Damien Salvador-Van Helsing left the Hammered Houndsman before the sun cleared the swamp. A bounty sat on every branch of his family tree now. Three of his contacts had gone dead or missing in the last month. He needed the goblin's word this morning, because the goblin was the last thread he had left to the Coffin Troll Exchange ledger, and that ledger held whatever secret was getting Van Helsings killed. His Crypt Strider carried him up the road without a sound and without a track. Damien slid down at the old swamp tree, the one with the rusted shield swallowed into its bark. He tapped the shield twice with his wand, cyclops finger wrapped in gargoyle hide. The bark shifted. Grimshank stepped out of the roots as if the tree had spat him up, a yellow chick tucked on his shoulder, a small dark box under one arm. "You're early," Grimshank said. "Good. I'm leaving after this." "Talk to me about the Exchange," Damien said. "I need a way in." Grimshank spoke fast. A caravan came through the goblin market twice a moon. It carried sealed crates for a private ledger, one Damien's family name kept surfacing in. Grimshank named the day, the gate, the bribe. Damien wrote nothing down. He memorized. Then Grimshank unlatched the dark metal box and turned it toward him. Inside lay a tuft of silver fur, bound with fine spider thread, sharp as pins. "That's extra," Grimshank said. "Sharp silver werewolf fur. My scouts pulled it off a branch near the Friar's Field Camp. It was tracking a party of three. You. Your cousin in the red coat. The twin sister he told to stay home. This is Venom Maw's coat, Damien. The Alpha has been walking the camp perimeter while you slept." Damien's stomach dropped. Gabriel was at that camp. So was the old Tome Friar he'd hired to read the werewolf lore out of a stolen book. If Venom Maw had circled them, the Alpha already knew every face, every name, every silver blade in Gabriel's satchel. Damien had brought his cousins into the sightline of the thing Gabriel had come here to kill. "No," Damien said. He shoved the fur box shut. "Venom Maw has been watching us." He was already moving. He whistled the Crypt Strider back and swung up. Grimshank called after him about the caravan date, but Damien only lifted a hand. The Exchange could wait one more day. His cousin could not. He kicked the Strider hard and pointed it toward the Friar's camp, riding through wet fern and black water, and the ledger and the family secret shrank behind him into something he could only reach if Gabriel was still breathing when he got there.