Kin

EIGHT

IT WAS THE FIRST TIME ANYONE REACHED OVER, grabbed her arm, and shouted, “Faster!” His fingers sank in almost to the bone, the pain a silver wire like the moon’s call, and each time she jammed the accelerator to the floor.

They did one of her favorite loops—up to the top of Haven Hill, a zigzag through the empty Market district—Monday meant no Market—with each of the traffic lights turning amber in a vain attempt to slow her down. Slewing sideways, through the shabby gentility of Falada Place and finally onto Woodsdowne Loop, flashing through liquid treeshade and bright dappled sun. The oaks—old as the Reeve, in some places—flashed by in a semaphore of stodgy trunks, heavy branches, the leaves envious of her fun but tethered to the larger mass. The right onto Tooth Street was so familiar she could have drifted into it in her sleep.

A long slide of burned rubber, the car trembling just at the edge of her control, before both left-hand tires came to rest gently against the curb right where they had left an hour and a half ago, the stereo blaring Tommy Triton’s old Blackhall Jack album drenching them both like rain, ignored. When she cut the engine, the sudden silence was stunning, the car still rocking slightly.

Ruby blew out a long, satisfied breath. “Welcome to New Haven.”

He was pale, but two spots of livid color stood out on his cheeks. It suited him, even if he was a little too thin. A train ride would do that to you, though—even the rich had trouble digesting out in the Waste.

He blinked a couple times, and his jaw worked. Looked like he was having trouble finding words. His irises burned gold, and he blinked rapidly. “You always drive like that?”

No. You just get the special treatment. “Pretty much.”

“Dangerous. If you can’t handle it.”

Thanks for your concern. “No accidents yet.”

“Good thing.” He was slowly turning a regular color again. “This city’s kind of small.”

Well, maybe, if you’re from New Avalon. She said nothing, measuring the steering wheel between her crimson fingertips. Her polish was chipped on her right thumb and left ring finger, and it bothered her. Nothing ever stayed fresh; it all got rundown and ugly.

“You like Tommy Triton?” Did he sound tentative?

“He’s okay.” All of a sudden she wanted to be home in her room, on her bed, with the music blaring and nothing on her mind other than a couple gossip mags and some nail polish. Maybe it was time to try another color.

“Kind of middle school. You ever listen to Kraxhead?” Did he sound hopeful?

“Nope.” I thought only feyhempers and Dust addicts liked them.

“You should. They’re good.” As if he was doing her a favor.

Maybe he thought he was. Ruby pushed the irritation away. “I’ll look them up.” The green blur of the Park was a heavy weight against the windows, and the sunshine through the windshield made sweat prickle along her hairline. “I should take you to the Ardelles’. Or back home. Gran’ll know we’re not visiting kin.”

“Does it matter? We’re together.”

For a moment she couldn’t believe her ears. A flush started on her throat and worked up to her cheeks.

“I mean . . .” Now he sounded awkward. “We’re both, you know, problems. That’s sort of why they sent me. I mean, sure, I’m rootfamily . . . but I don’t do what they want.”

“Me either.” She swallowed dryly, rolled her window down. The good crushed-green of cut grass flooded the car—someone had mowed recently. “I’m going to try, though.”

“Why?”

“Isn’t that what growing up means?” If I manage to mate and breed at least one kid I’ll be Clanmother when Gran’s gone. And if she didn’t, the clan would be rootless after Ruby’s lifetime, until the Moon made a junior branch into root, bringing dominance and some physical mark of her favor to the surface.

He shrugged. He was too big for the passenger seat; the Semprena felt a little too small with him sitting there, shedding healthy heat-haze. “According to them, I guess. Can we . . . you want to go for a walk? I like talking to you.”

A different warmth all through her. He was a stranger, and it sounded like the deck had been pretty stacked on the “don’t-like-this-girl” side. If he liked her, really liked her . . .

Well, he might be the first person who ever had. Even Cami had taken a little time to warm up to her, and that was after Ruby had taken on all comers in primary school, picking a fight with anyone who made fun of the shy, scarred girl’s stutter. And Ellie . . . well. Of course Cami got along with Ell, Cami could get along with anyone if she wanted to. It’d become Ruby’s job to protect them both when Ell’s family moved in from overWaste, and she’d done her best.

Ruby was useful, and she was in the same social circles, and she could find things. They had reasons for liking her. The cousins, well, they had to act like they could stand her, at least, because rootfamily were due that much. Others—like the other girls at school—couldn’t afford to piss her off, because she had that temper reputation.

What would it be like to have someone want to hang around without a reason? She’d always wondered.

“Sure.” She jangled her keys, popped the lock, and glanced over at him. “You don’t have to, you know. I’m hard to get along with.”

“I think I’ll manage,” he told her, and later she would realize it was a warning.

At the time, though, she just grinned and swung the door open, stepping out into summer’s last breath.

“Kind of small.” He hopped up on a fallen tree, its moss dry and brown since the fall rains hadn’t started. “Don’t you ever want to run more?”

Ruby shrugged. She hung from a convenient low branch, enjoying the stretch. Tensed her stomach, drew her legs up a little, checking her toenail polish again. There was a certain charm to pedicured toes against the roughness of bark and leafmold. Civilization and wildness all in one. “During Mooncall, sometimes I just want to hit the wall at the north end and keep going.”

Parallel to the log he perched on, the boundary of the Park was a clipped green verge along the street. He kept trying to go further in, but Ruby kept to the outside, where she could see the fronts of branchfamily heads’ houses. There was Oncle Sanvord’s, blue with white trim, and the lime-green Harvrell house—probably crammed to the gills with boycousins this week, since Tante Freya was sick and couldn’t care for her brood right now. They would all be out helping with Gislain Harvrell’s construction work, keeping them out of trouble until school started.

Conrad nodded. “Maybe you should. You ever think about it? Just running through the streets and showing them how to be afraid?”

She dropped, lightly, and brushed her hands clean. “That’s taboo.” The breeze was redolent with mown grass and the faint cinnamon undertone of leaves exhaling before they started to turn.

“All sorts of things are taboo. I just wonder.” He hunched his shoulders a little, staring into Woodsdowne’s depths.

“You get Twisted if you do taboo stuff.” It wasn’t quite precise—the Moon taking her blessings back wasn’t the same as Potential corkscrewing you into a wreck of your former self.

Close enough, though. Enough to make you shudder.

Conrad shrugged. Dappled sunlight all over him, he moved restlessly and touched the clan cuff, as if it irritated him. “We don’t Twist with anything else.”

“Well, no, but there’s the stories.” And really, the taboo stuff is just common sense. Don’t eat human flesh, don’t breed with your siblings, don’t hurt each other. “About the things that happen when the Moon—”

“You believe in that? It’s just a hunk of rock.”

“Well, yeah, scientifically it is, but there’s a meaning—”

“You ever think that maybe the taboos are just to keep us from asking questions? Finding things out? Being what we really are? I mean, them. Charmers and idiots, soft and pink, without even the sense to stay away from bad meat . . .” Now he was looking at her, expectant, obviously wanting her to agree. Or maybe just thinking she could agree.

Whoa. “Um.” Ruby searched for something tactful to say. Of course Cami or Ellie could come up with something that didn’t sound like an insult, but that wasn’t one of Rube’s greatest strengths. Graceful conversation was pretty much always a waste of time.

Still, she had to try. “I never thought about it that way,” she managed, finally. “They’re not all bad. I have friends who aren’t kin.” Good friends.

Best friends. It wasn’t their fault everything was shaking them up and making them grow apart.

He shrugged. “Yeah, well, they’ll turn on you. You can’t trust anyone.”

Wow. “Not even your own? I mean, you have a brother, right? And your parents, and—”

“They’re happy to send me off. My brother . . .” Conrad hopped down. “Never mind. I’m being rude again. Let’s walk.”

“Sure.” Relieved, she fell into step beside him, ambling along the grass just at the border. “You’re not rude.” It sounded a little strange. “I mean, I can understand.”

“You’d be the first, then.” He cut her a sideways glance, half his mouth tilted up in a wry smile, and she found herself smiling too.

Maybe she was getting better at tact.

NINE

CRICK-CRACK. PEBBLES RATTLING AGAINST GLASS. “Rube!” A whisper-yell. “Come on, open up!”

Rolling over, her room unfamiliar in that trembling instant between sleep and waking. They’d rambled all around the Park twice, and returned home smelling of sap and fresh air. Gran hadn’t said a word about the kin visits not happening, and Ruby’s amazement was only matched by Conrad’s slow smile.

See how easy it can be, that smile said. It was enough to make her half believe he might be a solution.

Or at least, the best option to happen along yet.

“Rube, come on!” The whisper-yell, again, and a rattling.

What the hell? She pushed the covers back and winced a little as her arm twinged. The bruise was already fading, but Conrad’s grip was strong. That sort of strength was scary and comforting all at once, like Thorne’s fierceness.

Speaking of Thorne . . . A thin frown tilted her lips; she slid out of bed and padded to the window. Two quick tugs on the sash and it was up, night pouring in with an edge of chill. The plane tree just outside, with its convenient branch she’d used more than once to clamber out and explore the night, rustled under a heavier weight. Of course, he was taller, and wider in the shoulders.

“What are you doing?” she whispered, fiercely. “Gran will kill you.”

“Only if she catches me.” Thorne’s expression was a thundercloud, his hair a wild mess. In the dark, he was almost brunet, and his dark eyes were merely gleams. “Where were you today?”

“Showing my guest around. What the hell are you doing?” It was one thing for her to sneak out and meet the cousins on the corner or in the Park’s depths. It was an entirely different thing for him to be at her window, for God’s sake. His familiar scent, dark with an edge of musk, flooded her nose. The usual relief loosened her shoulders—she couldn’t have put it into words, how seeing him sometimes made the world steadier. It slowed down the whirling.

Even if she had the words, she wouldn’t have told him. There was no point in making him think . . . well, things. Thinking things only caused trouble.

Right?

He leaned forward, almost breathing in her face. “Wanted to talk to you. Have you seen Hunter?”

“Not since the train station. Why?” She braced her palms on the sill and leaned out, whispering.

“He’s . . . something’s wrong with him.”

“Other than the usual?”

He glared, leaves stuck in his hair like a fey’s autumn crown. “There’s nothing wrong with him usually except he’s not dom enough for you. We all know it. Look, did he call or anything?”

“Nobody’s dom enough for me, Thorne.” She chewed at her lower lip, wished she hadn’t, because his gaze fastened on her mouth. “What’s wrong?”

“Hard to explain. Can I come in?”

“Are you insane?” She cocked her head. Was there a soft sliding step, somewhere in the house?

Thorne didn’t make any indication of hearing it. Instead, he plunged ahead. “I might be. Look, he says there’s something weird about this Grimtree. He doesn’t smell right, and I agree. Been thinking about it. Shouldn’t he have a sub around to keep him company and brush his boots? Maybe even his brother?”

That was traditional, but Ruby hadn’t thought about it. Trust Thorne to find something to worry about. “There’s not enough room in the house for another male. Maybe Gran told them so. Maybe Grimtree wouldn’t send two root boys to look at one root girl. It might give the wrong impression. But seriously . . .” Ruby sighed. “This is it? You and Hunter don’t like him because I’m supposed to pick someone in-clan?”

“Want you safe. And happy.” Thorne shrugged, the branch-es rustled alarmingly. His T-shirt was torn as if he’d been in a fight, but then again, he didn’t care about clothes. It probably drove Tante Carina to distraction, having to wash and mend for him. “I don’t think Hunt or this Grimtree can do either.”

“Which just leaves you, right? And if you get caught here, I’ll get into trouble, Conrad will have to go home, and you can claim we’ve—”

“What kind of guy would do that?” He was forgetting to keep his voice down. “Is that really what you think of me?”

I wouldn’t put it past you to act first and think later. God knows that’s your default setting. “I think you’re not supposed to be here. Mithrus Christ, Thorne, you’re such a jerk.” How did he manage to irritate her so thoroughly every five minutes? It had to be a talent.

“Glad to be. You’d eat a nice guy alive, Rube.” He shifted again, leaning back, and the branch creaked. “So you haven’t seen him.”

“Nope. No call, no visit, zilch, zip.” Now she was starting to get worried. It was ridiculous, though. Hunter was just on the edge between dominant and submissive, right in the middle of the pack. It wasn’t like him to go haring off and do something stupid. He was usually the voice of reason when she dragged both of them out to have some fun. “What exactly are you afraid he’s doing?”

“Getting himself into trouble. Same as you.” He eased back. “Be careful, okay? That Grimtree, something’s off about him.”

“He’s perfectly nice,” she retorted as hotly as she could in a whisper. “He likes my driving!”

“Then he’s crazy.” He winked and was gone, dropping out of the tree to land soft as a whisper.

The irritation mounted another few notches. She longed to climb down, follow him, and smack him on the head, just to do it. The old Ruby would have.

The Ruby Gran wanted her to be now, though, wouldn’t. She quietly closed the window and tiptoed back to bed, listening intently.

Nothing. The cottage was still and silent, not even the static unsound of someone awake. With Thorne vanished, the place was an oyster shell, closed tight around her as a pearl. She could be the only living thing left in New Haven, and wouldn’t know it until morning. Unless she crept down the hall to check if Gran was still breathing, like she’d done as a little kid.

What a great thought.

Her arm hurt a little. She glanced in the mirror, seeing the dark print of Conrad’s fingers. Thorne hadn’t noticed, thank Mithrus.

Not that she was worried, but something warned her it was probably best if she kept the two of them apart. Maybe she should add Hunter to that list. Juggle all three of them like a street busker throwing sylph-ether globes. Just don’t drop anything, because that would be a mother of an explosion.

