It was still one of the best ideas I’d had so far, and from the thoughtful look on Uncle Mike’s face, he thought so, too. He brought his plate and sat down next to me. “It would be a good way to find out what the Covenant was up to, if we could find a way to sneak some mice into their headquarters,” he said. “Didn’t the mice come before your family left the Covenant, though?”

“Yeah, but they came with my great-great-grandmother, Enid, when she married into the Healys,” I said. “Margaret might not know about the mice.”

“There’s an awful lot of wiggle room in ‘might.’”

I didn’t have an answer for that. I was saved from needing one when Istas appeared in the kitchen doorway. “I smell lasagna,” she announced. “You will share.”

“Hi, sweetie.” Ryan waved his fork in her direction. “Food’s on the stove. Did you have a good time with the mice?”

“Yes.” Istas started toward the lasagna, detouring only long enough to kiss Ryan on the cheek. “They are very pleasant company.”

“You have rat breath,” said Ryan, wrinkling his nose.

Istas looked pleased. “Yes,” she said. “I know.” She dished half the remaining lasagna onto a plate, bringing it with her as she moved to sit down next to Ryan. “Have we determined the best method for driving the Covenant from our territory yet? Will carnage be involved?”

“We’re still working on that,” I said. “We have numbers . . . now. But if this whole team disappears without a trace, the odds are good that the Covenant will send more people to find out what happened to them. Maybe we can disappear a second team, but can we manage a third? Or a fourth? Eventually, we’re going to wind up being the ones who don’t have the numbers in our favor.” And then the purge of New York would be able to begin in earnest.

“So what do we do right now?”

“Right now? I guess we watch and see what theydo. Once we know what we’re up against, we’ll be able to counter it.” I jammed my fork into my lasagna. “I hate waiting.”

“Doesn’t everyone?” asked Mike.

I sighed heavily. “That’s what I’m afraid of. We’re waiting because we want to minimize the damage. Well, the Covenant doesn’t have anything like that to worry about. They can move whenever they want to, and we have no way of seeing them coming.”

Ryan took care of the dishes while Uncle Mike walked around the slaughterhouse, double-checking my traps and doubtless setting a few of his own. We’d all need to walk carefully from now on. That was good. It would keep us on our toes. As for me, I collected all the knives I’d thrown at the various dart boards—it was a surprisingly high number, given how little time I’d had, but I guess stress makes me stabby—and returned to the small office that was going to be my bedroom for the foreseeable future. My “bed” was an air mattress on the floor with a quilt I didn’t recognize and a pile of pillows that I did. I threw myself onto it with more force than was necessarily safe and rolled onto my back, staring at the ceiling.

My lease was almost up. The Sasquatch whose apartment I’d been using was going to be home soon, which was supposed to be my cue to go back to Oregon (assuming she came back at all, after the message I’d left for her). Mom and Dad would understand that I couldn’t leave while the threat of a purge was hanging over the city—we’ve always done fieldwork in emergency situations, and the Covenant was the next best thing to a natural disaster as far as most cryptids were concerned. But what was going to happen after that?

I came to Manhattan to prove that I could make it as a professional ballroom dancer. Only things didn’t exactly work out that way. I hadn’t managed to win a single major competition; the times I’d placed, it had always been local, and the prize money I’d received barely paid for the cost of my registration. It didn’t touch my costumes, or the hours of studio time I had to beg, borrow, and steal whenever I could. Most people in my tier of the profession supplemented their income teaching classes, but I couldn’t even do that anymore. Trying to be a cocktail waitress anda cryptozoologist took up too much time. Quit bussing tables and I couldn’t afford to eat. Quit taking care of cryptids . . .

If I quit taking care of cryptids, I wouldn’t even know who I was anymore. I pulled a throwing knife out of my shirt without thinking about it, flicking it toward the ceiling. It flew in a satisfyingly straight line, embedding itself in the wood with a soft “thunk” sound. The fact that throwing knives into the air while I was on top of an air mattress was maybe not the smartest idea barely even crossed my mind. I was too busy thinking.

I came to New York to dance. The cryptozoology was supposed to be a sideline, something I did to keep my parents happy while I proved that I could have a career if I wanted one. But somewhere along the way, the proportions got reversed. I started spending more and more time with the cryptids who needed my help, and less and less time fighting my way through the cutthroat world of ballroom dance. My partner, James, had to chase me down for rehearsals. If it weren’t for the fact that he was cutting back his own availability while he prepared for chupacabra mating season, he would probably have talked to me about seeing other partners by now. As it was, I was braced for that conversation.

(James was decidedly gay, and extremely devoted to his husband, Dennis, who put up with more than any human married to a goat-sucker could reasonably be expected to endure. But sexual preference didn’t matter during mating season. Chupacabra never raise their young in the presence of both biological parents—something about it increasing the odds of the pups being eaten before they get old enough to become intelligent. The ways of chupacabra biology are strange, and not for me to understand. Yet.)

I was about to lose my apartment, my partner, and my chance at ever having the kind of career I dreamed of when I was a kid. As a professional dancer, I was on the cusp of failing. At the same time, the Covenant of St. George was in my city, I’d been forced to go into hiding to avoid having them find me, and I had no game plan for getting rid of them. As a cryptozoologist, I wasn’t doing much better. All I could really swear to doing correctly was being a member of my family: too pigheaded to know when I was beat, and too contrary to admit when it was time to run away.

I sat up, tucking the knife I’d been about to throw at the ceiling back into my shirt. That was the answer I’d been looking for. It didn’t matter if my dancing career was over, or if I decided to put on a red wig and become Valerie Pryor full time. No matter what, I was a Price girl. And if there’s one thing no Price girl has ever voluntarily done, it’s back down from a fight.

I’d been living alone long enough that it was weird to need to tell people where I was going. I still tracked Mike down and made sure he knew I was heading for Sarah’s before I left the slaughterhouse. He asked when I’d be back. I barely managed to bite back the urge to tell him that I didn’t have a curfew, and stomped up the stairs to the roof.

The night air was cool and smelled like big city, that heady mix of human bodies, cooling pavement, and a thousand clubs and restaurants venting their private atmospheres into the greater ecosystem of the metropolis. A city the size of Manhattan is like a rain forest or a desert: it has its own ecology, its own secrets, and its own dangers—its own predators.

Good thing that I was one of them.

It didn’t take long for me to reach Sarah’s hotel, even with the necessary detours and slowdowns created by the variable architecture of Manhattan. I maintained a dead run all the way, burning off the barest edge of my frustration.

The Port Hope was the lowest building on its part of the block, being only five stories high. That was useful for my purposes, especially since Sarah was staying on the top floor. I couldn’t jump straight from the roof of the high-rise next to it, so I got out a climbing hook and lowered myself one floor at a time, pausing on the narrow brick lips that marked the base of each new floor to adjust my rope. Once I had a good grip, I’d start down again.