He considered her for a moment, clearly dissecting her move—ostentatious, public, brash to the point of brazen—and they both knew he’d either have to welcome her involvement or punish her insolence. A dangerous play, and one she might pay for later, but to her immediate relief, he smiled and gestured to the table of tools as if it were a banquet.

“Be my guest.”

Kate strode forward slowly, confidently, every inch aware of how important it was to keep her emotions in check, her nerves in control. She mimicked her father’s cool smile as she made her way toward him, careful not to look down at her audience. When she reached the platform, Harker brought a hand to rest on her shoulder, and squeezed, a small, unspoken gesture, not of warmth, but of warning. And then he stepped aside to watch.

“What is this?” hissed the Malchai in chains. “You send a child to dispatch me?”

“I send my daughter,” replied Harker coolly. “And if you think that’s a mercy, you don’t know her.”

Kate smiled at the praise, even if it was an act. She’d show him. She could be strong. She could be cunning. She could be cold.

“Send me a girl,” said the Malchai, “and I will return a corpse.”

Kate kept her good ear toward the monster, but pretended not to hear. She considered the table, her back to the crowd. Her fingers danced across the objects as she pictured the smooth bone plate that ran down a Malchai’s chest in place of a sternum and ribs. She’d done her homework. Those who didn’t know better tried to drive a weapon through the bone shield, pierce it with bullet or blade.

“Anytime now, little Katherine,” said the Malchai, and Sloan’s words shuddered through her.

You will always be our little Katherine.

Kate’s hand closed around a crowbar. It took more force than a blade, but the length would act in her favor. She took it up by one end and dragged it casually off the table, letting it scrape, metal on metal, drawing out the moment the way Harker would.

She took up a knife as well, then approached the monster.

Her fourth school, Pennington, had a zero tolerance policy when it came to fighting, but the others had paid off. Back at Fischer, she’d taken karate, then kendo at Leighton, fencing at Dalloway, kickboxing at Wild Prior. St. Agnes didn’t have anything like that, but they were big on quieting the mind, allowing room for God. Or in Kate’s case, for focus.

Kate twirled the crowbar. The basement went quiet.

“Lean in, pretty,” said the Malchai, “show me your throa—”

Kate thrust the hilt of the knife between the monster’s teeth and drove the crowbar up and under his ribs. There was a wet sound, and the grind of metal on bone, and then the Malchai shuddered horribly, wretched a mouthful of black blood onto her shirt, and slumped. Kate lowered him onto his back, and his red eyes gazed up at her, dull and dead. She drew the crowbar free with a slick scrape, then strode back to the table, and returned the weapons carefully to their places, leaving a trail of gore in her wake.

And then she met her father’s gaze. And smiled.

“Thank you,” she said. “I needed that.”

Her father raised a brow, and she thought she saw the barest flicker of respect before he gestured to the basement. “Want me to find you another one?”

Kate considered the hall, still crowded with silent, shocked faces, burning eyes, coiling shadows. “Thanks,” she said, wiping her hands. “But I have homework.” And with that she turned and strode out of the basement.

When the steel elevator doors closed, she caught sight of her reflection. She was still in her school uniform. Her face was dotted with blackish blood, her shirtfront and hands slick with it. She met her own cold, blue gaze and held it as the elevator rose up through Harker Hall, floor after floor until it reached the top.

Sloan was nowhere to be seen, and Kate wove silently through the empty loft to her bedroom and closed the door behind her. Her hands were shaking as she tapped the radio on, and turned the volume up up up until the sound vibrated off the walls of the room, drowning everything.

And then, only then, safe beneath the sound, did Kate sink to the floor, gasping for air.

The first time August killed a man, it was entirely by accident.

He’d come to—been born, manifested—at the school, with the black body bags and the worried woman who tried to shield his eyes as she pulled her coat around his narrow shoulders and loaded him into a car. The car took him to a building where other children were being collected by their families. But he didn’t have a family, and he knew with a strange, bone-deep certainty that he shouldn’t be there, so he slipped out through a back door, and onto a side street.

And that’s when he heard the music—the first beautiful thing in an ugly world, as Ilsa would say. The song was thin, unsteady, but loud enough to follow, and soon August found its source: a weary-looking man on a packing crate, wrapped in a ratty blanket. He was tinkering with the instrument, and August made his way toward him, wondering at the man’s shadow, which stretched behind him on the wall, moving even when he didn’t.

It had too many hands, too many teeth.

And then the man beneath the shadow held the instrument up to the light.

“Who throws out a violin?” he murmured, shaking his head.

Back at the building, they’d given August a pack of cookies and a carton of juice. The food tasted like white noise on his tongue, so he’d shoved the rest in the pockets of the woman’s coat. Now he dug them out and offered them to the stranger. It must have tasted better to the man, because he devoured both, and then looked up at the sky. August looked, too. It was getting dark.

“You should go home,” said the man. “South City’s not safe at night.”

“I can’t go home,” he answered.

“Neither can I,” said the man, dropping the violin. It made a horrible sound when it landed, but didn’t break. “I did a bad thing,” he whispered as his shadow writhed against the wall. “I did such a bad thing.”

August knelt to retrieve the instrument. “It’ll be all right,” he said, fingers curling around the wooden neck.

He didn’t remember what happened next. Or rather, he did, but it was a set of photos, not a film, stills without the space between. He was holding the violin, running a thumb over the strings. There was light. There was darkness. There was music. There was peace. And then, there was a body. And sometime later, there was Leo, who found him sitting cross-legged on the packing crate, fiddling with the strings, while the corpse lay at his feet, mouth hanging open and eyes burned black. It took August a long time to understand the vital thing that had happened in the gaps.