Under her tangled mop of hair, she was smiling. It was a secretive expression, and she watched as her eyes danced and her teeth peeped out just a little, glowing in the half-light. It was late, the waning moon no longer pulling on that silver thread, and when she climbed back into bed she no longer felt so alone.

TEN

TWO DAYS LATER, SHE TOOK A DEEP, SURREPTITIOUS breath and tried again.

“They’re my friends.” Even though they’re not kin. She tucked her feet underneath her on the couch. Sunshine hadn’t begun to come through the living-room windows yet, so the bronze lamps were lit, and the tapestry, for once, was silent. “You’ll like them. Cami doesn’t talk much—she used to stutter—but she’s really smart. Ellie, well, she’s super-smart too. All practical and shit, too.”

“Vulgar.” But Conrad said it with a smile, lounging in the overstuffed royal-blue easy chair Gran never used. “There’s time later. I want to get to know you.”

Which was nice, and made a traitorous little bubble of warmth rise under her sternum, but still. She itched to be out, doing something. “This is a good way to get to know me. We can’t hang out at home forever.”

“Why not?” He stretched his long legs out, as if the living room wasn’t too small for him.

At least if she got married she’d have a house of her own. The space might be nice, except Ruby was neutral on the subject of cleaning. A certain amount was necessary and nice, but doing it was a pain and best done quickly and thoroughly. She’d be responsible for meals too, and while she could market and cook, well, it wasn’t exactly her cup of tea. There was so much else you could be doing.

Like wheeling over to the Vultusino mansion and lounging by the pool on a glorious sunny late-summer almost-afternoon. “There’s obligations. You know, social.”

His expression darkened. His booted feet played with the round leather footstool, pushing it a little further away as he settled more firmly into the chair. “We both hate those.”

I only hate some of them. She reached for diplomacy, yet again. For two days she’d been making small talk with him, and though he generally had something interesting to say, it was beginning to get a little . . . well, boring. “But they’re obligations. Anyway, my friends are different.”

He shrugged. “Can’t we go for a drive?”

No. “You just want to drive my car.”

“She’s a nice car.” He grinned, fondly, as if the Semprena was his and he was proud.

Nobody drives her but me. “If you don’t want to go, that’s fine. Gran should be back in an hour.” The Valhalla Bridge Club used to play marathons, but lately things had been serene enough that they met, played a few tricks or some mah-jongg, drank tea, and had long meandering discussions about tariffs and trade agreements, gossip, and whose child was going to make a good match or had done something naughty.

They weren’t all Woodsdowne. Gran’s usual partner was a dowager from the Stregare Family—one of Nico Vultusino’s extended kin, a mover and shaker among the Seven. There was Mother Gothalle, an old, slightly dotty Sigiled charmer who lived near the core and had an agreement or three with the fey to bring certain things through the Waste. And iron-spined old Queenie Falada, whose family had been in New Haven since before the Reeve. Ruby didn’t know what Mrs. Falada imported or exported, and she was pretty sure she didn’t want to.

Sooner or later, she’d probably have to. Maybe after college. Which was creeping up on its stilt-legs, closer and closer all the time.

Conrad, having settled the footstool just right, stretched out his long legs again. “You’ve gotten tired of me.” His mouth turned down, and he scratched at the clan cuff like it itched him.

“No, I just want to see them before school starts.” It was, she decided, good practice in being patient. Gran was endlessly patient, when she needed to be.

“Schoolgirl.”

He probably didn’t mean it as nastily as it sounded, but she bounced up anyway. “Have fun staring at the walls. You’re going to miss seeing me in a bikini.”

“Don’t go.” He didn’t move, just sat-sprawled with his golden eyes half-lidded. Somehow she got the idea he didn’t quite want her to stay.

It took her thirty seconds to clear the house, and she twisted the volume knob all the way up. Tommy Triton was wailing about shaking down the walls, and even if it was juvenile pop, she sang along while the Semprena’s engine purred.

Up on the Hill the Vultusino mansion was a massive weight of gray stone, but the pool was a clear blue eye, surrounded by lovingly tended gardens and a cheerful little poolhouse with two changing rooms. Warm brick walkways and pale scrubbed concrete were always safe to walk on, and the water was heavily charmed to the right temperature.

Cami settled, dripping, into a teak lawn chair. Even just risen from the glimmering water she looked polished, her hair a river of ink, her lips glossy red, and her pale skin gemmed with clear droplets. “Some s-sort of charmclan thing. Ell was bummed.”

The sunshine was just right—not too hot, because of the steady breeze. The red bikini was an old friend, a veteran of plenty of afternoons just like this. Ruby wriggled a little with pure delight. “Well, at least Avery will be there to keep her company.”

“You don’t like him.” Her blue eyes dancing, the Vultusino girl looked amused. She usually did, when it was just her and Ruby. Anyone else added to the mix upped the worry factor.

Maybe she found Ruby super-soothing.

Yeah, that’ll be the day. “I like him fine as long as he makes her happy.”

“Speaking of which. This Conrad.” Cami’s expression had turned slightly anxious, eyebrows drawn together and her pretty mouth tilting down at one corner.

Ruby shut her eyes. Sunshine all over her, a delicious buzzing, and each little drop from the pool against her skin was a tiny mirror-dot of sensation. “We have two days before school starts again.”

“You’re avoiding.”

So let me avoid. That wouldn’t fly. Cami would just worry. Her anxiety was a silent static, and it wore against the nerves.

Maybe only Ruby would hear it. She shifted slightly, the red glow through her closed eyelids a thin screen between her and the world. “The whole thing is boring. I’m supposed to pick someone to settle down with long-term, preferably while attending Ebermerle so I don’t get tempted by any charmcollege boy hotties, then get married and squeeze out enough babies that the future of the rootfamily is assured.”

“Aren’t you kind of . . . young for that?” Carefully, as if Cami wasn’t sure how far she could press. Her usual deck chair was shaded, and she would be sitting with her knees drawn up, hugging them. Just as she usually did.

“I won’t breed until after college. But really, not all of us live forever.” It might have been unjustified, but she couldn’t help herself.

Cami was quiet for a long moment. “It’s n-not forever.”

The scars might be gone, but a ghost of the stutter remained. If it had been someone teasing her, or something physical, Ruby could have beaten it up or made it go away.

You couldn’t fight some things, or solve them. They just sat there, hurting the people you loved. Forcing you to juggle faster and faster to keep everything from crashing down. “Family is forever. So is clan.” Both of them add up to a trap, she added inside her head. At least for me.

Another long moment of silence. Was Cami watching her with that pitying look? That was the trouble with the Vultusino girl. She felt everything all the way down, and it made the world outside the walls dangerous for her. She needed protection.

That used to be Ruby’s job, at least at school. She only had a year left before she was fired, so to speak.

The thing was, with Cami scar-free and not stuttering—much—anymore, and Ellie out from under her evil stepmother and doing fine, Ruby might be terminated from the only job she outright liked a lot sooner. Thrown out like a sudden Twist, suddenly no longer part of the tiny group she’d tried so hard to earn a place in. Her own little corner of the world outside the clan.

“Family.” Cami sighed, very softly. Her chair was under a white sun umbrella, and it creaked a little as the wind touched it. “It means a lot of things.”

To you, maybe. Ellie wasn’t getting the crap beaten out of her almost daily, and Cami was no longer so painfully, incredibly vulnerable. She was damn happy about both things, she really was.

There was just another feeling mixed in with that happiness, a hot, unsteady one. “It does, you’re right.” Ruby essayed a smile. It felt odd against her face, like the mask it was. “You got some booze?”

“Honeywine coolers, as usual.” The chair squeaked as Cami rose. “I’ll talk Marta out of them.”

“Good deal.” She heard a slight exhale, and her eyelids flew open. “Look what the cat dragged in.”

“De Varre.” Nico Vultusino, lean and tall, his moss-green eyes squinting slightly against the flood of afternoon sunshine, appeared like a revenant at the edge of the white-painted pool-house. Even in a white V-neck and jeans, he’d never look like a cabana boy. That edge of danger and old red copper to his scent raised all her hackles, and he liked it that way. “Nice to see you.”

That’s a lie, Family boy, but thank you. For Cami’s sake, she contented herself with a noncommittal noise. “Mh.”

“Nico.” Cami, small and slim and fearless, padded barefoot toward him. “Did something happen?”

“Will you stop worrying? It’s handled.” His teeth flashed in a very white grin, and he leaned forward. Just a little, as if he were a plant and Cami the sun. That slight, subtle movement told you everything you needed to know about them. “Everyone’s all friends again, at least until the next time that damn Canisari makes a fool of himself.”

Ruby’s throat threatened to block itself. “Great. You could make yourself useful and bring us some booze. And something for yourself,” she added hastily, congratulating herself for the politeness. “We could sit around and talk about nothing.”

“Sounds nice.” He reached out, and as soon as Cami got in range, his hand polished her bare wet shoulder. “You okay?”

For a moment Ruby thought he was asking her, and a laugh threatened to spray all over the pool. Water lapped; she swallowed the sound and realized he meant Cami.

“F-fine. What exactly happened?”

He shrugged, nice and easy, but his gaze came up over Cami’s shoulder. The warning was clear.

Don’t talk in front of strangers. “Tell you later,” he said. “I’ll get you some coolers, then, if de Varre over there won’t snitch to her grandmother.”

“She would never—” Cami began, hotly, but he laughed and tugged gently at a lock of her long black hair before vanishing down the path leading to the house.

“He likes pulling your chain,” Ruby observed. “So, the Canisari? They’re pretty reckless. At least the younger ones.” For a little while she’d had a crush on one of them, but that embarrassment was something she’d take to the grave.

Family and kin didn’t mix. Except Cami, and her. They were exceptions all over, weren’t they.

“Oh, yeah. So’s Nico. He’s getting better, though.” Cami turned, standing in the shade of the poolhouse, and her eyes were a blue glimmer. “Ruby, can I ask you something?”

“Ask away.” A long, luxurious stretch. Maybe she’d avoided the rocks. If Nico came out, Cami wouldn’t question her about Gran or Conrad or anything else. They could do the old familiar dance, Nico trying to get a reaction, Ruby giving him one, Cami keeping the peace.

Just like always.

“Do you really like this Conrad guy, or is it just what you have to do?”

Nope. Not past the rocks yet. “Talking about it is boring, darling. Leave it alone.”

“Okay.” Cami came back, picking her steps with care on hot concrete, and Ruby suppressed a sigh.

The pressure mounted until she had to speak again. “It’s just a betrothal. It’s not the worst that could happen,” she added. “Really. Trust me on that.”

Cami paused, looking down at her. In the sunshine, she glowed, an alabaster statue. Her swimsuit—white, one-piece, she’d stopped wearing cover-ups all the time—was rapidly drying. “You d-deserve more than that.”

It’s sweet of you to think so. Another smile. “Thanks, Cam. It’s getting hot. Race you to the pool.” She was off the chair and halfway to the water before Cami laughed and bolted after her.

ELEVEN

“I’M HOOOOOME!” SHE CALLED INTO THE COTTAGE’S cool, dark interior. “Did you miss me?”

No answer, but the house didn’t smell empty. Gran was inside.

Great. Had she been supposed to sit here and babysit Conrad? Had he decided to go back to New Avalon? That would be just grand, wouldn’t it.

The lights were on in the kitchen, and Gran was at the table, bolt-upright. Her hands were folded, and Conrad was there too, leaning against the counter near the sink. His expression was indecipherable, sun-eyes gleaming under the electric glow. They hadn’t had dinner yet.

It’s not my day to cook. What’s going on? “Gran?”

“Ruby. Sit down.” The lines on Gran’s face were graven a little deeper today. Instead of one of her housedresses, she was in her office wear, a black silk shell and tailored pants, a summer-weight wool blazer draped crookedly over the back of her chair.

It wasn’t like Gran to hang something up that way. Especially her work clothes.

“What’s going on? What happened?” She glanced at Conrad, but he was no help. He just stood there, staring at her. Was that a smirk? It couldn’t be.

“Sit down.”

“I want to know what’s happening.” She folded her arms, her stomach turning into pure acid. “You said I could go to Cami’s today.”

Did Gran’s mouth pull itself even tighter? “And if I call her, no doubt she will confirm you were there.”

Hot injustice, then, but she supposed Gran had a reason. She’d caught Ruby sneaking out a few times, including the last and most memorable when Rube had been trying to get out on a fullmoon night, desperate to hunt down missing Ellie and thinking that maybe with the shift burning in her she could find what nobody else could.

Or maybe it was something else. Gran hadn’t mentioned collaring again.

Was it that? But she’d been so good lately. “You can even ask Nico. But I suppose you think he’d lie for me, for Cami’s sake. I’d go to those lengths to cover my tracks, right?” She shrugged. “Okay, fine. What is this?”

“Ruby . . .” Gran took a deep breath. “When did you last see Hunter?”

For a moment the words made no sense. Why is everyone asking that? “At the train station, when we picked up Conrad.” She looked at him, but the Grimtree was no help at all. He just watched. The world gave a little jiggle underneath her, but she didn’t have any attention to spare to figure it out. “Why?”

“Sit down.”

The floor was acting funny, and there was a buzzing in her ears. It was her body again, knowing before the rest of her.

She pulled out her usual chair and lowered herself into it, slowly. “Gran, what’s happened?”

“We found Hunter.” Gran’s hands tightened against each other.

Then why are you asking me . . . She couldn’t even finish the thought. Sweat prickled all over her. “Found him?”

“In Woodsdowne Park, in the heart of the green. Ruby, he . . . he has gone to greet the Moon.”

What? The roaring in her ears made it difficult to think. “That’s impossible,” she said, with perfect logic. “He’s a cousin.” He’s young, and we don’t get sick often. When we do, we fight hard. Like Tante Rosa.

