Fifteen years. Fifteen years of lies, of deception, of denial. Fifteen years spent hiding in the cellar like some kind of Cinderella pastiche whilst his dad did things he wasn't allowed to ask about upstairs in the lounge. Fifteen years of feeling shadowhunters, of believing he'd be kidnapped if he let on he could see them. Fifteen years of believing people like the boy with grey eyes was the type of person to fear. He got the feeling a lot of people might fear someone who'd held a knife to their throat. He was the only one who didn't seem to be driving Kit to insanity right now though.

Kit didn't fit in. He'd never fitted in at home because of his dad's secrecy; he'd never fitted in at school because of the weight of the worry he carried with him; and he didn't fit in here either. He should have been used to it. In his own world, the life he used to lead, he was used to it. But he wasn't used to anything about this universe, least of all where he slotted into the puzzle of this existence.

He'd demanded to be put in one of the spare bedrooms in the Institute upon arrival - the Blackthorns had said there were "millions" of them. It would have been nice, he thought, if one of those millions had an en suite. It had been ten hours since he'd come into this room. By now he was hungry, thirsty, and he needed to go to the bathroom. He glanced up toward the clock on the wall. It was three in the morning. They'd all have gone to sleep, all the meddling Blackthorns with their perfect, Von Trapp, oh-so-supportive family. He knew they'd been kind, knew he shouldn't hate them - Emma least of all - but he did. He'd never had a family like that. And he hated Emma the very most. When she'd lost - lost, he thought, scoffing. She hadn't lost them. They were dead, just like his dad - she'd had a perfect little built-in back-up family. She didn't know what being alone was like. She fallen straight from one family into another without leaving her backyard, her comfort zone of normalcy. Kit had been wrenched from his life and slung haphazardly into a world of monsters and demons, of fighting and lies. He hadn't just been forced from his own backyard, he'd been forced to a whole other damn planet.

He opened the door and stopped short. Sat with his back against the wall next to his door was a figure armed with a blanket, pillow, a torch, and a stack of books. He was slumped forward with his chin on his chest, the blanket around his shoulders, and one of the tomes open on his lap. The torch beam fell on a spot a little down the hall, having rolled from his hand when he'd fallen asleep. Ty.

"What is wrong with you?" Kit snapped, and Ty's head came up, startled awake. He winced a little. "Why are you here?" Ty shrugged. "Go away! Don't sit outside my room! It's creepy." He bent down and took up the torch. "And I'm taking this," he added, and stalked off down the hall to find the bathroom.

Instantly, he hated himself. Ty hadn't done anything wrong, and he'd looked so confused when Kit had yelled. He shut the bathroom door behind him and sighed. He felt awful for being so mean to Ty, to all of them, but their kindness was too much. All it would take was one smile, one person asking if he was okay, and he'd lose it. All his icy composure would be completely ruined by one gesture of warmth. If he let them close with their unrelenting happiness, he'd snap. Kit took physics at his old school and he'd done an experiment that had won him third place in his eighth grade science fair. Using strips cut from a water bottle, he'd demonstrated how it was possible to keep a shoelace vertical by applying isolated points of tension to keep it upright. If any of the tension lapsed, even slightly, the shoelace would fall - he knew this because a kid in his homeroom had messed with the equilibrium and sent the whole thing into a heap right before the judges' eyes. Kit had punched him in the face the minute he got out of the cafeteria. He had in school suspension for a week for that. He felt a little like that now, like the shoelace. All that was keeping him from collapsing was stress and tension, he thought, wrapping a towel around his waist as he got out of the shower. One tiny change in that could totally unbalance him. If he didn't stay angry, he'd cry. He knew that. He'd rather all of them hate him than even one f them pity him. He scooped his clothes back into his arms and turned the torch on as he ventured back down the dark corridor. He swept the flashlight in a wide arc, coming to rest where Ty had been. His blanket was still there, and his pillows and books. But Ty himself was gone. In his place was a tray, weighed down with food; an orange, a bag of chips, an energy bar, a sandwich of something Kit thought might be peanut butter, and what looked like a smoothie in a bottle. He glanced up and down the empty hall like a guilty man, then took the tray, shutting the door behind him with a swift kick.

