Before Harry Connolly ever published Child of Fire, Game of Cages, or Circle of Enemies, he wrote a “prequel” novel that introduced Ray Lilly, Annalise Powliss, and other characters now familiar to readers of the series. In this exclusive, never-before-published excerpt from that original novel, Ray is more than rattled by his first introduction to Annalise and the powers of a Twenty Palaces peer.

An excerpt from

Twenty Palaces

Macy sniffed at the night breeze like a bloodhound, then spun and hopped onto the picnic table. “Trouble.”

Echo sprang up beside her. The gate of the batting cage banged open as Jon dropped the bat and joined them. All three stood tall, as alert as prairie dogs, staring into the parking lot. Payton emerged from the back door of the sports bar with an armful of food and a pitcher of pale yellow beer, but as soon as he saw the others, he plunked the stuff onto the table and climbed up, too, standing protectively close to Echo.

I didn’t belong up there; I wasn’t part of Jon’s group yet, just his guest. I followed their gaze, feeling the chill wind against my face, and saw a tattered silhouette standing out in the parking lot beside Jon’s van. “I saw that guy outside your house.”

“That’s not a guy,” Echo said. “It’s a woman.”

“We should call the police,” Payton said. “She may be another kook with a gun.”

To my surprise, no one took out their phones. “Why can’t people leave us alone?” Macy asked.

I turned, checking out the empty batting cage at the back of the bar, the darkened lot on the other side of the chain link, and the basketball court at the far side of the building. The outside of the bar had even fewer people than the inside did.

It hadn’t occurred to the others to do this. They lived a straight life of paychecks and tax bills. The mess in front of Jon’s house showed they weren’t ready to deal with this kind of danger.

My old friend needed my help.

I stepped in front of the group. “Jon, I’ll check it out. Don’t worry, buddy. I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”

He glanced at me. He seemed startled and pleased.

Macy took his arm. “We’ll wait in the bar by the front door. You guys bring the van around so we can load up and get out of here.” Jon tossed his keys to Echo.

“We should call the police.” Payton repeated.

It seemed like a reasonable suggestion, but the others ignored him again. Echo started toward the van. “Come on.”

Jon and Macy retreated inside. Payton ran after Echo, moving with the surprising speed some big guys have. He caught up to her and gave her hand a quick squeeze. She smiled at him briefly.

I followed a little behind them and was the last to leave the battered picnic tables and head out into the darkened parking lot. I didn’t really want them coming with me, but it wasn’t up to me.

The stranger sidestepped away from the van. As she entered the light, I saw by the shape of her face that she was indeed a woman, though I had no idea how Echo could tell from so far away. She had red hair cut very short and wore a black fireman’s jacket with reflective green and silver stripes. At first glance I thought she was homeless, but then I saw her hiking boots were expensive and looked fairly new.

Then I came close enough to see that her neck and wrists were covered with tattoos. Beneath her big jacket, she was tiny, almost frail. It was hard to judge her age at night and at that distance, but I guessed she was around forty. Maybe she was another terminally ill patient trying to get her hands on Jon’s mysterious cure.

She watched us approach, her posture tense; I could see we weren’t going to have a friendly chat.

Payton held out his hands. “Can I help you?” His voice was deeper than usual. The woman didn’t seem intimidated.

She opened her fireman’s jacket. I froze. If she started shooting, we were too far away to rush her and too close to run.

But she didn’t take out a gun. She wore a vest covered with ribbons, all alligator-clipped to her clothes and grouped by color. She plucked a white one free and threw it at Payton.

The clip struck his chest and bounced off. He caught it and held it up. The ribbon was decorated with the same design I’d seen on the tree outside Jon’s house.

“You aren’t infected,” the woman said. Her voice was small and girlish, but also strangely flat.

She plucked another white ribbon and threw it at Echo, who snatched it out of the air. The design immediately flared, turned black, and gave off a jet of black steam and iron-gray sparks. Echo threw the ribbon onto the asphalt.

“But you are,” the woman said.

