Page 10

This is for your protection, my mother would say afterward, her hand on my back as I drank the honeyed tea she always had waiting. I won’t have you dying like a victim.

I shove the thought aside. I’m prey, but I am not a victim. And I will get out of this.

Still, I’m not sure how. I run my hand over the bed. The mattress is bare, but there’s a blanket. Whether either is stained or not, I can’t tell in the dark.

I check the bedside table next, running my fingers over it until I find the knob of a drawer. I yank it open, and something rattles inside, which makes my heart soar with hope. I grope around, holding my breath, and touch cold metal.

Sharp metal.

A knife. I yank it out and crawl back over to the window with its thin, silvery light, just enough for me to see that this is not any knife.

It’s my knife.

I sink down on the edge of the mattress, my breath tight in my throat, staring down at the blade. If I tilt it just right, I can see my name.

He didn’t tie me up. He left my knife, although he hid it in the drawer, like he wanted to see if I would investigate.

I look up at the locked door and squeeze my palm around the handle. Suddenly, I’m not so convinced my jailer is human. Hunters kill, yes. But some of them like to play games.

My heart pounds as I think back to his initial attack. I assumed he was human because he didn’t completely overpower me the second he stepped out of the woods. But that’s all I have to go on. My mother might be a Hunter, but my father wasn’t, and I, unfortunately, take after him. I don’t have the senses that can tell human from not, the way Mom and Callie can. A single whiff on the wind, and they know immediately who they’re dealing with.

Still, there are signs, if you know what to look for. My kidnapper was fast, yes, but I didn’t see any of the uncanny speed that Callie used to taunt me with when we were younger—standing in my doorway one second, twisting my arm around my back the next. He was strong, but not unnaturally so, at least as far as I could tell. With his face covered, I couldn’t see his eyes. Sometimes you can tell, looking at the eyes.

I breathe out. If he’s human, I’ll be fine. I have my knife, and I practiced this exact scenario plenty of times as a teenager.

If he’s not human, if he’s a Hunter—well, that’ll be a problem. I’ve never encountered a Hunter in the wild before. Only through my mom, when I was younger. And of course through Abi and Chloe, fools that they are. Happy fools, though.

I try to steady my breathing, counting to four in my head as I inhale, counting to six as I exhale. It helps, a little. But the waiting is the worst of it. Every second is stretched out with tension, like a too-tight rubber band, but it never breaks. The door stays closed. My palm sweats against the handle of the knife.

I think of Adrian, of how I told him I’d hitchhike to Avens. Did my kidnapper overhear me? What if he went there, looking for him?

Suddenly, a new fear surges in my chest. What if my attacker is human, but was hired by someone? By Nicholas Wolrath, specifically? The only reason Adrian and I could even consider crashing his Halloween party is that we have a contact who works at Wolrath’s house, Sarah something-or-other. Adrian knows her. She got us a pair of invitations. But what if she got caught? Or betrayed us? What if my kidnapper was sent to intercept me⁠—

A key scrapes in the door’s lock. My training kicks in immediately, and I leap to my feet, landing in a fighting stance, knife held low. It doesn’t matter who my kidnapper is, in the end. I’ll have one good chance to launch myself at him. One good chance to sink this knife into his heart.

Assuming he’s human, not a Hunter. If he’s a Hunter, I’m fucked.

The lock rattles. Then there’s the clinking sound of a chain pulling through metal loops, and the creak of the door’s hinges, and a soft triangle of pale light spills in across the wooden floor.

I bolt like the rabbit I know I am, springing up on my legs and lifting the knife so it’ll have my full strength behind it. I barely see the silhouette of my captor in the doorframe before I’m on him.

He catches me by the wrist and whips me around. My feet lift off the ground for one dizzying moment. For one dizzying moment, I’m flying.

Then my spine slams into the far wall with enough force that the whole structure rattles in its foundations. Electrifying pain slams through me, and as I land hard on my ass, I have two thoughts:

One is that I still have my knife.

The other is that I was just thrown at least ten feet through the air. No human could do that.

Looks like I’m fucked after all.

5

PENELOPE

The Hunter steps into the cabin with slow, deliberate steps and swings the door shut behind him. Through the daze of being thrown against the wall, that’s what I’m most aware of: the thumping of his footsteps, the heavy rattle of the door locking back into place.

And light. There’s more light now. It takes me a minute, my thoughts tattered, to realize that he’s holding a hurricane lantern, the small flame flickering like a tongue to clear the darkness away.