Chapter 1

I was thirteen when I arrived on the doorstep of 425 Harrington Lane, the place I would begrudgingly call my home for the next decade. Although I would spend more time away from it than within it. The house was large and grand but poorly maintained. A different child might have balked at the state of her new of it. But I was cognizant that it was this or a workhouse for me.

The constable of New Jerusalem, who accompanied me on my first approach to the grim house had first done me the indecency of stripping me of the clothes I had been brought to him in. Well, his wife had, so indignity more than indecency, I suppose. I had come in what I had worn as a motherless vagrant of New York City, rough trousers and a greyed shirt. He had put me in a dress that did not fit so much as hang off my shoulders. Trousers, he had said, were unbecoming and indeed illegal for a young lady. But without delicate shoes to give me, he had mercifully allowed me my sturdy boots. These had been hard won and I would not have given them up without considerable struggle. But it seemed there were no laws concerning the daintiness of a lady's footwear, only that she put nothing between her legs. This coincided with what I had already been made aware about the world.

The constable rapped on the door. His hand was uncomfortably on my shoulder and his face was set with a grim distaste. He didn't want to bring me here, and had told me as much. Had said, in fact, that if he had any other option he would have brought me there, to any home but this one. When I had said why I had come, that they had been shipping orphans out west, to work on Midwestern farms, he had told me I would have been better off taking my chances. But it was his duty as a lawman to bring me, a wayward almost orphan, to my next of kin. And beyond the door with peeling paint, marked with a sturdy 425, was my next of kin.

The constable had to knock three times before there was an answer. In this way, I heard him before I saw him.

"Will Henry! WILL HENRY! WILL HENREEEE!"

Each of his subsequent shouts were louder than the last. Anger blossoming each time he had to repeat himself.

I knew his name, I had always known his name, he was a story that my mother had been strangely fond of, considering it had left her bereft and with child. But he had been what she called 'a proper gentleman' and one of the few of those that she had ever come into close proximity to. She only learned his name afterward, when he fled, leaving behind his coat, a business card tucked into the pocket.

The business card had not said what he did, only given the address and, in bold lettering: Dr. Pellinore Xavier Warthrop. I had it with me as proof of my paternity. It didn't matter if he took it as such, it had been enough to keep me out of a workhouse and out of the farmland, so it had done as much as I could ask of it. If he threw me out, I could dodge the constable and survive on my own.

After many minutes the constable's summons was answered, we were here, after all in the middle of the night, not by a man, but a boy, older than me maybe by a year or two and no more. He looked somewhat bedraggled with circles under his eyes and sleep tossed clothes.

"Ah, Will," the constable said, discomfort increasing with the sight of the boy, "I have a matter to discuss with Dr. Warthrop, fetch him at once."

Will's attention was on me rather than the constable, but I didn't say anything. I had been struck by nerves. The name Pellinore Warthrop and the address 425 Harrington Lane had been a phantom of my childhood. I had employed them to spare my short term needs. Now, standing before the house, it settled into my heart that my father lay just beyond the door.

A crease formed between Will's brows, but he turned back into the house without comment. When he returned he brought with him a man who, if Will was bedraggled, he was positively grimy. Not quite the gentleman I had been told about. He was tall and slender and might have been good looking if he were cleaned up a bit. I wondered if he were ill, his face was so pale and hollow. There were stains marring his shirtsleeves, rolled up to the elbow, and what looked quite like blood smeared on his collar, unbuttoned.

I had grown up three blocks south of the Five Points in New York City, a rough neighborhood to be sure. I had spent the first eleven years of my life with only the, spotty at best, oversight of my mother, the last two I had not had even that. My force of necessity I knew how to draw the worst conclusions. And this house was beginning to make my blood sing in my veins the way it did when I crept through dark alleys or slipped inside saloons. This man clearly lived alone with only the boy for company. And he had been called Warthrop, as I had known, and the boy Henry.

The warning beacons, small alone, began to form a constellation. The constable's dread to bring me here and his certainty that even a fate picked farm would be more suitable. The sorry that crept over his face at the sight of the boy Will Henry. Will's own state, poorly cared for, with darting eyes and a look I recognized as one who had seen more than the innocent affairs of childhood.

Where I come from had not been a comfort palace, I had learned early the ways of men and the dark manifestations of their baser needs, although I had been quick and clever and kept my knowledge secondhand. The constable had not taken my boots, nor the knife lodged in the right one. If I had to, I could be swift.

"Dr. Warthrop," the constable said, "A matter has come to my doorstep that is, to my unhappiness, of great concern to you." The constable had released my shoulder to take out a pipe and nervously fiddle with it.

"Why did you bring a waif to my door, constable? Did you not learn your lesson with Malachi?" The one, Doctor Warthrop, answered. His voice was sharp.

I could feel the constable stiffen, his hand tightening on my shoulder. Malachi, I thought, and what had become of Malachi? Another child whose mention concerning the doctor made my guardian the constable shift uncomfortably.

"It is the waif as you call her, that is of your concern. Pellinore, if there were another option available to me, let it be known that I would take it, but the law demands she be brought here."

The constable clearly knew of misdeeds by the hands of the doctor. Would he prosecute if my knife ended up in this Warthrop's throat? Or might he overlook it, knowing my impetus.

The doctor's face was quite enough to determine what he thought of that pronouncement. He spoke, however, regardless, "What do you mean, constable that the law demands it?"

"You are her next of kin, Pellinore."

Behind the doctor, Pellinore, the boy Will Henry's eyes widened and his eyebrows shot up. He looked from me to Warthrop. The question on the boy's mind, and on the minds of both the doctor and the constable was clear. And so, now that I got a good look at him, was the answer. His hollow cheeks and sharp cheekbones, his dark eyes and hair. All of these things he had given to me. I determined that he would be handsome with a little more meat on his bones. That was how I had found it for myself, pretty when well fed, harrowing when not.

There was a moment where the doctor looked startled, then his face chilled to an icy indifference, "Next of kin, whatever do you mean, constable?"

The constable haltingly explained, "Her mother died, Pellinore, but left her with your address. She told the girl that you were her father. Pellinore look at her, there can be no mistake."

Behind him, Will Henry choked. Pellinore Warthrop glowered at me, "That is impossible." He said with more decisiveness than he had a right to.

I reached down and pulled the battered business card out of my boot and held it out to him, "You left your coat."

Color smeared itself over Pellinore's sharp cheeks. He stood mutely for nearly an entire minutes, eyes fixed on the card. Then, in a sudden recovery he said briskly, "Very well, constable, leave her with me."

He stepped aside and I left the constable on the stoop, walking passed the doctor into the house. Fear at the door closing and being locked inside welled up under my skin. The cryptic reservations of the constable and the dread that emanated from the house itself all adding to my unease.

Of course, being but thirteen years old, there were many things for which I was unequipped. But the handling of fear was not among them. This was no natural talent, but a well hone skill picked up, like all of my other skills, by necessity. My mother, before her death, had had few opportunities to provide me with full time care, and she had died nearly two full years ago. I had spent many days and many nights in city streets in a neighborhood of New York renowned for its foulness. I learned fast that if you let them see that you were afraid, that was enough.

"You see to her care, Pellinore," the constable warned, "I will be quite stringent on that account."

Pellinore, eyes quite fixed on me, closed the door on the constable without answering his demand. His gaze was smothering. Door shut he paced around me, running his long fingers through his dirty hair. I turned with him, not allowing him at my back. I was heavily cognizant of the handle of my knife which pressed comfortingly against my ankle. Will Henry watched me too, his face a mixture of curiosity and compassion.

"What happened to you mother?" Warthrop asked sharply.

"What do you think?" I asked, sneer evident in my voice.

Will Henry flinched.

"Answer the question," he said sharply, "Directly and honestly." His voice bit, demanding and controlling.

There was not a tone of voice in the world that would make me less likely to give a direct and honest answer. Instead I shrugged, "I thought you'd be able to puzzle it out. Aren't you supposed to be smart? Being a doctor and all that?"

Will Henry's eyes widened once more and Pellinore barked, "Of course I can make assumptions. But tell me, give me a full account."

