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The stranger caught my wrist before I could run.
Not hard. Hard enough.
His fingers were cold, slick with blood, and the second he touched me, that name hit again.
Carson Vale.
It wasn't a thought. It was a damn bell shoved through my skull.
I jerked away. “Get off me.”
Outside the office, boots pounded across the warehouse floor.
“East entrance,” Jonah said in my ear. His voice came thin through the cheap comm bud. “Three guys. Maybe four. Mia, your camera feed just died, so I’m guessing they did that on purpose.”
“Great guess, Jon.”
Carson shoved the black moon seal inside his coat. It looked like a flat piece of black metal, no bigger than my palm. Nothing special. Except every hair on my arms was standing up like it knew better.
The moon marks painted across the warehouse walls kept glowing.
White. Bright. Wrong.
“Can you move?” Carson asked.
I stared at him. “Can you?”
Blood soaked one whole side of his shirt. His face had gone pale under the warehouse lights, but his silver eyes were still locked on the door.
Then something slammed into it.
The old wood bowed inward.
Carson grabbed my elbow. “There’s a loading bay behind the press room.”
“You know this building?”
“I know how hunters think.”
“That is not an answer.”
The door took another hit.
He looked at me, really looked, and my mouth went dry for no good reason.
“Well?” he said.
I hated that I listened.
We ran.
The old printing machines flashed past in rows of rusted steel. Paper scraps skittered under my boots. Carson stayed close behind me, and every few steps I heard his breath catch like something inside him was chewing through his ribs.
Jonah came back in my ear. “Mia, the whole city map is lighting up. Like, all the old gate points. The subway tunnel on Mercer. The church basement on Ninth. There’s one two blocks from our building.”
My stomach dropped.
“Don’t go home,” Carson said.
I stopped so fast he nearly ran into me.
“What did you say?”
“Don’t bring them there.”
“You don’t know where I live.”
His jaw tightened.
That was answer enough.
“Oh, hell no.” I shoved him in the chest. “Who are you? How do you know my name? How do you know where I live?”
The warehouse door behind us exploded inward.
Not broke. Exploded.
Wood hit the far wall in chunks.
Men in dark coats spilled through the office doorway. They wore silver masks over the lower halves of their faces. Each one carried a short crossbow.
Carson moved in front of me.
Not beside me. In front.
“Run,” he said.
One of the hunters raised his weapon.
I saw the silver bolt leave the bow.
Carson twisted, trying to shield me, and the bolt punched straight through his shoulder.
He made a sound low in his throat. Not quite human.
Then he grabbed a stack of loose paper pallets and kicked them over.
They crashed between us and the hunters.
“Move, Mia.”
That got me moving.
We tore through the press room, jumped a broken conveyor belt, and hit the loading bay. The big rolling door was half open, just enough to crawl under.
I dropped to my stomach and shoved myself through wet gravel.
Carson came after me slower.
Too slow.
A bolt hit the ground near his hand. Silver sparks snapped across the gravel.
“Come on,” I hissed.
He pushed through the gap, then rolled onto his back beside me. His teeth were clenched so hard I heard them grind.
The bolt was still in his shoulder.
Blood ran down his arm and steamed where it touched the cold gravel.
That was new.
Very, very new.
A hunter’s hand reached under the loading door.
Carson caught a fist-sized rock and threw it.
The man yelped. His hand vanished.
Carson got to his feet and stumbled toward the alley.
I should have left him there.
Seriously. I should have.
He had a murder-squad chasing him, knew my address, knew my name, and had eyes that turned silver when he got pissed off.
But he’d taken that bolt for me.
And I was apparently an idiot.
“Jonah,” I said, running after him. “Get the bike unlocked.”
“My bike?”
“Our bike.”
“You said if I ever let you call it our bike, you’d know I’d been replaced by a pod person.”
“Jonah.”
“Already doing it.”
We cut through two alleys, then crossed behind a liquor store where the dumpster smelled like sour beer and dead onions. My electric scooter waited behind a chain-link fence, ugly as hell and held together by zip ties.
I loved that scooter.
Carson looked at it.
Then he looked at me.
“You expect us both to fit on that?”
“You got a better ride?”
Gunfire cracked behind us.
He climbed on behind me without another word.
His body hit my back, hot through his ruined shirt. One arm wrapped around my waist. The other hung useless at his side.
“Don’t touch anything weird,” I told him.
“I have no idea what that means.”
“It means don’t grab me like we’re in some fake biker romance.”
“You’re driving a scooter.”
“Shut up.”
I kicked it alive.
The motor whined, pathetic but loyal, and we shot out into traffic.
Carson held on tighter when I took the first corner too fast.
“Try not to die,” he muttered against my ear.
“That was my line.”
Behind us, black SUVs came screaming out of the alley.
“Jonah,” I said. “Tell me you see them.”
“I see them. I hate them. Turn left at Halpern.”
“That’s a one-way.”
“Exactly.”
I grinned despite everything. “That’s my brother.”
I took the turn.
A delivery truck blasted its horn as we cut in front of it. Carson’s grip locked around my middle. The black moon seal pressed against my spine through his coat.
The second it touched me, I heard whispers.
Not words at first.
Names.
Hundreds of them.
They crawled over each other in my head. Old names. Buried names. Names that sounded like teeth clicking in the dark.
I almost drove into a parked car.
Carson grabbed the handlebars with his good hand.
“Mia.”
“Don’t.”
“You’re shaking.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re hearing it.”
That made me hit the brakes.
