than me.

“Floyd only causes trouble,” Adam pressed, and for a sly second, I considered taking Adam’s proposition seriously, but the tension ebbed away.

“He might cause more if we abandon him,” I said, knowing Floyd could report us as easily as anyone else could. Betrayal was the reason copycat flocks were often caught, the same reason we were vigilant about the kids we accepted. Since Floyd, we hadn’t taken anyone in.

“You don’t think he’d tell, do you?” Adam asked. “He isn’t that kind of guy.”

My opinion of someone generally came down to the moment we met. I didn’t consider myself a judgmental character, but it had kept me alive. When I first saw Floyd, he was drinking in Old Man Gregory’s, not even bothering to hide his elongated fingers. A wedding ring sat on the countertop, but the metal reminded me of a bullet. His dead stare paired well with it. His life was my call, and I dragged him out. He left the ring behind, and we never talked about it again.

Even then, I had to acknowledge how helpful Floyd had been before the election neared. He cherished the kids as much as Michele did, but the responsibility devoured him.

“I don’t know what kind of guy he is,” I said, “but I won’t gamble all of our lives to find out.”

“Daniel.” Blake’s voice was closer than I hoped. He stood by my side, close enough to hear my thoughts, and I studied his expression with ease. When his cheeks flushed against his grin, I knew he hadn’t heard a thing. “I got one.”

As soon as he held the fish up, he dropped it, leaving it to flop on the wet ground by his feet. Mud caked his pants all the way to his knees.

“Good job.” I laid one hand on his head—the only clean part of the boy I could see—and I bent down to pick up our only catch of the day.

“I can make dinner?” Blake said it like it was more of a question than a statement.

“You can,” I agreed, but I didn’t dare look at Adam as I finished both of my conversations. “Let’s go home and tell Michele.”

I had to look. I knew that. But it didn’t make it any easier.

Even though the cuts and bruises were gone, my naked body fit in the minute, oval mirror. My ribs jutted out, and when I dragged my fingers over the bones, spaces dipped between my touch. Even though I had eaten numerous times since my escape, I hadn’t gained any weight. Not enough anyway. Despite my new—and ghastly—nature, my stomach protruded over my hipbones. But my arms bothered me the most. My biceps weren’t as defined as they had been. The only defined muscles I hadn’t lost were in my legs. The running took care of that.

After fifteen minutes, I turned away and stepped over to my closet. Even though it was jam-packed with clothes, most of them were for the younger children. We shared whatever we owned, but there was now one exception. Daniel’s jacket was mine.

The blue-and-white fabric was heavy in my hands, but I saw more than I had before. A slit sliced through the right arm, and small red stains threaded themselves through the plaid pattern. Blood. I wondered if it were Daniel’s, if he had a scar, if his powers had limits like the rest of ours did, but most of all, I questioned how he got hurt before I put the coat on again.

Knocking broke through my thoughts, and the knob twisted, only to catch on the lock. I never locked it before. I hadn’t had reason to.

I yanked on pants, or in this case, thick black tights. “Hold on,” I said, but my words never stopped Catelyn.

She walked right through the door. Her head came through the wood first, her blonde hair always glowing brighter than the rest of her when she used her abilities. But I noticed her hair for another reason. In the time I was gone, she had chopped off her long strands into a pixie cut. Frayed bangs framed her round face, causing her already wide eyes to look wider. And bluer. And wet. “Serena.”

“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” I said, referring to her crying, but she didn’t listen. She never did.

Before I could say another word, she crossed the room and yanked me into a desperate, breath-stealing hug. Her tears met my neck, cold and plentiful. Catelyn smelled like lotion. Missing pieces of my memories were slowly etching back into place. I even held her back to look at her. The hooked scar on her cheek was still there, the way all scars stayed, and she touched it before wiping her tears away.

“I’m okay,” I said.

“I know.”

She didn’t have a chance to continue. Scratching shook my door in the frame, and a single yowl demanded Catelyn’s attention. She walked back, unlocked the door, and opened it to let in her tabby cat.

The feline stretched before she strutted into the room, her orange fur gleaming as she leapt onto the windowsill. She didn’t even want to see Catelyn. She wanted my window seat.

“You know Robert hates your cat, right?” I joked as I sat down, watching the cat whip its tail back and forth like a pendulum.

“I know.” Catelyn laughed as she sat next to me. “But it’s not like I feed her any of our food. And, she kills all the spiders.”

“What spiders?”

Catelyn beamed. “Exactly.”

I laughed too, and although it was genuine, it felt unnatural. “Is that how you argue with Robert?”

“It works most of the time,” she said, even though we knew the truth. The cat added to our façade. Bad bloods didn’t have pets. Only families did. “He only gets mad when she attacks him.”

I stared at the cat, an animal that knew nothing but survival. Just like us. “She’s not the only one.”

Catelyn’s hand landed on top of mine. Unlike Steven, she didn’t avoid touching me, and I wasn’t bothered by it. She was my sister. We weren’t blood relatives, but we were bad blood relatives, and she had been with me for six years. Her smile held the flock together while we gained members, and right now, she was holding me together. Her skills went beyond her powers.

“What happened to you in there?” she asked, never the one to hold back.

I was waiting for the question ever since she arrived, but I didn’t feel any more prepared to answer it. “The rumors are true.”

Catelyn scooted away and pulled her legs up against her chest. When she didn’t speak, I wished she would.

“They’ll do it to all of us if they get the chance,” I added.

“Did they do it to you?” Catelyn’s question didn’t register. I thought I had already confessed, but her confusion lingered in her stare. She focused on my neck, on my face, on any piece of skin she could see.

I didn’t have injuries, but I nodded.

“Why aren’t you hurt, then?”

If I were a regular person, I imagined I would’ve been offended. But I wasn’t. And Catelyn wasn’t either. And we both knew questions had to be answered for the sake of everyone’s safety. Still, I shifted away from her.

“Did Robert tell you to ask me that?”

Her face bent in a half-nod. “But I want to know, too.”

“I can’t.” Daniel. “I told them I wouldn’t tell.”

“Them?”

I gulped my secrets. They burned the whole way down.

“Were they bad bloods?” Anyone on the streets was smart enough to figure it out.

“One was,” I corrected, wondering where the line of secrecy landed. “He healed me.” Her eyes fell to his jacket and the way I clutched the long ends. “Please. Don’t tell.”

Catelyn’s smirk was as familiar as her touch. “Like you have to tell me that.” When she finished, she craned her neck to look out into the hallway. “Melody, come here.”

I tensed.

“It’s fine,” Catelyn promised, but I wasn’t sure if she was speaking to me or to the terrified four-year-old I scared in my sleep.

The carpet moved where the little girl walked, but she didn’t appear immediately. Her invisibility signaled her fear. It happened anytime her extreme emotions took over. I imagined that was why she was abandoned so young. One year ago, I found her on the streets. My powers allowed me to see her. She had almost starved to death, but now, thanks to me, she was plump and spritely.

As I concentrated, she shimmered into my vision, and her eyes widened when she realized I was staring at her. My abilities weren’t flawless. Bad bloods could sometimes sense me when I sensed them. Energy went both ways.

“Hey,” I coaxed, moving to the edge of the bed.

She stuck her thumb in her mouth, but spoke around it. “Hi, sissy.”

When I put my arms down, she ran straight for them, and I hauled her up until she met my embrace. I placed her in my lap, and she rested against my chest. “How are you doing?”

“Good.” She didn’t smile.

“I’m sorry if I scared you last night.” I brushed her brown hair out of her face. “I was having a nightmare.”

Her thumb fell out of her mouth. “I have those.”

Catelyn changed the subject, “Want me to braid you hair?” Leave it to her to brighten the mood.

Melody nodded.

“Then, we’ll go downstairs,” Catelyn said as she stood up. She gestured for the little girl to follow, and Melody climbed down from my lap to take Catelyn’s hand. When I didn’t budge, Catelyn tilted her face. “Don’t tell me you forgot.”

My mind raced, but nothing happened. “I think I forgot.”

“It’s Huey’s birthday,” Catelyn reminded me of the toothless boy. “He turned eight today.” Since we saved most of our money, we only celebrated birthdays during a new member’s first year. I couldn’t believe that much time had passed. “Robert actually baked.”

Picturing the depths of Robert’s struggle in the kitchen, a laugh broke out of me. As much as his powers revolved around heat, light, and fire, he couldn’t get an oven to work. “I hope he didn’t burn everything.”

“He probably did,” Catelyn said as I stood up to follow them into the hallway.

Huey was waiting at the bottom of the stairs, and when he saw us, he grinned. His missing tooth was starting to feel normal to me. “We made a chocolate cake, Serena.”

Huey’s favorite was vanilla. I remembered that. Or, at least, I thought I did. “Happy birthday.”

“Come on.” He darted across the living room toward the kitchen, Melody letting go of Catelyn to chase him. She giggled as Timmy joined her. The three burst through the door as Robert walked out, swerving to the side to avoid them.

“Slow down,” he warned, though he chuckled. It was the first time I heard him laugh in a long while. He only stopped to take a drink from his water.

“Did you burn the cake?” I joked as I walked over and took the drink out of his hands.

He didn’t even fight me. “Not even a little bit.”

I took a sip. “Why’d you make chocolate?”

Robert’s brown eyes shifted to the kitchen. “Huey wanted to make your favorite kind.” I nearly choked on my drink. “He isn’t the only one glad you’re home.”

The noise from the kitchen grew. The kids were already celebrating, but it didn’t sound like they were celebrating Huey.

“Serena!” Briauna stuck her head out, and her hazel eyes were enhanced against her dark skin. “We’re going to sing. We want you to lead.”

When I nodded, the thirteen-year-old disappeared back into the kitchen, but I stayed by Robert’s side. “How’s she doing?”

A sigh escaped him. “Better.”

As much as Briauna was like the rest of us, she was different in her physical appearance. When she hit puberty, scales covered her skin. They even shed off her. It didn’t take long for her parents to forsake her. She was lucky Robert found her before the police did. She joined right before Huey, and we celebrated her birthday two days prior to my capture. Still, she had attempted to go home, even hitting Robert when he stopped her. She got lucky again when he forgave her and convinced her to stay.

“I’m keeping an eye on her,” Robert added. “She hasn’t mentioned them once.”

“That’s good.”

“Always business with you two,” Catelyn interrupted, latching onto our arms. “It would be better if we started singing.”

Robert rolled his eyes at me, but he composed a smile, dimples appearing on his freckled cheeks. It was the only time Robert looked like a child again.

When we entered the kitchen, Melody was at our feet. “Braids.”

Catelyn picked up the girl only to sit her on the nearest chair. “Only if you sing.”

Melody pouted at me, “Start already.”

I hadn’t laughed or cried—not deeply anyway—let alone sang, but the others were waiting. Huey stood by his cake, and Niki leaned against the wall. Justan sat at her feet, and I searched his arms for the spikes that shot out of his skin, but he didn’t have them out. He was calm. Jake, on the other hand, had already doubled himself. Two of him stood in the kitchen. He was never calm, but he always had his powers under control.

“We’re waiting,” both copies of him chirped. He enjoyed showing off.

“Okay. Okay.” I took a breath as I tried to remember the tune.

Robert laid his elbow on my shoulder, causing me to lean into him, but it was his humming I heard. Happy Birthday. He always sang it for me whenever May fifth came around, and I found my voice in the memory.

All the kids joined in, and the harmony consumed the cramped kitchen. Since we didn’t have any candles, Huey didn’t get to blow them out, but he pretended to anyway, and everyone cheered in unison. Niki was the one to cut the cake into little pieces, leaving the largest for Huey.

He grabbed it, but he didn’t eat it. He held it out to me. “You should have it.”

I raised my hands to deny it, but Huey’s lips pushed to one side in determination. I took it and muttered, “Thanks.”

He beamed before he grabbed a smaller one. He didn’t talk to me again. He played with Jake instead, and Justan watched from the corner. Justan didn’t have control of his powers. After accidentally cutting Timmy, he kept his distance from the others.

For that reason, I sat next to him.

The blond boy tensed, but he moved his shoulders and forced his arms down. It was too late. I had seen his spikes crawl out of his wrists. The material looked like it was made up of skin and bone, and it left his skin purple and bruised afterward. He whispered an apology.

“You’ll get control over it one day,” I promised, knowing my uncanny presence triggered his nerves.

Still, a crooked smile appeared on his face. “I’m getting better.”

“That’s all that matters.” I took a bite of cake.

He mirrored my movements but not for long.

Loud knocking silenced the kids, and Briauna dropped her plate. The glass shattered across the floor. No one moved to get it. The knocking continued, and Robert cursed.

“Stay here,” he ordered before rushing out of the room.

I looked at Catelyn as she laid a hand on Melody’s head. “I’ll be back,” she spoke to all the kids. “Stay quiet for me.”

“Okay.” There was nothing quiet about Melody’s response.

Catelyn was up before I could stop her. She followed Robert, and I followed her, only to freeze in the doorway. Our front door was open, and Robert was talking to a cop.

“Frank,” Catelyn’s sweet voice was the only comfort I had as she approached the two. Apparently, she knew the officer. “Where were you on Tuesday? You missed your hair appointment.”

“I’m sorry, Catelyn,” Frank sounded younger than he looked. “After the red light, things got a little out of hand.”

Catelyn folded her arms. “The bad blood was caught though, right?” Her performance deserved an award.

“Executed that evening,” the cop answered. “The photo helped.”

My heart pounded. Photo? I recalled them taking one of me, right when I arrived, but I hadn’t considered why they did it. My face had probably been all over the news. I was no longer invisible. I would never be again.

Catelyn’s sigh of relief was as loud as his knocking had been. “That’s great.” She wrapped her arm around Robert’s torso. He was as rigid as I was from the officer’s words. “He’s been so worked up ever since. Barely slept last night,” she said. “We went through—what?—three bottles of wine?”

Robert blinked. “I only remember the first two.”

She covered her mouth as she giggled. “Got a little crazy.”

“We did have a noise complaint,” Frank said.

The party wasn’t the reason he was at our home. I was. My nightmare. My screams. They had risked us all.

“Just us,” Catelyn answered. “Trying to cure the hangover this morning.”

The cop looked at Robert, really looked at him. “And you are?”

“He’s my boyfriend,” Catelyn answered.

“My aunt owns the place.” Robert still had something to say.

“She in?”

Robert shook his head. “She’s gotten permission to travel abroad.” It was the same excuse we used for years. They never checked it. They had bad bloods to concentrate on, after all. “She won’t return for six months.”

“You watching the place until she returns?”

“Yes, sir.”

“We’re terribly sorry about the noise,” Catelyn interrupted before Robert offered up more information. He only got nervous around cops. Everyone knew it. But now, it was worse. “It’s just been so hard lately.”

“That’s quite all right. Times are tough,” Frank responded, but he was back on Robert. “You take care of this girl, young man. She’s a good one.”

“She is,” Robert agreed.

“You two have a nice evening.”

“See you soon,” Catelyn dismissed as she shut the door. Minutes passed like hours until there was no denying the cop had left.

The house was silent until Robert growled, “You use your real name?”

“It worked, didn’t it?” Catelyn stepped away and collapsed on the stairs. “I was afraid I’d forget my alias if I made one for work. I don’t exactly get a lot of shuteye.” Between watching the kids and working, she hardly slept.

Steven shuffled out of the crowd, ready to come to Catelyn’s defense. “Is everything okay?”

“Everything is fine.” Robert’s light voice didn’t match his stiff movements. When he ran a hand through his hair, his brown bangs stuck up. “But everyone needs to be quiet.”

Steven beckoned Ami over. “Get an early dinner ready.” He wasn’t about to leave Catelyn’s side to cook, and it was clear we might be hiding for the rest of the afternoon—and evening.

The fourteen-year-old herded the kids away in seconds. “Briauna, boil some water. Jake, cut the vegetables. Justan, watch the others.” All six of them followed the teenager, even Melody. The child didn’t even complain about her half-braided hair.

Robert slumped when they disappeared into the kitchen. I walked toward him, hoping the color would return to his face, but his complexion remained pallid.

“Hey—”

He jolted like he hadn’t realized I was inches from him. I didn’t leap back, even though I knew I should’ve. Robert had burned me by accident before, and this was no exception. The skin on my arm bubbled.

I grabbed it as breath seethed out of me.

“Serena—”

“I’m okay,” I said, but I was more honest than I intended to be.

My skin yanked together, and my head spun. Daniel’s abilities. Somehow, it stayed with me, and as the burn healed, energy drained from me. Exhaustion took over. Was this his weakness?

“Show me your arm.” Robert sounded like he was underwater.

I fell into a nearby seat, fighting the nausea as I mumbled, “You didn’t get me.”

Robert’s now-normal touch grazed my hand as I dropped it, revealing the skin that should’ve been burned, but it was fine. I was healed. The injury was gone. And my focus was slowly sliding back into place.

Robert looked stricken. “You—you healed.”

“No. No, I didn’t,” I defended, but Catelyn let out a gasp. Even though I told her, seeing it must have been something else entirely. “You didn’t get me,” I assured. “You just scared me.”

Robert’s stare never left my arm, but he let me go. “If you say so,” he said, allowing his trust to consume him. It was only then I felt guilty for lying. Daniel had healed me, and he still did, even from a distance. His powers were powerful—too powerful—and it was something we had in common.

“Let’s eat,” Catelyn said as she stepped between us, leaving out the part where we were prepping to hide for the rest of the day and night. “The kids will be worried if we leave them alone.”

Steven agreed. “Come on.” He guided Robert out of the room, leaving Catelyn and me to stare at one another.

When she faced me, I already knew what she would say. “What the hell was that?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted, staring at the front door as if the cop still stood there. Only certain powers stayed with me, and even then, they didn’t always work. It was rare. Daniel was an exception. A huge exception. “I really don’t know.” But I had to find out.

“Daniel, get your brothers. It’s about to rain.”

I didn’t see my mother as she shouted from the car, and I didn’t look back as I ran toward the lake. A crowd gathered for the holiday, but I searched for the two boys that looked like me. We looked like our father.

I picked up the pace, almost tripping over a water cooler before stumbling over the mud. Even my light weight sunk into the soft ground, but it would only get worse if I didn’t find them before it rained. Mom hated the rain.

When I finally spotted them, I sprinted down a steep hill. I wasn’t even halfway down when I tripped. My body flung over the rocks, and my arm swung out as I attempted to catch myself. I heard the snap. I felt the bone move as I landed onto the gravel below.

My older brother shouted as he ran over to me, but I hid my arm before he got too close. “I’m fine!” My groan exposed my lie.

“What happened—” My older brother was too close. He would see how it healed.

“Get Luke,” I squeaked through the nausea. Anytime I healed, I thought I would die.

“Let me see.” He was reaching for me when I smacked him away, but it was too late.

He was staring at my skin as it reattached. I only leapt up out of panic. When I ran, my vision blurred, and my breath blew away in the wind. My brother’s shouts followed me, but I was no longer by the lake.

My brothers were nowhere to be seen. It was dark, gloomy, and cold. Snow fell from the sky as sirens shrilled through Shadow Alley. When I grabbed my shoulder, my hand turned wet and warm. Blood.

I stumbled before falling onto the pavement. No one would save me. I would die. I knew this.

“Boy? Can you hear me?” The man’s voice drowned out the sirens as he touched me. When he recoiled, I looked up. His hand was covered in my blood, and droplets fell off his fingertips. They sounded like rain as they hit the ground. It was a peaceful sound. Anything other than gunshots and sirens were peaceful.

The man scoped me up with one arm and slung me over his shoulder as a whimper escaped my throat. “You’re gonna be okay, kid.” He sounded like my father before he kicked us out. “Just stay awake.”

***

I shot up and grabbed my shoulder as breath forced itself down my throat. My heart slammed against my ribs, and sweat smeared my palm. My bedroom wall stared back at me like a mirror. The dream. I was dreaming. I was still alive. But I didn’t let go of my shoulder as I collapsed backward. Even my bed was wet.

I ignored everything but the only scar I had. The bumpy flesh cascaded over my shoulder and across my sternum, a steady tremor of my heartbeat radiating over the pain. The injury almost killed me. If it weren’t for Calhoun, it would’ve. He had sewn me up on his own, preventing my powers from healing too much, and he nursed me back to health for months. Every time my shoulder burned, I remembered seeing him for the first time. He saved my life without knowing what I was, and when he learned what I was, he saved it again by keeping me.

I returned the favor when he introduced me to Adam, when he bought us a house, when he left us alone, when we saved others. But the flock’s weight was getting heavier and heavier. I could barely breathe. I had to leave.

“Where will we go?”

I jumped only to calm when I saw him. Blake was sitting next to me, his blue eyes cutting through the darkness. He heard everything. By his widened eyes, he probably even saw my nightmare. It was something a kid should never see.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

His little brow furrowed too deeply for a child. “Are you?” He definitely saw it. All of it.

“I’m okay, Blake,” I said, fighting the urge to pick him up. My shoulder hurt too much. “You don’t have to worry about me.” When he didn’t respond, I added, “It was just a dream.”

“No, it wasn’t.” Apparently, he could decipher what he saw.

I kept my mind blank as I stood up. “Go back to sleep, kiddo.”

He clutched onto my leg, “Are you leaving?”

I forced myself to step away so he didn’t see anymore. “I’ll be back before you wake up.”

