Like the brush of a feather or the bite of cold when a snowflake touches one’s skin, a glimmer of thought moved across her mind. Instinctively, she reached out as if to catch the sensation and hold on to it. But it receded, and she was left feeling emptier and lonelier than ever.

She opened her eyes, her gaze settling on a long woolen greatcoat hanging from a peg—David’s. He’d left it behind. Perhaps . . . if she was very lucky . . .

She rose to search his pockets, hoping for a tool she might use to jimmy the door. Her fingers touched and then curled around a crumpled piece of paper. She scanned the few words scrawled there with a sick feeling in her gut. He’d hired horses. He was probably already in the village. She needed to leave now if she had any hope of catching him before he departed. But how?

Her hands shook and fear curled up her spine into her head as she sought to hold complete panic at bay.

The turn of a key had her on her feet, poised to flee. She’d get one chance. She would be ready. She snatched up her satchel, prepared to swing it full force at whoever appeared in the doorway.

“Cally, it’s me!” Nancy shouted, putting up an arm to ward off the blow.

Callista slumped back, the bag a deadweight against her trembling arms. “What do you want?”

“Sam’s gone in to the fair. I think he’s still hoping to find St. Leger. If you want to leave, now’s your chance.”

Callista offered her a wary frown. “Why?”

“Because I saw the way St. Leger looked when he thought you were in trouble.” Her hand smoothed down over her stomach, eyes dark with hidden emotion. “And because I saw the way you looked tonight when you thought St. Leger had come to harm. Sam doesn’t stand a chance against a bond like that.”

Callista squeezed Nancy’s hand with a tremulous smile. “Thank you.”

Nancy shrugged her off with a snort of irritation. “Just go before I come to my senses. He is still my brother, you know.”

Callista nodded and, wrapping herself in David’s muffling greatcoat and cradling her bag as she might a child, hurried out into the wild chaos of the night, dodging fairgoers as she slipped past the crowded sheep pens.

“Excuse me,” she stammered as a figure loomed up out of the dark, hands gripping her roughly.

“Where you headed, little bit?” the man sneered.

She wrenched away, hurrying for the safety of the wooded track that would take her to town. Looked back over her shoulder to find him still watching her.

13

Night slid like a ghost over the land. One moment, the air hung gray and heavy, trees naught but purple and black silhouettes, birds quiet in the bushes, and a few lazy swallows circling homeward. The next moment, stars glimmered pale and high among streamers of cloud, and the moon rose up through their branches red as the blood he’d spilled.

The wood stretched all around him. He lifted his muzzle to the wind, feeling the scents burst like pictures in his head. The tang of pine and oak and elm, the soft, grandmotherly smell of moss and fern, and overall the bitter slightly sweet scent of the decaying deadfall stirred with each lift of a paw as he moved deeper into the trees. Ahead, a whiff of hot blood as a squirrel or rabbit darted across his path, and a passing breeze from the fairgrounds carried the fuggy warm aromas of manure and sheep and man.

He welcomed his shift to aspect like a freeing breath. He needed the easing stretch of taut muscles as he ran under the growing moon, the welcome of the spring night to wrap around him like a balm. The simplicity of instinct where every moment exploded into being with the immediacy of battle and then fell away, quickly forgotten.

A crow swooped down from a great sycamore, wings spread on the wind, beak sharp as a dagger. He snapped at it, but it fluttered away and dove once more before settling on a dead branch nearby, watching him with cocked head and ruffled feathers. It was half again larger than any normal crow, with a sharp intelligence in its jet gaze and talons tipped in silver. David recognized the creature from Mac’s description.

Worry uncoiled from a deep part of his soul.

“This is fortunate. We were sent to find you, child of the wolf. And here you are, come to us.”

So focused was he on the crow, David was unaware of the man’s presence until he stepped from the long twilight shadows, the power moving over and through him like a storm wave buffeting the senses, dragging him under.

Imnada.

Yet not.

Human.

But much more.

He was large. Amend that—he was colossal. David, who looked up to few men, knew that in human form he’d be craning his neck to stare into this man’s dark impenetrable eyes. And he was old. Despite the lack of gray in his hair or lines on his face, wisdom burned in his eyes and age hung upon him like a cloak.

What do you want with me? Did Mac send you? Has something happened to . . .

He couldn’t complete the sentence. If Mac had been hurt or killed, it would be a nail through his heart.

If Beskin has harmed a hair on his head, I’ll rip him to shreds and gnaw on his bones. A growl rolled up the back of his throat, pulling his lips back in a show of long, deadly fangs, his fury lifting the hair all along his spine. And then I’ll do the same to any damned enforcer that crosses my path.

“The little dog owns a nasty bite.”

Where the crow had been now stood a woman. It would have been easy to mistake her for a boy, with her short cap of black curls, sharp-boned face, and imp’s grin. But as she glided across the grass, her cloak of ebony feathers billowed aside to reveal small upthrust breasts and rounded womanly hips, her skin glowing pearlescent in the gloom of the wood. She turned her rainbow eyes upon him and the fur along his back bristled, despite himself. He recognized her immediately: Badb, one of the true Fey. He’d never stood in the presence of one before. They didn’t bother themselves with the shapechangers. Never had. Not even in the days before the Fealla Mhòr, when the walls between the worlds held many gates and it was easy to find the right path to cross over and back.

Perhaps this was because the true Fey knew in their hearts that the Imnada were different—their magic unlike any they had seen or understood. Even with all the Fey’s powers, they held no real sway over the shapechangers. The Fey were not their gods, nor were the Imnada beholden to them as the Other were for their very existence. How it must have galled them.

Here to pick at the corpse, carrion crow? You’ll have to wait. I’m still breathing, no thanks to you.

“Fine words from a hunter of cutpurses and a stalker of whoremongers,” Badb mocked, her crimson lips widening, but the giant of a man laid a hand upon her shoulder, and she retreated.

Interesting. What kind of man could control one of the Fey? A man with enormous power, was the answer that shivered up from the base of David’s brain.

“Can you put Mr. St. Leger’s fears to rest, Badb?” the man asked.

The girl closed her eyes for a brief moment. “Flannery lives. More than that, I cannot see. The shifters cloud my vision and all is hazy.”

David relaxed a fraction of an inch. I’ve been warned about her, but who are you?

The man shrugged. “A traveler . . . a friend . . .”

Friends are a danger. They make you care. I prefer enemies.

“Those you seem to acquire with ease,” Badb snipped, tossing her cap of curls.

“Gray sent me to bring you to him,” the man said. “And the book.”

It remains within the fair, but it’s not safe to return. There are men searching for me.

“Ossine?”

Men in service to Victor Corey, a gang lord. A man with half of London in his pocket.

“And why would this lord of gangs be searching for you? Does he also desire to study Zwanis Xhelho’s Book of Seven Forgotten Stars?” the man asked.

Corey hunts a girl.

“The woman you take north to Dunsgathaic.”

That’s no concern of yours. Who are you? What are you?

“You sense the answer, but you fight it. I can feel your resistance.”

David reached out once more, his mind pressing, searching. You’re Imnada, but you don’t bear any signum I recognize. It’s no clan or holding I know, which is impossible. As younglings, we’re taught them all by the Ossine as part of our learning.

“The Lythene died out long ago. I am all that is left.”