As the carriage ride wore on, both of us fell silent. Ali flexed her left hand, some melody running through her fingers as she stared over the side of the carriage. I wished I was outside, running. My heart beat sang through me, blood ringing in my temples. Ali might be able to calm her mind with a few mimed violin scales, but contemplation only made me restless.

What could Mom want to hide from us? Did Dad finally have lung cancer? Mom loved to worry about that. Back when he lived in the Old World, Dad used to smoke cigarettes with something called tobacco inside them. He’d been forced to kick the habit when the rifts got him, but how long did the damage last? Was it reversible? I couldn’t think of anyone I knew who died of cancer. As a healer’s daughter, that was saying something. Of course, unless someone had a tumor sticking out of their body, it was difficult to diagnose without Old World tools.

Finally Ali called for the carriage to stop, a street before ours. We’d walk the rest of the way so that our parents wouldn’t hear us arriving. “Quietly,” Ali reminded me when I leaped out.

We skirted around the side of the house, avoiding the crunching gravel of the front walk. Mom’s herb garden hid us, the massive sage bush providing pungent cover. I led us behind the pump yard, nestled in a clump of trees Dad kept “meaning” to cut down so Mom could expand her vegetable patch. As we crept closer, muffled voices traveled down from the window. I threaded my fingers into a step for Ali and she clambered up to my shoulders, balancing her body against the outer wall. Above me came the squeak of Ali slipping the pins out. She waited until one of Dad’s coughing fits started before opening the window. The locked clasp held inside, but she managed to make a large enough space to press her ear against.

“Can you hear them?” I whispered.

But she placed a finger to her lips. “Shhh.”

I obeyed, straining for any sound. Eventually Dad raised his voice and it reached me. “Judd doesn’t like me that much. He doesn’t like anyone that much.”

A pause followed. Mom’s voice stayed too low for me to hear, but a second later, Dad spoke again. “I don’t want to drag Noni into this. She’s been through enough.”

Noni? What did Jayce’s mother have to do with Dad’s pneumonia?

“We need allies of some kind.” I could hear Mom now. I would have given anything to switch places with Ali, but she couldn’t carry my weight. “People to watch the kids during an emergency. You’ve done so much for Jayce. I’m sure she’d help.”

“Not if the council gets involved.”

The council? I strained my ears, but I couldn’t hear anything else. I bit my lip, on the verge of asking Ali what was going on up there, but a minute later, her ankle wobbled. “Let me down,” she whispered.

“Did you hear something?” Dad’s voice came directly through the window as I let Ali hop off. She dashed around the side of the house, scattering gravel. I scrambled after her.

“What did they say?” I caught up with her by the front door, but she pushed through without speaking.

The ruckus drew Mom to the kitchen, and she immediately closed the bedroom. Her mouth hung half open, but Ali shouted before anyone else could get a word in. “When were you going to tell us?”

“Shasta, I thought you went to see Jayce.” Mom’s eyes darted between us, bloodshot from tears. My throat tightened. How long had she been crying?

“You were planning on telling us, weren’t you?” said Ali. “You weren’t going to send Shasta off to the woods without letting her know her father’s dying?”

“Ali!” Both Mom and I shouted.

“I heard you say it! Tell her.” A tear slid down Ali’s cheek as she looked at me.

A nauseated feeling rose into my head as Ali’s words sank in. Dad couldn’t be dying. Pneumonia didn’t kill men of his size and health. Ali must have misheard Mom. Or maybe she’d heard some frantic exaggeration. But really, nothing Ali said mattered right now. I just needed Mom to tell Ali to shut up and everything would be fine.

But my breath caught at the sight of my mother. She collapsed into a chair by the fire, hands clasped over her face and shoulders shaking. I fell to my knees next to her, trying to wrench the hands away from her face.

“Mom! What’s going on?”

She shook her head, unwilling to look at me.

“He’s got the mark,” Ali said faintly. “On his chest. Feizi’s mark.”