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“Your mother is,” he continues. “Alice Noble.”

“So you do know her?” Hope flares in my chest, and I manage to look over my shoulder, although all I get is a glimpse of a big arm circling around me to hold me in place. “She’s old. She’s powerful. She’ll⁠—”

“I don’t know that name,” he says. “But I’m also old. And powerful.”

Fear shivers through me. I look at the door again. It’s maybe four feet away. I shouldn’t have let myself get caught up in fighting him, should have made a break for it when I had a chance.

But there’s truth to what he said. I was enjoying it. I enjoyed the burn in my muscles, the power in my attacks, the glint of the knife’s metal in the dim light of the hurricane lantern. You cut me twice, he said. How many humans could say that about a Hunter?

“How old?” I ask. “She’s nearly a hundred.”

My attacker chuckles softly, a sound that chills me to my bone. Is he older than that?

“You can tell me,” I say, not even managing to keep the tremor out of my words. “I obviously know what you are.”

“And what is that?”

God, I hate the way his voice works itself under my skin. Low and rough and dangerous.

“A Hunter.”

He makes a noise that sounds like static through his gas mask. “Yes,” he says. “Now answer my question. Why are you human?”

I feel limp. Defeated. “If you’re so old and powerful, then you should fucking know how it works.”

“Your father.” He answers almost before I finish talking. “Your father is human.”

I don’t answer. He’s right, of course.

“And yet your mother kept you?”

An old hurt, the kind of hurt I thought I’d forgotten, blooms in my chest. I wrench against him, expecting him to stop me. He doesn’t, and the force of my escape sends me sprawling across the floor. I drop the knife, too, and it spins out toward the door. I chase after it, panic and fear spurring me on.

But he steps up to me again. Grabs me at the hips and jerks me back. I groan, watching the gap widen between me and my knife. Between me and the door.

“Answer the question,” he rasps into my ear.

“Just fucking get it over with,” I snarl back. “Just fucking kill me. My mother will be here within the week, and you can ask her yourself why she didn’t pull a very late-term abortion.”

He laughs, and it’s a cold, cruel Hunter’s laugh. Terror lances down my spine.

“You don’t want me to kill you,” he says.

He’s right about that, although I’m certain it’s going to happen anyway.

“You wanted to fight me, though,” he continues. “Why?”

“What do you want?” I twist around, and he lets me. I have no doubt that if I try to run, he’ll stop me, but he lets me do this. He lets me look at him. “Why haven’t you just killed me yet?”

He stares at me through his mask. I can’t see any trace of him, though. The big bug eyes only show my distorted reflection.

“Mary,” he says in that unnervingly soft voice again. I manage, only barely, not to ask who the fuck Mary is.

He lifts his hand, and I flinch away, but he doesn’t attack me. Only pushes his fingers through my hair. I stand very still, trying not to breathe. My hair whispers as it falls against my cheek.

Then he jerks his hand away with a hiss, like he’s been burned. I breathe out, waiting for the inevitable.

It doesn’t come, though. Instead, he says,