A month. She was going to miss school. She was going to miss the winter formal. She was going to miss sledding on Trevarthen Hill, hot chocolate at Bisclavret’s Coffee Shop, Gulliver’s much-anticipated school play where he was a tin soldier and got to march all over the stage. All because her parents couldn’t keep their mouths shut.

“Try to see it as a good thing,” her mother kept saying, in a soft voice that made Hannah want to throttle her. “A vacation of sorts. They’ll take a look at what went wrong and fix it, so this will never happen again.”

“It was just a fluke,” said Hannah, for the umpteenth time.

Nobody listened. Rose and David prepared a room for her. Her parents met with her teachers at Trevarthen and came back with an enormous stack of papers. Hannah told Ella, Aimee, and Chloe that she needed to have her appendix taken out. Harry knew the truth, through his mother, but they didn’t talk about it.

Then Hannah was being ushered through the doors of the hospital by her parents, kissed goodbye by her brothers, and abandoned in a small room a few doors away from Rose’s office.

“I like to think of it as more of a bedroom than a hospital room,” said Rose, in an obvious attempt to cheer Hannah up. “You see the throw carpet? My mum sent it over from England. And that mural on the wall opposite your bed? Harry actually helped paint that when he was little – I think he did the elephant.”

This did not make Hannah feel better.

She knew, from talks with David over the next few days, that her father had been right when he said there wasn’t a practical purpose for staying in the hospital. Rose and David could do a few things – test her blood, examine her iron levels, double-check that her dosage had been at the recommended level when the episode had happened. But the fact was that the only way to treat what had happened to Hannah was to change her dosage and hope for the best. The law that had brought her to the hospital was an attempt to appease a paranoid public, not a way to make things better for Hannah.

“So what am I supposed to do?” she said. “Sit around eating bon-bons for the next four weeks? Does this place even have bon-bons?”

“Depends on your definition of bon-bons,” said David thoughtfully. “They’re a brand name in France – in my opinion they’re nasty, like Mentos gone wrong – but I think the word can also just be a fancy way of talking about chocolate. Which is, incidentally, a highly sneak-in-able item.”

“There’s a playroom downstairs, in the main part of the hospital,” said Rose. “It tends to be frequented by younger children, but you might find something you’d like to do there. And you’d have new people to talk to.”

Hannah ignored both of them. Chocolates would improve the situation for all of thirty seconds unless David had an infinite supply of them. And she certainly did not want to talk to new people. Anyone she met here would be sick, broken, tired; and she did not want anything to do with them.

“I have a ton of homework,” she said. “I better just work on that.”

***

Hannah spent the first three days lying in bed and playing Fruit Ninja on her new phone. When her head started to hurt from staring at a tiny screen for so long, she took the elevator to the hospital gift shop and pretended she was browsing for a sick relative, hiding the hospital bracelet on her wrist under a sweatshirt she had stolen from Andrew.

On the fourth day, as she made her way down the hall, something was different. The door to the room across from hers – a room that had always been closed off before – was suddenly ajar. A large suitcase had been parked next to it.

Hannah stared. From her years of conversations with James and Tristan and Nicolas, she knew that a hospital stay in the weeks before the full moon was incredibly rare. Sometimes, she supposed, it happened for the same reason that she was there; other times, people came in for a dosage change voluntarily. But usually there was only one reason.

She was just about to peer into the room when Rose came running down the hallway.

Rose glanced at Hannah and then at the door; she frowned. “You didn’t go in there, did you, Hannah?”

“No,” said Hannah. “But why –”

“Good,” said Rose, sounding relieved. “Because I was hoping to catch you in time to let you know that you’re not to go in there. I’m afraid I’ve got to insist on that. Now, if you’d like to stop by my office, I’ve got someone I’d like you to meet. I’d think you’d be grateful for something to do…”

And she hurried off down the hallway. Hannah followed, utterly bewildered.

Inside Rose’s office, atop the bright peony pink of her sofa and holding a mug of coffee, was a woman who looked faintly familiar to Hannah. She was tall and dark skinned and somehow regal looking – Hannah couldn’t decide if it was her long neck or the elegant way her shoulders arched or the half-amused glint in her eyes. She guessed she was about Rose’s age.

She gave Hannah a wide, unencumbered smile, of a kind she had never seen in a hospital before. Hannah couldn’t help but smile back.

“You haven’t met before, have you?” said Rose.

“We might have given each other a little nod of solidarity here and there,” said the woman. She flicked one of her box braids across her shoulder and gave Hannah a wry grin. “From a distance, of course. But no, I don’t think we’ve ever spoken.”

“Well, meet the inimitable Hannah Cobham,” said Rose. “Hannah, this is Isobel – my best friend. Mrs. Robeson to you, I suppose. We met at university.”

“I wasn’t allowed to go to college in the States, so I went abroad, over in London,” Mrs. Robeson explained. “Rose studied medicine; I studied journalism. The laws were different back then, of course. Much worse for us werewolves. Never could’ve predicted we’d end up living in the same city afterward – but I guess it makes sense, doesn’t it? Easier to live here. Most of the time.”

Hannah squinted at her. Mrs. Robeson didn’t look like a werewolf. Not that werewolves looked any different from anybody else, but – Hannah didn’t think she’d have been able to guess. Not in a million years.

Mrs. Robeson smirked. “Type Three, been a werewolf since I was sixteen, and I leave the country every few months, so it’s been a damn long journey. You’ve got nothing on me.”