Anger flared up my spine and I mimicked his voice. My voice lent itself to the task, being another gift from him, "It what way, Doctor Warthrop, do you deserve to know the history of my mother?"

He reeled back, anger sharpening his features. But guilt was there too. I smelled it like a festering wound.

"She's dead," I answered, "That is the only thing that matters."

Will spoke before Warthrop got the chance, juxtaposed against the doctor, his voice was soothing, full of compassion and loss, "I'm sorry about your mother."

That must have been how he had fallen under Warthrop's care as well, the death of his parents. It made me soften for him. I would discover that that compassion was one of Will Henry's underlying traits. It made him a good companion to Pellinore, he could pick up where the doctor failed.

Belatedly, as though only realizing that I might be distressed at the death of my mother after Will's outpouring of sympathy, Warthrop moved as though to touch my shoulder. I reacted viscerally to his motion toward me. I jolted backward, twisting out of his reach and sidestepping so the table stood between us. He was taken aback by my extreme reaction but I was unable to allow him even the most innocent seeming of touches. The stricken look of the constable when he handed me off and his sadness when he looked upon Will Henry. The boy Malachi. These things did not speak well of the intentions of Pellinore Warthop's touch.

"What sort of doctor are you?" I asked. I hoped he he talked a bit more I could get a handle on his predilections. Malachi was a boy's name also, there was a chance only Will Henry was in danger here. A pity, but not my problem.

Warthrop looked at Will, who gave back an uncomfortable expression, finally, he said, "If you are going to be residing under this roof it would be futile to attempt to keep it from you, but I doubt you'll find it pleasant."

I shrugged at his warning, my life, thus far, had not been what one might describe as pleasant and I doubted very much that there was anything this doctor could tell me that he did for work that would further mar my view on the overall quality of the world's inhabitants. There had been a man who lived down the hall from my mother and I that I only knew as . He left in the dark and came home in the dark smelling like blood. This doctor could do no worse.

"I am a doctor of aberrant biology, in name, a monstrumologist," he said sort of grandly. The last word, not the only one in the sentence that tripped me up, he pronounced cleanly, not letting any of the many syllables slur together 'mon-stru-mol-o-gist'.

I wasn't sure if I was supposed to understand what the devil that meant. Maybe if I could put definition to 'aberrant,' I would have had some idea. As it was, his declaration had not explained anything.

My face scrunched up in confusion, "Thanks for clearing all that up."

He gave me a withering look, "Monstrumology," he continued, his tone becoming lecturing, "is a branch of science concerned with the study and occasional pursuit of monsters."

That word stuck home. "Monsters?" I inquired. If it had been somebody other than this gaunt man who had met me with bloodstains on his collar and eyes of matchless intensity, I would have thought he was lying. "You mean monsters? Werewolf, monsters? Eat children, made of nightmares monsters?" Laughter was in my voice.

His face was stern, although confused at the levity he had brought out of me, "Yes. Monsters. They are as real as you or I. And I study them, with the help of Will Henry. He is my assistant." He had mistaken my laughter as disbelief. But it was not. I had seen enough of the odd things that turned up in black market deals to be less than flabbergasted to find out that somewhere a Chimera might be chowing down on a hapless vagrant.

But really, it was Will Henry who convinced me. He didn't say anything, but his eyes were on me, sorry and concerned. 'Sorry you have to know,' is what his look said. Not the look of a boy with a mad master. But maybe the look of a boy who hunted monsters.

They expected me to be scared, I could see it in their expressions. But I didn't feel fear. Had I really felt no fear? Or had I become too good at feeling fear as excitement. Because I remember the excitement. I remember how the moment I really believed them by heart fluttered and I leaned toward them. But then, I had always known there were monsters, I knew what it was to shanghai sailors and I knew what happened to girls who walked alone at night. Even I, who did not make a habit of reading the papers, was acquainted with the bloodshed in Whitechapel. What Warthrop had told me was only that some of these monsters have very sharp teeth.

But this revelation of what the doctor did, particularly the last bit, that Will Henry was his assistant, was honestly what made me laugh. I felt like a knife was being removed from my side. Rather than instill the horror he obviously thought that it would, it was the most relieving thing he could have ever said.

"So that's why the constable didn't want to leave me here?" I said, carding my hands through my hair and grinning, "Because you take your boy out on monster hunts! That is what befell that Malachi too, then? A monster. He was eaten by a monster? That's all?"

"Yes," he said, confusion and what bordered on revulsion at my laughing where plain in his face, "Malachi was a fifteen year old boy devoured by an anthropophagi and you find this funny?"

Will too seemed distressed at my response, but I just shrugged, "Not funny so much as relieving."

"Relieving?" He asked, it was plain he was truly confused now, "Relieving that my profession is to work with monsters?"

I laughed again, "Yeah, doc, I thought the constable was so broken up about leaving me in your charge because of what you got to with Will Henry. Monsters aren't so bad."

It took him a moment to understand my implication, then, horrified, he looked at Will Henry, who looked equally traumatized, then back at me, "What in god's name would lead you to believe my intentions on Will Henry were anything but professional? He's no more than a boy." His gaze on me intensified, as though he were trying to peer through my skin to what lay beneath.

I shrugged, amused at his disbelief. Back home a girl who assumed the worst of a stranger was just showing good sense.

"Anyway," I said, not wanting to dwell on the now benign threat, "Monsters." My mind was racing with it. He hunted monsters. Monsters. Chilly excitement was crawling up my skin.

I had been in petty scraps before, knocked around boys smaller than me for their pocket change, and indeed, been knocked around in turn for mine. There was a certain thrill in it that I had always liked. Something in a fight that made my bones tingle. How might it be to square up with a monster?

"Can you teach me?"

"Teach you?" Warthrop asked, startled.

I leaned forward, "To hunt monsters? Can you teach me?"

He knit his brow together. He turned slowly and looked at Will. His eyes swept over him and his teeth gritted together. Then he looked down at me and I already knew his answer before he gave it. It was an answer I had been given before about a great many things, "No, I can not teach you. It is not... a profession suited to a lady."

Anger leapt up in my heart. But I did not argue. This was, as I had already learned, the way of the world. Being stricken with the affliction of femininity I was cursed to spend my life in need of defense, but forbade the blessing of learning how to defend myself. And, of course, if the need ever arose, it would be held against me that I had left myself defenseless.

This was as I thought at the time. Later, I would give him more credit, that this line about young ladies was, for the most part, only a line. He would have said no if I were a boy too. He did not want to afflict another child with what he had already afflicted Will Henry. That guilt that I had smelled had another source than me.

But just then, in his kitchen and thirteen years old, I was angry at being told that monsters existed with such finality that I had believed it without more than his word and then stripped of the chance to learn to hunt them. But I did not burn as I might have, with injustice. Pellinore Warthrop did not owe me tutelage. He had enlightened me to a variation on an old threat. Not even the moment he refused me in his kitchen did I believe that I would not learn how to fight monsters, only that he would not be the one to teach me.

"Alright," I equivocated, "Don't teach me."

He relaxed at that the roused himself, "I had almost forgotten, what is your name?"

"Annalee," I said, then I paused. I wasn't entirely sure what to use as my surname. It had been Mead, for my mother, but that was no longer correct. When in one of her more doting moments, my mother had told me that women lost their names when their lives went from place to place, and that we used their alterations to separate our lives into pieces. This hadn't been told to me as a bitterness, it was a gift that women were given. Unlike a man, we were allowed the chance to reinvent ourselves with each phase of our lives. Being too young to do more than take her word for it, this was the principle I operated under.

I finished with a shrug, "Warthrop."

This operated on the doctor like a blow to the stomach, whose entire body flinched and he spun away, heading in long and purposeful strides toward a heavy door that led off the kitchen, "Take her upstairs, Will Henry, give her a spare room. I am not to be disturbed. Snap to, Will Henry." Then he slammed the door.

"I'm sorry," Will said, "You won't find the doctor very welcoming."

I shrugged, "What's it like being his apprentice? Do you hunt monsters too?"

