Nita blinked, because the emotion in her mother’s eyes was old and worn but real. Nita had been thinking of this as a fairy tale. But the grief etched in the lines of her mother’s face was genuine. This person had existed. Her mother had cared about this person.

And it hadn’t ended well.

“The monster was smart. It knew just killing my friend would solve nothing. That would just make all her monster-hunting friends come after him. So he was clever. He ingratiated himself. For years, he was protected from the monster hunters of the world because of his relationship with my friend. He pretended he was different, that he wasn’t a killer. And because of my friend, they . . . Well, even if they didn’t believe him, they didn’t dare hurt him.

“So by day he schmoozed with monster hunters and conned my friend, and by night he murdered and did everything terrible that monsters of his ilk do.”

Nita was silent, leaning forward slightly, caught up in the story despite herself. “And what happened?”

“Monster hunters started disappearing. They’d go out to hunt, and they wouldn’t come back. Their traps stopped working. Their plans were foiled at every turn. One by one, they were being picked off. And as they were picked off, the monster whispered in my friend’s ear, telling her that the problem had to be coming from close by, that there was no way the monsters could have known when and where and how these hunts were happening. No way it could have been monsters doing the killing. It had to be other monster hunters. Or someone close to them. Someone in the know.”

Her mother’s expression was bitter. “And so my friend turned on the monster hunters, and they turned on each other, and the monster watched and laughed as all his enemies killed each other.

“And at the end, when he had killed all his enemies, he turned on my friend, and he killed her too.”

Nita rocked back, the pain in her mother’s voice shaking her as much as the story.

Her mother took a long, deep breath. “He’d always intended to kill her. Years of relationship were all a sham. He was thinking of himself, of changing the world hunting him to suit his needs. He never cared about her, only what she could do for him.”

Her mother met Nita’s eyes, hard and cold and angry. “So tell me, Nita, are you doing anything for your monster? Has he talked you into any harebrained schemes that benefit him more than you?”

Nita stared at her mother and thought about all the running around she’d done, the desperate risks of meeting INHUP agents, the modifications to her plans, all trying to find a way to save Kovit.

“You’re wrong,” she whispered. “He’s not like that.”