A/N: This story is nothing like my Maximum Ride/Twilight crossover, for those of you who have me on your Author Alerts. To everyone else who is reading this, I hope you like it!

All this business began in the dead of fall. The scant few trees to be found in the Lower City were dropping their leaves faster'an a spintry could his britches, and a biting cold wind could be felt blowin' between the houses even on the best of days.

Our Dogs and us Puppies had switched our light summer uniform to the one worn in fall. Our light tunics gave way for long woolen ones and our breeches for thicker trousers. Boots needed to be stuffed with animal fur to keep the frost from carrying off our toes. 'Twas also the purpose of wool gloves tugged past our arm guards, with each finger knitted separately so that we might still be able to hobble our Rats. Sometimes I wished for a hat of the like to cover my ears, but it would be too easy for any scut to pull it over my eyes.

The day had begun normal enough. Aniki, Kora, Ersken, Rosto, and I had been forced to move our breakfasts back indoors because of the cold. No one much mourned this, for it was warmer this way, and none of the others that had been at our breakfasts before wanted to walk all the way to Nipcopper Close at dawn with the chill nippin' at their heels.

My pigeons were still at their antics, what with their thick ruff of feathers to warm their tiny bodies.

A surprise came later in the day before my watch in the form of my brother Will. I'd been crossing the landing between Kora's and Rosto's rooms, heading out to visit my dust spinners, when he burst through the door in all his twelve-year-old eagerness.

"Beka! I've stopped by for a visit." I smiled at him and wrapped my arm around his shoulders.

"What brings you to the Lower City on this coldest of days, Will?" I asked as I drew him to the stairs to sit. My brothers and Lorine had been sweet as twilsey towards me since this past April and the goings on with the Shadow Snake and Crookshank's diggers. I'm just glad that I am finally a sister they can be proud of rather than ashamed of.

"Ladslove and I've come to deliver a message to Ahuda from my lord. He's been wishing that old bird would retire for awhile now." My face whitened.

"The horse is outside?" Will nodded in confusion at my actions. He must've thought me cracked.

I rose off my hunkerbones and dashed to the door, hand on my belt knife. Sure enough, some scummernob was getting too interested in how well Ladslove was tied to the fence post.

"Oi!" I shouted as I leapt towards them. "Keep your mitts off of that horse!"

The Rat took one look at my knife and scuttled into the alley. I couldn't go after and arrest him for looking a bit too closely at a horse, though I wanted to.

Will had followed me out. I turned and said, "You're off your game, brother. You should have remembered that it's never too cold for a Rat. Think on what would have happened if you'd come home without your horse." Mayhap that was a little harsh, but he needed to be reminded of what a cushy life at my lord's house had made him forget. If he was to deliver messages in the Cesspool, he'd best remember who else lived there.

Nothing fazed Will, though. "Sorry, Beka," he said as I led both him and the horse around the back to my landlady's shed. I sighed as we turned back towards my lodgings, Ladslove safely stored.

We'd just settled on the stairs again when Rosto stepped out of his room clad only in breeches. The sight of him spread a blush across my cheeks. Will looked curiously at the newcomer.

"What's all this racket, then?" Rosto inquired, eyeing Will. I was about to answer when a mot's voice followed him out the open door.

"Rosto? What's going on out there?" A hard knot of jealously tightened under my breastbone, but I let nothing show on my face. I reminded myself I'd never canoodle with the Rogue, even if he pined for me.

It did not escape my notice, however, that the mot was most definitely not Aniki. I raised a brow at him. Rosto turned his face away and colored slightly.

Was I seeing things? Had the King of Thieves just blushed?

Will, who had sat silently throughout this exchange, did not like being ignored.

"Hello. I'm Will Cooper, Beka's brother. Who might you be?" Rosto recovered quickly enough to make a gallant players bow.

"Ah, another of the Cooper clan! I am Rosto the Piper, King of the Rogue and your darling sister's neighbor." He'd snaked an arm around my waist whilst I wasn't watching during the last bit of his speech. I shoved him off, but not before Rosto's mot entered the hallway.

She was a right pretty gixie, and I could see the attraction. She was wrapped only in a sheet, which exposed honey brown skin. Her hair and wide glims were only a shade darker.

Her features were twisted with anger, though, and I could tell that if she reacted like this to seeing Rosto's arm around the Puppy who lived upstairs, she definitely didn't know about Aniki.

She opened her mouth (to shout something, I'm sure.), but Rosto quickly nipped both of them back inside. I was left outside with flaming cheeks and a suspicious Will.

"Eh… why don't we… go to my room? You haven't seen Pounce in a while, have you?" It was really just to lure him away from the first floor. We could hear the gixie laying into Rosto through the thin walls, not minding the fact that he was the Rogue and she was probably just his one-night-plaything.

Will followed, but he wasn't happy.

"What are you doing living with the Rogue, Beka? And why'd he have his arm around you?" I swallowed hard and stuttered out an explanation.

"He moved in here after me. He's only been the Rogue for a few months. Ahuda and my Dogs want me to stay here, to keep an eye on things, like. Rosto's changing this place into the court once the weather turns again," I paused here, to gather my thoughts. "And… with the arm… Rosto's just like that."

Will seemed to accept this, and flopped to my bed where Pounce lazed. That bugnob cat climbed atop him to begin kneading his chest. Will laughed and petted the silly thing, then sighed.

"I s'pose I'd better go. I was to deliver to Ahuda and come straight back." I hugged my brother goodbye and kissed his cheek as I saw him and Ladslove to the front gate.

"Come visit us on your next day off!" He called over his shoulder.

"I plan on it!" I smiled after my brother as he disappeared around the corner, then turned to see to the shed, Pounce at my heels. My landlady need never know that I'd harbored a horse in her shed, as long as I took care of the evidence.

As I entered the dim building, I saw that I was right to check. Ladslove had left a nice present of scummer for me on the floor. Turning to get the shovel, I was shocked to see a man enter and shut the door behind him.

He was a tall cove, with skin leathery from too much time spent in the sun. His glims were brown, small and watery in his gaunt face. Black hair was scarce covering his nob, it was so thin and greasy. A gaudy red vest and deep blue breeches covered him.

For all his poor looks, he radiated a sense of great power. I knew this to be true when he slammed my poor body into the wall and pressed a shiv to my neck before I'd had a chance to move. Pounce yowled and leapt at my attacker. The cove (who I now know was a mage.) swung a foot out and slammed it into my poor cat's noll as if he'd seen Pounce coming. I let out a wail as Pounce dropped, unmoving. The rusher clapped a smelly palm over my gob.I struggled to reach my own knife or knee him in the cod to make him let go, but his body had me pinned. He leaned his face closer to whisper into my ear.

"You are responsible for the death of my Vrinday," he muttered with a learned speech, invoking the name of Crookshank's bought mage, who had killed her own self in prison. "I will see you pay. But I shant kill you, no, no, you must suffer." The man was obviously cracked.

"Oh, yes, a Dog in name and a dog in soul, you are, you are," he said as much to himself as to me. "And what you are is what you'll be."

These words were different; they held magic. Even as I thought that, a red fire spread across my body from his hands.

I felt no pain as I shrank.

There was only a tingling sensation as my nob thinned and lengthened, my pearlies sharpened and grew, my ears stretched, my glims widened and turned brown, my tailbone uncurled, and my dark blonde hair spread to the rest of my body.

The mage knew I'd have no bad conscience over ripping his throat out then and there for hurting Pounce. Even as I was changing into a well and true mongrel dog, he scooped up my stunned cat and murmured a spell that sent my flying towards Daymarket.

As a dog.