***

Payton’s anger was quick. “Hey! You could have hurt her!” He stepped toward the woman and reached for her arms.

The tiny woman grabbed him with both hands and pressed him over her head. It wasn’t some kind of judo move?I’d seen plenty of those. She simply muscled Payton into the air.

Then, in the same motion, she tossed him aside. He landed hard on the parking lot, six feet away.

“What the hell?” I blurted out. I couldn’t have picked up Payton that way, but somehow she had done it. It must have been adrenaline. Must have been.

Echo crouched low, facing off with the woman. They looked as if things were going to get deadly serious.

Hadn’t I just gotten out of prison for a fight that got out of hand? I stepped between them. “Let’s calm down a minute.”

The little woman didn’t like that advice. She stepped toward me and threw a punch. I slipped it easily. She threw another punch, then another, but I danced away from her. She had a hitch in her shoulder that telegraphed her swing and she kept aiming up at my jaw?she’d have had better luck going for my stomach. It was closer to her level.

I tried not to think about what she’d done to Payton, and how it would feel if she did it to me. “Come on, lady, calm down. Calm down.”

But she kept coming, her face grim. Then I struck something with the back of my heel and fell against a lamp post.

The corner of the woman’s mouth twitched upward as she threw an overhand right.

I ducked, barely dropping under her punch and sprawling to the side. Her fist hit the metal post with an absurdly loud thoom. She had to have broken every bone in her hand.

A blue ribbon had been crudely sewn into the back of her coat. It had another strange, compelling design on it. Acting on an impulse I didn’t quite understand, I tore it free, then scrambled away from her.

My shadow was moving strangely. I looked up and saw the light pole toppling over.

I rolled out of its way. The woman jumped aside, too, barely getting out from under it in time. The metal post crashed against the asphalt, scattering broken glass.

“What the hell is going on?” I said to no one at all. None of this made sense. She couldn’t have destroyed a metal lamp post with one punch, could she? She couldn’t have felled it like a tree with only a right cross. It had to have been damaged already. It had to be a setup.

I didn’t know what to believe, but I knew it wasn’t the victim of a prank. I looked up at that strange, grim-faced little woman and repeated myself in a voice gone shamefully high with fear and confusion. “What’s going on?”

She came toward me, supremely confident and completely pitiless. “You picked the wrong friends,” she said in her tiny voice.

Payton slammed into her from the side. It was a full-body blindside tackle worthy of an all-star college linebacker. He drove the woman into the asphalt and for a moment she disappeared beneath his huge frame. My hair stood on end at the sound of it; I thought Payton had murdered her right in front of me. Then momentum carried him over and she rolled on top of him.

“You, too,” she said, her high, flat voice still calm.

She held Payton’s hand against the ground and punched his elbow. His sleeve went flat beneath her fist. She sprang to her feet and stomped on one of his ankles. It, too, flattened beneath her.

Payton drew a breath to scream, but the woman shrugged out of her jacket?I glimpsed a huge, complex glyph drawn into the lining?then draped it over the big man. Payton’s eyes and mouth suddenly glowed, and he fell unconscious.

Echo slammed into the woman from behind, knocking her off her feet and smashing her headfirst into the side of Jon’s van. The panel buckled under the impact. Echo landed a blindingly fast punch to the woman’s kidneys.

The woman threw her elbow back, but Echo darted away. Then she pounced again, bouncing the woman off the side of the van and rocking the vehicle a second time.

I stared at them, unable to believe what I was seeing. Jon’s van looked as though it had been sideswiped by a car, but the little woman seemed unhurt. Echo whipped her fists against the woman’s face and neck so fast I could barely see her move. She was a blur, but the stranger was taking the punches without much effect. She covered up to defend herself, then tried to counter with a punch of her own.

She couldn’t connect. She was moving at human speed, while Echo had gone far beyond that.

I struggled to my feet, feeling dizzy. Either I was going crazy, or something terrifying, miraculous and obscene was happening right here in the parking lot. It was as if the veil had been parted just a bit, and I was seeing the freakishness and fury at the heart of the world. I hoped I was hallucinating.