Gran was very pale. She’d only looked this way once or twice before. “He was attacked.”

What? Her mouth was numb all through, as if she was buzzed on something stronger than honeywine. “Attacked? You mean . . .”

“Yes. He . . . Hunter is dead, Ruby. He . . . he fought, but something—someone . . . I am sorry.”

What? Numb, she stared at Gran’s familiar face, turned alien now. She kept talking, but all Ruby could hear was the roaring. Maybe it was the honeywine coolers, though kin didn’t get drunk really, just pleasantly slow for a little bit. The simple sugars burned off with the poison of alcohol, a little lassitude and then you were done.

She could still smell the chlorine from the pool in her hair. Her bikini was still in the car, too. She had to go get it out. Plus there were chores, right? Chores to do. There had to be. This was all a mistake, and if she just did her chores . . .

“Do you understand?” Gran, quietly and firmly. “Please, Ruby. I am so sorry.”

There was a hand on her shoulder. It was Conrad, and he squeezed. He didn’t know his own strength, because it hurt, badly. A crunching, grinding pain.

She didn’t wince. She just stared at Gran’s familiar-strange face across the table.

“In the Park.” A good schoolgirl, repeating her lesson. “Hunter . . . in the Park. He’s . . . dead. Who . . . Gran, who would hurt him?”

“We do not know.” Gran’s irises were the color of steel, now. “But when we do, there will be justice.”

TWELVE

NEW HAVEN SWELTERED UNDER A LID OF GRAY, HEAVY cloud. Wet flannel, pressing down on everything below, steaming its way into every pore. The trees drooped, even though their green turned deep and vibrant like a jungle; the ones that had begun to turn stood halfway painted, splashes of color on their branch-fingers as they shivered feverishly.

In the old days, the kin would have been deep in the woods, and a platform would have been built in the treetops. The body would be arranged carefully among the sap and leaves and sawdust, and birds would clean the bones. After they were naked, white bone would be stained with ochre and wrapped securely, then returned to the earth.

The Age of Iron left great scars in the old forests, and the Reeve had made them Waste. You couldn’t have bodies hanging in the treetops in Woodsdowne Park—although, right after the Reeve, sometimes they did.

For those reasons, and others.

Her charmhose stuck to her legs. White-sleeved long dresses on the women, Gran’s patterned with subtle dragons in ecru thread, Ruby’s linen plain of any ornamentation. You couldn’t wear an underwire or jewelry, no metal allowed. Even silver, that holy Moon-glow ore.

No metal, and no words. The kin buried in silence. This graveyard was within New Haven, but no inspectors or city groundskeepers came within its peaked iron fence. Gran had once remarked that negotiating the passel of restrictions and leases with City Hall had been delicate and patience-consuming, but worth it.

Those leases had been negotiated just a little after the Reeve, in the vast deep darkness of the Deprescence; Ruby never quite figured out if Gran meant she’d been there to witness it herself.

Absolute silence as Woodsdowne men related to Hunter and past their tenth fullmoon run carried the wrapped body, thin sapling-sticks sewn into the wrappings to provide support for the cloth and the antistain charms.

Her lips moved a little. It was probably blasphemous, but all she could think of were the chapel songs at St. Juno’s. Mithrus Christ, watch over us all; we are the lambs and you the shepherd. . . .

Gran never said anything about Juno being run by the Mithraic Order, though the kin remembered darker times when anything remotely churchlike was dangerous. Even now cathedral-kin was a dirty, serious insult.

It meant betrayal. It meant you’d given one of your own to the mere-humans who once hunted kin for Church and sadistic pleasure alike. A tremor went through Ruby; she braced herself against the nightmare.

It was no use. There was no waking up from this.

Even though they had wrapped . . . him . . . carefully, it was still pretty obvious that things were, well . . . The shape was wrong, bulging oddly near the head and the legs too thin.

Things were missing.

What had happened? Gran just said, “He was attacked.” Conrad said nothing. Nobody else would tell her, and Thorne . . . well, he didn’t talk, or visit.

At all.

Something moved next to her. She couldn’t stop thinking about chapel at Juno, the girls massed together, Cami with her sweet throaty alto and Ellie, when she bothered to sing, quietly but clearly hitting every note. They made it sound easy.

When Hunter was eight he had announced she was pretty okay, for a girl. The smoky char-smell of barbeque and the tang of lemonade on her tongue, she’d let him kiss her cheek and the adults had laughed. Of all the cousins, he was the sweetest. The calmest, too—he’d only gotten into a domfight a handful of times, and all of those with Thorne.

It was Thorne next to her, dry-eyed and tense. The movement was his hand on her shoulder, warm and familiar. Her knees almost gave.

Hunter’s mother, dun-haired Tante Alissa who had married out to a branch from the Cherweil clan down in Pocario to the south, swayed. Her husband Barth propped her up. Hunter’s brothers, all older, were either carrying the . . . carrying him, or standing on their mother’s other side. Gran, apart and alone as Clanmother, held the silence as the slow steps of the bearers drummed on sweating earth, crushing green grass.

They lowered him slowly with charmed straps of seven-braided linen, and the soft thump of him resting against the bottom jolted all through Ruby. She bent forward, suddenly breathless, Thorne’s arm around her shoulders. He held her on her feet as the charmed shovels lifted soft steaming earth.

Gran reached the graveside and looked down. Her old, strong hands lifted, their nails unpolished and a little long, gleaming slightly. Potential buzzed between her palms, a shower of colorless sparks fountaining into the hole in the earth. You could see layers in the sides of the hole, stripes of different-colored dirt like pages of a book.

Ellie would know what each stripe was called.

The gravecharm settled in fine gossamer layers. Hunter’s mother sobbed, but silently. Until he was sealed, there was no speaking, no sound if you could help it.

He had to be free to go on, and speaking would call him back. Words crowded her throat. This is a mistake. Hunter, it’s a mistake, one of your pranks, stop playing around!

He loved water. Always the first in the pool, and sleek-graceful as a seal.

Stop it, Hunter. Stop it.

Gran stepped back and nodded. The first shovelful was tossed in by Hunter’s eldest brother, lean, dark-eyed Robert. His wife wasn’t here—she wasn’t kin. If they had any children it would be a miracle, since kin and mere-human were often sterile pairings. Just one more unraveling of the bloodline, but at least there was a chance she’d give birth to kin.

Maybe even a girl.

Crunch of shovel-edge against the pile, the soft sound of it pattering like rain into the hole. Ruby straightened slowly, but Thorne didn’t let go of her. His arm around her, tight and tense, but not digging in. Her hand quested a little, blindly reaching for the grave, but Thorne reached across, grabbed her wrist with his free hand. Was she trying to pull away?

He held on as if she was. The world whirled, hot and muggy, her breath coming in short little sips. A green carousel, going too fast.

Thorne’s arm tightened again, just on the edge of pain. He leaned into her, and for once she didn’t step away. If she pressed her side against his, the whirling slowed a little. It didn’t stop; nothing would stop it. It just got easier to handle.

The bearers worked, mechanically. Her cheeks were wet.

Hey Rube, want to go to the Park? Hunter’s dark, sleek head, and the way he ducked and smiled, shyly, each time she saw him. Wrestling with Thorne in the Vultusino’s pool, cocking his arm to skip a rock across the pond they’d hung out by the summer of her seventh-grade year. The time he gave her bluecharm candy for Fish Day and laughed when she found out it was sour. She’d once fallen asleep against his shoulder as they sat in an arcade on Southking, watching the crowd pass through the window. He hadn’t moved the whole time, barely even breathed.

The mound of earth shrank, shovelful by shovelful. Each load of dirt crackled with Potential. Bindcharms, sealcharms, some already worked into the dirt by Gran, others bound into the hafts of the shovels and escaping in controlled bursts. When a shovel’s charms were emptied it was laid aside and a fresh one handed to the bearer; each family of each branch had at least one they added charms to at every fullmoon.

If the bones must be laid in earth without being cleansed, at least they would be laid securely.

When the final load had been tamped down, the still-charmed shovels were laid aside as well. They’d be drained as dusk fell, and next fullmoon the charms would begin accreting again. Back during the Reeve the shovels were consecrated daily instead of monthly, the Moon taking pity on her children and providing them a little grace as the Age of Iron shuddered to a halt.

A glass bowl of silence, laid over the hilltop. The last funeral she remembered was old Maxim Corris, not the head of his branch but still the one everyone went to with problems because the head, Gregor Corris, was, well, a little harsh.

The Corrises had always been strange; they were full of fierce silence, the Moon’s daggered hand instead of Her giving palm. But Oncle Maxim’s interment had not felt like this.

Gran half-turned. Her steely gaze met Ruby’s. She tilted her head, very slightly.

Dry throat. Shaking, as if she had a fever. Ruby stared back, willing her knees to stay steady. Gran would be seeing Thorne’s arm around her, their fingers knotted together.

Would she smell the grief spreading from him like a bruise, red-violet pain digging into her ears and nose? Over his living scent, musk and male and fresh-cut grass, would she catch that fringed screen?

Gran didn’t understand.

Well, really, nobody understood Thorne, mostly because they didn’t care to. If he’d had at least one sibling, it might have been different. Maybe. Or maybe he would be just as spiky and difficult. They called him Thorne instead of his given name, even his parents—Hunter had started it, sure, just to be funny about his real name, but some things had a habit of sticking. His mother, willowy blue-eyed Tante Carina, had a hard labor with him and was rumored to now be barren, but his father made no move to take another mate. Nobody mentioned doing so to him either, not since he almost broke Oncle Radin’s jaw for even suggesting it during a clan meeting.

That was probably where Thorne got his temper. Under that temper, though, he cared, probably—like Cami—too much. Nobody saw that under the anger he wore.

Gran’s gaze moved on. She nodded to Hunter’s mother.

Alissa tilted her shorn head back, her eyes closed, and the sound that rose from her thrilled into the ultrasonic. A glass cry, a moon-cry, even under the daylight it twitched the silver thread inside Ruby’s bones.

The rest of them flung their heads back and howled.

It was a different hymn than one of the music-teacher Sisters picking at the organ, and different than the thudding of Tommy Triton’s backup drums too. High, hard, and silvery-haunting, it rose and fell in cascades as the breath did, each voice unique but their similarity overpowering.

Ruby’s mouth was open, but no sound came out. Thorne’s hands were strangely gentle. His throat swelled, the shine on his cheeks wasn’t sweat. Hot salt smell, and finally, finally, the shame in her own throat eased aside long enough for her own cry to join the rest. It went on and on, echoing against the uncaring daytime sky.

Underneath, the same dreadful knowledge beating against her cathedral-arch ribs, under her heart. Over and over, the same two words.

My fault. My fault. My fault.

Because maybe he’d been waiting in the Park for her, like he often did. All her sneaking out at night had a price, too.

THIRTEEN

ALWAYS, AFTER THE SINGING, CAME THE GATHERING. The Corris branch’s head house was a nice two-story brownstone, facing the Park, its large backyard now full of kin. The firepit was going, though it was still hot, and there was the smoky smell of meat being charred. Red paper lanterns hung in the trees and from the grape pergola, the Mackenroe twins had tubs of cool water to dip washcloths and rags in. A crackle of a coolcharm, and the icy rag could be patted against the neck or the forehead, providing a little relief.

Under the pergola, the heat was just as intense as in the middle of the yard. At least the thought of dappled grape-leaf shade helped.

Ruby hunched on a collapsible stool, bent over, her arms crossed tight over her midriff. Thorne laid the cold cloth against the back of her neck. “An axe,” he said, finally, under the crowd-sound around the fire pit. When dusk fell the Remembering would begin, stories told of Hunter’s life, because now he was safely with the Moon. If any piece of him had lingered, it had ridden their cries to the sky, past the sun’s veil to the round, pale Mother of All. “I heard Clanmother talking to my father about it.”

Why your father? “An . . . an axe?” The nausea just wouldn’t quit. “Oh, Mithrus.”

“Like Gaston Wolfhunter.” Maybe he just had to say it. “That’s why she was talking to Dad. He did his dissertation on those feytales.”

“Feytales aren’t real.” Except Ruby had seen one, living and breathing, underneath New Haven last winter. That particular feytale had almost killed Cami. And the other thing, the fey-spider that had lured Ellie in and almost eaten her? Another feytale, maybe. Legends and myths peering through the bars of the Age of Iron, come back to terrible life.

“Doesn’t mean someone crazy isn’t wanting to carve some kinflesh like old Gaston.” Thorne’s lips skinned back from his teeth, a humorless grin. “In the dark of the Moon, when the wind is high, and the wolf cry fills the night—”

She shivered. “Will you stop? That’s just gruesome.”

“Yeah, well.” He took the cloth away, refolded it. A coolcharm crackled, and he pushed her hair aside, laid damp coldness against her nape again. It felt wonderful. “You want something to drink? You look a little pale.”

“I’m fine.” If she said it enough, maybe she’d believe it. “You go ahead if you need to, though.”

“Rather stay with you.” His other hand brushed at her hair, as if there was something in it. “You guys were . . . close.”

“So were you.” She licked her dry lips. “Thorne, do you think . . .” How can I ask him? Where do I start?

“All the time.” Softly. “Can’t get away from it.”

She almost winced. That was part of his problem: he just never stopped chewing at himself. If you got him occupied with something, he’d dig until he hit gold or blood. There was no stopping him once he got an idea. “What do you think he was doing in the Park?”

The bubble of their silence grew. She half-twisted to look up at him, but he was staring in the direction of the firepit. Cicada buzz, high in the trees, rasped under the sounds of somber conversation and the crackle of the fire. Her stool wasn’t too steady, and the brick floor under the pergola was veined with moss. It would serve her right if she slipped, got dumped on her ass here.

