“It sounds so dark, the way you put it.”

“It is,” Marquis said. He touched her hair, hand running down the back of her head. “It’s dark before dawn. Sometimes we need to take a scalpel to the wounds. A transplant requires a bit of tough medicine, to prevent rejection, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t want to be the tough medicine,” Amy’s voice came out more unsure than she meant it to.

“If it comes down to it, my daughter,” Marquis murmured, his voice just for her, “I’ll be the tough, you can be the medicine.”

Amy nodded, noncommittal, not wanting to say anything that might prolong the uncomfortable part of the conversation.

Mark was looking. She looked at him, and felt Marquis’ hand pull away. He walked over to Chris again.

Whichever one she talked to or favored in the moment, it felt like she was betraying the other, and yet she had no loyalty to either of them. They had both let her down when it counted. Neither had been there. Now they were here but they weren’t—

Amy stopped herself. The anger she felt stirred in her chest and she pressed her hand over her heart, as she fought to quell it.

There were a few others on the street, but it was ten to seven, and it was cold enough people were taking their time to get where they wanted to be. Shin tended to be very informal when formality wasn’t stipulated, and that included roads without lanes or signage, that trusted people to fend for themselves and watch where they were going. It meant the work week was often a flexible thing. Obviously someone couldn’t not go to work at all, but arriving a few hours late, staying an extra few hours? That was fine.

A girl, who couldn’t have been more than eleven, stepped back in alarm as Chris’s shaggy gray form emerged from the flurry of snow. Instinctively, reactively, she bowed into a kind of curtsy. The mother seemed paralyzed, caught between getting the child to straighten and not wanting to offend, and ended up bowing as well, head down, as the group passed. The smaller children simply looked bewildered.

Until Hunter approached, energetic, and bowed too, hands extending forward as part of the bow. Nervous, they took her hands, and Hunter straightened, lifting their hands and pulling them to a standing-straight position again.

If they’d been reassured by the gentleness of the action, it didn’t show. It was easily possible the manic look in Hunter’s eyes unnerved them.

Hunter half-skipped, half danced away from the family. Catching up with the rest of the group for the twelfth time.

Marquis caught her, with his own bit of flourish and reaching hand. Hunter accepted, and Marquis drew the girl closer, one hand on her shoulder, steadying her, bending low to say something.