“They find out he’s alive and they change everything,” I concluded grimly. “Good reason.”

  “Plus right now, they’re not profiling random blonde humans and attacking the ones who fit on the theory that they might be me,” added Verity. “Based on what Dominic and Antimony know about their tech, we think they’re using some sort of heat scanner to pick out nonhumans when they’re looking for targets. Honestly, if we had half their tools for detecting cryptids, outreach would be so much easier. But right now, you can walk down the street and you’ll be fine. If they figure out Dominic is alive and I’m the woman who was with him when he ‘died,’ too many innocent people could be at risk. We’re minimizing casualties.”

  “Where’s Sarah?” I asked abruptly.

  “This time of day, probably Starbucks,” said Verity. “She goes for coffee in the afternoon. She’s the only one of us who can be absolutely sure of being safe. The Covenant still hasn’t figured out how to track cuckoos, especially not if they’re following human rules of behavior. They can carry anti-telepathy charms, but those can’t help them differentiate cuckoos from humans with similar coloration, and New York has plenty of pale, dark-haired people.”

  “Their heat scanners don’t find cuckoos?”

  “Cuckoos run about eight degrees cooler than the average human. Most nonhuman bipeds run six to twelve degrees higher. At least for right now, the Covenant is looking for the hot people—and even if they weren’t, their odds of finding a single cuckoo in the city would be less than one in a million. Most of the cuckoos in North America vanished a little over five years ago, when they tried to open a dimensional door and skip town. They didn’t survive the process. Sarah may be the last cuckoo left in New York, and for once, that’s not because of anything the Covenant did. So she gets the occasional break from being shut up in here with all the local minds she’s actively attuned to, and we get coffee delivered once a day.” Verity shrugged broadly. “It helps. Not enough, but . . . it helps.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “The dragons are focused on protecting the Nest, the bogeymen are focused on trying to batten down the hatches and hold the sewers, and all the other cryptid communities are doing their best to close their doors against the outside world. So we’re not getting a lot of reports from the locals about the Covenant’s movements. We know they’re actively hunting all the time; they’ve caught a lot of the solitaries, and they keep patrolling every night, looking for anything ‘deviant.’ We’ve confirmed the existence of at least three field teams. There may be a fourth, or it may be members of the other three coming together in their off time to enjoy their favorite hobby, wrecking the lives of innocent cryptids.”

  “So that’s what, twenty people?”

  “Somewhere around that.” Verity looked at me, letting me glimpse the naked fear in her eyes. “If you’re thinking ‘Twenty’s easy, I carry twenty knives all the time,’ stop. They’re dangerous, Grandma. They travel in groups, they’re trained killers, and they’re cruel. They don’t fight fair. They don’t particularly care about collateral damage, as long as they can kill the people they think of as monsters. Most of the city doesn’t know we’re at war. Sure. That’s how the Covenant works. They move in the shadows, they pretend ignorance is bliss and what you don’t know can’t hurt you, and they kill, and they kill, and they keep killing, because as long as they keep their heads down while they’re doing it, people just write the deaths off as background noise!

  “You haven’t been here, Grandma, you haven’t tried to comfort the people who’ve just lost spouses, or parents, or children. You haven’t watched people trying to cope with the deaths of their loved ones when no one else seems to care. We may not have tanks rolling down Broadway, but this is war, and it only ends when the Covenant can say nothing inhuman is left alive in Manhattan. And when they do that, they start heading out into other places, to cleanse those, too! There’s at least twenty of them, we don’t know all their names, we don’t know most of their faces, but they’re here, and they’re killing people, and we need them to stop. I need them to stop. And I need you to figure out how you’re going to make that happen, because my people are pretty damn tired of dying.”

  She took a deep breath before turning toward the door. “I’ll let you get settled in. Come out when you’re ready. Istas will show you around the warehouse and make sure you know the escape routes and house rules. Sally, it’s nice to meet you. Grandma, it’s nice to see you again. Grandpa . . .” She hesitated, apparently not sure what she was supposed to say. The silence stretched like a piece of chewing gum, getting longer and longer and more and more fragile. Finally, she shook her head, and said, “I’m glad you’re not dead after all. And I’m glad all of you are here. Really. We need the hands.”

  Then she was gone, leaving us alone in a situation that was very big, very complex, and very not designed to be handled by my usual brute-force methodology. Which explained why it was grinding her down the way it clearly was. Of all my descendants, Verity was the most like me in temperament. A problem she couldn’t punch into submission was a bit outside her comfort zone.

  It wasn’t much closer to my own comfort zone. Thomas was fifty years out of time, Sally knew nothing about the cryptid world, and I was joining a fight where knives and hitting weren’t likely to be the solution.

  Wasn’t this going to be fun.

  * * *

  I sat heavily on the edge of the bed, which sank a bit beneath me, revealing its origins as a piece of camping gear hastily press-ganged into service as bedroom furniture, and bent forward, dropping my head into my hands.

  The bed rose as someone sat down next to me, and Thomas put a hand on the small of my back.

  “I feel rather as if I’ve just been dropped into the middle of a theatrical production with no program and no notes on what happened during the first two acts,” he said, sounding surprisingly unruffled.