Ty waited to hear Kit's door click shut, put his head around the corner, and padded back down to the space of corridor outside Kit's room. When he wanted to be, he was immovably stubborn. It drove Julian to distraction when Ty didn't feel like training, because he knew no amount of pleasing would make Ty pick up a weapon if he wasn't in the mood. He laid down, feeling the floor under him, harder than his own bed but still bearable, and pulled the blanket close about him. The Institute got cold at night. Not as cold as the older buildings, like the London Institute, but still a little uncomfortable. Julian had put heavy, dark curtains in Ty and Dru's rooms because they were light sleepers and the sun woke them up, but throughout the rest of the building the big glass windows either had light curtains or no covering at all, too large to effectively block the light from. Ty tucked his head down under the blanket and squeezed his eyes shut. He knew he'd likely be awoken when the sunrise came through the balcony doors at the end of the corridor in a few hours. Perhaps that was a good thing. Maybe he should do what Kit said, go away and stop being creepy. Ty didn't see how it was creepy. After all, he was only sat outside. He wasn't in the room. There was a poem Ty had read once called the Eve of St. Agnes by John Keats - who was apparently a mundane with the Sight. In the poem, a faerie knight called Porphyro had watched the girl he loved from her closet while she slept. That was creepy, Ty decided. He was merely making sure everything was okay. After all, they barely knew Kit. How did Julian and Emma expect him to just trust this stranger not to hurt them? He could hurt Livvy, and then Ty would have to kill him. No one hurt Livvy if Ty could help it. When she fell, she often said it was a miracle that Ty didn't take up arms against gravity itself.

But, Ty also knew that sometimes, when people were hurting, they said and did things they didn't mean. When Mark had first arrived, he'd yelled at them all, thrown Ty to the ground. They hadn't done anything wrong; Mark had just been scared. Ty remembered what it was like when his dad had died, how much it hurt in a way he could neither process nor describe. Julian, only twelve, had looked after them, picked glass from Ty's hand when he'd punched the jewellery box beside Tavvy's crib even though he'd known it would hurt. It wasn't as painful as he felt inside. He remembered the way his head had hurt until he felt sick when Emma had asked him to explain how he felt, how the only way to explain the overwhelming sadness was to scream because all language has abandoned him. Now, at fifteen, that didn't happen really. He could explain better, and Julian was grown-up enough and knew how Ty thought well enough to understand what he was feeling without having to ask him. Sometimes, when he was struggling to explain, Julian would sit him down and speak softly, get him to explain it another way, using computers or quotes and situations from Sherlock Holmes. They'd gotten a lot further with helping Ty to heal by thinking about how Watson felt after The Adventure of the Final Problem than they had by getting Ty to talk about it from his own perspective. But, Ty thought mournfully, curling his hand into a fist and hugging it to his chest, he still had the scar on his knuckle where the shards of glass had made bloody lacerations to remind him how Kit might feel. Kit might not punch things, but he might shout, and Ty understood the urge to shut yourself away in your room when things got too much. His dreams, when they came, were full of glass shards and blood, the memory of Julian extracting chunks of jewellery box from his hand while Livvy held him still. When the sun came, he'd leave. But not yet. Not quite.

When Kit woke up and opened his door, Ty was asleep in the hall. Kit rolled his eyes and opened his mouth to say something, to tell him to take a long walk off a short pier, before he was interrupted by a disembodied voice from somewhere deeper in the bowels of the labyrinthine building.

"Ty!" the voice called and Kit retreated quickly back into his room before he was caught. He sat back against the door, curious who the voice belonged to, whether they too would tell Ty he was being weird. He knew that was technically eavesdropping, but concluded that if it was outside his own room it didn't count. If they wanted privacy – if you could even find any in this place – they should've gone somewhere they wouldn't be heard. It's not like Kit was sat with a glass to the wall. He'd hear it anyway. He didn't even really care, he reminded himself, because he didn't even like them.

"Ty!" the voice came again, closer now. A girl's voice, at the end of the hall. "Ty, what are you doing?" she asked. Not the same way Kit had asked last night, but genuinely curious rather than put out. Well, that was all very well but it wasn't her room that had a round-the-clock watch she'd never requested. In fact, he'd specifically expressed his disdain at the idea of anyone bothering him. Well, Ty wasn't technically bothering him, and a strange small part of him hoped whoever this girl was she didn't make Ty leave. Kit put his head in his hands. He wasn't sure what he wanted. He supposed he wanted to be alone, but for there to be someone who wanted to be there anyway. He wanted someone to care enough to weather the storm he threw their way so he'd know they were resilient enough to handle the much bigger waves that Kit was currently navigating alone.

