Leon and I jumped to our feet. I spun, searching for the Harrower. My eyes caught details—Mom’s bright hair, Mickey standing tense and alert.

Then the demon came stalking out of the crowd toward us.

He wore his human disguise, but he was recognizable all the same. And he wasn’t neutral. There was no mistaking the flatness of his eyes, the sinister edge to his expression. It was there in the way his lips curved, the twist to his mouth that suggested nothing of warmth or humor, but of a predator hungry and eager, ready for the kill.

Mom was in motion before I could even gasp.

The Harrower saw her. He broke into a run.

The throng parted around them. The din of the spectators turned into a confusion of cries and shouts, punctuated by the burst of fireworks crackling overhead. Mickey took a step forward, but Leon’s free hand shot out and caught him by the arm.

It was over in a matter of seconds.

The Harrower leaped at Mom. His talons flashed out, dark scarlet slicing toward her, but the blow didn’t connect. Almost before I could begin to worry, her right hand caught his arm, bending it backward until it snapped and hung loose and useless. His screech, so loud it drowned out all other noise, was cut off mid-note. Mom’s left hand went for his throat. At her wrist, colors flared out, burning into the twilight around us. There was the sound of a sigh, a sudden crack. The Harrower went limp in her grasp. His skin dissolved into scales as he slid to the ground, lifeless. Where he fell, the grass seemed to hiss. An acrid odor fouled the air. For a moment, the humid July evening had the chill of deep December.

The Beneath would gather him back into it, I thought. Even now it was collecting him.

But I didn’t watch.

A hush fell around me. The cries of the onlookers dimmed and then died, like someone had pressed mute. Above me, the fireworks exploded in silence. I heard only one voice. One word.

Audrey.

My eyes skimmed over the crowd. I didn’t see her, but I knew her. Recognition raced through me, up my spine, down my skin. Her voice was clear and strong. It echoed at the edge of my hearing. It wasn’t a threat, I sensed. It was supplication. A plea repeating.

I closed my eyes, trying to close out my thoughts. But even if I hadn’t heard her, I felt her there. Near. Here. Knowing surged within me, impressions I couldn’t deflect. A girl haloed by rain. The smell of roses at a funeral.

Iris, my senses screamed. The triple knot shining on a silver chain. The gleam of a ring, too large for the thumb that wore it. The memory of her calling to me across the snowy darkness six months ago. Audrey.

Blood pounded in my ears. Iris. Iris.

I opened my eyes.

This time, I couldn’t deny it. It wasn’t a dream, and it wasn’t my imagination. It was real. It was her.

Iris had come home.

I stood in silence, searching faces.

Leon said something to me; I didn’t answer. I felt his hand in the small of my back, but the warmth of his fingers didn’t erase the shiver that crept over me. I turned slowly, moving my gaze inch by inch. The crowd was in chaos, though Mickey had already stepped in to take charge. Everyone was speaking at once, but I wasn’t interested in their words. The voice I listened for had gone quiet. I clenched my fists, watching, seeking something familiar within the strangers that surrounded me. I looked for Iris in the arch of an eyebrow, in the curve of a jaw, along angles of forehead and chin, across mouths that opened and closed. I caught pieces here and there: a wave of black hair, eyes that glittered brown and gold in the half-light. But the features were wrong—the shape of the nose, or the slant of the brow. Iris’s face did not appear.

She’d slipped away. She’d been there, I was certain. But she was gone again. Beneath.

For now. Not forever. Or even for long, I suspected. She’d come home—and I was going to have to deal with her.

Leon’s words finally reached me. “Audrey—are you okay?” he was asking. He’d wrapped both arms around me. “You’re shaking.”

I made an effort to calm myself before answering. I shrugged. “I’d sort of like to get out of here,” I said, then turned and gave him my best attempt at a smile.

Unfortunately, it took nearly half an hour before we were able to leave the park. Although the Harrower ability to cloud human senses meant that most of the spectators hadn’t quite seen what occurred—at least not enough that they could give accurate descriptions or identify particulars—there was still an uproar to be quelled. While Mickey dealt with the crowd, Mom called her boss at H&H Security, letting him know the Kin needed to do damage control.

“Will that work?” I asked, once she’d finished her call. “How are they going to explain away”—I lowered my voice—“demons?”

“Human minds tend to just fill in the blanks,” Mom said. “What they can’t understand, they simply rationalize away.”

And if one or two did find monsters in the shadowy depths of their memories, they wouldn’t be believed, I supposed.

I glanced toward Mickey, still busy handling witnesses. “I guess dating a detective comes in handy, huh?”

If Mickey was shaken by the night’s events, he didn’t show it. After his last experience with demons, I doubted he was thrilled about encountering more of them—but he managed to placate most of the spectators, and then, instead of fleeing at the first opportunity, he accompanied us back home.

“That’s one way to make a holiday memorable,” he said, once we’d moved into the living room. “I thought they didn’t like to attack so openly. I’d expect a lot more calls about demonic activity, otherwise.”

“Do you get calls about demon sightings?” I asked.

“Just the occasional crackpot raving about aliens invading.” He paused a moment, rubbing his chin. “Maybe that’s not so crazy, after all.”

“They just come from below, not from above?” I suggested. I sank onto the couch, holding one of Gram’s needlepoint pillows, while Leon took up his usual position of leaning against the wall and frowning. Mr. Alvarez called Mom to give her an update on the situation at Powderhorn Park, but after a moment or two of answering his inquiries, she got him off the phone with an impatient, “Later, Ryan.”

“The Kin are taking care of it,” she told us. She usually liked to keep non-Kin out of Guardian business, so I was a little surprised when she didn’t just shoo Mickey out the door. But I supposed that, having been Beneath, he was as involved in Kin dealings as he possibly could be.

“Is that how you normally handle this sort of thing?” Mickey asked.

“Nothing about that was normal,” Mom answered. “You’re right—Harrowers don’t attack openly. They like seclusion. They like dark spaces and easy targets, and they don’t play to an audience. Especially the weaker ones. And this one was about as weak as they come, this side of the Circle. I’m not even sure how he breached it. This attack wasn’t random. This was…something else.”

I glanced at Leon and found him watching me. When he spoke, his voice was soft. “Audrey.”

My heart thudded. I didn’t answer. He wasn’t talking to me. He was talking about me.

Mom set a hand on her hip. “What about her?”

“She was the target.”

“The demon went after Mom,” I said.

“Because she went after it,” Leon replied. “A month with almost no Harrower activity, and then two attacks in a single week. And you’re the common denominator, Audrey. You were the target.”

I bit my lip. I could argue that it was coincidence, but I knew it wasn’t. “Iris,” I said. “It was Iris.”