He looked down, "Yes, he takes me with him, but mostly it's just fetching him things and helping him with necropsies."

I scrunched up my face with confusion.

"Oh," he said, "In the basement, he cuts open monsters to study their anatomy. Do you want me to show you to your room?"

I didn't. I wanted to keep asking him about monsters. But he looked exhausted and there would be time enough for questions later, "Yes, please."

He led me up a flight of stairs and to the largest bedroom I had ever been in. It was covered in dust in most places that bespoke years of disuse. Some spots though, around the bed and across a dresser where wiped clean. Someone had used the room recently.

Will did not follow me inside, "If you need something my room is in the attic, you can knock." He started to turn away then turned back, "It'll be nice to have someone else here. Sometimes living with the doctor can be lonely."

Haunted eyed though might be, this boy was squishier and softer than most boys I had encountered. I could hardly help but like him. "Thanks, Will, night."

"Goodnight."

He retreated up the hall and I closed my new bedroom door.

I spun in a slow circle, looking at my room. It was grand and old fashioned with hangings on the bed and elaborate detail work on the furnishings. I collapsed on the bed and looked up at the hangings. Before I extinguished the lamp I took stock of the whole room.

I had slept in many different places. My mother had a hard time keeping us in one apartment, so we moved up and down the slums. She had sometimes left me for weeks or months at a time in an orphanage. After my mother had died rooms had been in an even faster rotation. Sometimes I worked for a day to get a roof over my head, or cleaned up hotels enough that they let me stay in a back room.

Eccentric doctor be damned, this was the first room I had ever slept in that was not occupied with cockroaches and bedbugs. Also one of the few rooms I had slept in where there was almost no worry at all about someone else sneaking up on my in the middle of the night. Having gotten a good measure of the two of them already, the only night time visitors I could imagine was Will making sure I was alright or the doctor standing in the doorway to brood.

I turned and blew out the lamp and fell quickly to sleep.

With nothing else to wear the next morning than the ill fitting dress forced upon me by the well meaning constable, I came downstairs wearing the same thing I had both slept in and worn the day before.

In the kitchen, Will Henry was already up and cooking breakfast, eggs and pancakes. He looked livelier after he had slept, and smiled at me when he saw me.

"Good morning, Anna," he said, then went a hair pink, "Is it alright, if I call you Anna?"

Usually I went by 'Lee,' But Will sounded so sweet saying Anna I let him use the softer of my names.

Eating next to him I asked, "How long have you lived with…" I stalled, unsure what to call him. Having taken Warthrop as a name myself, I couldn't exactly call him that. 'The Doctor' sounded too formal and Pellinore too familiar. Father was out of the question.

"More than a year," he said, "My father worked for him, when my parents died he took me in."

"Sorry," I said, repeating his sentiment from the night before, "About your parents."

"Thank you," he replied, looking down at his pancakes, "Where were you, before here?"

"New York," I told him.

"The Monstrumologist Society has a colloquium in New York, every year."

"Yeah?" I asked, "I didn't get to many colloquiums while I was there."

Before he had given voice to a reply the good doctor himself joined us, bursting in from the basement door.

"Will Henry, what are you doing?"

"Eating breakfast, sir," he said, "You should eat something too."

He waved away Will's concern, "Snap to, Will Henry, I need you downstairs, I-" His gaze was heavy and cloying to be the subject of. He looked like he had forgotten that I existed. "Oh, yes. Annalee." Then he frowned, "Have you nothing else to wear, Annalee?"

I looked back at the same disheveled clothes he had been in the night before, further mussed by another night of work, "Have you?"

"Will, take her into town, outfit her with necessary supplies, then come back at once. I require your assistance."

I, who was very hungry, was unhappy to leave most of my breakfast to go cold, "Can't we finish eating?"

He scowled, "What? Oh, how much must you eat?"

I made a noise of disbelief that can only be truly sounded by a teenager and rose to my feet, abandoning my breakfast along with Will.

"Snap to, Annalee, I need Will Henry as soon as possible."

Something in the snap to made me entirely unable to do as he commanded. I dropped back into my seat and took up my fork again.

"What are you doing, Annalee, I told you to go with Will."

I made a huffy sound, "Will made me breakfast, I'm going to finish it." I returned to my meal, eating slower even than I needed to.

He did not seem to be equipped to handle my defiance, so accustomed he was to being obeyed. "Annalee while you reside under my roof-"

I looked up, "You require me to leave meals half finished to suit your whim?"

"I require Will Henry."

"Why don't you sit down and eat something, I'm sure by the time you're done cleaning up from breakfast we will be returned and you can go down to your dungeon and do whatever it is that you do."

"I will not be dictated to in my own home!"

"Fine, do whatever you want. I am going to finish my breakfast, that seems a small thing to ask."

"Finish your breakfast then," He said, "Come downstairs as soon as you are back, Will Henry." And once more, he disappeared into the dungeon.

I kept on eating and after a moment's hesitation, Will sat back down and finished his meal alongside me. I could not tell if he was impressed or dismayed.

When we returned from town I went upstairs to wash up and Will went down into the basement to help the doctor however it was that he helped him. These were hours that belonged to he and Will alone. I was neither invited downstairs nor privy to what happened there. He must have told Will to keep it under wraps, because after the first time, when he defined necropsy for me, he would never speak of it again.

Those hours marked great swaths of time that I had entirely to myself. The first time it happened I thought that I would revel in it. I replaced the little shoes I had been procured and put back on my sturdy boots under my new dress. And out the door I went.

The town was such that I had never seen before. Where I had been at home on unending pavement and dirty buildings, New Jerusalem was all green grass, with sparkling summertime dew. A little white church stood on the hill. When storybooks tell you what good days are made of, they talk about this town. Barring, maybe, the monster house down the lane.

But regardless, it took me fifteen minutes to get bored wandering up and down the cobbled streets. After New York this felt like a ghost town, and after learning that monsters crept through the dark, scrounging through rural Mom and Pop Shops seemed dull at best.

So I returned for my short lived adventure, bored and lamenting what was quickly becoming the least exciting days of my life. At home I had been able to scrounge up pocket money rolling dice on the street, or indeed, lifting it from someone's pocket. But it was not something I had a natural predilection for and I knew on the onset that there was no place in New Jerusalem with enough bustle for that.

Besides that, if I got myself into any sort of sticky situation, I would not be a blur of a face that could run off into a street. The constable would know me right off, probably, in pity, send me back to my father rather than outfit me with charges. And somehow I did not want to be on the butt end of it when Pellinore Warthrop discovered that I had been thieving my first day here.

So, back to the glum house full of secrets to which I was not privy.

They were still in the basement when I got there and, through the door, I could hear the drone of my father's lecturing, but not at all well enough to turn it into decipherable words. I retreated from the door, unable to open it without alerting them, for the door was too heavy and would surely creak.

Instead I crept into his library. I was not entirely sure I was allowed in his library, but it was in the main house and not shut by any doors, so I determined to appologize if he took issue, rather than ask him for permission.

The library was in disarray, with books stacked into heaps that were nearly toppling over, small bits of paper peeking out of some of them and strewn across a desk. About a third of them were written in a tidy hand, the rest in a scrawl so desperate I could not make it out.

I had never been much taken with books. I'd been to a bit of school, of course, but I had never progressed from my readers into full volumes. And, mother having never been one to keep books around, my literary education had stalled.

But these books were about monsters. I selected one at random and let it fall open in my palms. The pages were thin and vellumy and the text was so tiny and cramp I almost got a headache just from looking at it. I flipped through it, hoping for illustrations of some gruesome beast, but was let down. I found the rest of the library equally as lacking.

I wandered the house in boredom for another hour, poking my head into crevices and nooks, every room but Pellinore's bedroom and Will's.

Were I not so bored and were I able to convince myself that it was Pellinore's effort I was easing rather than Will's, I would not have done it. But Will had soft eyes and a sweet voice and I very much so wanted him to like me. So I cleaned up from breakfast and explored every inch of the kitchen until I found where everything went.

