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My skin prickles.

“Did you feel it?” she whispers. “Like someone was watching?”

The gods. She’s talking about the gods. And she’s right. I did feel it, that presence on the cold, damp wind. I’ve been feeling it.

“I don’t speak to the gods anymore,” I say stiffly.

“Yeah, me neither.” She grins nervously, like a victim right before they realize what I am. “I don’t even believe in them anymore, but just—” Her grin dissolves into a frown, and she looks over at the window. “When I was younger, I always thought I could feel them in storms. There was one time, when we were living in Mississippi and a hurricane blew in. I swear I heard them talking in the wind.”

“What did they say?” I’m surprised about this. It’s one thing for a human to pray to the gods, another for her to hear their responses.

Penelope’s not a Hunter. I can sense a Hunter miles away. And she absolutely feels like a human. But this—this is unexpected.

Penelope shakes her head, the movement of her hair brushing against my arm. “I don’t remember,” she says. “It was in the old tongue, you know.” She says something then, the word spiky and familiar. Humans are always near is the closest you’d get in English. Or maybe, Blood is always near.

“Not that,” she adds. “But that language.”

“Funny you picked that particular phrase,” I say. “My father used to say that exact thing to me all the time.”

Penelope sighs. “My mother was always saying it. To Callie, more than me, of course.” She turns toward me and kind of burrows into the crook of my arm. “Do you ever hear them? The gods?”

I breathe out. “A long time ago.” I don’t tell her the truth of it, that my parents said they’d abandoned me for marrying a human woman—for loving a human woman. That so much time went by that I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard them at all.

And yet it’s Penelope’s presence that seems to have called them back to me.

“Can I tell you something?” Penelope asks suddenly.

My heart thuds. I nod, like I’m afraid to speak.

“I used to pray to them to turn me into a Hunter.” I can feel her breath on my arm, warm and reassuring. “I wanted to be like Callie. Like my mom. And when I heard the gods that afternoon in the hurricane, I thought—I thought maybe it was going to happen. That I’d wake up and I wouldn’t be this weak little prey animal anymore.”

I don’t move. I don’t even want to breathe. I’m afraid if I do anything at all, she’ll stop whatever this is. This… opening up.

“Anyway, when it didn’t work, I stopped believing in them.” She pauses. “But this fucking storm… I don’t know.”

The sitcom’s laugh track kicks in suddenly, making my heart leap. I feel like Penelope’s waiting for me to say something, so I say the first thing that comes to my mind.

“You’re not weak.”

Penelope whips her head over to me. “What?”

“You said you’re a weak little prey animal.” I pull my arm away from her so I can look in her face. “But you’re not weak. You fought me.”

“You let me win.”

Heat flushes into my cheeks. “Later, yeah, I guess I did. But not when we were by your car. You cut me. You made me bleed.”

Penelope’s eyes glimmer as she searches my face. “Did I?”

“Yeah. It—impressed me.”

“I’m still not a Hunter.”

“That doesn’t bother me.”

Penelope blinks, and it’s like I said the wrong thing, but I don’t know why. It’s true. I like that she’s human, actually. I like the strength hidden beneath all that weakness.

“Food,” she says, standing up from the bed. Disappointment floods through me, and I don’t know what I should have done differently.