knee. He’d stopped crying and was more interested in examining my face and watching what I was doing. Though he grimaced when I mopped up the blood and spread a thin layer of the salve over his scrape, he didn’t cry again. I noticed that he had freckles, something no one in my enclosed city had. How strange to see just an ordinary human—not a Renewable, not a shadow— living out here. I wondered how it was possible, but I knew enough that now wasn’t the time to ask.
I wrapped the last of the strips around his knee, tying the tightest knot I could. I knew from having two brothers that boys never stayed still long.
“Thank you,” his mother murmured as I straightened. “Sean, what do you say?”
“’anks,” the boy mumbled before squirming out of his mother’s grasp and making a beeline for the building his parents had emerged from.
“Okay.” The man still had his knife between himself and me. “Get going then.”
“Brandon,” the woman said, chiding. “Be civil.”
He shook his head, still watching me, still suspicious. “Don’t trust anyone from the outside. We don’t know who they are.
The woman looked up, shading her eyes. I followed her gaze to the bright reflective object on top of the spire. It was dimmer now as the sun made its way down the sky. I still couldn’t make out its shape, but I thought it might be some kind of crystal, refracting the light into a million different beams across the city. The way the woman gazed at it reminded me of the way people in my city checked the time by the sun disc. Maybe it was a kind of clock.
“It’ll be just as dangerous for them out here in a few hours,” the woman said, speaking as though Tansy and I weren’t there. “She helped our Sean. They’re not here to hurt us.”
The man’s eyes went from me to Tansy and back again. His beard moved as he grimaced beneath it, uncertainty twisting his features.
“Fine,” he said eventually, defeated. “One night only. And that one leaves her weapon outside.” He seemed more suspicious of Tansy than of me, his black eyes narrowing at her.
Tansy opened her mouth as if considering protesting. I didn’t blame her—if they’d tried to take Oren’s knife from me, I would’ve felt naked. I felt a little guilty not volunteering the information that I was armed, too, but I knew it was smarter to keep it on me. I nodded at Tansy and she nodded back, slipping off the bow and her quiver of arrows and giving it to the man. He left them on the stoop as he led us through a revolving door, into the building.
Once inside, the man retreated to a comfortable-looking stuffed chair in the corner to work on something wooden with his knife. Sean plunked himself down to play with what seemed to be a set of polished round rocks, bouncing them off each other at random, and the woman closed the doors behind us.
They’d made a home in what looked like the lobby of some other building. The marble floors were covered with a slapdash assortment of colorful, overlapping rugs, and the large reception area had been divided into rooms by wooden screens. The revolving door opened directly into what I could only assume was the kitchen and dining area, dominated by a huge fireplace built into the floor and a chimney that descended from the ceiling to hover above it. It must have been a gorgeous piece of art and design back when the building was new, but now it only held a small cooking fire. The flames had an odd green edge to them, and my nose detected the acrid smell of chemicals. When I looked closer I saw that the wood they were burning seemed to be pieces of old furniture. I realized with a jolt that they wouldn’t really have access to firewood here in this forest of buildings. They must have been raiding the other ruins—or the rest of the building, which seemed unused—for wood to burn.
The rest of the furniture in the home was an odd mix of ancient-looking pieces, no doubt liberated from the ruins, and rough but solidly made pieces that looked relatively new. Overhead the ceiling was painted with a faded fresco of winged babies and clouds and swirling ribbons, encircled by intricately molded trim.
“I’m Trina,” the woman said as I turned in place, inspecting the odd mix of grandeur and hominess. “And you’ve already met Sean. My husband is Brandon, ignore him. Are you girls hungry?”
I glanced at Tansy, who seemed uneasy, out of place. If even I, who had been raised in a city with buildings like the Institute, felt overwhelmed, she must feel like she’d stepped into another world. And she looked positively naked without her bow at her side.
I smiled at her, trying to look reassuring, and then nodded at Trina. “Extremely,” I answered.
Trina laughed and went to the fireplace, lifting the lid of the pot suspended over the flames. The smell of something delicious and savory wafted toward us, and it was all I could do not to drool.
“I’ll just add some more water, there’ll be plenty for all of us. Come, sit.”
“Thank you,” I said awkwardly as Tansy and I made for the fireplace, beginning to strip off our outer layers. My nose and my fingertips began to burn and itch as they thawed in the warmth of the room. I kept my pack close so that Nix could stay near me. I could hear nothing and knew it was probably on the verge of hibernation, doing its best to stay silent.
As I looked around the room, something shadowy darted from right to left. All I could see was a blur of feet under the screen. I tensed, staring. While I watched, a pair of black eyes appeared around the edge of one of the screens, gleaming.
Trina noticed my sudden shift and smiled. “Relax. That’s just Molly. Don’t mind her, she’s shy.”
There was a faint squeal of protest and a giggle, and the dark eyes vanished again.
Dinner was a stew made of grains and winter vegetables. I was worried about there being meat in it, but Trina assured me that meat was a rare commodity in the city and that they only ate it when they got lucky—and even then, most people didn’t have much of a taste for it. Most of their food came from farms outside the city limits, tended by the whole community. When the harvest was good they all ate like kings all winter, and when it was sparse, they all scraped by somehow together.
Afterward Trina made a weak but fragrant tea out of dried flowers, and we sat by the fire, sipping it. Even Molly emerged for this, bare feet tucked up under her skirt and huge round eyes always watching me and Tansy. She looked no more than four or five years old.
“How many of you are there?” I asked, thinking of row upon row of buildings with shutters that closed as we passed.
“Only about two hundred of us now,” Trina replied.
“And fewer every week,” Brandon added grimly.
Tansy looked up from her tea. “Fewer? Why?”
Brandon leaned back in his chair with a creak. The fabric was worn and faded, and it sagged in the middle where he sat. He shook his head, setting his mug off to one side and retrieving his carving. It seemed to be a rough approximation of a horse, something I’d seen only seen pictures of in my city.
Trina spoke up instead. “It’s not a safe place to be, this city. There are . . . things here. Dark things.”
Tansy and I exchanged glances, and I knew I had been right. Shadow people. I leaned forward, forgetting my tea. “Maybe Tansy and I can help. Tansy’s from a place that’s so good at fighting off the shadow people that they’re afraid to even go near it. And I—” I thought of the shadow child I’d killed and its cry as its fell. “I’ve had a little experience.”
Tansy leaned forward, eager. “She’s being modest. She survived for weeks on her own with a shadow person right on her heels the whole time. Lark’s amazing.”
I felt my cheeks redden. I hoped they’d read it as modesty, and not as shame.
“Shadow people?” Both Trina and Brandon were looking at us, curious.
“Monsters that eat people,” Tansy supplied. “We always just used the word
They exchanged glances, and Trina nodded slowly. “Maybe. It’s hard to know exactly what they are. They only come at night, when the Star fades. And if anyone ever sees them, they don’t live to tell the tale. They vanish forever. Gone. Taken.”
She nodded. “The Star’s how we know when they’re coming. Once the sun sets and the light from the crystal dies, it’s death to be outdoors. Sometimes they break in, though, when they’re too hungry to be turned away by locked doors.”
