But the more time he’d spent with her, the more Sionnach realized that she was nothing like Rika. The two shared the same tiny stature, but Carissa was lighthearted where Rika was serious. Carissa was quick to laughter, teasing as if she were fey, happy to dance in the middle of the desert. There were no long-carried sorrows in his Carissa, and as the days passed, Sionnach had lost himself a little more in her affection. At first, he thought only to distract himself, but as time passed, he remembered why he had enjoyed frolicking with mortals: there was something pure in the lives of the finite.

Sionnach found himself temporarily enchanted by the girl with whom he spent his days. Today, though, he was interrupted before he could reach his evening date with the mortal girl. Maili had waited in the shadows. She stalked toward him, looking like something darker than should be in his town. At Maili’s feet a mortal teen lay facedown on the ground. One arm was flung out so the fingertips were in the edge of a puddle. The streetlight at the end of the alley cast enough light to illuminate the blood that the boy had lost. The mortal was either unconscious or dead.

“You need to rein it in,” Sionnach said warningly. “I’ve been patient.”

“I get bored, Shy. Before you got so close to someone who used to be one of them”—she wrinkled her nose like she smelled something unpleasant—“you used to understand that.”

“Things change.” He was so tense that his tail flicked to the side. He didn’t bother pointing out that Rika had been fey far longer than she’d been mortal. Mildly, he added, “People change; faeries change.”

“Not us. Not real faeries.”

“Even us, Maili.”

“Not all of us.” She took a step away from him, tucking one hand behind her back at the waistband of her pants, where he knew a weapon was undoubtedly hidden.

“We are strong, and they are disposable. They don’t matter.”

“Mortals matter.” As he looked at Maili, he tilted his head as if his animal nature would let him see what she still hid. There was something more to see here. This scene was too carefully constructed for it to be about a dead or injured boy.

“They shouldn’t, not to us,” Maili insisted.

“If we want to survive in the world today—” Sionnach stopped midsentence, caught by the sight of a silhouette at the end of the alley. He didn’t need to turn around to see that the person peering into the shadows was Carissa.

He knew that the alley looked deserted to Carissa; she couldn’t see him or Maili. She would see the body if not for the fact that Sionnach hurriedly crouched down and touched the boy’s arm to extend his own invisibility over the fallen mortal. In touching him, Sionnach knew that he was dead.