I thought of taking money where Will had for my clothes and getting food to make dinner. But I did not. I would not play housekeeper to Warthrop if he would not let me also play apprentice.

It wasn't till long after dark that they emerged from their confinement. Will yawned his way up the stairs, looking bedraggled and tired, his eyes lit up when he saw me. I had broken down and made some sort of dinner from the food in the house. After all, I was also quite hungry and unprecedentedly bored.

Pellinore Warthrop was a different beast entirely. While he had looked nearly pleasant coming up from the basement, a wild sort of joy in his dark eyes, when he saw me all of it fell away. He was masked again in iciness that revealed nothing.

I looked away from him. I had not expected our meeting to be warm. I had held no illusions of a strong and tall father sweeping me up into his arms and peering at my face only to exclaim, "My girl! You are so plainly my daughter, for you bear my eyes." Then doted on my with wonderstruck affection. Dreamed of it perhaps, what girl in my position would not? But I had not thought this would be how it would happen.

But I had also not been prepared for the aggressive chilliness that he was casting my way. What had I done to deserve such bold indifference, and indeed dislike, from a man I had known all of two days?

I began my own meal without looking again at my father. Calling him that, even in my head, felt unsettling. I couldn't imagine his reaction if I let it slip into my vernacular.

"Thanks, Anna," Will said, taking a plate for himself and sitting down at my side.

The doctor, or Pellinore, or my father, also took a plate and sat across from us both. He was still wearing a heavy apron that was covering in rather gooey debris. He ate in absolute silence, scowling all the while at the mediocre food I had provided.

"You made this just from what was around?" Will asked, "We had nearly nothing."

I shrugged, rather taken with the compliment, "I'm alright at using up scraps."

In a stodgy and formal tone, Pellinore asked from across the table, "Did you cook often, for your mother?"

"Nah," I replied briefly, "Just when I was on my own."

"On your own?" He asked with renewed sharpness, "When were you on your own? I was given to understand that you came here directly upon the death of your mother? Did she leave you alone often, Annalee?"

My story had slipped of its own accord. I hadn't realized all the little pieces I had to keep track of to tell even such an easy lie as this. My face turned pink, "I just said I came here after she died, didn't say when." But I didn't look at him.

Thunder built up his voice and I could hardly help but flinch back from it, "I refuse to be lied to, Annalee, you will tell me at once the entire account of your coming here. Did you or did you not come directly here upon the death of your mother? Is that not what you told me?"

I pushed food around on my plate, my stomach clenching, "Yes."

"Yes, what? Yes that that is what you told me or yes you came here directly?"

Sudden fury clipped up my spine and I looked up at him with shining eyes, "Yes, that is what I told you but no I did not come here directly. This was my very last resort!"

He had risen, steepling his fingers on the table, "There is a place in hell reserved, so says Dante, for those who lose their tempers without cause!"

I slammed my fork onto the table, "Then I'm sure it would really be Hell because I don't doubt you would be there!"

"Do not raise your voice to me, Annalee!"

"Then you don't raise your voice back, father."

This had the intended result and he bit back his retort. He went so still he might have been confused for a statue. Then he said in a voice cold but no longer loud, "You will tell me what happened, in every detail."

I no longer had the option of the very clever lie I had thought up, but could tell him the truth. I could not even allow myself to think the truth. I answered meekly, "She died two years ago."

"Two years?" He asked, "And what have you been doing since then? How did you live? How did you sustain yourself? You are barely more than a child."

For a moment I shook so violently that I couldn't speak, my throat clenched too tightly to speak. Fury burned under my skin. Too much for my little body. It overcame me how fury often does, particularly when it is mixed with old wounds and no lack of fear. Tears slid out of my eyes and down the sharp features of my face, but no words would emerge.

He moved with such suddenness that I thought the was going to strike me and I flinched toward the knife that I still kept in my boot. But he did not, he retreated to the door of his basement, giving me a final, chilly look, stripped entirely of emotion.

When he was gone, all of the fury burnt out and I felt the full force of the loneliness that had been my constant companion for as long as I could remember crushed back down upon me.

For the briefest of seconds Will reached out and touched my hand. He looked at me with so much compassion I nearly melted into him. I would have melted into him, clung to his shoulders and cried. But he was called away.

"Will Henry! Will Henreeeeee!"

The days to follow proved no respite to my loneliness, Will was kept on such a tight leash that I barely saw him except during hurried meals or as he dragged himself to bed. The doctor refused to even acknowledge that I was living beneath his roof.

I tried, harder this time, to read the doctor's books, and would spend hours laboring over a few pages, hardly able to draw any meaning from the cramped words. It did not help that half of them meant nothing to me and I was forced to drag out his enourmous dictionary and look them up, only to not understand the definitions.

I wandered, bored, through the small quaint town, climbing where I ought not, swinging from tree boughs and scampering onto church roofs. It was in so doing that I got in my first spot of trouble. And it was trouble, regardless of how much fun I derived from it.

I was minding my own business, kicking a stone down a cobbled street when I heard them. They whistled and hooted at me as I passed. Were it the sort of whistling broads got on docks, I would've moved first, but it wasn't quite that sort. A small gang of boys, although quite a clean gang, lurked under the awning of a butcher's shop. The hooting was more of the fear and bullying sort.

"Where you goin', New York Street Rat!" the leader of them shouted, "Oh, boys, where you think the mad doctor's bastard is runnin' to?"

Of course the story of a vagabond girl appearing at the doorstep of the infamous Dr. Warthrop had made its rounds among the town's youth. I wasn't of a mood to ignore them. It'd been a long while now since I had been in a fight and the itch was on me.

I made right for them, "What's that, you snot nosed, mug!" I shouted.

The boys drew back, surprised at my forthright and antagonistic response. But they would not be frightened away. They might have been, if I had been wearing the dirty trousers and shirt I had used in the city. But Will had been kind enough to get me a rather fashionable dress, so my ability to intimidate was a bit hampered.

The biggest among them, a boy of fifteen or so, strode right up to me, thumbs tucked under his suspenders, grin up his face, "Tongue like that really mucks with your pretty face, you little bird, how bout I-"

I did not give him time to finish. I could have run, I was not far from Harrington Lane and surely could have gotten back before they caught up, or, I suppose, I could have ignored them from the jump. I did neither of those things. But with my wrist held straight as I had seen the big thugs do it on in Manhattan back alleys, I punched him, square in the nose.

I wasn't so big, being a girl, and mostly underfed kept me from big muscles and broad shoulders. But unlike the cods that had whistled at me from the streets of this cozy little town, I'd been in a fight before. Real fights too. Kids even as small as me didn't fall totally out of the gang fights that sometimes gripped whole streets. Especially if you wanted to be there, which I always did.

The knife down my boot saved my skin one time when I got tied up in a brawl with some of the Whyo's, one of the tough gangs all us kids pretended to be part of. Kid came at me, bout the size of the one I had just punched, but he had a knife in his hand, ready to gut the first thing he could. My knife did her first singing in that brawl, keeping that boy off me.

So these soft New England brats weren't nothing. I kept my knife in my boot though, surmising that they had mothers and fathers that might miss them if I put a blade up their throats.

The first one fell back with a cry, both hands going up to his nose, blood pouring out. I smiled and leapt back, turning on instinct to catch his mate who had swung at me. His punch was wild and I ducked it, coming up inside his reach and belting him upside the head. He too, let out a wail. There were too many though, for me to get away clean.

The third got the jump on me while I was dealing with his friend and cracked me in the eye. My head snapped back and I felt the burn of pain where his fist had connected. I hooted, laughter erupting from my lips. That, more than anything, got my blood up. Tingling came into my bones the way it did when there was a fight on. I swung around and pummeled my assailant, once, twice, thrice, until he was on the ground. Then I was on him, his two unstruck friends trying to pull me off.

I kicked one of them in the groin and they both released me. I fell on that third boy, knees on either side of his chest, cracking my fist into his face. Not enough to really hurt him, just to wet my knuckles with a little bit of blood.

Then I was wrenched off.

The butcher had come out of his shop, rotund and imposing. He held me up off the street by the shoulders, nearly pressed against his bloody apron. He tossed me behind him and I fell on my bottom onto the street.

