Nameless

ONE

ST. JUNO’S WIDE GRANITE STEPS COULD CRACK YOUR head like an egg. Which was maybe why Cami always slowed down, dragging her glossy black maryjanes over the white and black linoleum squares, when they hit the wide, high-ceilinged main hall, minnows in a sea of girls set free for the afternoon.

And it was definitely why Ruby always sped up, tugging Cami’s arm, her candygloss lips going a mile a minute. Ellie ambled alongside, always gliding at the same clip. Lockers slammed, and the surf-roar of girlchatter was a comforting blur punctuated by squeals, catcalls, laughter, and groans.

In the middle, Ruby’s running narration, a bright thread as she batted her eyelashes, heavily mascara’d in defiance of both St. Juno’s archaic rules and her grandmother’s iron old-fashionedness. But everyone forgave her. “And so I thought, oh my God, if you’re going to do this you might as well do it right, and of course Hunt was there—”

You just had to forgive Ruby. She would cock her head and smile at you, the grin that lit up the world, and that was that. Cami’s long heavy braid swung; she tugged at her skirt with her free hand, getting it to fall right, and juggled her notebook. There were never enough hands for what you needed to get done at the end of a school day.

“Hunt’s always there,” Ellie threw in, tucking a bit of sleek blonde hair behind her ear. “And of course Thorne didn’t like it. You’d think they were best friends or something.”

Ruby tossed her auburn curls, tugging at Cami’s arm. “Who’s telling this story? Anyway. Come on, we’re going to be late.”

For what? But Cami grinned. Ruby was on her own clock, and it was at variance with the rest of the world more often than not.

She finished wedging her notebook safely into her bag and got the strap settled. As long as Ruby was on one side and Ellie on the other, she didn’t have to think about where she was going, and she didn’t have to talk. They would take care of it for her.

What else were friends for?

The hall was awash with white blouses, rounded turndown collars, the traditional ugly Juno blazers with their itchy blue wool and embroidered crests, the blue and green tartan skirts swinging. This autumn the white wool socks were all the way up to the knee, and little silver luckcharms were attached to maryjane buckles, chiming sometimes. They didn’t work inside, but you still had to wear them if you wanted to be in. Headbands were in, too—the thin ones, you could only find them in certain stores. Ruby, of course, knew exactly where. And Cami would make sure to buy far too many, and Ellie would later find them in her bag and might as well wear them because well, they were there, right?

That was the way the cookie crumbled, so to speak. The way it always had, the way it always would. Or if not always, then as long as the three of them lasted.

“So.” Ruby found her stride again. The doors were choked, as usual, but their last class of the day was High Charm Calculus, math and charm working together, and Ruby had declared that if she had to stay inside one more minute she would die. So instead of their usual stop at their lockers near the main stairwell to preen, they were heading for the front door when everyone else was, even the bobs and the ghoulgirls. “Hunt says, ‘I was here first’ and Thorne says, ‘It’s a free country’ and I say, ‘You two are soooo immature,’ and I ended up leaving with a guy from Berch Prep—”

“Who had sweaty hands,” Ellie mock-whispered. “They all do.”

“And a hip flask!” Ruby crowed triumphantly. “I didn’t get slammed, though. You’d be proud of me, Miss Stick-In-The-Mud.”

“Oh, she only got a little bit hazy.” Ellie’s eyeroll was a wonder of nature. “Why aren’t we skipping to get a charm to keep you from spawning?”

“Because, and this is what I’m trying to tell you, prepboy lost his starch.”

Breathless silence. Then Ellie and Cami both exploded into bright bird-laughter, and Ruby grinned, white teeth behind crimson-glossed lips.

“Get out!” Ellie crowed, and manhandled the door open. They tumbled out into rich golden fall sunshine, the sudden slice of a crisp breeze against bare knees, lifting Ellie’s sleek blonde hair and wringing hot water from Cami’s furiously-blinking eyes.

“Seriously!” Rube had the bit in her teeth now. Cami checked the stairs.

They were still there. Still granite, still with sharp edges, and still too steep.

St. Juno’s was a pure-human charmschool; it only took in girls with rich families and unTwisted Potential. The Family sent all their daughters to Martinfield, but Cami wasn’t pureblood. So it was St. Juno’s for her, along with the young girls of New Haven’s aristocracy of money, magic, and social standing.

The stairs were . . . troubling. Sometimes she thought the hedge of defenses that kept anything non-human or Twisted out of the buildings would smell the Family on her and rise, veils of flickering Potential ready to rip her into bits. And then there were the dreams, of stairs and a tall draped figure shimmering-pale.

Don’t think about that. The dreams didn’t belong in the daylight, so she just shivered. They left quietly, this time. “N-no w-way!” she managed, very carefully.

“Way!” Ruby almost wriggled with delight. “So things are looking good, right? Things are looking flat out great in the front seat of the Cimarro—did I tell you? He had a Cimarro, positively antique, cherry too.”

Considering Cimarros had been popular when Papa was a boy—there was a yellow one in the capacious Vultusino garage, lovingly tended by Chauncey—it gave new meaning to the word “antique.”

The first few steps went by in a rush, and Cami let out a half-whistle of relief. Ruby knew she hated the stairs, but she was always of the opinion that if you hated something, you just had to run right through it. Ellie was more of the sneak-up-and-hit-it-with-a-shovel persuasion.

Cami didn’t want to take the time to stammer through an explanation of her own philosophy, which was more “live to fight another day” than Charge of the Twist Brigade. But that was a Personal Choice, and her Personal Choices not to speak were okay, or so the speech therapist she’d seen for four years—before the woman’s Potential Twisted—had said. Your choice to speak or not is your own. Let’s try it very slowly, if you feel like it.

Cami had liked Miss Amanda. But once the Twisting had struck, there was no way Papa would let her go back. The risk of the Twist spreading was just too high, and plus, Twists sometimes . . . snapped. Miss Amanda’s hands had trembled, the bones sprouting claw-spurs through the skin, her Potential eaten up either by an anger she had never given voice to or just plain ill-luck, or maybe a bad charming. She’d had just enough Potential to qualify as a charmer, not good as a Sigiled or anything but able to heat a kettle of water to boiling with a snapped word or two, or make colored light dance in the air to form letter-shapes her struggling students could read. When the proper sound was made, the letters would glow and change to other shapes.

It was dangerous to have a lot of Potential, but it was less likely to Twist you than just a little was. Still, Cami’d gotten more from four years of weekly meetings with Miss Amanda than she had from plenty of other teachers.

But that was in the past, and the past was never helpful. So she just nodded as Ruby plunged into the story again and dragged them all down the steps, her hair a bright copper flame.

They arrived at the bottom breathless, in a wider crush of girls waiting for buses and cars crowding the curb. This year bigger utility vehicles from overseas and overWaste were popular, hunkering on shiny black tires with charm-spinning, gleaming hubcaps, the glass darkened and crawling with Potential. Watchwards, defense-charms, charms to keep dust and rain from smearing the glass—pickup time at St. Juno’s was like an exercise in conspicuous charm-viewing.

“And so Berch Prep Boy says, ‘I don’t think I’m gonna make it,’” Ruby confided. “And sploosh, there it goes. All over the seat.” The giggles were shaking all three of them now, and hard. Cami’s midriff ached.

Fortunately, laughing didn’t stutter.

Ruby jolted to a halt between one word and the next. “Hel-lo. Cami, sweetheart, why didn’t you tell me?”

“T-T-Tell you wha—” But as soon as she followed the line of Ruby’s glance, she figured it out.

The sleek black ’70 Ivrielle—another antique, though not as old as a Cimarro—crouched, in lazy defiance of the yellow Bus Zone paint. And leaning against its front was a tall, rangy young man with slicked dark hair and the indefinable stamp of other on him all the Family displayed. Their cheekbones were arched oddly, their eyes spaced just a fraction differently, the line of the jaw too sharp and the musculature visible in shoulders or arms or legs, even the girls’, was . . . unusual.

“Nico!” Cami shrieked, and the fact that she didn’t stutter over his name was lost in the wave of muttering schoolgirl envy. Ellie caught Cami’s dropped schoolbag, Ruby rolled her eyes, but Cami pounded across the pavement and flung herself into Nico’s arms.

“Mithrus Christ,” he managed, “watch it! Break my ribs, kid!”

“You d-d-didn’t—”

“Tell you I was coming.” He smelled of fresh air, a faint breath of cigarette smoke, and bay rum—Papa Vultusino’s aftershave. Though Nico would probably just get That Look if she tried asking him about it. “Wanted to surprise you. Hey, Rube. Ellen.”

“Vultusino.” Ruby showed her teeth. “Look at you, parking in the fire lane.”

“It’s bus parking, not fire lane. Gonna give me a ticket? Cite me for being Family on school grounds, too?” His smile didn’t change, and Cami hugged him tighter, reading the tension in his shoulders. Not now, she told him silently. She’s my friend.

“You wish. Guess we know who’s driving her home today.” Ruby’s baring of teeth was more of a smile now, Potential-haze like heat over pavement crackling on her shoulders. Her Potential was vivid, not soft like Ellie’s or invisible, like Cami’s. “Come on, Ellie. Buzz you later, Cami.”

She let go of Nico once she was sure he wasn’t going to say anything else. “Y-yeah. B-b-babchat.”

“But of course, my dear.” Ruby pecked her on the cheek. “Still have to tell you how the night turned out,” she whispered, a hot wash of Juicy Charm gum from her teeth and chocolate-salt smell from her skin.

Cami choked on a laugh, and Ellie handed her schoolbag over. “Babchat,” she said, softly. “Nine-thirty? High Calc’s gonna kill me.” Gray eyes wide, her blonde hair pulled sleekly back, the faint dusting of freckles on Ellie’s nose turned gold in the light. This close you could see her collar fraying, and the shiny patches worn into her blazer.

I’m going to have to do something about that. But the words wouldn’t come.

So Cami just nodded, and her two best friends in the world other than Nico linked arms and were away. Ruby would drive Ellie home, stopping at the gate and making the usual cheerfully obscene gesture safely behind the smoked glass of the windshield so Ellie’s nasty-tempered stepmother didn’t see her, and later when the Evil Strepmother was occupied, Ellie would use her Babbage-net connection—St. Juno’s required one and logged student times, and the principal Mother Heloise knew some about the Strep so the Strep couldn’t take the Babbage set away—to confer about the homework.

Cami hitched her bag higher on her shoulder and looked up at Nico.

He was just the same. A little taller, like he grew every time he went off to Hannibal College up-Province on the ribbon of safely-reclaimed highway, green and gray kolkhozes lurking on either side behind electrified fences.

His dark hair combed back, the moss-green eyes, the wide cheekbones. You could see Papa in him, just a little. He’d had time to change out of uniform too—Hannibal was a Family school, and it kept to old ways. So it was jeans and a black T-shirt, his heavy watch glittering silver, the old leather jacket with all its scrapes and wrinkles. “See something green, schweetheart?” He waggled his eyebrows, an oddly childish expression. “Get in. I’ve got places to be.”

Still, she waited, watching his face. Watching the shadow of anger, dull rage that never completely receded. She dug one polished maryjane into the pavement, biting her lower lip, and didn’t give up until he broke and grinned at her, his shoulders relaxing and the anger draining away until it was just a shadow.

“Jeez, you just never quit, do you? Come on. I hurried back to see you, babygirl.” He opened the door for her, as usual, and Cami tried not to notice the envious glances. The girls dawdled, and the ones who knew whispered to the bobs—the new girls, still finding their way around St. Juno’s hedge of restrictions—about it. The ghoulgirls, playing at being black charmers with teased-out hair and long dagger-shaped earrings, hissed and jabbed their fingers at him and his shiny black car, muttering to each other.

Nico Vultusino. He’s supposed to be her brother, but he’s one of those on the Hill. Shows up every once in a while to pick her up.

They didn’t know anything. They couldn’t know, and even if she could talk without her tongue twisting on her, Cami wouldn’t tell them. Nico was hers, and he had been since the moment he stamped into the library years ago and announced he hated her and would never like her, because she wasn’t pureblood like him.

He dropped into the driver’s seat. “I’m not gonna do this when you get to college, you know.” Twisted the key savagely, and music blared—Gothika’s driving beat, Shelley Wynter singing over the top of it about a minotaur in snow and the bass line popping like a runner’s pulse. He grimaced, spun the volume down, and tossed a battered pack of Gitanelles into her lap. “Light me up.”

“C-College. Long time away.” If she spoke slowly, she didn’t stutter too much with Nico. He was patient, though.

He listened.

“Not so long,” he said, as he popped the parking brake and she tapped a Gitanelle out, pushing the cigarette lighter in. “You’re growing up fast, babygirl. Want to have some fun?”

She didn’t think she could speak, so she just nodded, and lit the first of what would probably be a lot of cigarettes. She stuck it in his mouth as he turned the wheel, the tires chirped, and Nico spun them away from St. Juno’s like he was playing a roulette wheel.

TWO

“RACK ’EM, KID.” NICO DRAGGED ON HIS GITANELLE. Smoke wreathed his head as if he was a perpetual-burning scarecrow; but a faust wouldn’t be out during the day. Besides, fausts and Family made each other very nervous. It used to be Family sport to hunt them, back in the days before the Reeve.

It probably still was, in some places.

Cami leaned over the table, made sure the rack was tight, and lifted the triangle off with a ceremonial flourish. The pool balls gleamed, each one a different jewel against worn green felt. Her job done, she retreated to the booth and dropped down and took a sip of expensive imported-through-the-Waste Coke. The only way through the Waste was sealed in a train; the iron in the tracks kept the blight, the random Twisting, and the nasty creatures that lived outside the order of the cities and kolkhozes mostly at bay. The collective farms were full of jacks and Twists, but someone had to grow the food, right? And you couldn’t farm the Waste without reclamation to drain off the blight and channel the wild magic into systematic forms.

Thinking about the Waste was always bad, too. Cami heaved a sigh, returned to the essay she was supposed to be outlining.

Lou’s was full—but then, it almost always was. A long low pool hall, the bar at the front a reef in a sea of cigarette smoke, its mirror a giant cloudy eye behind racks of bottles. The tables marched in orderly ranks, just enough space around them for the players. Older men with open collars and cigars, young whip-thin hungry men working on their shots, the cracks of good clean breaks and the serious murmur as money changed hands all familiar and soothing. Green glass shades hung from long cords, the electric bulbs over some tables blinking a little as the dampers wedded to the shades suppressed Potential. Not the free-floating stuff the entire world was soaking in, but the kind that would tell a ball to roll a certain way, or whisper some English-spin onto it.

Lou’s was straight gaming. Anyone caught charming, consciously or not, was thrown out. Cami had only seen that once or twice, and the thought still made her a little sick. All the yelling, and the blood.

You had to be careful with blood in a Family place.

The booths were empty. Nobody really sat there, but Cami had a favorite one near Nico’s usual table; it was kept dusted and ready. Whenever he was home from Hannibal, Nico played here, and Lou never made a peep about little sis bending over her homework while Vultusino’s son ran games. At least Nico didn’t play for money.

Well, not often.

And he didn’t tell Cami not to tell when he did, but he would often give her that considering look. Just one more secret for them to share.

My little consigliere, he used to call her, back when he was twelve. Not anymore, but she didn’t miss it. That was one job she could do without.

Cami tapped her pencil against her teeth. She should be at home typing this stupid essay, or even working on French or practicing the short list of safe charms to be mastered this year. Instead it was this stupid essay about the First Industrial Expansion, 1750–1850, machines and factories replacing cottage industry and cities turning into sooty hellholes.

Not like they were much different nowadays, but at least they were safer than the Waste. The Waste used to be just empty land, or small farms—country was the term they’d used back in the day.

Cami shifted again, uncomfortably. History was boring as shit.

Who cared about the Industrial Expansions now, for God’s sake? Especially after the Reeve (for maaaaaaa-gic Reeeeeee-volution, Ruby would say, rolling her eyes). Post-Reeve studies weren’t until next year, along with serious charmwork and the settling of Potential.

