We walked, and New York City closed around us like a fist, and that was exactly right. This was our world, where we should have been all along; this was where we could fit in. It might take us time, but eventually, it was going to be like we had never left, and that was going to be wonderful.

  Thomas made a small, pleased sound. I stopped walking, snapped out of my brief reverie, and blinked at him. He smiled at me again. Was I ever going to get tired of seeing him outside in the sun, smiling at me? No. No, I was not. After the amount of time I’d spent trying to make this moment even remotely possible, I couldn’t think of anything I wanted more.

  Maybe to have it happen without a bunch of missing juvenile dragons and the Covenant of St. George in the mix, but there’s wishful thinking and then there’s being a little bit delusional, and I’d rather trend toward the former than the latter.

  “You found me a bookstore,” he said.

  I blinked again, turning to see what he was looking at. We were standing outside a store, its wide glass windows crammed with books and its front overhung by a red awning. Carts packed full of discounted books had been pushed out in front, tempting customers.

  “Good job, you found the Strand,” said Ryan, sounding only a little bemused. “I don’t think we’re here to shop, though. We’re supposed to be finding an alley.”

  “Do they have a public bathroom?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said, sounding even more bemused.

  “Great.” I turned to Istas. “Can I have the ribbons from your pigtails?”

  “Why?”

  “I want to use them to rig a leash to put on him,” I nodded toward Ryan. “If we go into the bathroom together and wait ten minutes, I can tie the ribbon around his neck and pretend that I’m one of those assholes who takes her dog everywhere she goes. I’m blonde. If I look confused, people tend to believe it.”

  “I want to be offended by the suggestion that we leash me, but it’s not a bad one,” said Ryan, slowly. “No security cameras in the bathrooms, either.”

  “And since we won’t be shoplifting, if they ask to search my bag, they’ll just find your clothes. Which is a little odd, but I don’t think it’s out of the ordinary for New York.” It was a decent plan, if not a great one, and I tried to sound more confident about it than I felt.

  Dominic sighed. “You know, standing out here and talking about going into the bookstore is not actually as effective as going into the bookstore. Shall we?”

  “It’s the beginning of a plan, if not the end of one, and we may as well go with it,” said Thomas.

  Dominic nodded, and as a group, we moved inside.

  Seventeen

  “I’ve always been lucky, since the start. There’s people who’d say being found in a cardboard box isn’t lucky, but I say that if I weren’t lucky, no one would have found me.”

  —Frances Brown

  The Strand Bookstore, trying hard to come up with a better plan, not really succeeding

  THE DOOR OPENED ON a large room filled with shelves and tables, all groaning under the weight of more books than I’d seen outside of a library. Thomas nearly stumbled, his eyes gone wide behind his glasses, and I wondered, with a brief jolt of guilt, how long it had been since he’d held a book, much less seen such a massive assortment of them. There hadn’t been time for him to get reacquainted with his library in Buckley before we’d been on our way out the door. For a man who loved books as much as he did, the last fifty years must have been hell.

  Well. They’d been hell for both of us. I started scanning the aisles I could see, looking for a sign that might lead me to a public bathroom.

  The aisles were a twisting maze of shelves and tables, giving me no clear sight lines on anything. I looked to my companions.

  “Any of you been here before?”

  “I have,” said Istas, surprising me. “With Ryan.” My surprise must have shown on my face, because her expression turned sour. “I can read. I like books on the history of fashion. And magazines.”

  “Big, glossy magazines full of pictures of shoes that make my feet hurt just thinking about them,” said Ryan.

  “Great. Then one of you can lead me to the bathroom.” I leaned up to kiss Thomas on the cheek. “Don’t get into any trouble before we get back.”

  “Does looking longingly at every book in this entire store count as getting into trouble?”

  “Only if you get busted for shoplifting.”

  “As if.” Sally rolled her eyes.

