Exclusive Cover Reveal + Excerpt: Mia Tsai’s The Memory Hunters

Fantasy and science fiction stories inspired by our world’s struggle to adapt (or even accept) the realities of climate change are everywhere right now, and with good reason. (Heck, just…look around.) But Mia Tsai’s The Memory Hunters puts a unique spin on the genre, making both the dangers of the future and the past feel extremely relevant to the moment we’re finding ourselves in today. 

Set in a world where two centuries of storms have wiped away not just most of humanity, but most of the survivors’ collective memories of what life was like before the disaster, the story follows Key, who possesses the unique ability to read the blood of others and search their memories for knowledge. But her gift comes with potentially dangerous consequences—if Key dives too deeply into a memory, she can be overtaken by it, and must be killed. It’s why she travels with a bodyguard—Vale—who is charged not only with protecting Key in the wild but serving as a safeguard for everyone else along the way. But as the two skirt the edges of an ancient secret that could change their society forever, they’ll both have to decide how far they’re willing to go to find out the truth—-and risk their lives in the process.

Here’s how the publisher describes the story. 

Kiana Strade can dive deeper into blood memories than anyone alive. But instead of devoting her talents to the temple she’s meant to lead, Key wants to do research for the Museum of Human Memory. . . and to avoid the public eye.

Valerian IV’s twin swords protect Key from murderous rivals and her own enthusiasm alike. Vale cares about Key as a friend—and maybe more—but most of all, she needs to keep her job so she can support her parents and siblings in the storm-torn south. 

But when Key collects a memory that diverges from official history, only Vale sees the fallout. Key’s mentor suspiciously dismisses the finding; her powerful mother demands she stop research altogether. And Key, unusually affected by the memory, begins to lose moments, then minutes, then days. 

As Vale becomes increasingly entangled in Key’s obsessive drive for answers, the women uncover a shattering discovery—and a devastating betrayal. Key and Vale can remain complicit, or they can jeopardize everything for the truth.  

Either way, Key is becoming consumed by the past in more ways than one, and time is running out.

The Memory Hunters won’t hit shelves until July 29, 2025, but we’ve got an exclusive first look at its (beautiful!) cover and a sneak peek at the story’s first chapter to help tide you over. 

Cover designer: Kristine Mills

ONE

 Connection is power. We can be strong on our own, but we are the most whole when the chain of knowledge is unbroken from generation to generation. We are each of us an ecosystem. We are all of us an ecology. —Aurissa Strade, senior hunter for the Museum of Human Memory, academy commencement speech 

Memory diving is different for everyone. That was the first lesson Key’s mother taught her, and one she internalized long before she attended the academy. From the beginning, diving had been righteous and holy, suffused with an expansive joyfulness, and that had not changed since she was a child. 

Key stared at the fungi at her feet, her mouth watering on reflex. The mushrooms had proliferated overnight after the storm. Squat, bone-white cups had matured unnaturally fast in the sodden ground, pushing aside leaf litter as they formed in a tight cluster beneath the shade of a sprawling bull magnolia veined with ghost orchids. Drops of red guttation oozed from the sides of the cups and collected in the bottoms, thus giving the mushroom its name: the blood chalice. 

Key kneeled beside the chalices—a set of them? a troop of them?—two small, rectangular tabs of rice paper held between thumb and forefinger, each tab sized to fit on her tongue. She bowed her head, her lips moving in whispered prayers to the ancestors. The saints would guide her as she searched for memories and protect her during her dive. She ended with a prayer to Saint Aurissa, her grandmother, to ensure she would find a missing piece of information that could be used to mend what the Decade of Storms destroyed over two hundred years ago. 

Calm settled upon her as she finished. The ancestors had heard. Key knew this in her gut, believed it as surely as she believed that the moon would rise or the rivers would flood. She lifted her head and blotted sweat from her face with a sleeve, swept an errant, salt-stiff curl behind her ear, and dipped the corners of the papers into one of the cups, soaking in a drop of juice. She repeated the motion, visiting each cup until the tabs were as saturated as the air around her. 