Outside, Ty looked up at the sound of his name.

"You woke me up, Livvy," he complained. She stood in front of him and he tilted his chin to look up at her.

"What are you doing?" she asked again. Ty shrugged. Livvy wasn't particularly surprised. She'd overheard Emma tell Julian the night before that she'd asked Ty why he was outside Kit's room and he'd done the same thing; just shrugged. "Let's get breakfast," Livvy offered, reaching a hand out to pull Ty to his feet.

"Should we bring Kit anything?" Ty asked.

"It might be better not to, then he might come out of his room!" Livvy laughed. "Come on."

Kit finally emerged to find that Ty had gone against his sister's advice because there was a small stack of toast with strawberry jelly on and a glass of orange juice. He bent down to pick it up and looked down the hall. Just where he had been last time, writing out notes from the encyclopaedia daemonica, was Ty, in a light blue shirt and black trousers. At night, Kit thought, in his pyjamas, Ty looked so different. Now, even just sat barefoot on the floor, he looked so business-like. Kit, in the same clothes he'd worn the day before and slept in, felt oddly underdressed.

"You're still here," Kit commented.

"Yes," Ty said, and Kit remembered the first time he'd heard that voice. It was low and quiet. But even though it wasn't loud, it was clear. Ty pronounced the 's' in 'yes', Kit noticed. Kit usually dropped it, the word coming out more like a 'yeah'. Typical, Kit thought, he was even pedantic in his pronunciation.

"I told you to go away. And your sister told you not to bring me anything," Kit reminded him. "Why didn't you listen?"

"I can be quite obstinate," Ty told him.

"I'm going to ignore the fact I don't even know what that means," Kit said. "Why did you bring me food? Why didn't you make me go and get it like your sister said?"

"Livvy. Her name is Livvy," Ty put in. "And I did it because our family motto is 'Lex malla, lex nulla,' which means 'a bad law is no law'. Sometimes, we have to break rules because the situation renders them impractical. Uncle Arthur eats upstairs in the attic because he's sick. Tavvy sometimes sleeps in the tent in his room instead of in his bed because he gets scared. If you're sad, you shouldn't have to eat in the kitchen with us. I'm not going to force you out so you don't starve. You're not an animal I'm trying to trap." He looked up. "Besides, if I was trying to lure you out, I'd start moving the food I brought you further and further outside your door, not just leave it right in front of you."

"That's some Hansel and Gretel stuff right there," Kit replied. "It's a shame I didn't leave any breadcrumbs to lead me back home."

"If you want to go home, I'll come with you," Ty offered. "Do you know how to get there?"

Kit nodded. "Yeah."

"Then you don't need a breadcrumb trail," Ty pointed out, putting his notes into the book and tucking it under his arm. "Also, it means stubborn."

"What?" Kit asked, leaving the toast and juice outside the door, a tempting lure for the Kit who wasn't there, and hurried after Ty.

"Obstinate," Ty clarified. "You said you didn't know what it meant. It means stubborn."

Kit sad nothing, but quickened his pace to keep up with Ty. Ordinarily, Kit would've been immediately suspicious, assuming the whole thing was a ploy to get him out of his makeshift solitary confinement. But Ty, he felt, wouldn't lie, wouldn't say one thing and do another. He trusted that if Ty said they were going to Kit's home, that's where they were going. And if he was right that that's where they were going, Kit didn't know how to feel.

As the taxi they hailed to take them to Kit's house pulled away from the sidewalk, Ty made a quiet 'hmmm' under his breath.

"What's wrong?" Kit asked, leaning back against the seat.

"N-Nothing. I just…I probably should have told Julian where I was going," he said worriedly. "I probably should have checked you were cleared to leave."

"It'll be fine," Kit said, brushing it off.

Ty closed his eyes and squeezed his hands into fists. He didn't want to make Kit not like him, but he was internally panicking. He didn't like that this driver was a stranger. He didn't like that he didn't have Livvy or Julian with him. He didn't like that he'd left his headphones at home, or that he didn't really know Kit all that well. His hands were fluttering in his lap, no matter how hard he tried to hold them still. Kit was looking out of the window at the streets going by. It made Kit's chest ache a little as the unfamiliar gave way to the homely. When the car pulled up outside the house and the two of them climbed out, there was a wistful tug at Kit's heart.

Kit put a hand on the front door and breathed out slowly.