  “True. You’d never get caught.” I glanced to Dominic, who was watching the store entrance and what he could see of the street outside the window with concern. “Keep an eye on them?”

  “Of course,” he agreed.

  I still didn’t like letting Thomas out of my sight when I didn’t have to. I wasn’t sure when I’d be comfortable with that. Maybe never, and wouldn’t that be fun? Jane already tried to psychoanalyze me every time I was in the same dimension long enough to come over for family dinner. She said that the fact that I’d gone running off into the unknown the second my husband disappeared proved I was seriously codependent, with possible attachment issues. I had tried suggesting she tell me something I didn’t know, and all that did was kick off another massive family fight. Not my favorite way to spend Thanksgiving, no matter what my history may try to say.

  So yeah, stepping away from him for a few minutes was probably a good idea, if only to remind me that I was allowed to step away from him, he’d still be here when I came back, this wasn’t going to be the start of another fifty-year quest. Although, honestly, “I lost him in a bookstore” would be less traumatic for the both of us than what had actually happened.

  Istas unwound the ribbons from her pigtails as she led us to the stairs, walking remarkably quickly on her ridiculous heels. “I know I can seem frivolous,” she said, handing me the first of the ribbons. “It is a carefully cultivated impression.”

  “I can see where it would be helpful camouflage,” I said. I’d practiced something similar, during the days in Buckley between my grandfather’s death and my marriage, when I’d stopped caring about what any of the human residents of the town thought of me. I had Thomas and I had the ghosts and I had the Galway, and those had been all I needed. Maybe that would have changed as the kids got older, but I didn’t think so. I knew myself pretty well. I’d still had a few illusions about myself in those days, and looking at the woman I was and the woman I’d been, I felt I could comfortably say that she would have been just fine if she’d never started pretending again.

  But for those years, when I’d been doing my best to seem like a normal part of the community, I’d worn my hair in curls and my sleeves long, to cover the scars on my arms. I’d been careful to be seen in the right places, doing the right things—volunteering with the Friends of the Library after my shift was over, helping the ladies at the church take meals to the folks who lived at the outskirts of town. Good-girl things. It was easy enough to look at Istas, an apex predator dressed in ribbons and lace, and see her wearing the same mask.

  “People are scared of you, huh?” I took the ribbon, wrapping it loosely around my wrist as she began unwinding the other.

  Istas stepped onto the stairs. “People who have the sense to recognize me for what I am aren’t scared of me,” she said. “They’re terrified, as well they should be. I am nature’s perfect killing machine.”

  “Here I thought that was cats,” said Ryan, in a tone that indicated a frequent joke, something with the edges of it worn smooth between them.

  Istas looked at him with polite blankness. “It is also cats. More than one thing can be perfect, it’s not a competition.”

  People were passing us on the stairs. None stopped to give us a second look. Our conversation, strange as it was, was really nothing all that unusual for New York City. Istas finished untying the second ribbon and handed it to me.

  “I was born in the high tundra, where the wind and the snow own all that they touch, and any brief break in their attention is a trap designed to lure in the unwary,” she said. “My kind eat our own, for nothing else is vast enough to fill our bellies or to satiate our hunger. And we eat others as well, when they come too close to us, or disturb us in our dens. We leave no scent when we pass, for we were made to hunt and haunt and never be seen unless we wish it. Any who know me for what I am should have the sense to quail in fear, and let me pass them by.”

  “That’s my girl,” said Ryan.

  Istas looked at him fondly. We had reached the first landing, facing a second story as filled with books as the one below. People moved between them, browsing, and paid us no mind. Istas moved forward, and I followed.

  “I am strange among my kind in that I can have this conversation without desiring to consume you for knowing too much of my truth, which is personal only to me, and not for anyone else to have,” she said. “And because I wish to move in the warm world, to thaw and see things as they have the potential to be, I make myself over to seem as harmless as I can be. Plus, I enjoy it.” She smiled toothily. “It is a brave and beautiful thing, to act for enjoyment alone in this world of complications and conflicts. Here is the bathroom.”

