We ran.

  The twins took point, barefoot but fast, cutting across the quad and out through the side gate without waiting for permission. Lillibet fell in just behind them, stride long and efficient. The rest of us strung out in a ragged line—Jamal, Hana, Luis, Maya, me—our footfalls slapping the pavement in uneven rhythm.

  The city blurred past in pieces. Brick rowhouses with cracked steps. A corner store rolling down its metal grate. A bus roared by, the driver uncaring of the cluster of teenagers sprinting along the sidewalk with swords bouncing at their hips.

  My lungs should’ve been burning; they weren’t. Bright Life hummed under my skin, turning fear into fuel. Even though my brain tried to spin out—too late, too late, too late—my legs just…kept going.

  Sera’s face was set in a hard line as she ran—jaw clenched, eyes forward, anger and fear braided so tight I couldn’t tell which was which. Shara kept darting glances at every alley mouth, eyes wide and shiny; tears tracked clean lines through the chlorine?dried salt on her cheeks. A couple of times her breath hitched like she might sob again, but she just gritted her teeth and pushed harder.

  Jamal’s usual bounce was gone. His mouth was a tight slash, eyes scanning ahead, hands flexing on the hilt of the basic bone sword he’d grabbed. Hana ran quietly, her expression sharpened down to a point, the way it got in chem lab right before something important happened. Luis’s jaw muscles jumped; Maya’s easy lope that ate pavement, her hands empty except for the plain Orc blade.

  Lillibet didn’t look winded. Or anything, really. Her face was the same composed mask it always was, but the tendons in her neck were standing out a little more than usual. Her hand hovered near her sword as we ran, as if she couldn’t quite stand to have it more than an inch away.

  “Stop,” she said abruptly, one arm shooting out.

  We skidded to a halt a block from the old rail yard. The twins slowed last, Sera breathing hard, Shara bent over with her hands on her knees, trying not to hyperventilate.

  Ahead, through the gap between warehouses, I could see the rusted skeletons of tracks and the sagging chain?link fence that wrapped the yard. A storm drain grate yawned dark at the curb, half?choked with dead leaves and trash.

  “We approach cautiously from here,” Lillibet said, voice steady. “No more running. Eyes open. Ears open. No one dies trying to be a hero.”

  The twins exchanged a look that said one attempt at that today was enough.

  The storm drain was worse up close.

  Rust flakes clung to the metal bars; trash choked the gaps. The smell that rolled out of it was sour and metallic, like old blood and wet coins.

  Lillibet dropped to a crouch, peering in. “This is it,” she said. “Stay close. Don’t get cocky.”

  Jamal muttered, “Define ‘cocky’,” but he was already following her down the narrow concrete access beside the grate. We climbed one by one, boots scraping on damp rungs, the light from the street shrinking to a square behind us.

  It got colder fast. And wetter. My breath puffed in small white clouds.

  The tunnel floor was slick with…something. Water, maybe. Hopefully. The concrete walls sweated. Our footsteps echoed, weirdly loud and then swallowed like the tunnel changed its mind about letting sound leave.

  We didn’t get far before the first Frill dropped from the ceiling.

  Lilibet sidestepped, that eerie sense of her warning about an unseen threat. It hit the ground in front of her with a wet thud. It found its feet, frill snapping open in a fan of poisonous color. She was already moving, sword out and up, knocking its first lunge aside. Jamal and Luis closed ranks beside her without being told.

  “Two more, left,” Hana warned, voice flat.

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  They uncurled from the shadows—four Greenway Frills in all, bodies shouldering each other in the cramped space, eyes like lacquered beads.

  They hissed and came for us.

  The tunnel fight was sharp and ugly. There wasn’t room for pretty swordwork, just short, efficient cuts and blocks, ducking when frills flared, trying not to get knocked into each other. Acidic blood sizzled on the floor. The air filled with that hot?penny, peppery stink.

  I got a claw across the forearm when one twisted under my guard—a shallow rake that burned like fire. Jamal took a glancing bite to the calf and swore inventively. Hana’s cheek sported a line of red where a tail grazed her.

  Lillibet did not get hit. Not once. She moved in the tight space like she’d trained here, every shift of her weight just beyond where death landed.