“I’m not sleeping.”

I looked over at the window I had covered with a black blanket. Sunlight pushed against the fabric. It was the afternoon. I remembered now. I had passed out while reading about the election.

“What are you doing up here?” I asked Blake, realizing he hadn’t been sleeping at all. He was only checking on me.

“It’s dinnertime.”

I sighed as I picked him up. He was heavy, much heavier than I remembered him being, and I shuffled him to my left arm where it didn’t hurt. Blake nuzzled his face against my neck as I reached over for a shirt. I didn’t speak as I left my bedroom and walked downstairs.

Michele was waiting. “How was your nap?”

“Can you take him?”

Michele took Blake without any complaints. The little boy didn’t complain as she sat him down. I threw on my shirt, then. She wouldn’t question the scar, but the others would. I had managed to hide it from most of them. Questions only caused problems.

As I walked over to the table, Michele said, “You need to sleep more.”

“A bad blood killed his family last night,” I told her about the article describing the reason for the child’s execution. A new article appeared every day. Sometimes, there were two. Or three.

“We can’t save them all.”

“We can try.”

“Daniel.” Michele sighed as we took our usual seats. The house buzzed with noise, but she didn’t bring up an argument. “We need a plan.”

I stared past her, unfocused and not quite awake. “Did you already talk to Adam?”

She nodded. “I know we can’t run,” she agreed with me, “but I also know we can’t fight.” Not with the younger ones. “You need to talk to Cal.”

“I’m going to tonight.”

She smiled. “I know.”

A red blur swooshed in front of my eyes, but it didn’t solidify until Adam stopped moving. His chair leaned against the wall, balancing on two pegged legs. “Don’t tell me you were going to leave me out of the meeting again.”

“It’s not a meeting,” Michele defended.

“Great.” Adam reached for the bowl of apples in the middle of the table. He had stolen more than one.

Michele slapped his hand away. “We’ll eat in a minute,” she said. “Ryne is going to help me cook.”

As if on cue, a teenager stumbled down the stairs, his dark hair bobbing behind him. “Ready?”

“If you are.”

He nodded, walking into the kitchen without talking to us. Aside from Michele, Ryne kept to himself. When Maggie had found him, we guessed he was six, but that would mean he was thirteen now. He looked older—almost the exact same age as Maggie—but I wondered if his scar added years to his face. It moved right through his nose and down his chin. He was lucky that was all the leftover damage he had.

Maggie found him with a homeless veteran as the man attempted to revive the boy. She convinced the man to give him up, and she brought him to me. He had a severe collision to his head, and I assumed he wouldn’t live when I used my abilities on him. I was wrong. He woke up, but he didn’t remember anything but his name. I suspected him of lying, but I didn’t question it, even though his stare held memories he didn’t talk about. Maggie sat with him a lot. They joined in the same year, and I knew little about both of them, but I understood Maggie’s biggest pain. She lost her older brother to the streets, and Adam had known him. When he found out about her brother’s death, he took Maggie in. Without Adam confessing to it, I knew it was gang related, and when I asked Adam where my best skinning knife disappeared to, I knew he had traded it for her. Even then, he denied it, and we didn’t speak about it again after that. Still, I half-expected she wanted Ryne because he reminded her of her brother, and I suspected she cared for Adam due to the events.

“So, wunt wer you talkin’ but?” Adam spoke with a full mouth as he chewed on an apple. Sadly, I understood him perfectly.

I told him about the article.

Adam swallowed his food. “The election is really getting to you, man.”

“It doesn’t bother me when I don’t think about it.”

“Everyone but Blake and I would fall for that,” Adam joked.

“Fall for what?” A small girl struggled her way into Adam’s lap before she leaned her bony elbows on the table. Our conversation was over.

“I’m not a chair, Tessa,” Adam lectured, but he didn’t move the child off him. Tessa was the only other member Adam had saved. It was how I learned he was involved with the gangs. Her father had been a member, but he couldn’t take care of the toddler. Adam took her in without even asking me.

The little girl didn’t budge from Adam’s lap either. “I can kill that apple if you don’t tell me.”

She wasn’t lying either. Despite her young age, Tessa’s powers had become vital to our survival. She could grow plants in a second, no matter the season, and she often kept our food supply up whenever it wasn’t safe to buy some. But she could also kill plants on command. She enjoyed that part more.

“That is cruel.” Adam chuckled before taking another bite. She tried to grab it, but he kept the apple in his mouth as he took her arms, stood up, and spun her around.

She screeched between her giggles before he let her down. “Go help,” he said, pointing his head toward the kitchen.

“Only if you play cards later.”

“Deal.”

She ran off without looking back, but Adam looked at me. “Say hi to the old man for me.”

Adam already knew I was leaving, and I nodded in response. As I walked to the front door, Michele ran out of the kitchen, “Don’t forget his jacket.”

I grabbed the coat off the snowflake lamp Michele left it on. “I won’t be long.”

“Yes, you will.”

I turned around to face the white-haired girl. She stood inches from me, but she took a second to speak again, “I’m sorry for being upset earlier.”

My stomach twisted. Adam must have told her about my decision to keep Floyd, too. “You have the right to be upset with me.”

“Not now,” she disagreed. “Not with the election nearing.” We didn’t have time to argue. “Adam will help me with Floyd.”

“I’ll get more supplies from Cal.”

“Just be safe,” she said as her eyes flashed yellow. “It’s dangerous out there tonight.”

“Goodnight,” I said abruptly, leaving our house before I asked her what she saw. For once, I didn’t want to know about any more visions.

I wasn’t outside for more than two minutes before I had to dodge trouble. When Justan shouted my name, I blocked my face with my arms. A rough object slammed into my forearm, and air hissed out of my lips before the object hit the ground. When I opened my eyes, a makeshift hockey puck teetered to a stop at my feet. I only raised my head to look at the boys. Justan and four Jakes were standing in front of me, long pieces of wood in hand.

I snatched up the puck. “Jake, are all of you playing against Justan?”

All four Jakes beamed beneath shaggy black hair but only one said, “It’s fair.” He went on to explain that he was teaching Justan survival lessons. This one was how to overcome numerous opponents at once.

Justan didn’t say a word.

I sighed and sat on the curb. “Does Robert know you two are out here?”

When they nodded, I raised a brow at Jake. In a millisecond, all four of him melted into one twelve-year-old boy. He was forbidden to use his doubling powers outside of the house, but our home was in the countryside. On top of that, our neighbors were hardly ever home. The recent noise complaint was rare, almost unheard of.

I tossed the puck at them. “You two better be careful.”

As if they didn’t hear me, both of the boys slammed their hockey sticks together. Jake even stomped on Justan’s foot. When Jake wasn’t doubled, he cheated. It was almost as if he couldn’t function unless he was doubling himself. He had too much energy for one body. Justan, on the other hand, was one year older and a lot more dangerous. He didn’t have that much energy because he spent all of his time trying to contain his abilities. The two were attached in their struggles for control, and watching them play was like watching sunlight take over the night. Justan’s blond hair was too bright, and it only appeared to be whiter when he stood next to Jake’s jet-black mop. Even then, they acted like brothers, though they looked nothing alike.

“All right! Hockey. I’m in,” Steven yelled as he ran by, and Melody clung to his back like he had forgotten she was there. Her widened brown eyes took over her small face, and her bottom half had already begun to disappear.

I shouted at him to set her down. Once free from runaway Steven, she ran up to me and hugged my torso like she would never let go. Timmy came outside. Ami soon followed, her long braid flowing behind her, and Huey appeared in a mist of smoke and feathers. He could transport anywhere at any time, but I never got used to it. I especially didn’t like the feathers. No one knew where they came from.

Steven was the one to hand out hockey sticks via the discarded woodpile near the neighbor’s house. “This is my stick,” he spoke as the wood cracked. The once-solid object drooped down, flopped up, and hardened into a perfect hockey stick. He could form anything, including his own body. Sometimes, I thought it got to his head—like he believed he could change everyone’s lives the way he could morph wood into another shape of wood.

“Anyone break a limb yet?” Catelyn asked before she came into my line of sight.

The group was already smacking the puck back and forth, but no one was crying yet. “My bet is on Timmy.” He always managed to get hurt first—mainly because he was the only human in a house full of bad bloods. His sisters had been bad bloods, so the parents had assumed he was one, too. When his sisters were killed, Niki found him and took him in, but he had yet to display any bad-blooded features. Still, he was tough for a human. I was surprised the nine-year-old didn’t get hurt more often.

“Or Ami,” Catelyn guessed as she sat next to me, taking a moment to pat Melody on the head. Catelyn wasn’t wrong. Ami hurt herself as much as Timmy did, but unlike Timmy, Ami’s powers hurt her. The fourteen-year-old’s skin attached itself to things. If she were concentrating, she could climb walls with ease, but more often than not, she just ripped her skin off. She demanded the most bandages in the house. Timmy was normally the one to help her put them on.

As a hockey puck shot by, Jake stole Justan’s stick out of his hand. Justan was unfazed. A long piece of wood and bone shot out of his wrist, and he used the material he normally dreaded for the game. When he returned the hit, Huey transported across the pavement to the puck and scored on Timmy. A flume of feathers fluttered to the ground.

Watching them use their powers so openly caused a smile to leap over my lips. One day, I hoped they could do it every day, without concern, but the election would decide that. It was approaching quickly too—too quickly. I didn’t want to consider what would happen if Henderson lost, but it didn’t take any consideration at all. It would be decided. Our lives would end.

“Serena.”

Shivers shot up my spine, and my clutch tightened on Melody. She squeaked. I loosened my hold when I saw Robert. He was standing behind me, but I hadn’t heard him approach. I hadn’t heard anything. But—by the looks of it—he had told everyone to stop using their powers. My mind had escaped itself.

Robert’s eyes softened like he knew. “Can I speak to you for a minute?”

Deep despair nagged at me. Even though his expression was delicate, his words weren’t. Still, I nodded, and everyone’s eyes were on me as I handed Melody to Catelyn. “I’ll be right back,” I spoke to the child who was already reaching out to me again.

I had to force myself to turn away so I didn’t take her inside with me. Robert was already walking into the house, and I had to jog to catch up. When we stepped inside, a wave of heat rushed over my skin. Even though it was a beautiful day, Robert hadn’t turned off the heater. He was distracted. When he locked the door behind us, I knew the distraction was bad.

As he inhaled a large breath, his back rose beneath his red shirt. He exhaled when he turned around to face me. Every movement seemed like a struggle. “Did someone named Daniel help you?”

I couldn’t breathe.

“He’s a risk.” In our twelve years together, Robert had never sounded more monotone than he did now.

“I never said he helped me,” I interrupted, louder than I intended. Even with my heart pounding, I could hear the abrupt raise in volume behind my normally soft voice.

Robert’s face lowered. “Stay away from him.”

He didn’t believe me. Not for a second. How he knew was beyond me. I had promised not to tell the Southern Flock about Daniel, and my promise had broken without me shattering it. Every piece of me was cold as I searched my memory for a slipup, but nothing came, and Robert wasn’t about to tell me what he knew. I could see it in the way he held his shoulders up, broadened and still.

My fingers curled. “Why?”

Robert blinked. I had practically confessed to knowing Daniel, and all Robert did in response was blink. Thirty seconds passed before he leaned against the door, leaned away from the door, and then, leaned against it again. His arms folded before he unfolded them, and then, he turned around. His back was moving again, but this time, his breaths were short and skirmish. “I’m leaving.”

Before he could open the door, I latched onto his arm. He spun out of my grasp and grabbed my arm instead. “This is how I know.” His fingers dug into my flesh, but they didn’t burn this time. The pads of his fingertips were lukewarm, a vibration of heat flowing through his skin to mine. It was the same place he had burned me, but it had healed. Daniel’s powers still flowed through my veins, and now, Robert’s abilities trickled in.

Nausea consumed me.

“I know I hit you yesterday. What I don’t know is why you’re lying to me.” Robert released me like he remembered how dizzying my abilities could be to me, like he was still thinking of only me, and his expression softened. Behind his crumbled brow, I saw him as the child I met and grew up with. “I can’t have you lie to me, Serena.” He stepped back, his eyes squeezed shut, and he pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m already risking too much.” It came out in a whisper.

He didn’t have to clarify. He was risking everything by keeping me, especially since Vendona had my photo. The Southern Flock was endangered by my exposure. If I had been anyone else, Robert would’ve executed me himself. He would’ve made it painless, but he would’ve done it. Everyone knew it. He had done it before—to a neighbor’s lost aunt, to a salesman who stumbled upon our house on the wrong day, to many others after them. Someone’s life was collateral damage.

“You can’t go near him. Not even once,” Robert continued as memories shook my insides.

Daniel was collateral damage, too.

“He’s dangerous,” Robert added, his eyes opening slowly, the brown color of his irises barely visible in his squint. “Understand?”

I bit my lip to keep myself from arguing. Even though my mind screamed at me to nod, I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything.

“Okay, then,” Robert spoke as if I had responded, and he looked past me as if my lack of response meant nothing. He supported himself on the railing as he shouted upstairs, “Niki!”

She ran downstairs as if she had been waiting, and her red eyes gleamed as she approached. Niki was listening to our conversation the entire time. When she passed me, her shoulder hit mine, and I whipped around to grab her dark dreads. I never got the chance to touch her.

Robert stepped between us. His hands landed on my shoulders, and he knelt down so his height didn’t tower over me. “I’m glad you’re back. I am,” he spoke so quietly I barely registered his words. “But I have to do this.”

He was going after Daniel. The liability was a risk Robert had to destroy if he wanted to keep me. Daniel was going to die, and he was going to die because I was alive.

“Don’t.” I dug my nails into Robert’s shirt. “You don’t have to do anything.”

He only touched me again to remove my grasp on his clothes. “I’ll be back in two hours.”

Niki already had the door open, and Robert had managed to step out of my reach.

“You don’t even know where he is,” I shouted at his back.

He slammed the door behind him like he did.

Daniel’s kindness flashed through my memory, some of the clearest memories I had of the past few weeks, and it gave me the strength I needed to move. I yanked the door open, and I ran. Robert and Niki hadn’t gotten very far. Their backs were silhouettes against the setting sun. I could catch them.

Steven blocked my view of them, his light brown hair blond against the burning sunlight. “You’re supposed to stay here.” He had known in advance. I bet they all did.

“Move.” The order escaped me in a hiss.

When he didn’t budge, I leapt to the left, but his hand caught me. Before I could even think of peeling away, his hand formed into mine, and the skin became one. His arm melded with mine, and his powers spiked my adrenaline. He used my own powers against me. I was trapped. Like handcuffs.

“Let me go.” A scream ripped out of my throat.

Steven fell back, taking his arms with him, and I was free. Everyone behind him stared. Catelyn’s blue eyes were the widest. I never screamed at anyone. Not before.

My mouth stayed open, and my eyes filtered out the horizon, hoping to see Robert once more, but he was gone. It would take a miracle to catch up.

“Don’t,” Steven said again.

I took a step, but I didn’t start running. My knees were shaking. Steven had grabbed me. Niki had brushed against me. Robert had touched me. Melody had been in my arms only a few minutes ago. They were all bad bloods—exactly like Daniel—but only one of them was going to die. Our kind couldn’t afford to lose any more. We had already lost too many to the electric chair. Robert just hadn’t seen it yet. No one had seen the toll of death but me. I had to stop him.

Right when I was about to take off, Catelyn stepped in front of me and grabbed Steven’s hand to form a barricade. Their combined silhouettes were bars on a jail cell. “What’s wrong?” she asked calmly, too calmly. Everyone was so calm.

“He’s going to kill Daniel.” The words fell out of me.

Catelyn didn’t even ask who Daniel was. She simply took a breath. “Can we make you stay?”

“No.”

“Then let us go with you,” she said.

Steven’s neck popped when he looked at his girlfriend. “What?”

Catelyn repeated herself without glancing at him. “Ami will watch the kids.”

When I looked at Ami, she bolted upright. The always-braided blonde was prepared to take over at any given minute. In fact, she thrived on it. She started taking the kids inside without any orders, and I looked back at Catelyn. My best friend and sister understood me, but even more important, she believed in me. Robert may have been her leader, but I was her friend.

“Thank you.” I breathed before I ran after Robert and shouted over my shoulder at them, “Now keep up!”

***

It didn’t take us long to catch up with Robert and Niki. The only thing I told him was how I received help from the western part of town, and there was only one safe way to get there: Shadow Alley. Catelyn and Steven didn’t question how I knew where to go, not even when we caught sight of Robert and Niki.

“Where do you think he’s going?” Catelyn bit her stubby fingernails. Her habit worsened the closer we got to the western part of Vendona. After the Western Flock was ambushed, bad bloods avoided the area, even if they weren’t old enough to remember it. I was five, but the fence was a frightening reminder of the government’s cruelty. All fifteen kids had been killed.

“I know where he’s going,” I whispered.

Robert would start at my parents’ house. Even though he didn’t know I returned, he knew where it was. We had met there, after all, and he would assume it was the only place I would’ve run to when escaping the police. He wasn’t wrong either. I had run toward it to find Shadow Alley. Daniel intervened one street down from their doorstep.

“Wait.” Steven grabbed both of us before we continued our pursuit. His neck arched as he peeked out. We were on the edge of the main square. “They’re talking.”

I ducked beneath his arm to see them for myself. Niki was the one speaking, but I couldn’t read her lips in the dark. “Any luck?” I asked Steven.

“No.”

I exhaled, and my breath plumed out in front of me. The temperature had dropped severely in fifty minutes. I even shivered. “What are they doing here?”

It wasn’t where I expected them to stop. They were outside Old Man Gregory’s. Despite the late hours, the store remained open. Everyone knew it was a secret bar, but Robert never went there. He hated the western part of town the most. He had only made an exception for Daniel.

I dug my hands into his jacket. If I could help him, I would. It meant we would be even. It meant I didn’t have to think about him again. It meant another bad blood didn’t have to die. Still, his emerald gaze was all I could think of as I stood on the street, dancing a slight step to stay warm.

“You think Daniel’s in there?” Steven asked.

I shook my head. “Only old men and drunks use that shop.” I didn’t have to clarify that Daniel was our age. Most bad bloods were. Or younger.

“I can’t see anything. Niki’s in the way,” Steven mumbled. “Can I say I hate her?”

Catelyn hit his arm. “You just did.”

It wasn’t a secret that Niki and Steven didn’t get along, but it was even worse that he was talking about it. Robert refused to believe any of us could hate each other, and it went against the rules. We were a team. We were family. On top of that, Niki could hear far better than the average human, and if she heard Steven say it, she would tell. Snitching was her occupation. It was the very reason Robert took her with him. She could listen for people following them. As the older kids in the flock, we understood her limits. As long as we stayed a few yards away, we were fine. The street noises would cover us up more than anything.

A car sped past on the main road, and Catelyn leapt behind Steven. Only police and the rich drove, but it must have been a rich person because they weren’t on patrol. Steven’s exhale echoed around the alleyway. “This Daniel guy better be worth the risk.”

“He saved me,” I sighed, knowing I couldn’t hide his name now, “and Robert knew just from the powers.”

Catelyn’s pupils widened even further in the dim light. “Robert saw?”

“If he didn’t, he knew another way,” I mumbled as I started walking toward the main square. Before I could pursue Robert further, a hand latched onto the collar of my jacket, and the force yanked me back.

I tried to pull away, but Steven had already let me go. “We’re going home.”

Catelyn’s small features scrunched into a mousy glare. “What’s gotten into you?”

“From what you told me, there was no way Robert saw Serena’s injury,” he spoke at Catelyn only to jut a thumb toward my plaid jacket. “He saw that.”

Robert knew Daniel’s clothes. Whoever Daniel was, Robert knew him well. Robert’s warning sunk deeper into my gut, but my fingers latched onto the fabric inside the pockets. I couldn’t let it go. In all my years with Robert, I had never seen him change faces so abruptly, and with Daniel, I had never met another bad blood so trusting. None of it made sense.

I stood my ground by digging my heels into the broken pavement. “I’m not leaving.”

Steven’s hollow cheeks, already flushed from the cold, reddened even more. “You almost died, Serena.”

“And I’m not going to let another blood die for my survival,” I bit back.

His face twitched. “Blood?”

“Bad bloods have a negative connotation,” I mumbled as I turned away. Even as I said it, I could hear Daniel’s voice—calm, decisive, honest. Three things I never thought a bad blood could be.

“Come on,” Catelyn said as she dragged Steven back over to me. “No one who saves my best friend deserves to die.” Her beam sealed her decision.

Steven, on the other hand, didn’t look so convinced, but he didn’t try to leave. He would never abandon Catelyn. He depended on her. “What if Robert attacks Daniel?”

“I’m intervening,” I promised.

“You can’t.”

“I’m not just going to sit by and let Robert do unnecessary damage control.” I peered around the corner at Old Man Gregory’s, but nothing had changed. “Daniel saved my life.”

“Robert saved your life, too.” Steven’s words struck me, and almost as if his words had grabbed me, I leaned back into the alleyway.

Even though I stared at my friends, I saw Robert from the night I met him. I was alone in the sirens and snow and shadows. Robert didn’t even ask for my name. He grabbed my hand, and we ran until we couldn’t run anymore. When I fell asleep under the bridge, he used his powers to keep me warm. He always kept me warm.