  She stopped, indicating a door. I stopped in turn, blinking at her, second ribbon still tangled through my fingers.

  “That was . . . a lot. Thank you, Istas, for sharing something personal, and for answering my questions.” Always be polite to the shapeshifting super predator. It’s a simple rule of life, but a good one all the same.

  Istas nodded, apparently pleased with my politeness.

  “Abscond with my husband now, and return his clothing to me,” she said, tone utterly mild. She turned to the nearest shelf of books, apparently fascinated with whatever subject they represented. I turned to Ryan, blinking.

  He smiled a little as he shrugged. “She’s always like this,” he said.

  “Great.” I grabbed his wrist, dragging him with me into the women’s bathroom. “Let’s get moving.”

  * * *

  The bathroom had three stalls, and the one farthest from the door was occupied when we arrived. I shoved Ryan into the first one with a quietly muttered “Strip” before taking up a position outside the stall door, trying to look nonchalant. Ryan said something I didn’t quite catch about pushy blondes. I chose not to argue.

  The sound of clothes being removed was mostly drowned out by the sound of the toilet in the last stall flushing, and a woman emerged.

  She was a little taller than I was, with chestnut-brown hair pulled into a tight ponytail. If not for the familiar angle of her cheekbones, I might not have noticed her. See, the Covenant treats people like lines of livestock, arranging marriages to avoid genetic bottlenecking while also circling useful traits that they want those people to pass along to their children someday. It shouldn’t work. That it does makes me wonder if they don’t have a little something extra on their side, something that would explain why their carefully tended breeding lines still throw sorcerers like my husband every so often. But Covenant bloodlines produce people with similar talents, similar temperaments . . . similar appearances.

  My mother looked a lot like me: petite, blonde, and very, very sweet, right until she decided it was time to stop with the sweetness. My grandmother was similar. I’ve always wondered if Mom and Dad didn’t wind up together in part because of that old cliché where the sheltered boys are looking to marry their mothers. It would explain a few things, that’s for sure.

  What I have, that neither one of them had, that all five of my biological grandchildren have, are my grandfather’s cheekbones. Apparently, that part of the Healy bone structure was bred in so completely that it kicks the crap out of all competing genes and asserts itself all over again. (Doesn’t hurt that I went and married Thomas Price, a man with cheekbones that could be used to cut glass. Once, when Dad had been drinking, he said Thomas was so pointy that we already knew what he’d look like as a skeleton. He wasn’t entirely right, but he wasn’t entirely wrong, either.)

  It’s the one thing I’ve got in common with every other Healy I’ve ever seen a picture of. My father, my grandfather, my kids, even the aunt and uncle I never met, whose pictures I didn’t find until after my grandparents were both dead, we’ve all had those cheekbones.

  This woman had them, too.

  She moved toward the sink, not seeming to pay me any attention, but I could tell by the reflection of her eyes in the mirror that she was watching me closely for any motion. I stayed where I was, doing a slightly better job than she was of looking nonchalant. She washed her hands, watching me the entire time, scenting the air with harsh soap.

  I knocked my elbow against the stall door behind me. “Take your time in there, babe, the sink’s busy,” I said.

  Ryan made a questioning sound.

  “I know we have theater tickets, but we have plenty of time, and anyway, I hate to get there early. You know that.” I tried to sound bored, like getting to the theater with more than five minutes to curtain was the worst inconvenience I could possibly imagine.

  The woman was focusing a little more on her hands now, washing them meticulously. Finally, she straightened, ripped a sheet of paper towels off of the dispenser, and left the bathroom. I exhaled, tilting my head back until it was resting against the stall door.

  “That was close.”

  “What was close?”

  “Pretty sure I just saw one of my cousins. Pretty sure she got a good look at me, too. And if she’s as smart as I suspect she’d have to be in order to get sent to New York with a Covenant team, she’s going to put two and two together and figure out that I’m something she ought to worry about any minute now.”

