Matt harnessed every bit of courage he was equipped with and hit the call button. He'd been pacing the front porch of the Watch for a long while, tapping that emergency carton of cigarettes against the railing of the veranda. It had been a sweltering summer since they'd arrived in California, but almost as if the sun too knew Quentin was dying, it drained out into gray skies and humid rain.

Jessy answered after the third ring. She had the kinda voice that changed pitch depending on her mood. When she'd just woken up, it was a low, creamy sound that made Matt remember why he'd pursued her in the first place. But when she was wide awake and hard at work with her horses, Jessy always talked fast, with a pitch that made Matt's ears itch.

Today, it was the latter.

"Matthew!' she chirped, and he brought the phone away from his ear—both to escape the shrill needles in her voice, and to keep Jess from hearing the filter hiss on the cigarette he nipped away at.

"Hey. Things've been... Anyway, sorry about not texting back. Lots goin' on."

"I was getting worried," said Jessy. "About called your dad."

I know, Matt wanted to say. That was really the only reason he'd called—to keep her from tipping off his dad. The last thing Matt needed was the old man breathing down his neck. It was an awful thought, but shit if it wasn't true; he'd called Jessy because he had no other option.

"How's work been?" he asked. It felt awkward, dry on his tongue to ask these things. Jessy was good at conversation, but Matt had never been that kind of guy. If he were to drop the call so soon though, she'd definitely know something was up.

"Not bad," Jessy said. "Finally got Irish used to the saddle. Can't wait to take him out and try ridin' him. He's got a good gait on him, loves to follow folks around." But by the time Matt knew he'd made a mistake by asking, it was too late. Jessy could talk about her horses for a lifetime.

She went on about horse matters and he let her. Something about working on Old Irish's canter and cleaning up the paddock for him—whatever the hell a paddock was.

Well into the heart of her enthusiastic chatter, the front door to the watch swung open. Matt moved out of the way for whoever might be passing by, mid-drag through his cigarette when it was swiped from his mouth.

Bailey hardly looked himself in a baggy jacket—the denim bomber he wore shredded up the back, and not with fashionable intent. It looked like it'd been taken into the jaws of a gator, a chunk of it snapped right off the spine. His hair was a wild thing in the wind—black smoke, undulating darkness. Matt noticed before how easily it lifted up in the faintest breeze, but in true wind like this, it was a dramatic kind of billow. Like he was standing on the edge of a seaside bluff. Falling through space. Defying gravity.

It was just one of the various things about Bailey that didn't make sense. And as Matt watched him tap off the ashes from his cigarette and take a drag for himself, he pulled the phone from his face, distant enough that Jessy couldn't hear when he asked, "The hell are you doing?"

Bailey didn't look his way—he gazed out at the lining of the trees and gave his shoulders an honest shrug.

Jessy's voice still bled out through the distant speaker. Halfway through a story Matt had heard before about the last horse she'd had who died of colic.

"Thought you couldn't smoke those without getting sick," Matt muttered, minding Jessy's rambling voice just enough to hear his name if she was to call it.

"We can't," Bailey said, but he took in another deep lungful and let the smoke escape through the relaxed curve of his mouth.

"Well shit. Stop before you throw up everywhere."

When Bailey said nothing, Matt reached out to take the cigarette back. But it was when Bailey returned it willingly to his hand that he knew something was off. Bailey didn't make sense—not a bit of it. But the kid loved Quen, right? Even if he didn't want to, even if he hated that he did.

It was a strange revelation that Matt had come to. The occurrence that maybe Bailey was just as human as he was wolf.

The front door opened a second time, and Imani snapped a finger at them both. "Put that out," she said. "Come inside. Lisa's made us all dinner."

Lisa was a small part of the reason why Matt had escaped outside to call Jess in the first place. She'd arrived around noon, and the woman hadn't sat down for more than five minutes since. She spent an hour tending to Quentin, but it seemed like whatever wild emotions were crashing through Mrs. Sigvard shown in a variation of overbearing motherly instincts. She'd been bounding from person to person with tea and comforting herbal capsules. And if Matt had to hear one more worried sigh come from that woman, he was going to lose his wits.

He tapped out his cigarette and said his goodbyes to Jessy, and by the time he'd stepped inside, each seat at the table had been filled—a heaping pile of spaghetti in the center, with baskets of bread and tossed salad. There were too many wolves in this place for one meal, so many of the sentinels took to lounging in the living room, some of them disappearing upstairs with no interest in the meal.

