Rae pressed her hand over her baby's mouth and counted the boots in the market square below. Her daughter's fingers glowed faint blue against Rae's palm. That soft light was the whole problem. Rae had spent a year dreaming of a safe place in Oak Grove, a hidden home where mothers like her could raise magical children without hiding. But dreams didn't help now. Someone was hunting kids like her daughter, and Rae still didn't know who or how close. She crouched behind a barrel, knees tucked, her short black hair damp against her neck. The whispers had started three days ago. A child taken. Then another. No names. No faces. Only fear moving mouth to mouth. Rae needed to learn who led the search before it found her. A fat sausage with tiny wings buzzed past her ear. She swatted at it. The little creature circled back and hovered over the barrel, glossy and stupid and loud. If a hunter looked up, they'd see it. Then they'd see her. "Go," she hissed. It didn't go. A heavy shape stepped from the alley behind her. Rae spun, ready to run. Then she saw the sandals, the wide belly, the calm face she knew too well. "Marcus." Her breath rushed out. "You scared me." Mac Daddy Marcus filled the whole alley mouth. He was huge, slow, and gentle, the father of the child pressed to Rae's chest. He didn't speak fast. He never did. He knelt beside her, and the ground seemed to shift under his weight. "I know who leads them," he said. His voice stayed low. "I followed two of them last night." Rae grabbed his arm. "Who?" "The one who owns the ruined tower on the fallen redwood." He pointed past the rooftops. Rae saw it then, a broken stone spire perched on a massive limb, gray and ancient against the sky. "They took a boy there. He's still inside." Rae's stomach dropped. She had passed that tower a hundred times and thought it empty. "How many hunters?" she asked. "Six. Maybe more." Marcus met her eyes. "They pay coin for every child. Someone in the market is telling them who glows." The winged sausage landed on his shoulder. He didn't shoo it. He just watched Rae, waiting for her choice. Rae looked at her daughter's glowing hand. She looked at the tower where a stranger's child sat trapped. Her dream of a haven felt far away and useless. But now she had a name for the danger. She had a place. She had one thing she hadn't had an hour ago. "They think the market is safe for them," Rae said. "It won't be." She pulled her hood over her baby's light and stood. The whispers were no longer just whispers. The hunt had a face now, a tower, and a leader. And Rae was done hiding from it.

Rae left her daughter with a trusted neighbor and climbed toward the tower with Marcus at her side. Six hunters guarded the ruined spire on the fallen redwood. She had counted them twice. Rae was small. She could not fight them. But she had one weapon they would never expect. "They're bored," she whispered. "Bored men drop their guard." She loosened her hood and touched the choker at her throat. Marcus frowned, his huge shoulders tight against the trunk. He was gentle, slow to violence. He did not like this plan. "I don't want you near them," he said. "You'll be close." Rae pointed to a stand of wide branches near the tower door. A strange tree grew there, its limbs heavy with plump winged sausages that flapped and bobbed like fruit. "Wait behind that tree. When they're looking at me, you move." Marcus stared at her a long moment. Then he nodded once. He crept to the tree and folded his massive body behind the trunk. A winged sausage buzzed off a low branch and landed on his shoulder. He did not shoo it. Rae walked into the open. She swayed her hips and let her stockings show. The nearest hunter saw her first. He grinned and called the others. All six drifted toward her, weapons loose in their hands. "Lost, little thing?" one said. "Very lost." Rae smiled and stepped back, drawing them from the door. "And cold. Won't one of you warm me?" They laughed. They crowded close, elbowing each other, eyes on her legs and her throat. Not one watched the tree. Rae kept them talking. She let a hunter reach for her wrist. She backed him one more step. "Now," she said. Marcus came out of the dark like a falling wall. His first swing caught two hunters at once and threw them into the stones. The others spun too late. He grabbed a third by the collar and slammed him flat. Rae dropped and rolled clear as a blade whistled past her hair. One hunter lunged at her. She kicked his knee and he buckled. Marcus finished him with a fist. In moments all six lay groaning in the dirt. The winged sausage flapped down and settled on a fallen man's chest, chirping. Rae ran to the tower door and threw the bolt. Inside, in the dark, a small boy sat chained to the wall. His hands glowed faint gold. He flinched from her. "I've got you," she said. She broke the chain loose and pulled him into the light. But the leader was not among the six. Rae counted the bodies again and her stomach turned cold. On the wall hung a ledger, open to a page of names. Her daughter's name was written there, third from the top. The hunters were beaten. The man who paid them still knew exactly where to look.

