He nodded. “I do a lot of my work via phone calls, mostly for those in the shadow world who need help walking through a transition.”

I couldn’t help it, my lips twitched. “You help the monsters with the monsters in their closets?”

He gave a shy smile. “Something like that. You can’t understand how hard it is for some of them to accept what they are, especially those who started out human. It’s on par with any major life change. Divorce. Death. Coming out.”

I looked from him to Gran. “Then maybe you can talk to her about why I might have run away from the shadow world. It wasn’t right what I did, but as a young woman, I didn’t think I had any other choice if I wanted a life. I know now I was wrong, but . . . I can’t change what happened in the past.”

“Training,” she said softly. “I was training you to be strong and I failed.”

I brushed past her, a rush of cold running down my side as I strode to the back door. “No, you didn’t fail, Gran. Because at the end of the day, I came back and I’m doing exactly what you taught me to do. To look out for those who couldn’t look out for themselves. And, right now, I have a job to do. Eric’s life is in danger and I—we—are the only ones who believe him. Which I think was on purpose.”

“How do you know that?” Eric asked.

I grinned and managed a wink despite my weary heart. “When it comes to guessing, I’m the best.”

18

My first stop was not 66 Factors Row, despite the urgency of my trip to find the chains and get them back to Gran. Because every person I walked by gave me big eyes and pointed looks at my shirt. A glance down said it all. I had to change if I wanted to go incognito at all. Mud stained my once white T-shirt, and my leather pants were caked in the same mud that flaked off as I walked, leaving a veritable trail behind me.