"Are you okay?" Ty asked. Kit turned, finally clocking Ty's rapidly moving hands at his sides.

"Are you okay?" Kit countered, raising an eyebrow. Ty nodded, blushing. "Then come on. Let's do this."

He pushed the door open, knowing it wouldn't be locked. Why would it be? It wasn't like there was anyone living there to lock the door to keep themselves safe. It hadn't kept his dad very safe, Kit thought, feeling like his heart had lodged in his throat. The second the door opened, the full extent of the carnage was obvious. The whole lounge was a wreck, the remains of the fight with the demon who'd killed Johnny blatant and raw and jarring. Kit gagged and Ty jumped, staring.

"What's wrong?" he asked, fighting the urge to put his hands over his ears.

Kit shook his head and walked away quickly, disappearing upstairs. Ty looked around at the disorder around him and began straightening the place up, replacing chairs that had fallen, returning upended tables to their correct positions. Upstairs, Kit sat on the hall, breathing through his teeth. Talk about role reversal, he thought, him sat here in the hall instead of Tiberius. He ran a hand through his blond hair and stood up, going into his bedroom. The world felt off-kilter, strangely broken but looking perfectly normal on the surface. It was like someone had dressed up his life to look externally perfect when, inside, it was utterly obliterated. Kit sometimes felt like that himself, like he was all hard and resistant on the outside, but inside he was slowly shattering.

Every square inch of his room was painful to look at, from his dresser scattered with trinkets and pens to his bed. His bed. He'd forgotten how much he'd missed it. He sat down on it and instantly relaxed, all the air leaving his body in one enervated sigh. He laid back and closed his eyes, feeling comfortable for the first time in so long. It wasn't even that his bed was all that comfortable – in fact, the bed in the Institute was probably nicer, the mattress less lumpy, but it was familiar. The mattress knew him, was moulded to his body. Even the duvet that smelt musty because he hadn't got around to washing it in a while before he left felt as inviting as a hug. It was the closest thing he would get to one now. He took one last minute laying there before he stood up and started shoving things haphazardly into his school backpack; clothes, his books, various things that had never been important until there was a chance he'd never see them again. He shouldered the bag and went into his dad's room. The smell of home hit him like a wave. If he was honest, Kit hadn't always liked his dad. But he had always loved him. Those were different things, and they weren't mutually exclusive. He might have detested the lying, the secrecy, but he knew his dad cared about him. When Ty had held that knife to his throat, his dad had gone mad. Kit knew he mattered to his father. From his dad's room, he took shirts and jumpers, hoodies and coats, things Kit could wear that would feel like home. He leaned in to take the hoodie strewn on the bed and breathed in the smell of his dad, musky and like earthy cologne. He buried his face in the pillow next, breathing in deeply, trying to permanently keep the familiar smell in his nostrils, and then tucked it under his arm as well.

When he walked back downstairs, Ty was stood in the middle of the lounge that had been completely neatened. All the broken chips of furniture had been cleared, the stains soaked from the rug, and Ty was stood in the centre of the room, looking mildly shell-shocked.

"There was a lot of ichor and blood," Ty commented shakily. "What happened?"

"My dad got killed," Kit said shortly. "Come on, let's go. I don't want to stay here."

"Are you okay?" Ty asked, following him out.

"What do you think?" Kit said dryly, and Ty backed up as Kit slammed the door behind them.

"No. I don't think you are okay," Ty replied, closing one eye in a wince as the door banged loudly shut.

"Good guess," Kit said scathingly as they walked out onto the sidewalk.

"I didn't guess," Ty flung back angrily, his low voice hard. Kit turned sharply. He couldn't have imagined Ty shouting but the boy's grey eyes had hardened and his voice had risen to a furious crescendo. "I tried to work it out. I tried to fix your house back up so you wouldn't have to worry about it. I came with you because I wanted to understand how you felt, even though I knew we'd get in trouble." His voice fell, stony and quiet, and just as angry. Somehow, Kit thought, it was worse. "I can't apologise for that. I'm not sorry that my best isn't enough." He put a hand out to hail down an oncoming cab and opened the door for Kit, climbing in after him and staring pointedly out of the window.

Kit's stomach was tying itself in knots. He didn't know what he'd said that had done it, but he knew he'd hit a nerve. He felt awful. The way Ty had responded hadn't been the way people responded to a throwaway mean remark. He'd been genuinely hurt. Kit knew he'd said something not just mean, but personal.