The scooter fishtailed across the wet street. A taxi missed us by maybe six inches.
The driver leaned on his horn and screamed something creative about my family.
I got us into a narrow service lane behind a closed nail salon, then killed the engine.
Carson slid off the scooter. He braced himself against the brick wall.
The silver bolt stuck out beneath his collarbone.
Up close, I could see the skin around it was blackening.
Not bruised. Black.
Like somebody had poured ink under his skin.
“You know what I hear?” I snapped. “I hear a whole city full of people saying names they don’t want anybody to know. So yeah, maybe explain that.”
He laughed once, except it turned into a cough.
“You don’t have time for an explanation.”
“Funny. I keep hearing that from men who are about to make my life worse.”
The black moon seal thumped against his chest like it had a heartbeat.
Carson looked down at it.
Then back at me.
“Your gift woke it up.”
“My what?”
“The thing you do with names.”
“I don’t do anything.”
“You heard mine.”
I went still.
That name pushed at the back of my teeth again.
Carson Vale.
My mom’s voice came with it, old and scared. Never say one out loud. Not if you want them to stay human.
I swallowed.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know exactly what you are.”
“Careful.” I stepped closer. “You don’t know me.”
His silver eyes dropped to my mouth for half a second.
Then he looked away.
“I know enough to tell you this. Those hunters won’t stop because you saw me. They’ll stop when they have you.”
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
Jonah.
I yanked it out.
His face filled the screen, lit blue by too many monitors. He looked pale. His hoodie was pulled over his messy hair, and there was a smear of pizza sauce on his cheek.
“Mia,” he said. “Please tell me you’re not bringing the glowing murder guy here.”
Carson leaned toward the phone. “I’m not glowing.”
Jonah blinked. “Okay. So he talks. That somehow made it worse.”
“I’m not bringing anybody home,” I said.
But even as I said it, I looked past the alley mouth.
Two blocks over, the black SUV rolled through the intersection.
Slow now.
Looking.
Jonah was alone in our apartment.
He had three locks on the door, a cheap alarm system, and a baseball bat he kept under his bed even though he swore it was for decoration.
My scooter battery was almost dead.
The hunters knew where I lived.
Carson saw my face.
“No,” he said.
“You don’t get to tell me no.”
“If they’re already tracking you, walking into that apartment gives them two targets.”
“My brother is there.”
“And that is why you do not lead them to him.”
I stepped right into his space. “You don’t know anything about Jonah.”
“I know what it looks like when someone uses family as leverage.”
His voice changed on that last word.
Quieter.
Rougher.
For one stupid second, I wanted to ask who they used against him.
Then a car door slammed at the end of the alley.
Carson grabbed my hand.
“Go.”
We ran again.
This time I took us through the old train yard, where Jonah and I used to cut through after school. Rusted freight cars sat under broken lights. The place smelled like hot metal and rainwater.
My phone buzzed every ten seconds with alerts from Jonah’s security system.
Front camera offline.
Hallway camera offline.
Building entrance forced open.
My lungs locked up.
“Jonah,” I said into the phone. “Talk to me.”
Static.
Then his voice came back, too calm.
“Hey. So. Small update.”
I stopped beside a freight car.
Carson nearly folded when he stopped with me. His hand clamped over the silver bolt.
“What update?”
“I think somebody’s in the building.”
My fingers went numb around the phone.
“Get out,” I said. “Fire escape. Now.”
“I’m trying.”
A crash sounded through the call.
Then Jonah cursed.
Not his normal fake tough-guy curse. A real one.
“Mia,” he said, breathing fast. “There’s a woman here.”
Carson’s head snapped up.
“What woman?” I asked.
“I don’t know. She’s in the hall. She has, uh—she has people with her.”
Something hit Jonah’s apartment door.
Once.
Twice.
The deadbolt groaned.
“Jonah, listen to me. Bedroom window. Go now.”
“I’m on the third floor.”
“You’ve climbed down worse.”
“That was one time.”
The door cracked.
Wood splintered.
I heard Jonah scramble across his room.
Carson took the phone from my hand.
“Jonah,” he said.
My brother went quiet.
“Who the hell are you?” Jonah asked.
“Open your closet.”
“What?”
“Now.”
“I don’t even know you.”
“You know Mia. That’s enough.”
I grabbed for the phone. “Carson—”
He held it out of reach.
“Closet,” he said again.
A second later, Jonah breathed out. “There’s a panel back here.”
I stared at Carson.
He knew about the hidden panel.
The one behind Jonah’s winter coats.
The one our dad had built before he disappeared.
Carson’s face gave me nothing.
“Get inside,” he told Jonah. “There should be a ladder.”
“There is. How do you know this?”
“Move.”
The apartment door finally gave way.
Jonah made a choking sound, then the phone dropped.
I heard feet.
Men’s voices.
Then a woman said, clear as a knife sliding from a sheath, “Take the boy alive.”
Carson went rigid beside me.
“Who is that?” I whispered.
His eyes had gone silver again.
Not just silver this time.
Bright enough to light the dark between the train cars.
“Sera Voss,” he said.
The name meant nothing to me.
The way he said it meant plenty.
Then the phone screen lit up one last time.
A message appeared from Jonah’s number.
UNKNOWN CALLER: Midnight. Bring us Mia Lane and the black moon seal.
A second message came before I could breathe.
UNKNOWN CALLER: Or your brother disappears.
At the end of the train yard, headlights turned toward us.
Carson looked at the message.
Then he looked at me.
And somewhere under his skin, something growled.