You'd been briefed, of course. A group of "at-risk youth" from some posh private school needing volunteer hours. That was it. No one had thought to mention that they looked like they'd just stepped out of a casting call for a dark academia magazine.

The bell above the door jangled, and you looked up from the adoption paperwork. Five boys stood on the threshold, drowning in the drab grey of the shelter's donated uniforms. The one at the front, a pale, pointed-featured boy with a shock of white-blond hair, surveyed the room with the disgusted air of a man who'd just found a rat in his caviar.