His mother pushed him through the door. The stranger in the overcoat put her arm through his and pulled him into the darkened hallway, and the last he saw of his parents—his mother’s hand covered her mouth, his father’s hand on her shoulder.

Then the light from inside was extinguished.

CHAPTER 3

Josef, Anna, and Isaac Wolf

1942

Josef and Anna sat in their darkened apartment and listened. They had waited until Isaac was gone.

“We must leave,” Josef said at last.

“I can sense it,” Anna said. “The hunter. It’s close and can smell us. Isaac left just in time.” She added, “I will change us now, yes? I think it would be better, even if it gives us away.”

Josef hesitated, then nodded. When she made the disguise, the shift to hide them as an old couple, he nodded again, approving. “We must hurry.”

As they left the apartment for the last time, Anna paused and glanced back, wistful. “I loved it here.”

Josef put his hand on her arm. He swallowed his own grief and worked to master his fear. They had to make it, for Isaac’s sake. Yes. For Isaac’s sake.

They slipped down the stairs slowly, cautiously, haltingly—as suited the disguise—and out into the night.

The smell (an odor of rot, a stench as of meat left out too long) greeted them, and they stopped and pressed back against the wall of the building. Anna gripped her husband’s arm tightly. Disguises really only helped against the Nazis. No disguise would fully shield them against the dark creature of the night—the fae hunter—who could see through almost anything and who might sense the shapeshift.

The cobbles were treacherously slick, especially for a couple who were to all outward appearances very old.

But it was only a short walk, a few blocks, and they would be in the Old Town Square. Just across the square they’d be safe inside. Anna could almost feel the vibrations of the magic locked inside the musty hidden space, so much magic, magic even greater than the fae that haunted and hunted them.

The odor of rot grew stronger as they approached the square, and Anna made a small noise in her throat, then stopped and pointed with an age-bent and trembling finger. There, at the top of the Saint Nicholas Church, was the hunter, poised like the statues that graced the facade. But this hunter was not carved of stone; this one, darker than the night, turned its head. Josef and Anna could see the dragon-like wings, the almost-too-beautiful face, the red eyes, eyes like fire.

They were all frozen for a moment, none of them moving. Anna was certain the fae smelled them. Josef stared across the square as if he could will himself and Anna to the Stone Bell and the wall with its painted symbol just beyond.