  “Oh, that’s just Margaret.” Ryan cracked open the stall door long enough to shove a bundle of clothing at me. I took it, tucking it up under my arm, and he closed the door again. “If she’s in the bookstore, that means we’re in the right place. Good job.”

  “You’re being awfully casual about ‘We were just in a small bathroom with one exit and a known Covenant operative,” I said, before taking another look around the room. “Scratch that. I think that’s technically a window, even if Verity would have trouble squirming out of it, and that’s an air vent. I could have gone through there if I’d had to, but I couldn’t have taken you with me.”

  “Out of all the Covenant people in this city, Margaret’s probably the best one for you to run into,” said Ryan, and cracked the door open again, passing me his shoes. “She was with Dominic’s original team. She thinks he’s dead, and after the whammy Sarah put on her brain the first time she was here, she doesn’t seem to be able to see him anymore. I’ve seen her looking straight at him without realizing he was even there. Since she’s never met Istas or me, we’re in the clear, and you’re obviously new to her.”

  I decided not to point out the family resemblance. That plus “blonde” was likely to cause some issues, especially after Verity’s little stunt on the dance show. There was no way she wasn’t going to figure out that I was family, if she hadn’t already. For all I knew, she was out there gathering the rest of her team.

  One Covenant operative, I could take. A team of four or five, not as easily. I still might win, but there was a decent chance I’d get seriously hurt in the process, and I had to heal the ordinary way if that happened. Healing takes time. I’d been seriously injured a few times in my teens, and I hadn’t enjoyed the recovery process. Signing up to do it again when I was trying to help Thomas and Sally get reacclimated and trying to acclimate myself just felt like a recipe for disaster.

  So no soloing the field team, got it. I gave the vent another look. “Ryan? You still a biped?”

  A strange chirping sound was his only answer. I opened the stall door, looking down at a perfectly ordinary tanuki, maybe a little larger than the average, but still small enough for me to lift. Looking at him, a new plan clicked together in my head, beautifully simple and perfectly straightforward, and a truly terrible idea. Which meant, of course, that it was the only logical way to go.

  “Change of plans,” I said. “We’re going into the vents.”

  Ryan made a slightly more quizzical chirping sound.

  “Margaret may be whammied not to recognize Dominic, but there’s nothing stopping her from recognizing me, especially with as much as I look like my grandparents,” I said. “She’s going to realize I shouldn’t have been here, and come looking. If we go into the vents, we can try and find the rest of her team. You’re small enough like this that you shouldn’t have any problem.” The first person to figure out the scientific method by which therianthropes change their size so dramatically is going to win some sort of an award. Of course, tanuki can also turn themselves into stone at will, so it may take a while. Their biology makes no sense. “I’m a little bigger, but I’m bendy.” A “little” bigger was a mild way of saying that I was larger than a small carnivore that looked like it weighed forty pounds, tops, but Ryan seemed to accept this, as he nodded and combed the whiskers on one side of his muzzle with a paw.

  The vent was in the wall above the sink. I put my hands on my hips for a moment, looking up at it, then grasped the edges of the sink and hoisted myself up, balancing on the edges of the basin. It groaned but didn’t snap off the wall; as long as I didn’t do anything too enthusiastic, it would hold my weight, even if only briefly.

  Briefly was all I intended to need.

  Like most older vents, it was covered by a plain grate, screwed into the wall with standard dome-head screws. I pulled a multitool out of my pocket and got to work undoing them, tucking the first three into the front of my bra for safekeeping and leaving the fourth in place to keep the grate attached to the wall.

  Problem: the grate had about an inch of additional metal on the inside, presumably to keep people from doing exactly what I was doing. I let go of the edges and unscrewed the fourth screw before easing the grate away from the wall, bending to set it in the gap between faucet and mirror. It barely fit.