“You fill me with foreboding—Emma? What’s wrong?”
“I want you to take me hunting.”
“Hunting?” Saskia looked her over, as though for weak spots. “All right. When?”
“Now,” Emma said. “It has to be now.”
A slow smile spread over Saskia’s face. She licked the grease from her fingers and dropped the half-eaten fowl.
“By all means, new girl. Let’s see what you’ve got.”
They fled the ball for the icy air of the streets above. Saskia taught Emma to pull the shadows around herself like a cloak, until she barely registered as a presence to the mortal eye. They went to an alley outside a nightclub. Though it was close to Christmas, and most students fled home for the holidays, the queue was packed. The wild-eyed revelers, eking out the last celebration before being forced back to sober families; the graduate students, set free at last from labs and frowning supervisors; the young college gardeners and cooks and admissions staff. They were loud and flushed. Ties loose, eyeliner smudged. So unwary. Emma almost couldn’t remember what that felt like.
And there was something else, too, something all the mortals had and she did not. She felt a huge, beating warmth inside them. And she finally understood what the fox maidens meant, when they talked about mortal vitality. It was a fire, inside those bodies. And she hadn’t known, until that moment, that she was so cold. Being near them hurt. It was like frostbite in front of a fire. Like looking in on a bright, cozy house on a winter’s night, when you’re all alone and cold outside.
So that was what it felt like. That thing she didn’t have anymore. Mortality.
That was what a fox maiden hunted. And after all her worries, the hunting proved easy. Saskia showed her. Emma just had to pass her hand over the nearest body. And as her fingers brushed a boy’s arm—a shadow’s brush, too light for him to notice—she felt a spark of that bright blazing mortal energy peel away, up intoher arm. And oh, the beauty of it. Her blood sang. She was warm, finally warm. The silver collar was humming around her neck.
Then she tried to pull more of the mortal’s warmth to her. It wouldn’t come. She could still feel the energy in him, the boy she’d chosen. She wanted more. But the collar squeezed her neck, like a warning. She’d taken all she was allowed from him.
Saskia guided her hand to the next mortal, and the next. They moved through the crowd, taking a drop of mortality from all they touched. Emma felt the blood pool in her cheeks and pound through her chest. Thought given way to pure instinct. So this was the hunt.
It was a daze that stayed with her all the way back to the House of Foxes. And when Saskia called back to Emma to turn, and her body twisted into a flurry of red fur and white teeth, Emma followed her into fox form without question. The world shifted.
and oh her senses are alive now
for there is a new music in her
the song of claw
to pierce the air
of jaw
to grind and crush
for this is the hunt
and she is fox
It lasted only a few breaths. Then Emma’s thoughts caught up and spat her back into girl shape. She fumbled on hands and knees, pavement cold beneath her skirts, and retched into the neareststorm drain. But she had done it. For those few moments, she had been a fox.
Saskia ran back, swirling out of fox form with obnoxious ease.
“All right there, new girl?”
Of course she was snickering at Emma. But she also looped an arm under Emma’s shoulders and eased her upright. Saskia had a bigger heart than she wanted to admit, Emma suspected.
“Fox form and star wine do not a match make, in your case. Let’s get you home.”
Emma let Saskia tow her back to the House of Foxes and slide her gently into bed. The room that had once belonged to Sara was now all her own. She had softened the brutality of the claw-marked walls with a few bunches of flowers, stolen from college gardens. Her meager possessions were piled on the desk. And Nancy had given her a cozy patchwork quilt, which she cuddled to her in the dark as Saskia left. The feel of tail and paws filled her mind. She had been a fox. Truly, nose to tail. A whole other being. She was dazed with the wonder of it. But as Emma’s stomach spent the next few hours ejecting every last drop of star wine into a basin Saskia had left by the bed, she had time for the haze of the evening to drift away.
Beneath lay horror at herself. She had known that the Night City was tempting. But she had been so swept away in one night, she had forgotten her mission. Forgotten her mother, and Nat, and the thousand reasons calling her back to the mortal world. Blind to the evil of the Turnbulls, numb to her true rage and the call of her vengeance. Emma spat grimly into the basin and waited. There seemed to be no more wine to bring up. She pulled herself ontothe bed and flopped over the covers, fully dressed. It did not seem worth taking off her ball gown. She was too sleepy.
But as her eyes drifted shut, a smile wreathed her face. She would not trade the magic in her limbs or the warmth of her sisters for anything. And it had not been such a loss for her mission either. Because, by succumbing to the Night City, she had learned her own power. And that power made her fast enough and cunning enough to face down any Turnbull. It was a weapon. She had learned that she did not need to block out the Night City entirely. To forgo star wine, perhaps. But there was so much else she could let herself explore. So much awe and darkness. In the mortal world, she could not have brought down the Turnbulls. But now she was changed. The Night City was helping her grow.
Tonight, she had become a fox. In the nights to come, what else might she do? Emma rolled onto her side and pulled a fold of the quilt over her. First, it was time to sleep.