“Storm’s coming.” Vale, Key’s guardian, emerged wraithlike from behind the ruins of a three-story house. It was the largest building in the compound and the most well preserved, though half the roof was missing and much of the floor had been torn down to the joists, exposing a cellar below. The stacked stone chimney stood tall, however, and it was that structure which had alerted Key to its existence, the skeletal finger of it beckoning to her through verdant canopy as she surveyed the forest from a rickety, abandoned fire tower several miles away. 

“We should be going now that you’ve got the samples.” Vale went to her rucksack, which she’d left on the wide front porch of the house along with her moon guitar, and withdrew a slim packet of antifungal powder and an empty water pouch. There was enough to kill off the nascent mycelial network, and other networks as well, just in case. The Institute of Human Memory held the copyright to their version of the chalice, and they abhorred sharing. “The stream by the watermill is running high. Won’t take long to finish up.” 

Key stood, dead magnolia leaves crackling beneath her boots, and shook her head. “Specimens, not samples. I thought I could dive here quickly, just to see if there’s anything interesting. The porch is a good spot.” 

“I said, storm’s coming. And we’re late. The curator’s gonna kill me if I don’t get you back soon. She’s probably worried sick.” 

“We might as well delay the inevitable, then.” Key smiled cheerfully, but faltered as she met Vale’s eyes, as black as mountain rutile in the golden tan of her face. “Vale, it’ll only take a minute. You let me dive at Bonnie’s Holler.” 

“That was before you wanted to take this detour,” Vale said. “Now it’s after. That minute might cost us catching the train back to the city. Which puts us back another day, on top of the six days we’re already behind. They probably think you’re dead and I’m at fault.” 

“It’s just one day. We can say the last storm kept us.” That wouldn’t be a lie. The storm had caught them out, the sky’s mood changing on the turn of a strong wind. Quicksilver clouds formed into a hard squall line, and the only thing they could do was shelter in place and pray to the ancestors that they wouldn’t get flipped out of their hammocks. 

Vale’s lips pressed into a frown, sealing her mouth shut. 

“You can sing me out in half time,” Key offered. “I just want to know more.” 

“You always do.” 

Vale’s gaze shifted, and Key followed it to the magnolia’s low, gnarled branches, several of them stretching away from the trunk in shallow arches until they knelt on the ground, their leaves mantling over them like wings. The tree was old, likely untouched by anything but wind and rain for at least a hundred years, and had been growing unchecked until its conical form was the same height as the house beside it. 

“How could I not want to know more about all this?” Key joined Vale on the porch, pinching the tabs lightly in one hand as she picked up her mat, still tied in a roll. “An unmarked compound half eaten by the woods, still standing, large enough for several families at least? No deep history except for what tales the locals tell? It’s a mystery!” 

The only information Key could glean from speaking to people in town—to be fair, it was Vale who had opened the channels of communication on account of her ability to establish a quick rapport with rural people—was that a hunter from the Museum of Human Memory had come by within the last five years. And it wasn’t the first or even second time a big city like Asheburg had turned its attention to a tiny place like Crystal Grove, despite it being far from Asheburg’s legal reach. Notable, that. The museum’s protocols emphasized careful documentation, yet Key had found no mention of Crystal Grove nor records of hunters coming to the area during her extensive research for this exploratory trip. 

“It’s not like milk. The tab won’t spoil if you leave it out for a day.” 

“It might.” Key paused. “Can you unroll this for me?” 

Vale cast her a disapproving glare. “I didn’t say you could dive.” 

“But you didn’t say no. What about quarter time instead of half?” Key softened her voice, using the gentle, soothing tone she often took with her penitents at the temple. “Please? Imagine if I found something marvelous. A missing link to the past. A light to illuminate the path behind us so those following won’t stumble. Kiana Strade and Valerian IV, heroes of history.” 

“Don’t you temple voice me!” 

Key sighed, dropping the act. “You’ll get a raise?” 

“If I don’t get fired,” Vale retorted. 

“You won’t get fired. I won’t allow it.” 