"Tiberius…" Kit said quietly. "I'm…"

"Shut up," Ty whispered. "There's something wrong."

"I…I know. I didn't mean it. I was just mad and…"

"No. Something is wrong." Ty repeated, and glanced up at the taxi driver. As he did, a single eye blinked at him through the gap between the top of the seat and the headrest. Ty went instantly for the door handle but the driver was faster, and pushed the pin to lock the doors. "Move!" Ty ordered and Kit pressed himself back into the corner where his seat met the window, watching the driver, who had taken both hands from the wheel. 'Hands' might be generous. They were more like claws that had started scrabbling back towards them. His head split open down the middle, row upon row of teeth gleaming from the abyssal hole in the skull. Kit dug out one of the heavy, hardback books from his bag and swung down, hitting the demon's reaching talons with enough force to make the creature screech and reel back, crushing itself against the car horn, which emitted a long, loud noise. At the same moment, there was an almighty crash and Ty was yanking his seatbelt off, pushing the release on Kit's and making it spring back, the metal clasp smacking hard into his hip on the way. The demon was shrieking and Ty had his lips pressed together firmly. He hesitated only a moment before he pulled Kit by the hand, and scrambled from the vehicle, tumbling through the empty frame where the window had been.

Kit smacked into the blacktop hard and felt the impact of it shudder up his arm like an electric current. Ty was already on his feet and pulling Kit up and out of the road, his gait lopsided where his leg hit the concrete, painful and awkward. There were no other cars on the road, but still they hurried out of the street. When they got to the muddy bank at the side, Ty put his hands over his ears and curled up into a ball.

"Ty?" Kit asked, and put his hand on Ty's knee. Ty smacked it away hard, leaving a red mark. He was rocking, hair sticking to his forehead with sweat, and Kit watched helplessly. There was nothing he could do. All he could do was…turn back time and tell Ty he didn't want to go, that they should both stay at the Institute. As he looked across at Ty, his heart turned over. There was something beautiful about Ty, unassuming and unprecedented. The angular planes of his face, even now when it was cut with tear tracks, and hard grey eyes, were like marble. Kit felt his throat tighten, and he swallowed hard against the lump that had formed.

A sudden screech of car tyres made Kit look up. Julian was getting out of the driver's seat of their battered car, with Emma by his side. Emma took one look at Kit and hauled him into the backseat of the car, sitting down beside him.

"Emma, I…" Kit began. Normally, he would've protested, yelled at her for grabbing him. He kind of felt like he deserved this though, looking out the window at Ty, huddled on the ground with Julian bent down beside him.

"Just…" Emma sighed. "Just be quiet, Kit."

Julian cast a look at the car, and moved to block Ty from the view of Kit. Ty didn't like it when people saw him have meltdowns; it embarrassed him. He certainly wouldn't want someone he barely knew seeing him at his worst. He bent down, putting himself on eye level and speaking softly but clearly.

"It's okay, Ty. It's okay. I'm here. Emma and I are here. Shh, it's alright. You're fine. You're safe."

Ty was shaking, his hands so tight on his ears that his knuckles were whitening. His breath was coming in gasps, and his skin was sweaty but cold. When he finally looked up at Julian, he relaxed a little, taking his hands away from his ears warily. Julian put a hand out, but Ty's hands were shaking, elbows tucked close to his body. He let Julian gently help him up and into the passenger seat of the car. Ty put his head against the window of the car, eventually letting it slump exhaustedly against his chest, not quite asleep but too drained to do much else. Julian said nothing to Kit, just set his jaw and turned the car around, driving steadily and silently back to the Institute.

Ty's face was bleeding. In the taxi, to smash the glass window, he'd used an open rune and the shards had flown all over. Most had flown outward onto the tarmac, but a few stray bits had nicked at his skin. Mark was sat with him, wiping blood from the boy's forehead and cheek gently with a cloth. When it finally stopped bleeding, Mark left and Julian took his place beside his little brother to apply an iratze.

"Am I in trouble?" Ty asked, his jaw set firmly the same way Julian did. "Because I didn't do anything wrong except leave without telling you, and that's fairly minor compared to what happened after that."

"None of the bit after would have happened if you hadn't left without telling us." Julian pointed out, patting Ty's arm gently where he'd applied the iratze. Ty was so porcelain pale that runes always looked far angrier on him. "But no, you aren't in trouble." Julian looked at Ty and hugged him hard, and Ty placed his hands carefully around Julian's shoulders. "I love you, Ty. You do know that, don't you?" Julian asked. "I was so worried something had happened to you."

