the bottom of my bag be

gold at the center and crimson at the edge, like two colors refusing to share a room. I wrapped my cut finger in the corner of my

e Houses was a lecture about a war that had ended two hundred years ago, delivered by a vampire so bored he se

n I finally asked. "Vanishes. She's got a

ified of some

but it faded when she saw my fa

. I didn't tell anyone. Some secre

pped being able to h

read and bowls of dark purple fruit. Tessa piled her plate high and began to eat as though she ha

s the

stomach rolled. And beneath it all, from the platter in the middle of the table where the roast lay in

uth wa

n and gripped the

asked through a m

st not

n't eaten

aid, and her brow furro

jacket was fresh and spotless. He did not look at me once. But I caught the way his hand tigh

I knew it wasn't. Something was waking inside me, restle

ets. The room settled into a hush. The violet light through the window had dimmed to a deep in

back with

elp. The dryness sat deep and strange, like an itch behind my teeth that no water could reach. I climbed bac

mean to f

corridor I h

was small, much smaller than I should have been, and the floor felt wrong beneath

chest. A man's voice, low and roug

ra. We don't

us. Her voice shook, soft and fierce at once

n, and a pale, beautiful face streaked with tears. Her eyes were the same honey

t up. Not a human roar. The rough, rolling howl of something enormous and an

nd us," th

he woman stop

my head, and for one moment, one s

ed. "Take her through t

s, no. Yo

cracked. "She's the best of us, Sera. She's the best of both. T

ias

Go

es. The woman cradled me against her, her hair falling over my face like a

red, her tears falling onto my cheeks.

the roaring, toward the light. I tried to cry out for

way, a stooped figure waited, small an

racked old voice. "T

ack once, only once

wasn't a wolf, all of it rushing together into a single roar, and out of the roar came a

rel

e with

hed in the blankets, trying to hold on to the dream, the man's face, the woman's voice, the old woman in th

he th

y stomach until I could hardly breathe. My teeth ached. My gums throbbed with a

at the end of the hall, a small stone room with a basin and a cracked mirror hung crookedly on th

It's only a d

ink, took a long, shudderin

d unraveling around her face. But her eyes were wrong. In the dim lamplight, they flickered

tar

my mouth. But I could see, with sudden, awful

teeth we

lengthened, slender and white and gleaming, curving delica

stumbled backward, and when I looked again, a half second later, the mirr

had se

t had gone ice cold, as though whatever had been holdi