WILLIAM TROTTED THROUGH THE WOOD. THE raccoon had turned out to be female and in possession of six kits. How the hell he missed the female scent, he would never know. Getting rusty in the Edge. His senses weren’t quite as sharp here.
He had to let them be. You didn’t hunt a female with a litter—that was how species went extinct. He’d caught a nice juicy rabbit instead. William licked his lips. Mmm, good. He would just have to figure out how to weigh down the lid on the trash can, so she couldn’t get into his garbage again. Maybe one of his dumbbells would do the job . . .
He caught a glimpse of his house through the trees. A scent floated to him: spicy, reminiscent of cinnamon mixed with a dash of cumin and ginger.
His hackles rose. William went to ground.
This scent didn’t belong in this world outside of a bakery. It was the scent of a human from beyond the Edge’s boundary, with shreds of the Weird’s magic still clinging to them.
Trouble.
He lay in the gloom between the roots and listened. Insects chirping. Squirrels in the tree to the left settling down for the night. A woodpecker, hammering in the distance to get the last grub of the day.
Nothing but ordinary Wood noises.
From his hiding spot, he could see the entire porch. Nothing stirred.
The rays of the setting sun slid across the boards. A tiny star winked at him.
Careful. Careful.
William edged forward, a dark soft-pawed ghost in the evening twilight. One yard. Two. Three.
The star winked again. A rectangular wooden box sat on the porch steps, secured with a simple metal latch. The latch shone with reflected sunlight. Someone had left him a present.
William circled the house twice, straining to sample the scents, listening to small noises. He found the intruder’s trail leading into the woods. Whoever delivered the box had come and gone.
He approached the house and looked at the box. Eighteen inches long, a foot wide, three inches tall. Simple unmarked wood. Looked like pine. Smelled like it, too. Nothing ticked inside.
His action figures were as he’d left them. His letter, pinned down by the heavy Hulk, remained undisturbed. The spicy scent didn’t reach it—it was untouched.
William pulled the door open with his paw and slipped inside. He would need fingers for this.
The pain screamed through him, shooting through the marrow in his bones. He growled low, shook, convulsing, and shed his fur. Twenty seconds of agony and William crouched on human legs in the living room. Ten more seconds and he stepped out on the porch, fully dressed and armed with a long knife. Just because it didn’t tick didn’t mean it wouldn’t blow up when he opened it. He’d seen bombs that were the size of a drink coaster. They made no noise, gave off no scent, and took your leg off if you stepped on them.
He used the knife to pry the latch open and flip the lid off the box. A stack of paper. Hmm.
William plucked the first sheet off the top of the stack, flipped it over, and froze.
A small mangled body lay in the green grass. The boy was barely ten years old, his skin stark white against the smudges of crimson that spread from a gaping wound in his stomach. Someone had disemboweled him with a single vicious thrust and the kid had bled out. So much blood. It was everywhere, on his skinny stomach, on his hands, on the yellow dandelions around him . . . Bright, shockingly red, so vivid, it didn’t seem real. The boy’s narrow face stared at the sky with milky dead eyes, his mouth opened in a horrified O, short reddish hair sticking up . . .
It’s Jack. The thought punched William in the stomach. His heart hammered. He peered closely at the face. No, not Jack. A cat like Jack—slit pupils—but Jack had brown hair. The boy was the right age, the right build, but he was not Jack.
William exhaled slowly, trying to get a handle on his rage. He knew this. He’d seen this boy’s corpse before, but not in a picture. He’d seen the body in the flesh, smelled the blood and the raw, unforgettable stench of the gut wound. His memory conjured it for him now, and he almost choked on the bitter phantom patina coating his tongue.
The next picture showed a little girl, tiny, ten at most. Her hair was a mess of blood and brains—her skull had been crushed.
More pictures came, eight in all. Eight murdered children lay on his porch. Eight changeling children, taken out of the prison known as Hawk’s Academy for an outdoor exercise. Fifteen years ago, he was just like them, locked in the sterile rooms of Hawk’s, the place where the country of Adrianglia exiled its changelings to turn them into “productive members of society.” The studies were taxing, the exercise exhausting, the rules rigid, and freedom was in short supply. Only outdoors, the children truly lived. These eight must’ve been giddy to be let out into the sunshine and grass.
They had been led to the border between Adrianglia and the Dukedom of Louisiana, its chief rival. The border was always hot, with Louisianans and Adrianglians crossing back and forth. The instructors allowed the kids to track a group of border jumpers from Louisiana as a routine exercise. He had done it before a few times, when he was small.
William stared at the pictures. It should have been an easy track-and-find. But this time, the Louisianans turned out to be no ordinary border jumpers. They were agents of Louisiana’s Hand: spies, twisted by magic and powerful enough to take out a squad of trained soldiers. They led the children on a merry chase, toying with them for a few miles, and then they let themselves be caught.
When the kids failed to report in, a unit of Legionnaires was dispatched to find them. William was the tracker for that squad. He was the one who found the children dead in the meadow. It was a massacre, brutal and cold. The kids hadn’t gone quickly. They’d hurt before they died.
The last piece of paper waited in the box. William picked it up. He knew what it would say. The words were burned into his memory.
He read it all the same.
Dumb animals offer little sport. Louisiana kills changelings at birth—it’s far more efficient than wasting time and resources to try to turn them into people. I recommend you look into this practice, because next time I’ll expect proper compensation for getting rid of your little freaks.