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meets my eyes, and I know we understand each other.  
    If it's Mediators who come our way looking for a fight, it's only a matter of time before one of them gets dead.
    I'll put it off as long as I can, but I'm thinking today's little outing might be my last for a while. It showed my strength too much, and the last thing we need here is the entire Lexington Summit showing up for good measure. Four of us, a couple hundred of them — even I don't like those odds.

CHAPTER FIVE

    Carrick brings me the newspaper back from town two days later and slaps it down on the table between me and my orange juice.
    "Page four," he says.
    I open it, and immediately I know why he's bristling.
    "Hopkinsville man still missing, presumed dead." I read on, my gut feeling like I'm eating ball bearings instead of cheesy eggs. Missing two months, made the news because his family was finally notified after they disowned him two years earlier for demon worship.
    "Fucking shitbag hells worshippers." My epithet doesn't carry as much punch as I want it to. My heart's not in it. My heart's somewhere around my feet, because I know what this means.
    "More shades," Carrick says.
    "More shades."  
    Jax and Evis go quiet, and I hear the sound of one of their characters taking a headshot and dying. They've gotten into shooters.
    Jax hits pause, and they both turn to look at me.
    "What are you going to do?" Jax asks.  
    "I don't know." The chances of me finding the person responsible for helping these hells worshippers spawn is next to nothing. Something creeps up on me, and I look at my eggs, appetite long gone. "This is the first shade spawning outside Nashville."
    Carrick sits down at the table next to me, not speaking.  
    "Whatever the demons have been waiting for, it looks like they have." I feel sick. Carrick and the others are silent, because they all know what I'm thinking.  
    They've got Gregor. He's not in Tennessee anymore, and he's on their side. This cannot be coincidence.  
    An even worse thought hits me like a falling log. "It's here." I can't seem to catch my breath, and this time the shades around me don't follow.  
    Evis frowns at me.  
    "Here, where I am." The timeline's not quite right, since we've only been in Kentucky about a month and this man went missing two months ago, but hatred knows no logic, and I know that what I've seen in Mediator eyes when they look at me is exactly that. Hatred.
    "What do you mean, Ayala?" Carrick says softly, his voice gentle but urgent.
    "I mean the Summits are going to blame this on me. They're going to think I'm helping make new shades." Saying it out loud makes me want to vomit up the half of my breakfast I almost enjoyed.
    I watch the understanding grow on Carrick's face, and just once I want someone to tell me I'm wrong. To lie to me.  
    None of them do.  
    "Find me where this man lived."
    Carrick leaves again in my car, and I spend the next two hours poring over the map of Hopkinsville and familiarizing myself with the town through the miracle that is internet mapping. I've made my phone into a hotspot, and while it's maddeningly slow compared to my old apartment's fiber optics, it gets the job done.  
    By the time Carrick texts me the address, I feel like I could walk around Hopkinsville blindfolded and have a good idea of where I was.  
    Unlike Nashville, Hopkinsville has no plethora of parks large enough for the hellkin of the world to hide out in. Which leaves outside the city limits.  
    "Hey guys," I say.  
    Jax pauses his game and looks up, as does Evis. This question feels like a drunken version of Pin the Tail on the Donkey, but it's worth a shot.
    "Do either of you remember where you were born?" The word born doesn't fit well, but it's the only one I've got. Hatched is probably closer, but gross considering their hosts were the eggshells.  
    They both nod, which is the only movement of their bodies. Great. They're nervous.
    "Do you remember if there was anything important about