Then, from the far corner of the square, a rumble, and a car appeared, careening across the cobbles in mindless abandon, a black auto. Josef and Anna pressed even more deeply into the darkness below the church steps. The car screeched to a halt in the middle of the square, a door opened, and a Nazi soldier staggered out, his companions laughing behind him as he relieved himself right there, his gray hat cocked back on his head. Josef suppressed the anger that rose in his chest at this desecration.

He almost wished for the Unseelie fae to dive down from above onto the soldier’s head, then checked that ugly wish. No one deserved such a fate.

But the Nazi car had startled the fae hunter. Anna felt it lift and drift on silent wings away toward the river and the Charles Bridge. The rot smell was gone and she could breathe again.

The soldier fell back into the auto, which turned and tore away past the clock tower. As it disappeared, Josef whispered between his teeth, “Now.”

They ran, no longer attempting to hide. They ran across the open space, making for the Stone Bell. Anna tripped on the cobbles and almost fell, and then she heard it, the fae, sensing them, the dark hunter screaming its deathly scream as it returned to the square, and Anna again smelled rot as the hunter bore down on them. “Hurry,” she cried. “Please.”

Josef pressed his hand against the wall, and they made it, they made it, disappearing through the door that vanished, leaving a blank plaster wall, and the angry fae hunter beat its leathery wings against the tower above the wall, sending a shower of broken tiles loose upon the cobbles below.

*   *   *

Isaac stumbled behind his guide while his heart tried to pound right out of his chest. But the woman was able to sense when a patrol car was coming, and she pressed Isaac back into the shadows until the taillights disappeared around a corner.

Then, without warning, Isaac heard from behind them a dreadful, piercing scream. He froze, clapping his hands over his ears. The sound echoed down the labyrinth of streets until it died away.

The woman stopped, turning, as Isaac flattened himself to the wall. “What?” she whispered.

He stared at her, confused. “You didn’t hear that?” He could see by the crease on her forehead that she hadn’t. But her eyes softened and she took his arm and continued to guide him north out of Prague, away from his home, away from the terrifying scream.

Isaac had to keep going. Yes. For the sake of his mother and father, and for his own dreams, too.

But if someone looked in their direction after that—someone or something like a black cat, say, or a Nazi soldier or even Isaac’s own parents—they would only have seen two oddly shaped moving shadows.