“I left a message for her,” he said. He touched the phone, which still sat in his lap.

Ashley’s power flickered in the background. She adjusted her position, acting like nothing had happened as she leaned against the edge of one seat, a death grip around her forearm.

“I’m going to remove my helmet,” Looksee said. “My breath keeps fogging up the screen.”

“Keep your back to the windows,” Tristan said.

“Okay.”

I wasn’t sure it mattered—the windows were in dire need of cleaning and dirt from the road covered them for extra measure. It was a good practice to be in, though, for our team members with secret identities.

There was some rummaging. Looksee wasn’t the only one to adjust her stuff. We settled in for a longer talk, with Tristan removing his helmet. He set it down on the faux-leather bench of the bus beside him, then blurred, becoming Byron.

Byron, too, removed his helmet, setting it down next to Tristan’s. Red and blue tinted metal, horns and ridges for the former, faint fins and distinct scales for the latter.

I pushed back my hood and pulled my gloves off, being more ginger with my left glove because of the injured arm it was attached to. I laid the gloves across my lap, and the metal decorations stabbed upward like a small crown. My hands were clammy.

“The patrol doesn’t want to go after the remaining Fallen?” Rain finally spoke. His voice was as careful as his movements had been, with a questioning, almost unsure lilt at the end.

“Tomorrow’s problem, they think. There’s enough to deal with today,” I said.

“That’s the bad news, then?” Rain asked. “Good news is we got some of the worst of them, the bad news is the Crowleys are going to riot?”

“That’s the gist of it,” Byron said. His reserved tone of voice was a good match for the quieter-than-usual Rain.

“You’re the resident expert, Rain,” I said. “How do the Crowleys react?”

“Oof,” Rain huffed out the word. “I know them mostly from visits and once a year events. We’d sometimes get people sent to us from their family, trading people between families, to cement ties. I was one of those people, once.”

Sveta spoke up, “Tattletale wants Cradle in exchange for helping us stop them. The patrol isn’t helping, so…”

“So it’s not even guaranteed we can make this work,” I finished the trailing sentence.

“Wants Cradle how?” Rain asked.

“To go free,” Sveta said. “The patrol is holding him and the assassin—”

“They’re annoyed about it,” Chris added.

“—and we wanted to ask for your input,” Sveta finished her statement.

Rain leaned back, his head lolling back until it rested on the top edge of the bench seat. He sighed.

“I thought I only had Love Lost to worry about now,” he said. “You want to let him go?”