Conrad appeared at the back door. He moved aside, letting someone else pass, and surveyed the backyard. He looked straight at her, and his mouth turned down a little.

Her heart squeezed in on itself, then thumped up into her throat. It was doing a lot of moving around these days.

“Probably meeting someone,” Thorne said, finally.

Probably. Was he waiting for me? Hoping? She dropped her head. Thorne’s even, careful stroking of her hair continued.

“Here comes the Grimtree.” He didn’t sound happy about it.

Ruby hunched her shoulders.

“Ruby.” A wash of healthy boykin smell, and that tang of smoke underneath it. Maybe it was just the firepit. “I was looking for you.”

“Well, now you’ve found her.” Thorne’s fingers tightened against the cool cloth. “Lucky you.”

“I didn’t catch your name.” Conrad sounded interested and pleasant, but that edge to his scent intensified.

“I didn’t give it.” Thorne’s smell grew stronger too, dominance rising, unwilling to back down.

Conrad’s smile didn’t change. “Do you have a problem, Woodsdowne?”

“Not yet.” Thorne patted the coolcloth, and Ruby put her hand up to hold it without thinking. “I’ll get you something to drink, Rube.” He brushed past Conrad, and Ruby looked up just in time to see the Grimtree boy shoulder him, a little roughly.

God, would they ever stop the dom games? All the boykin were like that. Maybe it was hormonal. Testosterone poisoning.

Thorne, however, just kept walking. Conrad stuffed his hands in his pockets, the clan cuff digging into his tanned flesh. He looked down at her, and heat suffused her cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” she managed, peeling the cloth off her nape. “He and Hunter . . . they were best friends.”

“Looks like he’s pretty friendly with you too.”

She couldn’t tell what his tone was. It wasn’t quite angry, was it? “He’s clan.” Why did she feel like she was lying? “Are you . . .” Are you all right? It sounded ridiculous, so she didn’t finish. Why wouldn’t he be okay? It must be awkward for him, but that was about it.

“I’m packing.”

It refused to make sense. “What?”

A shrug. His eyes had darkened a bit, and he wouldn’t quite look at her. “Well, you know. I’m not exactly welcome here.”

“What?” I sound like a cuckoo bird. Or a complete idiot. Either was pretty likely. The dress clung to her; she couldn’t change until she went home. “I mean, what makes you think that?”

“Well, you’ve got all these obligations. I’m just in the way.” Was that a nasty twist to his mouth? Or was he just grimacing with embarrassment?

“Are you serious?” She twisted the rag in her hands. A thin thread of water slid out, touched her knee. It didn’t help. She was going to sweat right through the linen, and probably drip all over everything just like a kelpie fresh from its pond.

“Well, it just looks . . .” A sudden stop, and when he went on his tone had turned into something softer. She couldn’t quite figure out how. “You’ve got a lot to deal with here, and the last thing you need is more pressure. You know?”

Great. Now Gran was going to think she’d made him feel unwelcome. She would get that disappointed look, and . . .

For once, Ruby’s imagination failed her. Her skirt was going to get soaked. She loosened up on the rag, took a deep breath. The fire pit smoke stung her eyes. “I’d like you to stay.” She couldn’t say it very loudly, but at least she’d put it out there. “Please.”

A rustle went through the assembled kin. The sun was sinking, and soon it would be time to eat and tell stories. Except she didn’t think she could swallow a single bite.

His shadow changed shape as he crouched. “Hey. Oh, Christ. You’re crying.”

“S-sorry.” She bit her lip, hard, but the blurring wavering in her eyes refused to stop. “I d-don’t usually.” Was this what Cami felt like, when she stuttered? She knew what she wanted to say, but it got all racked up between brain and mouth.

“Shhh.” He pulled her forward. Her knees hit the bricks with a grating jolt, but she didn’t care, because he put his arms around her and there was a dark space to hide in. For some reason, that was what did it, breaking the shell between her and a roaring sea.

Ruby buried her face in the Grimtree’s shoulder and sobbed, as quietly as she could. He stroked her hair, clumsily, pulling at the curls a little. The rag fell on the mossy bricks, and she didn’t see Thorne’s return, or the way he stood at the edge of the pergola watching.

She didn’t see Conrad’s expression while he stared at Thorne, either, or the narrowing of those sun-eyes. His hand caught in her hair, she gasped, and he immediately started murmuring soothing things—sorry, go ahead, cry it out.

The Gathering went on until midnight, with stories and songs and feasting. Stories of Hunter’s pranks—the Mithrusmas he locked Thorne in a closet, the time he threw a popcharm in the fire during another clan gathering and scared everyone to death, his love of fizzy limon drink and his taste for coral candy. So many stories, falling into the black hole that was his absence.

Conrad loaded up a plate and pressed her into eating. She kept looking around, seeing familiar faces, but not the one she wanted.

Thorne had left.

FOURTEEN

THE FIRST WEEK OF SCHOOL WAS MUGGY AND GRAY as well. It was the only week last-years couldn’t drive in, and Gran was at the office all day. Conrad offered to drive her in the Semprena, but it was bad enough that Gran had decreed he was going to share her car.

He is our guest, Ruby.

Inside St. Juno’s, charm-cooled air moved sluggishly through the high-ceilinged halls. Lockers slammed, hushed giggles ran around like tiny mice, chalk scratched on the boards, and the chapel was full of an incense hum.

It was like she’d never left.

Except things had changed. Ellie’s Potential was settled, so she’d moved up into Advanced Charm instead of Basic. Wonder of wonders, Cami’s had too, between one day and the next. Sometimes it did that, and they were in Advanced Charm together.

Which meant Ruby only saw them during chapel, French, and High Charm Calc. The rest of the time, she was on her own, and it was not only deadly boring, but it was also . . .

Well, it was lonely.

There were prepgirls fretting over their socialite status, and bobs—the new girls, still finding their way around. The ghoulgirls with their black hair dye and heavy eye makeup, but no lipstick, because that was too far outside the rules, playing at being black charmers. They sometimes gave Rube a shiver—she’d seen a black charmer, in summer, during the hearing that had banished Ell’s nasty-ass stepmother. It wasn’t something to play at, even if a radio show or two had reverse-heroic black charmer characters.

Ruby slumped in the wooden seat, trying hard to concentrate on Sister Margaret Ever Loving’s drone. At least she wasn’t sharing a desk with anyone. Her reputation was good for something. Or maybe it was just Gran’s reputation, or Woodsdowne’s.

“The forties were a decade of migration and war.” Sister Margaret, rail-thin inside her billowing black robes, leaned on the podium. Her right cheek was seamed by a long thick scar, and she sometimes wound her rosary up in her long bony fingers as if it were a throat that needed crushing. “The Deprescence was over, but its effects were long felt. Who can tell me what those effects were?”

Migration, nationalism, economic patterns shifting. Ruby held still, and the Sister called on blonde Binksy Malone, who blinked and simpered her way through the answer. It was pretty impossible that she’d done some studying over the summer, heavy partier that she was. She kept glancing at the textbook the whole time, and Sister Margaret let her suffer.

God, just move on. Ask another question. She scribbled on her notepaper, slowly drawing loops inside loops. It was no use.

An axe, Thorne had said. She’d managed to piece together a little more at the Gathering, and afterward, when visitors kept coming by the cottage. They didn’t come right out and say it in front of her, but if Gran could hear every sneeze in the house, it was pretty stupid to think Ruby couldn’t hear the low voices in the kitchen or living room.

Legs cut off. Marks in the flesh. Charring around the edges.

They even whispered it, the name of the most awful thing in the world. Gaston Wolfhunter.

Sometimes during history class she considered standing up and telling the Sister running it that there was another textbook, written in the bodies and voices of the kin. They remembered things. How it was to be hunted, or to burn at the stake during the Age of Iron. How it felt to huddle in your bed at night hearing the scrape of an axe haft on your window. Sure, when you looked it was just the tree’s branches.

It was a kid’s story, all right. A feytale, like the Impossible Riddle or Crusoe, Man-Eater. Except there was history under the sheet of legend. There had been a Gaston. Several of them, in fact. Way back before the Reeve, in the very beginning of the Age of Iron, the Mithrus Catolicus had trained mere-humans to recognize kin and other things, like fey.

Which would have been okay, except the recognizing was only so they could kill. A frightened mere-human is a dangerous one.

“Miss de Varre?” said Sister Margaret’s dry, dusty voice.

Ruby came back to herself with a jolt. “What?”

Whisper-giggles.

“In what year was the Compact of Provinces signed into law?”

Oh, that’s easy. “Thirty-nine, Sister.”

“What was the purpose of that compact?”

“To facilitate trade as well as solve the problems inherent in governing multiple enclaves surrounded by the Waste. Communication and the normalizing of relations were critical if enclaves were going to survive.”

The Sister nodded, and turned her entire body to look at the clock over the door, its heavy glass and wire covering buffered to prevent charm reaching through. It was a wonder she didn’t creak. Maybe she took oil baths, like grinmarches were supposed to.

“I am relieved to find you paying attention, despite all appearances to the contrary.” She turned back, slow and ponderous despite her thinness. “Required reading tonight is textbook chapters three through five; your first essay of the year is due at the end of the week. It must include at least two of the following . . .”

Ruby sighed, scribbling down the list of requirements. Of course they’d load you up the first few weeks. Revenge for summer freedom, maybe.

At least she wouldn’t have to think. She could just do her homework without bothering Cami and Ellie over Babchat. It used to be the high point of her day, her fingers racing over the keyboard, the blue glow on her face, talking through cables to her best friends. On the Juno intranet, Cami didn’t stutter and Ruby didn’t have to slow down, plus you could access some of the library without having to stick your beechgum somewhere for safekeeping. It was a pretty perfect method of communication. There was talk about extending it through buried lines, maybe even getting different cities and towns to Babchat to each other, but nobody had figured out how to do that yet. Potential and electricity had weird effects on each other.

The circles she’d been doodling nested together, and in their center two curves looked away from each other. Between them, a slender handle daggered for the bottom of the page.

Labrys. An axe. Her stomach filled with acid, and she shut her eyes and tried to breathe, until the charmbell tinkled and they were free to go to their next little purgatory.

“Hey.” Ellie slid into the seat between her and Cami. “How are you?”

“Peachy.” Ruby stared at the textbook. “I sense a quiz coming on.”

“It’s only the first week.” Cami sighed.

Why are you worried? French was one of Cami’s strong points, for all that her tongue used to trip over every syllable. Sister Mary Brefoil didn’t call on her, one of the few real instances of mercy Ruby had ever seen in a classroom. “This is just so useless. Why the hell is a past participle even necessary?”

“Diplomacy.” Ellie brushed her pale hair back, glancing up at the overhead fixture. The hum of conversation surrounding them wasn’t quite mutinous, but it was close. “There’s practical applications too.”

“It was a rhetorical question.” At least they were off the subject of how Ruby felt.

Cami dropped her schoolbag and opened her notebook. “Want to come over? Spend the night?”

“Sure.” Ellie’s acceptance was casual, almost rehearsed. So they were planning a get-together.

“Ruby?” Cami looked downright hopeful. She’d taken to pulling her hair back, and the architecture of her face, clearly revealed, was beautiful enough to send a pang through just about anyone.

“Can’t.” Ruby hunched her shoulders. “Got a houseguest.”

“You can’t even . . .” Cami hushed as Sister Mary sailed in through the door, round and bouncy, her apple cheeks flushed and her rosary swinging. “Can you come to dinner, then?”

“Have to ask Gran.” Why bother, when she knew the answer? She was supposed to be keeping Conrad happy, and that meant staying home. He didn’t want to go anywhere unless it was just the two of them, and he wanted to drive. She wasn’t about to sit in her car and let someone else steer, so she found reasons not to.

Ellie finally broke down and asked. “Any news?”

Meaning, about Hunter?

Ruby shook her head.

“Bonjour, mademoiselles!” Sister Mary picked up the yardstick laid precisely across her ruthlessly organized desk. Last year someone had pranked her inkwell; now that had been an occasion.

“Bonjour, Sœur Marie,” they dutifully chorused.

The Sister beamed, always a bad sign. “Vous êtes très chanceux. Il s’agit d’un quiz aujourd’hui!”

Ruby worked the words around in her head. Great. The suppressed groans going around the room were probably food for Sister Mary, who tapped her yardstick briskly against the desk and turned to the chalkboard.

A piece of paper slid into Ruby’s peripheral vision. Ellie’s handwriting, fast and graceful like the rest of her.

Would it help if we asked Gran for you?

Ruby shook her head and concentrated on the Sister’s scratchy voice rising through a question. Chalk scratched against the board, her neck itched, and she had to blink several times before the welling in her eyes went away.

She was going to bomb it anyway, so why even try? Still, it was better than seeing Ellie’s concerned expression. Cami kept peeking around Ellie, too, trying to see Ruby’s face.

They were worried.

Buck up, Ruby. Be what they need. She took a deep breath, stared down at her paper, and started translating. For the rest of the day, she was going to have to be cheerful. Again.

FIFTEEN

IT WAS A RELIEF TO GET HOME. THE GARDEN SWELTERED under a gray-lensed sky, Gran’s blueberry bushes holding wizened late fruit under leaves beginning to dapple with fall colors. Every crack in the slate path was familiar, every bush an old friend; the rampion had bolted and so had the radishes. Even the silvery rue looked happy to see her, and it didn’t ask any questions.

Inside, the charmed coolness was a balm. She slung her schoolbag onto the counter, opened the fridge, and found a bottle of fresh-pressed apple juice.

Somehow Gran always knew when it was time for apples. The only question was whether she should pour a glass or just drink straight from the—

“Hello, Ruby.”

She almost dropped the bottle, slammed the fridge door. “Christ. I didn’t hear you.” He was quiet, even for kin. Her heart hammered, the fridge’s compressor humming to itself under its layer of sealcharm. She hadn’t smelled him, but then, she hadn’t been trying to, and he’d lived here for more than a couple days.

