Inked

demon?”
    Zee sighed, resting his chin upon my knee. Hair spikes flexed, and his red eyes narrowed with memory as his claws gently tapped the tile floor. “Almost.”
    “Almost. What does that mean?”
    “Means almost .” Zee scrunched up his face. “Blood never lies, Maxine.”
    I gave him a long look, suspicions and theories rumbling through my head. But before I could ask, Dek lifted his head and froze. All the boys did, staring at the door.
    I was up in moments, out of the bathroom, running down the hall. Grant and Winifred were still seated in the living room, talking softly, but they stopped when they saw me. Grant did not need to hear my warning. He braced himself on his cane and rose in one smooth movement, knuckles white around the carved oak handle.
    “Winifred,” he rumbled quietly, still staring into my eyes. “You need to come with us now.”
    The old woman paled. No arguments, though. She stood, swaying, and Grant steadied her with his free hand. I moved ahead of them, Dek and Mal settling heavily in my hair. Red eyes winked at me from the shadows of the long hall. I listened hard, heard nothing.
    The door loomed. Grant and Winifred lingered behind me. I held out my hand, gesturing for them to wait as I crept forward. From the shadows of the closet, Zee whispered, “Clear.”
    And it was, when I opened the door. Nothing there.
    We left the apartment without incident, and took the elevator down to the first floor. Winifred watched me the entire time, with such intensity my skin crawled. So many stories in her eyes, so much she knew that had not been spoken. I hated secrets. I hated the mysteries in the past that no one, even if they tried, would ever be able to explain. To understand something you had to live it—or live something so close that the empathy was second hand. What this woman had gone through—the events chasing her now—was beyond me. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try.
    As the elevator doors opened I said, “You have ten seconds to tell me why you’re being hunted. No riddles. I want answers.”
    “We were children,” Winifred said tightly, still evading my question. “We didn’t know what we were doing.”
    I noticed she clenched that tightly folded square of linen in her hands, a hint of human leather peeking out from beneath the edge of cloth. I stuck my foot in the elevator door, holding it open. “Right. Because taking that from a dead woman is morally ambiguous . Try another one, Ms. Cohen.”
    Winifred gave me a haunted look. “She wasn’t dead when we took it.”
    And then, almost at a run, she rushed past me into the lobby. Grant began to follow, and stumbled. I grabbed his elbow, clinging tight, feeling as though he was holding me up just as much as I was holding him. I stared at the old woman’s rounded shoulders and whispered, “What is this?”
    “Something worth killing over,” he replied, voice strained. “She wouldn’t say much to me, but whatever happened when she was a child left a black stain in her aura. Almost like a…handprint. I saw something similar in Ernie, but I didn’t think much of it at the time. He was dying. He might have shot someone. Any of that would cause a shadow.”
    “I don’t believe in coincidences,” I muttered, and let go of him to hurry after Winifred, who had stopped by the glass entrance and was looking back at us with those old dark eyes. We were alone. No one around to hear more confessions. I reached for the old woman, intending comfort, strength—something, anything, that would reassure her that it was safe to tell me the truth.
    Before I could reach her, the glass in the door shattered. Winifred staggered into my arms, collapsing against me. I gasped, stunned, falling down with her—and my fingers touched wet heat. Came away red. She had been shot in the back.
    A roar filled my ears, deafening and cold. Grant began talking into his cell phone. I hardly heard him. Winifred was still breathing. I slid out from under her, trying to keep my hand on her wound. Pressing down with all my strength.
    Save them .
    Blood seeped past my fingers. Winifred’s breathing was rough, little more than a strangled hiss—but except for that and the quiet persistence of Grant’s voice, silence seemed to press around us. Such terrible silence, as though what little sounds we were making meant nothing to the crush of empty air surrounding our bodies.
    A strong hand covered mine. Grant whispered, “Go. Find who