Even the Reeve wasn’t that interesting. It was just there, like fausts and Family and minotaurs, charms and griffs, and all those other things that had been hiding during the short Age of Iron.

They had been hiding only to burst out when the World War ended, 1918, the last Year of Blood. Something about the War—the blood, the trenches, the masses of death—shook everything loose, and when it all settled in 1920, the Reeve had exploded and everything was different. The Deprescence had hit, and the ones that didn’t die as the country turned to Waste ended up Twisted, the first jacks—Potential-mutated babies, horns and feathers and fur—were born, and even being rich wouldn’t save you from starving to death. Or worse, being eaten by something nasty.

The Family didn’t talk much about the Reeve or the Desprescence.

Population movement from rural to urban, she wrote, and circled it as Nico muttered something and the rack was cracked. His opponent, a weedy man in a shiny blue jacket with a toothbrush-thin fair moustache clinging to his thin upper lip, lit a cigarette. A puff of harsh smoke, not silky like the Gitanelles—he was smoking cheap, and Cami suspected the guy was new and thought Nico was a pigeon.

Oh well. He’ll find out. She hunched further down, pencil scraping. Effects on rural society. One, wages down. Two, breaking of social bonds. Three, the encroachment of the Waste and the Wild.

Ruby was great at bullshit essays. She was good at bullshit in general, but she had a special genius for packing an assignment full of enough vocab to dizzy one of Juno’s Mithraic Sister teachers. She joked that it was her Potential, as if the teachers weren’t full-settled, their own Potential respectable and staid, and immune to schoolgirl pranks.

Cami sighed, scratched at an itch on the side of her neck. She’d undone her braid, her hair fell over her shoulder. True black, deep black, sometimes with blue highlights under strong light. She didn’t look like Nico; the darkness in his hair was underlaid with red. She didn’t look like anyone, really.

Some days she didn’t mind. Today was one of them.

Her neck still itched, and she glanced up to find the guy with the toothbrush moustache looking at her.

She dropped her gaze, hurriedly.

“Pay attention to the game.” Nico sounded pleasant enough. Nobody else, maybe, would hear the danger in his tone.

“Ain’t she a bit young to be in here?” Moustache Man had a surprisingly deep, harsh voice for such a skinny guy. Cami restrained the urge to roll her eyes. The door thudded open and everyone paused, but it was just a man in a long tan overcoat headed for the bar. He slumped a little, shuffling as if he was tired. He couldn’t be visibly drunk, smoked, or Twisted, though, or Lou would send him right out.

“You gonna check her ID?” Nico’s laugh now definitely had an edge. He stalked around the side of the table, sighted, and sent the yellow and the red careening into separate holes with one shattering crack. “What are you, a cop?”

Oh, no. Cami very carefully kept her head down, as if she was studying intently. But her pencil had halted, and she had both of them in her peripheral vision.

Moustache Man laughed. “Hell no. Just wondering.”

“That’s my girl.” Nico sighted again, and sent the solid green thudding home. “Don’t wonder.”

My girl. A warm flush went through her. Nobody else would know what he meant by that, they could take it or leave it. Just like pretty much everything he said.

They settled into serious playing, and Cami relaxed a little. Maybe she could just put the damn thing down for a bit; it wasn’t due until next week. It wasn’t like she was going to fail, even if her Potential was invisible. Especially not with Papa making donations to St. Juno’s like he did. Still, she worried.

Having anything half-done nagged at her. She chewed at her lower lip while she scribbled, grateful that her fingers, at least, didn’t stutter.

“Hey.” Nico leaned over her, setting down his empty, red-streaked glass and reaching for a fresh ashtray. “Get me another one, huh?”

Not a good idea. “Y-y-you’re—”

“Driving. Yeah.” He nodded, a vertical line between his dark eyebrows. “Don’t worry. Get me another one.”

Fine. But if you get pulled over it’s not going to be pleasant. “K-kay.” Her stupid mouth wouldn’t work right. She blinked, the smoke suddenly stinging, and Nico squeezed her shoulder before turning away.

He scooped up his cue and settled the cut-glass ashtray; he gave Moustache Man a brilliant smile, his eyes lightening a shade or two. “Ready to play for real?”

Uh-oh. Nico was about to fleece him. Great. Cami sighed and hauled herself up, brushing at her skirt. The vinyl, even though it was washed and dusted, was still sticky, and she probably had red marks on the backs of her thighs. They would match all the other scars, and make some of the ones on the backs of her legs more vivid. The knee-high socks in fashion this year helped, not that many people said anything about her legs. She wore long sleeves as much as possible, and the uniform made people’s eyes slide right over her.

Mostly.

The floor was tacky-sticky too, and she kept her head down as she passed, acutely aware of the looks. The regulars knew, yeah—but sometimes there were guys who didn’t. She wished she hadn’t taken her blazer off; the scars on her arms and wrists would show up if she got warm or blushy.

I wish he wouldn’t come here. But Nico was in a mood, and she had to let him run for a bit before he’d tell her what was wrong. It was probably Papa, again.

Sooner or later, if you scratched Nico hard enough, you got down to Papa.

“Well hello, Cami.” Lou, broad, bald, and mahogany-colored, ran a hand over his shaved, oiled dome of a head and grinned. Nicotine stained his teeth and his blunt fingers, and he was probably scary if you didn’t know he had a huge gooshy soft spot under his big ribs. His Potential was like a brick wall, though, and it crackled and fizzed whenever the mood inside the pool hall got dangerous. “What’ll it be?”

She managed a smile in return, setting the glass carefully on the bar’s mellow polish. The guy in the overcoat down at the end hunched, a gleam from under the bill of his baseball cap oddly big for eyes. He looked like a hobo, kind of, the coat was ragged and torn, and she was glad she didn’t have to stand closer. “O-one m-more. F-f-f-for N-n-n—” Frustration boiled up inside her. “Nico,” she finished, finally, and peeked up to find Lou didn’t look upset in the least.

He never did, but she couldn’t shake the habit of checking.

“Sure thing. He should be careful; that kid he’s playing has a nasty temper.” Lou read her shrug accurately. “I know, so does Nico. Eh, well. Small-time sharks playing in a Family yard have it comin’. Here ya go, sweetness. Give me another one of those smiles?” His broad dark face split in a wide yellow grin that wasn’t scary at all. At least, not once you got to know him. She ducked her head slightly, unable to stop grinning back. “There it is. Go on back and—”

“Little girl,” someone rasped.

It was the man with the tan trench coat and the stained red baseball cap. He was gaunt, unshaven, and his dark hair was matted into grizzled dreadlocks. A pair of feverish dark gleams for eyes and a scar-stubbled jaw; his hand bit her upper arm, fingers clamping with surprising, scary strength. Cami flinched.

“I know you, little girl.” He slurred as if his tongue was too big for his mouth. He inhaled sharply, his breath whistling.

She had time to be surprised that he didn’t smell bad—he reeked, in fact, only of fresh lumber, sap and sawdust—before he leaned close to her face and yelled, the whiskey on his breath burning her nose. “I know you! You were dead!”

THREE

IT HAPPENED SO FAST.

One moment Cami was trying to back up, her shoes scuffing the peeling blue-flecked linoleum, the man’s skin hard-callused and fever-hot against her arm where the short-sleeved white button-down didn’t cover. A cloud of whiskey fumed around his lean desperate face, and she realized the gleam over his eyes was a pair of small round lenses—sunglasses, even in the dimness of Lou’s Pool. There was a wet resinous slickness on his cheeks too, and not only did he smell like sawdust, but he looked like he was made of wood—weathered skin carved with deep lines, a long nose, his hard thin lips pulled back from yellowed gleaming teeth.

Her heart gave a huge shattering leap. What IS he? Please don’t let him be a Twist—

The next moment, Nico arrived, his fingers just as bruising-hard as he peeled the man’s grasp from Cami’s arm. A cracking groan, like wood splintering, and Nico’s eyes were ablaze with a low red glow. His lips had skinned back and his canines came to sharp points, a pearly glitter as the whiskey and calf on the bar spilled, a drench of coppery red and alcohol.

The sound coming from Nico’s chest was a deep thrumming. He twisted the wooden man’s hand aside, and Cami hit the bar because he had shouldered her aside.

“You were dead!” the brown man screamed again. “Dead dead dead! She ate the heart! She ate theeeeeeee heaaaaaart!”

Cami lost her footing, hitting a barstool and tumbling into a heap. Oddly, stupidly, her skirt flipping up and showing her unmentionables was the thing she worried about most as her knee scraped along the footrail on the bottom of the bar. She scooted crabwise, her hands burning as she scrabbled to get away. Glass rained down, shimmering, as Nico half-turned and threw the wooden man onto the bar. Empty glasses went flying, and Lou let out a yell that almost drowned the wooden man’s high whistling scream. A lick of fire pierced Cami’s palm, and the scream ended on a rending crack.

“Mithrus Christ!” Lou finished yelling. The baseball bat held high in his beefy paws didn’t get a chance to flash down; brick-red sparks of Potential crackled defensively on his bare skin. Nico glanced at him, and the deep thrum from his chest faded bit by bit. The wooden man’s head tipped aside, his sunglasses falling with a clatter, one lens cracked clear through. He blinked, slowly, and stared through her.

Cami’s ribs heaved. She just sat there for a moment, clutching her left fist to her chest. Liquor dripped, broken glass glittered, and she figured out her skirt hadn’t rucked up too far.

Well, thank God for that. Her throat was dry as summer pavement. She gathered herself enough to look down, her left hand opening, a red flower in its palm. Oh, shit. Is it deep?

“NGGGAAAAH!” The man on the bar thrashed into life again. Nico hauled him down, the tan trench coat flapping like a flag in a high wind, and was suddenly at the door. It opened, and he flung the man into the street outside.

At least he didn’t toss the limp form dangling from his fists through the door. And at least he hadn’t killed him.

That would be Very Bad, even if he was Family. Papa would—

“Oh, Christ,” someone said, very low and clear. “She’s bleeding.”

Cami found her voice. “I-i-i-it’s n-n-not—” It’s not bad, she wanted to say, because Lou looked horrified. He was already backing up, his meaty hip hitting something behind the bar and another glass falling, crashing into splinters.

Nico whirled away from the door. There was a breath against her face—bay rum, cigarettes, whiskey and calf—and he was kneeling in front of her, his gaze flat, dark, and terribly empty. The red glow had gone.

“Don’t—” Lou swallowed whatever he’d intended to say when Nico Vultusino glanced up at him. Nico’s canines were fully distended, and there was a ripple through the rest of the hall as every Family member tensed. They were daywalkers, true, and young ones, not yet burning with the Kiss of immortal undeath after years of service. But they were still Family.

Family meant Borrowing. And Borrowing meant blood.

Nico’s gaze swung back down to Cami. She swallowed, hard, and cupped her left hand. Slowly, she extended her fingers toward him, uncurling her arm. Blood dripped, a tiny plink sound in the utter stillness. At least she hadn’t smeared any on her shirt. Marya would scold her to no end if she had.

A river of shudders worked down Nico’s body. His hand shot out, closed around her wrist. Another rustling ripple of tension, as the non-Family drew back, hardly even daring to breathe. Moustache Man was holding his pool cue up like it was some sort of weapon.

Cami licked her dry lips. Her own Potential was a barely-seen shimmer hanging an inch from her skin, like the air over scorching blacktop. Fear, or anger, or any high emotion could make it visible even before it settled. Everyone would see it, and know she was . . . afraid?

Not of him. She concentrated, fiercely, and hoped she could speak without mush for once. “S-s-sorry, N-Nico.” He won’t bite me. He never has before, even when we were little.

At least, she had been little. He hadn’t. Even the few years’ worth of age he had on her was different, because you matured early when you were Family.

And she wasn’t.

He blinked. The shudders vanished. His canines retracted with a slight familiar crackling sound. He coughed, dryly, and looked up at Lou. “’Nother drink.” Sandpaper in his tone. “And the first-aid kit. Mithrus, how’d that happen?”

I was trying to get out of your way. She shrugged. A silent sigh of relief filled the pool hall. If he was talking, he wasn’t about to go crazy. Well, crazier.

He straightened, slowly, bracing her, brushing her off. “You okay? Hurt anywhere other than this?” Trying to be gentle, but his hand shook just the slightest bit. Her blood dripped again, and he could smell it.

They all could. Like sharks, Nico said. It only takes a little.

Her ribs ached from where he’d careened into her, and her shoulder had somehow bonked something and would be bruised. She shook her head, half her hair falling in her face, strings of jet-black, not curly like Red’s or sleek and behaving like Ellie’s. Lou banged the first-aid kit on the bar—there was a dent in the wood’s shiny polish.

A man-sized dent.

“Another drink, comin’ up,” Lou announced. “Billy, get your ass over here and help me clean this up. What the hell was that guy, anyway?”

In New Haven, you could ask that question, but you probably wouldn’t get much of an answer. The man could have been a jack born with weird skin, or a fey fresh from the Waste where they had their own strange ways of traveling, or anything else. Who knew?

Life and motion returned. They went back to their games, the Family members unfazed and the others maybe a little rattled. Moustache Man was nowhere to be seen, and after Cami’s hand was bandaged Nico found out the bastard had left with the cash sitting on the pool table. Gone while the getting was good.

Which meant Nico was pissed off pretty much all afternoon, even though he made it up in no time, skinning double from table to table.

Cami didn’t blame him. He fussed at her constantly, too, and she wished he wouldn’t. Because she kept thinking about the wooden man’s eyes, staring through her.

His blue, blue eyes. Like hers.

FOUR

IT WAS DUSK BY THE TIME NICO SHOT THE IVRIELLE through the slowly opening iron gates, barely avoiding taking off his side mirror. The pavement, shiny black and freshly sealed every summer, rippling with almost-visible defenses, was a ribbon between torch-burning trees, their leaves on fire with fall. Cami stared at the bandage—so white, Nico had done a good job wrapping it up. Then he’d taken down three shots of whiskey and calf and played for money the remainder of the afternoon, getting more and more worked up.

He locked the brakes, skidding to a stop, and Cami heaved an internal sigh. There was Mr. Stevens on the front steps, a thin stick in a dusty black suit, his slicked-down gray hair glinting a little as the sunset died.

“Just in time.” Nico kept the engine idling, his foot on the brake. “And look who’s here to greet us. My, my.”

Awkwardly, she grabbed at his shoulder with her bandaged hand. He checked, caught in the act of reaching for the door handle. His profile, with its proud nose and sullen mouth, didn’t change.

“Nico.” It was a miracle, something came out right. “P-please.”

“He’s gonna have my ass for taking you out.” His chin set.

“I’ll—”

“Yeah, you’ll work on him. I know. It’s okay.”

It’s not okay, the way you look is not okay. “He l-l-loves—”

“I’m disappointing. We’ve had this conversation. The ghoul’s waiting, you’d better go on in.”

Stevens can’t be a ghoul. He’s not even dead. She got the string of words together inside her head, let them out. “P-papa wants you t-to have a ch-childhood.” Why couldn’t he understand?

“I don’t know if you noticed, babygirl, but I’m not a kid.” He sighed, heavily, and some of the tension left him. “You go in. Have Marya take a look at that hand, too. I’ll see you later.”

“Nico—”

He cut her off. “Go in, Cami. I’ll deal with Papa. It was my fault anyway.”

Oh, for Chrissake. But there was no arguing with him when he was like this, so she shrugged, leaned over, and gave him a peck on the cheek—at least he looked happy with that—before she popped the lock and the car door.

Stevens looked a bit green—of course he would be worried, it was dusk. The sun was actually touching the horizon, and of course Nico would feel it. He probably had judged their arrival time within seconds. Just to get close to that edge.

Stevens would feel it too, Papa’s attention becoming heavier as the sun sank.

Her schoolbag slipped, and she hitched it higher on her shoulder. Nico carefully waited until she was clear before he gunned the engine and peeled toward the garages.

Cami sighed.