"I know," Ty said quietly. "I'm okay. You didn't need to worry. How did you find me anyway?"

"I tracked you," Julian admitted. "Once I noticed you'd gone." Jules let him go and sat back. "What happened? Why did you go? Did he make you?"

Ty shook his head. "No. I don't know why. I never get to go anywhere," he added, jutting his chin out stubbornly.

Julian sighed. "You know why; because I just want to protect you. And things can hurt us when we're alone. That's why Emma and I always go together."

"Mark is allowed out."

"Mark is older than you."

"I can do some things on my own," Ty retorted. "I got us out of that car and if I hadn't then Kit and I would have died," he pointed out logically. "I did the open rune right to break the window, better than I did it when I broke into the basement at Johnny Rook's house."

"You did," Julian conceded. "I'm sorry. It's not…it's not that I doubt you, Ty-Ty."

Ty looked up. "I know. You're looking after me."

Julian nodded and stroked Ty's hair. Ty smiled and leaned in like a cat having its ears scratched.

"I love you," Julian said, and stood up. "Okay. I'm going to go and check that Mark hasn't said Dru and Tavvy for acorns or whatever faeries do."

"Really?" Ty asked.

Julian shook his head, grinning. "No, not really. But I do need to check he hasn't lost them," he said, and shut the infirmary door behind him as he went.

Kit had barely got into his room when the door flew open.

"Hey!" Livvy protested, turning, and a girl about his height stood before him, shutting the door loudly behind her. Her green-blue eyes hardened the same way Ty's did, and somehow he knew this was Livvy.

"Don't 'hey' me," she snapped, and he took a startled step back. In a blue cotton dress with a floral pattern, her appearance didn't match the fire in her words. She looked as if she was the inspiration for that kid's rhyme; made of sugar and spice and all things nice. And also fury and fire and anger and ire. That last part they'd clearly chosen to omit from the nursery rhyme. "What did you do?" she demanded.

"I…what do you…"

"Ty," she said shortly. "What did you do?"

"I didn't mean to…"

She cut him off again. "I don't care what you did or didn't mean to. You did it. And you were wrong to. You have no idea what you're doing!" she yelled. "No idea. You don't know anything about him. Don't make him do things that could hurt him. Don't take advantage of him." Her voice quivered as she said it. She steadied herself before repeating it. "Don't take advantage of him. He's my twin brother. I'll kill you before I let you lay a finger on him."

"I know," Kit said quietly. And he did know. The fire in her eyes assured him she was entirely serious. She would destroy everything, turn the world to rubble, so she could rescue him from the debris.

"Anything could have happened! He could have been hurt or killed!"

"I could've been killed," Kit pointed out.

"He could've been attacked by demons!" she went on, ignoring him.

"We did get attacked by demons and it was fine!" he shouted back, and his blue eyes widened. He didn't know what on earth had possessed him to say that. He should have shut up, just let her rant. Damn. In the second it took all of this to go through his mind, he felt a sharp pain explode like an ignited flame in his face. Livvy drew her hand back, her palm red and tingling where it had connected with Kit's cheek. She stepped back, feeling as hot and flushed as Kit did.

"You got attacked by demons?" she asked. He nodded silently. "And what did Ty do?"

"He took out some weird pen thing and broke the window. He got us out of there," Kit said quickly, pressing back against the wall, bracing to be hit again.

"His stele," Livvy said, half to herself. She looked up at Kit. "He did it? He was okay?"

"Yeah, yeah," Kit assured her. "He was good. He seemed stressed afterward."

Livvy nodded, and Kit was surprised to see her beaming. "Wow," she breathed. "I bet Jules was furious that Ty did that after he so persistently refuses to actually train." She laughed. "That's amazing."

"Isn't that what you're trained to do?" Kit pointed out. "Hunt demons? Why is it so amazing?"

Livvy glared. "Ty isn't like that. He wants to be a scholar," she added proudly. "And," she continued. "It should have been me there when he killed his first demon, not you."

"He didn't technically kill it…" Kit muttered.

"He would have if I was there," Livvy retorted, heading toward the door. "Oh, and by the way if you do anything like that again, I'll kill you." She smiled sweetly, the action strangely sinister with her words, and shut the door.