I shivered, all too aware of his lack of presence now. “Fine.” I checked the store one last time. Still, nothing had moved. Maybe Robert was only clearing his head by getting groceries. Either way, we had to beat him back. “We’ll go home.”

Steven turned around faster than I thought he could move, and he began walking in a prideful march. He might as well have been humming his way back home. Catelyn let out a giggle as we started after him. “Sorry we didn’t find your guy.”

My face heated up as if she had referred to Daniel as my boyfriend instead of a fellow bad blood. “It’s okay,” I managed, even though nothing was okay. In my twelve years on the streets, my instincts had never felt so twisted before. We didn’t even get two yards before my instincts were confirmed.

A silhouette of a person split out of a side street and slammed Catelyn against the fence.

“Who are you?” he growled, and she yelped, only a moment before her body began to glow. In that split second, she disappeared through the fence, her powers saving her.

Steven punched the man in the face, but the attacker didn’t even hesitate. He had Steven pinned against the fence in seconds. It was my turn to fight. I tackled the shadow with every bit of strength I had. It wasn’t enough to take him down, but it was enough to distract the attacker. Steven stumbled out of his grasp.

“Run!” I shouted.

Hesitation flooded over Steven’s face, but Catelyn’s illuminated arm pulled him through the fence, and the two were gone in the night.

The attacker’s grip tightened on me, but he didn’t pin my body against the fence like he had done to Catelyn. He had learned, and fast. “Why are you following me?”

I writhed, but it did nothing. I had lost too much of my muscle mass in the blood camp. I wasn’t as strong as I used to be. I tried to spit in his face, but he dodged it by swaying to the side. His cheeks caught the light, and I froze.

“Daniel?”

His face turned, slower this time, and his emerald eyes moved over me. His grip didn’t loosen, and my arms ached as he dragged me into the light. Finally, his hold loosened, but he didn’t let me go. “Serena.”

I winced but managed a nod.

“Sorry.” He released me and stumbled back as if I had smacked him. “I—I didn’t mean—”

“It’s okay,” I interrupted as I glanced behind him. Aside from us, Shadow Alley was empty. Robert and Niki weren’t even around, but the thought of them made Daniel’s previous words echo. “Was someone following you?”

Daniel peered down at me, his gaze darker than I remembered. “I was mistaken.”

I stared at his face, memorizing every angle of his olive complexion as I searched my memory for someone similar—anyone like him that Robert hated—but nothing came. Daniel must have realized it, too, because he squinted before turning toward the shadows, hiding himself. I half-expected him to run, but only his hand moved. He grabbed his shoulder as he coughed, and I recalled how he walked in the rain. With that memory, others crept in. His half-laugh. His honestly. The dimple on his right cheek when he smiled. He didn’t seem dangerous at all, not comparatively anyway. Despite his fighting, I couldn’t imagine him killing anyone, but I didn’t appear that way either and I had killed more than once.

Right when I tried to convince myself Daniel was dangerous, that Robert was correct, he coughed again and his fingers dug harder into his shoulder. It was impossible not to recall the picture from his bedroom, the same photo where he had been bandaged up as a kid. Someone—or something—had obviously tried to kill him. If he knew what I had done, I doubted he would’ve saved me, and Steven’s words reverberated in my mind. He was right. Robert saved me more than once—even knowing who I was—and he continued to stand by my side. I didn’t even know Daniel, he definitely didn’t know me, and there was no reason in all of Vendona for us to know each other any more than we already did.

Still, I lingered.

“It’s late,” I blurted out, rocking back on my heels like momentum would force me to move back. “You should probably get home. Your dad must be worried.”

Daniel cleared his throat. He was starting to get sick. That much was obvious. “Dad?” he croaked the single word. “Cal’s fine.”

“I know he’s not your dad.” The correction came on its own, like I lost my ability to lie.

His lips slid into a lazy smile. “More of one than the other one I had.”

I could only stare back. Daniel had parents. Of course he had parents. Everyone had parents, but the idea of Daniel’s parents abandoning him didn’t register with me.

His eyes fell away from me like he saw my thoughts. “Did your parents take you in again?”

Parents. Robert was the closest person I had to a parent, and he was nowhere near a parent. Even though he was the Southern Flock’s leader, we had started it together. He was my equal. My biological parents were people I watched from a distance during lonely days. I looked like my mother, and so did my sister. I had yet to figure out their new daughter’s name, but I told Daniel, “Yes.”

“That’s good.” His face lifted once more, and his gaze moved across me as if he were studying me in the way I had studied him. “You look better, Serena.” His back pressed against the brick wall only for him to push himself away from it. He took two steps away before he spoke over his shoulder, “Try not to be out this late.”

Daniel was leaving, and I was losing my chance.

I couldn’t stop myself. I called after him. “I don’t have parents.”

My words immobilized him.

I stopped, too, standing in place, facing his back. My heart pounded with every confession I gave. Why I wanted to tell him was beyond me, but at the same time, he was the first face I saw after gaining my freedom again. In a way, he accepted me first. He was the only one who told me I would be okay again—mentally and physically—and so far, he was the only one I believed. He had healed me. And I didn’t want to believe a person like that could be dangerous. I wanted to believe someone could be good.

“I—I don’t have parents,” I repeated, feeling every word fall off my lips, quieter this time.

He turned around slowly, like he had to force every inch. I held my breath as he met my eyes, and I half-expected him to ask me why I was telling him, but he asked the last thing I expected. “Where are you staying?”

“With a friend.”

His expression didn’t budge.

My nerves forced me to push my hair back, but the winter gale brought my hair back over my shoulder, made tendrils by the swirling wind. “I was looking for him, actually.”

Daniel kept his silence.

I focused on his expression when I said, “His name’s Robert.”

He didn’t move. His lips didn’t bend. His eyes didn’t squint. His brow didn’t even twitch. It was as if Daniel were an optical illusion, a human who didn’t have to move. There were only a few people in all of Vendona that could do that, and it was only because of their soul. Like a flame, it had already flickered away, put out by the streets, and only smoke remained. Daniel was a ghost of a person. I simply hadn’t seen him before. His gaze faded at the edges, and his voice had always been hollow. He was just like me. It was why I liked him. I related to him. We were the same.

As he stared at me in silence, I felt every breath I took as my last one. Robert was right. Daniel could kill me, and he wouldn’t blink after doing so. I only wanted to know why Robert hated him before I went.

“Do you—” I began only to be interrupted.

“Never heard of him,” Daniel said, abruptly.

His four words held me in place. He didn’t know a Robert. He was a different Daniel. It wasn’t a rare name. They were strangers. Supposedly. Not one part of me believed him.

I refused to surrender. “He’s about this tall.” I stood on my tiptoes and lifted my hand into the air. “And he has brown hair.”

“What are you getting at?” His quickened voice comforted me. Even Daniel could get defensive. It was a familiar tone, one all bad bloods used, and one I could accept as honesty.

My hand dropped to my side. “I thought you might have seen him.”

“Wouldn’t know if I did.” He stepped forward, and then, he stepped even closer. I remained still, especially when he laid his hands on my shoulders. “Go. Home.”

His words didn’t correlate with his actions. He never let me go, and I never turned away. Our fogging breath mixed between us, and his eyes watched the cloud form and dissipate. His hands became heavier, and the backs of my feet sunk into the gravel until I ducked out of his touch.

“Do you want your jacket back?”

“Keep it.”

I started walking away before I was tempted to stay longer. I had indulged in him too much, explained too much, gave away too much. Even he had to know I was in a flock now. I wouldn’t be able to deny it, and I doubted I could face Robert again. Everything I did tonight was the very reason I was a risk. It was the very reason Robert should’ve killed me when I returned home. I wasn’t the same person I was when the police caught me, and I never would be again.

My eyes squeezed shut as I walked, but the lack of one sense heightened my other ones. I could hear everything around me, including the footsteps as someone ran up behind me. I spun around, but Daniel kept walking past me. He had followed, and now, he was going in the same direction I was: toward my house in Southern Vendona.

I chased after him. “Where are you going?”

“What does it look like?” he snapped over his shoulder. “I’m walking you home.”

During the ending hours of the day, Shadow Alley became an echo of scattering people—bad bloods, gang members, the homeless, and cats—but we, somehow, learned to avoid one another as much as we avoided the police. Even though we lived on the streets, we lived under a silent code of honor. We respected one another’s privacy, but I doubted any of us would help one another if Vendona met bloodshed again. We only had the streets in common. Everything else was lost in between the alleyways and the abandoned homes and government-issued fences.

As I looked at Serena, I wanted to doubt we had anything in common, but her words urged me to forget the line I normally drew between strangers and myself. Her gray eyes forced me to forget even more.

Her lips had to form Robert’s name before his face snuck into my suspicions. I knew I was being followed, but I had only seen a girl with dreads. I didn’t even know she was a bad blood until her eyes caught the fluorescent lights of Old Man Gregory’s. Red irises. I would’ve thought she was scouting for a flock if it weren’t for the risk she had taken by entering the store. Most bad bloods approached shyly. She stalked me like prey. I slipped out the janitor’s door to escape her. When I saw the three silhouettes in Shadow Alley, I assumed she was one of them. Serena was the last person I expected, but the fact that two other people were with her made it much, much worse. Her mentioning of Robert concluded it all. She had to be in the Southern Flock, and her leader had people following me.

It had been five years since my eyes had landed on Robert, and before that moment, I had presumed he was dead. Robert was a ghost to me—a person who always had a way of coming back to life at the most inconvenient times. Considering the election’s approach, I should’ve expected his arrival again, but I let his memory slip away every winter. Cal called it a coping mechanism. I called it hate. But I wouldn’t allow hate to blind me. If Robert were watching me, I would watch him right back, and if I had to do it through Serena, then that was what I would do.

My gaze slid down to the ground and over to her black boots. Every time we passed an alleyway, a strain of light flickered across her shoes, and I took note of them. They were made of leather, practical and strong. No buckles to echo or strings to get caught on anything. Just a single zipper up the side. Maggie had a pair just like it, but the toes were worn out. Serena’s must have been at one point, too, because a darker patch peeked out from the side. Someone had fixed it, and someone had fixed it well.

In the Northern Flock, Kally was the repairman. She was only fourteen, but she spent the first ten years of her life helping her carpenter father. Her skills varied from sewing clothes to fixing a leaking sink, and anything she didn’t know, she learned. I couldn’t help but wonder who the Southern Flock had as a repairman. Whoever they were, they were better with shoes than Kally was. The two people I had seen with Serena were possibilities.

The girl had obviously been blooded. She went straight through the fence, but when I thought of them, the boy’s face appeared first. His hazel eyes were too bright, and his cheekbones were set too high—almost as if his facial features had been moved through surgery—but he was much too slow for a powerful blood. He had only attacked for the other girl. He hadn’t even tried to stay behind for Serena, but Serena hadn’t been fazed at all. Whoever she was in the flock, she was higher up than he was and from what I knew, she was more powerful. And quieter. She hadn’t spoken in ten minutes, and I needed information.

“I didn’t mean to hurt your friends,” I said, hoping she would volunteer what I needed to know.

My hope was useless. Always was. She didn’t respond at all, not even a flinch.

“I hope that girl is okay,” I pressed, waiting for anything, even a huff of air. “That must have hurt, going through the fence—”

“That’s my sister,” Serena interrupted as if she were afraid someone else was listening. When the three words left her, she finally looked at me from the corner of her eye. “And her boyfriend.”

“Relax.” I exhaled my own big breath. It fogged out in front of me, and chills went up my spine. It was cold for Vendona. Too cold. “I’m not about to tell on either of you.” I tried to keep my mind off the weather, but my words died out the more I concentrated on not concentrating on it.

The girl I had pushed through the fence was blonde—delicate hair like Serena’s—but her eyes were as navy blue as my bedroom at Calhoun’s apartment. Her face was sharper, too, especially against her cropped hair. It was the scar on her cheek I remembered the most. I could pick Serena’s sister out from Vendona’s main square if I had to, and Serena had to have known that. But my focus was elsewhere.

“You have siblings?” I asked, not sure if I believed her or not. They definitely looked alike.

Her walk slowed down, and for a second, I thought she would stop walking altogether, but her steps never came to a halt and neither did her answers. “I guess so.” When she turned to look at me, I already knew what to expect to hear, but I didn’t want to hear it. “Do you?”

She was searching for information, too, and every second of silence that passed between us condemned me. I was fighting my own shadow.

“I did.” My eyes locked on the fence as I mustered up the words. “Two brothers.”

“Did they—”

“They died.”

Her silence wasn’t expected. I had only told a handful of people about my brothers, and every single one of them had pressed for more information, but Serena didn’t. She didn’t say anything at all, not an apology, not a condolence, not an ounce of fake sympathy or anything. She just listened—and I had to lock my jaw to prevent myself from telling her more.

I had seen death, even more death than the average bad blood, but death was too common to feel victimized over it. I had caused death myself. I didn’t have the right to mourn it at all. One person’s death was another person’s survival. But talking about it promised us all a horrible one. It was called the street curse.

I kept my mouth shut, knowing I would jinx myself if I didn’t, until Serena took a wrong turn. Her torso twisted toward an alleyway, her right arm swaying out from her side, and for a flash, my memory of the day we met filled my vision.

I grabbed her wrist before I knew what I had done.

She whipped around like the same thing had happened to her. The wildness in her eyes returned for a fleeting moment, and my breath caught. Her gray irises filled with a fog—like a morning mist—and I knew the only alive part of her was the wild part. This part was only half-awake.

As she pried my grip off her wrist, slowly at first, her fingers shook. “Why’d you do that?” A curse muttered under her breath. “Are you trying to make me scream?”

My jaw fell open, unlatching itself, and then, it closed again. She watched me as I rubbed my chin, and I dropped all eye contact as I pointed over my shoulder. “Your house is that way.”

“Cal told you the address.” Her voice was emotionless.

He hadn’t told me the address, but she had told me it was in the southern part of town, and she was trying to go east. Even then, I shrugged like Cal had told me everything. “Cal told me lots of things.”

A rumble escaped Serena’s throat as she marched past me, walking the correct way this time. I had to run to keep up with her, and I watched her blonde ponytail like it was a flashlight leading the way. When I got to her side, I fought the urge to grab her hood and pull it over her hair. It was too bright for walking around at night, but she didn’t seem to care.

“The technology,” she started. “It’s real.”

I hadn’t forgotten about the blood testing, but hearing it from Serena myself brought on more emotions than Calhoun telling me did. The blood camp had tested her, and they had almost killed her because of it. The government would do it to us all if they got the chance.

“It’s best if you stay with Cal.” Serena didn’t hesitate to share her opinion, but she didn’t look at me. Her gaze remained locked ahead on nothing in particular. “He’ll keep you safe.”

Her idea would’ve been great if I weren’t the leader of the Northern Flock. “That’s not an option,” I said, but she didn’t seem to hear.

“Henderson might win anyway.” She kept talking, but all I heard was her opinion of Alec Henderson, the man fighting for bad bloods’ rights.

“Not if he gets tested.” I practically spat my argument out, desperate for her to hear me again.

Serena stopped walking, and by the time I stood in front of her, she had perfected her snarl. “You think he’s one of us.” It was more of a statement than a question.

“He has to be.” I fought the urge to stick my hands in my pockets. I needed to be able to fight if she attacked, and the anger radiating off her suggested she might. Most bad bloods would if someone spoke against the only man in history to fight for them. I couldn’t blame her. I even had to take a breath. “Humans don’t stand up for us.”

“If you separate yourself now, how do you expect us to be accepted by them?”

Her question came out fast, like her powers revolved around talking quickly, but the starkness of her words struck me. I had taken the “bad” out of “bad blood,” but I had still kept us apart. Serena hadn’t, even though she used the whole phrase.

She blew her bangs out of her face, and her shoulders slumped as she glanced at the sky. “Besides,” she spoke like a child who spoke only to the stars, “I know of two humans who do.”

Even though my blue-and-white plaid jacket was too large for her, she straightened up as if she were in armor. “My parents do,” she explained.

Her confession stabbed me like a knife. “You said you didn’t have parents.”

“Not anymore.” When she hesitated, the powerful fighter she had appeared to be melted against the black backdrop of a dirty alleyway. “They live on the western side of town. That’s where I got caught.” Her rosy cheeks drained of color. I hated to see it happen. It was like a bright afternoon being washed away by a sudden rainstorm.

I had to walk past her to prevent myself from touching her again. “If they stood up for bloods, they wouldn’t have left you on the streets.”

Only wind followed me as I marched toward the southern part of Vendona, but soon, her voice called out, “They didn’t leave me.”

I stopped, and she made her way to my side. It only took her four steps. I hadn’t gotten very far without her.

When she leaned over, she caught my eyes. “I left them.” Her cheeks burned as she said it, but she never dropped eye contact. “They love me. Still do. But I can’t make myself go back.”

Her words didn’t make sense. “You left?” I repeated, positive I had misheard her. “On your own?”

She nodded. “I know it sounds crazy. Trust me. I know.” She half-laughed, the same sound of a last gust of wind sneaking in through a closing window. “But the Western Flock was massacred, and everything was so chaotic—”

As her voice faded away, her back faced the very fence that separated us from the field where the massacre had happened twelve years prior. She seemed too young to remember it herself. Then again, so did I.

When I stared at her face—her thin lips, petite nose, and thick eyebrows—I tried to dissect what she must have looked like as a kid, running away to live on the streets, but all I could see was the grown girl in front of me, a borderline adult. A girl with wild eyes and shaking hands and a voice as still as the cold.

“I was a kid,” she continued, but this time, she fiddled with the buttons on my jacket she had borrowed. Blake did the same thing when he wore it. “I didn’t really know what I was doing—”

“Go home.”

Her lips snapped shut, but her eyes narrowed as she registered my words. “I am.”

“To your parents,” I corrected, not even bothering to hide my rushed tone. If I could convince her to return to her parents before Vendona fell, I could save one bad blood, and it might all be worth it. “Go home, and be safe and happy—”

“I am happy.” Her usually soft features hardened as though she had aged in seconds. “I have a new home.”

“With Robert?” His name tasted horrible in my mouth. It might as well have been poison or vomit from poison—either would’ve been suitable—but her eyes flicked over me like she didn’t mind watching me drown.

“Why does he hate you?”

My muscles tensed, threatening to twist into knots I would never be able to untie on my own. Serena didn’t believe what I told her before. She knew I was aware of Robert, and she had let me walk with her anyway. She let me believe I had tricked her when I hadn’t. Not at all. This time, I was the one questioning who was in front of me, but at least—when she had questioned me in Calhoun’s kitchen—she had a knife. I had nothing.

Serena eyed me, up and down. “I know it was you,” she said slowly, like how I had spoken when I convinced her she didn’t need a weapon. “He followed you to that store.”

My stomach dropped. I had never seen Robert. I had only seen the girl with red eyes. The realization that Robert had been there made my entire body ache. I didn’t even know what Robert would look like now. Five years ago, he was fifteen, a young teenager. His face must have changed by now. He must have grown in height or stature. He could’ve grown a beard or had long hair. Maybe he even walked right past me. Maybe we looked at each other and I hadn’t seen him.

“What did he tell you?” My whisper came out in a growl.

“Not much,” Serena responded like my tone was casual. “He recognized your jacket.”

Robert had been following me for longer than I thought. Cal had given me the jacket two years ago. That very day, I had saved Ron from an officer. It was risky, and the sleeve had two slits in it from where the officer had stabbed me. By the time I had snapped his neck, my injuries had disappeared, but Michele never could get the blood to wash out. I didn’t mind much. It reminded me of Ron. If Robert knew the jacket, he had been watching me—closely—within the past year.

My attention broke as Serena shook the jacket off, revealing the all-black ensemble she wore underneath. With one hand, she pulled her black hood over her hair, and with her free hand, she held my jacket toward me.

I didn’t take it. “Won’t he know you saw me again?”

“Maybe that’s the point.” She winked. Actually winked. “He told me to stay away from you.”

I laughed. “How unoriginal.”

“Why’d he say that?” There was no hint of laughter on her part.

I took my jacket from her and studied the slits on the sleeve, still there, still red on the edges. “We don’t get along.” There was no reason to hide our connection anymore.

“I got that part.” Serena’s lips pushed to the side. “I want to know why.”

The expression was a humorous one. Her cheeks were too round, too rosy in the cold, for me to take her determination seriously. While I couldn’t see it before, I could now see her as a child. It was a shame she had left on her own, but it was a bigger shame that Robert was allowing her to stay on the streets. It must have been for her powers. Her abilities were strong. He wouldn’t want to waste it. He was too selfish to feel otherwise.

I swallowed the bitter taste in my mouth. “You’re not going to get what you want from me, Serena.”

Her eyes twitched, but they didn’t budge again after that. The girl had perfected a long, hard stare. “I’m used to that,” she finally said. Even though she barely moved a foot away from me, her black clothes blended with the shadows of the alleyway. She was nearly as invisible as Vi.

“I should go,” she muttered, almost as if she were speaking to the darkness instead of me. “Thanks for walking me this far.”

I didn’t nod.

She nodded at me like I had before turning her back to me. “Bye,” she spoke so that the wind carried her voice to me. It was a gamble, but I had heard her. She must not have thought I did, though, because she spun around and said it again. When I didn’t respond, she cocked her hip out. “You’re still not going to say it back?”