The steps were wide and low enough that they gave her little trouble, and this close you could see the surface of the front door shimmering a little, like the haze above hot pavement. “Hi, S-s-stevens.” She dredged up a smile—one she hoped wasn’t as tired as she felt.

“Good evening, Miss Camille.” The sticklike consigliere bent at the waist, and his seamed face under its skullcap of oiled hair held no glimmer of expression.

Nico was just being nasty. Stevens wasn’t like a ghoul; he was just . . . closed off. He was a blank door to everyone. Except probably Papa, who called Stevens the perfect well. You could drop secrets in and hear the ripple, but then they vanished.

I never want to find out. “Nico p-picked me up f-from sch-school,” she offered tentatively, as he turned and preceded her to the massive doors. “W-we g-g-got—”

“Mr. Vultusino requested your presence.” Stevens touched the door, running his spidery fingers over it. The house’s defensive haze shimmered, and the chuking sounds of locks and bolts sliding free fell out toward the circular driveway. “Mr. Nico was instructed to bring you directly home.”

Oh, no. Cami stifled a sigh. Why does he have to do this? She dug for some kind of excuse to offer, but Stevens didn’t pause, simply bowed again and indicated the door. Hitching her schoolbag up higher, she trudged in to face the music.

She was still no closer to figuring out how to smooth the waters as she climbed the carpeted stairs—these gave her no trouble either, their edges weren’t so sharp—to the red hall. Trigger was at Papa’s door, of course, and he tipped her a lazy salute. Against the rich crimson of the carpet and the heavy velvet of the muffling drapes, his baggy chinos and blue and red plaid jacket were just shabby enough to be familiar and comforting. “How was school, Miss Cami?”

Pretty boring. We did icecharms in Potentials class and some of the beakers shattered, that was about it. It would have been nice to talk, but her tongue was a knot of anxiety by now. She shrugged, ducking her head and spreading her hands. Then she mimed inquisitiveness—pointing at the door, raising her eyebrows.

“Nico’s in for it,” Trigger said shortly, and stepped aside. “He was supposed to bring you straight home. Sir wanted to see you.”

Well, I’m here now. Another shrug, this one with a helpless motion.

“I know.” Trig patted her shoulder, awkwardly. “God only knows what Nic was thinking. If he was thinking. Go on, sweetie. He’s tired today.”

He’s always tired. I wish . . . But she knocked, softly, on the carved-oak door. The knob was red crystal; she turned it gently and stepped in.

The windowless room was lit only by a single candle on the nightstand. It smelled of copper, bay rum and leather, and the faint everpresent tang of illness and age. For a moment her throat closed to a pinhole, the air dead-still and the dark wainscoting and heavy maroon brocade wallpaper threatening to fall in until they crushed all her breath out.

It passed, and she inhaled deeply. The closeness was scary at first, but then it was comforting. Like a heavy coat on a cold day.

Nothing bad could happen to her here.

Papa Vultusino, close to the culmination of the Kiss, lay on the massive four-poster bed. His barrel chest rose and fell steadily, and his breathing wasn’t a wheeze today. The candle flickered as she approached, and he opened his eyes.

Propped on the snowy pillows, he didn’t look very ill until you got close. Then the red spark in his pupils, strengthening daily, became apparent. So did the papery thinness of his skin, and the deep-scored wrinkles as well as the fine dry lines.

The Kiss took its own time, and it was burning away his mortality. When it finished he’d be one of the immortal Unbreathing, an Elder instead of a daywalker, and his only son would take his place as the living Vultusino of the Seven.

If Nico could just stay out of trouble long enough.

The chair pulled up to the bedside had a thick pink cushion and a straight back. The fireplace was empty, so he wasn’t cold today. That was a good sign. A large leatherbound book with yellowing pages lay open on the red silk comforter, and Papa’s wide capable hands—bony and spotted now, but still hard and solid—lay discarded on either side of it.

Those hands held all the gentleness in the world. She remembered Papa bandaging a scrape on her knee as Marya fluttered in the background. Little girl sometimes need Papa to bind up the wound, Marya. Let me.

Cami lowered herself down, gently. Her left hand was awkward with the bandage, but she scooped it gently under one of Papa’s, closed her other one over it. His skin was cooler than hers, and dry, calluses rasping.

The rasp reminded her of the wooden man, but she didn’t want to think about that. So she just patted Papa’s hand, watching his face as it shifted and the red spark dimmed a little.

He came back, bit by bit. Wet his lips with a paper-leaf tongue, and she glanced at the cut-crystal water pitcher on the nightstand next to the candle, rainbows shimmering in its angles. His hand squeezed a fraction—no, he wasn’t thirsty. His left eyebrow lifted a tiny bit, and he squeezed again. Very, very gently, with the strength of the Family that could injure or crush running in his bones, especially as he lay so close to the Kiss.

He could feel the bandaging.

Cami patted his hand once more, very gingerly. “It’s a-all r-right,” she whispered. Her stupid tongue wasn’t too bad in here. Papa had never told her to hurry up. He had always waited, with no trace of impatience. “J-just a scratch.” She decided to plunge right in. “N-nico b-b-bandaged it. D-don’t be m-m-mad—”

Papa’s eyebrows drew together, a faint thundercloud. Cami stopped. Listened to the dry hiss of the candle burning, to his breathing, to the absolute stillness.

She decided to risk a little more. “He w-w-wants you t-to be p-proud of him, Papa.”

Papa sighed. If he only knew, that sigh said, and Cami nodded in agreement.

Should I tell him about the wooden man? Maybe not. It’ll upset him, and he’ll be even madder at Nico.

So instead she told him about Potentials class and the shattering beakers, how Ruby’s of course had broken with a terrific crack and Cami’s own had crumbled into fine crystalline dust—proof that she had Potential, and further proof that it hadn’t settled yet. You could never tell where someone’s ability to charm would end up. Air, water, earth, sometimes fire, metal, wood, crystals and light, Affinities showed up generally about the end of puberty. Always assuming, of course, that you didn’t Twist.

Ellen’s beaker had turned into a solid jewel of water and glass, scintillating, and Sister Frederick’s Sainthood had nodded with warm approval, her apple-cheeks glistening.

Papa listened, breathing steadily, and she plunged onward, into the stupid paper she had to do. His expression lightened as she spoke, slow and halting, the stutter receding as she relaxed and he began to look a little less gray. His hand warmed too, and when she talked about the Reeve a different gleam entered his gaze. After a little while his hand loosened, and Cami picked up the bone comb on the nightstand. She set his salt and pepper mane right again with careful, gentle strokes, leaning over the bed and smiling every time she glanced at him.

It was just like crouching under his desk, in the long-ago. She would hide there, playing with his mirror-polished wingtips or just half asleep and listening as he made phone calls and attended to paperwork, Stevens murmuring advice or giving information in a monotone. Marya had turned the house upside down a few times looking for Cami until she started checking under Papa’s desk first; Nico had sometimes tried hiding there with her but was always summarily dragged out into the hall and sent back to his practices with Trigger.

A Vultusino man must fight, Papa would say. Go learn how.

Well, Nico had. Now Cami wondered if he would ever learn how to stop.

When she’d set his mane to rights and talked about Ruby and Ellie some more, and explained the current crop of High Charm Calculus problems, she took his hand again. Lifted it gently, and pressed it against her cheek. “I’m s-sorry I w-was late,” she whispered.

Papa was still for a long moment. His other hand lifted, slowly, and he patted her hair, very gently. Once, twice. She smiled, and his thin lips twitched in his still, pale face. The red sparks strengthened, and he gently took his hands away.

She rose, slowly, lit a fresh candle from the old one. Left both burning, and gave his hand one last squeeze before padding quietly to the door.

The hall was bright and oddly loud after the hush of the Room. She blinked, pulling the door shut, and found not just Trigger but Stevens too, standing poker-straight and staring unblinking at the mirror at the end of the hall, and Nico, who had changed into a light woolen suit, cloud-gray, and a maroon tie. His hair was slicked back, and his shoulders slouched just a little. He looked miserable, his chin set defiantly and the bloodring gleaming on his left middle finger.

The Heir’s ring, worn for formal occasions.

Uh-oh. She brushed her hair back, tugged at her skirt, and basically stalled for a second or two. “H-h-he’s—”

“Expecting us,” Stevens said. The flat tone took on a richness, and the gaunt man’s dark face slackened a little.

Which meant Papa was inside him, looking out.

“Marya’s got your dinner, sweetheart.” Trig had folded his arms, and was staring at Nico. “Run along.”

There was nothing else she could do. But she dragged her feet, lingering a little so she could brush by Nico, hoping he could tell she’d done all she could. Before she was halfway down the hall the door had opened and closed behind Vultusino’s wayward son and his consigliere, and Cami flinched at the little snick of the lock echoing all the way to the stairs.

Outside the windows, dusk had finished falling into night, and a chill soaking rain pressed against the panes. The red-tiled kitchen was a relief, warm and full of the smell of tomatoes and fresh bread. “There she is!” Marya cried, spidery six-fingered hands on her ample hips and her hair floating fine around her head. Her ears came to high points through the dandelion-burst, and if that didn’t give it away you could tell she was fey by her eyes, black from lid to lid. “Naughty little girl out until dusk. Worrying us all to death, yes!”

For the first time that day, Cami’s shoulders relaxed completely. She stood still as the housekeeper enfolded her in a hug redolent of heat, clean cotton, and the peculiar muskiness that was just plain and simply Marya. Fey always smelled of the earth, at least the low ones did. High fey didn’t come out of the Waste, or if they did, it was only to make mischief or steal babies and leave changelings.

Passing from Waste to city was a fey trick, and one they never shared the secret of.

The feywoman clicked her tongue, brushing at Cami’s hair, examined the bandage critically. “And what is this? Trouble? Ah, Nico.” A long theatrical sigh. She could give Ruby lessons in the sigh department.

“W-w-wasn’t his f-fault,” she began, but Marya waved her hands.

“He knows better. Wild, that boy, just like a Twist.” Her eyes—no iris, no pupil, just sheer glossy darkness—briefly swirled with opalescence, oil on black water. Her blue silken dress fluttered, a sure sign of agitation. “And he probably took you to horrible place, and you—what is that, little thistledown? What did he do?”

“He was p-p-p-prot-tecting me.” But she was saved from explaining further by Marya’s sudden flurry, her skirts swishing and her nut-brown face wrinkling against itself like she tasted something awful.

“If he not take you to horrible place, you not need protecting. Here, sit, sit, dinner. Growing girl needs good food.” She snapped a single word, and a pot on the stove ceased bubbling over and subsided. Fey lived and breathed Potential, and they didn’t Twist. They were just . . . different, and even with the low ones you had to be careful around their prickly notions of politeness—and their fickle, fluid notions of “truth.”

Marya was certainly the most stable fey Cami had ever met. Most of them had attention spans no longer than a hummingbird’s, and they flitter-fluttered around selling charms, or working at odds and ends for as long as the wind blew from a certain quarter.

On the other hand, anything outside Papa Vultusino’s walls did not interest Marya very much, if at all. Her concerns were immediate—the woodwork that needed waxing, the feeding of those in her domain, the scouring of the copper-bottom pots that hung, shining suns, in the russet-tiled kitchen. A brick hearth and a fire for pizzas and other things—can’t cook without smoke, Marya was fond of muttering—gave a comforting crackling; the gas range held bubbling pots, and the dishwasher chuckled. In the warm womb of the kitchen, Cami let Marya fuss over her, and by the time dinner was over she had almost forgotten about the wooden man.

But not quite.

FIVE

THE NIGHTMARE WRAPS ITS FLABBY, TOO-LARGE fingers around my entire body, and will not let me go.

The beautiful woman smelling of cloves and perfumed smoke, her golden hair a fountain of clean light, leans down. Her red lips are set in a slight smile, just the barest hint of amusement that will not wrinkle her soft white face. Winged eyebrows, high cheekbones, everything about her is so lovely. The heavy velvet of her indigo dress drags in the soft ankle-high dust. Her hands are broad and white and soft as well, oddly large for such a delicate frame, and her eyes are blue as summer sky. They are darkening, those lovely blue eyes, and when they are indigo to match her dress, it will be my time.

She whispers, as the frantic barking of the dogs grows nearer. You are nobody. You are nothing.

I know it is true, but still, I struggle. She strokes my dirty face with those big cold soft hands, rings glinting on her fingers, and my head snaps aside. The rest of me is held down, throbbing with nips and crunches of pain from the last beating.

My teeth sink in. I worry at that hand like a rat with a bone, and she jerks back, shrieking with fury. The shape behind her is a man, and as I thrash against the handcuffs his expression twists. It is familiar, a lean dark face; he is in a leather jerkin and breeches, a collage of brown and green muted by the dimness of my cell.

Her shriek ends, and her contorted face smoothes itself. She hisses between her teeth, a long catlike sigh, as the silver medallion at her breast, its spot of bleeding crimson in the center, runs with diseased pale light.

This one’s heart is fiery.

They leave, the cell door swinging shut, and I am alone. No, not alone. There is a strange lipless voice throbbing all through me, and my head feels funny from the smoke. Empty and too-big, as if I am in a place I cannot remember, not this small concrete cell. The voice always says the same thing.

You are nobody. You are nothing.

And I know it is true, but I pull against the handcuffs. I twist them back and forth, and I am making a sound like a bird’s thin cry, because my throat is crushed.

“Shhh.” Nico’s hand at her mouth. “It’s me.”

Cami sat bolt-upright, pale sheets and blankets caught to her chest, her sides heaving and sweat dewing her forehead. Nightmare. It was familiar, and she had felt it coming as she lay stiff as a poker, waiting to fall asleep.

The white bedroom was full of shifting shadow. The curtains were drawn over the huge bay windows, but the glimmer of the parchment walls, the creamy carpet, the pale wood and white-painted furniture made it brighter than night should be—only by a shade or two.

She let out a garbled sound, the high piping of a bird, and Nico’s hand eased. “Shhh,” he whispered, again. “It’s just a dream, I’m here.”

You are nobody. You are nothing. “N-n-n-ni—” Even his name wouldn’t come.

“Cami.” He caught her hands. His skin was warm, solid, real. “Book.”

The same old charm. “B-b-book.”

“Candle.” He was kneeling on her bed, and she saw the mess his hair had become. How late was it?

“C-candle.” Her breathing evened out. Her heart still hammered, but it wouldn’t explode. She could tell, now, that it would calm down. If she just gave it a little time.

He smelled of cigarette smoke, copper, the tang of whiskey. So he’d been at the decanters again. “Nico,” he whispered.

“Nico,” she whispered back. Relaxed all at once, a loosened string.

“There it is.” He relaxed a little too, but stiffened when she moved to hug him. “Easy, babygirl.”

“What h-h-happened?” But she knew. The cuts on him would be closing, the weals healing themselves slowly. By morning he would be good as new, not even a scar left to mark the punishment.

Family healed fast. And it used to be that this sort of punishment made an impression on Nico.

Now, though . . . nothing much did.

“I deserve it. Move over.” He lowered himself gingerly, hissing as his bare back met the sheet. “Mithrus, move over.”

“I am.” Irritable now, she scooted, freeing the topsheet. She’d thrown her pillows somewhere, but he rescued them, and in a little while they were safe together, her head on his bare shoulder, her nightgown caught on his pajama-clad knee. She tried not to hug him too hard, but he tightened his arm and pulled her closer, only tensing a little as it hurt. “Why d-did y-y-you—?” Why did you take me out? It’s like you wanted to get punished on your first night home.

“Shhh. Listen.”

She did. The wind was up, trees making an ocean noise, branches creaking, and the house’s corners whistling to themselves. How many nights had they spent like this?

She used to scream when the nightmares came. Now, not so much—but it was easier when he was there, warm and close and safe. Nobody had ever caught him—Papa had once or twice given her a penetrating look at the breakfast table, asking how she had slept, and Cami had blushed without knowing why.

I don’t like it, Nico had said the first time he’d appeared in the darkness, whispering fiercely. Tell me what it is. I’ll hurt it. I’ll kill it for you.

As if she could. The words wouldn’t come. The dreams faded as soon as she jolted into waking. There was only the feel of the soft, large hands, and the directionless voice in the darkness.

