In the middle of a thicket of gravestones, the women still fought. Candi was tall and quick and strong, but the woman in gray was stronger, faster, quick and brutal as a storm. She barely looked out of breath as she punched and kicked and punched again, her fists and feet a furious blur. With one tremendous kick from the woman in gray, Candi flew back and smashed into the Angel of Music, the sound nothing like music. She slid down the marble base and crumpled to the dirt.

The woman in gray straightened and turned an unreadable gaze on Tess and Theo and Jaime. She was so lovely and so strange that it was almost hard to look at her, but Tess refused to avert her eyes. She wanted to ask so many questions, say so many things. Who are you? Where did you come from? Where are you going? Thank you, thank you, thank you.

But what came out of her mouth wasn’t thank you, and wasn’t a question. “You stole my cat.”

“I only borrowed her for a while,” said the woman in gray. “And I might have used a little dye to cover up her spots. It will wash out.”

Tess winced at the sound of her own word coming back at her—borrowed. “You stole her,” she insisted. “Why?”

“I was protecting her,” said the woman. “And I needed her help.”

“For what?” Theo asked.

“Nothing you need to worry about,” the woman said. She crouched by the trunk. “What did you discover?”

“Nothing you need to worry about,” Tess said.

The woman smiled. “You’re your mother’s daughter, Tess.”

Theo said, “How do you know Tess’s name? What do you know about our mother?”

“Not much anymore. I knew your mother a long, long time ago. People change. Maybe neither of you is like her at all. Was there something inside the trunk?”

Jaime was looking at the woman in gray as if he were seeing a ghost or something out of a dream. “Yes,” he said.

“Jaime!” Tess said.

“We put all the stuff we found in our backpacks,” Jaime continued, as if he hadn’t heard Tess at all.

The woman searched the packs, her frown growing deeper as she examined the papers and the money and the other items from the trunk. She held up the little green statue that looked so much like the Liberty Statue. “I don’t understand.”

“We don’t, either,” said Theo.

“I drew you,” Jaime said.

“Pardon me?” said the woman in gray.

Jaime stood. He patted his pockets and pulled out a folded piece of paper. He held it out to the woman in gray. Though he was taller than she, he seemed utterly awestruck by her. His hand was shaking.