The little woman threw a punch at Echo, missed, and struck the sideview mirror. It tore off the side of the van, spinning over my head and out into the darkness.

Something sharp struck my cheek. I brushed at it. It was a tiny sliver of glass, beaded with blood.

The sliver fell away. I wasn’t holding the blue ribbon anymore and I wasn’t sure what I’d done with it. I studied the tiny red smear on my index finger. That’s real. My blood was real. The scratch on my cheek, smaller than a shaving cut, was real.

I looked back at Echo and the strange little woman. Real. I wasn’t going crazy or hallucinating. I was seeing this, and I had to come to grips with it if I was going to survive.

Echo landed a kick on the woman’s belt buckle, slamming her against the van. The woman grabbed the sliding side door and ripped it free, swinging the huge hunk of metal at Echo.

Echo vaulted over it.

The woman let go of the door. It flew out of her hand, skidding across the asphalt in a shower of sparks, straight for Payton’s body.

I leaped at him and rolled him out of its path. It skidded by us, grinding against the asphalt. I stopped my roll suddenly?the exposed, sputtering wires of the shattered lamppost were inches from my face.

Echo kicked at the woman’s legs, knocking her to the ground. The woman pulled a red ribbon from her vest and threw it into the air. It burst into a dazzling flash of light in front of Echo’s face.

Blinded, Echo staggered back, her hands like claws over her eyes. The woman rolled into a crouch and charged.

Echo took a deep breath through her nose, then struck out with both fists. She hit the woman full on the chest, sending her tumbling backwards.

She struck her head against the fallen metal lamp post and came to a stop two feet from where I was lying.

“Dammit!” she said, more out of frustration than pain. Then she did the thing I feared most. She noticed me.

“Did you think I forgot about you?” she asked. She plucked a white ribbon and threw it at me. It struck my chest and flashed silver.

The woman was startled. “What the hell?”

I threw the ribbon back at her. She caught it easily, and the design flashed silver a second time.

Then all her tattoos and ribbons glowed silver, spilling out of her sleeves and cuffs–even through the fabric of her clothes, as though she were covered with glowing tattoos. For a moment, she shone like a star and was beautiful.

Then the light faded, and she became shabby and merciless again.

“Wait here for me,” she said, then stood and whipped her coat onto her shoulders.

Echo rubbed her eyes and blinked her vision clear. She and the woman charged each other. The woman threw a red ribbon at Echo.

Echo ducked below it, charging forward on all fours for a moment. The ribbon passed harmlessly over her. Then she sprang back to her feet just as it exploded in a burst of fire.

The force of the blast lifted Echo into the air. She collided with the little woman, her clothes burning.

They fell backwards onto the asphalt. The woman wrapped her arms around Echo. “Gotcha!” she cried.

Echo went wild, frantically lashing out with her fists and nails at the stranger’s face and neck, but the woman didn’t let go. She drew back her fist and punched Echo once in the stomach.

Echo collapsed against the asphalt, stunned. The woman sprang to her feet and shrugged off her jacket.

I ran toward them. I had no idea what I was supposed to do, but I ran anyway.

The woman draped her jacket over Echo and pinned her arms beneath it. Lights flashed in Echo’s eyes and mouth. She screamed like she was on fire.

I charged at the tiny woman, lowering my shoulder down the way Payton had. But at the last second, I eased off?I couldn’t bring myself to use my full strength against her, no matter what I’d just seen.

She saw me coming and braced herself. I bounced off her as if she were a tractor tire and fell back on the asphalt. I moved my shoulder just to reassure myself that I could. I was useless.

“Dammit,” the woman snapped. “I’m trying to cure her.”

That made me pause. Was Echo sick? Infected, the woman had said. Was Jon infected, too?

Echo screamed again, but the sound was strangled as a bulge appeared at the top of her throat, moving toward her mouth. She looked like a snake vomiting an egg.