“Last I checked,” Vale said, “Dr. Wilcroft was in charge, not you.” 

“Last I checked, my grandmother’s name was engraved on the wall at the Museum of Human Memory. My family’s foundation helps support the institute. You work with me, which means you’re connected to the head resifix, as well as a city councillor. Firing you reflects poorly on the museum and the institute, and the papers love a scandal, which we all want to avoid. Therefore, you won’t get fired.” 

Vale’s jaw flexed. 

“Also, I already prayed about it.” 

“You told the saints?” 

“Yep, all paid up on the prayergram.” 

“Blood in the mouth, Key.” 

“Watch your language, they’re still listening. And—” Key cocked her head and cupped a hand around her ear. She wasn’t above a little mischief to get what she wanted, not when the ancestors had already granted their blessing. “What’s that? They’re telling me you won’t get fired.” 

Finally, Vale reached out and pulled on the knot of the cord to unravel it. “Fine.” 

Key grinned. “You’re the best!” 

“Quarter time,” Vale replied curtly, taking the mat from Key. She unrolled it with a snap and laid it on the floor of the porch, then retrieved a mycoleather case and two pouches from her rucksack. Inside the case were several pricking needles, extra rice paper, small, laminated cards specially designed to hold tabs, disinfecting wipes, and a pen. Without a word Vale held out a card, into which Key placed one of the tabs. Vale marked it with the date, site name, and the site number, checked off some boxes, and then sealed it into the pouch labeled SPECIMENS. 

Key kept her hand outstretched, waiting for Vale to tear open a package of wipes. The brief coolness of the alcohol was welcome in the humidity rising from the forest floor. 

Vale brought out a pricking needle and a fresh tab of rice paper. “See me.” 

“You are seen,” Key replied automatically. 

Vale pressed the needle against a calloused fingertip. “Hear me.” 

“You are heard.” Key winced at the pop of her skin, the small shock of pain. Blood strained out of the pinprick, expanding into a deep crimson drop. 

Vale trapped it on the paper. “Remember me.” 

“You are remembered.” 

Key squeezed the tip of her finger as Vale slipped the paper into a laminated card and labeled it. 

The rest of the words formed in Key’s mind, the ones that would have been spoken next in the temple. Sanctify me. 

And Key, favored of the ancestors, would bow her head, tracing her finger in a circle over her petitioner’s forehead before tracing a circle over her own. You are sanctified. 

Key checked her finger and, finding it suitably clotted, lowered herself to the mat, lying on her back, allowing her arms to rest at her sides. “What’s the codeword?” 

Vale frowned, thinking. “Cochineal.” 

“Cochineal,” Key repeated, visualizing the word, then drawing it in the air. When she woke, she would need to speak it to prove she was still whole in mind and not drowning in a stranger’s memories. 

“Quarter time,” Vale reminded her. She lifted herself onto her tiptoes in a stretch, then walked out of Key’s line of sight. A few seconds later, she heard muffled thumps as Vale began kicking over the blood chalices. 

Key closed her eyes, then placed the tab on her tongue. Bitterness and spice filled her mouth, and her saliva glands went into overdrive, sending an ache into her jaw. She swallowed, her face creasing with displeasure, and waited for the concentrated fluid to trigger the dive. 

One breath in, one breath out. Washes of color and light covered the insides of her eyelids. Key imagined her body disintegrating into the dirt, her tender flesh falling off the bone. Another breath in and out, sinking backward through time 

until it’s less diving and more expanding. Less floating in the depths of space and more becoming its uncontainable wholeness. 

Key solidifies the idea of herself before she begins traveling, reminds herself of who she is. Despite her shortened dive, she takes time to do it right. There is no memory diver, no memory hunter, who is not secure in themselves the way a mountain is secure against rain. The farther she goes, the more she needs to force herself into the memory to parse it, and if she doesn’t hold fast to who she is, her psyche will fray and fall apart. 