“I don’t say goodbye unless I think it’s final,” I repeated the very thing I had said to her the first time I left her. This time, she was leaving me, and I wondered if she felt the way I did. I wanted her to stay. I wanted to know more about her. I wanted to know why she ran away, how she met Robert, and if she would run away one more time. “I wouldn’t mind seeing you again, Serena.”

Her bottom lip dropped slightly before she closed her lips, and they formed a half-smile. “Say hi to Cal for me.”

Before I could respond, a cloud of dirty smoke burst out of nowhere. It fogged out, swirling and twisting like a tornado made of power, then it zoomed into itself, and it disappeared. Feathers filled the alleyway.

She was gone, and she had used a power I had never seen before—an ability that I wouldn’t have believed if I hadn’t witnessed it. My hand landed on the fence to keep myself standing. Serena was powerful. Too powerful. And she wanted me to know exactly who I had freed.

My powers had one flaw. One, major flaw. If I absorbed a bad blood’s abilities, and they were powerful enough, the bad blood could control if and when I used them again. I didn’t have a choice. They were just as much a part of me as I had become a part of them. My theory about how my powers worked was a weak one, but at least I had one. If bad bloods had souls, our powers were connected with them, and I absorbed both. They were inseparable. It was the very reason I was sure scientists hadn’t found a cure. Removing our abilities only resulted in our deaths. Lucky for Logan II, that was all the candidate running against Henderson wanted. But Logan wasn’t the only one who wanted something. Robert did, too. He wanted me home, and I was headed there—through Huey’s powers.

I knew Huey was controlling me the second the vortex appeared and took hold. Daniel was the last thing I saw before my molecules squished into nothing. At least, it felt like nothing, and nothing did have a feeling. The first time the sensation took me I was twelve.

The year Ami arrived I caught pneumonia. Since I was a bad blood, I couldn’t go to a hospital. My illness was threatening the rest of the Southern Flock. There were only five of us, and I could barely keep my consciousness. Niki was the first to suggest putting me out of my misery. Robert left then. When I closed my eyes, I had already accepted that I would never open them again. That’s when I floated.

I floated for three days, and on the fourth day, I woke up. Robert was still gone, but Catelyn had stayed by my side the entire time he was absent. She had only been with us for one year, but she had risked her own health to stop Niki from killing me. Robert returned one week later with a black eye and a horrible limp. I never asked him what happened, but I was sure Niki blamed me for it. Even worse, she acted like his black eye was worse than my near-death experience. We argued ever since, but I only experienced the floating feeling again when I met Huey.

In the one year I had known the boy, the blond had opened up a world of transportation to me. The vortex was the worst part of transporting. Once inside, everything was empty. The colorless, soundless space held nothing but the smell of smoke and the tickle of feathers. Once he showed it to me, I never wanted to go back. Huey was shocked. He thought it was heaven. When I asked him why, he said, “Heaven isn’t a sad place.”

To me, the vortex was sad, but Huey argued that it held nothing. No happiness. No anger. No sadness. Nothing. “For happiness to exist, sadness has to exist,” he spoke like an adult would, as if he were repeating a phrase he learned from his parents. “And I don’t want to be sad.” He almost started to cry. “I don’t mind sacrificing happiness for that.”

He was seven years old then, and from that day on, I knew he counted his years as years of sadness. It wasn’t rare for the eight-year-old to go missing into his vortex for days, but it was rare for him to pull me in forcibly. In fact, this was the first time he succeeded. The only other time he had attempted the feat was when I disappeared. As long as he had an idea of where I was, he could try to force me to transport, but he had failed before. This time, he hadn’t.

The familiar pinch of my molecules scraping back together forced air out of my lungs as they reformed. When I solidified, a curse escaped me, and pain shot through my limbs, trailing up and down the length of my veins. I had to lock my jaw to keep myself from screaming out, and when the smoke finally cleared, I was grateful for my sealed lips.

Robert stood directly in front of me, straightened up, shoulders out. Huey stood next to him. His mouth was ajar, revealing the gap in his teeth that looked like an extra opened mouth.

“You.” I blinked at Robert as my words constructed in my dizzy mind. “You used Huey? He could’ve been hurt.”

Robert’s eyebrows slid, inch by inch, to the bridge of his nose. “There you go again.”

I didn’t know how to respond.

“Start worrying about yourself getting hurt,” Robert said as his shoulders slumped. “Huey needs practice. He volunteered.”

My eyes met Huey’s only for his gaze to fall to his feet. Even though his blond hair slid over his forehead, the tips of his cheeks were visible. His skin was bright red.

I tore my eyes away. “He’s eight, Robert,” I said. “He did not volunteer.”

“Can I go now?” Huey’s voice was a squeak.

“Yes,” I said at the same time Robert said, “No.”

Our glares fixed on each other, and I didn’t avert my eyes until Ami called Huey’s name. Her long braid caught my attention as she waved him away from us. He practically sprinted to get behind Ami, and Ami’s hand wrapped around herself to touch him as she stared at us. “Try not to wake the kids up,” she snapped.

I had never heard Ami use that tone before. The teenager was usually quiet, and she reverted to her silent nature as she took Huey into the basement where most of the kids slept. Once the door was shut, I surveyed the rest of the house. It was empty—too empty—even though it was just after midnight. If I got caught, Steven and Catelyn must have been caught too. But they weren’t waiting for me. I was getting a special lecture, one meant only for me.

Robert leaned against the column in our living room as his eyes closed. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Where—” he sighed the word. “Why?” He didn’t have to clarify. He knew I followed him to intervene with Daniel.

“No one needs to die.”

When he squeezed his nose harder, his knuckles turned white. “No one died.”

“Not by your choice.”

His eyelids inched open, and his brown irises peeked out from his sliced gaze. “Where’s the jacket?”

I had to glance at my clothes to remember what had happened. Huey’s vortex muddled my memories, but returning Daniel’s jacket cracked through the gaps. “I gave it back.”

The heat in the air rose, a sign of Robert’s abilities. If he wanted to, he could make a person explode simply by looking at them. “You know where he lives?” His tone was calmer than I thought it would be.

“No.” For once, I spoke the truth. “I ran into him while following you. You barely missed him.”

Robert’s hand dropped from his face. I turned my back to him so I didn’t have to see his expression, but I hadn’t taken two steps before he called after me. “Where are you going?”

“To bed.”

Robert’s footsteps followed me to the stairs. “We need to talk.”

I stopped on the third stair. “Why?”

The railing shook when he grabbed it. “You know why.”

I turned around, raised my hands, and clapped them as hard as I could. Niki’s curses filled the room.

Robert’s eyes followed the cursing, landing on the nearest door—to a coat closet. Then, he looked back at me. “Why’d you do that?”

“She hates me, and you know it,” I said and sat on the steps. “If we’re talking, she’s not a part of it.”

Robert never looked away from me, but he spoke Niki’s name. The closet door creaked open, and she stumbled out. “I heard. I heard,” she said as she threw her dreads over her shoulder. Right before she disappeared into the kitchen, her red eyes glared in my direction, and then Robert and I were alone. Even he couldn’t deny what she had done, but he sighed as if he were trying to find a way.

“She doesn’t hate you,” he finally said. “She’s worried about you, like the rest of us.”

I blew air out.

“I’m not mad at you.” Robert’s words affected my anger the same way his powers affected people. It disintegrated. He collapsed in the space next to me, and his legs stretched down the stairs. When his arm pressed against mine, I pressed mine back. It was like we were children all over again, and it occurred to me that I was—in fact—still a child by legal standards. But my existence was illegal, so I didn’t feel like a child. I didn’t even feel alive.

His hand landed on my head, and he shuffled my hair around like he could break my thoughts up. “You need to stay home right now.”

I ducked away from his touch. “You were going to kill him.”

Robert’s mouth opened like he was going to argue but only a rumble escaped his throat. He stared at the wall as he coughed, and the stairs groaned as he shifted an inch away from me. “I wasn’t going to kill him.”

I didn’t know what to say. If he wasn’t going to kill Daniel, then I didn’t know what else could’ve happened. Killing was the only possibility bad bloods faced.

“And I won’t,” Robert promised, shooting over a sidelong glance. “But you shouldn’t have left.”

“I had to.” My words came out faster than he could finish his. “I can’t stay here all the time. I need to breathe. I need to move around—” I couldn’t be in a cage again. Not now. But my throat trapped my voice.

My eyes burned, and I squeezed my eyelids shut to keep them from catching on fire. It wasn’t Robert at all. His powers were under control. It was me. It was always me.

“Serena.” His voice was calm as he repeated my name once more. Too calm. Too unlike him.

My eyes sprang open. “You wouldn’t talk to me like this before.”

“Before what?”

“You know what I’m talking about.” I kept snapping, like a taut thread cracking under pressure.

“Then, why didn’t you just say it?” Robert looked at me like it was his job to unwind me.

“I—I—”

“You were tortured, Serena.” I didn’t want to hear him speak, but his voice was all I heard. “You were starved and beaten and damn near killed.” His fingers grazed my back as if he wanted to touch me but knew it was best not to. “Right now is not the time to be running around in more chaos.” He dropped his forehead on my shoulder and sighed. “You need to relax.”

“I’m not capable of relaxing,” I whispered into his hair. “Logan already did it. Vendona has the technology to test us all.” It was the third time I had spoken about it but the first time I had said anything to him.

He tensed, but he didn’t move away. “You’re not thinking clearly.”

I moved back, and he almost fell over. He had to catch himself on the stairs, but I was too focused. I almost growled when I repeated myself. “They can test our blood, Robert.”

In the reflection of his irises, I could see myself as I was a week ago—the wild eyes, the frayed bangs, the frostbitten nose—how skinny my cheekbones still were.

I jumped to my feet so we wouldn’t be face-to-face, and I grabbed the handrail as I leapt up two steps. “I meant to tell you earlier.”

When I turned around, he didn’t even stand. Instead, he rotated his torso so his back was against the wall and his toes were against the handrail, causing his knees to bend up. He was too tall for the little space. He was almost in the fetal position. “Did you already tell him?”

My hands curled at the question. “Are you seriously that focused on Daniel?”

“I don’t want you to make a mistake.”

I searched his face, all the way from his long eyelashes to his round chin. I wanted to see the answers to all the questions I had, but like Daniel, there were no hints in his expression. Just focused concern—so focused that neither of them seemed to see my returned concern. It was a leader’s focus.

“I’m going to bed,” I said as calmly as my emotions would allow. It came out too monotone, too obvious toward my intentions, and I blew the bangs out of my face to kill my adrenaline. “I’m sorry.” I meant it, too.

Robert nodded, but he didn’t look at me. He only looked at the living room, and I glanced over the stair rail—half-expecting to see someone standing there—but the room was empty. Robert was staring at a memory.

As I turned away, I attempted to search my own for which one he lost himself in, but I couldn’t think about it for long. I had something more important to do. I burst into my bedroom, knowing they would be waiting for me.

Catelyn was already sitting up, staring at me as if she had been waiting at my door ever since we had separated in Shadow Alley, but Steven was curled up next to her, his hand wrapped around hers. Even in his sleep, he couldn’t let her go. Melody was resting on a giant pillow on the window seat, her thumb shoved in her mouth.

I shut my door behind me, locked it, and shoved a sweater into the crack on the floor. I wasn’t risking Niki’s super hearing, and Catelyn understood my actions.

“I was worried you got caught again,” she whispered as she pried her hand out of Steven’s sleep grip. “Him, too. You know him, sleeps anytime he’s stressed out.”

“I’m awake,” he muttered, barely moving.

Catelyn never looked away from me. “You okay?”

I took a breath. “It was Daniel.”

Catelyn didn’t react, almost as if she had suspected it all along, but Steven’s eyes cracked open. By the time he sat straight up, his eyes were orbs.

I sat down on the carpet and pulled my knees against my chest. My clothes were still cold in some places, where the outside world had seeped into the black threads. “Robert was following him, but I think he only saw Niki.”

Catelyn gasped but threw a hand over her mouth like she could take it back. She only removed her hand to crawl to the edge of my bed to get closer to me. “You talked to him?”

“What else was I supposed to do?”

Steven buried his face against the blankets, but we still heard him mutter, “This is bad.”

“I know.”

Catelyn’s eyebrows shot up. “Do you think—?”

She didn’t have to finish her thought. It had occurred to me the moment I spoke to Robert. Daniel was like us. Too like us. Even for a bad blood.

“Northern Flock,” I guessed.

Steven’s face lifted, only for him to rest his chin on his hands. “He could be in the Eastern Flock.”

Catelyn rolled her eyes. “They’re dead.”

“You don’t know that,” Steven grumbled.

Catelyn turned to face Steven. “They. Are. Dead.”

Everyone knew they were dead, but Steven was the hopeful type. Too hopeful. It was the one thing Catelyn feared about him; he hadn’t spent enough time on the streets to understand how horrible everything could be. Steven was a pretender and an avoider, but he balanced out Catelyn’s stark reality and emotional distress.

Steven pretended she wasn’t looking at him. “He could be in a new flock.”

His second suggestion was worse. There were only two flocks—the Northern Flock and the Southern Flock—and they weren’t even the original ones. The Western Flock and the Eastern Flock claimed history, one of them by being killed, the other one by disappearing overnight. Other groups couldn’t claim a flock name. They were normally destroyed within the year. But Catelyn didn’t argue Steven’s logic. I did.

“It has to be the Northern Flock,” I said. “Those are the only people Robert hates.” I had seen it in his eyes, the glint of heat that filled his gaze anytime the Northern Flock was brought up. A similar darkness consumed him when Daniel’s name was spoken. That glint—although I wasn’t positive of the origin—was the same light Robert used to ignite his fire. His powers couldn’t exist without it, and his control stemmed from it. That control was why we chose him to be the leader instead of me, and I was satisfied until now. After twelve years, I wanted to know what that glint was. Whatever it was separated us from them. Whatever it was fueled the rumor of how much the two flocks hated one another. Despite the fact that I had never met a bad blood from the Northern Flock myself, we stayed away from one another’s territory like it was an expected thing. We stayed away like it was a survival tactic. But Daniel had saved me.

“Does he know?” Catelyn’s question floated past me, but when I looked up, I understood what she meant by her expression.

I buried my nose against my kneecaps. “He probably does,” I whispered. Daniel had to know I was in a flock just as much as I suspected he was.

“You can’t—” Catelyn started, but I stopped her.

“I won’t,” I promised, knowing what I had to do.

I couldn’t see Daniel again. Goodbyes or not, I was risking my family, and so was he, and bad bloods couldn’t risk anything right now. He had already troubled himself by saving me—probably out of the hopes of recruiting me—and I had already troubled myself by attempting to save him from Robert. As far as street rules went, we were even, and I had to be finished.

I squeezed my legs as I tried to tell myself it was time for bed, but Steven was the one to speak. “If he’s in the Northern Flock,” he started, “why would he be on the western side? Twice?”

I shook my head like I didn’t know—like it didn’t make sense—because I didn’t want them to know about Calhoun, the man who’d saved Daniel, the very man who’d walked me back and seen our home.

Cal was human, yet Daniel didn’t believe humans helped bad bloods. He was willing to take “bad” out of “bad blood,” but he still didn’t believe Henderson would win. His biological family was obviously dead, a family that had kicked him to the streets for a power as wonderful as healing, but he wanted me to go back to mine when my power stole souls.

Daniel didn’t make sense, but I wouldn’t lose Robert over trying to make sense of it. I had a family. I had a flock. And if I had to say goodbye to anyone, it would be Daniel. All the moments between us could fade beneath the November cold. I wouldn’t even shiver over it.

My splitting headache was only relieved by the cold wind pushing against it, cooling my temperature like medicine I needed but didn’t have. I pushed my bangs back just to expose my skin more and forced my eyes open as I continued walking, Ryne next to me. Since Robert was clearly following me, I couldn’t risk returning to Old Man Gregory’s, and I definitely couldn’t risk exposure in the main square. It was also the perfect opportunity to test Ryne, the black-haired fire starter who claimed to remember nothing.

I didn’t have to look at him to know he recognized where we were. Near the edge of the main square, a homeless man had found Ryne nearly beat to death. The boy’s shoulders tensed with every nearing inch.

“Remember anything?” I asked.

“No.”

It was nearly impossible to doubt Ryne, even though my gut begged to. The boy sounded like an adult when he spoke, confident and positive. I knew better.

“Nothing?” I pressed.

“Just my name.” Ryne’s fingertips rose to his hairline where more scars hid beneath his hair. “And this corner.”

It was the first time he confessed to it out loud. “Remember what happened?”

Ryne’s gaze slid up, a shadow slicing through his vision. It was the look of someone who would snap one day. It was the reason I wanted to keep him around. I needed valuable bloods. Ryne was a fighter, and his sheer focus was as valuable as Kally and Tessa were for supplies. Still, we couldn’t go back to Old Man Gregory’s—not after Robert and his red-eyed minion had followed me—and that left us one option for medicine.

The main square was hardly a square at all—it was more like a waning moon or half circle—and it connected the southern, western, and northern parts. It was the closest part of the outskirts to the Highlands, the central city of Vendona, and even then, it was far away. People from the outskirts didn’t risk going near the gate. Security increased, and arrests were practically guaranteed. It was the elite’s way of keeping the poor out and the bad blood population low. Even so, from the edge of the main square, bits of the Highlands inched into view.

Ryne turned away as it came into his line of sight, but within seconds, he faced it again, chin raised, jaw locked. With his complexion and hair, he appeared to be a younger Calhoun, but Ryne managed to seem more destructive. Perhaps it was the fact that he had both arms.

I laid my hand on his head, something I knew he hated, but he didn’t move away. He spoke instead, “They’re just protecting their way of life.”

It could’ve been a curse and I would’ve believed it more.

I roughed up his hair and gave him a slight shove. “Don’t worry about them,” I said. “Just get the medicine and we’ll leave.”

Ryne didn’t nod, but he disappeared into the crowd in front of us, blending in like any other citizen. I rested against the nearest wall I could find and pressed my temple up against the cold brick. My migraine was unbearable, and it was worse when I coughed. Every muscle inside of me ached, and yet I pushed my concern away. I glared at the looming buildings instead. They swayed in my foggy vision, like colored sunlight off the ocean in Eastern Vendona. If I never had to see the water again, I would be okay. I would be okay one day. The kids would be, too. And hopefully, Henderson would guarantee that. When I glanced at the Highlands again to study the skyscrapers—the reflective windows and gleaming steel and stick-straight grid living—I wished to know which building Henderson resided in. When he looked toward the horizon, I wondered if he could see all of us from his living room. When he woke up in the morning, I wondered what direction he faced. I wondered if he wished to face another way or if he hoped Vendona would tear its walls down one day.

As far as I knew, and I only knew what Cal explained, Vedona was one among thousands, a simple city-state separated but connected through the Council of States. Citizens weren’t allowed to leave their birthplace unless given special permission. This meant only the rich were afforded the luxury of travel. I doubted there was even a way to apply for transfer from the outskirts. I hadn’t had the time to ask.

When a car drove by, people darted to the roadsides, and my focus was torn apart by suffocating exhaust. I had to cough again, but my eyes followed the monochrome vehicle. A government car. It was a rare sight in the outskirts, but it was enough to remind myself of why I was standing in an alleyway.

Ryne hadn’t returned.

I poked my head out to glance at a shop’s clock, and my stomach twisted when I realized a half of an hour had passed. My head was slugging along more slowly than I thought, but I couldn’t wait any longer.

I stepped out into the main square and began my search. My eyes moved from person to dog to child to mother to shopkeeper. The faces blended together, and I made it a point not to make eye contact. I didn’t need to be seen or remembered or, God forbid, asked out on a date by a stranger. That had happened once. I didn’t like thinking about it.

Even though I knew where Ryne was supposed to be, he was still difficult to pick out from the group. Either I had trained him correctly or he was a natural. He blended right into the afternoon shadows, despite the fact that it was a singular shade caused by a light pole. He had the medicine in a bag, but he was outside of the toy store, watching two old men play checkers. Neither noticed their admirer.

As I went to drag him away, I found myself standing next to him. In Ryne’s other hand was a teddy bear. “I thought Blake would like it,” he said without removing his eyes from the game. “I won’t tell anyone.”

Spending extra money, especially on one flock member, was forbidden, but Ryne wasn’t one to follow the rules. Even then, he wanted to keep it a secret, though no one would protest Blake’s gift. He was the flock’s baby. The other kids loved doting on the youngest. Blake had never known anything else, and in a way, his positive acceptance was some of the only solace we had.

I took the teddy bear from Ryne’s hand and nudged him away from the checkers. “Let’s go home.”

He agreed by walking forward, medicine in hand, and I didn’t bother asking for any. It wasn’t for me, after all. Medicine and I had a hate-hate relationship. Despite my powers inability to heal illness, medicine didn’t work on me either. Not much anyway. When I took it, it burned off quickly and left my system faster, and I became immune to its effects like it was the disease itself. Sickness would be the death of me, but I could protect my flock from catching whatever I had.

I hunched my shoulders against the cold as I coughed again. Instead of taking the nearest alleyway, I took a different one, and Ryne followed. I had to lean against the wall again. My head spun.

“Are you okay?”

