“Marek, the girl!”

She pointed to the bed before unsheathing her wraiths and jumping out the small window. Vaulting over the shards, Luscia slammed into a puddle, slapping the surface of the water as she hunkered into a low squat with the impact. Luscia squeezed her eyes shut, trying to reengage the Sight for aid. Reopening them, the corner of a cloak caught her attention, sweeping past a flooding merchant cart. Down a row of patchwork tents, the man ran on foot, faster than expected.

Sprinting, she trailed him between the pipe huts, the foul smoke competing with the rain as it filled the lane with putrid steam. A few partakers, oblivious to the storm, staggered from the flaps, firmly entrenched in marrow stupor and mumbling nonsense. Thrusting them out of the way, she dodged the wasted patrons in chase of something far worse than any addict.

Gaining speed, Luscia ran up a terrace, leapt, and flipped over the final tent. Spinning through the air, she hooked her boot around the neck of the man’s hood and drove them both into the street, bathing them in soiled water. With her left wraith, Luscia secured his cloak to the cobbles and ripped the covering away from his face.

Aghast and confused, her lashes beat off the torrential rain. The wraith in her right hand chimed as she raised it, wavering.

“Ambrose?”

The rainclouds parted, permitting the moon to wash over his face, or what remained of it. While his features resembled the noble from Agoston, with the same sharp nose and protruding brow, his coloring was far from the man she’d threatened and pulled off Mila just days before.

Ambrose’s lips split apart as he grinned coldly, the flesh blackened in decay where it should have pinked. Curdled inkiness gushed from his mouth when he hacked a laugh. The substance congealed and seeped down his chin.

“You shouldn’t have come here, y’siti spawn.”

With a strength too formidable for any human, Ambrose lurched forward and sank his teeth into her upper arm. Luscia yelped in pain, the power of his jaw more animal than man. When her grip gave out and the wraith clattered to the stone, his fetid fangs opened to angle for her throat. Terrified, Luscia repelled his advance, pushing her forearms into his neck as he snarled. His rotting tongue, covered in fissures and pustules, flailed after her skin.

A savage growl, harrowing and unhinged, came from the right. A terrible force struck Ambrose, wrenching him off Luscia. Wheezing, she knelt on the ground and pivoted to see a massive Orrallach hybrid wrestle the diseased noble down the way. Hackles raised, lifted to Aurynth, her lycran dragged Ambrose by the ankle. Thrashing him from side to side, Aksel brutally attacked, his feral nature freed at her defense.

“Is that him?” Luscia jumped as Kasim ran up from the rear. Panting, he hunched over to grip his knees. “Did you find the killer?”

“How—”

“Followed the beastie.” He cocked his head down toward the tussle.

Her focus drew away from Kasim’s strange presence when the lycran yelped and stumbled back, slumping into a pile of garbage.

“Aksel!” Luscia wailed, running for her friend.

As Ambrose took off with renewed velocity, his ankle bent unnaturally, yet it did not slow his pace, even as she heard the pop of a bone snapping.

Dropping to her lycran’s side, she scanned his injuries—mostly superficial, save an ugly gash on his hind leg. It would heal, though not without significant pain. Kasim skated toward her, drenched in the drizzle. Holding the partnering wraith she’d staked into the cobblestone, he huffed as she examined the whimpering wolx, combing through his bloody fur.

“Now you bring these out?” he criticized, flexing his hold around the central hilt. “At least tell me you caught Wekesa in the act—that’s all I need for the arrest.”

“Wekesa?” Lucia sputtered incredulously, tearing a strip off her belted tunic to bind Aksel’s leg. “Nitt! It’s Ambrose, Kasim. He’s war-tainted, infected or something. I’m not certain, but we have to go after him now, before it spreads.”

“Wait, doru…you said Ambrose? Felix Ambrose?”

“Or that’s who he used to be, anyway. Bolaeva, please.” She extended her open palm to retrieve the crescent wraith, to complete her set. Begrudgingly, he handed it over and reached instead for his kopar. “Heh’ta, Aksel,” she said, ordering the lycran to stay when he whined, attempting to follow.

Luscia rattled her head agitatedly as she and Kasim rushed to follow Ambrose’s escape. She petitioned the Sight, but it again denied her access behind the veil, into the Other. Leaping on top of an overturned barrel, Luscia listened for the whispers, but none came. She was alone.

“Ano, higher!” Kasim yelled, jumping for a hanging ladder.

The lowest rungs snapped beneath Kasim’s feet. Luscia sprung off her heels with vigor and clutched the slippery fourth rung, but her fingers failed to reposition around the dampness. Kasim’s hand swung out from the rooftop just before she lost her grip. Entwining their arms, he hoisted her up and around.

Luscia winced as she landed on the slats beside him. Numbness had entered her fingertips from the blood loss. Unbuckling her belt, she bit the leather to strap it under the wound in her bicep, fastening it tightly.

“This,” she remarked, nodding to the other wraith and shaking out her arm to wake it, “is why there are two.”

Atop a beam, they scanned the dodgy grid of Marketown while thunder boomed overhead. She felt Kasim nudge her ribs and followed the end of his kopar where it pointed toward The Veiled Lady, a few streets beyond.

“There,” he confirmed. Luscia saw the dark smudge at the tip of his sword, trailing Ambrose’s fitful movements under the distant torchlight of a resilient streetlamp, still blinking in the rain.

Hopping off the beam, Luscia stalked the perimeter of the roof, surveying the stories below. Moored to a tilted post, a layer of canvas was stretched over the entrance of a dingy shop, operating as both a clothesline and a canopy. Cupping her hands, Luscia folded the wraiths in front of her chest and marched off the ledge, tucking in her knees to sail down the material. Descending in a graceful arc, she waited to ensure Kasim could do the same. Sheathing his kopar, the other al’Haidren plunged into the buoyant fabric, landing unceremoniously.

The moment he was upright, Luscia bolted through the rising puddles toward the popular tavern. Weaving between deserted vendor stalls, running as fast as her legs could carry her, she ducked to glide beneath a barrier of draped mats, soaking Kasim. As they rolled to their feet, Luscia shared a glance with the Darakaian, his dress shirt coated in muck. She looked around, lost. In the absence of her Sight, she recognized the streets of Marketown belonged to him and deferred to his lead. By the way Kasim grunted, swiping the rain off his face and stepping around her, he knew it, too.

Luscia tailed him as he hurried past the conventional path to The Veiled Lady and opted for another route, careering down a winding back street, vacant of lamplight from even the lodgings in the heights above. Smashing through the entry of a shabby emporium, Kasim trampled over mounds of trinkets to an archway on the other side, spitting them out into an adjoining alley behind the tavern.