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On a drowsy Sunday afternoon, adark coat hesitated in front of a house on a tree-lined street He hadn’t parked a car, nor had he co the sidewalk He si between one shadow and the next

The man walked to the door and lifted his fist to knock

Inside the house, Jude sat on the living rooed through a sludge of ketchup Her twin sister, Taryn, napped on the couch, curled around a blanket, thumb in her fruit-punch-stained mouth And on the other end of the sofa, their older sister, Vivienne, stared at the television screen, her eerie, split-pupiled gaze fixed on the cartoon hed when it seeet eaten

Vivi was different fro sisters, but since seven-year-old Jude and Taryn were identical, with the say brown hair and heart-shaped faces, they were different, too Vivi’s eyes and the lightly furred points of her ears were, to Jude, not sothe mirror version of another person

And if sohborhood kids avoided Vivi or the way their parents talked about her in loorried voices, Jude didn’t think it was anything i

Taryn yawned and stretched, pressing her cheek against Vivi’s knee

Outside, the sun was shining, scorching the asphalt of driveways Laer engines whirred, and children splashed in backyard pools Dad was in the outbuilding, where he had a forge Mo Everything was fine

When the knock caht be one of the girls fro her for an after-dinner swim

The talldown at her He wore a brown leather duster despite the heat His shoes were shod with silver, and they rang hollowly as he stepped over the threshold Jude looked up into his shadowed face and shivered

“Mom,” she yelled “Mooooooooom Someone’s here”

Herwet hands on her jeans When she saw the man, she went pale “Go to your room,” she told Jude in a scary voice “Now!”

“Whose child is that?” theat her His voice was oddly accented “Yours? His?”

“No one’s” Mom didn’t even look in Jude’s direction “She’s no one’s child”

That wasn’t right Jude and Taryn looked just like their dad Everyone said so She took a few steps toward the stairs but didn’t want to be alone in her rooht Vivi will knoho the tall man is Vivi will knohat to do

But Jude couldn’t seem to make herself move any farther

“I’ve seen s,” the man said “I have seen the acorn before the oak I have seen the spark before the fla A child born fro”

Mo with tension Jude wanted to take her hand and squeeze it, but she didn’t dare

“I doubted Balekin when he told“The bones of an earthly woman and her unborn child in the burned re Do you knohat it is to return from battle to find your wife dead, your only heir with her? To find your life reduced to ash?”

Mo hi to shake off the words

He took a step toward her, and she took a step back There was so He ht was different in the entry hall, and Jude could see the odd green tint of his skin and the way his lower teeth seee for his mouth

She was able to see that his eyes were like Vivi’s

“I was never going to be happy with you,” Mom told him “Your world isn’t for people like me”

The tallmoment “You made vows,” he said finally

She lifted her chin “And then I renounced them”

His gaze went to Jude, and his expression hardened “What is a promise from a mortal orth? I suppose I have my answer”

Mo room

Taryn was still sleeping The television was still on Vivienne looked up with half-lidded cat eyes “Who’s at the door?” she asked “I heard arguing”

“A scary h she’d barely run at all Her heart was pounding “We’re supposed to go upstairs”

She didn’t care that Mo by herself With a sigh, Vivi unfolded from the couch and shook Taryn awake Drowsily, Jude’s twin followed them into the hallway

As they started toward the carpet-covered steps, Jude saw her father coed to be a near replica of one he’d studied in a museum in Iceland It wasn’t weird to see Dad with an axe He and his friends were into old weapons and would spend lots of ti ideas for fantastical blades What was odd was the way he held the weapon, as if he was going to—

Her father swung the axe toward the tall man