“Sir, while I respect the destructive power of your family more than you may believe, I can guarantee you in turn that if Verity dies, the Covenant will regret their actions long before any of her relations can get here.”

“We get it,” I said. “If Verity dies, everybody’s sorry. You know who’s probably going to be sorriest? Verity. If this Margaret person wasn’t allowed to be in North America, why is she here now?”

“I was told that it was a test for her, to see whether she could focus on the mission at the exclusion of her personal vendettas,” said Dominic. A sudden wave of regret, blame, and self-loathing rushed off him like it was trying to fill the entire room. It took everything I had to stay where I was. None of the others were telepathic, but they shouldn’t have needed to be. He was practically screaming his pain. “Please forgive me. I believed them.”

“There was no reason for you not to,” said Uncle Mike. From his tone, I could tell that he’d picked up on the same emotional weather I had. I relaxed a little. “Whatever lies the Covenant may have told you about the cryptids, they raised you. They trained you. Did they ever lie to you about anything but dogma before?”

“I don’t know,” said Dominic.

“I hate the Covenant as much as anybody, but I’m willing to bet they didn’t, because truth is the best way to guarantee obedience. The more lies you’re told, the harder it gets to keep the stories straight. When your bosses told you Margaret was here to test her obedience, you had absolutely no reason to think that they were lying to you. You got me? You warned Verity as soon as you had the chance. You did everything you could.”

“I didn’t do enough.”

Istas yawned more widely than a strictly human jaw would have been able to support. There was an audible cracking noise as the bones shifted to accommodate the gesture. Dominic went very still, and I had the brief impression from his thoughts that he had managed, temporarily, to forget that humans were the minority in this room.

“This is dull,” Istas announced. “Are we going to stand here and debate blame while Verity is slaughtered? Vengeance carnage is often satisfying, but it takes longer to perform properly than the kind which does not require a death to begin.”

“That’s my girl,” said Ryan. “A delicate flower.”

Istas snorted.

Dominic took a breath, seeming to center himself. “Margaret Healy hates Verity’s bloodline for daring to leave the Covenant,” he said, returning to his original conversational thread. Smart boy. “She didn’t accompany the investigative team because they thought her hatred might have dimmed.”

“They sent her here because somebody suspected you’d been compromised, didn’t they?” asked Uncle Mike. He sounded almost gentle. Dominic’s obvious distress was getting to him. It was definitely getting to me; it was rolling off him in waves, making the air seem thick and heavy. Some emotions are harder to handle than others.

“Yes.” Dominic looked from me to Uncle Mike. “I don’t know how. I don’t know what I did, or didn’t do, or said, or didn’t say. I was so careful . . .”

“Kiddo, they’ve got charms and telepathy barriers on these people. They’re loaded for metaphysical bear. For all we know, they’ve got a witch or something back at headquarters who did some remote viewing on you when you didn’t even realize you were being watched. That would explain why they were able to drop Margaret at Sarah’s hotel. But just because they got suspicious, that doesn’t mean you did anything wrong.” Beyond joining their goddamn cult in the first place.

I try not to eavesdrop on other people’s minds most of the time; it makes me feel a little sleazy, like I’m living down to their expectations of my species. Still, that thought was loud enough that there was no way I could miss it. “Uncle Mike, he didn’t join,” I said. “He was born into the Covenant, the same way all of us were born into our lives. Please don’t take that out on him. Not right now.”

Uncle Mike flinched a little, glancing in my direction. There was a brief flicker of apology in his emotional state. Then he focused back on Dominic, and said, “What matters now is that you’re here with us, not there with them, and you’re going to help us get her back. As far as I’m concerned, if you’re on the up and up, we’re cool, you and me.”

A small throat was cleared from the center of the folding table, audible only because it was timed to come at the exact end of Uncle Mike’s statement. I turned to see one of the Aeslin mice standing there, waiting to be noticed. It was the one Verity referred to as the Head Priest. He was wearing a sequin-spangled cape that used to be part of one of her dance costumes, and his whiskers were as white as if they’d been baby powdered. They hadn’t been. This was a very old mouse. Two other mice, younger, wearing unspangled capes, crouched a foot away from him. They must have been sent to assist him on what would be, to a mouse, a very dangerous journey.

“I come to speak the Will of the Colony,” announced the mouse priest.

“Hello, mouse,” said Istas calmly, looking entirely unsurprised by the sudden intrusion of talking rodents on the conversation.

“Hello, carnivore,” said the mouse priest. He turned and bowed to Uncle Mike and Dominic. “Hail to the High Priest of Goddammit Eat Something Already, and to the God of Hard Choices in Dark Places.”

Ryan blinked. “What?”

“It’s a mouse thing, just roll with it, you’ll be happier that way,” I advised. “Hail,” I added, to the mouse.

He sat up a little straighter, wrapping his pink thread of a tail around his feet, and adjusted his grip on the carved pencil he was using as a staff. “The Colony has discussed the disappearance of the Arboreal Priestess,” he said. “We have further discussed the words of the Priestess before she was Taken from us, and have decided that we will Abide by her Wisdom.”

“What?” I asked.

Uncle Mike blinked. “Are you sure?” he asked the mouse.

The mouse priest nodded, the squirrel skull perched atop his head making it look like he was going to topple over. “We have served in this capacity before. We will serve in this capacity again. We are at your disposal.”

“Before Verity left, she talked about using the mice as spies,” said Ryan. “She even said that they were pretty good at it. Being mice means they can get into a lot of small spaces.”