“And those two?” I motion toward the brothers.

“They seem to have reached some sort of agreement after Cormac took you. It was pretty obvious since they stopped bickering all the time. Bit of a relief, actually.”

“Cormac didn’t take me,” I correct him.

“It’s pretty hard for a man to admit when a woman’s sacrificed herself for him,” Dante says. “It’s pretty hard for a father to admit it, too.”

“What a waste of energy,” I say.

“Says the one worrying about semantics.” Dante shines his handlight over his face and raises an eyebrow. “You have a point.”

Jost holds up a hand for us to stop. We slow down and wait as he moves forward a few steps into an alley. His figure disappears behind a building, and Erik follows him. Both brothers are swallowed by darkness and before I can call out to her, Valery goes in after them.

“Do they think that I’m going to wait around here and—”

A piercing scream shatters the night.

Dante and I race toward the alley, skidding to a stop at its dark mouth. Ahead of us is a figure, barely visible under the blacked-out sky. Dante flips on his handlight and the beam scatters across the figure. It’s Erik. He waves for us to put the light away.

“Remind me to speak with him about hanging out in dark alleys without handlights,” Dante mutters. He doesn’t turn it off, but instead points it at the ground.

“Deal.”

We approach Erik cautiously, unsure what to expect, but as soon as we’re even with him, Dante’s light reveals Jost crouched near the wall of the alley.

“What’s he—” But I don’t have to finish my question because as my eyes adjust to the darkness I see that Jost is not alone.

“Shhh!” Erik warns, and that’s when I hear the voices. One is calm and reassuring, but the other comes in fits of words punctuated by giggles and wails.

I move closer to Jost but the woman he’s speaking to startles and scuttles farther down the alley.

“Don’t come any closer,” Jost warns.

He calls out to the woman, but she only scrambles farther away from us in fits and jerks.

“What’s going on?” Dante asks, and then he flashes the handlight in our direction. The woman screams as the light hits her and I realize she’s not a woman. She’s a girl not much older than me.

But everything about her is wrong. In the light her pupils are wide and black, and that’s not even the most frightening thing. The whites of her eyes have gone red and her skin droops into giant jowls from her jawline. Some of it has detached entirely and something under the surface ripples. No, crawls. She hisses and wails and laughs as she scratches her fingers across the brick walls. It’s as though she’s decaying while she’s still alive.

“Jost,” I say, loud enough that he can hear. “We should go.”

I take a careful step forward and touch his shoulder.

“She needs help,” he says, flashing me a disappointed look.

“We can’t help her,” I say.

“Dante can help her,” Jost corrects me, “and Erik.”

So Erik has finally admitted to his brother that he’s a Tailor.

“Then let’s talk to them.” I pull Jost’s arm, urging him back to the others.

When we reach them, Dante and Erik are discussing something in grim voices. Valery hugs her arms to her chest and I place a reassuring hand on her shoulder. She doesn’t look up, and Dante’s expression is grave.

“That girl needs your help,” Jost says. “I know you can patch.”

“Jost.” Erik places a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “I have basic patching skills. I don’t think I can do anything about that much … damage.”

“I alter by feel,” Dante says apologetically. “I don’t have the medic training or equipment for such a severe case of…”

“So that’s it?” I ask, frustrated by how unfeeling they both sound. Beside me Jost straightens a little in response to my indignation, as though he’s physically backing up my moral stance.

“It’s not only that.” Erik pauses. “I’ve never seen damage like this before.”

“That doesn’t mean you can’t fix it,” I say firmly.

Behind us the girl bellows out a groan that grows strangled as she gasps for air. Jost takes a step toward her, but Erik grabs him, holding him back from helping her.

The girl’s skin sags as she lifts her hands out to us, her flesh falling in sickening lumps to the ground. Her cry grows weaker, echoing from some pit deep inside her, until she is silent and still.

I can’t tear my eyes from her body. I did nothing to help her. I only watched her die.

We stand in mute shock as we try to process what we’ve witnessed.

“Didn’t she remind you of anything?” Erik asks us finally.

I don’t have to think hard. The frenetic speech pattern, the animal-like responses, and most of all, her strange appearance.

“A Remnant,” I say. “But Remnants are more controlled than she was, and her skin wasn’t scarred.”

“I don’t think she was altered,” Erik says. He speaks in slow, measured words. “This is something else entirely.”

I shiver at the thought. I want them to help her, but I can’t deny this is something we haven’t faced before. “It was like she was decaying.”