Barabas was one of the Pack’s lawyers, and he did his best to navigate me through the treacherous mire of shapeshifter politics and laws.

“It’s not bad.” Barabas sat on the floor, throwing one long lean leg over the other and grimaced. “Well, I take it back. It might be.”

“Will it freak you out if I finish this? I already poured blood on the floor.”

“No, no. Why let good undead blood go to waste?”

I pricked my forearm with a needle and let a single drop of blood fall into the puddle. Magic shot through the undead blood like lightning. The blood slid upward in a graceful crimson arch.

“Whoa,” Barabas murmured.

The blood touched my fingers and wound around them, gliding over my skin, elastic and pliant. A blood gauntlet sheathed my hand. It wasn’t pretty but it was functional. I pulled a knife from my belt and sliced across the gauntlet.

Barabas made a sympathetic sucking noise.

No blood. I felt the pressure of the blade but it didn’t penetrate. I bent my fingers, trying to make a fist. I made it about two-thirds of the way. About a year ago my aunt Erra had come to Atlanta intending to wreck it. I killed her. It was the hardest thing I’d done in my life. She was wearing blood armor when she died. It fit her like spandex. She had run and twisted in it, and she had no problem swinging an axe fast enough to counter me. I tried the gauntlet again. The blood refused to bend. I was clearly doing something wrong. This wouldn’t work. If I couldn’t hold a sword, I might as well sign my own death warrant.

I concentrated on thinning the blood, turning it into segments that sat on top of each other like the plates of armadillo armor. “So what’s up?”

“Two things. First, Christopher wants to talk to you.”

Speaking with Christopher was like playing Russian roulette: sometimes you got brilliance so bright it hurt and sometimes you got complete nonsense. We had rescued him from Hugh d’Ambray. He must’ve been exceptionally smart at some point and he definitely had knowledge of advanced magic, but either Hugh or my father had broken his mind. Christopher’s hold on reality frequently slipped, and once in a while we had to drop everything and run out on the parapets to convince him that no, he could not fly. I could usually talk him down, but if he was really far gone it took Barabas to make him stop.

“He’s been agitated for the last two days,” Barabas said. “I have no idea if he’s even coherent.”

“Where is he now?”

“Hiding in the library.”