Tyger Tyger (33 page)

"Fear Doirich says to bring Aiden," Maggot Cat said. "Bring Aiden to him."

Blood in Aiden's curls, and white bone shards.
It was the image Fear had spoken into her mind in Mag Mell. She could see it if she closed her eyes.

"That's not going to happen," Teagan said.

"Keeee-yill." The smaller
cat-sídhe's
lower jaw started to jitter. Teagan had seen a housecat do the same thing when it made a ch-ch-ch sound imitating the call of a baby bird to trick the mother into coming. "Keeee-yill, keeee-yill!"

Maggot Cat slashed at him, claws out, and the smaller cat leaped back.

"Bring Aiden to him, and Fear will let you live. He still wants you.
Bring Aiden to him.
"

"I told you, that's not going to happen," Teagan repeated. "And I know he can't come out and get us. There's an angel guarding the way."

"Keee—" The smaller cat began, but clapped his paws over his mouth when Maggot Cat narrowed his eyes.

Teagan started toward the
cat-sídhe,
but the creatures backed away from her, then flattened themselves, seemingly dislocating every joint as they squeezed through a gap barely taller than their skulls under the neighbor's fence.

Teagan glanced at the Santini house. Mrs. Santini had gone to New York to visit a cousin in the Bronx a few years back, and had come away with a healthy respect for rats. There wouldn't be a gap big enough for a mouse to squeeze through in her home, much less a
cat-sídhe.
Aiden and Lennie were watching from the front window.

Stay there,
Teagan told him using American Sign Language. She'd had no idea how useful teaching Aiden ASL would turn out to be.

Aiden frowned.

I mean it.
She picked up the roll of duct tape, and the foul-smelling smear the
cat-sídhe
's wound had left on it made her stomach knot.

Her little brother had wanted to kill Fear Doirich and Kyle when they'd had them helpless in Mag Mell.

"They're really bad guys," Aiden had said. "We should smash them with rocks like they were going to smash me."

She'd been the one who'd said no. She'd wanted to get her family out of Mag Mell and home again. And killing Fear Doirich and Kyle had felt ... wrong. She'd listened to that feeling, because Fear Doirich was bound and gagged.

Yet, not an hour later, she'd fed Ginny Greenteeth to the hellhounds to save her own life. It had been ... useful.

You can curl up and die of regret and sorrow for what you've done. Or—

She would never do it again. She'd never let the Highborn come out the way it had in Mag Mell. Highborn were cold and calculating, born to violence, gifted in war. No matter what she'd inherited from her mother's twisted family, she would choose to be like her dad. John Wylltson was a lover, not a fighter. Teagan took a deep breath, then went back across the street and up the steps to her own front door.