  I lifted my head, eyeing him suspiciously. “You’re not upset?”

  “Oh, I’m so upset that I’m astonished I can still draw breath,” he said, in a reassuring tone. “I left our infant son, and now his daughter is old enough to have a child the age he was the last time I saw him.”

  “That wasn’t him in the kitchen?” asked Sally.

  I felt Thomas turn his attention in her direction. “I suppose it was, but I have trouble wrapping my head around that fact. I’ve mostly been cleaving to the idea that it proves he’s still alive, and not dwelling on all the reality of what his age means. Alice was a surprise but not a shock. She still looks almost like she did when I had to leave her behind. I would have loved her no matter what. I still didn’t have to make any major mental adjustments to look at her and see my wife. Looking at a grown man and seeing my son is a more difficult feat. Looking at a grown woman with a daughter of her own and a De Luca by her side—a De Luca! Now there’s a family I never thought to see turn traitor— Well. That all takes a bit more adjustment.”

  I uncovered my face and sat up, looking at her. “I haven’t missed nearly as much time as Thomas has—or as you have—but five years is a bigger jump forward than I usually make. I vanish for a year, maybe two. Not five. Not long enough for my granddaughter to get pregnant and have a daughter of her own, and probably decide I was dead. She’s not going to evacuate. Even with a baby, there’s no way we convince her to leave this city to its own ends, not when she feels responsible for what’s happening.”

  “So your whole family’s like this?” Sally asked.

  I considered for a moment. “They’re all different,” I said finally. “But pretty much, yeah. I ran out on my children when they were too small to understand why it was happening. They couldn’t tell me not to go. They couldn’t come with me. All they could do was stay behind. And somehow that led to them growing up with this incredible determination never to leave family behind again. Verity is what she was raised to be, and she was raised by the people I broke, so I know where her cracked bits are. Yeah, they’re all like this, to one degree or another. I haven’t seen most of them in . . . well, in five years longer than I thought I had.”

  I barked a sharp laugh that threatened to become a sob, and Thomas shifted his hand from the small of my back to my shoulder, drawing me closer. I took another deep breath, looking for serenity. Looking for stability. Looking for anything other than the bone-deep exhaustion that threatened to rise up and overwhelm me.

  “Think someone in this place has a sleeping bag I can borrow?” Sally asked. “No offense, and I trust you two not to get frisky while I’m in here, but I’m not sharing a bed with two people I’m not banging.”

  “Were you this picky in the bottle dimension?” I asked, halfway amused despite myself.

  “Nope,” said Sally. “Didn’t have the luxury of pickiness when we were all huddling together for body heat, or when we couldn’t spare the water for bathing more than once a month. You learn to put up with a lot. And you know what else you learn?”

  “What?” Now the amusement was complete.

  “You learn not to dwell on shit. The thing that tries to kill you today will try to kill you again tomorrow, and all you’re going to do if you sit around thinking about it is give yourself an ulcer. I’m back in the real world.”

  “Technically, all worlds are real—” Thomas began.

  “The real world,” Sally repeated, more firmly. “I am in the place pizza comes from, I am almost certainly going to get to stab some people, I have clean socks, and you’re intending to keep me, meaning I don’t have to try to figure out how I’m going to explain any of this bullshit to the Hendersons. I loved them, I did, and they tried their best to love me, but they adopted me because their church told them Jesus wanted them to, and then I turned out to be gay and weird and not very interested in their version of God, and so they were already falling out of the habit of loving me when I vanished. I’m sure it was a relief to everyone but James when I went away. And if I spent all my time sitting around dwelling on that, I’d scream forever, so instead, I’m going to go get some damn pizza. Anyone coming with me?”

  “I am.” I stood. “Verity can’t risk being seen, but if the Covenant spots me, they won’t recognize me. Even if they do, they won’t believe it. They may catch the Carew look. That’s fine. Let them come after me, just as long as we don’t lead them back here.”

  “Is this one of those situations where I would make things worse by insisting on coming with you?” Thomas asked.

  I hesitated. “Actually . . . maybe.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Do tell.”

  “One woman who looks kinda like she might be a Carew, but maybe not, walking with a Korean woman? Not that suspicious. A Carew and a Price, on the other hand . . .”

  “They still hate us that much,” said Thomas, and sighed. “I’ll stay here, then, and get a better sense of the lay of the land.”

  “Good plan.” I turned to Sally. “Ready for your pizza?”

  * * *

  Verity was in the main room, talking quietly with a cluster of dragons. She turned when Sally and I emerged. I waved her over, causing her to scowl briefly before she half-walked, half-trotted toward us.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Sally wants pizza, so we were going to go for a walk before we figure out how to take down the Covenant. What’s the protocol for leaving the building?”

  “Go out through the convenience store, try not to look suspicious while you’re doing it, and call for Mary to meet you on the sidewalk and let you back in,” said Verity. “If she doesn’t show up within a few minutes, keep walking, and do a few circuits of the block before you try calling her again. If she doesn’t come after the third time, take a walk. Get at least a mile away, then call her again. I’m guessing you don’t have phones?”