She’s in luck. Often there are no memories at all, and Key remains suspended in the dive until Vale recalls her. In the dark, memories begin to glow, twisting and flapping like streamers in the wind. Key catches the tail of a particularly bright one, tasting pepper, salt, butter. It will yield, then. She follows it, knowing instinctively when she has passed fifty years, a hundred. It’s a short distance, like walking from one room to another. 

The next fifty carries with it the discomfort of clothing that is too tight. Fragments branch from the main memory, flashing like pale, ephemeral fireflies, each of them linked with threads as slender and fine as hyphae. If Vale had agreed to a full dive, Key could explore the echoes of remembered laughter or the glimpses of faces, hoping for something more profound. But she can only traverse the strongest path with the time she has. 

The last memory dive dead-ended abruptly at a hundred fifty years, holding only annoyance over the flat humming of a fluorescent light. Too many of the souvenirs the other hunters bring back contain the hook of an earworm or the scent of extinct flowers. Those memories would feed the penitents at the temple, but not the museum. 

Key needs something better, something special. Something worthy of the Strade name.

 At two hundred years, the memories are of floods and hurricanes, disaster after disaster. The streamer thickens and strengthens, cording like rope, and Key steels herself to pass through the emotional gauntlet. The time period after the Decade of Storms is rife with tragedy, and though Key has seen enough of it to be conditioned, she isn’t unaffected.

Key trains her focus on the period before the Decade. As one of the few blessed by the ancestors, she has the ability to go that far, or farther, unlike the other hunters at the museum, senior hunter and head curator excepted. She drops another ten years back, certain she’ll find something. Key splays her senses out, searching for the invisible limit of her ability. She descends through a nebula of light, where a woman is crying. There is mud between her toes, and the silence outside is too loud. 

Another ten years go by. Key slows, her progress dwindling to single digits. The strongest hunters can see two hundred thirty years into the past without their minds fracturing, and Key isn’t there yet. She forges on, safe under the saints’ protection. A man slams his fist on a table mid-argument. Howling winds rattle warped glass windows. The taste of metal coats her mouth as Key senses a strong memory and pushes herself into it, changing her shape to fit it. One of the techniques she’d learned at the academy was to find a focus and grow from there. A hand is clutching a mug. Red clay, white paint, handmade. Bumps of glaze have gathered and hardened on the handle. 

She looks from her hand to a wooden table, her eyes following the swirl of a large knot. The motion carries with it a sense of déjà vu. Her fingers flatten against the side of the cup as she scrapes her tongue against her teeth. No amount of sugar or prayer can hide the tang of blood, and the more she thinks about it, the more nauseated she becomes. 

Chair legs bark across the hardwood floor. Her grandfather drops a spoonful of powder into her mug, pours steaming water into it, stirs as the heat transfers through the ceramic and scalds her fingertips. She pulls her hand away. 

“Drink,” he says. 

“I’ve had so much and nothing’s happened,” she replies. 

He pushes the cup toward her. “You need more. The blessing only is given after the full sacrament is taken. This is the last. You have been seen and heard and remembered. Now, you will be consecrated.” 

“Can’t we do it later?” She’d rather be outside shoveling snow than here beneath her grandfather’s hooded, wild-rimmed eyes. 

“You cannot take from the chalice later.” 

A pure note shivers through her, and her vision blurs. She has a vague sense of being outside her body. The note turns into a familiar melody—a hymn from the temple, sung to her since she was a baby in a sling on her mother’s chest. It threads through the bits of her, stitching her together, tightening, forcing her to break out of her shape. She isn’t done, though. She can’t leave. She’s going to gag and force down the concoction, and that night she will fall ill. She 

 took a deep breath as she surfaced from the dive, waiting for fresh oxygen to spark recognition of herself. Beside her, a voice was lifted in song. But the memory held on like a burr, digging deeper as she attempted to shed the image of a small kitchen, the snowfall outside muting the colors of the stained-glass panel hanging in front of the window. Her mouth buzzed with a sour, coppery aftertaste, and pressed all along her skin was the scent of wet humus and the trilling of birdsong. 

A phantom teaspoon clinked twice against the side of a mug. “Drink again,” her grandfather said. 