You are nobody. You are nothing.

She shivered, and Nico rubbed his chin against her head. It scratched a little. In prep school he’d liked the stubbled look until she complained that it was scratchy and made him look dirty. The next day he’d shaved, and grumbled when he nicked himself. As if it didn’t heal immediately.

“Winter’s coming.” He let out a sigh. “Go to sleep.”

The heat all through her was different now. She’d noticed it before, her hands shaking a little and her heart in her throat, a pleasant excitement like when he drove too fast. A curious safety, but the nervousness in her itching all over, and she couldn’t figure out why. “How b-bad d-d-does it h-hurt?”

He made a slight movement, as if tossing away the question. “Not bad.” But his voice broke, and he lay stiff and unbending while the tears trickled down his temples and vanished into their hair—his and hers, mingled together on the white pillow. When they were done he relaxed, slowly, bit by bit. Cami fell asleep after his breathing evened out, and as usual, he kept the bad dreams away.

And, as usual, when she woke up in the morning there was only the dent on the pillow next to hers, and a deep tingling on her cheek, as if he had kissed it before ghosting out her door.

SIX

THE POOL, A LAZY BLUE EYE, THREW BACK uncharacteristically fierce autumn sunlight with a vengeance. Cami drew her knees up under the umbrella’s shade; Ruby, applying crimson lacquer to her nails, made a clicking sound with her tongue. “It’s just sunshine, it’s not going to kill you.”

“CANNONBALL!” Thorne yelled, barreling past them, a lean brown streak with a shock of wheat-gold hair and orange trunks. Hunter was right after him, dark-haired and sleek in bright yellow. They hit the water with a shattering double splash, and Ruby made a little eww sound and leaned back.

“J-just water.” Cami settled back in the chair, adjusting her sunglasses a little. “N-not g-gonna—”

Ruby pointed with the nail brush. “You just watch yourself, missy.”

Cami pursed her lips and made a raspberry, and shared laughter rose.

You didn’t get leftover summer like this in New Haven very often, but when you did it was to be seized with both hands. Which explained why Marya had been chattered into providing notes for the three girls; Thorne and Hunter—Woodsdowne cousins, and warring for Ruby’s attention, like always—were on their own for track-covering. But Marya had long ago become adept at counterfeiting parental scrawls on St. Juno-charmed paper, and Papa turned a blind eye as long as Cami didn’t skip more than once a month.

I was young once too, Papa had said long ago, patting Cami on the head. Be reasonable, eh, bambina?

He never let Nico skip, though. The Vultusino-in-waiting couldn’t afford to.

Ellie emerged from the changing room in a bright blue bikini that hugged her lovingly. The bruises on her arms were fading and yellowgreen, and the one on her thigh wasn’t bad.

Ruby whistled. “Look at that. Fits you like a chaaaarm!” She giggled as Thorne heaved himself up out of the pool, shaking his head, bright droplets splashing. He went right back in with another gigantic splash, graceful as an otter.

“I am not even gonna ask why you have a bikini in my size,” Ellie said darkly, settling on the lounge chair next to Cami’s shade.

Because I know what the Strep does to all your clothes, and then she tells your dad you did it. And you get it from both sides, so this is just easier, right? “G-good.” Cami snagged the cocoanut-oil sunscreen. She passed it over, pulling her hand back quickly.

“White girl thinks she’ll explode if she catches a ray or two.” Ruby’s eyeroll was so pronounced you could hear its mutter in the mountains.

“She just wants to avoid skin cancer.” Ellie began the process of slathering on sunscreen. “As do we all. What time is it?”

Red sighed again. “Not even eleven, worrywart. Chill. The Strep won’t find out.”

“She knows things,” Ellie muttered darkly. Of course, the Strep was a charmer strong enough to have a Sigil of her own—the two high-heeled shoes, a symbol of her work and talent. She was the best couturier in New Haven, and her work was sent overWaste, too. No doubt Ellie’s dad, reeling from the loss of his first wife, had thought the Strep quite a catch.

Even Ellie had been cautiously happy to have a mom again. Until the Strep showed her true colors, that was. It was a wonder the woman hadn’t Twisted yet, she was so full of spiteful rage directed right at Ellie.

Rube snorted. “What, like how to be the biggest bitch in Haven County? Gran could eat her for lunch.”

Ruby’s Gran lived in a tiny cottage in the Woodsdowne area, full of the smell of baking good things, the scorch of an active charmer at work, and pretty small for a woman who controlled a good chunk of the import traffic through the Waste or the port. The de Varres were an old clan, almost as old as the Family and allied to the Seven in New Haven.

In some other provinces, though, Ruby and Nico wouldn’t just snarl at each other. There might have been actual blood. But here in New Haven, a treaty held, and Gran’s house was the closest to absolute safety you could find outside a Family home.

At least, if she liked you.

Ellie’s laugh was laced with hard bright bitterness. “I wish she would. But that would poison your dear sweet Grannie.”

“Good luck.” Ruby critically examined her pinkie, drew another stripe of polish down it. “Hel-lo. What’s that?”

Cami glanced up. Across the pool, something moved in the greenery. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears for a moment, and she hugged her knees even tighter. “N-new g-garden b-b-boy.” The head groundskeeper had just hired four more since some of the old ones were off to college; Trig and the security team had cleared the applicants and Marya had given her approval. They were like all the rest—silent plain-normal humans, young men without any Twist to them, low Potential and low prospects too, probably from the fringes of New Haven’s crumbling inner core where the minotaurs walked, the dead-eyed hapsters hawked their drugs and gave the Family a percentage, and the gunfire echoed. Working for the Families was one way to get out and away from the coreblight—and Papa Vultusino gave college scholarships in return for loyalty and discretion.

Some of the other Seven weren’t so kind. But the boys from the fringes kept coming. They didn’t have many other chances.

This particular garden boy was tall and lanky, with messy coal-black hair. He kept it shaken down over his eyes, and something about him made Cami uneasy. If she said anything, he’d be sent back to the core; once, there had been an under-groundskeeper who had told her she was such a pretty girl while he tried to touch her scarred left arm. She’d flinched just as Nico came around the corner to call her for lunch.

That had been awful.

“Nice shoulders.” Ruby capped the polish, deftly. “Cami, dearie, I could get accustomed to this summer stuff.”

Cami silently agreed. Even if she hated the naked way her scars flushed in this kind of weather.

“Too bad tomorrow’s going to rain.” Ellie finished her anointing and wiggled her toes, luxuriously. The garden boy started trimming something on the far side of the pool, while Thorne and Hunter did their best to duck each other. They must have been hoping Ruby was watching.

Cami relaxed a little. It was just the right temperature under the umbrella, a breeze redolent of mown grass and autumn spice moving over her. Her one-piece cream swimsuit and the matching sari-skirt covered up just about everything. There were the dimpled burn scars on her arms, and there were her wrists. But if she stayed out of the sun they wouldn’t show much, and the long thin white marks from cuts didn’t show too badly anyway.

Nobody ever said anything about it. Nobody but Nico did, anyway. And he only wanted to know if they hurt anymore. Or if she remembered anything before being found in the snow.

He didn’t like things he couldn’t fix.

“God damn it.” Ruby sighed. “Can’t you ever be wrong about the goddamn weather?”

Ellie shrugged, picking up a thick battered copy of Sigmindson’s Charms. She’d tested ultra-high on Potential. It was a good thing—it kept the Strep from being too awful, because of the risk of Twisting Ellie with hate and rage. But still. “Wish I could, Rube. It would be nice.”

“Lottery numbers,” Ruby muttered darkly. “Minotaur races. Even something at the Avalon Casino.”

“Improper use of Potential.” Ellie began flipping. The conversation was so familiar, they could have had it in their sleep. Cami watched the new garden boy trimming, his shoulders broad-muscled under a white T-shirt. He moved a little oddly, but she couldn’t figure out just how. “The risk of Twist increases with each—”

“—use of unsanctioned or unsafe charm,” Ruby finished. “Being responsible is so boring.”

“Being responsible doesn’t bite you in the ass like being irresponsible does.” There it was, Ellie’s Words To Live By boiled down to a single sentence.

“What if you like your ass bitten?” Ruby arched her eyebrows, her oiled skin brushed with gold.

“Hey, what?” Hunter heaved himself up on the edge of the pool, water-jewels on his skin sparkling in bright sunshine. “I can help with that.”

Right on cue. Cami suppressed a sigh. Rube seemed genuinely oblivious to the way the two cousins kept showing off for her.

“Ha.” Ruby waved a languid crimson-tipped hand. “Ask Thorne. I hear he likes that sort of thing.”

“What are you getting me into?” Thorne rose from the pool, sleek and lean. Cami looked away. “You guys are in swimsuits. Why don’t you ever swim?”

“Maybe because you’re all spazzy and scare them,” Hunter sniffed, and it was on. Thorne grabbed him and they thrashed in a roil of brown limbs and crystalline water. The garden boy moved to another shrub.

It didn’t look like they needed trimming, but what did she know about bushes? His hair was really black, with odd undertones. Blue glimmers, like hers. You didn’t see that color a lot.

“You’re staring,” Ruby mock-whispered, not opening her eyes. “Are you actually showing interest in something male? Other than you-know-who?”

Cami dropped her face into her skirt-covered knees. Her cheeks burned.

“You are. Wow.” Ruby sounded genuinely amazed. “Is he cute?”

“Can’t tell at this distance.” Ellie continued flipping through the charm-book. “Oh, look. Here’s one to save someone from drowning.”

Ruby’s aggravation was a long, drawn-out sigh, rippling the air with a ruffle of Potential. “Oh, Mithrus.”

“I’m just being cautious.”

“You are not going to die by drowning, Ell. Not while I still find you amusing.”

“Your arrogance is almost as large as your ass.”

“Come closer and say that, my dearest.” Ruby chuckled, a low throaty sound. “Cami, you can look, you know. It’s actually a good sign if you do. Remember Puberty Ed?”

Cami almost flinched. Now that had been uncomfortable. Sister Eunice Grace-Atoning was the oldest, dottiest teacher at Juno, and listening to her mumbling explanations of how to keep from getting pregnant or diseased—or worse—in a classroom full of blushing, giggling girls while outside spring sunshine drenched the world with gold . . . if there was anything more deadly boring and stupid, she hadn’t come across it yet.

Ruby had, quickly and frankly, told Cami everything she needed to know in sixth grade, during one of their many sleepovers. The blush had been hot enough to still feel—they do what? Ewww, gross.

Shhh! Ruby had looked very serious. They say you can catch Twisting that way too, so you’ve got to be careful.

I’m never doing that.

Gran says, Ruby had nodded sharply, in unconscious imitation of Gran de Varre, some day you might change your mind, so it’s best to be prepared.

“Leave her alone.” Ellie sighed dramatically. “Thorne! Go see if you can talk Marya into getting us some beers!”

Cami peeked up from her knees. The garden boy had stopped, his handheld clippers paused. The scissor blades gleamed in the sun, and sweat darkened his white shirt. He had lifted his chin, and he stared back at her.

“He’s looking.” Ruby whispered for real this time. “I can tell he’s looking. Cami, are you looking?”

“N-n-no.” But she was. The heat was all through her, a rose stain like some of the windows in the long shaded hall near the library where all the paintings hung, and the scars would all turn white against that flush. It felt as if she was near Nico, charm-voltage all through her, and she shifted uncomfortably.

“You’re lying. How soon they grow up.” Archly amused, Ruby snuggled down on her lounger. It had to be her russet-golden length the garden boy was staring at. “Thorne! Fetch us some booze, we’re thirsty!”

“I’ll get—” Hunter was half out of the pool already. Thorne tackled him. Par for the course. As if being the first to bring Ruby a beer would make her settle, once and for all, on one of them.

“Oh, Lord.” Ellie sighed again.

“I’ll g-g-get it.” Cami was up off her lounger in a heartbeat, and she retreated from the sunny poolside. Marya would scold, but she could be persuaded to part with some honeywine coolers—the fey had funny ideas about alcohol. Ruby would bitch, of course, but the list of things Ruby would bitch at was so long there was no point in letting it run your life.

Past the changing-house, down a leaf-shaded pathway, the slate pavers gritty and warm underfoot, she was almost clear when she heard a rustle.

It was the garden boy. He must have cut around the back of the changing-house, even though it was a tangle of thorny-wild rosebushes. Cami flinched, stared at the pavers, and hunched her shoulders.

“Hey.”

He was actually speaking to her. Mithrus, what was she supposed to do? She pulled further into herself, hunching more, and he’d somehow stepped right in her path.

“Hey,” he repeated, very low. Confidentially. “Princess girl. Can I talk to you?”

Oh, God. She weighed her options. Walking through him was one, but he might try to touch her. Retreating was a better option, but then Ruby would ask her what the hell and Ellie would probably guess what had happened and sooner or later Nico would find out—

Caught between several unappetizing alternatives, she had a wild idea of diving into the rosebushes pressing against the side of the path and the changing-house. There was no good reason for him to be talking to her, and if someone found out there would be trouble. Not just trouble but Trouble, underlined and in neon.

“Shit,” he muttered, just as Thorne and Hunter bailed around the corner.

“Hey, Cami, take us with you!” Bursting with energy and a haze of warm water, they splattered up to her, Thorne halting and shaking his head. Cami flinched from the spray of droplets, and the garden boy had vanished.

It wasn’t until later, pleasantly buzzed on honeywine and watching as Ruby leveled herself effortlessly into a clean skimming dive, that she realized she was almost disappointed about that.

SEVEN

TWO DAYS LATER, NICO WAS FINALLY WILLING TO TALK about why he was home from Hannibal. “There was some trouble. Fighting.” He lounged on paint-splattered carpet, the cut-crystal ashtray balanced on his stomach. “It’s just a couple weeks, Cami. It’s already smoothed over. And Papa wanted me home anyway. Something about . . . well, he’s worried about something in the city.”

She might have asked him about that, except she knew Nico wouldn’t tell her about anything upsetting or dangerous. She knew things, of course, picked up around the edges, heard in corners. You would have to be blind, deaf, and terminally stupe-Twisted not to overhear . . . things . . . in a Family house.

Right now, though, that wasn’t her problem. You keep picking fights and the Family might do something big to you. “I w-wish you’d b-be c-careful.” Rain swept the window, restlessly, false summer fled as if it had never been. Ellie was grounded again, the Strep using some bullshit something-or-another; Ruby’s grandmother had caught her sneaking out of her window at midnight so she was grounded too, and Nico was . . . Nico.

“Your tang’s all tungled again.” Nico propped his head up on a pillow dragged from his hacked-up bed and waggled his eyebrows. His suite had been in dark green, a Family Heir’s traditional color. Nico, however, had taken black spray paint and an edge to pretty much everything, and after a while Papa had told Marya not to repair or redecorate.

Marya obeyed, of course. But she also tried sneaking pillows and pretty things up to make Nico happy. Cami could have told her it was useless. When he was determined to be an ass, there was just nothing to be done about it.

“You’re mean.” At least she didn’t stutter over that. It was all she could say.

He ground out the Gitanelle and curled up to sit cross-legged, his eyes dark. “I’m sorry.”

It was the same conversation, started so many years ago. You’ll never be a pureblood! I hate you!

You’re m-mean, she’d yelled back, shocked at her own daring but on fire with the injustice. They were the first words she’d spoken since coming to live in the house on Haven Hill, and Nico had balled up his small fists. Coming home from yet another expensive boarding school for the winter holidays and finding everything suddenly arranged around another child hadn’t been high on his list of favorite things, and he’d even shown his baby fangs.

But Cami had flinched, her eyes widening, and Nico had immediately dropped his hands. He had stared, horrified, as she shrank back, his mouth falling open and his fangs retracting. Don’t . . . hey. Oh, hey. Don’t cry. Drawing himself up, little-boy proud. You don’t have to cry. I don’t hate you.

