Bride

“Of course.” Neither Father nor the army of na

“I’ve been reminiscing about the things Father would say. Like: That thing I lost. Do you have any news about it?” I shift smoothly between English and the Tongue, making sure not to change intonation. Mick’s eyes glance up from his phone, more curious than suspicious.

“Ah, yes. You used to laugh for minutes and say, I have not. She hasn’t returned to her apartment—I’ll be alerted if she does.”

“But then you’d get mad because Father and I weren’t paying attention to you, and wander off on your own, grumbling about the oddest things. Let me know if that changes. Have you been talking with the Were Collateral? Has she mentioned anything about Loyals?”

He nods and sighs happily. “I know you’ll never believe it, but I always say: I have no contact with her. But I’ll see what I can do. Father always loved you best, darling.”

“Oh, darling. I think he loves us equally.”

Back in my room, I pull out my computer, wondering if I could pilfer a Wi-Fi chip off someone’s phone. I fuck around a bit, writing a flexible script to scour Were servers that I might never be able to use. Like always while coding, I lose track of time. When I look up from my keyboard, the moon is high, my room is dark, and a small, creepy creature stands in front of me. It’s wearing owl leggings with a chiffon tutu, and stares at me like the ghost of Christmas past.

I yelp.

“Hi.”

Oh my God. “Ana?”

“Hello.”

I clutch my chest. “What the fuck?”

“Are you playing?”

“I . . .” I glance down at my laptop. I’m building a fuzzy logic circuit seems like the wrong kind of answer. “Sure. How did you get in here?”

“You always ask the same questions.”

“And you always get in here. How?”

She points at the window. I stride there with a frown, bracing myself against the sill to look out. I’ve explored it before, in my desperate quest for some unsupervised espionage. The bedrooms are on the second floor, and I’ve checked multiple times whether I could climb down (no, unless I got bit by a radioactive spider and developed suction cups on my fingers) or jump out (not without breaking my neck). It never occurred to me to look . . . up.

“Through the roof?” I ask.

“Yes. They took away my key.”

“Does your brother know you’ve been climbing like a spider monkey?”

She shrugs. I shrug, too, and go back to my bed. It’s not like I’m go

“What?”

“A spider monkey. Is it a spider that looks like a monkey, or a monkey that looks like a spider?”

“Hmm, not sure. Let me google and—” I pull my computer onto my lap, then remember the Wi-Fi situation. “Fuck.”

“That’s a bad word,” Ana says, giggling in a delighted, tickled way that has me feeling like an improv genius. She’s flattering company. “What’s your name?”

“Misery.”

“Miresy.”

“Misery.”

“Yes. Miresy.”

“That’s not . . . whatever.”

“Can I play with you?” She eyes my laptop eagerly.

“No.”

Her pretty mouth curves into a pout. “Why?”

“Because.” What are we even going to do? Long division?

“Alex lets me play.”

“Alex? The blond guy?” I haven’t seen him since the Max incident. I’m assuming it was filed as “under his watch,” and got him plucked out of jailer rotation.

“Yes. We steal cars and talk with the beautiful ladies. But Alex says that Juno isn’t supposed to know.”

“You play Grand Theft Auto with Alex?”

She shrugs.

“Is that appropriate for a . . . three-year-old?”

“I’m seven,” she declares haughtily. Holding up six fingers.

I let that slide. “Not go

Another shrug, which seems like her default response. Relatable, honestly. She settles on the bed next to me and I’m briefly worried that she might pee on it. Does she have a diaper? Is she housebroken? Should I burp her? “I want to play,” she repeats.

I’m not a soft person. After living the first eighteen years of my life in function of a long list of very nebulous others, I perfected assertiveness. I have no issue with producing a firm, final no and never revisiting a request again. So I must be suffering a major cerebral event when I sigh, and pull up my editor, and quickly use JavaScript to whip up a Snake-like game.

“Is this edu . . . Edu . . . ?” she asks, after I’m done explaining how it works. “Edutacional?”

“Educational.”

“Juno says it’s important that the games are edu . . .”

“I don’t know if it is, but at least no major felonies are involved.”

There is something disarming about the way she leans against me, soft and trusting, as though our people haven’t been hunting each other for sport in the last couple of centuries. Her tongue sticks out between her teeth as she tries to snatch apples, and when a dark curl slips in front of her right eye, I catch myself with my fingers hovering right there, tempted to fold it behind her ear.

“Shit,” I mutter, pulling back my hand.

“What?”

“Nothing.” I trap my arms between my back and the wall, horrified.

It feels like the middle of the night when Ana yawns and decides it’s time to go back to her room. “My cat is waiting for me, anyway.”

Wait. “Your cat?”

She nods.

“Does your cat happen to be gray? Long hair? Smushed face?”

“Yes. Her name is Sparkles.”

Oh, fuck. “First of all, he’s a boy.”

She blinks at me. “His name is Sparkles, then.”

“No, his name is Serena’s damn fucking cat.”

Ana’s expression is pitying.

“And he’s actually my cat.” Serena’s. Whatever.

“I don’t think so.”

“You do realize that he arrived when I did.”

“But he sleeps with me.”

Ah. So that’s where he disappears to all the time. “That’s just because he hates me.”

“Then maybe he’s not your cat,” she says, with the delicate somberness of a therapist who’s letting me know that I don’t have a diagnosable disorder, I’m just a bitch.

“You know what? I don’t care. It’s between you and Serena.”

“Who’s Serena?”

“My friend.”

“Your best friend?”

“I only have the one, so . . . yeah?”

“My best friend is Misha. She has red hair, and she’s the daughter of my brother’s best friend, Cal. And Juno is her aunt. And she has a little brother, his name is Jackson, and a little sister, and her name—”

“This is not The Brothers Karamazov,” I interrupt. “I don’t need the family tree.”

“—is Jolene,” she continues, undeterred. “Where is Serena?”

“She . . . I’m trying to find her.”

“Maybe my brother can help you? He’s real good at helping people.”

I swallow. I just can’t with children. “Maybe.”

She studies me for several seconds. “Are you like Lowe?”

“I’m not sure what you mean, but no.”

“He doesn’t sleep, either.”

“I do sleep. Just during the day.”

“Ah. Lowe doesn’t sleep. At all.”

“Never? Is it a Were thing? An Alpha thing?”

She shakes her head. “He has pneumonia.”

Seriously? When did he get it? He seemed healthy to me. Maybe for Weres, pneumonia is not a big— “Wait!” I call when I see Ana heading for the window. “How about you go through the door?”

She doesn’t even stop to say no.

“It would be more fun. You could stop by Lowe’s room on your way,” I offer. Because if this child dies, it’s on me. “Say hi. Hang out.”

“He’s not here. He’s gone to deal with the lollipops.”

I trail after her. “With the lollipops.”

“Yes.”

“There’s no way he is dealing with— Do you mean the Loyals?”

“Yes. The lollipops.” She’s already climbing upward, and spider monkey doesn’t even begin to describe how agile she is. But still.