The song restarted. The singer’s voice caught silver and barbed between her ribs, reeling her through layers of the memory. The image splintered as she ascended, parts of it left behind, spinning away like seed pods on the breeze. 

She opened her eyes to the burn of daylight, her senses heaving. The glory of infinite connection dimmed, and with it went the euphoria of the dive. Above her, sun and sky and tree leaves showed through the broken roof of a covered porch. The scent of earth persisted, as did the sourness on her tongue. She blinked as a woman leaned into her field of vision. She was beautiful, her monolid eyes intense and black, set in a youthful, delicate face with lightly tanned skin and a rosebud mouth. 

Vale. 

“Who are you?” Vale said. 

There was a second of disorientation as the memory laid itself stubborn over her, as if she were looking through a film negative. Her temples throbbed as she fought past the image of the kitchen in haloed triplicate, her hand grasping for the mug and getting only the spongy surface of her mat. 

“Who are you?” Vale repeated, her eyes narrowing. 

She took another deep breath and finally, the remnants of the memory dissolved until only fine strands of it were left, caught on her like spider silk. She sat up, fully grounded now, and lifted a hand to her head. “I’m Key. Hunter.” 

“Who am I?” 

“Vale.” Her tongue was thick and foreign in her mouth. “Valerian IV. Guardian.” 

“What’s our word?” 

Key scrubbed her wrist across her cheek, searching for the knowledge, her thoughts sluggish. 

“Key?” Vale’s tone lifted in warning. 

Alarm flogged her heartbeat. She needed the codeword before it was too late. “A bug, or something. Color. Pink.” 

Vale tensed, her arm blurring with speed. Before Key could finish gasping, Vale had a slender knife to her neck, her face so close they could share breaths. “Who are you?” she demanded. 

“No, no! I got it! Cochineal.” 

Vale exhaled and withdrew, putting a hand to her chest, relief spreading over her face as she sat heavily on the floor. “Don’t scare me like that.” 

“Don’t scare me like that!” Key retorted, still feeling the residual coolness of Vale’s blade as a spectral kiss. She swallowed, sending a silent thank-you to the saints. 

“You’re usually faster to recover. Are you okay?” 

She held Vale’s eyes, unwavering as she tamped down her fear. Vale was her protector, but according to the academy, Key might need protection from herself. “I’m okay. Not used to quarter time, I guess. Like being roused too early from a nap.” 

Vale returned her knife to its sheath. Key rose to her feet as wind swept past her, tugging at the fine curls on the back of her neck. She closed her eyes to savor it better, and as she did, the image of an old, three-story house, its gray-painted sides furred with unseasonable snow, projected itself on her eyelids. The magnolia in the yard bore tightly furled white buds, and inside the kitchen’s garden window hung a stained-glass panel. 

Key’s eyes popped open. She scrambled off the porch, ignoring Vale’s exclamation, and sprinted down the remains of the front walk until she had gained enough distance to get a better view. The magnolia here was much bigger now, and what was left of the kitchen had collapsed inward, deflating much the same way the other buildings in the compound had, pierced as they were by time and nature. But Key could imagine the outlines of the wall, the orientation of the furniture inside. 

You have been consecrated. That was what the old man had said: consecrated, not sanctified. Everything else in the recitation had been the same. If she included the iconography of the magnolia in the stained glass, it could only mean that she had found an early version of the temple’s main recitation. 

She drew a long, slow breath, gratitude swelling within her. After too long spent finding nothing, the ancestors had guided her to a memory that fell directly into her research specialty at the museum. It could not be more perfect. 

“Thank you, grandmother,” Key whispered, putting a hand to her chest. There was no way she could leave. Whatever the curator did, she and Vale would have to bear it. “Vale,” Key called. “We have to stay.” 

“No.” 

“But—” 

Vale swept her arm to the side, indicating the area of freshly turned dirt where she had trampled the mushroom and doused it with the antifungal solution. Pieces of rust-stained mushroom poked up like teeth, their ivory sides already pitted brown with rot. “Storm’s coming and we’re behind schedule. I gave you the quarter time you asked for, and more besides.” 