Conrad leaned against the doorway to the living room. The lights were off, cloud-screened sunshine gleaming off the copper-bottomed pans in their rack over the range. In the almost-gloom, his eyes were chips of amber, and he looked solemn. He hadn’t shaved. The scruffiness was kind of appealing.

“Hi. I thought you were out driving.” Driving my car, that is.

He shrugged. Why was he looking at her so intently?

Well, now she had to get a glass down. She couldn’t just slog off the bottle. “How was your day?”

“Fine.” He kept watching her.

“You want some?” She sloshed the juice a little, tried a smile. “It’s not honeywine, but it’ll do.”

“No.”

He wasn’t exactly chatty today. That suited her just fine, actually, so she poured herself a glass and was contemplating some toast to get her through homework when he spoke in her ear.

“Ruby.”

She jumped again, almost knocking the bottle over. How was he so damn silent? She could hear everyone else, even Gran. “Quit doing that!” He was way too close, shoving her against the counter, and a bright dart of unfamiliar fear went through her.

A red scent was all over him. Coppery, old, crusted, it lurked under kinsmell and scraped against her nerves. Her skin rippled with the precursors to the shift, sweat springing out in pinpoint prickledrops. Her skirt swung, and the glass of apple juice toppled, sticky and cold.

Great, I’m going to have to clean that up—

“Brett called,” he said, pleasantly, in her ear. His breath was too warm, he grabbed her wrist and squeezed a little. “Anything you want to tell me, Rube?”

Brett? The boytoy, he had the number to her bedroom phone. She’d forgotten all about that. What the hell? The juice was soaking into her shirt, the counter cutting into her belly. “Get off me.”

His fingers clamped down on her wrist. Small bones ground together; she half-screamed. “Ow! What’s wrong with you?”

“Is he kin? This Brett?”

“What? No! He’s just—” Just a mere-human. What would that sound like, to him? She couldn’t get a breath in right, and her head started ringing. That awful roaring sound had just been waiting to jump on her again. “Just a friend!”

“He sounded pretty friendly, all right.” Another hard squeeze, grinding her wrist.

“Ow!” The roaring in her head intensified. “Stop it!”

“So should I go somewhere else, huh? You’ve got someone lined up already? Some little pink punk?”

Is that what he thinks? “What? No, he’s just—ow! He’s just a friend! Stop it!” The words spiraled up into a breathless squeal. “Please. It’s not what you think Conrad please!”

He let go of her, all at once. Ruby whirled and backed up sideways along the counter, her shirt soaking up cold apple juice along the back too. Her skirt’s waistband, wet clear through, rasped against her skin. She rubbed her wrist and stared at him.

Narrowed eyes, still glowing-hot. His hair tumbled as if he’d just run his hands back through it, or as if he’d been roughhousing. Was this what Grimtree cousins did? Some of the boykin liked horseplay, but they never . . . never . . .

She couldn’t even think, the roaring swallowed everything inside her head.

His face changed, as if he was about to shift. He stepped toward her, and Ruby flinched, scooting away along the sink.

“God. Ruby.” Harshly, dry. “I . . . I’m sorry. I just . . . you’re so . . . you’re beautiful. And I’m just . . . I thought you’d . . .” His ribs heaved, deep flaring breaths. Heavy musk in the kitchen, both of them were sweating. Hot water on her cheeks, and curls knocked loose over her face.

You thought I what? She swallowed, hard. “You hurt my wrist.” Flat and toneless, someone else using her voice again. Who?

Did she want to know?

“I’m sorry.” He took another step. This time she didn’t flinch, just pulled her wrist close to her chest and stared at him. “I don’t . . . I just don’t want to lose you.”

Their combined smell, along with the roaring, made it difficult to think, difficult to breathe. The shift was close to the surface; she pushed it down. If Gran found out . . . what would she think? If she walked into the kitchen right now and smelled this, she might think that Ruby and Conrad had . . . had . . . done something else. Something irrevocable.

Would she be disappointed? Or would she start making marriage noises? Moving the betrothal up a notch. Mithrus knew the clan needed something to take its mind off Hunter dead in the Park.

“I have to clean this up.” She couldn’t make it any louder than a whisper. Her throat was a pinhole. Her skin ran with pins and needles, and a high brassy edge of fear had invaded her scent. “Gran’ll be home soon.”

He stared at her like she’d just started speaking a foreign language. Had she said it in French? She didn’t think so. Her wrist throbbed, her cheeks flamed, and the fridge clicked into life, making its familiar low hum. Potential sparked once, twice in the space between them—the edge of Ruby’s personal space flexing. She wasn’t as high-powered as Ellie, but she had more than him, that was for sure. His Potential was merely a low umber glow, rasping against hers before retreating.

Conrad whirled and vanished into the living room. A few seconds later the front door slammed, and now he was making noise. He ran down the slate path like the Wild Hunt was after him.

Ruby shut her eyes, cradling her wrist, and sagged against the counter. The roaring inside her head crested again, but this time she welcomed it. She didn’t want to think about what had just happened.

What did just happen? Her wrist throbbed, ached. Mithrus Christ, what was that?

SIXTEEN

GRAN’S GUMBO WAS JUST ABOUT THE BEST THING IN the world. Spicy, smoky, hot and wonderful, ladled over imported rice and with a slice of Dalkenna Grocer’s crusty bread, sending up steam in fragrant whorls and burning comfortably in your stomach while you washed the dishes afterward—she’d eaten it all her life, and there was almost nothing better.

Tonight, though, she just picked at a prawn drenched with savory broth. “He was gone when I came home.” It wasn’t exactly lying, she told herself. It was protecting.

Gran set the bread down. She wore the crimson housedress today, her hair rebraided and the smell of violets from her soap wafting around her. “He didn’t leave a note?”

Ruby shrugged. Her wrist throbbed, maroon and dark-blue bruising rising to the surface, but she’d wrapped a couple hemp bracelets around it like she sometimes did. You couldn’t see the worst of it, and Gran wasn’t looking. “No.”

You weren’t really supposed to charm outside school, but she’d thrown a couple air-cleaning ones around, popping them off her fingers just like Ellie. Her first instinct—to spill the whole story to Gran—ran up against the wall of what Conrad might say in return. Brett was Berch Prep, which was fine, but he was also mere-human, and if Gran took to asking questions, well, some of Ruby’s nighttime party prowls might come to light.

That was a prospect to give her a chill or two. Keeping her mouth shut was the best policy. Even if she was just protecting her own sorry hide.

I don’t want to lose you. Was it that important to him?

Was she that important? Now she could see, kind of, why he got mad. If he didn’t want to go home, or if he really planned on going into the Waste if she didn’t like him . . . she could sort of see it.

Still, her wrist hurt. Her chest hurt. Hungry as she was, the gumbo just didn’t want to go down. If she hunched over her bowl, she’d get a Sit up, please . . . Ruby? Are you unwell?

Gran settled in her own high-backed chair with a sigh. “I confess I’m glad to have a moment with you. I’ve missed our time together.”

That helped, and didn’t help, at the same time. Her chest eased a little, but there were all sorts of things Gran could disapprove of lurking in every corner. Time alone with her was likely to be yet another minefield to dance through. “Me too.”

The old woman broke a crusty bit of bread, looked down at her bowl. “How was school today?”

“French quiz. Think I bombed it.”

“It is a difficult language, sometimes.” Crunch of breaking crust, splash of spoon. Ruby sipped at a little broth, swallowed hard. “Your friends. Camille, and Ellen. How are they?”

What is this? She darted a look up, but Gran was frowning slightly into her gumbo. “They’re okay. Cami’s Potential settled.”

“Ah. Is there a celebration?”

I don’t know. “Maybe, I don’t know yet.”

Silence. “You have been doing your chores with great alacrity lately.” Did Gran sound, of all things, tentative?

“Trying.”

“And Conrad? Does he help?”

Ruby watched her gumbo, drawing a spoon through it as if admiring the colors. “He’s a guest. I don’t let him.”

Gran nodded, thoughtfully. “The Grimtree seem to have different manners.”

“I noticed.” That’s one word for it. She scooped up a mouthful of rice. She had to eat, Gran would notice if she didn’t. There would be questions. Her wrist throbbed insistently.

“Very different manners indeed. Ruby . . .” Gran paused, forged on. “Do you like him?”

So that was what she was aiming at.

What did Gran expect her to say? No, send him home? Or even, Yeah, but not enough? What was enough? She owed the clan, and he liked her.

Enough to get jealous. I don’t want to lose you.

“He’s okay.” That sounded unhelpful. What else could she say? “I’m trying, Gran. Really I am.”

“I know. I see you trying, and I . . .” Gran broke the bread into smaller and smaller pieces, dusting them into her bowl. “Sometimes you remind me of . . .”

Ruby splashed her spoon a little, as if she were five again. Of course, back then she hadn’t ever worried about who she reminded Gran of.

But she had padded down the hall almost every night to see if Gran was breathing. Sometimes she’d even hidden under Gran’s big heirloom bed and slept there, until Gran waited one night to catch her and say you might as well come in, child. There, next to the safety and warmth keeping all nightly terrors away, Ruby could sleep.

She’d stopped doing that when she was about ten, but sometimes she wished she was five again.

Ruby cocked her head, and her heart began to pound. Gran caught the sound as well, and frowned, slightly.

The front door opened. Footsteps. What was he going to say?

Conrad stepped into the kitchen, his black hair slicked down. His boots were wet, but he’d wiped them carefully. It looked like he’d run through a sprinkler or something, and he was redolent of sap and crushed grass. “Did I miss dinner? I’m sorry. It smells fantastic.”

Gran pushed her chair back, but Ruby was already on her feet to get him a bowl of rice and gumbo. And also, to stand on tiptoe to get down a charmcrystal vase for the wet daisies he carried, holding them awkwardly in one fist, his expression rueful and hopeful at once as he stepped carefully across the kitchen toward her. “I brought these. For you.”

Why was she so relieved? “Thank you.” Inside her ribs, a tightness eased, and she found out she was hungry after all.

SEVENTEEN

SHE SAT ON THE FRONT STEP, HUGGING HER BARE knees as thunder rolled in the distance. Autumn storms would start coming in soon, but for right now it was sticky and the sky-bowling was just a heavenly headache. Out over the Waste it might be raining somewhere, Tesla’s Folly crackling between earth and sky, lighting up the twisted ruins of a world mere-humans used to own.

Who owned it now? Maybe the Waste did, and it saw the cities and kolkhozes as intrusions. A planetary cancer.

The top band of her shorts dug into the slight rash her sodden skirt had worn around her waist. Sometimes she stretched out her hurt wrist, rotating it, wincing a little each time a sharp jab of pain speared though. The swelling wasn’t bad, and kin healed quickly. It would be fine tomorrow morning, most likely. Still, it hurt.

He came out quietly, his boots creaking a little. Sank down beside her, a different heat than the breathless mugginess. She rested her chin on her knees, heels braced against the step and her toes bare and vulnerable in the hot humidity.

They sat like that, while the thunder-train rolled on greased wheels overhead.

When the sound had died, he moved slightly.

Ruby flinched.

He put his hand back down. “I’m sorry.”

Me too. She stared at the garden’s far wall, a low stone affair. Everyone who could afford it walled their house off, a leftover from the days just after the Reeve. Maybe Gran was saying, Go ahead, come and get me. Or maybe she just didn’t care. It wasn’t likely that she’d ever been scared.

What was it like, to be fearless? If you weren’t born that way, could you learn it?

“If you want, I’ll go.” Conrad leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. “I, uh. I’ve never been what anyone’s wanted. I just thought . . . I’m not what you want, either.”

You don’t know what I want. “You hurt me.” The words were toneless. It was the best she could do. She didn’t want to sound accusing, but . . .

Exactly. But.

He made a short, exhaled sound, as if he’d been hit in the stomach. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to. I just . . . I thought you . . . you’re so beautiful, and I’m just . . .”

“Just what?” All the same, a traitorous spot of heat bloomed deep inside her. He thought she was beautiful.

“I don’t know.” Almost angry, but maybe it could have been because he had to raise his voice over the distant thunder. “I thought, well, why would you want me around? I’m just another way they’re trying to cage you.”

Which probably made them even. “And I guess I’m just another way they’re trying to cage you.”

“Nah.” His head dropped.

The steaming city under a lid of cloud rumbled uneasily, again. When she was little she used to think it was the core making that noise. Just like a big dozing animal, crouched in the center of New Haven and groaning under its own weight of curdled, clotted Potential.

“How is it different?” She watched the sky fluoresce, breathing in the heat. Her T-shirt was getting sticky, and she had a scab on her knee from hitting the cupboard that afternoon while he had . . . hurt her.

“You’re my way out of a cage.” He said it to the flagstone walk, as if he expected her to laugh at him. “You don’t know. You just don’t know.”

“I guess I don’t.” The scab on her knee was rough and fresh, still smarting.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“I know.” Do I? There were the daisies in their vase, safe on the kitchen table. The way he’d looked when he offered them, though Gran sort of sniffed when he sat down all wet to dinner.

The way he’d looked horrified and run away. Maybe he hadn’t really meant to . . . do what he did.

“Do you want me to go?” He said it so softly she almost didn’t hear.

Ruby hesitated, between yes and no, for a long time. So long, in fact, that he spoke again.

“You asked about . . . my brother. He’s . . . he was everything they wanted. He got everything first, and best, and always. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t . . . I think I did this to get away from him. I loved him, but . . . there’s just only so much you can take.”

Don’t I know it. Only Ruby didn’t have a sister, even though a single girlchild wasn’t treated the same as a boy-only. A living, breathing sister Rube could have fought with, relied on. She had Cami and Ellie, but it wasn’t the same. They were moving on, growing up.