Echo’s mouth opened wide and a pair of long black filaments emerged from it. They twitched and wavered like long grass in a hurricane. Then a set of needle-sharp black points appeared, pushing out of her throat. They were all connected, I suddenly realized, like a small tree branch. Another set appeared, then another, like thorn bushes growing out of her. They were each half as thick as my little finger, and they curled up out of Echo’s throat and braced themselves on her lips.

Legs. They were legs. Something was crawling out of her.

Echo thrashed. The little woman could barely hold her still.

“If he gave you a weapon,” the woman said, “use it!”

I didn’t have a weapon. I didn’t even have the ability to move.

Something wet and the color of new phlegm pushed past Echo’s teeth. It looked like a grub or a maggot, but with those strange, crooked, spiny legs. And it was as big as a cat.

Wings uncurled from its back and began beating the air. Blood sprayed off them. Echo fell still.

The thing turned toward me and leaped.

***

I fell back. The creature touched landed on my chest, needle-sharp legs stabbing through my jacket. It snapped at my mouth with pincers and?

There was a tremendous flood of energy from the pocket of my jacket. It felt like I was hiding a high-powered generator in there. The worm was flung straight up into the air, and the energy subsided.

The creature beat its wings and stopped itself falling. It glanced at the tiny woman, then turned and flew away, struggling to stay aloft.

“You let it get away?” the woman said, incredulous. “Why didn’t you attack?”

I knew I should have answered her somehow, but I couldn’t tear my eyes off the retreating creature.

It had been inside Echo. That thing had been inside her. I thought back to the batting cage?to Echo’s amazing quickness and coordination. Macy had been just as gifted. And so had Jon.

Did Jon have one of those things inside him, too?

I reached into my pocket and felt what had given me that tremendous surge of power. I’d dropped the stolen blue ribbon in there at some point without realizing it.

“Hey, dipshit!” the woman said to me. “Is this your first time? It can’t be.”

I turned to her. The streetlights shone directly onto her face and I got my first good look at her. She was younger than I’d originally thought, probably under twenty-five. Her plain face looked delicate. She had no makeup, no hairstyle, no jewelry that I could see.

She had turned her attention to me and it was like being stared at by a live wire. She was full of power, and she was irresistible.

“My first time? Yes, it was.” Echo was absolutely still. Her lips were split and torn from the passage of the creature but she wasn’t bleeding. Her neck was misshapen and collapsed like an empty bag. “She’s?”

“Cured,” the woman said. “As cured as her kind can be. Let’s get after that thing or I’ll have to cure the whole damn city.”

I knelt beside Echo. She couldn’t be dead. I touched her chin and her head rolled toward me. A pool of blood spilled out of her mouth onto the parking stripe. I jumped back.

Damn.

The strange woman grabbed the back of my jacket and pulled me along. “Come on,” she said. “We’ll help the others later.”

Somehow she had the idea that I was on her side. I craned my neck to look at Payton. He was still breathing. I wanted to run back into the bar and call an ambulance for him, but I didn’t. I kept my mouth shut and did exactly what the woman told me to do.

She marched me toward a high fence at the edge of the lot. The woman was alert and careful, watching for the return of the creature. She didn’t seem concerned with me.

I considered coldcocking her, but she had already smacked her skull against the metal lamppost. If that hadn’t hurt her, nothing I could manage would. I looked at the back of her head and neck, half expecting to see a set of switches there. All she had were more tattoos.

“It looked weak to me,” she said. “I don’t think it could have gotten far. Keep your eyes peeled.”

“Are you sure it went this way?”

“Can’t you see the blood?” She pointed to the parking lot. I almost said no, but then I saw it: A line of dark droplets barely visible in the light of the distant street lamps.

“What are you, undercover?” she asked. “What have you found out?”

“The world is scarier than I thought.”

“Funny.” Her tone suggested that she hadn’t laughed in years. “He didn’t give you a weapon?”

“No, he didn’t.” I had no idea who “he” was, so my answer was an honest one.

