It wasn’t until Hiro was already halfway across the room, bearing down on me, that I realized I was

scrubbing my left wrist against the hem of my hoodie. Quick as a striking snake, his fingers closed

around my wrist, and he dragged it away from my body.

I almost dropped my weight down into my knees, bracing myself to tear my arm away. But he

looked down at the marks, pushing my sleeve up. “These are old. Weeks old.” He darted a single,

malicious glance at Anna. “Let me guess. Reynard.”

“What?” Bruce crowded him aside. Inhaled sharply. “Why didn’t you tell us you were marked?”

“He . . . uh, well . . . Christophe had to. The suckers were coming to kill us. He asked if he could

borrow something from me. I didn’t know it was . . . that.” Memory swallowed me whole, and I

shuddered.

. . . Christophe jerked his head back, fangs sliding free of my flesh, and something wrapped itself

tightly around my wrist, below his bruising-hard grip on my forearm. He exhaled, shuddering, and

Graves tried to pull me away again. My arm stretched like Silly Putty between them, my shoulder

screaming, and I couldn’t make a sound.

The winter blue of Christophe’s irises clouded, dark striations like food coloring dropped in water

threading through the light. They still glowed even more intensely, in a way that shouldn’t have

made sense. “Sweet,” he hissed, and made an odd hitching movement. His chin dipped, and his fingers tightened bruising-hard on my wrist, like he was going to do that again.

I wanted to scream, couldn’t. Nothing worked. My body just hung there, frozen and unresponsive.

“Christophe.” Shanks sounded nervous. “Um, Christophe?”

The world trembled on a knife edge. Blackness crowded in around the corners. My head tipped further back. Graves held me up, both arms around me now. It was work to breathe. In, out; in, out, my

ribs almost refused to rise. There was air outside my face, but it was just so hard to bring it in. Instead, the sea of atmosphere pushed down on me, crushing.

“Jesus,” Graves whispered. “What did you do to her?”

“How much did he take?” Hiro asked quietly.

Over his shoulder, Anna’s face floated. She was white. Not pale, like she usually was. White. As if

she’d just seen a ghost. Red pin-pricks flickered in the depths of her pupils, and there was a sudden

overwhelming certainty that if Hiro wasn’t between us she would want to talk to me. Right up

close.

Right up hard.

“She’s with him,” Anna hissed. “A traitor, right under our nose. Just like Eliza—”

Hiro let go of me and turned sharply. He actually bumped me, he turned so fast, and I stumbled

back, almost falling on the couch. Bruce’s hand closed around my upper arm, bruising-tight, and his

other hand shot out, wrapping in the back of Hiro’s high-collared gray silk jacket-shirt. The material