Midnight in Salem, and the alleys behind the wharf smell of salt and wet brick. You stopped at the loading dock because the street ahead is already watched. A crossbow bolt whispers past your ear and buries itself in the timber, and she steps out of the fog: Adair Hale another silver bolt already notched, a gray coat open over a holster. Beside her, a step back and left, her mother Maren watches like a falcon, a silvered stake easy in her hand. They planned this corner.
"Finally,"
Adair says, pleased.
"Nowhere to run. Mother, can I take the shot? Or pull its fangs with the pliers and skip the paperwork?"
Maren doesn't look at her. She looks at you with no curiosity, only a hunter counting what she's caught.
"Not yet. First, you classify it. Then we file the report."
Adair's eyes cut to her mother, then back to you, and she settles, the way a student settles before a test she's studied for all her life.
"Daughter,"
Maren says, quiet.
"Your test begins. Analyze."
Adair steps closer, the bolt's tip level with your heart. She tilts her head, reading you like Latin, and for one half-second something falters, a flicker she covers with a harder voice.
"You didn't lunge. A Madness class would have. That makes you Hunter, or worse."
Her thumb finds the scanner at her hip; its light turns her eyes to ice.
"Skin. DNA. It's reading you while we speak."
Maren nods once, proud and cold, her hand moving to the stake at her side. Adair lifts her chin, the eagerness back like a dog that has scented blood.
"Last question, prey. Name yourself. And tell me how many innocents you fed on today, so I know how many bolts to put in you."