“I have one stop,” I muttered, forcing a small smile. “You think you can get back on your own?”

Ryne glanced from the right to the left. He had never gone anywhere on his own. He was either at home with Michele or traveling with Maggie. This time, he would have to prove himself. He gave one sharp nod to accept the challenge, and before I could ask if he needed directions, Ryne took off toward Shadow Alley.

My fingernails dug into the wall before I slapped the bricks as hard as I could.

Violet’s shadow leapt out. She was always following me. She just wasn’t aware I knew.

“You scared me,” she whined without solidifying. Her dark mass was a spiral of fog, inhuman but with a human’s voice.

“Get him home safe,” I mumbled back.

The shadow made a motion I could only interpret as a nod, and she was gone, disappearing into the ground like a slithering ghost. I waited the entirety of five minutes to make sure she had followed Ryne before I made my way to Cal’s.

I unlocked the door and stuffed the small teddy bear inside my jacket. When I shouted his name, he didn’t respond, so I helped myself. I grabbed a Diet Coke out of the fridge and drank it as fast as I could manage. When I was done, I grabbed another one, but this time, I pressed it to my neck.

The cool metal brought my fever down, and my focus returned. I needed to ask Calhoun for something, but he didn’t seem to be home. I would have to wait.

I walked down the hallway until I was in my bedroom, the blue color the very hue of the ocean I hadn’t seen in years. Strangely enough, I didn’t mind when Cal tried to mimic my original home when I moved in, but I preferred the gray clouds of the northern side to the blue water on the eastern side. And the desire to see the color gray only reminded me of Serena.

She must have stood in my room at some point, but there wasn’t a single sign of her presence, even though I was searching for one. It wasn’t until my eyes landed on my desk that I realized what she must have seen.

The photo of me as a kid—sitting on Calhoun—with bruises and blood. My only scar was a result of those injuries. It ran down my right shoulder, and it hurt often. Just looking at the photo made my bones ache. But I kept it, and the other photo, this one of a group of kids, as a reminder, even though I doubted I could forget.

The pain radiated down my spine as a coughing fit consumed me. I leaned on my desk and the photo of fifteen kids fell over. I stared at the back of the frame, but I didn’t touch it. I only breathed. They didn’t need to see me anyway.

When I caught my breath, I cracked open the drawer. My pistol was still there, but I was surprised to see it. I half-expected Serena to have found it and taken it for protection, but she didn’t, and it stared back at me.

“Daniel.”

I slammed the drawer at the sound of my name, and it echoed the way a gunshot would’ve.

From the doorway, Cal blinked. Before he could manage to speak, I began coughing again. My throat scratched when it was over. “You could’ve announced yourself.”

“Thought I did.” Cal’s tone was slow, a deliberate shift he held when he was ready to lecture me. “You sick?”

“No.” My lie was too quick. I sighed and slid into my desk chair.

“Daniel,” Cal began, “you know our deal.”

“I’m not sick,” I said while coughing. I couldn’t be ill. “Not now.”

“It was all that walking in the rain—”

“I didn’t come to talk about that.” I made a habit of interrupting Cal. He didn’t seem to mind. Instead, he walked across my room and sat on my bed. I spun my chair around to face him.

His eyes met mine, a smile dancing in them. “What do you need, kiddo?”

“Serena’s address.”

The smile in his eyes faltered. “No.”

“What?”

“You need to take care of you,” he said as he fiddled with his armless sleeve. “I don’t know what you’re thinking with that girl, but—”

“She’s in the Southern Flock.”

I half-expected his jaw to drop, but he rolled his eyes like he spent far too much time with teenagers. “I know.”

My jaw dropped instead.

“That’s exactly why I’m not givin’ it to you,” he explained, and if he had two hands, I was sure he would’ve folded them in his lap. “You don’t need to be near Robert.”

My shoulder burned as if my bones could hear his name. “He’s following me.”

Calhoun didn’t budge.

“Has been for a year, minimum,” I added.

“So, what?”

“So, what?” I repeated, leaning forward on my knees. “I want to know where he is.”

“You want to know where she is,” he corrected, “and if she’s in his flock, she’s his problem.” The idea of the two of them together bothered me in the same way the skyscrapers did—too big, too organized, too controlling—but Calhoun obviously saw something else. “You have your own flock to take care of.”

“But—”

“Don’t you remember what happened last time you met?” He played my interrupting game well. Robert and I almost beat one another half to death. Even then, I healed and walked away. Robert was left in a pile of his own blood, and I was even. Now, I wasn’t sure which one of us was starting our battle again—him or me. I wanted to protect Serena’s abilities, even if that meant taking her from them, but he was following me, and I doubted she had any clue as to why.

“She doesn’t need to be in that flock,” I managed through clenched teeth. “She’s powerful.”

“Which means she can help herself.”

“She could help us,” I corrected. The election would come, and the Northern Flock would need all the power it could get. Serena was triple the power I ever imagined.

Calhoun was silent, but only for a moment. “The answer is still no.”

“We need her help. When it comes time to fight—”

“Why do you think Henderson will lose?” Calhoun’s tone cut through the air as he stood up, towering over me.

I remained in my seat. “What?”

“You’re panicking like the polls are already in.” Never panic. It was one of his rules. “Why don’t you believe in Alec?”

I blinked, mainly at the fact that Calhoun had used Mr. Henderson’s first name, but I had to collect my thoughts. “It’s only a matter of time before it gets out.”

“Until what gets out?”

“He’s a blood,” I said it like it was a fact.

Cal’s black eyes flicked over me, and then he burst into laughter. He even had to bend over to grab his knee. “Henderson is no bad blood,” he managed as he collected himself, wiping his eyes, the laughter still rocking his chest.

I glared.

Calhoun sobered. “Henderson is not blooded,” he corrected his word choice.

“You don’t know that.”

“So, what if he is?” Cal asked. “So what” was his favorite phrase. Much like a preteen.

“Then, we lose and everyone dies.” Even I could hear the panic in my voice. Blake, Tessa, Kally, Peyton, and all the others filled me. Without them, I couldn’t imagine myself.

Cal was motionless, like the idea never shook him. “And if Henderson isn’t blooded? If he wins?”

I stared at my hands, now in fists. “We’ll be treated badly,” I said as the realization sank in, over and over again. I always knew it, but every time I thought of it, it felt like a new, terrible acceptance of a reality I would hate. “The discrimination won’t stop. People will still die.” My knuckles twitched, and I unlatched my grip on myself. My palm was white where my fingernails dug in, and one spot of blood pooled out. It solidified before my skin even reattached itself. But this time it hurt more than usual. A lot more. The illness did that to me.

Cal’s hand landed on my left shoulder, careful not to touch my injured one. “You’re not wrong, Daniel,” he sighed. “But you need to take care of yourself before you can help anyone—no matter the outcome.”

I coughed like Cal’s words asked for it, but I ducked away and stood up like I could deny it. “My flock is the most important part of my life.”

Cal’s eyebrows rose. “More important than your own life?”

I tried to glare at him, but my coughing prevented that. “I’m leaving.”

He wasn’t going to help. I would have to find Serena on my own, and talking with Cal was wasting my time.

“You need to rest,” Cal argued as he attempted to step in front of the doorway. I stopped, but only to stoop beneath his arm. He shouted at my back, “At this rate, you’re going to die from exhaustion. Stay here.”

“I can’t,” I called over my shoulder as I returned to the kitchen to grab one last Diet Coke. “I have to go.”

Cal didn’t try to stop me this time. “You’ll regret it if you get everyone in the flock sick.”

“I won’t,” I promised, and I left before he could hear me cough again.

Three days after accidentally attacking Serena and her friends, I dared to open up the curtains by the dining room table. The soft morning sunlight urged me to sleep, but I needed it to do the opposite. In my peripheral vision, I saw Michele watching me the entire time.

“We can talk about this tomorrow,” she started, but I shook my head. We didn’t have time to reschedule conversations to another day. “Did Cal—”

“He wouldn’t give me the address.”

Michele knew about my plans. In fact, it was her idea. Recruiting Serena was our top priority. Michele’s premonitions promised that the Southern Flock member would be important, and her powerful abilities seconded the notion. I couldn’t trust Robert with her. I couldn’t trust anyone with her. But I did trust her. Her warning about the technology might have only been the beginning.

“Did you explain everything to him?” Michele’s eyes threatened to flash yellow with the spike of her emotions. “Did you tell him about my vision?”

“He won’t budge, Michele.”

She grabbed my arm. “Why not? What can we do?”

I uncurled Michele’s hand from my jacket. “I’ll figure it out,” I promised without looking at her.

The front door swung open and slammed against the wall. Three kids ran by in a blur, a sign of Adam running with two others, and Michele snapped up from her seat. “Shut the door next time,” she yelled as her wispy hair flew behind her. She crossed the room and slammed the door louder than when the kids had opened it. Her palms landed on the wood, and her eyes were frozen yellow. Her fingers shook. “Something bad—” Her gaze was normal by the time she looked at me. Her face had aged in a matter of seconds.

“I know,” I whispered back. I wasn’t psychic—not like Michele—but my shoulder hurt anytime something bad happened, and it hadn’t stopped aching since meeting Serena.

I touched my scar, and Michele’s eyes moved over my grip. “Again?”

My gaze dropped to the table. “Maybe she’s the danger,” I started, hearing the lie in my voice. “Maybe we’re reading this wrong and we should stay away and Cal’s right and—”

“Daniel.” Michele slid into the chair in front of me. She didn’t speak as she grabbed my hand and pulled it away from my shoulder. While holding one hand, she touched my forehead. “I knew it.”

I was caught.

I ducked away. “I’m fine.”

“You need to rest.”

“I’m fine,” I snapped as I stood up. Her eyes widened at my tone, and I blew air out. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

“I know.” Her smile was as small as the rest of her features, but then her raised eyebrows took over her expression. “Hey, Blake.” She stood up as I turned around to face the kitchen.

The little blond boy barely took up half of the doorway as he watched us from a distance. He glanced between us as if he thought he was somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be, but he wasn’t—not that he should’ve known about anyway. Michele and I were trying to talk in private, and Blake’s telepathy allowed him to understand that, even though he shouldn’t have.

“Come here,” I said, trying to coax him over.

He raised his hands up to his chest, exposing the teddy bear Ryne got him, and squeezed it. “I didn’t mean to interpret.”

Michele laughed. “I think you mean interrupt.”

“Interrupt,” he repeated, his cheeks glowing pink. “That.”

He was quiet—something Blake never was—and I stood up. I didn’t take two steps before Blake was focused on me. “What’s up, kiddo?” I asked, hearing Calhoun in my own voice. I picked the boy up before he spoke.

“Want to play checkers?” he asked, leaning back to stare at me. “Ryne taught me.”

I put him on the couch. “Checkers? Where’d Ryne get checkers?”

“He stole them,” Blake said it in a tone I recognized. When he didn’t actually understand what he was saying, he said everything like a cheer. Blake had read Ryne’s mind.

I inhaled a deep breath as I thought about the day before. I was so out of it, I hadn’t even thought of why Ryne was studying the checkers players. I turned away from Blake to face Michele. “I’ll go talk to him.”

“Don’t bother,” Kally interrupted, appearing from the kitchen. “He’s out with Maggie.” She fiddled with the ragged edges of her dirty blonde hair. Last time I had seen her, she had long locks.

Michele squeaked. “What happened to your hair?”

The fourteen-year-old flinched, but she didn’t speak. The stairs were creaking instead, and Kally’s bright green eyes locked on the cause of the noise. Her flinch squeezed into a scowl, and the living room burst into chaos.

Kally sprinted toward the stairs, screaming, and I tried to grab her, but she slipped out of my grip. I spun around, trying to follow her, but Kally left ice in her shadow. I slipped, and my face smacked the wood floor.

Peyton was screaming before I even realized who Kally had attacked. Michele was shouting over the both of them.

“Put the scissors down, Kally,” Michele screeched, yanking and pulling at the two girls who were half of her size.

“She did it to me!” Kally was cursing and wiggling on top of Peyton.

Peyton fought back.

It started to rain—only a little bit—but it started to rain inside the house. A gift from Peyton. I scrambled to my feet. I barely made it to the stairs as all three girls started screaming at one another, Michele’s voice above Peyton and Kally’s. The two preteens didn’t stand a chance, but that didn’t stop them from trying.

The rain turned to hail as Kally’s anger rose, and Peyton added to the mix with a fury of wind. I looped both of my arms beneath Kally’s and yanked her back, nearly falling down the stairs. Michele stopped Peyton from following, but Peyton had the scissors now, and she was flailing her arms around.

“Put those down,” I shouted, but it was too late.

The rain was something Peyton created, but she never got used to it. The scissors slipped out of her grip, shot over the landing, and stuck straight into the couch—less than a foot away from Blake.

The boy stared at the homemade weapon stabbing into the cushion, and another boy stood next to him. Ron. The deaf boy that attached himself to the baby of the house was normally the most peaceful one, but his face turned bright red as his eyes scrunched up in a glare.

Ron lifted his hand, and the scissors lifted with the motion. The metal pointed straight toward Peyton.

“Don’t,” I shouted, even though it was useless. Ron was deaf. Still, the scissors didn’t move. They simply floated in the air, twitching like an animal.

Michele slid in front of eleven-year-old Peyton, and the usually pale preteen paled even more behind the psychic woman protecting her. Kally didn’t move either. I took one step toward them, and Ron met my eyes. I made a gesture to put the scissors down, but Ron looked at Blake.

“It’s okay, Ron,” he said. “I’m fine.”

Ron looked at Blake like he could, in fact, hear, but the scissors shattered into pieces. One piece stuck into the step by Peyton’s feet. She squeaked.

Ron patted the top of Blake’s head before turning to leave. I started after him, even though I wasn’t sure how I would talk to him without Blake. I didn’t get two feet before Michele stuck her arm through the stairway’s polls and grabbed my arm.

“I’ll do it.”

I glanced over at Blake. “Are you okay?”

He nodded, perfectly calm despite the situation. He didn’t know peace. This was home to him.

I had to turn my back to the boy before my anger rose. I glared at Peyton and Kally; neither had moved. “What the hell were you two thinking?”

Peyton’s round face gained color again. “She stole my shirt.”

“So you cut her hair off?” I had to hold back from screaming. “We share clothes around here.”

“It was mine,” she said, her voice tearing against her throat.

Michele sat down and grabbed Peyton’s arm. “What shirt?”

The preteen glared at the wall.

“What shirt?” Michele repeated.

“It was my mom’s.”

A sharp breath escaped me. The only rule we had about possessions was simple. Any possessions members brought with them from their original home stayed with that kid. Peyton had a pink shirt from her mother. Why she wanted to keep it was beyond me. Her mother had ditched her without even something to eat. The oversized shirt was the only thing she was wearing.

I looked at Kally, and she raised her hands. “I didn’t take it. Swear.” The fourteen-year-old dared to shoot a glare at Peyton. “And I’m still cutting off your hair.”

“No one,” I shouted over her, “is cutting anyone’s hair off.”

“But—”

“You are going to help Peyton find her shirt,” I ordered, “and before you do that, you’re both going to apologize to Blake.”

Peyton’s face scrunched up, but she was the first one to say, “I’m sorry.”

“Me, too,” Kally mumbled, folding her arms.

Neither of the girls actually looked at one another or at Blake, but when I glanced at Blake, he stroked the top of his teddy bear. “I think your shirt is in the upstairs bathroom.”

“What?” Peyton barely breathed the word.

“Floyd put it there while cleaning yesterday,” Blake said every word slowly, as if he were getting the information from somewhere.

I glanced at the basement door as it clicked closed. Someone had been eavesdropping, and I had to bet it was Floyd himself.

I pressed my forehead into my hand. “Go get your shirt, Peyton.”

“Sorry,” she said as she ran up the stairs, practically crawling as she went.

Kally just leaned her back against the wall. “Want me to go talk to psycho?”

“His name is Ron,” I muttered.

“Whatever.” She pushed herself off the wall. “Where’d he go, Blake?”

His nose scrunched up as he searched the psychic airways. “Tessa.”

Ron was in the garden by the side of the house. Tessa was always there, practicing her flower-growing abilities, even though we needed tomatoes more than pretty things.

Kally walked over to the shattered scissor pieces and picked up all the bits. “I’ll be back.”

I stopped her. “Why are you taking those?”

She cocked her head to the side. I could almost see the ghost of her long hair being flipped over her shoulder. “He likes to fix things he breaks,” she said it like it was an obvious thing. “It’ll cheer him up.”

I was speechless as the fourteen-year-old walked away. Blake even followed, only glancing back once. He wanted to help Ron just as much as Ron helped him. I imagined Ron didn’t feel like he existed without the little boy, but the anger he showed was beyond anything I had expected.

“When did they get so violent?” I asked as I found a place to sit on the stairs.

Michele scooted down each step until she was sitting next to me. “They’ve always been this way,” she said it like it was an apology. When I looked at her, her features softened. “It’s not your fault. It’s this stupid world.”

I followed her gaze to the front door and remembered the first time I had ever stepped through it. Adam was the only one with me, but we had already recruited Michele and Kally. Kally was six, and I wasn’t much older at eleven years old. The house belonged to an old friend of Calhoun’s, and Calhoun was positive we’d never get caught. He even lived with us for the first year to prove it. At the time, Vendona had bigger problems to focus on—like all the bad bloods running rampant on the streets. Being in a flock was unheard of. After all, Vendona had just massacred the main one. The government didn’t think bad bloods would recover, and I didn’t either until we saw Cal’s house.

Back then, the house had been big enough to run around in. I couldn’t imagine filling it up, but now, I never felt like I could breathe inside of the walls. The floors used to sparkle, but they were cracked and dusty now. The peach-colored wallpaper was stained or chipped away, and the windows held smudges of fingertips. All the doors creaked, and some of them were even cracked, but one thing had remained the same. The single, black lamp Cal bought us remained polished and untouched.

I kicked it like it didn’t belong. “I hate this thing.”

“You wouldn’t keep it if you did,” Michele retorted.

“You forced me to keep it.”

“Come on.” She pushed my arm with hers. “You wouldn’t have let me force you if you hated it.”

A chuckle escaped me, but it quickly died in the house’s silence. It had never been quieter. I didn’t like it.

“Relax,” Michele spoke up like she wanted to fill the silence too. “No one got hurt. Everyone’s fine—”

“I can’t protect them.”

Michele quieted.

I looked at her. “You know that, right?”

“I—” Her mouth closed, and the corners of her lips formed a frown. “I think I understand that more than you do.”

I stared at her, wondering exactly what she had seen and if she could interpret it or not. I trusted her to tell me if she could, but for as long as I had known her, she always held back. She knew something bad would happen. I knew that much. But I didn’t understand one thing. “Why don’t you run?”

A half-laugh escaped her as she prepared herself to speak, and for a brief moment, her irises were yellow as she remembered her previous vision. “Because that’s not my job.”

I waited, but she didn’t explain. “What are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper as her forehead landed on my right shoulder. “That’s Serena’s job. She’s the one that has to run.”

My heart pounded, and my fever escalated from the spike of adrenaline. Serena was always the one to run. I met her while running. Michele saw her in a vision while running and I wanted her to run from the Southern Flock. It only seemed fitting for her purpose to involve running again. I just didn’t understand what kind of running it would be.

“What do you mean, Michele?” I managed to force the question out, even though I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answer.

“That’s all I know,” she promised, sitting up only to let her back fall against the wall. She stared up at the ceiling. “All I ever see is her running. I’ve never even met the girl.” She blew her bangs out of her face. “I normally only see people I know.” Her face stayed propped up, her chin lifted, but her irises met mine. “We need her.”

I stood up. “I’ll go talk to Calhoun again.”

She nodded without argument. It was her way of telling me that I should’ve never left Cal’s without information in the first place.

As I reached the front door, she called my name. “Are you going to be all right?”

I realized I had been coughing, and I nodded as I peeked outside, watching as the daylight lingered on. I had a couple of hours left before dusk, but Cal and I would be arguing all night.

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” I said as I stepped outside. I shut the door behind me before she could ask anything else. I kept my focus on Calhoun and Serena and Robert and everything else that felt dangerously close to imploding the way my shoulder bone had years ago. And that never healed.

Nothing ever did.

Robert started the morning with half of an apology. All the fighting was very unlike us, but we did it anyway and found ourselves redefining what our relationship was. It had always been platonic—that of a brother and a sister—but he had found me on the streets, and he had taken me deeper into the streets where I was nearly killed. How he found the streets was still beyond me, but I knew it had almost killed him too. The blood bonded us, and because of our bond, I could decipher what he intended to say. I was allowed to leave. He couldn’t force me to stay inside, but he wished I would.

I didn’t.

Right after the sun began to rise, I snuck into Briauna’s room, careful not to wake the various kids who shared it with her. She was the only one I knew who could sense me coming, the only one who wouldn’t react when I touched her hand to wake her. I half-wondered if her scales had come with a set of animal instincts that went beyond the average human, and I fully wondered it when her eyes popped open, shining a reflecting light like a cat’s, before dimming down to her hazel irises. Other than that, she didn’t budge.

“I need you to cover for me,” I explained in a hushed tone. I had already asked too much of Catelyn and Steven.

Briauna propped herself up on her elbows, only to lay back down and scratch at her scales. A few flaked off. “Just come back.” She closed her eyes as if it were easy to sleep.