No sister. No mother, either. Just a ghost she was measured against. The person she reminded Gran of, the one never spoken of. You couldn’t fight with a ghost, or prank it, or find a way around it.

You could only be less. Ghosts didn’t make mistakes, they didn’t criticize or act up or bomb a French quiz. They weren’t selfish. They were perfect. Even hating them brought no relief.

She uncurled slowly. Put her bare feet on the walk. Gritty slate under her feet, slightly damp and blood-warm. Her pale, vulnerable toes, and his thick heavy boots.

“Don’t go,” she said, finally. “Please.”

“You mean it?” Soft and wondering. He reached over, slowly, as if expecting her to flinch again, and touched her shoulder with two fingertips. Gently, so gently.

A dark, secret thrill poured through her. The heat outside her skin wasn’t so bad, compared to the glow that lit itself inside her chest and belly and legs. “Of course I do. Just . . . don’t do that again, okay?”

He nodded, half-seen in the dusk. A glimmer of those golden eyes. Whatever reply he would have made was lost in the sound of running feet.

Thorne bolted through the gate, wild-haired and wide-eyed. “Ruby!” He skidded to a stop, and didn’t hit Conrad by a sheer miracle. The Grimtree was on his feet, facing down Thorne, who leapt aside and almost knocked over a terracotta pot full of strawberry plants. “The Clanmother. We need her.”

She found herself on her feet too. Conrad, tense and a little sheepish, slowly lowered his hands. Did he think Thorne was going to jump them? “What happened?”

“It’s . . . the Park.” His sides flickered with deep starving breaths, and the words came out in hard heaves. “There’s been . . . another murder.”

“Oncle just said to come get you.” Thorne, still breathless, braced a hand against the hallway wall and hunched his shoulders. “There’s cops.”

Gran’s pale eyebrow raised as she settled her purse on her shoulder. “Police?”

“It’s not kin.” Thorne glanced at Ruby, who stood, hugging herself, charmcooled air brushing her bare legs. “Mere-human. Girl.”

“You should go upstairs.” Conrad, right next to her, was a tall warm bulk. He probably didn’t mean to loom like that, but she had to admit it was sort of comforting.

“How bad is it?” Gran was already halfway across the living room, heading for the massive mahogany charmer’s hutch. The tapestry made little skritching sounds as the threads shifted, and Conrad looked at it like he expected it to start speaking. The charmer’s sun-and-moon were veiled, the Moon’s smile sad and worried, the stars around them tarnished.

Thorne glanced at Ruby, straightened. High, wild color stood out in his cheeks, and the sweat on him glistened. His T-shirt was stuck to his back, and muscle flickered under its thin screen. “Pretty bad. Clanmother . . . it’s like him.”

“Him?” Gran paused.

“Like . . .” He glanced at Ruby, plunged ahead. “Like Hunt.”

Ruby swayed. Her shoulder hit Conrad’s. Oh, God. “No,” she whispered.

A heavy arm around her shoulders. Conrad pulled a little, and she let him steer her. The roaring in her head tried to come back; she pushed it away.

“I see.” Gran shook her head, her mouth turning down. She stepped into a pair of flats, and she was apparently planning on leaving the cottage in her housedress. “How many police?”

“Six. They came to Oncle Efraim’s door, said they don’t want an incident. There’s a detective—Haelan. He asked for you personally, Oncle told me to run.”

“Haelan.” Gran’s teeth, sharp and white, showed in a swift grimace. No kin liked the police. “You’ve done well, Thorne. Conrad, my apologies, I must attend to this. Ruby, is your homework done?”

There’s a dead body and you’re asking about my homework? “Can I come with you?” Don’t leave me here alone.

Well, technically not alone, but . . . the roaring kept wanting to come back. It was hard to think through it.

A single shake of her pale head; Gran checked her purse, frowning slightly. “Of course not. It’s a school night. Go to bed and don’t worry. Thorne, please wait in the hall. I shall be out directly.”

“She’s old enough,” he said, instead of hopping to obey. “And she’ll be Clanmother one day.”

Gran halted. She turned slowly to face Thorne, who had drawn himself up. Under the wild thatch of wheat-colored hair, dark eyes glinting, his chin up in that same defiant tilt . . . Ruby let out a soft sipping breath.

He looked sharply handsome, almost Wild. And incredibly, painfully rebellious.

The old woman simply examined him from top to toe. “Indeed she will,” she finally agreed, “but for right now, she is still a child, and so are you. Your elders will deal with this, whatever it is, so that you may have your childhood a little while longer. Go into the hall, young one.”

Ruby closed her eyes. Conrad’s arm tightened. “Don’t worry.” He probably meant to say it softly. “It’ll be all right.” He drew her up the stairs, away from all of it, and she let him.

Thorne didn’t wait in the hall. Instead, the front door slammed, and he was gone as quickly as he’d shown up, out into the gathering storm.

EIGHTEEN

IMPOSSIBLE TO SLEEP, EVEN THOUGH THE COOLING charms in each room were refreshed and actively humming. Thunder muttered in the Waste, a dozing creature wrapped around the city walls.

Ruby finally rolled out of bed and wandered to the bathroom, then downstairs. The sky-grumbles only added to the silence of past midnight, underscoring the quiet. The light in the kitchen was on, a warm golden glow of buffered glass incandescents.

Gran was at the table, again, dark smudges under her eyes. She did not glance at Ruby, staring at the playing cards as she shuffled them again. Her hair was tangled into its nightly braid and spilled down her back as a pale rope. Her fingers flicked, laying out the cards in a wheel-pattern instead of her usual five up-and-down.

Sometimes at night they didn’t talk to each other, Ruby just got a drink or a snack and went back upstairs. Tonight, though, Ruby sat down in her usual spot, brushing curls out of her face.

The cards blurred as she blinked and rubbed at grainy sleepsand.

Tesla’s Folly kept sparking. It was enough to make you wish for rain, for screaming, for broken glass. Anything to break the tension.

“You’re worried,” she said, finally, folding her arms on the table, laying her head down on them as if she was in primary school and bored. Her deportment grades had never been above passable, ever.

Maybe she should have tried harder from the beginning.

Gran didn’t reply for a long moment. Then she nodded. “Yes.”

“Is someone hunting us?” Or just killing in the Park? Trying to make us seem like . . . like what? “Or trying to frighten us? Or . . .”

“Je ne sais pas, ma belle.” Gran turned over a jack, another, both red. Blots of color from Ruby’s perspective, the table-edge a distant infinity. “This is a troubled time, indeed.”

I’ve been trying to make it less troubled. “I’m sorry.”

A ghost of a smile touched Gran’s thin lips. “You are a relief instead of a burden, little one.”

She hasn’t called me that in ages. She watched Gran’s hands, familiar and bone-pale, unpainted nails short but nicely buffed and trimmed. No age spots; there were charms for that. My vanity, Gran would remark occasionally, will overwhelm me one day, no doubt.

“I’m trying.” Now that she could hear Gran’s breathing, smell the comforting musk and whiff of Levarin perfume that meant safety, her eyelids were heavy. The kitchen was restored to order after gumbo, except for a water glass set by the toaster—Conrad’s. Cheerful tomato-red fridge, the red counters wiped and the floor swept clean with a mopcharm, and except for that one lone glass Ruby could pretend it was just them again.

And except for her wrist, tucked out of sight. It still ached a little.

“You try so hard, Ruby.” Now Gran glanced at her, a penetrating look. Her irises were steel-colored again, and any of the cousins might have quailed under that gaze. But Gran was just thoughtful, not severe, though if you didn’t live with her you might mistake one for the other. “Sometimes I think you try too hard.”

The thump below Ruby’s breastbone must have shown on her face, because Gran shook her head, slightly. “No, I don’t mean it that way. I meant only that I fear you may do yourself some harm, seeking to fill . . .” She halted, as if groping for words. “You are not alone. The clan confines, but it also protects.”

Like a straitener’s jacket, right? So I can’t hurt myself or anyone else.

Like a collar. “Gran . . .”

It was maybe Gran’s turn to wonder what Ruby might say. Don’t collar me? Or even, I’m scared. Keeping everything whirling was a full-time job, and now it felt like it was going to speed up even further. All the fast driving in the world couldn’t outrun this.

A girl was dead in the Park. Just like Hunter. Who would do something like that?

“I made many . . . mistakes, with your mother.” Gran’s hands now lay against the cards, their white and red and black quivering uneasily. “I . . . do not ever want to repeat them, with you. I am trying too.” A slight smile, again. “In all senses of the word, I expect.”

There was a prickling behind her eyes. Hot and heavy, and she denied it. “I love you,” Ruby whispered. “You’re not bad at all, Gran.”

Well, that was damning with faint praise. But Gran’s smile widened a trifle, and just for a moment everything between them eased. Thunder rumbled again, but farther away. Some storms were like that. They flirted, they teased, until you just wanted to explode.

Was this what a boytoy felt like when Ruby did the same? That was an uncomfortable thought, and she was having a lot of them lately. Was that what adulthood did to you, fill your head with everything you’d rather not think about?

How could you not think about the whispers in the corners, the half-heard words? She’d heard them as she lay upstairs, stiff as a poker in her bed. The girl had been found splayed out in a glade within sight of the road, torn open.

Savaged. Torn. Blood. The marks. Hushed voices as Oncles and Tantes consulted the Clanmother, Gran’s replies quiet and pointed. She was so calm.

“I love you, too, child. You are very far from bad.” Gran gathered the cards. “Do you want some warm milk? It will help you sleep.”

“Nah. I’d have to brush my teeth again.” Ruby hunched, stretching her back, then extended her bare toes under the table, pointing them as if she were back at Madame Vole’s Dance Academy. Ballet was finicky, there was no space in it for exuberance, but it was the dance you were supposed to learn if you were part of New Haven’s upper crust. Of course Cami floated right through it, and Ellie was as precise and gliding as always. Ruby was always putting her limbs in the wrong place, too much expression, too much fidgeting, slow down. “It’s really bad, isn’t it. The . . . in the Park.”

Gran rose, slowly, pushing her chair back. “You have enough to worry about. That is mine to solve.”

But if I’m going to be Clanmother . . . well, it wasn’t certain that she would be, was it, now? “Okay.” She tried not to sound dubious.

“I am not so fragile yet that I need children to shoulder my responsibilities. You have much of your youth left; I wish for you to . . . to have it.”

Which was an awfully nice idea, but there were all sorts of things in the way. One of them was sleeping upstairs, and her wrist twinged just a little. “It’s okay, Gran.”

Edalie nodded and shuffled for the fridge. Her embroidered slippers made their peculiar sound, light and deliberate, as unique as Gran herself.

The words crowding in Ruby’s throat wouldn’t help anything. Sending Conrad back and handling negotiations for another prospect to visit would be just another drain on Gran’s time and energy, and the last thing she needed was Ruby whining at her.

Especially with murders in Woodsdowne Park. Ruby hid the shudder by stretching and yawning. “I’m going to bed. School tomorrow.”

“Dream well, child.”

“I’ll try.” Though I don’t think it’s very likely.

The stairs creaked in their old familiar voices, and she halted halfway up, cocking her head. Had she heard a quiet snick, the guest room door closing so, so softly? Or a brush of feet against the hall carpet?

Nothing else, and of course the hall was starting to hold threads of Conrad’s smoke and musk under the blankets of other familiar scents that were her-and-Gran. Maybe he’d wanted to come downstairs, or she was just hearing the cottage creak even though the nights weren’t cooling off. New Haven was under a dome of nasty expectant weather, and it would only get thicker until a storm could come in.

It was there, standing stock-still, that she realized the cards hadn’t been quivering because of Potential. No, Gran’s hands had been shaking, just a little. Which gave Ruby such a weird, unsettled feeling in her stomach she ran softly up the remaining stairs and into her room, as if a childhood monster was right behind her.

NINETEEN

LOCKERS SLAMMING, CATCALLS BRIGHT PIERCING notes over conversation surf-noise, high-pitched laughter echoing against the high ceilings. Ruby stared into the depths of her locker, neatly arranged this early in the year, and blinked several times, trying to think of what she should grab. What came next?

“There you are.” Ellie reached past her, slid the French book out, and flipped open Ruby’s bag. “You need this. And this. Got a notebook?”

“I think so.” Ruby blinked. Ellie was already digging in her red canvas schoolbag, almost yanking it off Ruby’s shoulder. “Ell, relax. I’ve got a notebook.”

Ellie shook her pale hair back, blowing irritably at a single, slightly waving strand. “You’re dead on your feet. Come on, we’re going to be late. Cami’s holding our pew.”

“Can’t we just skip it?” She knew the answer before she even said it, and for once, was too damn tired to care. “It’s just a bunch of singing and listening to homilies.”

“Now there’s the Ruby I know. We missed you at Babchat last night.”

“Trouble.”

“We figured. Cami heard from Nico.”

“Of course he’d hear. Why would he bother her with it, though?” Ruby slammed her locker shut with a vengeance. “He’s a piece of work.”

Ellie paused for a moment, eyeing her as a wave of Year 10s flooded the hall. They had chapel earlier than everyone else. Maybe some of them even took it seriously. Bright-eyed, dew-cheeked, and smooth-haired in the blue wool blazer and ubiquitous plaid skirt, they all looked the same. It took getting a whiff to tell them apart.

Either that or a closer look than Ruby cared to give. It was all the same, anyway. This year thin headbands were out and hair ribbons were in, the luckcharms on their polished mary-janes were bugle-shaped silver beads instead of the flat sharp-edged dangles they’d been last year, and jangling feyweight bracelets were making a comeback.