Lisa gestured him over in a hurry to a stool she'd pulled aside.

She was the only one not seated, and she buzzed about restlessly, aligning all of the plates and utensils until they were in perfect order. Then she tucked her mussy hair behind her ear and reached out for a plate.

"I should take some to Quentin."

"Please," Imani said, blocking her reach toward the center of the table. "He's resting."

Slowly, Mrs. Sigvard set the plate aside. "Right," she said, tucking that same strand behind her ear again. "Of course."

The table went quiet. The air felt heavy, and the only clatter came from the ice cubes in Leo's drink as he tossed back a bit of scotch.

Lisa wiped her hands down the front of her shirt and put on a smile. "Eat, everyone. Eat."

But it seemed, like Matt, no one felt much like eating. So Izzy stood in an effort to lighten the mood and served each plate with a heaping spoonful of spaghetti. And as she set one in front of Matt, he grazed over all of the faces at the table. Alex, playing with the food he had no appetite for. Jaylin, looking like he might vomit if he were to even consider eating. Tisper, working down her third glass of wine, and Sadie, thanking Lisa for the meal—though she probably wouldn't eat an honest bite of it either.

It was too much. Matt liked Quentin—he really did like the guy. But dammit, this was too much.

"Jesus Christ," he said and every face at the table startled to his voice—aside from Elizaveta, maybe, who rarely reacted to anything. "Starving yourself ain't gonna make him better," Matt said.

No one argued to that—not even Jaylin had a word to say. In the end, the only one who didn't have a bite of the food in front of them was Matt.

When they were finished, plates were collected by a residential sentinel, who hurried off to the sink with piles of silverware and half-eaten food. And the table went quiet again—everyone working down their drinks, minding their own thoughts. Even Bailey stuck around—hunched over on a stool too tall for the table.

"What if we take him to a hospital?" Alex presented out of the silence.

Imani stirred her wine by the stem. "They wouldn't know what to do with him."

"Then we find Andre," said Alex. "We get him to tell us what he used so we can fix this."

"If we knew where Andre was, he'd be dead," Bailey grunted.

"He'd be more than dead." Leo slammed his empty glass down on the table. "We'd be nibblin' the meat from his bones."

Though Matt hadn't eaten, he felt queasy at the thought.

"Could it be a bane?" Jaylin asked, his voice a meek thing compared to Leo's thunderous inflection.

"It would have shown in the tests," said Imani.

"Let me see one," Bailey said, still hunched forward with his elbows on his knees. "One of the bullets."

To Matt's surprise, Imani reached into her pocket and flicked a sheen of silver into the air. It was only a glisten—a single glittering star, shooting across the dining room. Then Bailey had it in his hand.

Sometimes Matt forgot that these people could catch flies out of the air with a pair of chopsticks if they really wanted to.

Bailey turned the bullet over between his fingers, and the room was quiet as he brought the metal close to his face. "Blood," he said.

Tisper tapped her nail against her wineglass, her words gone a bit cursive as she said, "Uh, yeah. It came out of his body, remember?"

"Nah," Bailey said. "Not Quen's."

"Not Quen's?" Izzy asked.

"Perhaps blood is old," pondered Elizaveta. "Bullets used before."

Lisa was busying herself with her napkin—folding the thing in fourths, unfolding, then folding again. But after a moment of thought, she paused. "No. Andre's not the kind of man with the patience to extract bullets from a dead body."

"So what?" Matt asked. "They were covered in some other guy's blood before they went into Bronx?"

Suddenly, Imani shot from her chair—her face hard, chiseled with resolve. She held a hand out and Bailey flicked the bullet back toward her like a coin. She snatched it from the air, and in a few paces she was gone from the room, not an explanation. Not so much as a word.

She'd realized something and left them all to agonize over the silence.

After dinner, Matt stalked his way upstairs to pack his things into his bag. But he hadn't expected the sight of Alex—curled there on his own bed, hands over his head, face in his knees. He was covering his ears, clamping his hands over them tight and whispering things beneath his breath. The moment Matt touched his shoulder, he jolted.

Matt yanked his hand away and studied the wide gray gaze Alex gave him. "What's wrong with you?" Matt asked.

Alex shook his head and pushed his hands up his face.

"I did too much," he said. "I did too much. I wanted to hear Imani—I wanted to know what she realized at dinner. But they won't stop now. Jesus, they won't stop."

"What do you mean they?"

"Voices," said Alex. "Too many. Too many voices."

