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“Do it,” Hannah whispered. “Mom, it’s okay. He’s not— he’s not a monster.”
The first time she’d said those words she hadn’t believed them. Now the belief shook in her but itheld.
Locus had activated the occlusion field the moment they’d come down to Earth. Not to hide—only to ease a human mother’s heart. It softened his edges, made him look almost thesame. He disliked it, but he kept it for her sake. Now he let itdrop.
The air shifted around him, ahandful of light sliding off his skin like water. The human-bent angles bled back into what he was. Amethyst saturated his irises. The ridges at his temples lifted sharp as script carved in bone, his ears angled back to points that marked him alien without question. His hair turning white and his brows inverting.
Hannah’s mother flattened her hand over her sternum and pressed hard, like she could push the fear back down into her body before it broke over her. The father grabbed her biceps and held, arms a band around her. He didn’t look away. He stared at Locus the way men stared at approaching storms. The room went very quiet except for the faint buzz of the drone outside and the precise sound of Hannah’s breath seeing him again in this light. Her mother’s breath hitched audibly, awhisper of awe caught inside her terror, as though she fought not to collapse at the sight ofhim.
Hannah touched him. She lifted her hand and put her fingers lightly against the ridge at his temple where the bone lifted. Her touch should’ve relieved him. It didn’t. It set the hunger inside him to howl because her hand said mine, not because of ownership, but because of recognition. He closed his eyes for a moment and kissed her palm without openingthem.
The headman clapped once. “Better,” he said. “Now we all know what’s being debated.”
“What’s being debated,” Hannah’s father said, his voice steadying, “is whether you walk out of this house at all.” His shoulders squared, as though his body alone could throw the intruder back into the street.
The headman laughed for real. It was an ugly sound. “It will take more than threats to decide that.”
Locus shifted, placing his body so that any shot that came from the kitchen would take him before it touched the others. The headman watched him do it and smiled with something like respect. “I prefer you like this,” he said lightly. “The audience does too.”
“Where are my brothers?” Hannah asked. “Where’s Emmy?”
“Your boys are lounging in a nice safe room,” the headman said. “I put men on them who like soccer and call their own mothers twice a week. Itake care with talent. As for the girl.” He enjoyed the way Hannah’s mother went still. “She’s in transit. Marked as payment for discourtesy. Payment for wrecking my Challenge and making my investors ask whether I’ve lost my edge. Itold them I haven’t. They wanted proof. Your sister will be that proof, sold as the prelude to your final Challenge.”
Hannah’s mother made a sound that didn’t belong in a throat. Her father swore again, soft and lethal. Hannah leaned into him as if her bones had melted and then re-hardened into something sharper than before.
Locus’s pulse kicked hard, asteady throb beneath his ribs. Every word here mattered, every answer another marker he would carve into memory. He fought to keep still, though his blood urged him to break the headman’s teeth for speaking of Emmy likevexxingmerchandise.
“Where is she?” Hannah shouted.
With a laugh, the headman turned his wrist and looked at an expensive digital watch he had no need for. Cameras liked props, which probably explained it. “She’s with a man who calls himself Aram Voss. He’s a middleman. Buys choice pieces atdelicious prices and apparently sells them at even better prices.” The headman gave a surprisingly honest shiver. “Scary dude. I wouldn’t want to be your daughter if he buys her.”
Locus filed the name away, the habit, the flaw—weaknesses he would use. His hands ached to close around the man’s throat, but he locked his muscles still. Emmy’s life demanded patience, notrage.
“Her name,” Hannah said. The sound she made was a plea turned into steel. “Say her name right now when you talk about her.”
The headman’s smile cooled. “Emmy,” he said. “Emmeline. Pretty thing. Mouth like yours when you’re furious. She tried to bite the man who put her in the van. Ilike that in a girl.” He glanced at Hannah’s father. “I picked her because she’d fetch a price and give me a show. Ialso picked her because she looks like trouble. Men pay more for trouble.”
Hannah’s mother folded in on herself. She bent at the waist and caught the back of the couch to keep from going to the floor. Her father caught her under the arms and pulled her up. He whispered into her hair, his voice fierce. “We’ll get her back. Iswear it.”
Hannah’s hand had stopped shaking. That concerned Locus more than the tremors. Her stillness was the kind of stillness that reached for knives. “Where is she now? Right this minute?”
“In the air,” the headman said, giving a soft whooshing sound that made Locus want to break his teeth. “They lifted from a municipal strip farther south less than an hour ago.”
Locus memorized every useless detail. “Where are they headed?” His mind already measured kill-paths, entry points, strategies he might use when the timecame.
“The same place the two of you will be going.” He offered a slashing grin. “And that information is top secret.”
“You play with words because you fear to say the place aloud.”
The headman studied the drone in the window and shrugged. Then he lifted a hand, and the lens brightened. His smile was sharp, like a man raising a glass of champagne in celebration. “In six hours the buyers will come and inspect sweet Emmy. In twenty, she’ll be gone. Sold. She won’t be dead—yet. She’ll only wish she was. And by the time your Challenge ends, she will be beyond your reach, and you will be annihilated.”
Chapter 14
HANNAH’S MOTHERsobbed into her husband’s shirt, soaking the fabric until it darkened. Hannah reached for her but stopped, pulling her hand back. She wrapped both arms around herself so she wouldn’t fall apart.
Locus placed his palm at the small of her back where her spine curved and the pulse hid in bone. He felt the beat. Steady. Rage hadn’t broken her. It had sharpened her—and his hand lingered, registering the warmth of her body under his touch.
“You’re going to take me to her,” Hannahsaid.
