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The phone slips out of my hands and lands in the cold dirt. I can barely breathe. For the first time in decades, I think of Albert Wolrath’s face when I broke into that big mansion beside the sanatorium, pale and wide-eyed in the dark, right before that hulking personal guard of his shot me through the left eye with a revolver. My biggest fucking failure. It took almost a decade for me to revive, and by the time I dug myself out of the dirt, Albert Wolrath was dead, too. Taken by a heart attack.

I suck in sharp, shuddering breaths as I look up to the sky, caged in by empty tree branches. I know Nicholas Wolrath isn’t the same person. But the pleasure of Albert Wolrath’s death was denied to me, and snuffing out his ancestor feels like it will bring me something like peace. I felt it as soon as Penelope said his name, a sudden, painful jarring in my heart as all those memories come flooding through me: the pale October morning when she died, her pale skin and flushed cheeks and damp hair. She was so small and frail in my arms as I carried her down to a babbling creek a night’s ride from the sanatorium, her breaths shallow in the crook of my elbow.

He made it worse, she whispered to me when I visited her the day before, bloodstains still on her pillow. Albert Wolrath himself reassured me that the surgery was the cure she needed. Instead, all it did was collapse her lungs until she could barely breathe.

I’d stolen away with her that night, so certain I could save her. After all, the gods gave me the power to kill. Why couldn’t they give me the power to resurrect, too?

It didn’t work, of course. And he went unpunished, protected by his wealth and that mean, squint-eyed bodyguard and my rage, if I’m being honest, because my rage made me stupid. And it kept me from my revenge.

Until now.

By the time I get back to the house, Penelope has fallen asleep on my bed, her hand curled around her knife. I leave her there until morning to brood over my next steps. My kind don’t need much sleep.

The idea takes form fairly quickly. Penelope wants to get to Clifwell. I need to be in Clifwell.

So I’ll drive her.

It’s a surprisingly simple solution, and I take the night to examine it from its various angles as I prepare the Gas and Go for my absence. I don’t see a problem. I won’t tell her what I’m doing, of course. She might know Hunter’s ways, but she wouldn’t understand this. She might even try to stop me. We’re not going to murder anyone, she said about her and this Adrian.

Well, I am. Brutally.

She wakes up early, before sunrise, stumbling out from behind the curtain with bleary eyes and fresh clothes. “You brought my suitcase,” she says, braiding her way toward the kitchen. “Do I smell coffee? Please tell me there’s coffee.”

“There is.” I’m drinking a cup myself, the heat warming my hands. “I have your phone, too.” I nod to where it’s sitting on the TV tray, but she’s too busy pouring her coffee to notice.

“You didn’t kill me last night.” She turns toward me with a slightly uneasy smile, her hair rumpled from sleep.

“I’m not going to kill you,” I say. Then, because I don’t want to delay this any more than I already have: “I’m going to drive you to Clifwell.”

We stare at each other from across the big room that is my house. Her emotions are about what I’d expect. Confusion. Surprise. Trepidation.

“Drive me?” Penelope finally spits out. “Is this a joke?”

“Not a joke.”

“Okay, but—why?”

I take a sip of my coffee. I hadn’t considered she’d ask that. I assumed she’d just be happy to be rid of me.

Still, the answer comes easily enough. “I have a—a Hunter’s obligation, I suppose. To help you.”

“No, you don’t,” Penelope says sharply. “I’m not a Hunter.”

“You’re close enough,” I say. “As far as I’m concerned.”

That’s not a lie, at least. Anyone who knows about the First Death and speaks the old tongue, human or not, deserves my respect.

Penelope wanders over to the couch and perches on the opposite end from me, still clutching her coffee mug. She’s definitely wary.

“I thought I would have to talk you into towing my car over to a tire shop.” She grins. “I guess if you give me a ride, you’ll be keeping my car, huh?”

I had considered she might be suspicious about me giving her a ride, and that, at least, I’m prepared for. “The closest tire shop is in Avens,” I say. “But you said you needed to be in Clifwell by Halloween.”

Penelope watches me carefully. Her suspicion is more than evident. “I’ve still got—what? Five days?”

I sit very still, afraid that if I move too much, she’ll guess I have ulterior motives. She’s not a Hunter, I keep telling myself. She can’t sense the blood pounding in my veins at the thought of finally getting my revenge.

“That tire shop is always backed up,” I tell her. “It’ll take at least three days for them to get your car fixed up, probably longer, and that’s assuming they have the tires you need in stock. You’d be surprised by how often they don’t.”