Marya had found them an hour and a half later, curled up together in a faded-rose, velvet-curtained window seat in the dim whisper-haunted library, Nico stroking Cami’s long black hair soothingly, both of them sleepy-eyed. Cami had blinked, slowly, and said M-m-Marya, pointing like a toddler.

That’s right, Nico had replied. Marya. Book. Candle. Nico.

M-Marya. B-book. C-c-c-candle. Nico.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “Mithrus. I don’t mean to be. Not to you.”

Everyone else, but not me? “I kn-know.” She was curled in the one leather chair he hadn’t taken a straight razor to, her special chair in his room. Big and wide, and deep enough for both of them as children, it was a smaller ship to sail rougher seas now.

Thunder muttered in the distance. The storm was sweeping in. Nico sighed, hauled himself up, and turned out the electric lights. He moved around, lighting candles and sticking them anyhow in a collection of holders or just in built-up wax charm-softened with a muttered curse.

Family didn’t Twist, like fey. There were other dangers—the sickness of too much Borrowing, the Kiss finding one of them unworthy, a faust’s terrible fire-breath doing what the sun couldn’t to daywalkers and Unbreathing alike. Also like fey, their Potential was a part of what made them . . . different, and they swam in it without worrying about anything toxic.

Except the Waste. They were human enough to have to worry about that, at least.

He knocked a chunk of wax down from his scarred wooden dresser, kicked it skittering across the room. Why shouldn’t I ruin things? he’d said, bitterly, once. None of it matters. It’s just stuff.

It m-matters, she’d replied. It’s b-b-beautiful.

Not to me. And there they had left it.

When he had enough candles lit to suit him, he crouched in front of the chair, watching her, mossy eyes dark. They played the game, holding eye contact for as long as possible, until their breathing melted together. When he shifted his weight she shifted too, and in a little bit he let out a long sigh and settled down on his knees. He leaned into the chair, and Cami stroked his hair, pushing her fingers through the dark waves. The candleflames danced like charmer’s foxfire, and when she shivered he did too.

“Book.” His tone was soft, thoughtful.

“B-book.”

“Candle.”

“C-c-candle.”

“Nico.”

“Nico.”

“See? All better.”

Even if it wasn’t a real charm, it worked. “You’re so angry.”

“Born that way.”

Maybe you were. “We l-love you.”

“You do. Them? I’m just another piece to shove into the Seven.”

“They may not. If you . . . ” Her throat refused to fill with the words. She couldn’t imagine what they would do to him, but it would be dire. The “punishments” administered when he incurred Papa’s displeasure were bad enough.

“So what? They fire me from the Seven. From being the Heir. We go to the Island.”

Another childhood game. So he wanted to be kids again tonight. She gave him the next line, gently. “And h-how will w-we eat?”

“You’ll pick fruit. I’ll hunt. At night we’ll share, and you’ll be Family.”

I can’t be Family. I wasn’t born in. But she still smiled. “How?”

“I’ll find a Waste-witch to make you. Or we’ll get my heartstone and make you into a leman; I’ll hunt for you, and you can Borrow from me. Then we’ll live until the Kiss comes, and we’ll be Elders together on our very own island. Move it.” He clambered up, and they squeezed together in the chair. Rain poured down the windows. His breath was hot on her neck, and she closed her eyes. This was part of the game too, relaxing until they were one heartbeat, and the flutter inside her skull was the silent brush of his strange dark fiery thoughts. He shifted so she wasn’t hitting anything sensitive in his lap, and she fought back a hot blush.

“Where will we l-live?” she whispered.

“We’ll build a hut from palm stuff. Like in Crusoe the Man-eater. We won’t need it, though. It’s warm on the Island.”

She could almost pretend to be nine again, small and safe. “Trop-pical r-rains.”

“The jungle’s thick. We’ll be okay.” He paused. “You really are upset.”

Now she could tell him. He wasn’t likely to go flying out to find the wooden man and do something awful. “The w-wooden m-man. At L-l-lou’s.”

“Wooden . . . oh, that? He was probably just a drunk jack. I was there, right?”

Do you think I would go there alone? “His eyes. B-blue.”

“Lots of people have blue eyes, babygirl.”

“R-r-really b-blue. L-l-like m-m-m-m—”

“You’re not a jack. Or a Twist. You’d be one by now, if you were going to.”

That’s not what I mean. He recognized me from somewhere. She made a helpless movement.

But he just forged on ahead, as usual. “I don’t care where you came from. You’re with me. That’s all.”

“S-something’s h-happening.” It’s not just the wooden man. It was his eyes. And something else. Everything’s wrong. She’d felt this when Papa first took to bed in the Red Room months ago, a strange shifting sensation like the ground crumbling beneath her.

And it was getting worse.

“It’s Papa.” For once, he didn’t sound bitter. “He’s really close. And you think without him . . . Christ, Cami. Don’t worry so much. Family doesn’t give up what’s theirs.”

“I-i-if you k-keep d-doing things, they’ll maybe get a-another S-s-seventh.” There’s plenty of youngbloods, even if they’re not Lineage.

“I won’t let that happen. Every boy’s Wild before he steps into the Seven, Cami. I’m just doing what they want, still.” He sighed. “I can’t get away from it.”

She squirmed until she could put her arms around him, and the sound of rain filled the silence with its deep silvery mutter.

“You’ve been having more bad dreams, too.” He was taller than her, but he still managed to curl up and rest his head on her shoulder. It was uncomfortable, but neither of them wanted to admit they were too big for the chair. “You always do before your birthday.”

She was hard-put to stifle a groan. We don’t know my birthday. But Papa had suggested Octovus, because it was Dead Harvest season, and because that way she would have presents twice in a year, not just near Mithrusmas. It was nice . . . but still, sometimes, she wondered when her birthday really was.

And if she would ever really know.

“Sweet sixteen, and a big party all planned,” Nico teased. “Wait until you see what I got you.” And he wouldn’t tell, no matter how Cami poked him. For the rest of the evening she forgot the world-tilting feeling, and everything was all right again.

EIGHT

THE SHOPS IN HAVEN SOUTH—THE OLD CITY—WERE mostly run by jacks. You could, if the wind was right, hear the sirens from the blighted urban core, and sometimes on the news there was footage of a stray minotaur stamping through smoke and dusk up the center of zigzagging Southking Street. It would shrug through canvas awnings, jacks and humans scattering, gaining what safety they could as the shifting bullheaded thing made of mutating Potential and pain ran itself into nothingness, away from the core-chaos that gave it birth.

Sometimes minotaurs happened in the suburbs too, but not often. It took a huge irruption of hate- or rage-fueled Potential before they were even viable, let alone heavy enough to coalesce onto a person and spin them past jack, past Twist even, into the shadow-realm of cannibal monster with hulking shoulders and wide-horned, bone-shielded head.

Following Ruby down Southking Street deserved its own athletic badge. Usually Ellie was there to steer Cami through the crowd and track Ruby down after she got excited and zoomed away to look at oh my God this cute little thing! But Ell was still in what Rube called Strep Durance Vile, and Cami glanced away from Ruby’s copperbright hair for just a moment, when a jack with warty gray skin held up a fistful of thin silver bangles and shook them, cawing her sellsong.

“Pret-ty things for a pret-ty girl, come buy some sweetsilver miss?” The jack’s mouth split open, showing broad yellow teeth, and the edge of Potential between her and Cami flashed into visibility for a moment. It crackled with hexagram flashes, a shiver spilling down Cami’s spine as she backed away, almost tripping, and looked wildly around for Ruby.

No luck.

The lunchtime crowd was thick and she should have been in French class, bored out of her mind and droning along with Sister Mary Brefoil as verbs were conjugated and sleepy slants of thin autumn sunshine pierced Juno’s high narrow windows. But Ruby had cajoled, Ruby had wheedled, Ruby had said, You’re only young once and I need to shop . . . and Cami had given in.

Stay calm. You’ll find her. She might even go back to Ruby’s car—they had parked on Highclere, and Cami could go back and wait. If all else failed she could find a public shell and call the house. If Marya picked up, Nico would come get her. But it was Thursday—Market Day for most of New Haven—and Marya might be a-marketing in the Arbor to the north, where the servants for the upper crust and the powerful and Sigiled charmers did their shopping for organics and Twist-free produce from certified kolkhozes, and other essentials. So the phone might ring, Chauncey or Stevens might pick up, and she’d have to explain why she was skipping—and why on earth she was on Southking, of all places.

And that would not be pleasant. She’d never gotten in trouble before, but what if Papa’s patience snapped, so close to his transition? The unsteadiness was under Cami’s feet all the time now, and she didn’t want to take any chances.

She set off through the crowd, her schoolbag hitched high on her shoulder and her blazer welcome warmth, a chill wind, threading between jacks and humans, cold lipless breath touching her bare knees. She shivered, scanning for Ruby’s bright hair, and saw only backs and legs, jacks and humans hurrying in the frosty sunshine. Her breath came fast in a thin white cloud. False summer was long, long gone.

Smoking peanut oil from the foodcarts, signs proclaiming Real Meat, spices, the dusty scent of imported cloth, the hawkers crying their sellsongs. Cheap jewelry, more expensive jewelry, tailor stalls, a ringing clatter from a blacksmith shaping anti-Twist charms, the forge a blare of heat and a young jack working the bellows, his clawed hands oddly graceful. He blinked one cat-pupiled yellow eye, then the other as Cami stood and watched for a moment.

If she’d been born jack, with feathers or fur, or if her Potential had turned that way when the hormone-and-charm crisis of puberty first hit, would Papa have taken her in? Or kept her for this long? Or would she have been abandoned, maybe sent to a boarding school far away? There were jack-only schools in the cold North, past the Province border and overWaste, and the stories about them were terrible. Accidents happened around jacks.

Bad accidents.

Don’t think about things like that.

A stray dog barked as it ran between two canvas tents. She flinched, turning away. A bookseller—a normal, with an iron anti-Twist pendant at his neck on a leather thong—eyed her curiously. Cami blushed, looked around for Ruby again. Scarves fluttered, a fortuneteller’s tent stood tall, purple, and motheaten, spangled with tarnished gilt; a knifemartin stood behind his table of bright blades and watched the flow of foot traffic with narrowed eyes. Some of the darker tents were accorded plenty of space—one had the serpent-sign of a poisonmaker, and everyone hurried past that awning. People would wait for dusk and go in through the back.

New Haven was a hub, with both the port and the sealed over Waste trains bringing goods in and exporting charmwork and finished products. The de Varres took their percentages, and the Family took theirs, and everyone else crowded around the rest like grinmarches around a pile of husks and clippings, getting their fair share and making credits any way they could.

The trouble with wondering about where she’d be now if Papa hadn’t kept her was that it made the unsteadiness under her feet so much worse. Windchimes tinkled and good-luck bells chattered uneasily as the wind picked up, and her stomach turned over, hard.

Screw this. Cami spun on her heel and set off, her head down, with a purposeful step. If she went up two blocks she could cut over to Highclere, find Ruby’s Semprena, and sit on the hood until Rube noticed she wasn’t around and—

“It’s Camille, right?”

She almost ran into him. White shirt, tan leather jacket, faded jeans, a glitter of silver at his throat. She mumbled an apology, moved aside, but he stepped to the side too, as if they were dancing.

So she had to look up.

The garden boy, his messy black hair actually pushed back from his forehead, had an odd face. He was tanned—of course, he worked outside. Strong jaw, too-strong cheekbones, like he hadn’t quite grown into them yet. His eyes matched his hair, pupil and iris blending together to make a dark hole. Bad-luck eyes, but he couldn’t be Twist, not if Marya had given him the okay. Cami dropped her gaze, confused, and the silver at his throat was a small medallion, some kind of star engraved on it.

Her head filled with rushing noise.

“Whoa, there.” He actually caught her arm as she swayed. “Mithrus, what are you doing here?”

The dogs bayed and she scrabbled, desperately, the Queen’s rising scream filling whirling snow. The rats ran after her in a swelling tide, their sleek-oiled coats gleaming, and the cracking, rending sound of glass breaking tore the universe apart . . .

Cami came back to herself with a jolt. She was sitting down, and the garden boy had a straw to her lips. “It’s just fruit juice,” he was saying. “It’s okay, it’s not—”

Is it charmed? She pushed the cup aside. Swayed again, almost falling off the stool. A striped awning flapped overhead, and Southking Street throbbed like a bad tooth. She blinked as something liquid splashed, and the garden boy backed off.

“I’m sorry.” He had a nice voice, at least. It reminded her of Nico’s, but without the sharp-edge anger. “You looked like you were gonna faint.”

The foodcart had a shiny chrome counter, and the burly female jack in a red plaid shirt behind it was studiously ignoring them as she messed with a hissing-hot grill, the scales on her wrists and the back of her neck bright green and glowing. The garden boy lifted the cup and sipped, carefully, the clear straw holding red liquid.

“Strawberry juice,” he said after swallowing. “Fixes everything, and I’ve taken some so you know it’s not charmed. Plus I know I’m not supposed to even talk to you. Believe me, I know.”

What the hell just happened? She’d lost Ruby, and then . . . something. Like a bad dream, but during daylight. She swallowed hard, realized she still had her schoolbag, clutched to her chest like a drowning girl would hold driftwood. “I l-l-lost R-ruby.” The words tripped over each other. “I’m s-s-s-sorry.”

He actually leaned back, gazing at her like she’d just produced a Twist charm, or started to sprout jackfeathers. She would have flinched, except it was impossible to hunch her shoulders any further. One of these days she was going to get over the effect her stutter had on people.

But not today.

“So you do talk.” He nodded, once, like he was surprised she could make words. So was she, right now. “I thought you just, you know, didn’t bother. Because you’re beautiful.”

What? “I s-s-s-st-st—”

Another nod, just like Nico. The jacket was butter-soft leather, but scuffed and scarred. “Stutter. Yeah. So? Hey, Danna. Something nice for the lady.”

The jack cast one disdainful glance over her meaty shoulder. The scales spread up her cheek, a fanlike pattern that was actually beautiful, if you looked close enough. “You payin’?”

The garden boy tossed a couple crumpled paper credits on the counter, their woven surfaces alive with heavy-duty anti-charm ink. “I can take my business elsewhere.”

It was kind of like being with Nico. Cami found her hands working again, and her brain too. She dug in her schoolbag, coming up with a crisp five-cred note. “H-here.”

“My treat.” The garden boy grinned. “I’m Torin Beale. Tor, for short.”

“C-c-cami.” She wished she could add more, but she could just tell her tongue was knotting up. But she did offer her hand, and he shook, gravely, his jacket creaking a little. His skin was warm, and not hard but firm. You could tell he worked hard every day.

“I know.” But his smile took the sting out of it. The jack banged an unopened bottle of limon down on the counter, sweeping up Tor’s creds and making them disappear.

Cami took it, cautious; the tingle in her fingers told her the bottling-seal was unbroken, and therefore safe enough. She cracked the top. “Thanks.” It was a miracle, the word came out whole.

“No problem. Hey, what are you doing on Southking? Shouldn’t you be at that school? What is it—that’s right, you’re a Juno.”

“S-sk-k-kipp-ping.” Of course it was too good to last. She made a face, sipping at tart cool fizzing limon, and the garden boy—Tor, a short hard sound of a name—actually laughed.

“Me too. Were you, you know, here with someone?” He took a long draft of strawberry juice, and Cami glanced at the crowd again. No sign of Ruby. Her head felt strange, stuffed with cotton wool. When she looked back at him, something seemed different. It took her a moment to figure it out.

His necklace was gone. Or had she imagined the silver gleam? The thought made her queasy, so she swept it away. It went quietly. “Y-yeah. Sh-she g-g-ot d-d-istracted, though. I g-g-guess.”

“Lots to be distracted by here. You want to look for her? Or you want me to take you home? Because really, you shouldn’t be wandering around alone.”

The jack behind the counter found this suddenly interesting, turning away from the grill. The scales on her cheeks flushed and popped with Potential, just like the grill behind her popped with heat. They crawled over her skin, and the red tint between them swelled, destroying the beauty of the pattern. “What, like you’re some sort of knight in shining, orphan boy? Please.”

