I compromised by letting him steer me to a spot where I could still see, but where, hopefully, I wouldn’t be the first thing snatched through the glass.
“What is that?” Twobble breathed, pressed up against the side of a display case. His ears were flat against his skull, which I’d only seen once before, during Malore’s attack.
“The bill,” Ardetia murmured. “Coming due.”
Skonk gripped his notebook so tightly that the pages crumpled. For once, he didn’t try to write anything down.
My mother stepped closer to the window, hand lifting as if to protect it. Her eyes were big, pupils blown wide, breathshallow. I saw recognition dawn in her face before she spoke, a kind of old, deep horror that had nothing to do with me and everything to do with the girl she’d been before leaving Stonewick.
“No,” she whispered. “No, no, no.”
“Mom—?” I began.
She hissed.
Not like a human. Like a frightened animal defensively baring its teeth.
The sound cut through the room. Everyone looked at her.
“She shouldn’t be able to be here,” My mom said, the words tumbling now, edges sharp. “Not this easily. Not like this. The Wards—”
“She’s riding the crack,” Nova said grimly. “The one opened by the attempted circle. The Hollow flexed. The Hunger Path shuddered. It left a seam. She found it.”
Stella’s lip curled, exposing more of those very sharp, very capable fangs.
“Of course she did,” she muttered. “Parasites always find the new blood.”
My butterfly mark burned.
Not the bright, almost-warm burn of the Wards or the Academy.
Cold.
Shadows outside coalesced.
They pulled inward, like smoke being drawn into a funnel. The rolling dark that had filled the square shivered and thentightened, threads of it twisting together, braiding into a taller, denser shape.
The temperature in the shop plummeted. Breath puffed like icy clouds in front of mouths. The kettle on the stove rattled like its metal bones ached.
“She?” I said, though I already knew. Some instinct in my bones knew.
Mom’s fingers dug into the fabric of her skirt.
“She’s here,” she whispered. “The high priestess.”
“The high priestess of Shadowick,” Ardetia echoed softly. “In Stonewick. In person.”
“Stonewick isn’t a stage for her theatre,” Stella snapped. “She doesn’t get to waltz in here like she owns the place.”
The Silver Wolf snarled, hackles bristling, claws scraping against Stella’s polished floor. My dad’s eyes went a shade more amber, the canine in him pressing harder.
My heart crawled up into my throat.
The high priestess.
My other grandmother.
The woman I’d seen only in fragmentary visions and nightmares and the uneasy flash of Gideon’s almost-respectful, almost-afraid descriptions.