I didn’t press anymore. I just left and was running down the street before I knew it. Everything from the past week passed by me as my arms and my legs pumped. I was just a girl out for a morning run, nothing more, nothing less.

The cool breeze wrapped around me, and the memories blended in with the bare trees swaying down the street. For a moment, I swore I saw the browns, yellows, and reds of fall, but the colors were long gone—disappearing during the time I was in the blood camp—and now, branches pointed the way, each arm twisting toward Shadow Alley.

Everyone knew why there was an abundance of trees behind the fence. They acted as an additional fence, another blockade to stop people from visiting the field where the Western Flock was massacred. I had never seen the field myself, but Catelyn had. She said it looked like any other field. Nothing special about it. Nothing but history haunting it. Losing all the space by closing it seemed more destructive, but Niki—during one of the only times we had spoken—suggested damage we couldn’t sense. Radiation or something worse penetrated the field, left over from a bad blood who sacrificed himself during the police raid. I never asked where she heard the rumor, and she never clarified, but I believed her. People used to speak of how the snow fell red that night, and I had seen red snow before. It was the same shade used on a particular street name sign. Debary’s Lane. My parents’ street.

I stopped at the edge of the alleyway and peered around the corner. My father had been a cop when I was a kid, but now, I doubted he worked. I didn’t think my mother did either, although I couldn’t remember what she had done. How they supported themselves was beyond me, but the little time I had to spy didn’t help resolve my questions, and there was one big one I could never forget.

My sister.

I had never met her, but I had seen her, and I doubted I would ever know her name. I was five when I left, and five more years passed before they had her. It was almost as if they had counted each year of my life before they brought a new life into the world. That meant she was seven now. She even looked like me. With long, blonde hair and small features, we both resembled our mother. Our father was nearly the opposite—a stocky, rough man with brown hair—but I remembered his hugs the most.

I stared at the stoop, a single slab of concrete that hadn’t changed in twelve years, and as the memory pulled me, I took a step forward. I had never taken a step into Debary’s Lane. I had only watched it from Shadow Alley. But now, I was different. I had begun by running and I had survived by running, and for the first time, I could retrace those steps. All fifteen of them.

The crimson door glared back at me, but the russet doorknocker was a giant eye, a reminder of Charlotte’s gaze. It hadn’t even been there before. The door used to be green.

I stepped back, and the gravel slid beneath my heel. I fell, and a sound escaped my mouth. It wasn’t a millisecond later that I heard it: voices coming from inside the townhome.

I scrambled to my feet, sending gravel powder into the air as the door began to shake. Someone inside was panicking just as much as I was panicking on the outside. I had three seconds, and it took me two to cram myself in between a wall and the neighbor’s AC unit.

“Honey?” The high-pitched voice sounded strained as she stumbled into the street, only a few feet in front of me. I could see the mole on her neck. My mother.

A man with graying hair followed her, and he didn’t speak until his hand landed on her shoulder. “She isn’t here.”

My mother never looked at him. “She was.” Rapid blinking caused her blue eyes to sparkle. “I heard her—”

“It was probably a cat.”

“Serena was here.”

My name. She said my name, and I couldn’t breathe a single word. I hadn’t seen her up-close since I was a child. Half of me expected she had forgotten my name, presumed I was dead, enjoyed that they could start over without me, their bad-blooded child.

“Momma.” It was her. My sister. She had brown eyes like our father, and she rubbed the right one like she had been sleeping on the couch. I wondered if the couch was still next to the window. “What’s going on?”

My dad’s hand moved from my mother’s shoulder to my sister’s. “Why don’t you go back inside, sweetheart?” Not her name. I wanted to know her name.

When she heard his tone, she stopped rubbing her eye. “Serena was here?”

My hand curled over my own mouth, and my fingernails dug into my face. Their voices blended as my heartbeat consumed my eardrums. I was hot again. My whole body was hot.

“Serena.”

My focus returned with agonizing adrenaline, but I didn’t budge. My father had spoken my name, but now, he was alone, and he wasn’t even looking at me. He was staring at the wall, his eyes darker than I remembered. If he glanced five feet over, he would’ve seen me, but he stared at the ground as he pulled a notepad from his back pocket. I had been wrong. He was still an officer. The Vendona city-state symbol—a magnolia—was etched into the front.

I watched him as he scribbled down a note. When he was done, he stepped out of sight. I waited five minutes before I dared to move. My knees ached, but I ignored the pain as I crawled out from the crevice.

Right when I was about to take off sprinting, I looked back. A rock and a piece of paper sat in the exact place where I had sat the night I met Robert and ran away.

I snatched it and ran away again.

The main square was full of shoppers, workers, and gossipers, and I blended into the crowd with ease. I walked with them, pretending to be one of them, and waited until my hands stopped shaking. I waited until the memory solidified with my emotions, and when everything stilled, I leaned against the nearest wall.

Air filled my lungs as I took a deep breath, and then I shivered as I exhaled. My hand dug into my pocket, and I pulled out the small piece of paper.

Scribbled on the front was my name. It was the only thing I knew how to read. When I unfolded the paper, a small note stared back—nothing more than a drawing to me. I couldn’t read it, and I crumbled it into my pocket like I didn’t want to.

It was then that I saw him.

Daniel walked through the crowd, but it wasn’t much of a walk. It was more like stumbling and I had never seen Daniel stumble. Not once. Not even when he was fighting. But he was wearing the blue-and-white plaid jacket and it fluttered amongst the crowd of black coats and gray sweaters. He was practically asking to be arrested.

I took a step forward and then I stopped. Daniel continued to walk slowly, like he didn’t even know where he was. He looked drunk and the rest of the crowd ignored him like he was. Still, the first cop to lay eyes on him wouldn’t be so kind.

I sighed before I pushed myself toward him. “Daniel.”

He didn’t respond to his name, but it was definitely him.

I grabbed his arm. “Daniel.”

He mumbled incoherently until his eyes met mine. His usual mossy stare was dim and his olive complexion had paled significantly. Still, he smiled a ghost’s smile, one that disappeared as quickly as it came. “Serena.”

I tightened my grip but surveyed the crowd. A few people were staring. “Are you okay?”

“Whatdidyousay?”

He indirectly answered my question. He wasn’t okay.

I cursed as I shoved my arm under his. He was hot. Too hot. And not in the flattering way. “I’m taking you to Cal’s.” My parents’ house was only two blocks away from Calhoun’s den, so we weren’t that far. I only hoped an officer didn’t stop us on the way.

“He’ll be mad,” Daniel mumbled, his voice barely audible against the shopping crowd.

“That’ll make two of us,” I retorted as I pulled him—hard. He was dragging his feet and I struggled beneath his weight. Still, I pushed forward.

After twenty minutes of stumbling and tripping, I dropped Daniel at the bottom of Cal’s doorstep. He tried to talk to me, but I ignored him as I stomped up the small steps. My fist shook the door as I pounded on the flimsy wood. When he didn’t answer, I shouted the old man’s name. “It’s me, Serena.”

Almost immediately, the door cracked open. His caterpillar eyebrows stared back at me. “What are you doing here?”

I stuck my thumb over my shoulder. “Your son—”

I didn’t even finish my sentence before Cal yanked the door open and pushed past me. He was down the steps and giving me orders in seconds. “Get his other side,” he said as he lifted up Daniel’s right arm. Even with one arm, Calhoun was a step ahead of me.

As I grabbed Daniel’s other arm, Cal continued speaking, “Lay him on the couch by the window. He’ll need fresh air.”

I followed the old man’s orders, and Daniel collapsed on the couch like a lifeless dummy. He was breathing and his eyes were open, but they focused on the ceiling as if it were as far away as the sky. His cheeks were bright red.

“What’s wrong with him?” I asked, never taking my eyes off him.

“He’s sick.”

As if the two words were a trigger, Daniel’s gaze slid over to me. “I’m not sick.”

“He’s lying,” Calhoun interrupted.

I continued to look at Daniel. His head bobbed like he wanted to argue with Cal again, but he inhaled a shaky breath. He was definitely sick. Small beads of sweat collected near his brow, and he raised his hand toward his hairline, only to grab my hand instead. “I need you,” he said, each word escaping like it held a vital definition of existence.

I fought the urge to keep holding his hand, and I pulled away. When he repeated it, I sat down on the floor next to the couch. “Just get some sleep.”

“I do,” he managed a whisper, and it crawled over my shoulder. It was not what I was expecting to hear.

I glanced back at him.

“I need your help,” he said.

“Shut up.” The words left my mouth before I could stop them. I didn’t even know where they came from, but my insides were twisting like I was going to be sick too.

His pupils shifted, and the corners of his lips curled, but he nodded and laid back again. This time, he closed his eyes, and his breathing went quiet. I stood up.

“He’s still breathing,” Cal spoke from the kitchen, calmer now.

My face burned as I realized the old man had heard everything Daniel had said.

Cal’s beady eyes locked on mine like he heard my thoughts. “He’s very sick.” The words didn’t compute because I was too busy staring at Cal’s hand. He had a needle—a giant needle—in his grasp, a medical bag sitting on the counter. I had missed where he had pulled it from.

“What are you doing?” I managed, ready to find a way out, but Cal gestured to me with open palms.

“Calm down,” he instructed. “I do this all the time. I need you to get his shirt off.”

“But—”

“Just do it, Serena.”

I heard my little sister say my name when Calhoun said it. The day flooded through me, and then I was moving again. I didn’t think. I just obeyed.

I grabbed the jacket and yanked the cloth until it was off one arm. Then, I leaned over him, dug my arms beneath him, and pulled until the freed cloth was on the other side of his body. When I got the jacket off his other arm, I started on the shirt.

My fingertips slid against his stomach, and his skin burned against mine. His powers were electric bursts of sizzling pain, and I clenched my teeth as his pain seeped into my veins. It was a side effect of my powers. By absorbing someone’s abilities, I also absorbed other bits of that individual. In this case, my head spun. My stomach cramped. My whole body ached. I had to close my eyes to concentrate, and my concentration helped me pull off the white T-shirt.

I stepped away as soon as I could and found myself sitting on the carpet before I could breathe again. His powers were melting away, and with it, his illness. But I could see Cal, and watching him made me wish Daniel’s illness had kept me blind.

Cal’s needle was shoved deep inside Daniel’s arm, and the metal’s shape was outlined in his skin. I wanted to look away, but Cal’s one word held my attention. “Aspartame,” he muttered as he slowly pulled the needle out. A drop of blood poked out of Daniel’s skin, but it dissipated as if it had never existed. The needle hole went with it. He was still healing his injuries, but my mind was damaged with confusion.

“Aspart—what?”

“Aspartame,” Cal repeated, walking back to the kitchen without looking at me. He turned on the water as he continued, “One of the most dangerous chemicals known to man. Caused too much cancer to count.” He dropped the needle into the sink, and the clanging metal rang around the room. “Also helps rejuvenate any bad blood.” His dark eyes met mine with the softness they held on the day he walked me home. “We used it in the military to keep you all alive until the end.”

Torture. The Separation Movement. The killings that brought on the bad blood nickname and the massacres that caused the bullet holes in our streets. They were lined with aspartame, and Cal had just injected Daniel with it.

“It’s also in Diet Coke—the old stuff,” Cal continued to speak calmly, as if we were talking about flowers or the weather. He began washing his hand like he was about to bake cookies. “It’s only sold in certain places anymore.” His eyes flicked up to me. “Old Man Gregory’s for one.”

Cal’s stare said it all. Daniel had told him about Robert, and Cal knew Robert was associated with me. Cal also knew where I lived. I assumed Daniel did too. And now, I knew that Cal was in the army—the same army that had been ordered to take us all out after the infamous “first” bad blood.

She was discovered thirty years ago, and she was only four when she killed an entire congregation of religious people. The story remained unclear in a factual sense, but the rumor was generally the same. People recognized her powers—whatever they were—as a new god, and about the time they began to worship her, her powers had killed them all, suddenly and viciously. A former vice-president had been among the victims. Politics took over, and Vendona’s hatred passed a segregation law. It turned into an execution law in a matter of days. And Cal had obeyed it.

“I was eighteen when I enlisted,” he said it like it mattered. It didn’t. He would’ve been one year older than I was, and I would’ve never enlisted to kill children. “The first one I killed”—he turned off the water—“he looked a lot like Daniel.”

I swallowed.

Cal took a breath, which allowed me to concentrate on Daniel’s breathing. It had calmed. Whatever Cal had done was helping.

“I’m not that boy anymore,” Cal clarified, just as emotionless as he had been when ordering me to remove Daniel’s shirt.

I glanced over, wanting to make sure that Daniel was, in fact, breathing—that I wasn’t imagining the noise—and I thought I’d never be able to breathe again. Daniel’s right shoulder faced me, and there was nothing normal about it. His olive complexion had been replaced by thick, red bumps. One line shot through the flesh where he had been sewn up, but the injury was still clear. His shoulder had almost been taken off.

The photo I had seen of him as a child suddenly made sense. The scar was the remnants of that memory.

“I thought he could heal,” I stuttered, realizing that Cal had kept speaking and I had only managed to interrupt him. I didn’t hear a word he said, and now, he was silent.

He ran his hand over his buzzed, black hair, and he took two steps away from the island. Two steps was all it took to enter the living room, and from where he stood, he stared at Daniel’s single scar. “He can’t heal illness.”

Even Daniel had a weakness, but Cal had avoided what I wanted to know.

“What—” I tore my eyes away from the scar to stare at Cal’s stoic expression. “What happened to him?”

Cal didn’t answer, and I didn’t bother repeating myself. I didn’t have to. I reached over, grazing Daniel’s scar with the hope of absorbing that information into me, but my powers never worked that way, and hope wasn’t something Daniel and I had.

Upon my touch, Daniel flinched, and his left hand swung up to grab his old injury. My hand was pinned in-between his grasp and his scar, and the bumpy flesh seared against mine. I gasped, trying to control myself as I stared at his twisted expression. Small tears collected at the edges of his eyes. He trembled.

Slowly, I rotated my hand and wrapped my fingers around the back of his hand. “Daniel.”

When I spoke his name, his chest sank and a loud sigh escaped him. I exhaled with him as I inched my touch away from him. It suddenly made sense—the way he had approached me in the kitchen when I first woke up after losing consciousness. He knew what it was like to hate the touch of another person. He knew distance was the best way to touch me, and I was only seeing that about him now.

“Never seen him calm down that quickly,” Cal noted as he sat on the couch against the far wall. I hadn’t even noticed the man pass behind me, but now I stared at him. He had probably killed dozens of bad bloods, but he had saved Daniel. He had shared food with me and walked me home, but he could sneak behind me like a hit man, and he looked at me like he had plans for me. Just like any officer. “What do you want, Serena?”

My knees popped as I slowly stood up and inched away from Daniel. I kept my eyes on Cal.

“You can’t help him,” he said.

“You can’t either.” It was the truth. No one could help Daniel. No one could help any of us, and Cal stared at the wall like he wasn’t hearing anything he hadn’t heard before.

“Not that I don’t appreciate your help today, Serena, I do,” he began, “but you should’ve left him where you found him.”

Anger bubbled inside of me. “The cops—”

“He has a fake ID.”

His words sliced through me. A fake identity meant Daniel didn’t have a real identity. It meant Calhoun hadn’t legally adopted him or legally registered him or kept him as his son. It meant Daniel was someone else, someone I didn’t want to see, but someone I knew whose life was on the streets. I knew it the entire time. He had to be in the Northern Flock, and Calhoun was confirming it.

“Daniel Wilson,” Cal clarified. “It’s my last name, but it’s fake for him.”

Wilson. It was the name Daniel told me first. It would’ve been easy for him to keep the lie, but he hadn’t. He had told me his real name—Daniel—and Calhoun was filling in the rest. Neither of them wanted me to be a stranger, not even from the beginning, and bad bloods were always supposed to be strangers.

“Why are you telling me this?”

Cal’s angular face somehow softened. “I can get you a fake ID too.”

His single sentence held an underlining message in the same way Robert’s had that morning. Calhoun knew I didn’t have a real identity, and they were offering me a place—a place next to them.

I stepped back. “I should go.”

The three words hadn’t left me for very long by the time I grabbed the door handle. Cal didn’t even have time to respond. I darted out of the apartment as his voice echoed behind me, “See you later.”

My hand was wet and hot, and the heat increased the harder I gripped my shoulder. It burned. Everything burned. My nostrils burned, and the gunshot echo burned my eardrums. It was so loud I thought I would never hear again until Cal spoke, Boy. Boy. Can you hear me?

I could hear him, and I could hear her. Daniel. Serena’s fingers had touched my shoulder, and everything calmed.

The rose curtain’s light color reminded me of dried blood, even though it signaled the arrival of afternoon. I squinted at it as if I could zap the annoying time away. It didn’t even occur to me where I was—or how I had gotten there—until I stretched and my limbs ached from a fever. Every part of my body was convincing me to return to my sleeping state, but someone kept me awake.

“So, you’re up.”

Dread pushed against my chest as I forced myself to roll over. My vision fogged from the movements, but Cal’s buzzed head slid into focus. His sharp gaze followed. If he had two arms, I imagined that he would’ve been leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands threaded in front of him. But he only had one arm. While his right arm was missing, my right arm burned with a fury only the past could create. My only injury would never go away. It always ached when I was sick, especially when I ignored the symptoms.

“I’m sorry, Cal.” The apology was habitual and so was my constant need to keep moving. I tried to sit up, only to fall back down. My head spun. Air pushed out of my lungs.

Cal cursed. “Stay down, Daniel.” We only used one another’s names when the situation was tense. “You’re gonna hurt yourself,” he continued as he dropped a wet towel on the armrest next to my head.

I grabbed it and pushed the cloth against my heated skin. Cal never moved away. In fact, he sat down on the couch, right next to my feet. His back pushed against my legs as I managed to prop myself up. Cal stared at the small staircase that lead up to a single storage room no one used. As far as I knew, it still had a bed for Vi, but the bed had been there before her. He never did explain it to me.

“Do you remember how you got here?” he finally asked.

My brain raced, but like my body, it gave up quickly. “No.”

Cal’s jaw popped, and for a second I saw Adam in his older face. I wondered how much Adam would resemble his uncle in the future, but the question faded when Cal cleared his throat. “Serena,” he croaked. “She brought you. Must’ve found you stumblin’ around like a drunkard—”

“What?”

“She knows, Daniel.”

His words cut through my sickness like an innovative medicine had been invented just for my condition. Everything cleared. My mind, my aches, my fever. My breathing stabilized, but my insides were twisting like they’d never still again. Adrenaline.

“I didn’t tell her you were in the Northern Flock,” he continued, laying his elbow on his knee. His fingers moved, but he looked at the space where his other hand was missing. “But she knows.”

The longer his accusation lingered, the more it settled in like a fact instead of a question. Of course she knew. She had to have known. Her leader was following me, I was living with a man who wasn’t my biological father, and we had met on the streets. She would put two and two together the same way I had. But something had to have happened for Cal to say it.

“I offered her a fake ID,” he answered my question. He didn’t follow it up with an apology. We both knew why he did it. He wanted to see her reaction. If she were alone on the streets—or even with a family that supported her—she would’ve jumped at the opportunity. Having a backup plan was vital for survival, and she had already lived far past the average bad blood. But she hadn’t accepted Cal’s help. She had obviously run. She had something more important protecting her: a flock, a powerful one, and it wasn’t ours. All of my suspicions were confirmed.

I stared at the ceiling. “She’ll come back.”

“Of course she will,” Cal snapped, “and when she does—”

“I’m offering her a spot.”

Silence strained the space between us, and my eyes slid back to Cal. In the bright light, his face looked older than I remembered it being. The shadows beneath his brow caused a sleep-deprived ring to form around his eyes, and his lips sulked, deep lines settling into his cheeks.

“That was exactly what I was hopin’ for,” he finally said.

I sat up straighter. “I expected you to argue.”

His head moved back and forth in a slow sway. “The election is coming,” he sighed. “She can do something no one else has before.”

Escape. He didn’t have to say it.

“She’s a good asset—a risk, but an asset—and I’ve seen it myself,” he paused. “She has a purpose.”

I was about to ask him what he meant when a sudden knocking broke through our conversation. While I leapt, Cal remained calm.

“Must be the kiddos,” he said as he stood up.

“What?”

Cal ignored me until he reached the door. “You’re staying here for a few days, just until you get better.” Cal’s signature goofy grin appeared on his face as he opened the door. “I just thought you could use some company.”

“I told you this was the right house,” Vi spoke up first as she glided into the house. Even in her human form, she somehow moved like a ghost.

Ron followed her in silence, holding onto Blake’s hand, and Peyton sulked behind them. Michele flicked the girl’s shoulder and ordered her to leave her attitude at the door. Peyton was still in trouble, and she listened to every word Michele said. She started her entrance with an apology. Right after, Peyton plopped down on the couch next to me. I nearly missed Adam coming in. Including me, over half of us were present, and Cal’s small apartment suddenly seemed much smaller.

“Sorry, we’re late,” Michele said as she laid a hefty bag on the countertop. “We had to pick up some supplies, and Peyton nearly lost Blake on the way over.”

