“So it’s not Brenna because the profit is in a successful show, not a bunch of dead dancers,” said Malena. “Shit. Brenna Kelly’s a dragon? Shit. I gotta tell my mother she was wrong when she said no one had ever been able to hide forever.”

“She didn’t hide forever,” said Pax, with a faint note of black amusement. “Verity blew her cover. Good going, Verity.”

“I do what I can,” I said. A yellow cab came gliding around the corner with Dominic in the front passenger seat. He pointed at us, clearly signaling the driver. The vehicle pulled to a stop and we all piled in.

I looked back as the cab pulled away. I couldn’t help myself. The Crier Theater loomed behind us like some vast, hulking beast, squat and hungry and obscene. My grandmother was in there somewhere, or had been, when she was lost. We had to get her back.

We had to.

The drive home was silent, save for the crackle of the radio and the occasional muttered directions from Dominic, who seemed content to be the most memorable one in the car. Our cabbie hadn’t been within range of the confusion charms, and might remember us later if anyone asked. A short redhead, a tall Latina, and a massive Pacific Islander didn’t get into cabs in this area every day. I spent the time bent over my phone, sending the new assortment of gruesome snapshots to my father. Hopefully, this would tell him more about what we were up against. If it didn’t, I didn’t know what we were going to do.

We asked to be dropped two blocks from the apartment. Better safe than sorry, especially when talking about people who were treating my colleagues like their own private hunting ground. Dominic paid the driver, and the four of us stood on the sidewalk, watching as the cab slid off into the night.

“Pax?” I said, once I was sure we were alone.

“I’ll do my best to get inside quietly. If Anders wakes up, I’ll tell him we were hung up at the theater trying to console Malena. He knows we’ve been getting close to her recently. He’ll believe it.”

“All right. If you see Lyra—”

“If you see Lyra, tell her I took Verity home with me after we left the theater; too upset to deal with the fact that we’d lost someone from my season,” interjected Malena. “Feel free to make like Mac and I were super close, instead of just people who’d danced together a time or two. Sell it as hard as you can, and we’ll be besties if that’s what it takes to make it look legit.”

“You do make the most remarkable friends,” said Dominic dryly.

Malena looked at him and snorted.

I touched Pax on the arm. “Be safe,” I said. “If anything seems out of place, come find us. Don’t be a hero.”

“I have a family at home to worry about,” said Pax. “I have no interest in being a hero.”

“See, I have family, too,” I said. “Having a family seems to be the trigger that keeps forcing people to heroism.”

“You’re a good person, Verity, but I swear, I’ll never understand humans,” said Pax. With that, he turned and walked away, heading for the apartments and leaving me alone with Dominic and Malena.

Both of them turned to look at me, Malena expectantly, Dominic with the sort of quiet patience that had seen us both through so many potentially life-ending encounters. They were good backup. Maybe not as good as my entire heavily armed family, but still . . . with these two standing beside me, there was a chance that I would come through this alive. That was more than I’d had a few weeks before.

I’d take it.

“My grandmother bought a motorcycle when she got to Southern California,” I said. “Since there’s no parking at the apartments, she’s been keeping it with a local family of ghouls who live nearby. They have a garage.”

“So?” asked Malena.

“So ghouls are like bogeymen: they prefer to live underground. They don’t here in Southern California, which is odd until you account for the earthquakes—but even then, they usually have tricks and techniques that let them build in seismically unstable areas. So why are they living in houses? Why not burrow and reinforce the walls?”

“Maybe they did, and something came and took their burrows away from them,” said Malena slowly. “Like how chupacabra used to mostly live in cactus patch burrows, until humans decided it was time to clear the land. No cactus, no convenient cover for your scrape. No convenient cover for your scrape, you may as well get a condo.”

“That is the most practical approach to industrialization I have ever heard,” said Dominic.