Hatcher shuddered as if he’d just felt a cold breeze, then took two steps backward, fear rushing his movements, his eyes narrowing.
Yeah, she was not what she looked like.
He stopped himself from outright turning and running. Whatever that token meant to him, it was enough that he would face down a deity.
He tipped his chin up at an angle, but kept his gaze firmly locked on Abbi.
Then he held his hand out toward Variance.
Variance drew a strand of hair out of his pocket. There was enough moonlight, the strand glittered silver. He gave it to the Hunter.
The Hunter dropped the hair into his mouth.
Between one breath and the next, the hunter was standing there.
Then he wasn’t the hunter.
He was a little girl with Variance’s eyes: Rhianna.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Variance made a low sound and swallowed back a sob. Then silence filled the whole of the vast space as if the world had forgotten how to make noise.
“You’re a ghoul?” I managed, my voice low, this child, hunter, monster, all I could see.
The girl nodded.
“Your shape,” Lula said. “Does the token contain your original shape?”
Her guess surprised the ghoul. “Yes.” Even his voice sounded like a little girl.
I might be angry, I might be a bastard, but I could tell that creature in front of me was telling the truth.
“If Dominick keeps the token, what happens to you?” she asked.
The monster child tipped her head down, as if even considering that possibility was unthinkable. But when she looked up, her mouth was twisted into a bitter anger no child would ever show.
“Parts of my form will disintegrate,” the child said. “It will be agony. And it will lead to my madness and then my death.”
I wanted all of that for Hatcher, for the creature who had tried to kill Lula.
But I wanted to save Rhianna even more than I wanted revenge. I wanted Variance to have some chance of returning to a human life so he could be her father.
“How do we know you aren’t working for Dominick?” I asked. “Or for Atë?”
He shrugged. “You can’t know, other than taking my word. But if you get my token, I will help you retrieve the girl.”
“We don’t have time,” Variance said, his tone flattened as if it took every ounce of effort he had to speak. “Do you know where he’s keeping her?”
“I do.”
“Take us to her.”
“If they promise to retrieve my token.”
“For fuck’s sake,” I said. “Yes. Fine. Where is it? What does it look like? And why the hell does Dominick have it in the first place?”
“It looks like a coin,” the ghoul said. “Dark metal, engraved. It was in Dominick’s chambers. In a box.”