I haven’t worn a feyweight since Year Eight. The little clip-on figures were the hottest thing going for three years running, hard to find and spawning thousands of cheap knockoffs. Even a ban by the City Council hadn’t stopped kids from wearing them, though it had driven import profits up into the stratosphere. Gran had even given her a few handfuls of the little things, smiling a peculiar little grimace.

Ruby’s old pair of feyweight bracelets—one for each wrist, because of course that was the thing to aim for—was probably in a jumble in the bottom of the rosewood box atop her dresser. She’d scored clip-on jangles for Ellie and Cami too, the three of them walking in a sphere of laughter and chiming through Havenvale Middle School.

Everything used to be so simple.

“She’s worried about you.” Gray eyes paler than Gran’s, Ellie’s expression was a watered-down version of the concern sometimes drawing down Gran’s face whenever Ruby had done or said something too careless. “You don’t Babchat, you don’t come over, you don’t talk about anything, you know, real. We miss you.”

Maybe Cami might, but you probably don’t. I’m a selfish bitch, remember? “Just been busy, you know, with everything going on.” Ruby spun her locker’s dial, the identicharm on it flushing red briefly as it sealed itself. “Let’s get to chapel.”

“Ruby.” Ellie didn’t give up easily, gliding next to her as Ruby set off for chapel at a good clip, swimming against the hallway-current. “Look, ever since Hunter—”

Oh, hell no. “I don’t want to talk about it. Is that okay with you?” A little too aggressive, but if she had to start unpacking the details right here she might as well just run away screaming.

Come to think of it, the idea had its merits. Just run and run, get to the Semprena—hooray for Conrad letting her drive her own car again. . . .

Dammit. She didn’t want to think about him. Conrad had eaten dinner while she cleaned up the kitchen last night. Maybe he was hungry; he put away two bowls of gumbo, complimenting Gran’s cooking. He could have been trying to keep her mind off things, or just nervously talking.

Her wrist twinged a bit, only when she torqued it the wrong way. She could still feel his breath on her ear, warm and dangerous. And see his boots next to her bare toes, while he told her something he probably hadn’t told a single other person.

Something to hold, just between the two of them. Shiny and fragile like spun charmglass. Just like Gran, later at the table.

Ellie caught her arm. “I was just asking. You know, if you want to talk. We’re good for that, you know. Both of us.”

So good at talking you never told me what the hell was going on with either of you. So it was Ruby’s turn to keep a secret or two from them, stuff it into that little place inside her where other confidences glowed.

Luckily, Ruby’s secrets weren’t dangerous. Just stupid stuff about growing up, that was all. It was selfish of her to even act like she had a problem.

All harmless things, except for one. Had Hunter been hoping she’d go out on one of her nightly prowls?

Gran was going to be home late and headed into the office early too. Even if she wasn’t, there wasn’t a whole lot she’d tell Ruby. The radio news this morning, while she sat alone in the Semprena because Cami had taken to picking Ellie up on her way to school, didn’t have much either. The murdered girl was from Hollow Hills, a scholarship student, law enforcement had no comment and asked for the family’s privacy to be considered.

How long would that last? The tabloids were going to have a field day. And of course, there would be whispers.

About Woodsdowne.

The chapel doors loomed in front of them, old dark wood worked with Mithrus’s tau cross and bull horns, the Magdalen’s sad eyes carved around them and rubbed with a stain that once had been bright crimson but now was a deep ochre. Like painted bones.

“It’s okay,” Ruby said, finally. Ellie kept gliding next to her, her arm through Ruby’s as if they were younger and gossiping instead of older and lonely, walking side by side with their physical proximity hiding a distance greater than the Waste.

Inside. Where it didn’t show.

“It doesn’t sound okay.” Ellie’s fingers tightened, just a little. “But when you want to, you know, talk, I’m here. Okay?”

They weren’t quite late, the organ was softly noodling under a rustling of bored Year 12 girls nevertheless glad of something that wasn’t class time. Cami was still standing, her long inky hair straight as a ruler, holding their usual bench. Uneasy Potential sparked and flirted along the wooden backs, despite the layer upon layer of suppressive charm meant to make sure the girls didn’t prank each other—or the teachers—into oblivion.

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Ruby muttered. “Come on.”

Binksy Malone, blonde hair shining in the gentle golden light, elbowed one of her coterie and jerked a chin at Ruby. They both giggled, and it was middle school all over again. Except then, Ruby would have snarled.

Ellie’s eyes narrowed, and her fingers flicked along her other side, hidden from the Sisters up on the dais and in the gallery. There was a sharp crackle, lost in the rest of the sound, and Binksy’s perfectly manicured hand flew up to her mouth.

Good. I hope that stung.

“Didn’t know you could throw a popcharm that far,” Ruby whispered, keeping her lips still as the organ music petered out. Ancient Sister Alice Angels-Abiding, the music teacher, shuffled yellowed hymn-sheet pages and glanced over the chapel’s gloomy interior. Especially under the dampers. Wow.

“If she doesn’t shut up I’ll hex her hair off,” was Ellie’s muttered reply.

“Come on.” Cami motioned them into the bench, and when Mother Heloise, the principal and prime potentate of St. Juno’s, turned her beneficent round-faced smile upon the massed girls, Ellie was grinning broadly.

Ruby tried to smile, her face a cracked, unfamiliar mask. All through chapel, there was warmth on either side of her, Cami still and straight-backed, Ellie leaning against Ruby whenever they were seated.

How selfish was it, then, that Ruby still felt so cold?

TWENTY

HIGH CHARM CALC HOMEWORK WAS A BITCH TO DO on your own. Instead of curling up on her bed to do it, or tapping at her Babbage, she liked to spread it out on the kitchen table. Unfortunately, the breathless heat outside was creeping into the house, despite layers of coolcharming. Gran had even left a note that Ruby could refresh the coolcharms herself, despite the prohibition against Juno girls with unsettled Potential charming without supervision.

Which still wouldn’t have been so bad if Conrad hadn’t been hovering, his golden irises glittering. “Let’s go to the Park. You can do that later.”

“Gran expects me to keep my grades up.” She tried to concentrate, wrote the equation on a fresh piece of paper. The trouble was you never knew which ones were unsolvable if your Potential hadn’t settled, so you had to work each one at least twice before you could mark it correctly. Ell was a whiz at High Charm Calc, but without her on Babbage Ruby was left to her own devices.

At least it gave her brain something to focus on other than bodies in the Park.

“Come on. Don’t you want to have some fun?” Cajoling. He leaned against the counter, cloudy sunlight on his broad shoulders. If he just left her alone for a little while she could get this done.

“Looking for dead bodies does not sound fun. It sounds gruesome.” She worked the equation again, frowned as it came out the same. Made a notation on the worksheet, moved on to the next.

“I don’t want to look for dead bodies. I want to roam with you.” His hands worked against each other, knuckles cracking as the shift blurred and rippled under his skin. Ruby hunched her shoulders.

“Maybe after I finish this. But you have to let me finish.”

“Am I distracting you, schoolgirl?” He probably didn’t mean it to sound so dismissive. It was schoolgirl when she refused him something, and kingirl when she didn’t. “Maybe I should just leave.”

Which way was she supposed to take that? Ruby put her head down a little farther, feeling his hot gaze on her. Was he angry? “You could just let me finish this.”

The smoke in his scent was maybe anger. She took a deep breath, trying to ignore the shift prickling under her own skin in response. Her skirt left her legs bare, but it was Juno wool, scratchy against the back of her thighs. Her blazer, draped over the back of the chair, held heat like a sponge even when she was only near it.

Whatever Conrad was going to say was interrupted by a tinkling charmbell. After that, three quick raps, and Ruby’s heart leapt with relief. She was on her feet and across the kitchen in a heartbeat, and the front door opened to reveal Thorne, his wheat hair a mess, a black tank top and the well-worn paint-splattered jeans he wore after school hugging his legs.

“Boo.” He slid in quickly, she slammed the door and popped a refresh of the nearest coolcharm off her fingers, snapping it right next to him so he’d feel a puff of fresh air. “Thanks.”

“Is it bad news?” She crossed her arms, fresh worry exploding in her stomach. “Gran’s at the office, so—”

“Nope.” He grinned, a wide white wolfish expression. “Just came to see you, pretty girl.”

Her own smile didn’t feel like a cracked mask now. “There’s iced tea in the fridge. Unsweetened, the kind you like.”

“Aren’t you hospitable.” It was meant kindly, but nobody else would have known. He raked his fingers back through his hair and followed her toward the kitchen. “The Grimtree here?”

“If you’re not rude, you can hang out with him while I finish my homework. High Charm Calc, I’ve got to get it done.”

“Sure. I’ll be polite as fuck.”

Her giggle cut off halfway as she stepped back into the kitchen. Conrad’s face was unreadable, and the smoky scent was stronger than ever.

“Thorne’s here. You remember him, right? You guys can hang out while I finish, and we can go rambling together.”

“Afternoon.” Thorne’s tone was neutral, and he headed for the fridge. “How are you liking New Haven, cousin?”

“Some parts are pretty.” Conrad’s chin lifted. “Others, not so much.”

“Same as everywhere.” Thorne grabbed a glass, turned to the fridge. “Let’s head to the living room. Give Rube some quiet so she can finish, and then we can have some fun.”

“I don’t think so.” Pleasant, but cold. “I’m going upstairs. Have fun without me. You probably will.”

Ruby almost gasped. Conrad headed straight for her, and she had to step aside or be knocked over. He gave her one cutting glance, then was gone. The stairs shuddered and the guest room door slammed behind him, rattling the entire cottage.

Thorne, standing in front of the open fridge, actually gaped. It wasn’t often that he looked stunned. He left the iced tea in there, and swung it shut. “I was perfectly polite,” he began, with the air of injured innocence he kept just for her. “You saw me!”

“I think he’s shy,” Ruby managed, faintly. “I mean . . .” She couldn’t quite pin down exactly what she meant.

“Maybe he misses his kin.” Thorne finally shut the door. “Been meaning to talk to you, anyway. You okay?”

No. “I guess.” She trudged back to the table, settled in her chair. Thorne pulled out the guest chair, avoiding Gran’s usual place even when she wasn’t home. She stared down at the scattered paper. “Are you?”

“Not really.” He watched as she picked up her pencil.

“Me either.” She sounded small and defeated even to herself. “Thorne . . .”

“Want me to wait in the living room?”

It occurred to her that Conrad was probably jealous of him, too. And if she was honest with herself, he probably should be. She snuck a glance at Thorne’s face, finding him gazing at the door to the hallway with an abstract expression.

What could she say? “I miss Hunter.” If they talked about that, they wouldn’t be talking about Conrad. Or anything else that was dangerous.

“So do I.” He rested his hands on the table. Still not looking at her. “I . . . Ruby, if you found out something—like someone wasn’t what you thought—what would you do?”

Uh-oh. She laid her pencil down again. So much for staying away from dangerous subjects. “What?”

“Like, if you found out something about this Grimtree—”

He can probably hear you. “Thorne, please. Gran expects me to at least try.”

“I don’t care what she expects.” He’d gone pale. “I care about you.”

It was the first time he’d said it so, well, openly. She stared, but he still wasn’t looking at her. Thorne watched the doorway to the hall as if something was going to come through it, someone he heard but Ruby couldn’t.

Something he feared.

“Would you take me instead of him?” His throat moved as he swallowed. His hands, loose and easy on the tabletop, didn’t so much as twitch, but she found herself nervously keeping them in her peripheral vision.

As if he were Conrad.

“I’d fight him,” Thorne said, very softly. “The old way, shift and claw. If you wanted. I know I’m not . . . I’m not Hunt, he could always make you laugh.” A deep breath. “But I can try.”

The sensation of being in a weird dreamworld where everything was reversed made all the breath leave her. Was this what being feytouched was like? There was little love lost between kin and the Children of Danu, but they’d been hunted together during the Age of Iron, and that sort of thing made them unwilling allies more often than not. Maybe she’d angered one somehow, and they’d hexed her for fun.

At least it wasn’t the roaring in her ears. “Thorne . . .” A pale whisper.

“Just think about it. Who knows, I may challenge him anyway. Something’s wrong, and I’m going to catch it.” He shoved his chair back. He still wouldn’t look at her. Ruby couldn’t get in enough air to speak. What did you do when you couldn’t breathe?

“Thorne . . .” She tried to find another word, any word, to slow him down. But he was already gone, without waiting for her to answer.

Maybe he was afraid of what she might say.

The front door closed softly, and she sat at the table, alternate waves of scalding and ice going through her. Her nose was full, and her eyes blurred with hot water.

Stop it. Look at your homework.

A drop spilled onto the worksheet, and she hurriedly brushed at her cheek as she heard footsteps on the stairs. Conrad, probably coming down to bug her again. Had he heard everything?

Maybe he had. If he did . . .

“You’re still here,” he said, from the door.

Ruby didn’t look up. “I have to finish my homework.”

Silence filled the kitchen, an invisible, dangerous fume like the bleedoff from a sylph-ether factory. She picked up her pencil, stared at the soft blue eraser at one end. The problems on the worksheet were spider squiggles. Moving as if charmed into sudden life, because she was blinking back more tears. Why?

If Thorne was serious . . . she would have to find some way of stopping him. How? It wasn’t like a Calc problem, a solution presenting itself as you followed all the steps. Once he got an idea in his head, it was set, and good luck changing anything.

Everything just kept going wrong. Hunter, a dead girl in the Park, Conrad . . .

You selfish bitch, Ruby. And she was. She couldn’t hide from herself.

Because she’d felt relieved when Thorne said it. As if someone else could handle the problem, when it was her own damn thing to fix.

“He’s a little too familiar with you,” Conrad finally said, quietly.

Don’t start. Please don’t start. How could she balance the two of them? Conrad wasn’t Hunter. She cleared her throat, swallowing more tears. “Mh.” A noncommittal noise.