  We took them down. One by one, in the cramped dark, until the Frill bodies lay cooling on the concrete, their colors already dulling.

  Theo wasn’t here.

  Lillibet didn’t waste time. “Deeper,” she said.

  We got to a section of tunnel where the air changed.

  The smell hit first—hot metal and something sour under the damp concrete reek. Then I saw it.

  Blood.

  A dark, ugly smear where the tunnel floor dipped. It had soaked into the grit, run in thin fingers along the tiny cracks. Spatters marked the walls at shin height, a few drops higher where something had flung or fallen.

  Half in a shallow pool of gray water and muck, Theo’s sword lay on its side.

  Moon Shadow looked wrong there. The black bone blade was streaked paler with whatever was in the water; the hilt was crusted, like someone had dropped it and walked away without a second thought.

  The twins made identical, broken noises. Sera slapped a hand over her mouth. Shara clutched at her sister’s arm and then just…sank, knees hitting the wet concrete.

  Hana’s breath hitched. Luis swore softly in Spanish, the word fraying at the edges.

  “Monsters never leave enough to bury,” Sera whispered. Her voice sounded scraped raw. “He’s gone.”

  “No.”

  Lillibet’s voice cut through the tunnel, clean and sharp.

  She stepped into the outer edge of the blood smear, not caring that it soaked her shoe. Her gaze swept the scene—where it pooled, where it didn’t, how high it climbed. Cold math in her eyes.

  “There’s not enough blood,” she said. “He wasn’t killed here.”

  Shara looked up, eyes huge and wet. “How can you—how do you know?”

  “If they killed him here, this whole section would be painted,” Lillibet said, still studying the floor. “This is bad, not fatal.”

  I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath until it whooshed out of me in a shaky exhale. Jamal let out a low, choked laugh that wasn’t really a laugh at all.

  He edged around the slickest part and bent to pick up Moon Shadow. The sword came up with a sick, sucking sound, dripping water and something thicker. For a heartbeat he just stared at it, like he expected Theo to materialize at the other end of the hilt.

  His jaw clenched. His grip tightened until his knuckles went pale.

  “If they wanted him dead, he’d be gone,” Jamal said, voice rough. “Or in chunks. This…this looks like they hurt him and carted him off.”

  Which was not comforting, and weird, but it was still better than “nothing left to bury.”

  Lillibet finally lifted her head, looking down?tunnel. Whatever was going on behind her eyes folded into a single, hard line between her brows.

  “They’re taking him deeper,” she said. “Nest, feeding ground, or both.”

  Shara made a small, animal sound. Sera hauled her in, one arm banded tight around her shoulders even as her own tears carved clean tracks through the grime on her face.

  “Then we go get him,” I said, before my brain could offer any wiser options.

  Lillibet’s gaze flicked to me, weighing something. After a beat, she gave one short nod.

  “Jamal, keep the sword,” she said. “You’re closest to his reach. Luis, rear guard. Everyone else, tight formation. If there’s a nest ahead, we don’t give them space to flank us.”

  She stepped over the worst of the blood and moved on, deeper into the dark.

  Jamal wiped Moon Shadow once on his pant leg—it did nothing, but maybe made him feel better—and fell into place behind her. We followed, shoes whispering through damp grit and diluted red, carrying someone else’s weapon and the knowledge that, for now, he was still alive to need rescuing.

  The tunnel widened, then opened out into a larger chamber—a storm catch basin, huge and round, with a grated ceiling three stories above us and a pool of stagnant water off to one side. The smell here was worse. Rot and iron and something sweet underneath that made my stomach twist.

  Railroad spikes had been driven straight into the concrete wall, six sets in a rough line, chains snarled between them like rusted vines. Theo hung from the far left, limp and unconscious, arms stretched overhead, wrists twisted into the links so his fingers could only twitch if he’d been awake. His feet barely brushed the floor. What was left of his shirt clung in tatters; bandages beneath were soaked through and shredded. Old wounds oozed sluggishly around the edges. New ones bled freely, scarlet dripping in a steady, awful patter onto the stained concrete below.

  Greenway Frills prowled around his feet, tongues flicking out to lap at the spreading puddles of his blood.