"It's been forty minutes now."
"How many seconds?" I asked.
Maribel turned and gave me a look that could have stripped paint.
"If one of them got bitten, the others would've pulled back and left them behind," I said, getting back on track before she could say anything. "That's standard. That's what you do."
"Unless they walked straight into a large group and didn't have time to make any decisions at all," Maribel said.
"I don't think they're that careless," I said. "They took part in the big clearing operation around the Whitesun. These aren't rookies stumbling around with no awareness, they know how to read a street."
I meant it, even as the quieter, less generous part of my brain was running through the alternative scenarios anyway. They'd been out here long enough to know better than to let themselves get surrounded. They had to have known better.
I hoped they had.