Before I could lose my mind, Blake let go of Ron’s hand and charged at the couch. The little boy leapt into the air and I grabbed him before gravity could take him back to the floor. He giggled and moved his arms like he were swimming. “I got to see a kite.”

“I told you he ran off on his own,” Peyton muttered, folding her freckled arms.

“Roll your sleeves down,” Michele responded with a stern tone. “It’s November.”

Peyton turned her back to Michele before she obeyed, also taking a moment to roll her eyes. It didn’t matter if Peyton was a bad blood or not. She was still eleven, and her powers left her unaffected by the weather. Expecting her to wear a coat was foolish. It was something she and Kally had in common, despite how many times they fought. Today, Kally must have stayed at home. Keeping certain kids separated was Michele’s way of keeping things calm while I was away. Still, being the mother figure of a twelve-kid flock couldn’t have been any easier than my position, Adam’s position, or anyone’s position. We all had responsibilities and sometimes, things slipped under the radar.

I lifted Blake onto the couch and laid a hand on top of his blond head. “Did you run off on your own?”

His blue eyes squeezed shut, only for one of them to peek open. His cheeks were red. “I don’t wanna get in trouble.”

Peyton let out a curse that an eleven-year-old shouldn’t know. I pointed at her. “Don’t talk like that,” I said before turning my attention toward Blake. “And don’t run off—not even for kites—and you owe Peyton an—”

“I apology,” Blake spoke to Peyton, obviously repeating what he had heard in my mind.

A second of silence broke through the room before everyone erupted into laughter.

Blake’s expression, even though his features were so small, held a determined, serious quality that wrinkled his nose up. He blinked like he didn’t understand why we were laughing. “I said I’m sorry,” he stuttered after crossing his small arms.

He knew how to say sorry at five years old, but he still fought to control his powers. When he heard people’s thoughts, he blurted them out exactly how people thought them. It caused confusion, and it sometimes caused me to fear for him in public, but it mainly caused humorous moments in a city-state that barely held humor at all.

“It’s fine,” I said as I ruffled his hair. “You did well.” I looked at Peyton. “You, too.”

She beamed, and Ron slowly moved toward her side, silent but obviously relaxed now that he wasn’t in charge of Blake’s location.

Adam chuckled at the sight but leaned his back against the wall like he was happy to stay out of the crowd of children. “I told you I should’ve run those errands,” he joked as he bobbed his head of black hair toward Cal. “Now you’re in trouble with the army man.”

“Hey, now,” Cal interrupted with a chuckle that mirrored his nephew’s. “No one is in trouble.”

“So Daniel’s coming home?” Blake squeaked, but before anyone could speak up, his face broke into a frown. He narrowed in on Cal. “That’s not fair.”

Cal straightened up, and I knew he was reminding himself of Blake’s abilities. Even though he housed us, Cal stayed away as much as possible. Blake and he had only met a handful of times, but once Blake connected with someone’s thoughts, they seemed to be his too.

“Daniel…” Cal’s eyes shifted between the boy and me. “Daniel isn’t feeling well yet, but he’ll be back soon.” His voice was softer than usual, and Blake didn’t seem to believe it. I knew it was because of Cal’s thoughts. No one knew when I would feel better, but Blake had never argued before. For once, I wished I had his powers so I could understand why this was any different from all the other times.

I squeezed Blake’s shoulder. “I will be back before you know it.” I had to suppress a cough.

He tilted his head back and caught my gaze. “Then, who’ll watch us until you’re back?”

“Michele,” I answered, gesturing to her. “Or Adam. It’s going to be the same as usual.”

Blake’s nose crinkled. “That’s not what Ron said.”

Ron was deaf. He couldn’t say anything. Despite this, I looked directly at him, half-expecting the silent boy to speak up or learn sign language in minutes. Although, I didn’t know sign language and staring at the nine-year-old did nothing.

“Floyd’s been making all sorts of gestures to Ron,” Peyton explained. “I think he figured out how to talk to him—”

“All right, kids.” One by one, Adam pulled all of them away but Blake. “Go mess up Daniel’s room or something. The adults have to talk.”

“Not my room,” I interrupted before anyone could move. I didn’t want to say it out loud, not in front of the kids, but my gun was in my room. Adam seemed to remember it though, because he glanced at his uncle. Cal shook his head. He had a gun in his office, too.

“We’re like a militia in here,” Adam muttered.

“The storage room is safe,” Vi offered, being old enough to understand exactly what was going on, but as far as the others knew, she had never been upstairs. Her extra bedroom was a secret. The others stared at her as if to question the extra perks she had, and her black eyes widened. “What? Even shadows get tired sometimes.”

“Take them up there,” Michele dismissed.

Vi grabbed Ron’s hand first and shouted, “Make a train, kids.” Blake scooted toward the edge of the couch until he fell, and then he ran over to Ron. He latched onto Ron’s hand, and then stared at Peyton. The girl rolled her eyes before grabbing on. Vi made a horn noise, and they all disappeared into a smoky shadow, swirling up the stairs like a train had burst through Cal’s apartment.

When Michele heard their voices wafting quietly through the floorboards, she sighed. I glanced at the ceiling, satisfied by the distance. Blake’s powers, like anyone’s, had limits, and he was the one I was worried about. It only took two seconds for the white ceiling to turn black. Shadows dripped off the bumpy texture and pooled into the center of the living room. The black lake quickly formed Vi, and she shook her smoky hair until it solidified.

“They’re occupied,” she reported back, monotone and focused. Despite her thirteen years of age, she was considered one of the adults, and she clearly knew what was going on.

“Floyd,” I guessed, retracing the conversation back to Peyton.

Michele nodded while Adam’s fist curled at his side. “He’s coming tomorrow,” he said, “and he’s going to challenge your leadership.”

“I saw it,” Michele seconded.

He was going to take advantage of my illness and the confined space of Calhoun’s living room. It would be impossible to hide the fight from the kids, and that was exactly what he wanted. He was able to spend all of his time with them, and he had obviously been trying to convince them to speak their mind about it.

“We can’t change leadership right now,” I finally spoke, drawing out each word. It wasn’t even about me. With the election so close, Floyd was practically committing suicide by suggesting a reorganization of our troop. We couldn’t tear apart now.

“It gets worse,” Michele squeaked.

“Of course it does.” A half-laugh escaped me. “I can handle it. Floyd has never been a problem—”

“We know that,” Adam agreed, “but that’s not the problem.”

I went silent.

Michele touched the ends of her long, white hair. For a moment, she appeared to turn into glass. “I had a premonition while you were gone.” When she spoke, she sounded too close, like the day we met. “Something is going to happen to Henderson’s campaign, and it’s going to happen soon.”

Ami wasn’t her real name. Her real name was Ameline Marion Lachance, and she was born to a French family in the Highlands. When she was nine years old, that same family ditched her, but her story was unlike any story I knew. Her mother had come directly to our house.

The panic in Robert’s eyes foreshadowed what we would see. By the time I followed his stare, the spring air had shifted to temperatures far beyond the worst summer heat. Parked at the end of our driveway was one black car. It looked more like a blockade.

I was about to run when he grabbed me. We had worked too hard for the house. He wasn’t going to give it up so easily, and he didn’t want me to either. We hid Catelyn and Niki in the alleyway, and Robert and I walked up to the car together.

Ami’s mother was the first person we saw. She stepped out, wearing the highest heels I had ever seen, and then she pulled Ami out gently, like she was a delicate doll about to break. When I first laid eyes on the girl, she was dressed head to toe in pink. Her blonde hair was threaded back into intricate braids, and a bow sat at the end of the braids where the golden strands came together. When Ami cried, she swung her head back and forth, and the bow swayed like a pendulum, all neat and tidy like a present.

Robert understood before I did.

“We’ll take care of her,” he promised without even a question.

The woman slipped him a few thousand dollars—hardly anything for people from the Highlands—and told him our house’s location was a secret. Even then, she never explained how she found the address. Robert suspected the woman was a bad blood herself, but he never asked Ami about her mother. He simply took her in.

She didn’t talk for two months, and she didn’t use her powers for three. Like many bad bloods, I was the only one she felt comfortable with at first. I attributed it to my powers. When I touched her, I borrowed her powers, and instinctually, I believed she—like most bad bloods—felt like she was a part of me just as much as I was a part of her. Due to this, Robert assigned me to train her.

One afternoon, we went to Shadow Alley for a lesson on control. We started slowly, seeing if she could stick her skin to a leaf on the ground, and then a brick wall, and then the fence. I never wanted her to climb the fence that separated us from where the Western Flock’s house once stood, but she insisted, and she climbed straight up it like gravity meant nothing to her. Back then, the second fence—a tree barricade—hadn’t covered everything yet, but when she reached the top, she fell down. Without speaking, she started walking home, and when I asked her what she saw, she said what Catelyn had said. It was just another field. Only one minute passed before she added the truth. There were no flowers.

When I thought about it, I realized I hadn’t seen any flowers in the outskirts of Vendona. They were rare and fleeting things. But today, one lay at my feet, waiting in its perfect condition on the back alleyway floor as if a couple had fought and one bloom had dropped from a bouquet while the person was returning home to apologize. Even worse, it reminded me of my parents. My father bought my mother flowers every full moon, and although the full moon was a week away, the single flower brought the memory back to me. Their house waited a few streets away. My father’s note, snug in my back pocket.

“That’s mine.”

I looked up to meet the owner of the squeaky voice. The young boy’s blond head was just like Ami’s, but it shagged over his forehead, tousled by the day. His blue eyes were too big for his face, too serious for a child’s, and he held a bouquet the size of his little body.

I knelt down and picked the flower up from the ground. I didn’t recognize the white petals—the ones like snow—but I held it out to him.

His baby blue gaze flicked back and forth from my face to the flower before a grin spread across his chubby cheeks. “You keep it.”

Right when I was about to thank him, a mass pushed against the veins in my head. My eyes crossed, but my vision didn’t blur. Instead, I saw Robert holding a ladder as I painted the kitchen. Catelyn was bandaging Steven in the corner. He had just arrived, and his eye was swollen shut. She kissed his bruised cheek. I saw Daniel heal my own injury. I saw blackness, and I pushed back against the mass. I saw Daniel fishing. Another guy sat next to him, black-haired and with a laugh like thunder.

Then, it all disappeared—the world, an odd and wavering place.

I blinked, and the little boy blinked back at me. Somehow, in some way, I knew he saw me in the same way I saw him. His powers lingered. I could see myself through his eyes, all pale and tense, and he could see himself through mine, delightful and awestruck. The child was a bad blood, and he was the first bad blood whose powers transferred to me without physical touch.

“Blake.” A preteen ran around the corner, only to stop when her black eyes saw me. She froze, but only for a moment. In a split second, her thin arm shot out, and she snatched the boy up, never once taking her targeting eyes off me. He never dropped the bouquet.

The gothic girl looked down at me still kneeling before focusing on the boy. “Don’t go running off, okay?” Her sweet voice was nothing like her exterior. Even when she softly pushed his bangs from his eyes, he kept looking at me. “It’s dangerous out—”

“She talks minds too,” he interrupted.

The girl tensed, and her black hair lifted, like she could hover in the air. I slowly stood up. Her gaze slid over to me, her focus on the single flower in my hand. I was about to run when her shoulders relaxed. “Serena, right?” She adjusted Blake in her arms. “You look different.”

My heart squeezed. “I don’t know you.”

“I know.” The gothic girl smiled, a peculiar sight. “I saw you that night.”

“What night?”

Her lips cracked open like she was about to clarify, but her ears perked up, and she glanced to her left—the same alley Calhoun lived on. Footsteps echoed around us, and the girl stepped back to make way for the person. I recognized the voice before I even saw him.

“What are you two—” Daniel walked around the corner, and he stopped speaking to the kids. “Serena.” His eyes trailed to the flower just like the girl’s had, and then a smile broke his expression. He patted Blake. “Did you give Serena a flower?”

“Yep.” The little boy nodded so enthusiastically I half-expected the gothic girl to drop the child.

“And who are the other flowers for?” the raven-haired girl encouraged the child.

He practically fell out of her skinny arms to lean toward Daniel. “For you.”

When Daniel took them, he exposed why the bouquet appeared to be huge. Blake was hiding a teddy bear behind the flowers, but now he tried to give the toy to Daniel too.

“It makes me smile,” the child said.

Daniel chuckled. “Keep the teddy bear, kiddo,” he said before turning his attention to the girl. “Vi, take him inside. We’ll be in soon.”

The shadowy girl obeyed Daniel without argument, but Blake clutched her shoulders and peered over at me. A mass pushed against my head again, but I pushed back. My memories didn’t come out this time. I had blocked him, and he grinned. It was only then that I realized what happened between us. He’d seen my memories, and I had seen his. He went fishing with Daniel, and there was another boy with them. A boy I had yet to meet.

I followed the two kids with my eyes until they left my line of sight. That’s when I dared to face Daniel. Dozens of questions flooded my mind, but I didn’t want to ask them. I didn’t want to know the answers. Still, the beginning escaped me. “Is Blake—”

“Not my son,” Daniel finished, even though that wasn’t what I was going to ask. I wanted to know if Daniel knew about Blake’s powers. I had never met a bad blood who could read minds, let alone a child so powerful. This time, though, I kept my mouth shut. I wasn’t here to question him anyway.

“Thank you for helping me the other day,” Daniel continued, but his unsteady voice matched his nervous habit of touching his hair. “I’m feeling better.”

It had only been two days.

His thumb pointed over his right shoulder—the one with the scar, the one injury I had seen on him, the one that almost killed him—and I was almost positive I knew exactly what happened to him. I breathed to stabilize my heart, to keep my guess at bay, and was grateful Blake was no longer around to force it back up.

“We’re about to make dinner,” Daniel’s voice crept through the loud voices in my head.

“I’m here to say goodbye,” I blurted out, speaking over my deafening thoughts.

He blinked, startled, and I knew I had yelled it at him, but his expression softened as he stepped closer to me. He took another step, and I couldn’t move. He even reached out and touched my hand, wrapping his fingers around the flower until it was in his grasp instead of mine. “You keep saying goodbye,” he said, “yet you keep coming back.” He tucked the white flower behind my ear.

“I know.”

Daniel never stopped looking at me. “Because of Robert?”

His name reminded me of why I needed to say goodbye and why I couldn’t bring myself to leave. Either way, I couldn’t explain it to Daniel, but he looked at me like he—not Blake—was the one with mind-reading powers.

“You keep talking to me because you’re trying to understand him,” Daniel guessed, aware of my intentions and sounding oddly disappointed by it.

My fingertips twitched with temptation to touch the flower behind my ear. The little plant was all I could feel. “I need to understand Robert if I’m going to understand myself.”

A half-sigh escaped him. “I guess that’s another thing we have in common.”

I stared directly at his shoulder. He turned his back to me as if he knew what I had seen: the seared flesh, the obvious explosion. It was burned into my memory the same way it was scorched into his skin, but when he glanced over his shoulder, I saw the dimple on his cheek appear. “I need to understand how he relates to you,” he confessed it like secrets were simple to share.

My face burned like my secrets were full of fire, lingering beneath my skin, ready to burn the world at any moment.

“We can talk about that after dinner.” His hand swung backward, and his palm lay upward, facing me.

I grabbed his hand before I even realized I had. His fingers wrapped around mine, but he didn’t move. He just touched me, held me there, keeping us still in a hateful world that never stopped moving. It was as if I had absorbed his ability to move, but my powers didn’t work like that. Still, Daniel’s eyes moved to the sky. It was gray like every day before it.

“Every time I touch you,” he paused, “I feel like you’re the one healing me.”

I couldn’t breathe, but I managed to speak with my last breath, “My powers don’t work that way.” Not yet anyway. I could never use someone’s abilities on him or her. I could never heal Daniel, not even if I wanted to.

His lip bent up anyway. “Maybe my powers work differently for you.”

I had nothing to say to that. It was possible. Everything was possible. Since our existence was illegal, there were few public studies about how we worked. On top of that, even if there was a study done directly on how my abilities functioned, I wouldn’t have been able to read it. I was illiterate, and I wondered if Daniel was too. Something about the way he spoke told me he wasn’t. Maybe it was his patterns. Maybe it was his vocabulary. Maybe it was simply instinct. But he could probably read what my father wrote. Even more importantly, he could teach me how to read what my father wrote on my own.

The favor burned in my throat as Daniel guided me down the alleyway and up Cal’s stairs. I didn’t breathe until the door opened, and then it was even harder to breathe.

Mini Cal stood against the far wall. He was the same boy Daniel was fishing with in Blake’s memory, but it was only now, in the dim lighting of Cal’s home, I realized he looked like the one-armed veteran. He wasn’t the only person in the room either.

Cal opened the oven, while two children set silverware around a small table, unfolded from the wall. On the couch, Blake cuddled with his teddy, and Vi sat next to him, examining the ends of her hair. But the most beautiful one was the woman. She was tall and willowy, with long white hair and gray eyes like mine. Unlike me, though, every part of her seemed soft, like a warm glow followed her around wherever she went.

The snow angel was the first to step toward me. “Serena, right?” Even her voice was delicate.

I managed a nod, once more surveying the amount of people in the room. Three young kids, four teenagers, including Daniel, and Cal. Definitely not big enough for a flock. Maybe I was wrong, after all.

Before I knew it, hands were on either sides of my arms, and the snow angel wrapped me up in a hug. “It’s nice to finally meet you,” she said against my neck, but her skin never touched me. She smelled like honey. I didn’t have time to hug her back before she pulled away and gestured to the couch. “Why don’t you take a seat? Everything’s almost ready.”

I glanced at Daniel, but he focused elsewhere, warning the two kids by the table to be careful. Mini Cal nodded at me. I wondered what all of their names were, but no one volunteered the information as I sat next to Blake.

He scooted closer, and his pudgy arm rested against mine before he looked up at me. “Ryne got me this.” He lifted his teddy bear and grinned. He had a missing tooth, just like Huey. They even had the same color of hair.

“It’s very cute,” I managed, noticing the gothic girl’s hollow stare. She hadn’t budged from Blake’s other side. “Vi, right?”

Her lips twisted like she wanted to ask how I learned her name, but it wasn’t hard to figure out. Daniel had said it in the alleyway once, but once was enough. I paid attention, and Vi looked back at me like she knew it.

“Yeah.”

I smiled, wondering which one was Ryne—the miniature version of Cal or the little boy helping set the table. I was careful not to look at either one, cautious not to let them know how much I wanted to figure them out, but Vi reached over and grazed me.

Everything changed.

My veins went cold, my molecules tingled, my skin felt like it was melting. I sensed every bit of her abilities, and I had to grip the couch to keep myself solid, to prevent myself from dissipating into the darkness. Even my vision shifted. The world was much brighter, almost painfully bright, and I understood the difference between Vi and other bad bloods—a terrifying thing.

Her shadow form was her true form. Her human form was the magical one.

When her powers settled, and my world turned back to my world instead of hers, she gazed back at me like she was waiting for my reaction. Her eyes weren’t black at all. They were shadows.

Blake’s head swung back and forth as he looked from her to me. I could feel his mind pushing against us both. He knew what I knew. She was a different kind of bad blood, a kind that made me wonder if she were bad blooded at all.

I wanted to puke.

“You okay?” Daniel’s voice helped me fight my nausea, and as he slid into focus, I realized he was all-too aware of what was happening to me. He was familiar with how my powers worked.

When I didn’t respond, he slid into the empty space next to me. With Daniel, Blake, Vi, and I on the same couch, it was impossible not to feel squeezed into the group. A goofy grin broke Mini Cal’s face—an exact replica of the first one Cal ever gave me.

“You okay?” Daniel asked again.

“She is,” Blake answered for me, like it was the polite thing to do.

Daniel began to lecture the boy—something about speaking for someone else being rude—but the little boy standing in front of us distracted me. His hand was bleeding, sliced open across the palm, and he held it toward Daniel without speaking or crying.

The girl by the table was already shouting excuses. “I didn’t do it,” she promised. “Ron tried to use his—” She stopped, only looking at me once, before continuing, “He lost control of the knife.”

“Peyton,” Snow Angel started lecturing the girl, but I was forced to focus on Daniel.

He grabbed Ron’s hand, and the child’s slit skin slid back together. The boy flinched, but the cut healed completely, leaving only a trace of blood behind.

“He says thank you,” Blake spoke right as Ron beamed.

Daniel held up a hand for a high-five, and Ron completed the gesture with his clean hand before running back to the table. I followed the boy, but Cal’s eyes caught mine. He cleared his throat. “All right, Peyton,” he started as he focused on the girl. “Can you get Ron cleaned up before dinner?”

Peyton agreed before grabbing Ron’s arm and dragging him down the hallway. Mini Cal followed them like they needed guidance, and Snow Angel lingered in the living room as we fell into silence. Daniel had healed Ron in front of everyone, including me, and everyone’s eyes were on me as if they expected me to react.

I didn’t, but my eyes ended up on Daniel, the most obvious question leaving my mouth, “He knows about you?”

Daniel’s lips pulled up, a dimple appearing on one cheek. “They all know,” he whispered. “Every single one of them.”

“All of you. You’re all bad bloods.” Serena started to stand as she spoke. “Right?”

No one replied, and the only one who moved was Blake. He held up his teddy bear’s arm and the toy danced on his knees. Serena’s eyes—her gray gaze—landed on the boy before Michele stepped out from behind the island and snagged her attention.