Rae climbed down from the tower with the ledger under her arm and the boy's hand in hers. Marcus followed, quiet, his breath heavy. The hunters still groaned in the dirt behind them. Rae kept moving until the tower shrank between the trees. She needed a safe place. She needed her daughter. And she needed to warn the one man she had been avoiding. He was waiting by the strange tree near the base of the fallen redwood. Rawlings. Marcus's twin, father of Rae's second child, thicker in the face and shorter in patience. He had a small camera up already, snapping a winged sausage as it flapped off a low branch. "You brought the whole tower down on us and I get a photo of dinner," he said. He grinned at Rae like nothing was wrong. Rae stopped short. She had not told Rawlings she was coming. "You followed me." "Marcus texted." Rawlings shrugged. "Said you'd need a second pair of hands. Or a fat head to throw at somebody." He tapped his own skull and laughed. Marcus almost smiled. For one strange moment the fear lifted off Rae's chest. The boy tugged her sleeve. His glowing gold hands lit up as a winged frank drifted down and landed in his open palms. He laughed for the first time. The little creature chirped and wiggled its stubby wings. Rae felt something crack open inside her. She had spent two chapters running scared. Now a freed child was laughing under this odd tree, safe, for a breath. "Hold that," Rawlings said, raising the camera. "That's a good one." He took the picture. Then he tossed the camera to Rae. "Now you. Get me and the little guy." Rae caught it and laughed, really laughed, and snapped Rawlings squatting beside the boy with a sausage on his shoulder. They passed the camera back and forth. They took foolish pictures. For a few minutes they were not hunted. They were a family under a tree full of flying meat. Then Rae looked at the last photo. Behind Rawlings, past the branches, a shape stood on the ridge. A tall man. Watching. He held something small and dark to his eye. A camera of his own. Rae's stomach dropped. She turned. The ridge was empty now. "He saw us," she whispered. "The leader. He got our faces. He got the boy." Marcus stepped in front of the child. Rawlings stopped laughing. Rae looked at the ledger in her arm, then at the two men, then at the boy's glowing hands. "We can't scatter," she said. "He'll pick us off one by one. We need one place. Hidden. Ours." She gripped the camera hard. "A home he can't find. For my kids. For this boy. For every mother out here running." Marcus nodded. Rawlings, for once, said nothing. The plan had a shape now. So did the danger.

The photo of the man on the ridge still burned in Rae's mind. She could not run forever. She needed walls, a roof, a place hidden high where no hunter could climb. Marcus knew such a place. He led them along the fallen redwood until they saw it. A broken stone spire rested on a giant limb far above the ground. Weathered towers. Cracked windows. Half a castle, perched where nothing should perch. "Nobody looks up," Marcus said. Four words. He started climbing. The climb took an hour. Rae carried her daughter on her back. The glowing boy scrambled ahead with his gold hands, laughing. Rawlings came last, sweating, gripping every root. "A castle in a tree," he panted. "You people are insane." He hauled himself onto the limb and lay flat, chest heaving. Then he looked at the old spire and grinned. "But it's ours." Inside, the stone was cool and dry. Old rooms. Thick walls. A high window with no ladder to reach it. Rae set her daughter down on the floor. The girl and the boy ran off together, their small feet slapping stone. For the first time in days, Rae let her shoulders drop. This could work. This could hold. A haven. The thing she had promised every hunted mother out there. Then a winged sausage flapped in through the broken window. The boy shrieked with joy and chased it. His hands flared brighter. Where his light touched the old cracked stones, moss burst green. A dead vine budded. Rae stared. The place was answering him. Rawlings laughed. "Look at that. The kid's growing the walls back." He held out his hand. Rae's daughter grabbed his thick finger and pulled him along. Marcus stood in the doorway, watching his brother stumble after two glowing children. Something in the huge man's face softened. "We can bring the others here," Rae said. "The mothers. Their kids. All of them." She looked at Marcus, then Rawlings. "We have a home now." That night they sat together under the high window. The children slept in a pile, breathing slow. Rae felt full. Safe. Then Rawlings pulled the camera from his pocket. He flipped through the day's photos, smiling. Rae watched over his shoulder. He stopped on one. A picture of the spire, taken from below during the climb. In the corner of the frame, far down on the forest floor, stood a man. Small. Looking up. A dark shape held to his eye. Rae's stomach turned to ice. She grabbed the camera. She had climbed a mountain to hide. And the leader had watched her do it. He knew the tree now. He knew the spire. "He followed us," she whispered. "He knows where the children are." The haven was built. And it was already found.

The six hunters were bound to her now, and the leader guarded the tree. But that night, a new danger showed itself. The glowing boy sat by a high window in the spire. His gold hands lit the broken stones. From the forest floor, that light climbed the redwood like a torch. Rae stood beside him and looked down. Anyone with eyes could follow it straight up to the children. She pulled the boy back from the window. She stood the mothers at every gap in the wall and hung blankets. The glow leaked through anyway. Cloth could not hold it. Wood could not hide it. One clear night would bring men and cages to her door. Rae had one thing left that men could not touch. She went alone to the lowest room, where the old stones met the redwood limb. She knelt on the cold floor. She closed her eyes and reached into the dark under the tree, into the place she never spoke of. "Mortheus," she said. "I need you." The air went cold. A shape rose from the shadow in the corner. Bones under a black hood. Two blue lights burned where eyes should be. Its long gray fingers stretched toward her, then stopped. The undead thing bowed its skull to her and to no one else. It was hers, and she was the only voice it heard. "They will find the children by their light," Rae said. "Hide us from the sky." Mortheus did not speak. It reached one hand toward the spire above them. The blue eyes flared. Rae felt the cold pour up through the stones, through the walls, up to the broken crown. She held her breath and did not move. Above her, the mothers cried out. The boy's light did not go dark. Instead it turned inward. The glow stayed warm inside the walls, but from outside, the spire went black. Rae climbed the stairs fast. She ran to the high window and looked down at the forest floor. Nothing shone back. The redwood stood dark against the night. The light was still there in the boy's hands, still on the walls, but the sky could not see it. She had cast a shroud over the whole spire, and no searcher would climb toward a tree that gave off nothing. Rae let out her breath. The children were safe from watching eyes. But Mortheus stayed at the base of the stairs, waiting, its blue gaze fixed on her. She had called it up from the dark, and the dead do not go back for free. She had asked a god for a favor. Now she owed one, and she already knew the price: she had to help him break his skeletal curse.