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Night fell and the cold swooped down with it. I wandered the city after that. A passerby glanced at the blood on my face that I was doing nothing about and gave me a wide berth. I had no plan, no direction. Street signs were a blur to me. The Thames stayed to my right and eventually, I found myself at the Blackfriars Bridge.
The water was black and still, only a few ripples gleaming silver under the moonlight. I tucked my fists deeper into my pockets, seeking warmth that wasn’t there. An exhaustion hung over me that had nothing to do with sleepless nights. It was the tiredness that comes from carrying around a heavy, invisible burden no one else can see or touch.
I glanced down along the stretch of bridge, quiet and still, and felt the urge to run. No destination in mind; just run until my lungs burned and my cheeks grew hot against the cold night wind. Run and run until I was somewhere else. Until I wassomeoneelse. Maybe the heavy load of being me would fall off along the way and I’d be free of it.
I turned my gaze to the black water.
Or maybe I’ll just disappear.
eight
Cole isn’t at his tiny shoebox of a dwelling.
I wait as long as my patience allows—ten minutes—then take to the sky to find him. It’s a monstrous thing now, this London. Since my living day, it’s expanded into a colored maze of “Tube” stations, taxis, and even a bloody Ferris wheel. The Tower castle is now an easy walk to a Tesco.
But beneath the lights and modern architecture lurk my childhood memories. No amount of years or modifications will ever bury the pain that lives in the bones of this city. Against my will, memories crawl out of the shallow grave I’ve buried them in.
A thrill that my uncle had arrived at Hever Castle for a visit.
A greater thrill—and pride—that he wanted to takemein his carriage for a trip to the city.
How that thrill curdled into a nightmare I couldn’t wake from.
How Uncle’s liveried men sat outside the carriage’s passenger quarters, out of earshot of my cries. They guided twin white horses over bumpy roads, oblivious to what my uncle was doing to his ten-year-old nephew just on the other side of the partition.
A hundred pairs of wings flicker at the memory, yet a part of me welcomes the unpleasantness. It reminds me why humans are not to be trusted but destroyed. Ruined, just as they ruined me.
High over a black London night, I turn my attention to the task at hand. Human despair has a pungent scent; the city is rife with it, but Cole emanates it like a vapor. I find him on the Blackfriars Bridge. He stands, hunched at the rail, staring into the black water.
To no surprise, the Twins lurk just on the Other Side of the Veil, as close to Cole as they dare, dripping their insidiousness in his ear like poison. I Cross Over and lunge at them with a snarl.
“Be gone, foulness,” I say, my wings spread to their full width, fire and wrath burning in the black pits of my eyes. “You trespass on my property.”
Keeb—in a shapeless rag of a dress—cowers behind her sister and peers at me through her stringy gray hair. Deber is bolder; she glares at me with pus-colored eyes. Both flick clear, veined wings while a cloud of flies buzz around them. They lack the sleek polish of my beetles.
“Ambri.” Deber gives me a mockery of a courtesy. “With due respect, we found him first.”
There is no respect in her smirk or the obscene giggle emanating from her sister behind her.
“You interfere with a task given me by Asmodai,” I say. “That human is my chosen target.”
“So we’ve heard. Yetwehave driven him to the bridge. To the very brink—”
“He’s mine!”I bellow, my wings blowing a hot wind.
“Then by all means…” Deber sweeps a wasted arm at the figure on the other side of the Veil.
Cole Matheson is hunched over, small, miserable, and—like most humans—completely unaware of his own power. But the witch is right; he’s at the edge. It would take only the smallest nudge…
“I have use of him yet,” I say. “Go, Deber, and take your decrepit sister with you.”
“Very well, but watch that youtread carefully, Ambri,” Deber says, drawing her sister close to her. “Lest your loyalty to our cause comes into question.Again.”
They dissipate into a cloud of flies and vanish. I pass through the Veil and emerge onto the bridge as a human, smoothing the lapels of my coat.
“Nice night for it,” I say, stepping in a circle of light cast by a streetlamp.
Cole looks up, and a gasp nearly escapes me. His handsome face is beaten and bruised. His glasses are missing, and he gazes at me with eyes that are haunted and hopeless.
