I push up in a panic, look around me. My clothes are where I left them, a black star of a mask, a riot of blond braids splayed across a hat that sat last night like a sinking ghost ship on top of my head. It’s the outfit I laid out while asleep the morning before. Aside from that single night of closet raiding, I’ve apparently been too exhausted to experience any new sleepwalking adventures . . . at least as far as I know.

I stretch an arm across the bed, find it empty. I never heard Luka rise.

“Audra!” More pounding. Claudia. I untangle myself, trip from bed.

“What?” I say, hoarse. I yank open the door. Claudia stands there in a plain black sweater and pedal pushers, Audrey Hepburn glasses on her head. It’s bizarre, seeing her in something so normal—possibly her weirdest costume yet—until I recall her penchant for watching artists in the park on weekend afternoons.

She holds a phone toward me.

“What’s this?” I take it from her, realizing I never washed the makeup off my face, including the feathered eyelash that clings like a dead spider to the corner of my eye. I peel it off, stick it to the doorjamb, and take the phone from her. Squint at a single line of text:

T says: Bring the talon tonight.

“Who’s this from?” I say, confused.

“Tibor, through Jester.”

I give her a weird look as Luka appears in the hallway. He’s freshly showered, wet hair tucked behind his ear.

“Tibor wants my pendant?” I’ve worn it every night. Have not missed the eyes that stray toward it each time I arrive, the words spoken to cupped ears behind the pounding music. Or the following our predawn wilds have acquired as we spill from the underground well before first light. If they—or any of the faceless others—know who I am, they’ve said nothing about it. Or at least not in front of me.

“No, Audra. You. You’re the talon.”

“Okay.” I glance from her to Luka. Apparently I’m failing to understand something.

“Maybe he’s gotten the passports,” Luka says, though I know he’s really asking a question. “It has been nearly a week.”

In fact, I’ve hardly noticed the passing of the days, which have blended together into one long night at a court that has extended from Visoka Street to the nearby Tuskanac forest.

But Claudia is clearly shaken.

“What are you worried about? You’re friends with him, right?” I say. Made up every night, surrounded by a court full of frenetic Progeny, she’s always appeared more glamorous than life and older than her years. At this moment, however, she looks like a scared eighteen-year-old.

“Not exactly,” she says, looking pale. “I’ve never met him. That I know of.”