“Aside from Cal,” she confirmed under the roar of the heater turning on. Her knee-length black dress fluttered around her dark leggings, blending in and out like Vi’s powers had consumed her. I half-expected Michele’s eyes to flash yellow, a sign of her abilities, but her irises remained as gray as Serena’s.

The girls stared at one another, and I wondered if Serena knew of Michele’s abilities. I especially wondered if the vision Michele had seen Serena in years ago actually meant anything, but I didn’t have a complete grasp of how Serena’s powers worked. I was clueless. All I knew for certain was what Serena said, and for the first time in my life, I wished I had Blake’s powers so I could hear what both girls were thinking.

Serena’s throat moved as she swallowed, and then she turned to me. Her scrutinizing gaze told me she wanted answers, and she wanted answers now. But I didn’t have an explanation. Michele’s premonition saw Floyd coming and causing a fight over my leadership, but she hadn’t once warned me about Serena coming. I was ill-prepared for the opportunity to show her my flock, to invite her like Michele and Cal wanted, to be honest like I wanted to be. Still, my thoughts were lost on my lips.

“Daniel,” Cal’s voice interrupted any concentration I had managed. When I glanced at him, his caterpillar eyebrows settled above his eyes. “The others.” He wanted me to wait.

“Others?” Serena squeaked.

I stood up and touched her arm before she could ask. “Think of it like a support group for now.” My forced smile twitched at the edges. “We’ll talk about the rest after dinner.”

“It’s almost ready,” Calhoun added, suddenly cheery as he spun around to the sink. “We’re having pot roast.”

Blake pumped his fist into the air, taking his bear with him. “I love pet roast,” he cheered.

Cal spun back around. “Not pet roast, Blake.”

“Pot roast,” the little boy finished Cal’s correction.

“Right on, kiddo.” Calhoun shot the kid a grin. “We don’t eat pets around here.” We didn’t even have pets.

The two bantered back and forth as Serena nudged me. Before I could even react, she grabbed my hand and yanked me backward a few feet. We weren’t far from the others, but her widened eyes told me we were far enough for her.

“That boy,” she started.

“He’s special,” I confirmed, pressing my shoulder against the wall. “I know.”

Serena’s eyes flicked over, like she was trying to see past me but couldn’t. She sighed when she finally decided to look at me and only me. “He went into my mind.” I half-suspected that much, but her next words hit me. “I went into his.”

My shoulder popped as it tried to rise against the wall. “What’d you see?”

Serena’s second of silence was too long. Blake had seen too much of my life by accident, things no one should’ve seen, and I didn’t want Serena to know. I didn’t want anyone to know the truth.

“You were fishing with Mini Cal,” she said, a dent appearing above her nose.

I burst into laughter. “Mini Cal?” I could barely catch my breath between my laughs as I remembered Adam. “Oh, man, Adam,” I shouted down the hallway. “You have to hear this.”

Adam appeared faster than any normal human could’ve appeared, and a small gust of wind shot past us. He was exposing his powers to Serena, but she already knew, so I ignored it as I told him what Serena’s nickname for him was. While Cal chuckled, Adam’s face reddened, and he faced his uncle. “I don’t look like you that much.”

“It’s a compliment, boy,” Cal spoke through the end of his laughter.

Adam folded his arms and blew his black bangs out of his face. “At least I still have hair.”

“I got rid of mine,” Cal retorted, too quickly. “And we’ll see how much of that stays in twenty years.”

While Adam and Cal continued to play-argue, I snagged a glance at Serena. She was staring at the two, and I wondered if it was the first time she had seen Cal relaxed. The old man, in his norm, was hilarious and laidback, but with the election’s approach, he had hardened. We all had. It made me realize I might not have known Serena at all. What was she like before Henderson? Did she smile more? Was she usually busy with chores? Why would today be any different?

I wanted to know. I wanted to know everything, and I had never wanted to know more about a person before. Still, I had to remember why. Robert was connected to her. An entire flock was. And she was the first blood ever to escape a blood camp, even under the new testing—blood testing that wasn’t even legal yet. She had more to do with everything than I knew, and that was the only thing I was sure of. It was why I was so focused on her, wasn’t it? Every time she looked at me, I thought I might lose my ability to think straight. I thought I might lose my abilities altogether.

“Don’t let the old guy scare you,” Adam broke through my thoughts, but I kept staring at her as my best friend talked to her. “My uncle isn’t as tough as he looks.”

“Tougher than you,” Cal retorted.

“I should know,” Adam ignored Cal’s remark. “We share genetics.”

Serena managed a smile, but it was Calhoun’s question that turned her smile into a sincere one.

“Care to help me with the roast, Serena?” He invited her to partake in something, and she jumped at the chance to be a contributor. My eyes followed her from the living room to the kitchen, only a few feet away, but every step reminded me of how far she’d come. When we met, she was skin and bones. Since then, she had gained some weight, and her steps were lighter, more carefree. Her voice was too. If Robert was doing anything right, he was at least feeding her. But the reminder made me sick to my stomach. I had to know how he found her.

“So,” Adam started to whisper as he inched closer to me. “This is her?”

“Yeah.”

From across the room, Serena tied her hair up in a ponytail, her blonde hair swinging back and forth until it was secure, and then her eyes met mine. She even let out a smile before she turned her back to me in order to face Calhoun. Her shoulders had even gotten stronger.

In my peripherals, Adam stared at her too. “Not quite what I was expecting,” he admitted, “but your focus makes a little more sense now.”

I eyed him, angrily.

He smirked. “Does she have a sister? A friend, maybe?”

“Adam—”

“Just kidding, man.” He hit my arm and let out a half-laugh. Before he could continue, Michele walked across the room, and Adam straightened up. He had to watch his jokes around the mom of the flock.

“So,” Michele started to talk, her back facing Serena. “How are we going to explain her to everyone?”

It was only when she said it that I remembered how much of a secret Serena had been. I had risked my life to save her, and in turn, I had risked the flock. It wouldn’t have been taken lightly, so Adam and Michele were the only ones I spoke to about it. Vi and Blake found out by default, but the seven others were oblivious. Peyton and Ron were too young to cause a ruckus, but Floyd and Maggie would when they arrived.

I glanced at the door, half-expecting it to open, but the house was still. My imagination was left to guess how Floyd would react, but Michele was standing right in front of me. “What did you see?”

“It wasn’t clear,” she sighed. “He challenged your leadership, but I never saw Serena, and I saw more of Henderson’s face on the news than anything.”

Her other premonition. I had almost forgotten.

“One more bad thing,” she continued. “I saw a gunshot. And blood.” Michele was shaking, and at the edges of her irises, small flecks of yellow appeared.

I laid my hand on her shoulder. “Relax,” I said, and she did, almost like my orders actually meant something. Cal thought they did. That’s why he insisted we pick a leader—a face—for emotional reasons. Other than that, I didn’t feel like a leader at all. I felt just as lost as the rest of them. Political leaders, blood, and a gunshot never resulted in something worth celebrating.

“What if he gets assassinated?” Adam asked, but he said it with a lollipop in his mouth. Where he had gotten the candy was beyond me, but where he got his attitude wasn’t. Calhoun was just as calm about destruction. They had the warrior’s gene.

I released Michele only to press my fingertips to my forehead. “Then, we’ll deal with it when it happens, but we can’t worry about that for now.” We had to worry about our defenses, and right now, our best defense against everything—the government, the people, even the Southern Flock—was Serena. “We’ll tell the others that she’s our friend.”

“Just a friend?” Michele’s voice rose only to drop again. “That’s your excuse?”

“It’s not like I had time to plan,” I pointed out. I was too focused on Floyd, and I never thought Serena would return so quickly. Cal’s offer of a fake ID should’ve scared her more. The fact that she had already returned was almost questionable. It made me think her flock didn’t care about her disappearance. But—then again—their lack of care could push her into our arms.

“I’d become friends with her,” Adam commented, as if thinking the same thing.

Michele rolled her eyes. “You’d become friends with any female.”

“You have to admit though”—Adam propped his arm up on Michele’s tiny head—“the girl seems pretty great.”

“You barely know her,” Michele said, but her tone admitted her agreement.

For everything Serena had been through, she blended into the room like she had known everyone forever. Most bad bloods took weeks to acclimate to the group—I blamed it on all the rejection we faced—but Serena helped Cal like he had never scared her, and she held my hand like I had never kicked her, and she smiled at Blake like he hadn’t forced himself into her private thoughts. Perhaps her powers did more than collect others’ abilities. Perhaps her powers blended her into them as well.

“Did you two touch her yet?” I mumbled, wondering if they felt the same as I did.

“I purposely avoided it,” Michele admitted, glancing at Adam.

He pulled his lollipop out of his mouth, and his nose crinkled. “Not sure.”

“That’s a ‘no’ for him too,” Michele concluded. “Why?”

I kept my thoughts to myself. “We’ll say she’s a friend for now,” I repeated my plan to them, “and after I have a chance to speak with her, based on that conversation, we’ll explain the full story to everyone. Got it?”

Adam and Michele nodded, but Michele’s nod was paired with a sigh. Her back leaned against the spot next to Adam, and she reached up to grab his lollipop. He didn’t argue as she stuck it in her mouth. Her eyes were all over Serena, but Serena was focused on Cal and Blake.

“It’s strange,” Michele commented, pulling the candy from her lips. “I’ve seen her in my visions, but she looks different in person.”

Adam took his lollipop back. “What’d you expect?”

“Someone a little more,” Michele paused, “wild.”

We went silent, but Adam messed up her white hair. She didn’t even budge. I didn’t either. We didn’t have the right to. As much as bad bloods were shunned by society, we had our own set of unspoken rules. Never judging another bad blood was near the top. We were judged enough by others. But Serena was different—too different—and even Michele sensed it. What set her apart from us was the question. I had a feeling the answer relied on what tied us all together, and I doubted we were ready to accept that.

“Just prepare yourself for Floyd,” Michele broke the tension, but her words happened at the same time as the knocking. Even when she wasn’t having visions, she seemed to speak them. Her shoulders slumped like she wasn’t even surprised. Serena, on the other hand, had the opposite reaction, and I only noticed because of Cal.

“It’s okay,” he said, drawing my eyes toward him. He was talking to Serena, now standing in the corner of the kitchen. Her knees were bent like she was preparing to run, but when Cal spoke, she straightened up, and her focus followed Cal as he walked to the door. “They’re right on time.”

“They?” Serena repeated as Cal opened the door.

Tessa burst in and ran straight across the room for Adam. She squealed as Adam picked her up. “You’re getting too big for this.”

He wasn’t lying, but the nine-year-old squeezed both of his cheeks. “You’re getting too slow to dodge me.”

It was her cue. He spun around fast—too fast—and the two of them became a blur of swinging braids and black hair. When they finally came to a stop, her giggles pierced the air.

“Don’t start that,” Michele lectured. “Tessa will throw up again.”

“No, I won’t,” she said

At the same time, Adam said, “No, she won’t.”

They laughed again before he repeated what he had done. Maggie rolled her eyes as she approached the spinning duo, but the grin she cracked suggested she felt differently than Michele about it. The redhead’s grin didn’t break either, until she saw Serena. “Oh.” Maggie’s face turned as red as her hair. “Hi.”

“This is Maggie,” I explained to Serena, and when Adam stopped spinning, I pointed to the girl with pigtail braids. “That’s Tessa.”

“Hi.” Tessa’s ‘hi’ was much more energized than Maggie’s was, and the little girl waved with both hands.

Serena nodded at them both, but her eyes were quickly scanning the room. As the others entered, I could practically see Serena counting.

Maggie gestured to the blonde with uneven hair. “That’s Kally”—she pointed to the scared boy next to her—“and Ryne.” Both shrugged like none of it mattered, and I knew the duo was up to their usual fighting. If I didn’t know myself, I would’ve guessed they were dating, but they clashed as much as their powers. While one contorted fire, the other could freeze anything, and all we could do to neutralize the situation was to ignore their bitterness. Maggie did just that as she looked at me. “Floyd will be here any minute—”

The words barely left her mouth before Floyd stepped inside, all dangly and out of breath. He closed the door and leaned his back against it as he exhaled a loud breath.

“You guys forgot to tell me when we were leaving,” Floyd explained in-between breaths. “I ran to catch up.”

“We might have left early without telling him,” Maggie whispered to me and then winked.

I suppressed my laughter, but Adam didn’t. Floyd immediately shot a glare at him, and right when I thought he’d start a fight, his eyes moved over to the kitchen. My stomach twisted as Floyd found Serena among the crowded room. “Who are you?”

“We’ve met plenty of times,” Cal intervened as he opened his oven to check on the pot roast. “Dinner is almost ready too, so we can catch up—”

“I wasn’t talking to you,” Floyd mumbled as he shook his jacket off and onto the couch. His eyes never left Serena’s, and she straightened up. She didn’t look away either. In fact, it was Floyd whose eyes fell first. He looked at me instead. “Who’s she?”

I raised my hand. “Relax, okay?” I started. “We can talk about it after dinner.”

“Relax?” His voice indicated that he was planning to do the opposite.

“Floyd,” Michele snapped first. “She’s just a friend.”

My plan. It seemed much worse when actually played out.

“Just a friend?” Floyd’s expression twisted. “There’s no such thing.”

“Floyd,” Maggie practically shouted, and her red curls suddenly appeared curlier as she shook.

Adam took one look at her before putting Tessa down on her feet. He leaned down to whisper to Tessa, and Tessa ran down the hallway. Vi took the hint. With her silence, I had almost forgotten she was there at all, but right when I needed her, she appeared, looking at me once, before grabbing Blake and taking him down the same hallway. “Come on, Ryne, Kally,” she directed over her shoulder.

Ryne gestured for Kally to go first and Kally huffed. “Just because I’m a girl.”

“Get over yourself,” he mumbled back, but they ended up walking together, side-by-side, and the room was left to the older kids of the flock—with Cal standing next to Serena’s side. Her focus still hadn’t left Floyd. She was unmovable, unshakable, but her stance warned of how deadly she could move. I half-expected she was as quick as Adam was, and she didn’t even have his powers yet. Adam was the one to step up to Floyd first.

“There’s a lot to talk about, okay?” Adam didn’t even deny it. “But you’re not going about it the right way. You’re going to scare the kids.”

“They’re already scared.” Floyd’s finger pointed at me. “And he’s not the one trying to comfort them all day.” He turned his finger to jab himself in the chest. “I am.”

In one blink, Adam was behind Floyd and the door was thrown open. Adam’s hand was even wrapped around Floyd’s arm, but Floyd had remained where he stood. Adam only succeeded in stretching Floyd’s arm, but he still told the guy to leave.

“I’m staying right now,” Floyd said.

“Obviously.” Adam released him, and Floyd slowly drew in his outstretched arm, forming it back into its regular size. He rubbed the skin like it hurt, and small ripples appeared where extra skin had formed. When he stepped away, Adam followed, looking ready to stretch Floyd out again if he made another move.

“That’s enough, guys,” I tried to interrupt, but Floyd acted like he couldn’t hear me.

“I’m not scared of you or your uncle,” Floyd spoke down to Adam, who was only a few inches shorter and only a few years younger. Adam was stronger—and smarter.

Calhoun laughed. “You are as dumb as you look.”

Floyd whipped around to face Adam’s uncle. “What did you say?”

Cal’s face hardened. “You are. As dumb. As you look.”

Floyd’s face burned a cherry red, plastered against his pasty face.

“Go ahead, Stretch Armstrong,” Cal continued, patting his chest once. “Try to take out GI Joe.”

The color on Floyd’s face melted away. “What?”

“There are twelve of you,” Serena said, so suddenly the air in the room shifted with everyone’s focus. She stood at the center. “Twelve,” she repeated the number like it meant something.

Floyd’s eyebrows squeezed together, only to relax when his thoughts turned into words. “Is that what this is about?” He stared daggers at me now. “You brought her here to tell her what we were? Are you trying to get us killed?”

“Outside,” I growled. “Now.”

“You are. You’re trying to get us killed.” Floyd leaned back. “I guess there’s no point in waiting for the election anyway—”

I snapped. I grabbed him, right by the center of his shirt, and the skin on his chest stretched into my hand. My fingernails dug underneath the flap I pulled toward me, but Floyd hadn’t moved. He stood right where he had before. He simply stretched.

“Stop,” Serena’s shout broke through us, and we broke apart like she had physically pulled us back, even though she hadn’t. Adam had. He had yanked me back, and I hadn’t even seen him move.

“He didn’t tell me anything,” Serena continued anyway. “He didn’t.”

Floyd looked at me, then back at her, then back at me. “You’re about to then.” His expression never changed. It was empty, stretched out like the night I had met him at Old Man Gregory’s. “Is she the one you saved? The escapee?”

A noise escaped Serena’s throat.

“You think this is the only way we can survive? Her?” Floyd continued.

Adam stepped in between us before I could hit him. “Relax,” he yelled at both of us before pointing at Floyd. “And shut your mouth.”

“Agreed,” Cal spoke up, taking steps until he was right in front of Floyd. “A man who turns to his enemies for amusement is an enemy to himself.”

“What do you know, geezer?” Floyd was losing his mind. “You’re not me. You aren’t even a bad blood.”

Cal leaned closer. “I got enough bad blood on my hands to understand.”

“How righteous of you,” Floyd spat at his feet. “I’m sure she would love to hear all about it—how we were created by a bad blood killer.”

“Leave Serena out of this,” I snapped, but Floyd wouldn’t stop.

“She’s going to find out anyway,” he continued, turning around to say everything I wanted to say to her myself, but he never got his chance.

The front door slammed shut, followed by the sound of footsteps rushing away.

Serena was gone.

About the Author

Shannon A. Thompson is a twenty-three-year-old author, avid reader, and habitual chatterbox. She was merely sixteen when she was first published, and a lot has happened since then. Thompson's work has appeared in numerous poetry collections and anthologies, and her first installment of The Timely Death Trilogy became Goodreads' Book of the Month. As a novelist, poet, and blogger, Thompson spends her free time writing and sharing ideas with her black cat named after her favorite actor, Humphrey Bogart. Between writing and befriending cats, she graduated from the University of Kansas with a bachelor's degree in English, and she travels whenever the road calls her.

Visit her blog for writers and readers at www.shannonathompson.com.

Acknowledgements

My mother’s bookmark when she passed away in 2003 read, “A hundred years from now, the world may be different because I was important in the life of my child.” The world is already different, Mom. Mine is different, and for that, I thank her for her love and encouragement, always. I also wish to thank my father and brother for being the most supportive non-readers I’ve ever known. I still love you.

Nine years ago, Bad Bloods was originally published as one novel, and shortly afterward, it was taken off the market. Even though it has almost been a decade, I have never been able to let this story go, and I thank everyone at Clean Teen Publishing for giving this story a second chance. To Marya, for seeking out Serena’s vision with fierce understanding. To Melanie, for finding the perfect split with love and care. To Rebecca, for carefully supporting explanations and changes with grace. To Courtney, for exciting cheers with sincerity. To Cynthia, for her golden patience dealing with my nitpicky mind. I am eternally grateful for your support and kindness.

Last but certainly not least, I must thank the two readers who have cheered me on since 2007’s original publication all the way through the decade-long rewrites and today’s publication. To Chris Gibson and Ariel Galyean, my two longest fans, I cannot express how much your kind encouragement means to me, but I hope this is a start.

To all my readers, close and far, I thank you from the bottom of my little writer’s heart.

Thank you,

~SAT

Order the continuation of this story today. Bad Bloods: November Snow is the exciting conclusion that you don't want to miss!

Fans of Red Queen and The Hunger Games Trilogy will love this new series by Shannon A. Thompson.

When Daniel and Serena unite, their accidental relationship becomes the catalyst for a twelve-year war to continue. Exposing the twisted past of a corrupt city, Daniel, Serena, and everyone they know will come together to fight. But Serena has another battle. After a political rumor threatens their lives, Serena must leave her family and join the political front against her will. To survive apart, Daniel has to separate his love from his hatred and join forces with his worst memory to secure Vendona's war. But very few of them will survive to see the last day. Bad blood or human, a city will burn, snow will fall, and all will be united by catastrophic secrets and irrevocable tragedy.

Order your copy today!

If you are enjoying the Bad Bloods Series, we recommend you check out Shannon's other complete series titled The Timely Death Trilogy.

Minutes Before Sunset is currently F-R-E-E!

Two destines. One death.

"Her kiss could kill us, and my consent signed our death certificates."

Eric Welborn isn't completely human, but he isn't the only shade in the small Midwest town of Hayworth. With one year left before his eighteenth birthday, Eric is destined to win a long-raging war for his kind. But then she happens. In the middle of the night, Eric meets a nameless shade, and she's powerful—too powerful—and his beliefs are altered. The Dark has lied to him, and he's determined to figure out exactly what lies were told, even if the secrets protect his survival.

Jessica Taylor moves to Hayworth, and her only goal is to find more information on her deceased biological family. Her adoptive parents agree to help on one condition: perfect grades. And Jessica is distraught when she's assigned as Eric's class partner. He won't help, let alone talk to her, but she's determined to change him—even if it means revealing everything he's strived to hide.

Minutes Before Sunset is the first book in The Timely Death Trilogy. The Timely Death Trilogy is a brand-new exciting young adult paranormal series.