“Where are the others?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Jesus. He keeps you in the dark, doesn’t he?”

“Oh, I’m in the dark, all right. What is that …” I couldn’t say creature or monster. Those words were ridiculous. I was afraid that as soon as I said the word monster aloud I would stop believing everything I’d just seen. “… that thing?”

“Don’t know. Don’t care. It has a physical form now. Mostly. Let’s just kill it and move on.” We reached the fence. The trail of blood continued on the other side. The worm had gone over here.

The woman grabbed the bottom of the chain link and pulled up. The metal groaned and warped. When she was done, the fence was twisted enough to allow us to slip beneath it. The thing had gone over; I was going under.

“Tell me what you found out so far,” the woman said. “How many more were there like her?”

That was a question I did not want to answer. Or was she testing me? She had seen me at the house earlier. She probably knew about Jon already, but not that Macy and Echo had apparently received the same cure.

If you could call the thing in Echo’s body a “cure.”

It didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to inform on my oldest friend, or anyone else. I was loyal.

I still had to tell her something, though. I couldn’t just lie, not without knowing how much she already knew. Hell, I still wasn’t clear on what I “knew” myself.

The stranger had already slipped under the warp in the fence. I followed, taking my time as I slid on my belly over the dirt. I considered saying that the mysterious, non-weapon-distributing “he” deserved to hear the information first, but I just didn’t know enough about the situation. What if “he” was this woman’s boss? Her ex-husband? Her? Her–

“Well?” she said. I had delayed too long.

A heavy piece of metal fell somewhere across the yard.

“That way,” she said. I went in the direction she indicated, creeping around a low brick building while she went the other way. I was glad for every step that put distance between us.

The lights were now so far away that I couldn’t tell if I was still following the trail of blood. I had to detour around a pile of something I couldn’t make out in the dark. I laid my hand on it and immediately recognized a brake pad. They were auto parts. I didn’t know for sure if the yard was still operating, but the rusty grime under my fingers suggested not.

I inched forward carefully, not wanting to trip and cut open my head on a lump of metal, and not wanting to run into either the strange woman or the … thing. The stolen blue ribbon had repelled the creature, but would it work a second time? Better not to gamble on it.

I couldn’t hear the tattooed woman’s footsteps anymore. I looked behind me; the parking lot was well lit and there were no silhouettes between it and me. Time to get the hell out of here.

There was a groan from up ahead. It was a man’s voice, hoarse and trembling. I stupidly edged around a wrecked car toward the sound.

The old man lay on the asphalt, half-lit in a shaft of reflected light. My vision had adjusted well enough to make out his general form. He lay stretched out on his side, facing me, as though he’d tripped over one of the empty bottles by his feet.

I moved toward him. “Come on, dude. This is a bad place for you to be right now.” God, he stank like a urinal, but I grabbed his arm and tried to lift him to his feet. With luck, I’d be able to get him back through the warp in the fence before I passed out from the stench.

As the old man shifted position, the reflected street light fell on the thing clinging to the back of his tattered jacket.

I grabbed the old guy’s jacket and tore it off his shoulders. The huge worm jumped backwards before I could throw the jacket over it. It snapped open its wings and fluttered a foot or two off the ground.

I yanked at the old man’s arm, dragging him across the concrete. The worm fluttered toward us, zeroing in on the old man. I heard a scuffled footstep behind us and turned to see the tiny woman approaching. She had a green ribbon in her hand.

“Wait!” I shouted. “Just wait!”

She didn’t wait. She threw the ribbon straight at me.

I dropped to the ground, thinking I should have run away when I had the chance.

The worm fluttered toward me and the old man both, but the ribbon intercepted it, striking it dead on. There was an explosion of green fire. The thing burned up to nothing without making a sound.

A blast of icy air struck me just before I was engulfed by green flames.

But they didn’t hurt. Again, the ribbon in my pocket hummed with power. Flames surrounded me, licking against my skin, my clothes, even my eyes, but they felt like a wintry breeze. Nothing painful.

