He only blinked at me and repeated his own question. And when I didn’t answer, he smiled—an expression utterly absent of joy—and cocked his head to the other side in a jerky, birdlike motion. “This is your nest, right? Your home? That ground-level hovel you cats burrow into, for what? Warmth? Safety? You huddle in dens because you cannot soar. I pity you.”

My eyebrows shot up over the disgust dripping from his every syllable. “Maybe you should pity yourself. You’re still bleeding, and it looks like you’ve broken a wing. You’re in good company.” I held up my own graffitied cast. “But mine’s been fixed. If yours doesn’t get set properly, you can’t fly, can you? Ever.”

His narrowed eyes and bulging jaw said I was right. That I’d found his weak spot.

“Our doctor is just a couple of hours away.” Dr. Carver had already been called in to treat Owen. “But you won’t get so much as a Band-Aid until you tell us what we want to know. Starting with your name.”

The thunderbird cradled his crooked arm, but his gaze did not waver. “Then I will never fly again.” He looked simultaneously distraught and resolute—I’d seldom seen a stronger will.

“Seriously?” I took a single step closer to the bars, judging my safety by distance. “You’re going to cripple yourself for life over your name? What good will you be to your…flock, or whatever, if you’re jacked up for the rest of your life?”

Doubt flickered across his expression, chased away almost instantly by an upsurge of stoicism. “The rest of my life? Meaning, the three seconds between the time I spill my guts and you rip them from my body? I’d say a broken arm is the least of my problems.”

I rolled my eyes. “We’re not going to kill you.”

“Right. You’re going to fix me up and toss me out the window with a Popsicle stick taped to one wing.” He shrugged awkwardly with the shoulder of his good arm, leaning against the cinder-block wall for support. “I’ve seen this episode. This is the one where Sylvester eats Tweety.”

“If memory serves, Sylvester never actually swallowed, and while I love a good poultry dinner, we can’t kill you without proof you’ve killed one of ours. And you don’t match this.” I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the fourteen-inch feather I’d found next to Jake’s body. I’d stored it shaft-first, to preserve the pattern of the vane.

The difference was subtle but undeniable. Our prisoner’s feathers were dark brown, with three thick, horizontal black stripes. But the one in my hand had two thick stripes and one thin, in the middle.

Marc stepped up when the thunderbird’s forehead furrowed as he stared at the feather. “We can’t kill you, and you’re entitled to water and two meals a day.” At least, that’s what the council said a werecat prisoner was entitled to. We didn’t actually have any precedent for how to treat prisoners of another species. “But we don’t have to tend your injuries or let you go, so you’ll stand there in pain for as long as it takes you to start talking.”