1. Knox

CHAPTER ONE

KNOX

The house was perfect. It was a three-story Victorian that no one seemed to go into or come out of. The lawn was immaculate, and there was a regular gardener, so it wasn’t abandoned, and I could see the expensive tchotchkes sitting on every other mahogany shelf on the whole first floor with my binoculars.

Maybe the family was on vacation, or it was a summer house, or... hell, what did I know about how rich people lived? All I knew was that it was full of expensive stuff, had no security system, and I’d been casing the place for three days and hadn’t seen a single person inside it.

It was halfassed, three days, and once upon a time, I’d have kicked my own ass for thinking that was enough.

Just, Pigeon didn’t have time for me to do this right. If I didn’t pay off her dealer by Saturday, he was threatening to become her pimp, permanently, to force her to pay him back.

It had been his plan all along, of course. Pretty teenage girl, big brother jackass enough to get himself thrown in jail, no protection from the fucking drug pushers who frequented our neighborhood.

I’d thought my own sister too smart for that bullshit, but it turns out there’s no such thing. Hell, if anything, maybe the smart ones are more inclined to do goddamned drugs. I was as smart as a fucking brick, and I’d never been so much as tempted.

So there I was, with another two days to pay off my sister’s five-figure debt, before she was dragged into that life forever.

My sister, who not so long ago had a perfect GPA and was talking about scholarships to the best colleges in the country.

So yeah. The Victorian was the answer.

It was the only answer I could see.

It had been helping other, more experienced men from the neighborhood rob houses that had landed us in this mess, but it was also the only way out. I’d fallen in with a bad crowd, because they were the only crowd around, and they’d started taking me along on jobs, teaching me, and giving me a cut when they did their work. Problem was that as low man on the roster, I was also the one who got abandoned to the cops when they showed unexpectedly, and did two years in jail.

Two years during which my sister got hooked on fucking drugs, something it had taken me almost another year back outside to realize, and by then it had been too late. Pigeon owed the scummiest scum of the earth almost twenty thousand dollars, and I had to find a way to get that much money before her whole life was ruined.

Then I had to figure out how to get her sober.

Tempting to chain her to the radiator in our tiny apartment and never let her out again. The outside world was a terrible fucking influence, and it seemed that she was sensitive to it. Poor Pidge. She was trying her best, it had just been a hard damned life, both our parents dying young and leaving her to me while I was still in prison for making the same damned mistake she’d made, just in a different way.

She should have been taken into foster care, but it had been all too easy for her to slip through the cracks. No one noticed and no one cared that she didn’t have anybody to take care of her. Ignoring it was easy, when the other option involved bothering to do something.

Well, no one noticed but fucking Mutt, the local pimp and dealer. And he, of course, had been all too willing to “help out.”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Then another. Pigeon. I was doing this for my sister. Yes, I’d promised myself when I got out that I’d never turn to robbing houses again, but there was no legal way for a man of my education and social class to make that much money in under a week, other than stealing.

There’d been no movement in the house in days, it was the dark of the moon, after midnight, and there’d be no better time to get to it. I just had to fucking do the job. One last job, and never again.

Because there had to be a way for Pidge and me to climb out of the gutter, didn’t there? I had a wild moment of fantasy about just picking up and leaving. Packing our meager bags and running across the country. To another country, even. Anywhere that my sweet little sister didn’t have a drug problem and owe more money than I’d ever seen in my life to a man who... well hell, I doubted Mutt had ever seen that much money at once either, except in someone else’s hands.

The back door lock was a cinch, and I had it picked in under a minute, not that I was timing myself... much. I’d been damned good at this. A prodigy, one of the other guys had called me. Not that he’d helped me out when I’d been caught.

The door swung open on silent hinges, and I closed it behind me.

A shiver raced down my back, and I gasped for breath. It wasn’t... adrenaline, exactly. I’d always gotten a rush out of doing this with the boys. Now, it just felt wrong. My skin crawled, and I was almost overwhelmed with dread.

Good.

This, I’d never remember with a sort of wistful sadness, wishing I could revisit it later. This was awful, as it truly was, and as it should be. Someday... someday I’d do better. I’d be better. And I’d look back and remember this moment and think, “Thank fuck I’m not there anymore.”

I tiptoed my way into the front parlor, where I’d seen tiny porcelain figurines on the shelves through the window. Not that I was planning to take those—that was a ridiculous fucking idea, and I’d like as not break them before I managed to sell them. But there’d been something else in there too. A huge floor safe, the old-fashioned kind that a man could crack into with good ears and a bit of determination. The kind of safe people kept money and jewels and other expensive things inside.

I had this wild fantasy that they’d just have stacks of bills in there, still in bank wrappers, and I’d be able to snatch just enough to pay Pidge’s debt, and fucking run. Then we’d pack our bags and leave. I didn’t know where we’d go, but anywhere that wasn’t the cesspit we’d been born into seemed a good choice. Anywhere Pidge didn’t have someone ready and happy to give her drugs till she was in debt again.