"You get out of here, all of ya! Go on, run along!"

Shrugging and happy that I was not going to be carted off back to my father, or indeed to the constable, I ran, blood running happily in my veins.

My skirt was dirty and my hair was disheveled. I had blood on my knuckles, a black eye, and the biggest smile I had worn since New York. I almost hoped that Warthrop would be upstairs in Harrington Lane when I got back and interview me on my activities.

He was in the library when I got back, I could hear him holding court over poor Will from the kitchen. I couldn't imagine how Will stayed awake for those dull lectures, nor how he could turn a subject so interesting: monsters, into such a boring exercise.

I scrounged around the kitchen for a few minutes, seeing if there was anything I could patch together into a meal, not feeling as though I should go back down the street for groceries just now. I thought I could make some sort of stew. I dragged out the meager ingredients and dumped them on the counter.

Then, without knocking, I walked into the library, "You hungry, Will?" I asked, cheekily ignoring the doctor, who had cut himself off at my entrance.

"Oh," he said, surprised at my entrance, but smiling, "Um, yes." Then he frowned, "What happened to your eye?"

In two long strides the doctor had crossed the room to me and gripped me by the chin, tilting my face to his. I had not yet been this close to him and recoiled, he smelled like death and chemicals. Then, ever observant, he snatched my bloodied hand, "Have you been fighting?" He asked with incredulity.

Chin still gripped in his cold fingers I gave him my most shit eating grin and said, "What's it look like?" I had already learned that he could not tolerate his questions being answered by questions.

"Who in God's name were you fighting?"

I shrugged, "Boys down the street."

"Are you alright?" Will, sweet Will, asked from behind the doctor. He had gotten up too and was looking concernedly at my wounds.

"I cannot imagine that if she is well enough to be smart mouthing me she is not in intolerable pain," the doctor said.

I laughed, and pulled my chin out of the doctor's grasp. I looked at Will, ignoring Warthrop, "I'm alright, Will, thank you for your concern, you're sweet."

He went a little pink.

Warthrop drew away from me and straightened, clasping his hands behind his back. I could see he was trying to keep calm, "I let you out from my attention for one single afternoon and you pick a fight and black your eye?"

I sneered, "All due respect, Pellinore, but I've been out from under your attention for a lot more than a single afternoon." As much as I was enjoying myself, taunting him a little, I didn't want to elaborate my experience with fighting. More than one had ended up on the business side of the little knife in my boot. Course, I had a few scars from ending up on the business side of someone else's. On both accounts I did not believe the doctor and I would see eye to eye.

"Be that as it may," the doctor said, control slipping minutely from his tone, "You are now under my authority and I forbid you from fighting."

I pushed hair back behind my ears and tried to give him an innocent look, "Forbid me?" I asked almost mockingly, "So if I get jumped I just have to let 'em do their worst?"

He heaved an exasperated sigh, "No, of course not, is that what occurred? Did you instigate the fight or was it purely self defense."

"They gave me lip, so I gave them hell."

"Them? How many were there?"

I straightened and preened, "Five, all of 'em older too. Got down four before the butcher broke it up. If I'da had time I could have dropped the lot of 'em."

"You came out the better for a fight with five boys, all older than you?" He asked.

I grinned happily, "I'm good in a fight." This was something I was proud of.

His tone came down hard, "That is not something in which you ought to hold pride."

I had a glorious and short lived daydream of punching him square in his sneering face, but I found I was not able to. The fight just went out of me. I slumped my shoulders and stared at the carpet, "Won't happen again."

"See that it doesn't."

I crept out of the room and back into solitude, wishing he would at least release Will so that I might have someone to talk to.

He didn't for two long weeks he didn't, keeping Will so closely at his side the poor boy spent all of his time near feinting from lack of sleep and nourishment. Regarding me, he had returned to his original method of acting as though I was not there.

As much as I wanted to be above it, I spend evenings in tears in my pillows, biting down on them to remain silent. My days consisted of a lethargy borne of loneliness and despair compounded by boredom.

A month into my incarceration at the doctor's house, I was roused from laying dejectedly on my bed by a soft knocking on my door frame.

"Hi, Will," I said. Excitement at even this lifted me out of the bed with a smile.

"The doctor is shut up in his room, I was wondering if you wanted to play cards, I stole some from him." He asked me, sheepishly grinning.

I might have cried I was so thrilled by the offer, "Thank you Will, yes!" I exclaimed, kissing his cheek in adoration for this break in my boredom.

He shuffled his feet, "I don't really know any games, but I thought you might."

"I'll teach you," I proclaimed. I knew poker, which me and the dirty boys from my street back home had taught me, they having learned from fathers and older brothers. But I knew other games too that had been more suited to my young and ill funded crew.

Will and I sat on my bedroom floor, cross legged and facing each other, the doctor's stolen cards laid out before us. I taught him one of my old favorites, which he caught onto quickly.

It consisted of flipping cards in rapid succession, slapping down your hand when one was turned up that you wanted. By our sixth game it had devolved mostly into slapping each other's hands and giggling.

"You're cheating!" He playfully accused, when I snatched cards right out from under his hands.

"I am not!" I protested in mock hurt, "I am just better at it than you are!"

He shoved my shoulder at that, and I took advantage of his eyes leaving the cards to snatch a winning hand. I squeeled in delight.

"You see!" He said, "Cheating!"

We broke into giggles, dropping our cards and laughing until our sides hurt.

"Will Henry," the barking command came from behind us in the doorway. We both twisted around. The doctor stood imposingly in the doorway, scowling. "What are you doing, Will Henry?"

He answered in the demure tone he regularly used for the doctor, "Playing cards, sir."

"I can see that, why? I called for you."

He got up, abandoning the cards on the floor, "I'm sorry, sir! I didn't hear you."

"It does not matter, did you go to the bakery and fetch scones?"

"I did, sir, yesterday."

"There are no scones in the kitchen, Will Henry!"

"You finished them, sir, last night."

"Oh, did I? I can't seem to remember. Fetch more, will you, before the bakers closes. Snap to, Will Henry. I must speak with Annalee."

Will scampered off to do his bidding and I slowly picked up the cards, already missing Will. I both dreaded and took joy in his acknowledgement of my existence.

"Annalee," he said haltingly, then with more sharpness, "Why are you wearing trousers?" I had reverted to my old style of dress when in the house, more comfortable to be sure.

I looked up at him, "Why are you?"

"Did Will Henry not supply you with adequate clothing?"

"Will did just fine with my clothing," I said, not wanting my choices to backfire on the poor boy, "Never mind the trousers, didn't you have something to say? Why does it matter what I'm wearing?"

Shrugging, as if to admit that it indeed did not matter what I was wearing, he straightened his back, clasping his hand behind it and began what sounded like a rehearsed soliloquy. The moment he started speaking his voice fell into a soporific lecturing tone "As surprised as I am at your existence," he drones, "and as unfit as I might be for your care, it is my responsibility to see, at the very least, that you be properly educated."

I rolled up onto my feet, crossing my arms over my chest. There had been quite a gap in my education. My mother had bundled me off each morning to the children's school for the first nine or ten years of my life, but after that I had been kept home to do other people's laundry to help keep food on the table. Even when I had been in school, I had never much taken to it.

Pellinore continued, "I have just received word that you will be given attendance at the West Chariot School for Girls in London this September. It is the sister school to the boy's preparatory academy that I attended. I do expect that you will give your studies your absolute attention and cause me no embarrassment by your performance. However, in order to ensure that you are adequately prepared, you will spend the rest of the summer under my direct tutelage. We will begin this afternoon, but you must first tell me, sparing no detail, the history of your previous education. What, for instance, is your proficiency with Greek or Latin."

I did not know which prospect seemed less appealing. Being tutored by Pellinore or being shipped off to a girls' school. "Whatever you think is best, Pellinore," I said, more than a little sarcasm in my voice.

He looked rather taken aback, I saw him half mouth 'Pellinore.'

I laughed a little cruely, "Would you rather I called you, Papa?"