“I need to journal.” 

“Do it later.” 

Key frowned, her hands twitching for want of ink and pen, but it was true: Vale had relented and was unlikely to budge further. Besides, Vale was the expert when they were this far from the cities, and it wasn’t wise to keep arguing with someone who’d spent most of her life half feral, raised on the cruel shore and new barrier islands of the southern sea. 

Instead, Key set her desire aside. The blessings of the ancestors were permanent and would not wane the way the seasons once did. She’d come back, for certain. “You’re right,” she said as she returned to the front porch. She glanced quickly into the doorway, scanning for anything useful to bring back to give to the blood chalices in the museum’s lab, but was met only with trash from squatters. She picked up her mat and rolled it up. “I can journal on the train.” 

She paused as Vale began checking her weapons. “Are you . . . expecting someone?” 

Vale settled a hand on the pommel of the butterfly swords scabbarded at her side. “Yep. Well, I wasn’t before, but now I am. Been waiting on ’em since the station.” 

“You let them track us this far and didn’t say anything?” Key glared as she tied the knot. 

“If you’d listened to me, we’d be gone already, and we wouldn’t have a problem.” Vale shrugged. 

“Vale! I had a feeling!” 

“And so did I.” She grinned, her previously taciturn demeanor melting away into wild beauty. Vale took the mat from Key and attached it to the top of a frame backpack. “I wouldn’t worry too much. These fools are from the city, or close to it. Don’t know who trained ’em, but they had no idea how to hunker down against a storm as big as we got. Their camp got washed out. Here.” 

Key accepted her staff, the bamboo smooth and solid beneath her palm, a tangible comfort. “When did you have time to spy on them?” 

From the fringes of Key’s hearing came the faint, hollow crunches of magnolia leaves being stepped on, which she wouldn’t have noticed if Vale hadn’t called attention to it. 

“Quiet, now,” Vale murmured, not answering the question. She bounced on her toes, loosening up, honing her radiant smile into something predatory and keen. “Get in the house and stay there. Put your back to the corner nearest us.” 

Apprehension tightened in her gut. 

“They’ll come through the hole in the wall to your left. Bring ’em to the front door.” Vale pulled on a pair of thin mycoleather gloves. “Go.” 

Key slipped around the frame of the front door, edging toward the corner Vale had indicated, gripping her staff in her hands. Through a broken window, she caught a flash of motion. She peered at it, straining her eyes. It could have been the stirring of the magnolia from the strengthening breeze, or it could be something else. She couldn’t tell. 

Her gut tightened further despite the reassurances she gave herself. She might have hated combat training at the academy, but she knew how to use her staff. And she had Vale here. Vale wouldn’t let anyone hurt her. 

Key amended herself. Vale wouldn’t let anyone hurt her and live. 

From outside, Vale called, “Come on out, friends. I’ll make it quick for you.” 

There was only the rustling of leaves. 

Key could picture it now: Vale with her hands on her hips, drawn up to her full height of five foot nothing, a taunting smile on her face. Though she was slight, she was two hundred pounds of fight in a hundred-pound body, and whatever she lacked in size, she made up for with her capacity for violence. 

“No nearer,” Vale said. “I can hear you fine from where you are. How goes, friend?” 

A man’s voice answered. “Steady, now. We’re travelers.” 

“You know that’s a damned lie.” 

Key risked a peek through one of the house’s front windows. About twenty yards off, close to the puzzle cairn Vale had built to entrap unbound spirits, there stood a man, his hands raised. Something about him looked oddly familiar. But then the world spun, and she was forced to close her eyes briefly, riding out the residual effects of her dive. Sweetness and grit filled her mouth, the tidal pull of the memory licking at her. The stronger ones left more behind, which meant she needed to work harder to remain herself, or risk succumbing to the visions. 

She opened her eyes to ground herself, rubbing her thumb against the smooth surface of her staff, and willed the memory away. 

“Just looking for some shelter, like you,” the man said. 

Key heard Vale’s derisive snort. “Second warning, friend. No further. Stay out there until me and mine leave, and there won’t be any trouble.” 

