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He looked at me, startled.

“Right now there is only one target in this car, and it had better fucking stay that way, do you hear me?”

I watched the internal war wage under his skin, muscle and tendon rippling, bone shifting. And then he was back to his familiar, beloved human features—not that I didn’t love his doggy ones, too, but he was a lot safer as a man than a dog right now. He was also scared and angry. I could see both in the set of his jaw and his wide, mismatched eyes.

Once Taavi had things under control, I noticed what was happening everywhere else.

Mom was sobbing, Dad was trying to yell at the phone through the car’s Bluetooth, although I wasn’t completely sure who he was yelling at, and I could now hear the shouts and jeers from outside the car clear as fucking day, since there was a gaping hole where most of the window next to my head used to be.

“No Nids in government!”seemed to be the most popular one, although I also heard“Nids go home!”which I didn’t really understand, because it wasn’t like we were from another country. Arcanavirus had hit the entire fucking globe, but patient zero had been identified in Los Angeles, so if anywhere was going to claim us, it fuckingshould bethe United States. But reason wouldn’t work with Magic-Free Movementers. I knew this. I didn’t like it, but I knew it.

I could feel Taavi’s eyes on me, and tension radiated from his body. A glance told me he was holding it together, but I was going to guess that if I’d asked him to uncurl his fists or show me his teeth, it would be clear that he wasn’t holding it together by much.

Which, honestly, was fine. I wasn’t holding it together by much, either. It’s just that elves don’t grow fangs and claws when we get seriously pissed off or scared.

All I get is… well, pissed off and scared.

And I was definitely both.

Dad couldn’t move the car any faster, although we’d maybe managed another foot or so since the last chunk of curb smashed through the window, and I wasn’t entirely sure what to do if they started shit-chucking stuff at the front window or decided to rush the car. Because I couldn’t just sit here and let them hurt my parents, so I’dhaveto do something, but I also knew that ifIgot out of the car,Taaviwas going to get out of the car, and he was probably going to end up biting somebody’s foot off, andthatwas going to land us both in jail if we were lucky enough to survive.

I looked over and met Taavi’s eyes, silently pleading with him to keep it together. I needed him to keep it together, because if he could, then I could.

My phone vibrated again, and I damn near jumped out of my skin. It didn’t stop vibrating, and I lifted it to my ear with shaking hands.

“Hart.”

“Tell me you aren’t in the middle of whatever is happening over there.” Smith was yelling, his voice rougher than usual.

I didn’t reply, mostly because I couldn’t tell him that and I also couldn’t think of a smartass response.

“Goddamnit,” was Smith’s reply, and I knew it must be bad because that was the first time I’d heard him use profanity. “Where are you?” he yelled next.

I swallowed. “Just past Green Bay on Main.”

“Tell me you aren’t the car.”

I didn’t bother asking.

“Goddamnit,” he repeated. “Can you get out of there?”

“No.”

“Don’t… don’t get out of the car.” He hung up.

I put the phone back in my lap, then cautiously glanced out the window to try to see what Dickbag was doing. At the moment, he appeared to be arguing with someone, and I spared a half-second to hope that the person was trying to convince him not to throw the piece of cement he currently had in his hand. Dad was still yelling at the phone, but Mom’s crying had dropped in volume.

Fuckinghell.

The last fucking thing I wanted was my family dragged into this bullshit. I’d been up to my lavender eyeballs in it since I’d met Taavi, as had he, although neither of us by choice. But I hadn’t thought it would follow me—or I would follow it—all the way to Wisconsin.

Shawano isn’t normally the center of political uprising. It’s a small town, and while small towns may seem backwards to a lot of people, there are plenty of good people in them, too. People who came to Gregory Crane’s funeral and left Elliot meals on his doorstep. People who said hi to me in the store and asked about my folks or my job in Virginia. People like Detective Smith, who was out there trying to get justice for Gregory, regardless of what subspecies he was.

It made me wonder if every one of these MFM assholes was even from Shawano. I’m sure some of them were—every town and city and county and fucking country has them. But I also felt like this wasn’t the Shawano I’d grown up in. The Shawano where Elliot and I had played as kids, gone to high school, and had our first dates. I might have been human back then, but Elliot wasn’t, and the whole goddamn town knew it. And most of them adjusted. Ms. Callahan at the library had still picked out the books he liked. Mr. Honigaski, our social studies teacher, would sneak him granola bars in our afternoon classes because he knew the school lunches didn’t have enough calories for a shifter’s metabolism. And Ms. Runninghorse, who ran one of the afterschool programs on arts and crafts, would let him get up and run when he was restless.

I might think of Shawano as a tiny, shithole town, but it really wasn’t. Or, at least, it hadn’t been. Tiny, yes. It didn’t have the kind of excitement I’d been looking for as an eighteen-year-old or a prospective cop. I wanted big cases, and big cases came from the big city. But I didn’t hate my hometown. Mocked it, sure. But when it came right down to it, I found that I was much, much, much more disappointed to find the MFM this active here than I thought I should be.

Because I’d believed that Shawano was a good town.