Aeslin mice never forget anything. They don’t hold the rest of the world to the same lofty standard, which is a good thing, or we would be forever breaking their tiny, fragile hearts. For them, an offer of memory by one of their gods was the greatest of all possible honors. I just hoped I wouldn’t have reason to make good on my promise. “What do you need us to do?” squeaked the priest, lowering its feather. “We are at your Service.”

“The werewolf we came here to find is cleverer than we suspected, and has done more damage than we feared,” I said. “We need to check people for signs of infection. We suspect that it’s been biting them and then coaching them through their first change, bringing them back only when they can control their tempers.” It occurred to me that there might be some sort of master schedule I could consult, something that would tell me who had taken sick or vacation days, and when. Back home, it would have been virtually impossible for one of us to be bitten by a werewolf and disappear for a week without someone taking notice. Maybe I’d get lucky, and it would work the same way here.

I hadn’t been getting lucky very often.

“No bitten thing can control their temper,” said the priest, sounding dubious. “It may Seem So, but that will be Mere Illusion. Given time enough, they will slip. The bonds they construct around themselves will break, and the Beast will be Freed.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” I said. “Will you help me?”

“A moment,” squeaked the mouse gravely, before turning back to the congregation. The circle constricted, becoming something more closely akin to a huddle, and they began murmuring, squeaking, and otherwise talking amongst themselves. I resisted the urge to lean closer and try to listen in. They deserved to make this decision without feeling like I was judging them.

Finally, all six mice turned to look at me expectantly. “We will Come,” squeaked the priest. “But you must Choose.”

I blinked. “What?”

“I cannot claim this Honor as my own, for I am responsible for the Lives under my Care,” said the priest. “But you are responsible for the Heavens and the Earth, and the lives of mice and men must be as tools to you. So you will Choose the three who will accompany you, whose lives will be risked for this Sacred Task. Thus will we know that the correct souls have been selected for such a Holy Undertaking.”

My mouth went dry. I had known when I asked the mice if they would be willing to do this for me that I would be risking their lives—and while Aeslin mice are superheroes compared to their more mundane cousins, they’re still mice. They can be killed by cats, or poorly placed human feet . . . or werewolves. I had been hoping, on some level, that they would choose their own best and brightest, and save me from the responsibility.

They were all still watching me with bright beady eyes, clearly excited by the idea of going on a holy mission, even as the thought of initiating that same mission made me feel slightly sick. “You, you, and you,” I said, stabbing my finger almost at random into the congregation. “You’re the ones I choose.”

The three mice who had been selected for this great honor—and this incredible risk—squeaked with startled delight, throwing their feathers (and in one case, lit candle) aside. The candle was quickly retrieved by another mouse, I noted, before it could set the carpet aflame. That was a small mercy, as the three chosen mice swarmed onto my palm and then raced upward to my shoulder, their squeaks and chitters of joy completely unintelligible to my human ears.

I remained in my crouch, briefly meeting the eyes of the young priest. It looked more tired than it had when we left America, and I realized with a pang that I didn’t know its name, or whether it was male or female, or whether it was mated. It was a cypher to me, and I was a god to it, and that suddenly didn’t seem fair.

“Do you want to come along?” I asked the priest. I couldn’t figure out how to broach the bigger questions. I had never been as good at talking to the mice as my sisters were, and maybe that went both ways: Verity and Antimony were priestesses, not gods, and that made them objects of less reverence to the colony. There was room for conversation there, and maybe that same room didn’t exist for me.

The priest flattened its whiskers, looking pleased by the offer. At least I’d gotten that much right. “No, but thank You,” it said. “I will stay here, with the congregation, and Pray for the Success of Your endeavors.”

“All right,” I said, and straightened. The mice on my shoulder gave another brief cheer. “You are hereby free to go wherever you need to go in order to keep yourselves safe. If danger comes into this house, go to the walls, and keep yourselves safe.”

“We Shall,” squeaked the mouse priest, and the two remaining members of the congregation cheered as loudly as their tiny lungs allowed, sealing the compact.

Still feeling as if I were somehow betraying their trust in me, but with no other evident solutions, I turned and left the room as the mice atop my shoulder cheered.

The hall was empty. The other doors were closed—including one that had been open until very recently, where Riley Tanner was being quarantined. I hesitated as I passed it, unable to fight the idea that I should stop and knock and tell him what was going on; that Cooper was a traitor, or at least was no longer on the side of his former allies. That we were going to check the Society for other turncoats, and find a way to track Cooper down before he could spread his sickness through the whole continent. I would have wanted to know, in Riley’s place.

I would also have wanted to help. And the only way Riley had left to help was to stay locked in that room with the virus in his veins, waiting for my makeshift treatment to either cure him or fail him. He couldn’t come out. He couldn’t protect his family. Telling him what was really going on wouldn’t just be futile, it would be cruel, and much as I didn’t like the man, I didn’t want to torture him.

Sometimes there are no easy answers in our line of work. Sometimes there’s no way to prevent people from getting hurt. I sighed, looking away from the door, and kept on walking.

It was the only thing I had left to do.

Fourteen

“Family matters more than anything else in this world. Family doesn’t have to love you. Family doesn’t even have to like you. But when you need them, family has to have your back.”

—Kevin Price