Page 33 of Shadowfox

I paused at a corner café, pretending to adjust my scarf in the reflection of the glass. A man in a cap paused half a block behind me—then moved on when I ducked into the entrance, walked through the café, and exited out the back onto a narrow-cobbled alley.

My tail was sloppy.

Maybe green.

Or maybe not mine at all.

Still, I didn’t like the timing.

By the time I reached the underpass near the river, dusk had begun to smother the city. The girders overhead held up the world like iron bones, and the Danube hissed dark promises nearby.

A woman waited there, in the shadow of a rust-streaked pylon. She was reed-thin, her dusty gray coat several sizes too large for her waifish frame, her faded scarlet scarf wound tight like she feared her own breath might escape and betray her. Her nose was sharp, almost avian, hooked just enough to make me think of a beak.

I didn’t need to guess.

This was Lark.

I resisted the urge to laugh at the perfection of her code name.

“The fog rolls in from Vienna,” I said, using the few Hungarian words I’d learned before leaving France.

She flinched, nodded, hugged herself with both arms, and replied, “But the lights are stronger in Budapest.”

Lark’s eyes darted behind me, as though a wrong answer might’ve brought a firing squad.

“You’re late,” she snapped.

“I wasn’t followed.”

“Theyalwaysfollow. You lose one, another picks you up.”

Her fingers twitched at her sides. She was jittery—too much so. I didn’t think it was nerves—well, notjustnerves. She moved like her bones itched, like her skin didn’t fit right.

Amphetamines?

Or fear so deep it rewired her?

It was hard to tell, though the dilation of her eyes screamed self-medication.

“You’re our only contact?” I asked, just to test her steadiness.

She nodded. “For now. Others were burned, some fled, some turned. I’m clean.”

I almost laughed. Given how her fingers never settled, “clean” was the last word I would’ve used to describe her.

Worse, she didn’t sound likeshebelieved it.

“You asked for me to come alone.”

“Yes. Shadowfox can’t be approached casually, not with what’s at stake.”

“Shadowfox?” That was the operation’s code name. How did this woman—or anyone outside our circle—know it? A jolt shot through me, as every instinct screamed for me to bolt from the bridge and leave the bird woman to the night.

Her head cocked to one side. “The man you were sent here to meet. I was instructed to use only his code name.”

Huh. The target’s code name is the same as the mission?

That struck me as odd—and something I’d need to take up with Manakin when this was all over. Something about it sat like a stone in my gut.

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