The homeless man beneath me wrenched in agony, then seemed to dissolve. The flames suddenly receded.

The old man had been burned down to a pile of smoking bones. He hadn’t even had time to scream.

There were greasy ashes stuck to the front of my clothes. I tried to brush them away and they stuck to my hands. My nostrils were filled with the stink of burned oil and charred meat. Revulsion flooded through me as I looked down at my palms, and that revulsion immediately changed to rage.

I leaped to my feet. “You killed him!”

The woman turned and started to walk away. “I saw the creature warded away from you. I assumed you were protected.”

The stolen ribbon in my pocket … No. No, I couldn’t think about that yet. The woman was still walking away. Hadn’t she heard me? I followed, determined to make her understand. “You killed that old man! If you’d given us another second and I would have gotten him away.”

She waved me off. “This was easier.”

“EASIER!” I grabbed her elbow and spun her around.

Mistake. The woman slapped her hand over my face. She was small and as light as a child, but her hand squeezed me like a vise. Her strength astonished and terrified me. She could squeeze until my teeth broke off and fell into my throat. She could push until the hinge of my jaw shattered and the bones stabbed into my brain.

“If you don’t change your tone,” she said, “I’m going to mess up that pretty face of yours. I’m a peer in the society. You don’t talk to me that way.”

She grabbed my arm and marched me around the building. We weren’t going to the hole in the fence; she walked straight up to the gate, grabbed the padlock holding it shut and twisted. The lock burst. A few seconds later, she was marching me down the street away from Jon, Macy and Payton.

“Where are you taking me?” My voice sounded thin and frightened. I hate being afraid.

She didn’t answer.

Damn. If only I hadn’t lost my temper. If only I hadn’t tried to save that man’s life. He would have been just as dead and I would have gotten away from this crazy fucked-up woman. For a little while, at least.

I wanted to shoot questions at her: What the hell was she and how could she do what she did? What had come out of Echo? What the hell was going on? But I kept my mouth shut because she’d mistaken me for someone else, someone in this society of hers. She seemed to think I was a junior member, something below “peer.” If she found out I was nobody, she could do to me what she did to Payton.…

No.

To hell with that. This strange, tiny, tattooed woman scared the piss out of me, and I hate being afraid.

“I changed my mind,” I said, unable to hold back. “It’s all right with me that you murdered that guy in cold blood. I’m totally cool with that. Seriously. Why don’t we head down to the Millionaire’s Club? You could probably burn a dozen guys to death for no damn good reason. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

Her only response was to set her jaw. I was pissing her off, which was a stupid thing to do, but damn it felt good. Was that good feeling was worth dying for? Apparently.

She stopped at a motorcycle parked at the curb. It was a blue and gray BMWR1200GS?a nice bike and fairly new, but it was scuffed, scratched and generally misused and neglected. “On the back.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then I’ll tear your legs off and throw them up on the roof over there.”

Her tiny, pale eyes stared at me and her lipless mouth was set in a thin, tight line. She was ready to do it and I didn’t have anyone to back me up. I shrugged and climbed on the back.

She climbed on in front and kickstarted the engine. “Hold onto my jacket,” she said. I did. She peeled out of the street and onto the empty road.

Echo’s corpse, Payton’s mangled body, and Jon’s wrecked van got farther and farther away. I had no idea what I’d say to him if I lived long enough to see him again. Would he believe that Echo had that creature inside her? Would he believe that this woman had forced him to come with her? Would he believe how strong and fast the women had been?

It was ridiculous. All these people needed were colorful spandex suits and they could fold themselves into the pages of a comic book.

I shifted my grip on the back of the woman’s jacket, mainly to wipe greasy ashes off my hands. She should be the one wearing evidence of murder, not me.

Because, Christ, I’d been in town one day?one damn day?and I was already fleeing the scene of a double murder. I suddenly barked out with laughter as I pictured Karl’s face when I told him what happened. I had ashes on my jacket?and probably Echo’s blood from the thing’s beating wings?and a story no one would believe. Probably it would be best if this woman broke my damn head open; it’d save me from a life sentence.