This made his entire body recoil and I laughed again. He said, shortly, "I suppose Pellinore will...suffice." He continued again, "Your education, Annallee, detail what you have been provided thus far."

For some reason, I felt embarrassed to reveal the sparseness of my education, "I went to a little schooling, until I was about nine, then I got pulled out. Never went back, after my mother died I didn't have time."

"She pulled you out of school?" He asked mystified, "Surely nothing was of higher importance than your education. For what reason would your mother pull you out of it?"

I laughed helplessly, "So I could work, Pellinore and so we could eat. You didn't exactly have an affair with a countess."

Color was crawling up his neck, "I see, and what did she have you doing?"

"Laundry, mostly."

He looked relieved that I had not taken up the darker calling of poor young girls, "Were to introduced to Greek or Latin, even in rudimentaries?"

"You must not have to be very quick to be a monstrumologist."

He scowled, "No Greek or Latin then, we will have to begin your instruction if you are going to be ready to be taught with those your age next year."

"I know a little Greek," I conceded, and he looked interested, "Boy who lived next door was Greek, Aleixo, he taught me to speak a little. Well, he taught me to cuss."

"I am speaking about classical Greek, a far cry from the street language of immigrants."

I shrugged, "Whatever you say, but if you stumbled on a Sphinx right now I bet she'd sound more like Aleixo than Homer."

"But Homer is of more literary consideration."

"You will come with me to the library for instruction, come now, Annalee."

Heaving a sigh, I followed him downstairs and into his dusty library. Once there he drew out a heavy tome from his bookcase and dropped it into my hands, "You will begin with that."

I thought he would leave me there to read the dusty book and hopefully glean some knowledge out of it. But he did not.

He started pacing back and forth in front of me, hands behind his back. "The history of the Greeks, Annalee, dates back to the earliest stretches of our known history. Their literary and artistic culture as well as their formative political ideas and democratic notions form the backbone of Western Civilization. It is for this reason that the careful study of the classical Greek language is of utmost importance.." He continued in this vein without pausing for longer than I could believe. I did not know if I should be more mystified that he had so much to say on such a dull matter or bored senseless.

I dropped my head to the side and laid it against the cushion of the chair looking out the window and the brilliant day out of doors. Who would have ever thought that living alongside a monster hunter would ever be this boring?

What I really wanted to be doing was running outside, finding some boy to get into another scrape with. Not Will, he didn't seem like the scrappy sort, his heart was too big. But I missed the adrenaline of it, the pulses that shot up my spine with both blows that connected and blows that I dodged.

"Annalee," He said sharply, "Annalee, what did I just say?"

I thought about making something up but couldn't drum up the energy, staring out the window I said, "I don't know, I wasn't really listening."

Looking back at the rebellious and defensive child that I was then, I wonder if it could have turned out any other way. What might have transpired if Pellinore Warthrop had been a kind man as well as a good one? Or if it had been he who had indulged my voracity for his profession. Would I not have ended up where I am? Was it chance or my own design that led me to this place? With this particular man asleep beside me not quite a decade after my father nearly put me to sleep with his lecturing. How might I have altered course if I had spent the span of the next decade alongside the estimable Will Henry? I would have been a better person, to be sure, for how could he not have rubbed off on me at least somewhat?

I am not wholly convinced of either fate or choice being entirely to blame. Yes, I have taken myself here, I have been active in my own fortune telling, but I was not the only actor on the stage. There were times when my hand was forced, and, of course, there was meeting exactly the wrong man at exactly the wrong time.

But I am skipping ahead, months ahead, when I would be out of the relatively safe shelter of Pellinore Warthrop's protection and very far away indeed from the sweet influence of Will Henry.

At the time, lounging in that chair and fighting a nap, I could imagine no worse place on earth than this library, dull and stuffy, filled with Pellinore's prattling and woefully free of monsters.

He was still glaring at me, egging me on to respond to him when Will saved me. My good Will. He rushed in with his paper bag of scones and said hurriedly, "There is something delivered for you, sir, waiting outside."

"What is that, Will Henry? A package, from whom?"

"Dr. Leonard Bruxley, it says, sir," he said.

The doctor almost bristled in anticipation, "Bring it in, Will Henry, bring it in."

"Yes, sir, I did, sir. I put it in the basement."

"Good boy, Will Henry!" He said, elated, "Come now, Will Henry, snap to, we must see what it is, did it come with a letter?"

"Yes, sir," he said, handing the letter over.

The doctor tore into, his eyes wild, "Felis Verulentus, Will Henry!" He said without a second glance to me, "Snap to, Will Henry!"

This proved to be the ending of my private tutelage with my father. For the next seven days he was wild with obsession, calling Will out of bed at odd hours to return to the basement and pour over the thing he had been sent. On the eighth day, I was woken by Will before dawn, his coat on and looking apologetic.

"Anna," he said when I woke, "The doctor left you a note, but I wanted to wake you, we are leaving, we will be back soon he says, in time to send you to school."

I sat up and rubbed the sleep from my eyes, "Oh, you're leaving? Will you be alright?"

"Yes," he said, although he didn't look particularly certain, "Sorry to leave you alone, Anna."

I pulled him into my arms, he seems surprised but returned the embrace.

"Ah, Annalee, you are awake." It was the doctor, interrupting our goodbye.

Will hurriedly disentangled himself from me and the doctor addressed me again, "We are being called away, I have left money for you to provide for yourself, do not neglect your studies. We should have returned by the time you must be off for school, but if we are not, I will send you instruction on making your own way there."

And that was all that was said of the matter by my dear father.

I returned to giving my farewells to Will, "Be careful, Will," I said pulling him close again, "How should I ever stand Pellinore alone if you do not come back."

"Be here when I do?" He asked. His smile was big and warm, like it always was.

"Then come back soon," I said, "I'll even get scones when I see you coming, so you won't have to run off on errands on the very second of your return."

"Will Henry!" Pellinore shouted from the cab, "What is delaying you, Will Henry?"

In a fit of girlishness I kissed Will on the cheek for the second time, "Good luck, Will."

They did not come back in time to see me off to school.

On the first of August I received the following missive, Pellinore's words in Will's hand.

Annalee,

Regrettably we will not be able to return in time to see you off. Enclosed are boarding passes for your passage as well as instructions. Write to alert me that you have reached your destination safely.

Your Father,

Dr. Pellinore Warthrop

p.s. I'm sorry you'll be gone by the time we get back, I'll miss you. Will you write to me? I will write to you. I would like to count you as a friend, Anna, it's been a relief to have you at the house. - Will

I tore Will's post script from the bottom and folded it into my pocket, leaving my father's correspondence on the kitchen table. The train that would take me to port I would cross the ocean from was leaving the next morning, so there was no chance of them chancing to come home before I departed.

I felt sorrier than I thought I would to miss Will, although I harbored none of those feelings for the doctor. I had to go and buy a suitcase, not having one myself, as well as the list of necessary equipment that Pellinore had attached to his sorry excuse for a letter. I packed and repacked that suitcase seven times before it was late enough to go to sleep.

Before I went I sat down at the desk in my bedroom and wrote the first letter I had ever written. Although the letter was short it took me a long time, both to make sure my writing was legible and to be as honest as I wanted to be. Yes will, I would like to count you as a friend.

Will,

Of course I'll write you. But you have to promise to write back. Tell me everything that you can about your trip and how brave you were hunting monsters. I'm afraid to go off to school, Will. I don't think I'm going to do well.

But Will, I want to thank you for how sweet you were. I know you didn't have much time or energy after chasing after the doctor but you were the nicest anyone has ever been to me. Of course I count you as a friend.

Yours,

Anna

I left the note under his pillow where he would find it when he got home.

I crawled into bed and blew out my lamp and lay beneath the covers. In the dark, with my eyes screwed shut against it, I began to cry. Reason had little to do with it. I had lived in bare bones tenement buildings and gotten in knife fights. I had nearly starved on the streets and made a hard earned way alone in the city. But I had never been more frightened than I was at the thought of going off to this school all on my own.