“Did I ask you?” His black eyes sparked, and Cami didn’t even think about it. Her hand shot out, closed around his wrist. The strawberry juice in its wax-paper cup splashed, and she pulled a little, just as if he was Nico and ready to go ballistic.

The jack laughed, a nasty bitter little sound of jacktemper. “Oh, cute. Yeah, you hold him back, Juno bitch.”

“Come on.” Tor slid off his stool. “Danna’s in a mood today. She’s all jealous.”

The jack paled, and licked her thin lips. It was funny—she had such a small mouth and the rest of her was so hard, corded with muscle. It looked like she could knock the cart over without half trying, and the scales on her cheeks actually lifted a little, tiny muscles underneath swelling with anger. Cami slid off her seat, schoolbag awkward under her arm and the limon almost fizzing free of the bottle. Tor steadied her, and his hand was oddly gentle. “Fucking jacks,” he said, just loud enough to be heard. “We don’t want to stay around. It might be catching.”

Why did boys always have to be so nasty? Cami pulled him away. “D-d-don’t. P-p-please.”

He shrugged, his jaw set sullen. It was amazing how eyes so dark could be so scorching. “Fine. But just ’cause you say so.”

Well, great. I’m a hero. “She c-c-can’t h-h-help it. J-j-jacks—” Jacks usually had temper problems—not enough Potential to really charm, and they most probably wouldn’t end up Twisting, but still. They weren’t awfully employable, and had to live on the edges of the core. Almost-Twisted, just like they were almost-charmers. In-between and always angry. Or maybe they were scared of becoming Twists and being pushed even further down the chain.

Sometimes, angry just meant scared.

Ellie would be a strong charmer, maybe even Sigiled. So would Ruby, it was obvious. Cami wasn’t so sure. Her Potential tested high, sure, but you could never tell until it quit being invisible and started settling. Ruby always told her not to worry.

Where was Ruby now?

Tor’s grin lost some of its hurtfulness. He stripped his hair back from his face with stiff fingers, and for a moment he looked almost . . . vulnerable. “Yeah, a jack’s a powder keg. I know. So, you want to look for your friend? Or should I take you home?”

Well, wasn’t he just taking charge of everything. Cami shrugged, dropped his wrist and took another pull off the limon. “I d-d-don’t want t-t-trouble.”

“That’s a shame.” He cocked his head, tossing the leftover strawberry juice at a chained, dozing trashulk, hunched pluglike on a patch of verdant charmgrass in the midst of concrete and metal. The hunched gray green lichen-starred bulk snapped, catching the cup out of the air and munching, the collar at its throat flushing dull-red with pleasure. Its almost-snarl, vibrating just below the surface of the audible, sent a shiver up Cami’s spine.

Or maybe it was the way Tor was looking at her. Serious and intent, his eyebrows coming together and his mouth relaxed. “Seems to me you could use a little trouble. The right kind, I mean.”

Did he really just say that? Heat rose up her neck, as if she was the jack’s sizzling grill. “R-r-right k-kind?” As in, is there a right kind of trouble?

Oh, my God, I’m actually flirting. Ruby would be thrilled.

The thought of Ruby jolted her, and she looked around again. The crowd had thickened for lunchtime. The sun was high enough to pierce the lowering gray that was autumn sky in New Haven, but it looked like rain soon.

“Yeah.” Tor’s smile was like sunrise, all the anger gone. His teeth were very white. “Maybe not today. And I can understand, if you don’t want to be seen with me. You’re Family, right?”

Not really. She contented herself with a shrug. He kept changing on her, she couldn’t keep up. “I th-think I sh-should—”

“There you are!” Ruby chirped, her lacquered nails digging into Cami’s shoulder. “What the hell are you doing?”

When Cami turned back, he had vanished into the crowd. Just evaporated, and good luck getting Rube to slow down enough for Cami to explain. So she just held the sweating-cold bottle of limon to her hot-throbbing forehead while Ruby, glowing with excitement, scolded her and dragged her along, telling her all about this fabulous shop where they could get earrings and hair ribbons nobody else had, and Ellie was just going to expire of joy.

NINE

THAT FRIDAY NIGHT SHE TYPED OUT THE STORY, hesitated, and punched the send key.

There was a long pause, and Cami was seriously considering chewing her nails as she watched the Babbage’s flat glowing screen. Rain fingered the window, heavier than a mist but not heavy enough to be a downpour. The Dead Harvest was probably going to be cold and wet this year. All the costumed revelers would be buying turnaside charms to keep dry, and even the lure of free candy and tiny cheap flash-loud charmpoppers dropped into bags like party favors wouldn’t bring so many of them to the door to scream their traditional Trick’s-treating!

On the other hand, the house parties would be spectacular this year. If Nico was home still, he might even drive her to a few. She would go as the Moon, of course, just like every year. The costume was simple, it covered everything, and even had a veil. Maybe Nico would go as Hellequin again, prodding sinners and Twists toward the underworld as fausts leapt to obey his every bidding. Last year he’d been Gaston Wolfhunter, complete with ax and staff, and it had been a job keeping Ruby distracted enough not to snap at him. He hadn’t made it easier by poking at her while driving between parties, and Rube had announced flatly that she would never be in a car with Nico Vultusino again.

Cami heaved a sigh. The white room sighed around her too, smelling of beeswax and lemon polish.

Finally the cursor blinked, and the BlueEllen is typing message showed up, faint and sparkling. They were supposed to be babchatting about Calc homework, but Cami had hijacked the conversation, for once.

At least Ellie let her get it all out, and fingers on keyboards didn’t stutter. One of these days someone was going to figure out how to shrink a Babbage so Cami could stick it in her pocket and have it talk for her.

Wouldn’t that be a dream. Of course, they’d have to discover how to ground it so a stray burst of Potential didn’t fry everything. Once they did that, electronics were going to get a lot better. If the Great Tesla hadn’t Twisted in 1919 when the Reeve hit, maybe he would have figured it out. There were legends of him heading into the Waste instead of waiting to be hunted down as a Twist, and the blue Potential-lightning out in the dangerous wilderness was called Tesla’s Folly.

Ellie finished typing.

BlueEllen: So you’re going to see him again, right?

CV528491: I dunno. Should I?

BlueEllen: Was he cute?

CV528491: I guess.

BlueEllen: What EXACTLY did he say?

CV528491: He asked me if I wanted the right kind of trouble.

BlueEllen: THEN HELL YES.

Well, that was as unequivocal as it got. Especially from Ellie.

CV528491: I dunno. What did you get for #4?

BlueEllen: Do NOT change the subject. When you gonna see him?

CV528491: He works here. I guess he’ll be around.

BlueEllen: You need a plan.

CV528491: I have a million plans. Unfortunately none of them are applicable.

BlueEllen: I can bring a quart of charmsauce and a couple grenades.

CV528491: You have grenades?

BlueEllen: I could always use one of the Strep’s tantrum tampons.

Cami grinned. “Tantrum tampon” had been one of the few times she hadn’t stuttered, and it had made Ellie laugh instead of crying. There weren’t many jokes just the two of them shared, without Ruby being in on it . . . but that was one of them. And she had hugged Ellie so tightly that evening, the first time the Strep went all jack-mad on her.

BlueEllen: But seriously. You need a plan for this. It involves a boy.

CV528491: What I NEED is to finish that stupid Hist paper. #4?

BlueEllen: Let me check.

Ellie took the hint, then, and kept it to Calculus. She also suggested Cami trash the outline and just get Ruby to write the goddamn thing. She’s already doing mine, Ellie pointed out, and just then RubyRedHood popped up in the Juno intrachat and Ellie, being mod for this turn, hit the “accept” button.

RubyRedHood: What did I miss?

Ellen, thank God, didn’t tell her. By the end of the chat, the HC Calc homework was done and Ruby had decided she was going to do all three papers, because she liked it. Cami would take the French homework, and that was that. For someone with a tongue that tripped over itself, she was remarkably okay at French. It helped that it was all in the back of the throat, instead of in front where said tongue would mess it up.

She leaned back in her chair. It was a gray, raw afternoon, and in a little bit she would go visit Papa. He had been closeted with Stevens and Nico since she got home from school, and that was probably bad. Maybe Nico had been acting up. Again.

Well, I can’t watch him all the time. He doesn’t listen like he used to, either.

She chewed at her lower lip. Of course she knew what they were talking about.

The disappearances. Her shudder made the chair squeak.

The newscasts and tabloids were full of them, three children with high Potential vanishing from their houses in the last two weeks. Sometimes, when things happened, the Family would quietly step forward and help the cops figure things out. If it turned out to be a ring of fausts or a mad Twist taking kids, the Family would . . . arrange . . . things, and Nico would tell her just enough so that she knew, without having to worry.

As if he didn’t know she would worry no matter what he told her.

Vanishing children were bad for business, some of the Family would say. Cami personally thought it was bad for anyone. And not every kid who disappeared had it as lucky as the Vultusino foundling.

She leaned back in her chair, tilting her head.

White walls, silky blond ashwood furniture, thin gauzy white curtains under the thicker cream-brocade ones. The carpet was cream instead of snow. It was like the surface of an egg, and Marya had moaned about putting a child in such a room. But Cami’s disorderliness had been entirely confined to the kitchen and the playroom on the first floor, with its bright primary colors, blocks and toys and every variety of messmaking a little girl could want. Wherever she’d been before Papa found her, she had learned not to mar a blank white surface.

A flash of noise filled her head, and she smelled fresh-cut apples. Maybe Marya was baking and Potential, or just the heating duct, was carrying the aroma up here. Cami pushed away from the Babbage, wandered to the wide south-facing window. Her schoolbag was a dimple of darkness on the bed and the closet was ajar, showing clean Juno uniforms, white shirts, sweaters. She’d draped a long gauzy blue scarf—originally bought for Ellie, but torn now—over the full-length mirror, and she avoided looking through the gauze with the ease of long habit.

Mirrors weren’t quite . . . safe. For one thing, Potential behaved a little oddly around any reflective surface. They were called soulcatchers for a reason, Ellie had remarked once. There’s all sorts of stories. Didn’t you know?

Cami just didn’t like them, that was all. Meeting her own eyes was never a comfortable experience, and sometimes she wondered that Nico and her friends had such an easy time with it.

The window seat was white watered silk, and she braced a knee on it, her breath touching the glass with flowering mist. Below, some of the garden boys were working at the margins of the pond and the rose garden, in the hedge maze dewed with rain. Even in the cold months there was plenty for them to do. Nico didn’t even notice them, the way he didn’t notice the army of maids Marya fussed at to keep the whole house shining.

That’s the difference. He can’t see, I can’t look away.

A sharp unpleasant shudder raced down her back with small prickling feet. One of the garden boys had messy black hair. He wore a white T-shirt even in the chill, steam lifting from his skin as he worked at trimming a hedge with what looked like a giant pair of scissors. He tossed his hair back with a flick of his head, a habitual movement, and Cami recoiled as if scalded. She was on the third floor; they couldn’t see up here in the afternoon, even with the golden electric light shining behind her.

Here she was, barefoot in a pair of jeans that probably cost more than the garden boy made in a week, her pale-pink long-sleeved silk T-shirt barely meeting Ruby’s standards of fashionable—expensive, yes, but not nearly eye-catching enough—but also probably worth more than a day’s wages for him. He’d be sent to college, sure, and maybe end up a kolkhoz smallcharmer or low-level industrial tech.

But right now he was out in the rain, while she was warm, and dry, and moaning about homework. Not to mention looking forward to a party and presents and all the accoutrements of a cushioned life on the Hill.

Why would he say anything to her? Some guys thought the scars made her easy, or that she could introduce them to Family. And all the Family boys were never good enough for Nico’s approval. I know what they’re thinking, he would say darkly, and scowl. Asking just how he knew what they were thinking was guaranteed to make him stamp and be difficult. And God forbid she actually asked what exactly he thought they were thinking.

She kept breathing on the glass. Maybe a pattern would show itself in the condensation, something that would solve the problem.

What problem?

Her fingertip rested on the glass. It wasn’t quite a star, she decided. Star-shaped, but not a star. And there were little things, like seeds. She traced it, rapt concentration taking over as her finger followed an invisible thread. The window-glass shivered.

Below, in the hedge maze, a dark head paused. Tor looked up, and black eyes flashed.

Cami snatched her hand back, guiltily. She ducked as if he could see her, three stories above in her eggshell bower. The vapor on the window vanished, leaving the pattern unfinished. What had she been thinking of?

The design on his necklace. A star. Only not a star.

Cami slid off the window seat. Her legs were trembling slightly. For some reason, the image of a round, juicy, ripe red apple had filled her head. Was Marya baking? It was silly, but this particular apple loosened her knees and made the rest of her cold all over, as if she was outside in the rain too.

Not rain. Snow. Lots of snow. Her wrists ached, the old scars twinging.

She shook her head. There was a soft respectful tap at the door. “Miss Cami?” It was a servant, a cheerful brunette girl who was often in the hallways dusting in a black uniform and a starched white cap. “Miss Cami, Sir is asking for you.”

Cami let out a long shaky breath. Papa was done with Nico and Stevens. It was time to go comb his hair and talk to him. She could talk to him about Ellie and Ruby, maybe. That was a safe subject.

Southking Street, Torin Beale, and apples were definitely not safe. Who could she tell? What did she have to talk about, other than a persistent feeling of cold sinking dread?

Her hand was on the colorless crystal doorknob. Something splatted against her window.

Cami jumped, but there was nothing. Not even a mark on the rain-soaked glass.

“Miss Cami?” Another soft tap.

“Y-yes.” Her throat was dry. Her head ached, suddenly, and her wrists gave another flare of pain, as if sharp metal was tightening around them. She managed to twist the knob and summoned up a pale smile for the worried-looking maid. “Th-thank y-you. Y-Y-Y-Yol-landa, right?”

The brunette beamed, her round face splitting with delight. “Yesmum. Thank you.” Blushing fiercely, she retreated, and Cami hurried in her wake, padding barefoot and trembling toward the Red Room and an old man’s labored breathing.

TEN

THE BIG, SOFT FINGERTIPS ARE AT MY THROAT. LONG broad hands, the fingers slightly swollen and manicured, and Her face is a white moon with golden hair fountaining over it. She traces my windpipe, the thin skin and ridges of cartilage underneath. The buzzing in my head is full of that funny smell—apples and heavy incense, a drugging smoke that makes my entire body a slow, lumbering mass. I am so small, and I am being spread out, too thin, butter scraped over too much bread. That cannot be right, for I am curled forward, my head on Her pillow, our hair mingling as She settles next to me. Dust rises, each speck of it glowing with Her presence, and under the drugging incense is a hint of sharpish rot.

But I do not care. It is soft here, but so cold. She is the only heat, and it is a chill that burns.

This one’s heart, She whispers, Her red lips shaping the words so slowly. You love Me, don’t you? My Nameless.

Oh, I do. I cannot help myself. We are wound together, Her palm against my tiny chest, everything in me rising to meet Her. She is gravity, She is dim light and life and love, and I make small piping sounds as She caresses me. This pleases Her, and Her nails scrape lightly, sliding through layers of pinhole-eaten velvet brought from Above. Only the big ones go Above, the littles are not allowed. The bigs bring back food and cloth, shinies to please Her and refuse for the littles to eat after the dogs are done.

Always after the dogs are done.

Sometimes, often enough, there is a new big one, to shave and to bring to Her for the oblivion She promises. A refugee from Above, where everything is too bright, too loud, too sharp, too deadly.

There is a steady persistent drip-drip-dripping, water on stone, and the badness is coming. Suddenly I am even smaller and a flood of chill ink is rising, its surface glittering with flecks of dusty phosphorescence, and as it creeps up my legs and reaches for my hips I hear the chanting. They worship Her, and She laughs, and the gleam is a glass knife, wicked and sharp. It flashes down, held in a muscled, tanned hand, a child’s scream is cut short, and Her laughter, Her laughter, it is bells and cruel beauty—

“Shhh.” Nico was on the bed, bare-shouldered, red sparks in his pupils. A wedge of golden electric light spilled in from the hall, and there was Marya, blue silk and her fey-woven shawl fluttering as she made helpless little movements with her hands. “Shh, Cami. It’s just a dream. You’re all right.”