“I don’t think you should talk to him.”

“Fine.” You can’t tell me what to do.

She bent over the paper and tried to concentrate again. Conrad just stood there, but Ruby didn’t stop until the garage door rattled, Gran coming home early. Which was Ruby’s signal to flee upstairs past a silent, watching Grimtree boy, and splash some cold water on her aching, flaming face.

TWENTY-ONE

SATURDAYS ON SOUTHKING STREET WERE CROWDED affairs, but since Ruby hadn’t been skipping to shop during the week, it was all she had. The press of everyone else who had a weekend day off to get their consumption on would have been all right, but it was still muggy and overcast, like breathing through a hot damp rag.

It wasn’t made any easier by the fact that Conrad, while unwilling to be left at home alone, apparently hated shopping.

“You have everything.” He looked good, at least—tanned and vital, white T-shirt, jeans on his long legs. “Why bother coming here?”

He kept scratching at the clan cuff on his left wrist as if it bugged him, but that was probably just nervousness. Some kin didn’t like crowds. It was hard to contain the shift with mere-humans, even charmers, bumping soft and tantalizing against you with every step.

Ruby loved it.

“But I might find something else,” she said for the tenth time, fingering a stack of thin silk blouses. The colors were all wrong, and the stall proprietor—mere-human, to be sure—had the lethargic, heavy-lidded look of a milqueweed smoker. The fabric was high quality, though, and she wondered if the man had paid import on it. There was an awful lot of silk coming in nowadays. Maybe she should ask Gran about that.

If she came home before Ruby went to bed tonight. The hunt for the killer wasn’t turning anything up, despite the boykin cousins searching the Park for clues or scent. Whoever it was, they had covered their tracks thoroughly.

And Thorne hadn’t been back to the cottage. She couldn’t get him on the phone, either. Maybe he was avoiding her.

Conrad actually sniffed, disdainfully. “Like what? You have more clothes than you could ever get around to, schoolgirl.” A faint note of disdain, and he bumped into her, a little harder than kinboys usually did. Ruby’s hip hit the folding table the stall’s wares were piled on, and the mere-human gave her a filthy look.

“Thanks.” She slipped sideways, joining the flow of the crowd with practiced skill, and he grabbed at her arm, fingers sinking in. A jolt went up her arm, and she inhaled sharply.

“Let’s go home.” His fingers eased up, but she still felt the bruise rising. He grabbed at her hand next, thrusting his fingers between hers, and she wondered if Avery ever did this to Ellie. She’d never seen Nico and Cami holding hands, but they didn’t have to, you could see as much shining in the air between them.

Conrad’s hand was fever-warm, and hard. Did Cami or Ellie ever feel small or vulnerable next to their . . . boyfriends?

Was he her boyfriend? He wasn’t a boytoy, that was for sure. He wasn’t a cousin, either. Thorne would have been behind her, watchful and silent, his glower enough to keep a lot of trouble away. Hunter would have been to her right, clowning around a little like a Dead Harvest jester, pointing things out she might like, cracking jokes.

He could always make you smile. Her vision blurred, and her skin itched. The shift was there, lurking, even under inimical daylight. “I don’t want to go home.”

“Then give me the keys.” He made a playful grab for her bag with his free hand, she turned away, almost stumbling into a jack with a leather jacket and weird, high, sharp cheekbones. Bone spurs, it looked like, and his cheeks were slicked with clear fluid, as if he was crying.

She looked hastily away, stepping closer to Conrad after all. There’s one big flaw in your plan. “How will I get home, then?”

“Call and I’ll come get you.”

That makes no sense at all. “Fat chance.” She tried to yank her hand away; maybe the movement surprised him, because his grasp tightened, small bones grinding together. “Ow!”

“Sorry.” His lower lip pushed out a little. Was he actually sulking?

If any of the cousins sulked, you just left them alone. The boytoys didn’t sulk, because as soon as they did, Ruby was gone, and no matter how many times they called, she didn’t answer. She couldn’t treat Conrad like that.

Right?

“Let go.” She succeeded in pulling her hand away. Her nose was full, and all the thrill of shopping had drained away like water from a broken vase.

“Aw, don’t cry, girlkin.” He slid an arm around her shoulders; the heat of him tried to be comforting but just made her sweat more miserably.

Her bra was going to chafe, and her jeans were already uncomfortable. Plus, her hair felt like a wet draggle, and it felt like there was a rash beginning on her nape. She should have put the whole curling mass up, but she liked the way it looked spilling over her shoulders, against the thin crimson T-shirt.

Not now, though. Now it was hot as hell, and she could tell the curls were going to either go flat or become an unmanageable mass. I love your hair, Cami always said, her touch gentle as she combed or braided. Mine just sits there.

He guided her along, her head down and her gaze fixed on the pavement while she struggled to swallow the rock in her throat. Breaking down in a sobbing heap on Southking Street just wasn’t done.

When she could look up, she found out he had steered her onto Lowe Street and was making for the Semprena, parked down at the end. She usually parked on Highclere, but during the weekend everyone did, so you had to walk a little farther if you arrived after crack-of-dawn. Lowe Street was a little seedier, but still neatly kept, and the glossy black curves of her car sat comfortably among other heavy imported vehicles. You could tell the locals—those who didn’t park in driveways had prime spots, their cars a little older but not old enough to be classic, a little dustier but not dirty enough to be deliberately masked.

Conrad stopped on the passenger side, and the heavy weight of his arm slid off her shoulders. Her cheeks were hot and her eyes still full, but she was able to tilt her head back and see him staring down at her with a curious expression.

Those golden irises were beautiful, but the tiny image of herself in his pupils was somehow . . . disturbing. She couldn’t figure out why, because he leaned down, and his mouth met hers.

It wasn’t like the shy peck on the cheek Hunter sometimes dared, or Thorne’s trembling urgency. It wasn’t like the hot need of the boytoys, either, like they were trying to get a mouthful of water in the desert.

It started out gentle, quickly turned demanding. He tasted of copper and heat and a weird acridity, of kin and wildness and musk. Before she knew it, he had backed her into the Semprena’s side, and trapped between him and the car the urge to escape ignited inside her.

He caught her wrists, pressed her back, hot mouth and sharp teeth and the shift running inside her bones uneasily. His foot between both of hers, and she could feel that he was interested, very definitely interested in taking it further.

Just like any boytoy. But he wasn’t. He was kin, and not cousin. Not safe. If she let him go too far, she’d end up married young instead of just betrothed, and that wasn’t what she wanted.

Is it? I can’t tell. It was too hard to think, between his mouth and his hands, cupping her face now that she’d stopped struggling.

He broke away and stared down at her. “Ruby,” he breathed, that strange edge to his breath muddling her thinking even more. “I . . . God.”

“Yeah,” she managed, weakly. Funny, but the coldness all through her, independent of the muggy weather, had gone away.

“I love you,” he whispered. Something lit in the back of his gaze for a moment, a small struggling spark. “I need you.”

Maybe that was what she wanted to hear, because the tears brimmed over. He held her while she cried, again, helplessly, soaking his T-shirt. He stroked her hair, gently for once, and she couldn’t help thinking about how much she wished he was someone else. At least she wasn’t freezing inside, way down where nobody else could see.

TWENTY-TWO

TWO WEEKS LATER, RUBY LAY POKER-STIFF AGAIN, straight as a board. Stared up at the ceiling. Endlessly familiar white plaster, its whorls a map of her childhood country. This had been her room always, Gran said, and it was a toss-up whether the hazy memories of a white crib and sunshine were her own, or just from being told so many times about it.

Lots of other things were toss-ups, too.

Stop it. Just go to sleep.

Her bookshelf was organized by subject, author, title. All her clothes were folded, even the dirty ones in the laundry hamper by the door. All her mixtapes were packed in flat boxes under the bed, only the classical ones Gran kept buying her allowed to stay out, stacked alphabetically next to the stereo. Which never throbbed anymore; when she played it was softly, the sound tiptoeing around through the empty spaces where her comfortable mess used to live.

There was nothing left to organize unless she wanted to go through her jewelry box. If she still couldn’t sleep in an hour or so, she might do it, but then what would she do if she couldn’t sleep tomorrow?

The entire cottage was breathless-quiet. No real rain yet, and everyone was getting tired of waiting for it. False summer was supposed to be cool at night, sunny during the day, not this sticky gray blanket and unmoving air. The trees stayed quarter- or half-turned, splashes of sickly color among the nasty, juicy green. The City Council had put out a circular, warning everyone to stay away from weather-charms. Even though they’d Twist you right down to the ground, someone might have been tempted. Sirens echoed all night in the distance, and there was a crime wave in the core—shootings, beatings, stabbings, theft.

People went crazy in this kind of heat.

Her arm hurt. If she looked, even in this dimness, she could probably see the fingermarks, deep sausages of bruising, sinking in and throbbing almost worse than when Conrad made them. Because she’d been on Babchat with Cami and Ellie to do her homework, for once, when he wanted to talk to her.

He was kin, but he didn’t know his own strength.

Mithrus, just stop.

Deep breathing wasn’t getting her anywhere.

She pushed the covers back, sat for a few minutes on the edge of the mattress. Staring at the window, where faint orange cityglow reflected from the oppressive clouds filtered past the plane tree’s branches. Leafshadows hung still and spiny, no breath of air to move them. The branch outside her window was still there.

It wasn’t that being responsible was boring, really. There was a certain pleasure to be had in tidying up her room or even wrestling with her French homework.

No, the bad part was the sense of hanging from a cliff, her fingers slipping, and each time she got a good grip something else slipped.

Was that a sound, under the sirens? She was at the window before she realized it, tugging it up as cool-charmed air brushed her bare legs and arms. Easing it up, hoping it wouldn’t betray her.

“What are you doing?” Her hip hit the sill and she winced, but her hand shot out and closed around a sweat-damp wrist. “Mithrus. Where have you been?”

“Thinking.” Thorne caught his balance again, crouching on the branch. “Hoping you’d come out to play, so we could talk some more.”

She tried to ignore the sharp pinch of guilt. Waiting for her, just like Hunter might have been? “I can’t.” I’m trying to grow up, here. “Why can’t you be reasonable and come over during the day?” And not leap out the door after telling me you’re going to challenge Conrad and maybe start a diplomatic incident.

“With him there, listening? Ruby, something’s off about him. I can smell it. Look—”

“We’re going to have an alliance.” There. She’d said it out loud. “I have to.”

He stared at her, the shadows dappling his face, turning it into another mask. His wrist turned to iron, but she didn’t let go.

“You don’t have to. There’s things that . . . come out, Ruby. We’ll talk. Please.”

“I can’t.” What part of that did he not understand? Dampness, full of the smell of hot asphalt and rotting humidity, poured into her room. “Thorne—”

“You want me to fight for you?” He leaned forward a little, examining her expression. She hoped nothing showed. “Or does he make you happy? Just tell me he makes you happy and I won’t say another word.”

“Thorne . . .”

“Is it because I’m a boy-only? Or do you love him? Or is it Hunter?” Fierce whispers, the deep blue groaning scent of desperation coming off him in waves. “Mithrus Christ, just tell me.”

How could she even begin to explain? “I have to, okay? Gran expects it.”

“Then we’ll go somewhere she can’t find us.”

Yeah. That will work. “Come on, Thorne. Please.” It was like fullmoon, the silver thread dragging inside her. Only this was the wanting to slide out the window and explore the night with him, his fierce silence beside her familiar as her own breath. “Help me out here. Come by during the day, talk to Gran, and don’t do anything stupid.”

A pinprick of amber light flared deep in the back of his pupils, the shift running under his skin. Outside it a little too, fur poking up, blurring along his arm. “What’s. That?” Thrumming under the words, felt more in the bones than heard with the ears. He was going to wake someone up. Gran, or Conrad.

It was anyone’s guess which would be worse.

“What?” She glanced down, and realized she was just wearing a tank top and shorts to sleep in.

Thorne was staring at the fingermarks on her upper arm, dark and vicious. Maybe he could also see the hickey on the side of her neck, fresh and red-dark, but he wouldn’t see the bruise on her hip or the one on her calf from Conrad accidentally kicking her, those big boots of his . . . and she had been walking slowly. He was accident-prone, maybe. Like some of the cousins—Marina, or gangly Peter Ardelle.

“It’s nothing,” she whispered, tugging on his wrist. “Okay, look, I’ll come out, but only for a few minutes. I can’t—”

“Who did that?”

“It’s nothing. Look, Thorne—”

“Was it him?”

“Shhh, for Mithrus’s sake keep it down. If they find out you’re—”

“It was him.” The pinpricks of light snuffed themselves, and she shuddered once, nervously. The smell coming off Thorne now was different. Darker, older, and even its familiar musk couldn’t disguise the burning underneath.

Anger. More than anger.

She wet her lips, nervously, a flicker of her tongue. “Thorne. Please. Help me out here.” Calm down.

He nodded, just like she’d said something profound. “Okay.”

She nodded back, relieved, and her hand loosened on his wrist.

Maybe that’s what he had been waiting for, because he tore free and dropped, landing silently below. A few leaves fluttered in the wake of his passing, and even when she leaned out, straining nose and ears, she sensed nothing. Was he already gone?

“Fuuuuuuuuuck,” she breathed, a long aggravated sigh.

Another roiling of thunder under the stitchery of sirens, far in the distance over the Waste. She heard nothing else. Her arm ached, and the cooling-charms weren’t doing nearly enough with the window all the way open.

She eased it shut, then stood with her eyes closed, listening.

Nothing.

Back into bed, nestling atop the covers because of the heat. She was all set for another sleepless night, but the next thing she knew the alarm clock was buzzing like a minotaur’s rage and it was time to put her cheerfulness on again to face another damn gray, breathless day.