“Ah, hell. Sorry. She’s too valuable.” 

Black market memory hunters. Shit. Key clenched her teeth, regretting her decision to argue with Vale. The chalices might be unusable, but there was a living, breathing treasure trove of memories standing inside a ruined house, clutching a staff. All they needed was a single drop of her blood to unlock every secret residing in her. 

Movement from the left caught her eye again, and this time it was accompanied by the rattle of magnolia leaves underfoot. A woman dressed in camouflage hiking gear came striding through the broken part of the wall— and promptly tripped over a wire Vale had set, crashing onto the ruined floorboards. They gave way with a wet, dull crack, depositing her in the darkness between two joists.  

Key didn’t bother waiting to see whether the woman could get out of the cellar. Her heart gave a wrenching twist and about sprang out of her chest, and she raced to keep up, exiting the house through the front door as Vale had instructed—only to freeze as she saw the man, also in a camouflage jacket, his lank brown hair in a ponytail, a sword dangling off his belt. He was pale and lean, and not all the shadows in his deep-set eyes were caused by age. 

A memory stirred and shook itself free. 

Vale spoke from her position to Key’s left. “If you want to help your buddy, you’ll stay put and let us go in peace.” She flicked a glance at Key. “Keep away from the door.” 

Key scuttled to the right, her head whirling with visions. She swayed, her heartbeat a thrum in her ears as she flashed back to an afternoon at the temple a few months ago. A petitioner from beyond the city limits had brought an offering for Key, wanting her to speak his family history. He was new, a fresh convert. Key remembered the fear in his eyes as she pricked his finger with a needle and squeezed a drop of blood into the divining pool, its still waters hiding tangles of mycelium. 

“Make good choices,” Vale said blandly to the man. “We aren’t worth your trouble.” 

“I think she’s worth quite a bit,” the man replied, jerking his head at Key. “We’ve been told about you, Miss Strade. I’ve never met one of you before. You and your memories, that’ll get us set for life.” 

“What?” Vale drawled, her accent showing through. “You ain’t heard of me?” 

The man gave her a once-over. “No.” 

“That’s too bad, then. Funny how you knew her name when I didn’t say nothin’. You tell me how you knew who she was, and I promise to call down your saints when I collect the blood price.” 

The voices of the ancestors rose, clamoring, demanding she speak. Key could not deny them. “A family member of yours came to the temple in the spring,” she said, lifting her hand to point at him. She took a step forward, then another, the memory solidifying. “Perhaps your brother, or cousin. He wanted to know what his grandfather looked like as a young man. I saw him through his grandmother’s eyes as I drew the portrait. You’re his exact image.” 

“Shut up,” the man in the camouflage jacket said.  

“Your family’s been going to the same lake for generations. You and your grandfather have the same birthmark. A strawberry patch.” Key tapped her finger on her chest, over her heart. The man stopped short. “Your grandfather had a scar through his eyebrow. A childhood injury gained from falling on the corner of a table. Their house smelled like tallow in the winter.” 

Key dropped the pitch of her voice, planing it smooth until it was benign and comforting. The situation could still be turned, though the probability was low. “Isn’t that what we all want, to be seen and remembered? To know what it was like for our ancestors? Now your family has something that can’t be taken by storms.” 

“I don’t want to be remembered by you.” The man spat at the ground. “You stole his blood. You and your family and that museum. All you’re good for is what you’ll fetch on the market.” 

“Enough talk.” Vale’s voice was low and level, a bad sign. “I’m advising you to run.” 

“I won’t be running, little girl. I’ll be collecting the blood price and leaving with her.” 

Key winced. That had been the absolute worst thing to say to Vale. 

Footsteps thumped; Vale spun around. “Key!” 

The woman who had fallen staggered through the doorway, a knife in hand, and threw herself at Key. She stumbled back, but it was too late. The tip of the blade caught the sleeve of her shirt, snagging in a crease and ripping it open. Pain shot up her arm as her skin parted. 