“Nightmares again?” Trigger, a scarecrow with a mop of messy hair, an unusual shape because he wasn’t in a baggy, beaten sports jacket. His white T-shirt glowed, and he kept his right hand low, because there was a gun’s gleam clasped in it.

“S-s-s-s-so-sor-r—” The word wouldn’t come, it was a stone of panic in her throat, and the white bedroom shivered around her, trembling like oil on the surface of a puddle. Underneath that thin screen the bad blackness lived, it was rising, and as the dream shredded, Cami’s cheeks were slick and hot with tears.

“She’s okay,” Nico said over his shoulder. “You can go on back to bed.”

Marya was having none of it. “Little sidhe. Screaming so loud. Is it them? Are they here?”

Who? But Cami was shaking so hard, the question wouldn’t stay in her head.

“Shhh. Don’t.” Trigger had the feywoman’s arm. Marya’s eyes glowed with bluish foxfire over the smooth black from lid to lid—she must be upset, Cami thought, and another apology was caught and murdered by her stupid, treacherous, stuttering tongue.

Why can’t I TALK?

“Stop saying sorry.” Nico snapped his fingers sharply under her nose. “Book. Say book.”

It won’t work. This will be the time it stops working.

Marya resisted Trigger’s trying to hurry her out of the room. “If it’s them, little sidhe—they take the littles, and the hounds—”

Cami sobbed in a breath. Two.

“Get out,” Nico said quietly, but his tone rattled with menace. “Marya. Go on. Let Trigger take you back to the kitchen. All’s well here.”

“Cold iron,” Marya muttered. Her shawl moved on its own, the fringe slithering with cold sullen sounds. “Naughty little things.”

“Come on, Marya.” Trigger cast Nico a significant look over the feywoman’s drooping head, and there were other voices in the hallway. “She’s fine, it’s all right. Little girls have bad dreams sometimes.”

“Book.” Nico’s face was in front of hers, familiar in the darkness but strange with the red in his pupils, his canines touching his lower lip. “Come on, babygirl. Take a few breaths. No hurry.”

“S-s-sorry,” she managed, relieved that she could at least get that word out. Her hair was a sticky weight against her back; she had sweated and thrashed. Her arms hurt, a fierce dull ache centering on her wrists. Nico’s fingers were warm; he had her shoulders. Crouching on her bed as lightly as a cat, and his head made a small sideways sound, inquiring.

He could hear things she couldn’t, being Family.

The door swept closed, Trig saying something to whoever was out in the hall. Was the whole house awake? How loud had she screamed? Did Papa hear it, down in the Red Room? Was he now lying propped on pillows and staring, with the Kiss burning in his familiar-strange face? You could see he and Nico were related, closer even than the similarity between every Family member.

Except Cami. She didn’t look like anyone.

“Book,” Nico said, patiently. His pajama pants were worn at the knees, battered blue-striped ones she’d bought for him two Mithrusmases ago. The tang of cologne—or Papa’s aftershave—mixed with the healthy heat-haze of Nico, but overlaying it was a scrim of cigarette smoke and a copper breath. Either he’d Borrowed, or he’d been downing something with calf. “Don’t worry, Cami. We’ve got all night.”

I have school tomorrow. So she struggled with her breathing, and the gasps evened out. Her pulse continued to pound, but Nico relaxed a just a little. “B-b-b—” She coughed, swallowed, tried again. “B-book.”

The red was fading from his pupils. His shoulders lowered a bit as his canines shrank, tiny crackling sounds as the bones shifted lost under her shivering. “Good girl. Candle. Take your time.”

“C-c-candle.” Sweat cooled on her back, and her pajamas were all rucked around. The tank top was soaked through, and her sheets were probably gummy. “C-candle.”

“Marya.”

“M-mar-y-y-ya.” Her teeth threatened to chatter. She realized she still had her hands up, as if to ward off a blow, and dropped them. Nico relaxed even more, his knee wringing a creak from the springs. She blinked several times, and the white room stopped twitching as if it would shatter around her.

“Ruby.”

Oh, Mithrus. “Y-you h-h-hate—”

His laugh was sharp and short, freighted with the copperiness of calf. “We don’t like each other. You can still say her name. Come on, babygirl. Play the game.”

“R-ruby.” Her tongue was beginning to unknot itself.

“Ellen.”

“Ell-l-l-lie.”

“Good. Now take a deep breath.”

She beat him to it. “Nico.” Once more, the charm worked.

Another laugh, this one more genuine. “Good. Move over.”

The covers were a mess. And the cloth sticking to her skin was clammy, like the touch of cold fingers. Cami shook, stripping her sodden tank top off while he was punching the pillows into submission. When he settled with a sigh onto his back and she slid close enough to put her head on his shoulder, he stiffened.

“Whoa.” But his arm didn’t pause, he hugged her close, and she realized they weren’t kids anymore just as her entire body turned into one of Marya’s crackling fires.

“S-sor-r-r—” Oh, damn it.

“It’s okay. Shush.” He relaxed all at once. “Nothing I haven’t seen before, jeez. Marya used to put us in the tub together.”

Well, yeah. But that was years ago. “Th-they kn-know y-you’re u-u-u-up h-here.” The stutter got worse when she tried to whisper, now. Stupid thing, her tongue in revolt.

“What, you think I’m bad for your reputation?” But there wasn’t any bite to the words. He sounded, of all things, amused. “Better get used to it.”

“N-Nico.” She tried to put all the aggravation she could into it, and poked him in the ribs. His skin was rougher than hers, and the heat of him was cleaner than nightmare-sweat. When she moved, her chest bumped against his side, and he swallowed hard, very quickly.

“Do me a favor and settle down, okay? I’m being a gentleman.”

Oh really? The scalding flush subsided, bit by bit. When she let out a long shaky sigh, every muscle suddenly deciding to unstring itself, he murmured quietly.

“You remember this one?” Very careful, very soft, as if by asking gently he could bring the dream out into the light.

Nothing but whiteness, choking softness, and the cold. This one’s heart. She shook her head, carefully, trying not to move anything else.

“Someday you will,” he said, into the darkness. “And I’ll fix it. I promise.”

“Y-you d-don’t have t-to.” If I could remember, I might not want to tell you. Because you’d do something, maybe something the Family couldn’t cover up, and Papa would get mad. I should distract you. “Wh-what w-was M-Marya saying? Th-th-them.”

“Nothing.” Slightly irritated now. “Family stuff. It’s being taken care of.”

She said nothing. Her chest hurt, but she didn’t dare move. The rock in her throat was dry, but getting up to get a glass of water suddenly seemed like a bad idea, since she’d tossed her tank top over the side.

Nico’s arm tensed. He squeezed her, very carefully. The crackling tension and strength under his skin suddenly made sense—it wasn’t just whiskey and calf he’d been at.

He’d Borrowed. Family business. The ache under her ribs was a sharp spike.

“It’s nothing you should worry about,” he said, finally. “There’s some . . . problems. In town. And Papa’s close to transition. So some things creep out of the cracks and think that the Seven are distracted.”

“Th-the k-kids? The m-missing ones?”

“Like I said, nothing for you to worry about. Think about your party instead.”

Oh, yeah, that makes it tons better. “R-ruby has a d-dress for me.”

“Can’t wait. And no, I won’t tell you what I got you. You’re gonna have to wait and see.”

Cami turned her head a little. Her lips met the hollow between his shoulder and chest, muscle and skin fever-hot against her cheek. His hand had slid down, cupping the curve of her hip through her own flannel pajama bottoms. He had gone so still she wondered if he’d transitioned right there, and she almost winced. Just another reminder of what would eventually happen to him. Papa’s dead mortal wife hadn’t been Family; but once you had some of the blood, you were part of the chain. Did Nico ever wonder why Papa had given Camille that name? Did it bother him?

I wish I knew my born name. “I w-w-wish I b-belonged,” she whispered against his shoulder.

“You do,” he whispered back. “With me. Now go to sleep, before I get the urge to do something I shouldn’t.”

Would that make it better? Do you really want to? She held herself stiff and silent, afraid of moving, until the rhythm of his breathing lengthened and his head tipped back. Huddled against him, Cami stared over his chest at the curtains over her window moving slightly, maybe in a breeze from the heat register in the floor, and tried not to think about apples until sleep finally found her.

ELEVEN

OCTOVUS BLEW IN WITH SOAKING STORMS FULL OF Waste-lightning, but the week of Cami’s birthday was only cloudy and cold. The house throbbed and whispered, the manicured grounds were starred with charmed lanterns, bright dots of golden light, gleaming now that dusk was falling and the party was about to start.

“Oh, wow.” Ruby touched one of the shoulder straps, pushing it up a quarter-inch. She also brushed at a stray strand of Cami’s hair, her quick fingers tucking it behind a bobby pin and magically making the mess artful instead of silly. “Almost perfect. Where are the pearls?”

“Here.” Ellie blinked, biting at her lip a little. The single strand of irregular, pinkish pearls, red silk thread knotted between each one, nestled against Cami’s collarbone; Ellie fastened the clasp. “Yeah. Wow is right.”

Cami shut her eyes. Next would come the mirror. “H-how b-b-bad is it?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Ruby actually bounced on her toes, a movement Cami could feel. “You’re gorgeous. Let me get my heels. Ellie, make her look.”

“She has to get her own shoes on, too.” Ellie patted Cami’s silk-clad shoulder. “Cami, sweets, it’s not bad at all. You’re gonna knock ’em dead. Cheer up, it’s your birthday.”

Not really. But they didn’t know that.

“J-j-just a-n-n-nother F-f-f-family p-party.” Things were getting more tangled by the minute. Oh, God, I probably look ridiculous in this thing. Why did I let Ruby talk me into it?

It was traditional for the daughter of a Seven to wear red on her sixteenth. Not just any red, either, but heartsblood, the red so dark it could only come from the last wringing of that deep organ. The straps would have worried Cami, but they were wide enough—and Ruby had come up with a pair of long white opera gloves to cover most of the scars. The others wouldn’t show much unless she blushed, so all Cami had to do was stay away from anything embarrassing.

This is so not going to work.

“Cami, honey.” Ellie patted her bare shoulder again. “You’re going to have to see to step into your shoes.”

The V waistline of the dress had looked okay while it was on the hanger, and the skirt skimmed her hips and flared enough that she could walk without tripping herself. Ruby had also found a pair of pumps in exactly the right shade; Cami didn’t have a clue just how.

Doesn’t matter, Ruby had said, cheerfully. If it exists, I find it. I’m a hunter, baby. Rawr!

Ellie and Ruby had fussed over her hair, torturing it with flatirons and pins with holding charms, and Ruby had painted the makeup on with a steady hand. Don’t make me look Twisted! Cami had wailed, only it took her three times as long to say it.

The reply was classic Rube: Relax, bitch. I wouldn’t Twist you up.

“I c-c-can’t. They’ll all b-b-b-be l-l-l-looking.”

Ellie’s fingers were warm and gentle. “If it makes you feel better, they’ll be looking at Ruby looking slutty more than either of us. You’re not showing enough skin to be a Magdalen, even.”

“I do not look slutty,” Ruby piped up. “You’re just overly modest. Or, to put it another way, boring.”

“I am comfortable with my boringness, thank you.” Ellie snorted. “Come on, Cami. One foot in front of the other.”

Sometimes she wished she’d met Ellie before Ruby. When Ruby arrived in third grade at the Hallows School, one of her first acts at recess was decking one of the girls teasing Cami about her stutter. Cami had simply put her head down and shrank into herself, but Ruby, afire with indignation, took on all comers. It’s not FAIR, she would yell, before leaping on someone in a flurry of fists and feet. From that moment, they’d been friends—and Ellie had come along later, in middle school at Havenvale. Private schools in New Haven had their own language, one Ellie hadn’t known since she and her dad had moved from another city, overWaste in a charm-sealed train—but again, Ruby had ridden in to save Ellie from getting picked on, and now they were a troika.

Or more like Ruby and Ellie were best friends, and Cami was the third wheel that made the thing stable.

She opened her eyes. Ellie was grinning, the faint freckles on her nose almost invisible under a light coat of translucent powder. She had great skin. “That’s good. She’s breathing and has her eyes open.”

“Check her for a pulse. Maybe she’s transitioned.” Ruby snorted, leaning over the vanity and touching up her eye makeup. The little black dress sheathing her was almost indecent, but with her glory of coppery hair and the expertly applied eyeliner she somehow looked fresh instead of whorish.

“Wow, even more tasteless than usual, Rube.” Ellie was in black too, a halter-topped satiny number that made her into a sleek old-timey film star, her pale hair slicked down and her lack of jewelry classic instead of poor. It weighs me down, she said, twisting at the ring on her finger—a charmed star sapphire, the only thing left from her real mother. The Evil Strep had been talked into letting Ellie stay the night, probably because Stevens had taken care of sending a formal invitation to one Ellen Sinder, with the Vultusino crest impressed on the wax seal and a heavy scent of money wafting up from the pressed-linen paper. She looked just about green when she got it, too, Ellie had whispered gleefully.

Even a famous charmer with a Sigil like the Strep feared Family.

“I can’t help it. I’m nervous. If Cami faints I might turn into a puddle of tears.” Ruby turned away from the vanity mirror and batted her eyelashes, making little kissy noises.

“F-f-f-fuck you!” Cami burst out.

They all dissolved into laughter, and Cami stepped into the pumps. They were okay, she guessed. Heels always made her unsteady, no matter how many Family functions she attended.

Ellie took her elbow, and they approached the full-length mirror in its heavy frame, the scarf over it fluttering from a stray breath, probably from the heater registers. Ruby arrived on a wafting breeze of chocolate perfume, whisking the gauzy material aside. “Voila. Gaze upon fair princesses, better than mortal man deserves.”

“Amen to that,” Ellie muttered.

Cami peeked at herself.

Oh.

The slim, red-wrapped girl in the mirror hanging on Ellie’s arm had a shy disbelieving smile. Her gloves were spotless white, her lips carmine, her black hair an artful mass of charmed curls, a single charmstick thrust through it and dangling a string of crystalline red beads. The kohl smudged around her blue eyes made them huge, and she looked tall, elegant, and completely unlike the regular, everyday stuttering Cami.

This once, the mirror didn’t frighten her. It was a miracle. “Wow,” she breathed.

“Amen again.” Ellie grinned. She tugged at her skirt, removing an imaginary wrinkle. “There. I think she appreciates our efforts, Rube.”

“She’d goddamn better.” Ruby tossed her curls. “Come on. We’re fashionably late, ladies. Let’s go Make An Entrance.”

Every house of the Seven had a ballroom. The Vultusino’s was a long wood-floored expanse, spindly wrought-iron chairs and tables along the walls and several smaller chambers opening away—the ladies’ resting room, the smoking room, the two supper rooms, the solarium, two private audience chambers for Family business, the playroom for children too young to participate in the dancing, and a private room for members of the Family hosting the event to retreat to. The licensed and charm-bonded caterers were already at work, threading through guests with silver trays bearing fluted crystal glasses of champagne, champagne-and-calf, and fruit juices, as well as tiny, exquisite canapés. The mirrored bar was two deep already, the massive crystal-draped chandelier blazed, and the portly moustachioed herald at the door—another traditional feature—gave a signal. The music halted, turned on a dime, and became a tinkling fanfare.

“The Lady Camille Vultusino has arrived!” The herald’s bass voice cut the hush, and Cami stepped through with her head high. Her knees almost buckled, and she heard very little of the herald announcing Ruby and Ellie.

Well, Ruby would be thrilled with that.

There were Family everywhere. The others of the Seven were represented—a contingent from the Cinghiale, and the Canisari their traditional opposing force, the Vipariane the balance to the Vultusino, the Stregare who were balance to no one, with their distinctive long tapering fingers and gold jewelry. The two branches of the Diablie, the Destra and Sinistra, mingling and indistinguishable except for their Unbreathing Elders, who stood stiffly, gleams of coal-red or foxfire-blue in their clouded pupils.