Of all the people in the world I could have had at my side, I would not have wished for any of them but Will Henry. I felt foolish and silly thinking so, I knew him hardly at all. Certainly I had lived in his proximity all summer, but we had not spent great tracts of time together. It was his eyes that drew me in, big and warm and horror struck. Will Henry who wanted to be my friend and hugged me even though I could do nothing for him.

But, of course, Will was not here. He was with my father hunting monsters I was not allowed to know about. And so I slept one last night alone in the big house.

Dear Will,

I keep thinking of you being eaten by monsters in some wilderness. Please write me and tell me that you are alright. I miss you, Will. More than I ought to for how briefly we lived together. You were so kind to me, Will, kinder than anyone ever has been. And with nothing that you could ever gain from it. I wanted you to know, Will.

I made it to the school alright, intact at least. But that's the end of the stories that end well. I couldn't do it, Will. Everybody knew Greek and spoke French, they knew what forks to use and had only ever used knives to cut up steaks. I was so lonely, Will. More lonely than I've ever been. I couldn't keep my head above water in classes. I was behind in everything. How do they read so fast? I did try to be good. Really, Will. I know Pellinore won't believe it, but I tried so hard. I wore the uniform and I tried to be nice to people, I tried to learn how read French poetry.

I survived for two months, not quite even that, Will, five weeks. I was failing everything. They were going to kick me out. And, Will, I didn't care. I couldn't sleep at night for thinking of monsters. Although I tried, I could concentrate on nothing else. I forgot to eat thinking of them. I could not stay here.

I know this is asking too much of you, Will, but don't tell my father. He is going to get a letter from the school telling him that I am progressing well, I sent one also to the school in your hand, from him. I told them He was sending me home, that there was a family emergency. I'm sorry, Will, but can we be friends if I do not tell you all of my secrets?

I am on my own in London now, Will, it is not so different from New York. Pellinore sent money with me for spending during school. That got me started. I find work to keep me going. Don't worry about me, this is what I know. I am going to find someone to teach me about Monsters, Will. I have to.

I've included an address so you can write me. Don't forget. I am worried about you.

With affection,

Anna

I reread the letter until I could recite my own words in my head without looking. Then I crumpled the letter and threw it away in the wastebasket in the corner of my scrappy little London flat. On a fresh paper, I wrote.

Will,

I hope you made it home more or less in one piece. I would hate to think of you torn to bits in some wilderness. I miss you.

Let Pellinore know that I made it to school alright, and that it is going well. School is better than I thought it would be, Will. I'm not the top of my class or anything, but I'm doing alright. I've made some friends too, so I am not as lonely as I thought that I would be. One of them, Helena, you would like, she taught me to balance a spoon on my nose. I'll show you when I return in the summer.

Write soon, Will.

With affection,

Anna

This letter I closed and sealed, addressing it clearly on the envelope. I would send that to Will, and Pellinore would have already gotten the missive I wrote on thieved school stationery concerning my scholastic progress.

I dressed myself in clothes I had bought using some of Pellinore's money. Boy's trousers and a shirt, a heavy rucksack. I cut my hair at the shoulders, a rather fashionable length for young men, and bound it up. Thus disguised I roamed rather undisturbed through the streets.

I had yet to discover anything about monsters, but I was on the lookout. Unfortunately, living on one's own was not free and Pellinore's money was not endless. He had only supplied me with enough for a school girl's pocket money, not keeping a little flat and buying my own food. Fortunately, I was not without my own means.

On the third day of my liberation, I had found the crack in the city I had been looking for. Every city had them, I only had to find London's. And find it I most certainly did. In the alley behind a dirty pub I could make a winner's fee and a cut of the house's take on bets if I fought other boys in the street. It kept me in untorn clothes and a room of my own, well fed and contented.

I had always had a proclivity for it, the rush of my blood in my veins was matched truly by no other thing. It got my blood up and made my bones sing. What I might have lacked in muscle and raw power, I made up for in quickness and brutality. I had won nearly every one of my bouts and, among the early comers who watched the scraps between boys, somewhat of a favorite.

I always stayed after to watch the men. I watched what made them lose and what made them win. I watched where they hit and how they moved their feet. I'd spend whole evenings looking only at fighting men's feet. I counted this as training. If I didn't know where to find monsters, I would be ready for them when they got to me.

In the hours before dark, when there was no fighting to be had, I crawled up fireladders to the roofs of buildings. I climbed and leapt, teaching myself to slide down banisters and flip my body over. This and the fighting made my body lean and hard. In my limited thirteen year old logic I thought that if I was ready for monsters, they would come to find me.

The logic, of course, is flawed. There was no reason for monsters to hunt me, or to seek me out, or come upon me in the dark. But regardless, they did find me. Or, I ought to say, he found me.

While it was happening I did think that it would be the end of my days, but afterward it proved to be naught but the beginning. The liquefaction of a caterpillar in a chrysalis.

It was the dead of night and I was still on the street. I had stayed for too long watching a particularly vicious pair of men pummel each other and now had to scurry back through black streets. Usually I made myself leave before they were done, so that I might get back home before the streets were entirely unlit. But not tonight. The fighting had been too good, the winner to quick on his feet. I had watched until the very end, so enthralled that every thought of my own safety died.

I paid for my oversight, forced to make it home in the dangerous dark. But, as always, I forgot to register my fear. I ought to have, if it had been working properly my body would have been full of it, kicking my to sprint through the lightest parts of the street and not stop until I was tucked away at home. But I did not, and took my regular route, through alleys and unlit streets.

It was halfway home, in an alley thick with darkness, I first felt it. The hairs on the back of my neck raised. I swiveled around, looking wildly behind me. Having seen nothing I turned back, quickening my steps down the alley. My gut churned and I could feel him behind me, creeping closer. I was certain that even if someone were following me, I could outmaneuver him. I could not, of course. It would be many years before I could outmaneuver this particular danger.

I ran, hoping to outpace him and, if it was my imagination, hoping to get home more quickly. I failed in both of these. As soon as I began moving faster excited laughter echoed from behind me and I heard the flash of steps. He was on me before I could get even out of the alley's dimness. Large and tall, knocking me to the cobbled steps. I could barely see him, certainly I couldn't make out the details of his face. I could only feel his figure, slim for a grown man, but still large, bearing down on my, knees sharp and heavy on back. Then he reached around my and covered my mouth with a rag drenched in something foul. I tried to pull back, to not smell it. But my vision dimmed and I knew no more.

When I finally awoke, and I did awake, I felt as though I had been floating for years and years. It was an exaggeration of the feeling you get after a long nap, when you have not dreamed but you are left with an obscure sense of time having elapsed.

I did not awake tied to a bed, nor stripped of my belongings. I was more or less intact. I could take stock of my own injuries a few moments before the blackness that clung to my vision cleared. Scrapes on my hands and knees from being knocked to the pavement. Sharp and hot wetness on my left wrist, a cut, bleeding heavily. Pain in my head from the chloroform, at least I assumed the rag had been drenched in chloroform.

I could smell that I was outside, grass and manure and clean air. The countryside probably. I could feel scratchy drying grass poking me through my shirt and trousers. Finally my vision began to clear and I could see where I was. A chain was clamped onto my left wrist underneath a long clean cut. A few feet away the chain was attached to a pike that had been driven deep into the hard ground.

I was indeed in the grass and in the countryside. It was dark, but behind me faint illumination came from a little country house that was tucked back behind a large barn. I sat up, trying to listen beyond the stunted range of my vision in the blackness. As I did I tore a long strip from the bottom of my shirt, using it to bind my sliced wrist.

I had a list in my head already of what I needed to do. I was not foolish and I had spent most of my life under my own protection. I knew that sometimes girls were taken for dark deeds. It was not something I was cognizant of ever learning, but a fact of the world that was simply known. I had also understood that it may not be up to me to prevent it, that I, a thirteen year old girl, could be outsmarted and outmuscled and outmatched. So I had spent time deciding what I would do if I were ferried away in the night. I had prepared movements for my muscles even when my brain was keening with terror.

