The blood I’d slipped in was still fresh enough to be wet and red. There wasn’t much of it, and I hadn’t been expecting it; that explained why I hadn’t caught the smell of it before. Now that I was “looking,” it was everywhere, almost overwhelming me.

Pulling away from Tybalt, I sprinted down the hall toward the futon room with an energy I hadn’t realized I still had. Dizziness and panic fought a brief war for control of my actions, and panic won, spurring me to run even faster. I’d told myself Connor and Quentin would be safe where they were . . . and we had a killer who killed her best friend, working with an accomplice who could walk through walls. I’m an idiot. All I could do was hope that I wasn’t already too late.

Sometimes hope is the cruelest joke of all.

THIRTY-ONE

THIRTY-ONE

THE FUTON ROOM DOOR WAS OPEN. I skidded to a stop as I turned the final corner, staring, before beginning to walk slowly forward. It felt like I was moving in a dream.

That only lasted as long as it took for me to realize just how much blood had been spilled, and that there was a dark, torpedolike shape lying motionless in the middle of the floor. There was no sign of Quentin. “Connor!” I exclaimed, almost falling over myself as I dropped to my knees next to the seal. “Don’t be dead, don’t be dead, come on, baby, don’t be dead . . .” My hands fumbled across his blood-tacky fur, looking for a pulse. “How the fuck do you find a harbor seal’s pulse?”

“He’s not dead.” Tybalt was standing in the doorway, studying the blood splattered on the walls and floor as casually as a man studying the menu at his local diner.

“How do you know?”

“He doesn’t smell dead.”

That would have to be good enough. I stood, wiping my hands against my jeans as I looked around the room. I hadn’t wanted to believe that they could be in danger. I’d wanted to believe I was just panicking, paranoid as always, and everything would be fine. You can’t always get what you want.

“He went to seal form when he was injured,” I said, my voice sounding distant to my own ears. “It must have been a shock. That’s usually what triggers an involuntary shift in Selkies.”

“You mean like this?” Tybalt stooped to pick something up, holding it up to show me.

A stun gun. “That’d do it,” I agreed. I walked over to the futon, running my fingers along the mattress. The blood matted on its surface was sticky and still warm. Once again, we’d almost made it in time.