Hannah gave her a long, skeptical look. Mrs. Robeson gave her one back. To Hannah’s surprise, they both cracked up.

“Mrs. Robeson just got back from Tibet,” said Rose. “She’s a reporter – for The Washington Post, you know – foreign correspondent – and they send her all over the world. But apparently they want her to do some work at home for a while?” She raised her eyebrows at Mrs. Robeson, and Hannah understood that Rose didn’t know the full details yet.

“That’s why I’m here,” said Mrs. Robeson, more to Hannah than to Rose. “Unfortunately for me, going pretty much anywhere – and especially coming back here, to the land of the devil’s own bureaucracy – means an unholy amount of paperwork to fill out. So Rose and I decided to scribble it out over coffee. Sign here to confirm I’m not planning to rip anyone’s throat out, yada yada. Very boring.”

“You still haven’t answered my question,” said Rose.

“You didn’t ask a question,” said Mrs. Robeson. “And you know I’d have told you earlier if I’d been at liberty to talk about it. But here it is: turns out they want me to do something on Rumon.”

Mrs. Robeson seemed to have predicted the effect that this simple sentence would have, because she squeezed Rose’s hand after saying it. Rose had paled visibly.

“Sorry – hang on –” Her voice grew tight. “Did you say Rumon?”

“Yes, yes, but don’t worry. They just want me to quell the public’s fears a little. Not that I think it’ll help much, but the money’s good, and since I’m the only one who can do it – well, I couldn’t see why not. Besides, it’ll be interesting. I haven’t been to Rumon for ages.”

“Yes,” said Rose quietly. “It definitely will be interesting. Just – be careful, all right?”

“Careful?” said Mrs. Robeson. “Rose Tarry, do you know me at all?”

“I’m only saying. Things have happened.”

“Things happen everywhere.”

“I know,” said Rose. “I know.”

Hannah was about to ask what on earth they were talking about when a hesitant knock rattled its way through the door. Everyone looked up.

The man who stood in the doorframe was tall and balding, with a scrubby little goatee and shoulders that slumped. Mostly what Hannah noticed about him was how sad his eyes were. Rose’s expression sharpened at once.

“Erm… insurance finally got back to me,” the man said. “If you’re able to look over some more papers. But if this is a bad time –”

“No, no,” said Rose. “Isobel and I were just having a chat. She’s an old friend. Here to sort out some papers of her own.”

“Yes, we’ve met – talked a little this morning in the cafeteria,” said the man. “I’d like to speak to you both, actually… different perspectives…”

“And Hannah here had just stopped by to visit – but she can go back to her room, no problem. Hannah, if you would?”

As that afternoon had been more interesting than the last three days put together, Hannah would have preferred to stay, but she was well acquainted with the look Rose was giving her, and she knew there was no point in resisting. The man sat in Hannah’s former place on the sofa and watched her as she headed for the door. Rose mouthed sorry and we’ll talk later.

The second Hannah left the room, she found the nearest corner of unobtrusive hallway and sat down to listen. If Rose hadn’t realized she was going to eavesdrop, she was an idiot. After all, Hannah couldn’t even help eavesdropping as long as she stayed in the hallway. They weren’t bothering to keep their voices down, and her ears were too good.

“…Never seen him like this before,” the man was saying. “Not even when his mom left – of course, he was very young; I suppose he didn’t understand for a long time; but if there was something wrong, he always listened to me, even if he didn’t listen to anyone else. Now? It’s like nothing gets through to him. Nothing.”

“It’s only been a few days,” said Rose gently. “He’s just had his entire life turned upside down.”

“You don’t understand. He’s a kid who’s always taken things hard – he’s always kept things to himself – I know how he looks when he’s upset. This is new. This isn’t my son. I don’t know –” His breath caught. “I don’t know that he can handle this.”

Rose was quiet, but Mrs. Robeson made a funny clucking noise with her tongue. “Eventually,” she said, “he’s going to realize that he doesn’t have a choice. It’s a conclusion we all come to in our own time. Think about it – the world decides what we’re going to be before we even have the breath to complain. You can either decide you’re not going to complain anymore, or you agree to spend your whole life complaining.”

“That’s exactly what I’m worried about! Topher has always – Topher blames himself. Topher wallows,” said the man. “This silence – this acting like his whole life is over – I could see him doing it for the rest of his life.” He swallowed so hard that Hannah could hear it from the hall. “Easily.”

“Well, if I were Topher, I would not want to know you were thinking that,” said Mrs. Robeson. “I’d want my dad to have some faith in me.”

He cleared his throat. “I didn’t mean –”

“She knows,” said Rose tersely, and Hannah could just see her giving Mrs. Robeson the same look she had just given Hannah. “You want the best for your son. And that’s exactly what we’re going to give him. Now – shall we have a look at those papers, Mr. Sewell?”

Hannah listened a while longer to see whether they might reveal anything else, or if Mrs. Robeson might return to whatever she had been talking about before the man – Mr. Sewell – had come in. Unfortunately, the conversation turned decidedly to insurance, and there was no point in listening anymore. Hannah returned to her room and to Fruit Ninja, turning over the things she had heard in her mind.

If she put the obvious together, then this Topher was the person occupying the room across the hall. It was funny: Mr. Sewell’s description of Topher, as brief as it had been, made him sound exactly like the kind of person Hannah would never want to talk to – the worst of the hospital people she was trying to avoid. But there was another part of her that wanted to see for herself if he was really as bad as Mr. Sewell had said. To see if she could get him to say something.