Wounds first: That I had done to the best of my ability. The blood was somewhat staunched and I could do no better at the moment. The next thing was harder: Figure out what was a threat.

Obviously the man who had attacked my in the alley, but where was he? For what purpose was a chained in a field outside a country house? It was possible that my original attacker had sold me to someone else, but that didn't explain my purpose here.

I got to my feet and walked to the pike driven into the ground and attached to my chain, that would have to come up. A glimmer of light made my head shoot up, dropping into a crouch on the grass. It came from the roof of the barn, glittering in the light from the house.

It took me a moment to align the things that I saw. Glimmering on a long metal shaft, an imperfection in the roof's straight lines. A man. A man lay on the roof on his belly, a rifle poking out in my direction.

I dropped flat to the grass, instinct telling me to take cover. But a moment later I reconsidered and slowly stood back on my feet. It made no sense to drag me all the way from the city streets, drugged and unconscious, so that he could chain me down then shoot me the moment I came to.

There was something else he needed me for.

It came to me in a rush of understanding, piecing together the clean cut and the chain and the rifle. I was bait. I turned to face the dark, face becoming flushed. Excitement tingled up my spine. Wishful thinking convinced me that it would be no ordinary wolf or bear that came out of the darkness. What sort of hunter was both committed enough to kidnap bait but incompetent enough to need it against something as paltry as an animal.

I knew it to the marrow in my bones. There was a monster in the dark. I had been ready and it had come. I unwrapped the covering on my sliced wrist and let the blood flow. Let it come. This was what I had wanted. I drew out my little knife from my boot, fingers tingling.

It felt as though I was waiting a long time, then, out of the darkness, low and deep, came a growl. That singing in my blood that I so loved came again, but with such intensity as I had never felt. I almost began to laugh.

And then I saw it, looming at me out of the dark, hulking and shaggy. A wolf, but larger than a wolf by four or five times, teeth enormous and glistening. The singing surged, lacing my blood with combat lust.

It was not bravery, which I had always counted as acting despite fear, but a vacancy of fear of any kind. Later I would know that failure to feel fear is as dangerous as a failure to feel pain. It does not mean one is not damaged, only prevents them from being adequately warned.

The adrenaline had sharpened my senses and I smelled the rank of its breath and heard the rasp of. And I only felt excitement, a rushing high that nearly made me cry out with the joy of it. It hunched its legs, ready to pounce but I moved first. Without meaning to I laughed into the dark, hooting as I sprinted at the beast.

I would not have made it all the way there if it had not launched itself toward me, my chain being too short. It attacked as dogs did, all bite, claws used for running and not slashing like a cat.

That maw came at me like lightning and snapped nearly at my hand, but I twisted away, leaping my chain like a jump rope and twisting to right myself. The wolf leapt again and I ducked down, scooting forward so that it landed over the top of me, its belly right above. I howled in exhilaration and stabbed upward.

It screeched and blood gushed from around the wound, coating my hand. The smell of it intoxicated me and drove me onward. The wolf lurched back, wrenching the knife from my bloodied grip.

I dance backward, away from it. It whined from the assault but was regrouping, circling me. The smell of blood had sent my heart pumping, ecstasy thrilling in my veins. "What's the use of that pretty rifle if you're not going to shoot!" I called up to my human kidnapper. I feld giddy. This was the thrill of a fight multiplied one thousandfold. I did not ever want this to end.

I ducked under the wolf once more and came up laughing, the wolf stumbled on my chain, nearly crashing to the ground, snarls being ripped from its throat.

A trilling british voice echoed merrily from the barn in lieu of gunfire, "But you're doing so unexpectedly well on your own! I would hate to miss the finale."

I didn't respond, I had come upon an idea. I rolled forward under the hulking thing and came up on the other side. I leapt astride it, my hands fisting in its coarse and dirty fur. I felt more fleet of foot than I had in my life, moving as if on castors.

I pulled on my chain. It tightened around the thing's throat as I'd hoped and I twisted my arm around it, pulling back with all my strength. My left arm, cut up the wrist, was half useless and I had to drag my full weight on the chain to give it enough pull. But the thing's next snarl was hampered. It thrashed and tried to roll, tangling itself up. Its body came down sideways and I hurriedly slipped from astride it to prevents its bulk from crushing me.

I dug my heels into the ground, pulling on the chain. The struggle seemed to go on for a millennia, but each ounce of strength that left the wolf seemed to flow directly into me. It sputtered and its legs gave out. I kept pulling.

The head of the beast lolled and I leapt to its front and pulled free my knife, still lodged in it's chest. I swung down with a wild cry, slicing through the monster's throat. Its blood spattered across my face and chest. It was warm and I loved the smell.

I collapsed against the corpse. The battle had left my almost entirely drained, excitement already leaking out of me. And I could go nowhere, my tactic having wrapped my chain so thoroughly around my adversary that I had no more room to maneuver. I sat back on the wolf.

It was not that I expected the shot to ring out and leave me dead with the wolf. I would have almost been satisfied with that, so exultant I was with my conquest. My body thrummed from my toes to the tips of my fingers. But already it was deadening. I felt no relief, only hunger, oh to do this again, to recapture that thrill.

I saw the man climb down from the roof, walking toward me. I could hear him laughing.

"Well done, my boy!" He said genially, rifle slung over his shoulder, "A truly unexpected display! Using the chain was something no one has thought of yet."

I could not help but grinning, my breath was ragged, but regardless of the danger my heart swelled with the praise. He was the one who had brought me here and for that I loved him in that moment, for allowing me that exquisite pleasure.

"It was a werewolf, right?" I asked.

"Not quite, my little hunter, but a Beast of Gévaudan, werewolves are but a thing of storybooks." He was now close enough to see in the light of the not quite full moon and the country house.

He was tall as I remembered and elegantly dressed, long blonde hair tied fashionably back. He stopped a few paces from me and swung his rifle back up to his shoulder, finger caressing the trigger, "I do apologize for the inconvenience. No hard feelings, my boy."

"Wait!" I said, still grinning, "Tell me first, are there more of them?"

He did not lower the gun, but he nor did he pull the trigger, "Not right at the moment, are you choosing now to become afraid? And here I thought you had a bit of pluck."

"No," I said, "I want to fight another."

Now, with another laugh, he let the rifle dip down, "Now that is not something one hears every day. And what is this, not a sprig of antipathy for being snatched off the street?"

I gave him an appraising look, "You needed bait right, to draw it out?"

He shrugged, "I did indeed, they are too cunning to fall into a trap unless you give them a good bit of encouragement."

I nodded and considered my next sentence, I didn't want to say it if it wasn't true. I thought of the contents of city streets and the excitement of this, "I would have done the same."

He laughed, "Would you have?" He approached me and tipped my head back by the chin to get a better look at my face, then tapped my on the nose with a finger, "Boy after my own heart."

"I'll do it for you."

"You'll do what for me?" His eyes twinkled.

"Bait monsters. I'll do it. Teach me to hunt them and I'll do it."

A wide grin etched over his face, "Why, my darling boy, what an offer! I am tempted to take you up on it. Do you have a name, lad?"

I answered with surety, as though I had answered that question with this answer a thousand times, "Lee Henry."

Something in that delighted him, "It seems Henry boys do have a knack for the heat of battle," he remarked.

I held fast to my assumed surname, but I rethought my first. If he was to teach me to hunt we would potentially be in close proximity. There was no way to hide that I was not the lad he had taken me for. I amended my statement, "Well, Annalee Henry."

He quirked his head to the side then laughed again into the night, "A girl in trousers with a knife in her boot asking to be taken on hunts! Do you know what, Annalee Henry, I do believe I will take you up on your offer." In a twinkling, his eyes darkened and he said with unflinching severity, "I will have you warned though, get in my way and I'll put a bullet between your pretty little eyes."

That seemed, to me, to be more than fair. I put out my hand to shake his, he took it, giving it a firm and businesslike shake.

Mockingly he said, "My girl, don't you want to know who you're in business with?"

"Oh, right," I said, startled that I had neglected such a basic question, "What's your name, then?"

He winked, "Doctor John Kearns."

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Please let me know what you thought!