  We both shook our heads. Verity sighed.

  “Okay, we’ll add that to the list for tomorrow. Right now, it’s just Mary for access for you. Or Sarah, if you see her, but you can’t count on that. I really wish you wouldn’t just wander off.”

  “But you’re not telling us not to go.”

  “You’re my grandmother. Do you think I could make that stick?”

  I considered for a moment, then shook my head. “Not really. But I’m armed, we’re both paranoid, and I want to get a vague sense of the atmosphere out there.”

  “All right,” she said, reluctantly. “Just be as careful as you reasonably can, okay? I don’t want to deal with Grandpa getting widowed when the two of you just got into the same place again.”

  I sighed. “I know I can be a little crabby sometimes, but I’m more careful than you people give me credit for. Even if I continue to hate that word and everything it stands for.”

  “Less talking, more pizza,” said Sally.

  “You heard her,” I said. “Who am I to stand between a woman and her burning need for pizza? I even promise to do my best not to wander into traffic because I got distracted by all the shiny lights of civilization.”

  “You better,” said Verity. “I want you all to meet Dr. Morrow while you’re in town, but I’d like it to be a meet-and-greet, not an emergency surgery. I think you’ll like him—and he’s not going to ask questions about paperwork or insurance once he knows you’re with me.”

  I lifted my eyebrows as I nodded approvingly. After everything we’d been through during our interdimensional travels, all three of us were overdue for a physical, and Verity was smart enough to recognize that. “Got it: save the car crash for after we’ve met your pet doctor. Ally?”

  “Caladrius.”

  “Damn, you found a Caladrius?” They’re almost extinct. Have been for centuries. Something about the combination of being something that can be slaughtered for useful resources, and looking almost human while being obviously not human annoyed the Covenant. The fact that the almost-human thing they look like happened to align pretty well with the modern church’s depiction of angels probably didn’t help.

  Probably.

  “Two, actually,” she said. “They’re at St. Giles, and they’ll be thrilled to meet you.”

  “Great. You get all that, Sally?”

  “Nope,” said Sally. “There’s so much, I’m not really getting much of anything beyond ‘If I promise to look both ways before crossing the street, I can have pizza.’”

  “That works for me,” I said, and leaned over to give Verity a quick hug before I started back toward the door we’d arrived through.

  As before, it was unguarded, and the door wasn’t locked, easily letting us back out into the little courtyard. The dragon kids weren’t bouncing their ball anymore, having traded it in for piling themselves into a heap of golden heads, almost like a hoard, with the long, reptilian form of the young male curled proudly on top. They were giggling sleepily, obviously pleased with themselves. I paused long enough to look at them before heading on, Sally close behind me.

  “The thing to remember about dragons,” I said, once we were in the short, private hallway to the convenience store, “is they look human, but they’re not. They’re people, and they deserve respect and dignity, but they’re not human people.”

  “Meaning . . . ?”

  “Meaning those kids were probably following some deep-seated instinctual pattern. I’ve seen adult dragons form piles like that my whole life. Not normally with the big scaly one on top, but still, often enough that I figure it’s not something they choose to do so much as something they’ll just find themselves doing from time to time. And it’s perfectly normal.”

  “What . . . How does that . . . If that’s a boy, and those are girls, how does that even work?”

  “Humans have an incredibly low degree of sexual dimorphism,” I said, and opened the door to the convenience store. “It’s why we can share sweaters and shoes and knives and such. Dragons have a very high degree of sexual dimorphism. Enough so that for a long time, we thought they were two separate species.”

  The convenience store was empty save for Pris, who was now engrossed in a romance novel, barely seeming to pay attention to the shop she was supposed to be watching. She looked up when the door swung closed behind Sally and me, and got up with an exaggerated sound of irritation to cross over and lock the door.

  “We’ll hopefully be back soon,” I informed her.

  She scoffed but otherwise didn’t acknowledge that I’d said anything at all. She walked back to her stool and sat heavily, retrieving her book from where she’d placed it face-down on the counter.

  “Great customer service,” said Sally.

  I shrugged. “Cut her a break. She’s dealing with some pretty heavy bullshit from the dominant species right now, and that means we’re as likely to be enemies as allies, even after we’ve been vetted.”

  One corner of the dragon’s mouth tugged upward in what might have been a quickly smothered smile. She still didn’t look at us. I waved anyway as I left the store, Sally on my heels, and stepped into the balmy New York afternoon.

  “Pizza?”

  Sally’s request was plaintive, and made my stomach grumble.

  “We’re in New York,” I said. “No matter which way we go, there’s going to be pizza within a block or two. So pick a direction, and we’ll go that way.”

  Sally turned a slow circle before pointing in the direction that seemed to have the most people heading in it. “There,” she said.

  “Cool.” I started walking.

  Letting her pick the direction served two purposes. First, this way she was less likely to get mad at me if we had to walk more than a block for pizza. Second, living with weird-ass luck like mine has meant learning how to manage weird-ass luck like mine. If I’d picked the direction, we would probably have walked straight into a Covenant patrol, and I wasn’t in the mood to deal with that just now. We’d have to face them eventually, but we could do it on the other side of pepperoni.