Vale blurred forward, and the woman cried out, the knife gone from a hand now bent at an unnatural angle. In the next second, Vale had the woman on her knees. 

“Key?” Vale hefted the woman’s knife, testing its balance, then nestled the flat of it against the skin of the woman’s neck. “You okay?” 

She looked at her arm. Medium brown flesh gapped open, weeping beads of blood into the unbleached bamboo linen of her shirt. 

“That was stupid as hell,” Vale said to the woman. “I wasn’t even done talkin’ yet. Who sent you?” 

The woman jerked to her feet, but Vale was prepared. She grabbed her hair, the movement casual, and hauled her back, flicking the tip of the knife over the woman’s cheek. Her skin split, a mirror of the wound on Key’s elbow. 

“I won’t ask again.” Vale leaned in close, her lips by the woman’s ear. She went as still and crystalline as morning dew. “Who sent you?” 

“Don’t say anything,” the man said, his voice tight with warning. 

“Arvensis,” the woman replied. 

Arvensis. A morning glory, often called bindweed, invasive and tough to get rid of. An apt name, Key thought, for a black market hunter, someone who preyed upon legitimate hunters and flourished in the cracks of society. 

“Let me go, please.” The woman cast a pleading gaze at Key. “Tell her to let me go.” 

“My ma taught me to be polite, so thank you for the information. Now I invoke guardian law, since I’m registered and I bet my life both of you ain’t.” A glint appeared in Vale’s night-dark eyes as she settled her gaze on the man in the jacket. “Two things. First, I’m twenty-four. Second, it’ll be both of your lives on top of the blood price.” 

Vale steadied the woman, then drove the knife into her throat. 

Key cringed hard, dropping her staff, and scrambled off the porch. 

“You little bitch!” the man yelled, drawing his sword. 

Vale uncoiled, her butterfly swords in her hands, meeting him with a clash of metal. It would be over in seconds; very few could stand against a guardian trained at the academy, and even fewer could stand against someone as quick and vicious as Vale. The man hollered, dropping his sword, his hand dangling uselessly. Vale flowed through, elbowing him in the jaw, and when his head snapped back, she bulled forward, sending him sprawling. 

She put a knee on his hand and her sword to his throat. “Correction,” she snarled, baring her teeth, her profile made more terrifying with freckles of blood. “I’m a country bitch. Give me your name, fucker, so you can be remembered.” 

The man spat at Vale. 

Without looking up, Vale said, “Key. This one’s yours by right. Take the blood price.” 

“Make it quick after I’m done.” Key’s voice was soft with resignation. When she turned toward their packs, the memory of the house as it used to be came to her so strong as to mute everything but the sound of her grandfather’s voice. You will be consecrated. 

“Key.” 

She gasped in a breath, startling, then stepped back onto the porch to get the supplies she needed. “I’m going.” 

Belatedly, the wound in Key’s arm began throbbing. She dug around in her rucksack for a mycelium pad, affixing the lightly scratchy material to her skin with adhesive, then took a spare tab from Vale’s pack before walking back to the wounded man. Her shoulders were heavy. “Hold him, Vale.” 

“No,” the man moaned as Vale rose. She anchored a foot against his cheek and took his hand, lifting it and cutting the tip of his middle finger open. He flinched and writhed under Vale’s weight. “No,” he moaned again as Key lowered her head. 

“You are seen,” she said, touching the tab to his finger. In a split second the paper was glutted and limp with blood. “You are heard. You are remembered.” 

Vale was true to her word, grunting as she yanked her sword across the man’s neck. Key bore witness as was the correct thing to do, every muscle in her body tensed as she forced herself to watch. Later, workers in the department of public history would prepare his blood for a dive and take the measure of his life. A few of his memories might be worth saving. A few of his memories might be worth giving. 

When he was still, Key drew a circle on her forehead and said, “You are sanctified.” 

“One more for the city,” Vale said, standing. “Let’s clean up fast and head back.” 

The Memory Hunters will be released on July 25, 2025, but you can pre-order it now. 

Lacy Baugher Milas is the Books Editor at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter and Bluesky at @LacyMB