A nother scream wakes me, but this one is full of rage.

I jolt upright and check on my sisters, startled to see that all three are still asleep.

Normally, they wake before me, but right now, their faces are serene, and it throws me.

For a moment, I consider rousing them, but it’s not often that they appear so peaceful.

I refocus on the sound that woke me, questioning my senses and the echo of the scream I heard.

I’m certain it carried rage, but also grief. A horrible sadness.

My instincts tell me I can’t ignore it. After all, at worst, answering the cry will be a waste of my time and nothing more.

Still, I again consider waking my sisters, but I remind myself that I’ve gone out into the world on my own enough times to feel confident doing so now.

Levitating to the side of the room, I retrieve my protective suit from its hook. I consider my whip but decide this time to leave it behind. After the way it was used against me in the fight at the Academy, I only take it with me when I’m certain I’ll need it.

Within minutes, I leave the cabin behind and soar up above the trees covering Mount Greylock and into the cloud cover.

The scream has left a mark on the air, clearer to me than any before it, as if the person’s grief has manifested into a visible trail.

I find myself turning, not in the direction of Boston, but toward New York City.

It isn’t the first time I’ve visited this city, but it’s the first instance where I’ve gone alone.

It’s also the first time a trail of pain has led me to Central Park.

I’m wary of how exposed my position will be once I descend from the cloud cover. There’s an increased chance of being seen by humans in this city. New York doesn’t seem to sleep—a fact that’s made more real by all of the nocturnal supernaturals who are out and about in the middle of this night.

Steering well clear of those beings, I use the trees as much as I can to cover my descent while I drop all the way to the ground.

The trail of pain draws me toward one of the statues that sits ahead of me next to the path I’ve landed on.

The statue consists of a group of connected stone forms depicting a girl, a rabbit, and a small man wearing a top hat.

They’re sitting on top of a large toadstool, which is currently dripping with liquid that smells like alcohol.

A woman stands beside the statue, her chest heaving and arms hanging loosely at her sides. She’s dressed in old pants and a threadbare shirt while her feet are bare like mine—certainly an unusual attribute.

She grips a half-empty bottle of whiskey in her right hand while another bottle lies on the ground at her feet, tipped on its side and too empty to leak.

The broken shards of what looks like a third bottle are scattered across the toadstool and the path near the woman’s feet.

Without acknowledging my approach, she gives another scream and throws the bottle she’s holding against the rabbit.

Glass shatters, and shards spray in all directions, joining the debris already littering the ground.

Her cry echoes in my ears, a nearly perfect match for the sound of rage that dragged me from my sleep.

It looks like she’s working her way through bottles of alcohol, smashing them one by one against the statue. I imagine she’ll pick up the one on the ground next.

I pause on the path, carefully considering how to proceed.

Until this moment, I was certain of the way forward, the same way I would approach every crime—identify the wrongdoer and bring them swiftly to justice.

But this woman…

She’s alone. Certainly isn’t threatening someone.

Oh, what to make of her?

Pain ripples out from her in agonizing waves, so strong that they reverberate within the air around me, the kind of grief that only a Fury can sense, particularly because the power also emanating from this woman is intense.

She is far more than the picture of poverty she portrays, but… what is she?

It’s unusual and slightly worrisome that I can’t tell what kind of supernatural she is.

All I know for sure is that she’s the first mystery I’ve encountered in the last eight months.

Tears drip from her eyes as she drops to her knees, seeming not to care about the broken glass even when she lands on a chunk of it.

Nor does she seem to care about my presence.

Her voice is a broken mumble. “I will never forgive myself.”

I approach her carefully, picking my way between the broken pieces of glass, studying her intensely. I’m not worried about cutting myself on them. My meandering path is giving me time to think. Trying to determine her supernatural status is like chasing an unraveling ball of string.

There are so many threads.

I sense the power of a witch along with the power of a dryad, but neither of those explains the sheer vastness of her power.

When I’m five steps away from reaching her, I inhale another scent. It’s charred and burning. Hellish .

I miss a step, suddenly transported to another place and another time when I was nestled in fiery arms, kept safe in the embrace of a hellhound who would have given his soul for me?—

Striker.

It’s been months since I remembered his name, let alone his scent. I’m certain this woman isn’t a hellhound herself, and yet she smells like the hellish fire of Striker’s beast.

It nearly sends me to the ground. Nearly forces my knees to buckle. The sudden weight of too many feelings… of connection and hope and love…

I shake myself. I need to focus. I don’t need those emotions anymore.

Even with my eyes momentarily closed, I’m not vulnerable. I can sense any attack from afar. But the level of power emanating from this woman tells me I need to be on my guard around her.

She continues to appear as unconcerned about my approach as she was about kneeling in broken glass. Her focus remains on the statue in front of her, but her words speak to a level of despondency that seems to defy any possibility of fear.

“Have you come to extract justice from me, Fury?” she asks.

There aren’t many supernaturals who would immediately identify what I am, especially in my current state of appearance.

My hair is tied back, and my telltale snakes are nowhere to be seen. I’ve also left my whip at home. There are no visible signs that I’m a Fury, so the fact that she knows what I am confirms how powerful she is.

“Should I?” I ask, keeping my voice light as I stop a mere two paces away from her. “Extract justice from you?”

“Yes,” she says, her shoulders slumping further. “For my failings. You should.”

I consider the broken glass. “It seems to me you may be punishing yourself enough already.”

She snorts before she finally raises her eyes to mine. “There is no punishment great enough to?—”

The sound dies in her throat, and her eyes widen as she stares at me.

“Dark saints,” she whispers, her lips remaining parted while her jaw has dropped.

I’m not sure what has alarmed her so much. She already sensed that I’m a Fury.

In a barely audible whisper, she says, “You’ve held a bone of Typhon.”