But would Jon believe me? Maybe this happened to him twice a week.

I needed to find him. I needed to get away from this woman and tell him everything that had happened, whether he believed it or not. Maybe it would save his life.

We zoomed around a corner and she swerved across the double yellow line for a dozen yards. She was going way too fast, and the wind in my hair made me acutely aware that I wasn’t wearing a helmet. Neither was she, of course, but she could probably drive into a brick wall and walk away unharmed. I hung on for my life, too tall for the small bike and whipped by the chill wind.

After a few more hair-raising turns, we pulled into the driveway of a hotel. We passed the sign before I had a chance to look at it and she braked hard at the entrance.

A valet took her key and gave her a ticket. She swung her leg off the bike and gave me a hard look. I followed her inside.

The hotel lobby was the most beautiful manmade place I had ever seen in my life. The floors were marble tile. The desk looked like it was trimmed with mahogany. To the right, three marble steps led to a genteel little circle of plush leather couches. Beyond that, a longer flight of marble stairs led to a restaurant.

The tattooed woman marched straight through the room without a sideways glance. If she was impressed by our surroundings, she didn’t show it.

I felt wildly out of place in my sooty clothes. The woman looked like a street weirdo, with her tattered fireman’s jacket hanging open to reveal the swarm of ribbons clipped to her vest. We made quite a spectacle for the suit-and-tie crowd. Not that there was a crowd. I glanced up at the clock. It was 1:45 in the morning. Uncle Karl had probably already taken my things from my apartment and dumped them on the back yard.

A tall, slender man with a receding hairline stepped out from behind the concierge desk. He was dressed in a stylish black suit and wore a golden nametag so small I couldn’t read it. I had a moment of absurd envy for that nametag.

“Ms. Powliss,” the man said. His tone and expression were full of snobby contempt. “The service elevators are this way.”

Ms. Powliss ignored him and marched straight to the stand of elevators against the back wall. I was grateful to have a name to hang on her. It made her seem almost human.

The concierge glanced at me but, before I could mouth the word “Help” or “Call the police,” he turned away. I looked at the front entrance. What if I ran for it? What if I simply shouted nine-one-one?

I didn’t do any of those things. As if she could read my mind, Ms. Powliss grabbed my jacket and dragged me into an opening elevator. Besides, I had no idea what she would do to the people who came to help me. She’d killed that drunk without a second thought. Would she do the same to the bellhops and cleaning staff here? And while I had no great love for cops, including my uncle, I didn’t want to see them burned alive.

She pushed a button. We rode up alone. If she’d taken me to a secluded spot, I’d have known she was planning to kill me. But a four-star hotel? I figured I was either about to meet someone important or we were going to do some hot-tubbing.

The doors dinged open. Ms. Powliss led me down a wide, tastefully decorated corridor. The wallpaper was covered with lemon-colored stripes and there were small tables with vases of fresh flowers against the wall. I supposed there was no point in smashing a vase over her head. Maybe I should offer her a daisy and kill her with kindness.

“Are we going to order some raisin toast?” I asked, trying to hide my growing fear. “ ’Cause I’d love some raisin toast.” She wasn’t amused.

She stopped at a door and thumped on it hard enough to make it rattle. I couldn’t tell if she was angry or if she couldn’t handle all that strength.

The door swung open, revealing a man in his early fifties. His skin was pale and his eyes were vague and sleepy. His blond hair was long and fine, hanging limp around his sagging face. His shirt–he wasn’t wearing pajamas, even at this hour–was pale blue silk and he wore a waistcoat embroidered with elaborate stitching. The designs reminded me of Ms. Powliss’s tattoos and ribbons. His pants were cream colored and tailored. He’d probably been handsome when he was younger, but now he looked all used up. He looked weak. And rich.

“Annalise, how good to see you,” he said. I couldn’t place his accent. Something European, but I’m not much for accents. “How goes the hunt, my dear?”

