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alarm. I keep walking, not slowing down or approaching the cottage. I look casually around and try to spot the thing that’s set him so on edge.
    There’s a small park up ahead with a playground for children. I’ve been there a couple of times, always when it was empty because I wasn’t supposed to play with other kids growing up. It’s full of laughing children and parents and old couples strolling around. The road is mostly deserted, but there are a few people passing by and two teenagers standing outside a house, talking.
    Then I see him. He seems ordinary, a regular guy in his thirties, but he’s the only one who might have spooked Sean. Unlike the others, he’s on his own and he’s standing quite still, leaning against a lamppost and consulting a map like he’s a tourist. This isn’t an unusual sight, and I open my mouth to tell Sean so, but then the man’s eyes flick upward and settle on the pair of us. I look away quickly to avoid eye contact, and my heart leaps into my mouth. There was something about the way he glanced at us. Something hopeful.
    Sean turns abruptly and heads into the park. I follow him, glancing once at the man watching us. I could swear he looks disappointed.
    “What’s going on?” I ask Sean once we’re by the edge of the playground, well out of the man’s earshot.
    Sean shrugs. “Being careful, that’s all.”
    I give him a disbelieving look. “You think he’s a hunter.”
    “I think he might be.”
    A hunter . The word rattles around my head like loose change. I found out about hunters years ago. No one told me. I suppose they didn’t want to frighten me. Getting a secret out of Mina Ma is like trying to pry open a sealed pistachio, but she couldn’t stop me from eavesdropping. I used to hear her talking to Erik about the people who hunted and killed echoes all over the world. On the news they call them vigilantes. An old secret society set on stopping the creation and survival of unnatural things like me.
    They are the reason I mustn’t tell people what I am. It’s why I’m tucked away in our cottage and not allowed to hang around normal people. It’s why Mina Ma has a pistol and double locks the doors and looks suspicious if strangers talk to us in town.
    I’ve never been afraid of hunters. I think it’s like standing in a field, caught between a blind tiger and a healthy one. You can’t watch them both. So you ignore the blind one. It doesn’t know where you are; it can only try to sniff you out in the dark. You watch the other tiger, because it doesn’t have to find you. It can see you. It can catch you with a single leap.
    I have always kept my eyes only on the Weavers. On their laws. Until now. Now, with Sean tense at my side and a stranger nearby, I feel a tiny prickle of unease.
    “Sean, he’s just a guy .”
    His teeth clench. “You think I’m being paranoid?”
    “Yes, actually,” I say, trying to cast off my unwelcome doubts. “How would a hunter have even found me?”
    The look on his face tells me the answer. The fight. Of course. Erik tried to stop the kids and their friends and their parents from talking, but one word slipped to the wrong person would have been enough. Any one of them could have tipped a hunter off about the rumor. Anyone could have told him which house to watch.
    “He looked awfully disappointed when we came in here,” says Sean. “He was expecting us to go to the house. Or he hoped we would. If he is a hunter, he was probably waiting to find out what you look like. If he finds out, he can follow you, get you alone—”
    “Stop,” I say sharply. “This is ridiculous!”
    “That’s what they do.”
    “He’s probably a tourist—”
    “And if he isn’t?”
    I’ve never tried so hard not to be scared. I bite my lip. “If he isn’t, then no harm done,” I say, trying to sound uncaring. “We walked right past the cottage, so he has no reason to think I’m the one he wants.” I put on my best brave face. “Sean,