"So do that thing you do to turn them off," Matt said. But Alex gave his head another one-too-many shakes.

"I can't. I can't, it won't."

"Should I go get your mom?" Matt asked, but Alex's head shook and shook and shook.

Then suddenly he rose to his feet. "Hit me."

Matt edged backward an uneasy step. "What?"

"Hit me," said Alex. "Knock me out. Please—anything."

"I'm not going to hit you," Matt said.

"Hit me."

"I'm not going to hit you," Matt repeated.

Alex moved forward, gave Matt a good shove backward. "Hit me," he said again.

And in that moment, Matt panicked. He swung his fist, immediate pain on contact. He clutched at his aching knuckles and Alex reeled backward onto his bed, rolling in agony and cupping his nose—but still very much conscious.

"It was supposed to knock me out!"

"I'm sorry!" Matt screeched back at him. "I'm not a fighter!"

When Matt caught the blood leaking from between Alex's fingers, his panic flurried. And in the middle of the chaos, a soft voice came from the doorway.

"I thought I smelled blood." Yui hesitated there at the threshold for a few heartbeats, then she let herself in. It was like she was trying to decide just what was more important; helping the wounded or waiting for permission to enter. She hurried to Alex's bedside, yanking fistfuls of tissue from the box on his nightstand. And Alex yelped as she shoved his head back, tissues clamped around his bleeding nose.

She had soft eyes, Yui. But they went sharp when they turned on Matt. "Why did you hit him?"

Matt splayed his hands in the air. "I didn't—he asked me to!"

"Either you didn't or you did."

Then a second set of footsteps were hurrying into the room, and a third. Tisper, who stood there in her baggy sweatshirt, gaping at the situations. And Sadie, a slight shade of green at the sight of so much blood.

"Jesus!" Tisper said. "Matt what did you do?"

"I didn't do anything!"

"He hit him," Yui clarified.

"Why'd you do that?" Sadie asked.

Matt sunk down at the edge of his bed, utterly defeated. The pain of Alex's face still pulsed in his knuckles, but when Yui had pulled the bundle of tissues away, his nose had stopped bleeding. And Alex was half-way sitting up, looking at the were-girl like some kind of angelic anomaly, feathered down from the heavens.

"Are you okay?" Yui asked.

Alex nodded, that look of his all soft and glazed over. A googly-eyed kinda wonder that made Matt want to bang his head on the wall.

Fuck all if he got a girl out of this situation.

"Hurry the hell up and tell them I didn't want to hit you," Matt said.

"I asked him to," Alex clarified after a second of silent stammering. "It's okay."

Sadie watched her friend, her delicate fingers twisting through one another in that restless kinda worry. "Why, Alex?"

"Sometimes when I listen in too much, I can't make the thoughts stop," Alex said. "There were so many voices and..."

"Did it stop?" Matt asked.

Alex's eyes hesitated on Yui. "Yeah," he said to Matt. "But you should probably have someone teach you how to throw a punch."

Matt was going to retaliate, but the bedroom door shut and Jaylin stood there, face puffy and hair mostly flattened on one side. "I smell blood," he said, his words slinging with sleep. "Matt what did you do?"

"Jesus Christ," groaned Matt. "Can y'all get the hell out of my room so I can just pack my shit?"

But Tisper, being Tisper, wandered further in and clamored onto the foot of Matt's bed. It made him want to edge away a bit. The last time they sat on the same bed, he'd nearly ruined them.

"That's right," Tisper said, tracing the quilts with a sigh. "We're supposed to leave tonight, huh?"

"Yeah. They're calling a cab for us soon," Sadie said.

"I'm not leaving." Matt didn't have to look to know it was Jaylin that said it. In all honesty, Matt never expected him to give up and go home. Not yet.

"Well, if Jaylin's not going, I'm not going," Tisper said.

"Mom's here," said Alex, wiping the excess blood from his face. "I was just going to stay until she wanted to leave."

"If you guys are staying, then I'm staying," declared Sadie.

Matt thought about his dad. About all of the training he still had to prepare for. About Jessy and work and his life. His normal life.

And then Matt thought about the hanging man, and what Sadie had told him.

"You're here to give something, Matt. That's a good thing, right?

"Are you going to stay, Matt?" Tisper locked an arm around his bicep, leaned her head against his shoulder. It'd been a long time since she'd pulled this on him—that old fashioned, kitten-bunt of hers. Tisper Tatem's most effective tactic to getting everything she ever wanted.

Matt gave a deep, deep sigh.