“I don’t report to you.” Annalise grabbed shoved me toward the door. The European released the door knob, letting me bang it open with my shoulder. I stumbled a few feet into the hotel room, trying to keep my balance.

“Callin, keep your wooden men out of my way. I nearly killed him. And next time you put someone in the field, let me know first.”

“That’s interesting,” Callin said. “Because I do not have any wooden men.”

“What?” For the first time, Annalise’s tough exterior broke, replaced by genuine confusion and worry.

Callin looked me over carelessly. “Not since Hubert died in ‘93.”

Annalise’s expression turned back to anger quickly. “You’re lying,” she said. “No one else would send a wooden man here without telling us.”

“He doesn’t belong to me,” Callin said. “Are you sure he’s one of us?”

“Look.” She tossed a white ribbon at me.

I tried to duck out of the way, thinking she was about to set me on fire again. The ribbon homed in and struck my shoulder. The glyph on it immediately glowed silver.

“See?” Annalise said. “He’s carrying our–”

“Before you say anything imprudent,” Callin interrupted, “you are not missing something, are you my dear?”

Annalise grabbed the tail of her jacket and pulled it. She saw the torn threads where the stolen ribbon used to be. “Well, I’ll be damned,” she said. When she looked up, her expression was icy and dangerous. “Sorry to bother you, Callin. I’ll take him and go.” She took a step forward.

Damn. I backed away. Maybe there was a fire exit in the next room, or–

“I will handle it, child,” Callin said. He shut the door in her face.

I stared at the blank white door and the man beside it in shock. I expected Annalise to kick it open any second, but it didn’t happen. Either she didn’t want to raise a racket in this hotel, or she had to defer to the sickly-looking guy beside me.

Callin leaned against the door and watched me with a placid smile. He didn’t look very scary, but neither had Annalise before she’d started tearing off car doors with her bare hands. And if the two of them were at odds, maybe I could use Callin against Annalise and escape them both. Maybe I could even find out who they were. Jon needed to know.

“So,” I said, breaking the silence. “Will you tell me what is going on?”

No answer. Callin simply stood and stared at me. He looked a little dazed, as if he was drunk. I glanced around, giving the guy time to think of something to say. The room was tastefully decorated with flowers and cream-colored lace. Everything was refined and effeminate, as though it had been put together for an elderly aunt. There was a hall, probably leading to a bedroom, and a balcony. We were too high up for me to get out that way.

“Okay,” I said. “That’s cool. Thanks for helping me get away from her. I’ll be going now.”

I stepped around Callin and tried the door. It wouldn’t budge. The knob wouldn’t even turn.

“Hey, man. Would you unlock this? Please?” I was trying to be polite the way seat-belt people were supposed to be, but it didn’t seem to be doing any good. I remembered Echo lying dead on the asphalt and the smoking bones of the old drunk. I needed to get the hell away before something similar happened to me. “Can’t you understand me? Let me out.”

Still no answer. Callin didn’t even move, except to watch my movements.

“No? Then how about in here?” I strode quickly down a short hall into the bedroom. It, too, was pale and tasteful. It was almost ghostly.

And there was no door, just another balcony.

Callin strolled into the room, his body language casual and confident. While watching me very closely, he moved to the desk, closed a leather-bound journal and slid it into the top drawer.

I could have sprinted to the front door, but it was still locked. “Look, this doesn’t have to get ugly. I just want to leave. All right?” I couldn’t be more reasonable than that.

“You are no one’s wooden man,” Callin said.

I glanced over at the huge bed. “Nope. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I mean, I’ve been to jail.”

“Annalise should have killed you after all.”

That was too much. “You just said the wrong thing,” I said with a bluster I did not feel. “Now open that door before–”

Time froze. My thoughts seemed to stand still. The room turned blinding white.

Then the world started moving again. I was on my back on the carpet. Callin had me by the throat.

“You will tell me everything,” Callin said. He smiled, revealing a pair of long, needle-sharp fangs.

The world turned a blinding white again.