The fury I felt toward Claudia wasn't just about her intrusion; it was the audacity of it. I had warned her. I had drawn a line in the dust of this strange school, and she had stepped over it without a second thought.
When she finally entered our room, I didn't look up. I let the silence sit between us, heavy and cold, until she sank to her knees in front of me.
"I am sorry, Harriet," she whispered, her voice devoid of its usual spark. "I didn't mean for it to be creepy. I just... I wanted to see them. Your friends. I wanted to observe."
"And you think 'observing' from the shadows isn't creepy?" I asked, finally meeting her eyes.
She pleaded until the edges of my anger began to fray. I wasn't a creature of spite, though Oak haven was quickly teaching me how to be one. Eventually, I sighed, a silent signal of her forgiveness. I slumped back onto my bed, the exhaustion of the day finally catching up to me.
My thoughts drifted to my mother. I realized with a pang of guilt that I hadn't sent word since my arrival. I reached for a quill and a scrap of parchment, intending to compose a letter. I stared at the blank space, the nib of the pen hovering. How much could I tell her? Did I mention the boy found dead in the woods? The way Alistair looked at me? Or did I simply tell her I was "doing fine," a lie wrapped in elegant script?
The weight of the unsaid words became too heavy. I left the letter unfinished on the mattress and let sleep claim me.
I woke to a sound that shouldn't have been there.
The room was bathed in the bruised purple of late night. I glanced at Claudia's bed—empty. A cold knot tightened in my stomach. Where has she gone now?
A sudden, sharp crash echoed from the bathroom. Panic, sharp and visceral, surged through me.
"Claudia?" I called out. Silence.
I crept toward the door, my fingers curling around the heaviest book I could find. I raised it, my heart hammering against my ribs, prepared to strike at whatever horror emerged from the dark. The door flew open. I swung with everything I had.
"It's me! Harriet, it's me!"
I froze, the book inches from Claudia's head. But it barely looked like her. She was clad in skintight black fabric, her striking white hair stained a murky, greenish-black. Her face was painted to match, turning her features into a hollow mask.
"What is this, Claudia?" I breathed, my heart still racing. "You look... deceased."
"It's the dress code," she said, checking her reflection. "For where I'm going."
"Do you take me for a fool? You look like a ghost."
She sighed, the mask of mystery slipping. "Fine. I'm going to Gallows Row. I'm going to see where that boy was killed."
"Are you insane?" I hissed. "You're going to a murder scene? In the lower district? At this hour?"
"I knew you'd try to stop me," she said, heading for the window. "But since you're awake, you might as well come. Safety in numbers, right?"
I don't remember agreeing. I only remember the blur of pulling on my boots and the rhythmic clatter of carriage wheels against cobblestones.
We arrived at Gallows Row Street, and the atmosphere shifted instantly. If Oak haven was a world of polished marble and whispered restraint, this was a world of rot and survival. The air was thick with a stench that made my throat itch. Shadows moved in the alleyways—people sleeping in crates, children with hollow eyes playing in the filth.
Claudia had wiped the paint from her face, but her hair remained dark, a shadow against the dim lantern light.
"This place is a dump," she whispered. "How do they exist like this?"
I didn't answer. My eyes were fixed on a small girl huddled in a corner. She was playing with a rusted screw, her face smeared with soot. She looked at me not with curiosity, but with a terrifying, ancient kind of fear.
"Hey," I said softly, kneeling beside her. I took off my jacket—one of the fine pieces Claudia had given me—and wrapped it around her thin shoulders. I pressed the spare change from my pocket into her hand. "Keep it. For food."
"It's futile, Harriet," Claudia remarked, watching from a distance. "Without a guardian, someone will just take it from her. You're making her a target."
"I can't just leave her," I snapped.
As the words left my mouth, a chill swept over me. It wasn't the wind. It was the sensation of being watched—not by the desperate people on the street, but by something above. I looked up. High atop the church, perched on the stone cross of the sigil, was a figure. A silhouette against the moon.
"Claudia, look."
But by the time she turned, the sigil was empty.
"Look at what?"
"There was someone there. Watching us."
Claudia gave me a look that was far too clinical. "I don't see anything, Harriet. Maybe the stress is..."
"I'm not imagining it," I muttered, turning back to the girl. She reached out, her tiny fingers catching the fabric of my sleeve.
"Thank you," she whispered. It was the first time she had spoken.
"Clara!" A voice cut through the dark. A young man emerged from the shadows, his eyes a piercing, icy blue—the same blue as the girl's. He looked at me with a suspicion so sharp it felt like a physical weight.
"I was just helping," I said, standing up.
He relaxed slightly when he saw the jacket and the coins. "Thank you," he said, his voice a low rasp.
As I turned to leave, he stepped closer, leaning in until his breath brushed my ear. He whispered something—a string of words that made no sense, a language that felt like it belonged to the earth itself.
"What?" I asked, frowning.
"Nothing," he said, his expression unreadable. "Just go. Quickly."
I hurried to catch up with Claudia, but I couldn't shake the feeling. I had felt that man's presence before. Not in the streets, but in the very air of Oak haven.
************(POV SHIFT)
The boy watched them vanish into the fog.
"Where they are going is dangerous, brother," the girl said. Her voice had changed; the childish lilt was gone.
"It doesn't matter," the boy replied. "I cast a protection spell on her. She'll be fine, provided her friend doesn't lead her into a nest."
"You helped her? The 'one with no presence' actually interfered?" The girl smirked. "Is it because she saw you on the cross? No human should have been able to see you there."
"A 'mere human' indeed," he murmured. "Go home, Clara. Give the others the bread. I have work to do."
"Fine," the girl said. As she walked away, her body blurred and stretched, the "little girl" dissolving into the form of a sharp-featured teenager. "I thought I'd get to keep the 'hungry orphan' look a bit longer. It's so effective for tips."
Deep in the woods, far from the city's rot, the moon revealed a different kind of hunger.
Two massive wolves, their fur the color of winter bone but matted with fresh crimson, prowled into a clearing. One began to shift, the cracking of bone and stretching of sinew sounding like dry branches breaking. A woman emerged, naked and lethal, her beauty a sharp contrast to the gore on her skin.
She stepped into a stream, washing the blood of "newborns" from her thighs.
"Hurry, hermano," she called out to the other wolf. "We have one more sector to clear before dawn."
The second wolf shifted, a muscular man appearing in the moonlight. "I don't know why you bother washing. We aren't done yet."
"I hate the smell of them," she said, her eyes flashing red before she plunged back into the shape of the wolf.
The hunt wasn't over. Not for them, and not for the girl at Oak haven who didn't yet know she was the prey.