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My hand curled into a fist. At the tips of my fingers, a faint, shadowy discoloration lingered, like ink bleeding under the skin.

I shoved my hand deep into my jacket pocket, heart hammering.

“Does the family know he’s gone?” I asked, keeping my voice low.

Everyone stared at me for a long moment. Wade’s gaze flipped to the monitors which showed a steady heartbeat, then back to me. But I shook my head.

Does he resemble the bodies in the morgue? Victor’s question brushed through my mind.

“It’s not like Cassidy,” I paused, trying to find the right words. Whatever I was seeing now wasn’t something I was used to. Maybe Jude would have a better explanation since he’d been practicing with Nat for a few weeks. But McKaley seemed… vacated? Like whatever had been tied to the shell of his body, had detached and floated away. “Not drained, more like abandoned.”

The team’s attention snapped to me. A low, throbbing headache took root behind my eyes, a tax for power I didn’t yet understand. And it took a lot of work to finally shove the Bastion-sight back down. Sparkles formed around the edge of my vision, an aura headache.

Nothing remained to lead us anywhere in this room. Had he been tied to Cadence’s stain? Jumped from him to her? Or both of them touched by the same thing? Abandoned because I yanked it out of her?

I walked away, the husk of Gerald McKaley burning in my mind. The team fell in step behind me, a silent procession back through the fluorescent maze.

“When was the girl exposed?” I asked Remi as we hit the elevator.

He shook his head, but Wade’s phone chimed softly. He scrolled, eyes narrowing. “She was in the ER a week ago for an allergic reaction.” A pause. Thumb hovering. “Same day McKaley coded. Same ER. Same shift overlap.”

“Did it move from him to her?” Ezra asked. “He died and it moved to her?”

Remi shrugged. “I never saw them together. And all the meds they pumped into me made it hard to focus on anything. Time went sideways for a while.” He left it there, hanging in the cold silence.

The pieces clicked together. A shadow that traveled. Maybe the changeling didn’t need a summoning. It waited for openings. Weakness. Desperation. Did it wait for the soul to vacate before jumping in? Or had it been forced out when the Reaper came to collect?

Maybe changelings feared Reapers.

I cursed silently, frustration a tight knot in my chest. For all the intel we’d gathered on Erlik and his cult, we knew next to nothing about changelings.

The only thing I was sure of was find one, and it would lead us to the others. I was certain it was all connected.

7

ANGEL

The team had compiled a comprehensive list of people to question, but we had to be careful. Our pursuit had to fit within what the SED considered legitimate, like Veil tears, Erlik’s cult, and the usual supernatural threats from our long backlist of cases. The part about changelings was a footnote. An escaped monster. Something the SED claimed not to fully understand.

Convenient, that.

After the hospital, after McKaley, I had a thousand more questions, and without Jude at my side, my thoughts turned to the girl, Cadence, and before her, Jonah.

“The kid,” I said as we settled into Ezra’s SUV. “Jonah Thayerson. Where is he?”

“He’s in a special needs group home,” Wade said. “He gets a lot of CPS visits. Extended family ended up giving him up after some violent outbursts.”

“Can we fast track a drop-in?” I’d call in favors if I had to. But I felt like some part of this whole mess began and ended here.

Ezra sighed, but Wade was already dialing Tiana. If anyone could talk their way in, it was her.

The drive was quiet. I watched the city blur past the window, thinking about a kid who’d been non-verbal until a changeling wore his skin. Was it the same changeling Jude had seen as a child? How many were there? A dozen? Hundreds?

Wade insisted we eat lunch first. Since we had to wait for approval, I picked at what he put in front of me. It tasted like nothing, but I texted Ivan, ensuring he was safe, then Jude’s grandpa, and even Nikki. Checking on his people helped. Not having him at my side while the icy chill continued to creep up my arm made the day drag.

The group home was a converted Victorian, painted pale blue, with a swing set in the backyard and curtains that matched.

A social worker met us at the door, middle-aged, exhausted, the kind of tired that came from too many cases and not enough answers. She frowned at our badges but led us inside.