I jammed my keys into the ignition. “My first real patrol as a Guard,” I said quietly, wishing that saying it out loud would make it sound real instead of crazy. Wishing it made me feel brave instead of petrified, proud instead of furious at the Judge of the Sanctum, who I was pretty sure had coldly manipulated me into leading her “field unit” here on Earth. Worse than that, she’d demoted Malachi and sent him along instead of giving him what he’d earned through decades in her service: a peaceful eternity in the Countryside. Of course, I wasn’t totally mad he was on the mission—I got to be with him—but I still felt guilty. He’d done it all for me.

Malachi set the pack at his feet, and then leaned back and smiled at me. Like he didn’t regret his circumstances in the slightest. “Let’s go hunting.”

TWO

TWO

I LEFT MY NEIGHBORHOOD and drove toward the highway. Malachi shifted in his seat as I accelerated along West Shore Road. “Are you all right?” I asked.

“Yes. It’s just … fast.”

I glanced over at him. He was holding the oh shit handle with a white-knuckled grip. “Still not used to riding in cars?”

“Not yet. I did a few times in Bratislava, but they were not like this.” He scanned the road, the sidewalks and stores, the gas stations and office buildings. “Nothing was like this.”

“I’m sorry.” I touched his hand as I stopped at a red light. “It’s easy to forget how new and different everything must be for you. You’ve done really well so far.”

He rewarded me with a sexy smile. “Because I’ve got you to show me around. Speaking of—where are we going?”

My grip tightened on the steering wheel. “To the East Side of Providence. The camera that caught the Mazikin on video was north of the Brown University campus, and the two people who saw it were students.” If anything happened to a Brown student, it would be national news, so the police would be out in force. It made our job that much harder.

Malachi nodded. “It’s a densely populated area?”

“Providence is more urban than Warwick, but not as crowded as the dark city. You’ve seen that the land of the living is different, though. People notice things—and each other. They don’t wander around with their heads down, absorbed completely with themselves.” My gaze drifted to the sidewalk, where several people were walking along, faces lit from the glow of their cell phones. “Okay; they do sometimes, but not all the time.”