I don’t know how people accomplished anything in the days before email. When I logged into my account, I had three messages from Dad, one from Aunt Jane, and one from Sarah. Sarah wanted to confirm that we were on for dinner; I shot her a note saying I’d be there by eight, and warning her to stay out of dark alleys and subway tunnels. Not that Sarah’s the kind of cryptid who likes to hang around in the places monster hunters tend to frequent, but you can never be too careful.

Dad’s messages managed to be more useful and more worrisome at the same time. We had records of three confirmed Covenant “purges” in the Manhattan area, along with two in New Jersey and six more that weren’t verified but looked likely. They seemed to come through every fifty years or so, spend a summer slaughtering anything they could get their hands on, and then go home, serene in the knowledge that they were doing holy work.

I may sound prejudiced against the Covenant. That’s because I am. They’re a huge society with nigh-infinite resources and access to research materials I can only dream about. So what do they do with all that power and potential? They hunt innocent cryptids for the crime of having been born to a species that didn’t make it onto the “approved” list. There’d be hundreds of special interest groups dedicated to stomping them out if they were hunting panda bears and dolphins. Since they hunt bogeymen and basilisks, they’d probably get a medal if anyone knew that they existed.

Dad’s notes went on to say that the De Lucas were among the worst of a bad lot, since they actually bought the party line about the extermination of cryptids being the will of God. It’s hard to reason with someone who thinks he’s got a holy calling. Violence is sometimes the only answer, and I hate killing people. It’s messy, it’s inconvenient, and while body disposal is surprisingly easy when you know what you’re doing, it’s not a pleasant way to spend an evening. Apparently, most of the De Luca family had already ridden the party line to extinction, since Dad had death records for a whole stack of De Lucas, including “Christabelle and Antonio De Luca” who were survived by their only son, Dominic. Poor guy must have been raised by the Covenant. That was just going to make him more annoying.

Aunt Jane’s letter was a sort of supplement to Dad’s information. He may be the family historian, but she’s the family nosy gossip columnist—a more useful function than you might guess. It helps that my Uncle Ted’s an incubus, which gives her a direct connection to the cryptid community. She’s an honorary succubus, and she gets on all the mailing lists.

According to Aunt Jane, asking her lists “Does anyone know what’s up in New York?” resulted in a positive deluge of information, all of it pointing back to one worrisome conclusion: nobody knew what was going on, and everybody thought it was going to be big, whatever it was. Which explained why the locals weren’t evacuating. Until they knew whether or not there was a problem, they wouldn’t want to risk losing their nesting spots, or deal with cell phone cancellation fees and forwarding their mail.

I printed the messages and stuffed them into my backpack before starting for the bathroom. It was time to get ready for my second shift in twenty-four hours. At least once I got there I could have a little word with my boss about why he hadn’t been clueing me in on gossip that might pertain to my chances of survival.

Wow, all this excitement and minimum wage, plus tips. Who says you can’t make a living in New York City?

Seven

“A proper lady should be able to smile pretty, wear sequins like she means it, and kick a man’s ass nine ways from Sunday while wearing stiletto heels. If she can’t do that much, she’s not trying hard enough.”

—Francis Brown

Just arriving at Dave’s Fish and Strips, a club for discerning gentlemen

BY THE TIME I GOT TO DAVE’S I was drenched in sweat, feeling put out and abused by the universe. I don’t know how walking at street level could do more damage to my admittedly low-maintenance haircut than running across the rooftops would have, but it managed. The gel I’d used to make myself look less like a startled cockatoo melted in the hot Manhattan air. At this point, my hairstyle was best described as “half spikes, half surprised mop.”

I stomped into the dressing room, stopped, and promptly upgraded my opinion on the unfairness of the universe. Candy was sitting in front of the mirror, putting the finishing touches on her makeup. She looked as dewy-eyed and fresh as a Miss America contestant getting ready for the swimsuit competition. Even the tawdry uniform Dave forced us to wear was elevated by contact with her skin, somehow becoming raiment fit for a princess. And that’s exactly what it was, because she was a princess, cryptid royalty and, like any real princess, she didn’t need fur or jewels to let her intrinsic nobility shine through. Her flaxen hair was long, smooth, and perfect, just like her hourglass figure and fashion-model face. Nothing human should look that good. Which was a good thing, because Candy was a long way from human.

“Candice,” I greeted, heading for my locker.

Her gaze didn’t waver from her reflection as she offered a cool, “Verity,” in return. Out of all the girls working at Dave’s, Candy liked me the least.

Sadly, that made sense. My family is part of the reason she’s been reduced to cocktail waitressing—us, and the rest of the Covenant.

Dragon princesses look like curvaceous, drop-dead gorgeous human girls; as the name implies, there are no males, and their exact method of reproduction is unknown. Not, I’m ashamed to admit, due to a lack of field research. Cryptozoologists have been trying to figure out where dragon princesses come from for centuries. It’s one of our holy grails, like finding a living unicorn or, well, the Holy Grail. (People used to think dragon princesses hatched from the bodies of dead dragons. People also used to think rotting meat spontaneously generated flies, and that’s only occasionally true. It depends on the type of meat.)

Near as anyone can tell, dragon princesses evolved solely to care for dragons. They’re born craving gold and spend their lives pursuing wealth—and if they get it, they promptly use it to buy more gold. They gather in Nests, sleeping in tangled harems on beds of 24-carat loot. It’s a pretty sweet gig. There’s really just one problem with the dragon princess gig: dragons have been extinct for centuries, leaving their symbiotic pets to gather gold for nobody, and worse, leaving them stranded in the cryptid world with no natural weapons to speak of.