With three throwing knives ready in my left hand, I walked to the door, and pulled it open.

Seventeen

“Empathy is a beautiful thing. It’s also a luxury. When your back is against the wall, remember that survival comes before sympathy, and if you can only save one person, you have to save yourself.”

—Alexander Healy

Stepping into the hall in an unknown location that is probably still in Queensland, Australia, but might as well be on the moon

COOPER WAS EITHER ARROGANT or stupid, or put too much faith in Blithe—or possibly and most likely, some combination of the three. The hall was empty, stretching out in either direction like an invitation to freedom. I stopped in the doorway, tucking my chin against my chest and closing my eyes as I listened to the house, trying to decide which way was going to lead me to the outside world. Voices drifted from the left, distant and distorted, but audible enough to make me think they belonged to living people, rather than to an unattended television set. I raised my head, opened my eyes, and started walking.

The nice thing about being in a house with an unknown number of people is that while it’s still best to be reasonably stealthy, there’s no need to muffle every step like some sort of ninja in a video game. Most small sounds will be dismissed as either a sign of the foundation settling, or the result of someone else moving around. There’s a downside, of course—I could come around a corner and find myself nose to snout with one of my werewolf captors—but the positives outweighed the negatives, at least in my situation.

The impression that this was a Thirty-Six Society safe house intensified as I walked along the hall. The walls were bare, save for a few small, geometric paintings in cheap black frames, and the carpet, while a cheerful shade of lemony yellow, was clearly designed to be easily cleaned, more practical than plush. I would have laid odds on it having been Scotchgarded against bloodstains. Whoever did their interior decorating wasn’t creative, but they were practical enough to make up for any lapses.

Following the voices led me to the top of a flight of stairs. I stopped and pressed my back against the wall, listening.

They were arguing about something. I couldn’t make out what it was, but the female voice sounded angry, and the male voice sounded more placating. Cooper wasn’t there, or if he was, he was sitting by silently, observing his people while they fought.

Cooper had taken Chloe and Trigby with him when he went to get Shelby. My stomach sank. Either there were more werewolves than I had suspected, or Cooper was already back with my girlfriend. Neither option was good. To be honest, I had hoped that Cooper’s people wouldn’t come back at all. Shelby wasn’t some defenseless little flower, and with her mother and sister right there, she stood a good chance of taking out any attacker. But Cooper knew her. He might know how to get around whatever security the Tanners had in place.

Bastard. I didn’t enjoy thinking of myself as a killer, but I couldn’t deny that I would enjoy seeing him dead.

Slowly, I peeled away from the wall and began creeping down the stairs, so tense that my shoulders felt like they had been replaced by iron bars. The knives in my hand were no real comfort. I still couldn’t use my left hand for knife-throwing, and this wasn’t the sort of situation I wanted to walk into one-handed and without a gun. I listened even harder as I descended, hoping for something to indicate how many werewolves were beneath me, and whether they were the two I had seen before.

The step beneath my foot creaked loudly.

I froze, pulling back a step, but it was too late: the alarm had been sounded. “Blithe?” a man’s voice, much closer than it had been only a few seconds before: he was approaching. Dandy. That was just what I needed. “Did you need something? You know you’re supposed to stay with the Price fellow until Cooper gets back.”

Maybe this was just what I needed. Now I knew that Cooper hadn’t returned with Shelby, even if this confirmed the existence of at least two more werewolves. Like Blithe, this man sounded faintly familiar; I had probably walked past him at some point, maybe even been introduced to him, and failed to register anything out of the ordinary. Assuming I got through this alive, I was going to recommend the family seriously improve our werewolf detection training.

A narrow male face appeared around the wall separating the stairwell from the front room. He had time to widen his eyes and open his mouth in preparation for shouting for help, and then a knife was in his throat, making it impossible for him to do more than choke. He staggered backward, out of my line of sight, before I could throw another knife.

“What the fuck—?!” shrieked the female voice.

So much for stealth. I ran the rest of the way down the stairs, whipping around the corner into the living room to find a skinny teenage girl holding up the man with the knife in his throat, a terrified expression on her face.

“We didn’t do it,” she said rapidly. “We didn’t kidnap you we didn’t touch you we didn’t do anything please. Please don’t do this. Please we haven’t hurt anyone please.” The man was still choking and clawing at the knife in his throat, and for a moment, I was afraid I had acted too quickly: that I had killed, or at least direly injured, an innocent bystander.

Then I noticed her hands. They were shortening, the fingers becoming stubby as the nails became more pronounced, stretching into claws that dug into the man’s skin without quite breaking it. These people were werewolves. Whether they had chosen this or not, they were, for the moment, the enemy.

She proved it a second later, when she shoved the man aside, revealing the reshaped angles of her legs, which had stretched and bent while his body had blocked them from view, giving her a wolf’s jumping power while leaving her with a human’s height and versatility. She snarled, showing a mouth full of teeth, and leaped for me, clawed hands extended.

I flung a knife at her, aiming for the dark triangle of her open mouth. She batted the blade aside while it was in the air. Shit.

With only two knives remaining and no chance of getting more, I did the only sensible thing: I turned and ran, trusting panic to grant me greater speed. There was a door only a few feet away. I wrenched it open, revealing a dark porch, the night spread out beyond it like a prayer—and Cooper, Shelby slung over his shoulder, standing there. The look on his face must have mirrored mine, all stunned confusion and disbelief. Then it hardened, and his eyes flashed amber.