I listened to the tumblers in the safe, the way old Artie had taught me, before he’d been caught too, for the last time, and died on the inside. I’d been right, it was an easy one, the tumblers loud and clear as a bell. Less than five minutes, and the thing clicked open. I felt like a fucking champion for about ten seconds.

Then I couldn’t think of anything past the idea that some god had heard my prayers, because right there, front and center, were stacks and stacks of fresh bills. It had to be a million dollars sitting there in front of me, one twenty on top of another, all crisp and green and looking like they’d come straight from the bank.

I could have cried. Fuck, I almost did, covering my mouth with one hand and just staring for a moment.

Blinking a dozen times to get myself under fucking control, I rolled my shoulders back and nodded to myself. This was good. It was perfect. I just had to figure out how much was eighteen grand—maybe a full twenty, since fucking Mutt was bound to pull some “now you owe me interest” bullshit, liar and cheat that he was. And then get the hell out.

A dark voice in my head told me I should take more. That a stack of cash could set Pidge and me up real nice in another city, and it wasn’t like I wasn’t already stealing their money. What was another few thousand?

But no. I was here to get Pidge out of trouble, not line my pockets. This wasn’t about me or money or anything like that. I was not going back to robbing houses for a living. I was taking what I had to have, and getting the hell out.

I barely had the first stack in my hand before I heard a hiss behind me. I thought maybe it was a cat, but then light flared at the side of the room. A fireplace, flipped on as though by magic. It wasn’t a gas fireplace, I was sure—it’d had fresh logs sitting behind the grate a moment before, and not the plastic-looking fake kind.

How the hell . . .

I whipped around and found myself looking at a person. Well... maybe a person. It was sort of a woman, dressed to match the house, in a long black gown that covered every inch of her skin except her face and hands, which were paler than paper. But her visage was screwed up in rage, a snarl on her face, and teeth bared. Long, sharp canine teeth that reminded me of those schoolbooks with drawings of sabertooth tigers. Not that her teeth were bigger than her head, just... big. Too big.

Her eyes, glittering black, were trained on my hands, where I clutched a stack of money. Her money. “How dare you?”

Shit.

“Ma’am, I’m sorry, I just?—”

“Be quiet, ingrate,” she hissed, and that was when I realized the hiss that had drawn my attention had come from her, not a cat at all. She just sounded like a freaking cat. “You dare to come into my home and steal from me? And you’re not even a pretty girl I can feed to sweet Emmanuel. No, a disgusting grown man, who would feed his unnatural urges.”

Almost faster than I could follow with my eyes, she rushed at me, a black satin blur. Unfortunately for her, I’d been in prison. I was used to being jumped on the regular, and I’d learned how to fight damned well during my time inside.

As fast as she was, she was also as light as tissue paper as I shoved her away. She came at me again, fangs flashing in the low light, and my heart leapt. She was trying to fucking bite me, with teeth like tiny daggers. When she came at me again, I shoved harder, and this time, she stumbled back, losing her balance and tumbling... oh fuck. Tumbling right into the fireplace, through the flimsy metal grate and into the flames, which she’d somehow magically started.

I leapt forward, unthinking, to grab her and help her out, but the moment she touched the fire, her dress caught. She screamed like... well, like a person on fucking fire , and thrashed around. For some reason, she didn’t push away from the hearth, just... rolled in it. I tried to come forward, to help her out, but she slashed at me with suddenly clawed fingers, black and glistening and wicked, and I leapt back. I wanted to help. Hadn’t actually wanted to hurt her at all. But she wouldn’t let me help her.

Even on fire, she was shrieking something about me being ungodly, a monster from hell, and I... she had teeth like an inch long, had tried to bite me, and I was ungodly? She wasn’t wrong; I didn’t much believe in any god, but she was a literal nightmare monster.

I tried to take hold of one of her feet and pull her out of the fire, but she kicked out at me with surprising strength, screeching for me to keep my filthy hands off her. By the time I caught my breath from where her kick had knocked it out of me, she’d stopped thrashing.

I stared into the fire for a moment, mouth hanging open and eyes round. She was... dead. A woman was dead and I’d killed her. That wasn’t another few years in prison. That was forever. If I believed in a god, that was eternity.

The money. I had to—had to grab the money and go. Get out. Escape. I couldn’t have gone through all this for nothing. I had to save Pidge.

I turned back toward the safe, only to realize that there was a man standing next to me. A young man, maybe Pigeon’s age, pale as the woman had been, with white-blond hair and... red eyes. Piercing, almost glowing, red eyes.

He was staring at the smoldering, smoking remains of the woman, a dispassionate expression on his face. Then he turned to look at me, shock in his voice, and said, “You killed Mother.”