I know it’s hard to believe, but not everything in this world is about you.

Why had he said that?

I thought you were better than this.

What had he done?

Not with a bang but a whimper.

A question.

Who are you?

Whoever you are . . .

I’m going to figure it out.

He tore off the iron pendant and lobbed it at the wall. It hit hard enough to dent the plaster before rolling across the floor. August put his head in his hands.

Who are you?

Who are you?

Who are you?

There was a knock on his door, and his head snapped up. Leo was standing there, filling the frame. “Get your coat,” he said. “We’re going out.”

August glanced at the window and was shocked to see the sun had gone down.

“Where?” he asked.

Leo held up a piece of paper. “Where do you think?”

August scrubbed his eyes. “I’m not hungry.”

“I don’t care. Phillip’s in critical and Harris is out of commission, so tonight you’re with me.”

He didn’t know what he’d done to deserve his brother’s attention, but he didn’t want it, not now, not like this. Leo had a reputation when it came to hunting.

“Everyone knows your face,” said August, scrambling. “If I go with you—”

“They’ll assume you’re a subordinate. Now get up.”

August swallowed and got to his feet. He reached for his violin case, but Leo stopped him. “Leave it.”

August blinked. “I don’t under—”

“You won’t need it tonight.”

He hesitated. His brother didn’t have any of his instruments, either. “Leo . . .”

“Come,” ordered his brother.

August’s hand slid from the violin case. As he trailed Leo through the apartment, he cast around, hoping to catch sight of Henry or Emily, a lifeline, someone to stop them. But his parents were nowhere to be found and Ilsa’s door was shut.

He didn’t ask where they were going. Away from the Seam and the city center, that much was obvious, into the grid, a tangle of darkened streets, broken buildings never salvaged. A place for addicts and ex-criminals looking to hide from FTF and Sunai alike.

“You’re quiet,” said his brother as they moved down the street. “What are you thinking about?”

August hated when Leo phrased questions that way, leaving little room for evasion. His head was a mess, and the last person he wanted near it was his older brother, but the answer still drifted to his lips. “Kate Harker.”

“What about her?”

A harder question to answer, because he wasn’t sure. Everything had been going fine. And then something had tipped, the balance had faltered, fallen. Why did everyone have to ruin the quiet by asking questions? The truth was a disastrous thing.

“August,” pressed Leo.

“She knows I’m keeping a secret.”

Leo glanced back. “But she doesn’t know what it is?”

August fidgeted. “Not yet.”

“Good,” he said, his voice infuriatingly calm.

“How is that good?”

“Everyone has secrets. It’s normal.”

“None of my secrets are normal, Leo.” He shoved his hands in his coat. “I think I should pull out of Colton.”

“No.”

“But—”

Leo stopped. “If you suddenly pull out of school, they’ll figure out why. Your identity will be forfeit. I’m not willing to trade the possibility of trouble for the certainty of it.”

“She’s not going to stop digging,” said August.

Leo started walking again. “If she learns the truth, you’ll know. She’ll tell you herself. Until then, you stay in school.”

“And if she figures it out? Then what?”

“Then we deal with it.”

The way he said it made August nervous. “She’s an innocent.”

Leo shot him a black-eyed look. “No,” he said, “she’s a Harker.”

Kate didn’t turn the music on when she got home.

For once she didn’t want to drown out her thoughts. She needed them all, loud and clear. She went straight to her room and locked the door. Set the phone facedown, pulled the tablet from her bag, and booted the updrive.

Sunai, Sunai, eyes like coal.

The whole ride home her mind had spun over what little she knew about the third breed of monster.

What little anyone knew.

Sunai—the word alone seemed to rile the other creatures and annoy her father. But there was more to it than that. The Sunai were rare—much rarer than the Corsai or Malchai—but they still made Harker nervous. It had to be because of the catalysts. The Corsai seemed to come from violent, but nonlethal acts, and the Malchai stemmed from murders, but the Sunai, it was believed, came from the darkest crimes of all: bombings, shootings, massacres, events that claimed not only one life, but many. All that pain and death coalescing into something truly terrible; if a monster’s catalyst informed its nature, then the Sunai were the worst things to go bump in the night.

It didn’t help that South City probably fed the rumor mill itself. Some said Flynn kept the Sunai like rabid dogs. Others said he treated them as family. Others still claimed the monsters were buried in the ranks of the FTF. Another, more frustrating, theory held that they could change their faces. Control minds. Make people forget they’d met them . . . if those people ever lived to tell.