There were so many Unbreathing here, probably because Papa was close to transition. So still, only the gleam of their eyes moved as their gazes combed the crowd of breathing life. They stood tall, thin, and motionless, somehow avoided even in the heaviest crush of bodies.

You never wanted to crowd the Unbreathing. They didn’t see things the way the mortal living did, and sometimes they . . . did things.

Nico appeared. She threaded her arm through his and tilted her head, accepting the polite applause. “Finally,” he muttered without moving his lips. “You’re beautiful.”

The flush was all through her. Everyone could probably see the thin white scars on her upper shoulders. The music began, and he was heading straight for the dance floor, where the crowd was pulling back and away.

“N-no.” She tried to tug on his arm. “Y-you’re c-c-cra—”

“Relax.” With his dark hair slicked back and his eyes blazing, he looked more Family than ever. Next to his impeccably crisp tuxedo and the Heir’s bloodring glimmering on his finger, she already felt a little rumpled and wilting. “It’s just a waltz. Tradition, kid.”

It’s always tradition in a Family. Why was this tradition okay with him, and other ones not?

The empty floor looked very large, and Cami caught a flash of russet hair. Ruby was already heading for the bar; Ellie had a glass of plain champagne half drained, and both of them looked inordinately smug. Trouble was on its way. For once, though, she didn’t have to worry about derailing it.

Or, she could worry, but she couldn’t exactly do anything about it.

Nico halted, the music began, and her body obeyed woodenly. She’d liked dance classes well enough; every girl of New Haven’s upper crust had them at the Vole Academy. Madame Vole never made fun of Cami’s stutter—in fact, she understood Camille Vultusino would prefer not to speak at all, and Cami never got into trouble for giggling in class.

Her feet didn’t stutter, either.

Nico paused, catching the rhythm. Her hand on his shoulder, his secure and warm at her waist, and all of a sudden they were nine and thirteen again, sneaking into the shuttered ballroom and pretending to be grown-ups. Waltzes and foxtrots, a scratchy tango played on an ancient Victrola from just after the Reeve, and she found herself moving with him, the flush fading as the world dropped away. He gazed steadily over her shoulder, and she could just let him do the directing.

“I mean it,” he said, finally. “You’re beautiful.”

She nodded. Thank you. She could feel the words knotting up.

So could he. “Book.”

“B-b-book.” Automatically.

“Candle.”

“C-candle.”

“Nico.”

“Nico.” Her smile caught her unawares; she watched his face.

Serious, intent, a sharp line between his eyebrows. His eyes were darker than usual, too. “I want to tell you something.”

“Okay.” As long as they kept dancing, she could handle this.

“But not until later, okay? Just . . . relax. This is your night. And there’s a surprise.”

“Surprise?” Another one?

“Yep.” And he whirled her to a halt amid a swirl of polite applause. A shadow loomed in her peripheral vision, and Cami almost flinched.

But it was only Papa, straight as a poker in his own tuxedo, mane of graying hair combed neatly and the Vultusino signet on his left hand glowing with its own sullen crimson spark. He moved stiffly, and the ruddiness in his graven cheeks told her he had Borrowed.

Stevens would be upstairs in the Red Room, probably with Chauncey transfusing him from canisters—breathing Family couldn’t take transfusion, it had to be straight from the living. It was dangerous for Papa to Borrow so close to the Kiss, and Cami gasped as a murmur swelled through the crowd.

Nico handed her over, and the music came back on a tide of strings. Papa’s smell—bay rum, leather, and copper—enfolded her. The world righted itself once again. She laid her head below his shoulder carefully, so she didn’t disarrange the charms in her hair or throw him off balance.

She shouldn’t have worried. He was strong, especially so near the Kiss, and his iron grip was carefully gentle; she could feel the restraint quivering in his hard hands.

“Bambina,” he whispered, his lips moving slightly. “My little girl.”

It wasn’t like dancing with Nico. She could let Nico do the steering. Papa wasn’t being let. He just did it, like a tidal wave or a minotaur. There was no stopping him.

That was an even greater relief.

“You are Family,” Papa said, in that same stilted whisper. “Nico knows.”

If Papa says it, it has to be true. She kept dancing. A nod, letting him know she heard, her cheek moving against his chest. His tuxedo smelled of fresh air and starch, and somehow it was subtly wrong. The humanity in him was burning out, and what was left was dry clove-and-copper, a mix of crusted blood and the ancient spice of the Unbreathing.

Already, Papa’s great barrel chest was thinning. “When I am gone—”

“No.” She had never in her life dared to interrupt him. “No, P-papa.” Unbreathing wasn’t gone, it was just changed. But things looked different on the other side of the Kiss, and the Unbreathing retreated from the world. At least, they didn’t keep charge of Family affairs, unless there was an inter-Seven dispute. Then they moved, swiftly, to punish—or simply to appear; their mere presence often solved any number of . . . problems.

Papa’s hand tightened a fraction on her waist. “When I am gone, bambina, Nico protects you, eh? It is arranged.”

It is arranged. Those three little words, the seal of finality. How many times had she heard him say it, deciding some detail, from a business deal to other, darker things? Things she wasn’t supposed to know or think about. The lump in Cami’s throat didn’t go away, and the water in her eyes was going to ruin Ruby’s careful work.

It was arranged. Well, okay. Great. Except she didn’t want Papa to transition. There. She’d admitted it, at least to herself.

Because once he was gone, the others with their flaming eyes and their cruel mouths would maybe not keep their disapproval whispered behind ring-jeweled hands. Nico wouldn’t notice, or if he did, it would only make him furious. There would be Trouble, capitalized and underlined, and there was no way she could head that trouble off without Papa’s breathing presence keeping the worst of it at bay.

His certainty of her belonging was the only anchor she had, really.

The music finally came to a close, and there was more applause as Papa handed her back to Nico. She tried to look happy. Papa patted her cheek, his hand feverscorching and dry. At least he looked pleased, an infinitely small smile creasing his coppery face, thinning as the Kiss hollowed him out.

Trig was suddenly there, angular, scrubbed and slightly ill-at-ease in a black jacket instead of his usual violent plaid, his bowtie just a little askew. Papa took his proffered left arm, and the respectful murmur hushed even further.

Nico was very still, watching.

Something’s wrong.

The wrongness crested. Papa stopped, Trig at his elbow, and his gray head lowered. A sigh went through the assembled Family—bright-eyed, clothed in expensive dark fabrics, their faces all slightly similar in some way outsiders could never quite articulate, broad high cheekbones and their foreheads all curved to the same degree, a similarity more instinctively felt than actually seen. Ruby and Ellie stood out in that sea of sameness, Ellie’s face very pale as she stood rigid next to Ruby’s bright flame. Rube had her fingers around Ellie’s arm, digging in.

What’s wrong?

The black-clad servants began to notice the hush. One of them was the garden boy. Tor stood by the door to the smoking room, and he was the only person not staring at motionless Papa Vultusino.

Instead, his black eyes burning, his hair messily declaring war on whatever he’d tried to plaster it down with, he gazed directly at Camille. His lips moved slightly, as if he was mumbling a message, or singing to himself. There was a glitter at his throat—a silver chain, the necklace tucked below the black button-down shirt with its starched and ironed creases. Roaring filled Cami’s ears. She swayed on her heels, and Nico steadied her absently. High flags of feverish color stood out on Nico’s shaved cheeks, and the tips of his canines touched his lower lip.

Enrico Vultusino collapsed, his rigidity crumbling and the rest of mortality sloughing from him as the tuxedo flapped on his suddenly slimming frame. Trig caught him; several other living Family moved forward to help. They halted, however, as a sound like a hot wind through a wet cornfield echoed in the ballroom. The living Family parted, and the Unbreathing came forward, moving like eerie graceful clockwork, their motionless bone-dry faces merely settings for the bright jewels of their eyes. They closed around Papa and bore him away, leaving Trig adrift-alone in the middle of the dance floor.

The Kiss had claimed Enrico Vultusino, after long years of service to the Family. It was an honor to be allowed to see the Unbreathing, an honor to see them claim one of their own. The older Family daywalkers clustered about, clasping Cami’s hand and murmuring how they were proud to be part of the occasion, how lovely she looked, how Papa was an Elder now. The younger stared, some of the girls with frank envy, the boys getting close whenever the crowd took Nico away, one or two of them bending over her hand and pressing their lips to her gloved knuckles while she smiled and tried to look pleased.

It was like seeing everyone celebrate because the sun wasn’t going to come up again. There was a Papa-shaped hole in the world now, and she just felt cold.

For the rest of the evening, as the Family celebrated both a daughter’s birthday and the ascension of another of the Seven to the Unbreathing, Cami could not shake the image of Trig with his hands loose and empty, suddenly old as he watched the man he would have died for taken away into strange heatless immortality.

Trig was mere-human too.

Just like Camille.

Even Ruby was yawning. She and Ellie leaned together at the bar, giggling, as a few Family bravos complimented them and did shots of vodka-lamb instead of calf. The charms on the girls’ hair glowed as the lights sank, the house preparing for dawn. Outside in the cold rain, small golden flames guttered out one by one in a randomness not even a Sigiled adept could discern a pattern behind.

Camille leaned into Nico, his the only heat in the chill surrounding her. They swayed together in a private corner of the dance floor, near a bank of small tables littered with napkins, empty glasses, twists of paper from the canapés and jack-d’oeuvres. The crowd was thinning. The music, drifting from speakers hidden in the ancient moldings, had turned sleepy, but Nico was still bright-eyed and tense.

“Hey,” he whispered into her hair. “You awake, babygirl?”

Not really. But she nodded slightly. Her hair had held up wonderfully, though a single charmed curl had fallen free over her face. Leave it, Ruby had said in the ladies’ dressing room a few hours ago. Looks smashing.

Smashing hell, Ellen had replied. You’re the one smashed. She was one to talk, getting another gin and tonic down with a practiced bolt. The blond’s mine.

D-d-don’t, Cami had told her. The champagne had been fizzing in her head, loosening the knot in her tongue. She’d blinked, nodding sagely. He’s m-mean, and he has a d-disease. N-n-nico told me.

For some reason, that had cracked both of them up—but Ellie had given the blond boy from the Cinghiale Family short shrift after that, and he’d left with a group of youngbloods for some club or another close to the core. Something about a minotaur cage, and Cami didn’t want to know.

Family girls didn’t go out after dark. They were taken home in private cars, put to bed and fussed over. Some of them sneaked out and ran with the boys—but they were Wild, and even they had stringent rules to obey. They never went out alone, and absolutely never without a Family boy or two. Even Cami knew those rules.

“Having a good birthday?” He didn’t sound angry, just thoughtful. But he was so tense, humming electricity going through him. She rubbed her cheek against his shoulder, trying to soothe.

“Y-yeah.” The word was hollow. Papa was gone. Really gone. Not just up in the Red Room, listening to whatever seashore song the Kiss brought close. She would never comb his hair again. Or sit between his feet in the mothering dark below his desk, hearing the reassuring thunder of his voice from above. Never sit on his lap and play with his tie, while he patiently explained things to her or listened to her halting little-girl babble.

Maybe if she’d been born Family she wouldn’t feel this hollowness.

“Good deal.” He stopped moving, and the champagne made her head spin. He was digging in his trouser pocket, destroying the line of his jacket. It was a wonder he’d made it through tonight without a fight or anything. She’d half expected him to go off with the Cinghiale.

Maybe he was behaving just for her birthday. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Papa was gone. How was she going to keep Nico out of trouble now?

“Listen. Are you listening?”

She looked up, blinking fiercely. Everything was blurry. The last glass of champagne had filled her head with half-heard whispers, and the cold was all around her.

“Mithrus, Cami, don’t cry. He’s just transitioned. You’ll see him again. But I’m the Vultusino now. I’m finishing out at Hannibal. There won’t be any more problems there, I promise. When I come back, you’ll finish at Juno’s and go to college, right? And then—” He had finally found what he was rummaging for, and she wished he was still holding onto her. The world was tilting off-course even more, and she had the sneaking feeling it wasn’t all the champagne’s fault.

“Then,” Nico said in a rush, cracking the small red velvet box open, “we can get married.”

It was the Vultusina’s ring. A blood-diamond glittered in clawed scrollwork cage, heavy white gold alive with charmlight to make it fit the chosen one, and Cami swayed again.

What? “What?” Why was she having trouble breathing? And why was there blackness closing in around the edges of her vision?

He had never looked like this before. As if she might snatch something he wanted away, as if she was the one who could tilt her head and say let’s go, kid and be meekly followed.

“We can get married. If you . . . After, you know, college. Unless you don’t . . . don’t . . . ”

Don’t what? How could I not? A small seed of warmth bloomed under her ribs, and she almost swayed with relief. “Yes.” Her cheeks were wet. Nico. My God. “Y-yes.”

Maybe she should have thought about it. But it was Nico, the warmth under her ribs dilated, and the ring glittered as she touched it with a trembling fingertip. Its charmlight flushed a deep crimson as it popped a single spark.

If she hadn’t been the chosen one, his chosen one, the ring would refuse. It was like the Heir’s rings, or the signets. Sometimes things could be charmed for so long they seemed . . . alive.

The world righted itself, and the terrible cold fell away in invisible shards. The box snapped shut and she flung her arms around him, hugging so tight the charmstick in her hair tilted, and as he hugged her back, there was a pair of black eyes across the room.

Watching.

TWELVE

THE END OF OCTOVUS HAD ALWAYS BEEN A CELEBRATION, even before the Reeve. New Haven crouched under the lash of cold rain and spatters of sleet as Dead Harvest dawned, and curled itself down still further as the afternoon wore on under iron-colored clouds. Despite the wet and the keening east wind, last-minute costume-booths were still open on Southking, the thrift stores were crawling with customers—it was lucky to have something used as a part of your Dead Harvest attire—and the invitations flew fast and thick.

THE PLEASURE OF

YOUR PRESENCE IS REQUESTED

AT A COSTUME FÊTE,

so on, so forth.

No celebration at the Vultusino house, because of the observance of Papa’s transition. But the invitations had to be sorted, and Nico didn’t know how. It had always been Cami’s job to go through them with Papa and make a plan for their separate appearances—the arcane dance of Family etiquette dictated some parties must be attended by the Head and some by the Heir, some by a junior member; others would be important but it could give the wrong impression if the Head attended, and above all there was the careful balance of power among the Seven to take account of. This year she didn’t have Papa’s comments to guide the whole process, but she’d been swimming in the Family’s etiquette for so long there were no real problems.

It still took a while, even with Stevens making one or two helpful, if dry, remarks. Cami finally decided that since Papa had transitioned the only party that was absolutely required was the formal costume ball, hosted by the Stregare this year since one of their ruling family had transitioned too, just before May Eve.

The Vultusino would be responsible for the next May Eve party, because of Papa transitioning so close to Harvest. That was something Cami could worry about later. It would take months to make arrangements, but Stevens and Marya would help. So it ended up with only one Dead Harvest appearance to agonize over, the great Family costume ball.

Ellie was stuck home handing out candy to trick’s-treaters while the Evil Strep attended the Charmer’s Ball, and Ruby had plans with Hunter, Thorne, and some of the other Woodsdowne clanboys. So there was no help there, and Cami’s Moon costume from last year would have been fine . . . except her chest had gotten bigger, and she was taller. It looked ridiculous, and Marya muttered it was ill-luck to alter a Moon. Which meant the feywoman sent a few maids a-marketing for cloth and necessaries, and made the costume as she did every year.

Little mayfly, growing like a weed, Marya had said around the pins in her mouth. Stand still, little sidhe. Be good.

The sun slipped below the horizon on the last day of Octovus, and New Haven took a deep breath. The Dead Harvest had begun.

The gates of every great house—even the Seven’s fortresses—stood open, the charmbell buttons and antique cold-iron knockers ready to be pressed into service. The Sigiled charmers’ houses were alive with foxfire charmlight, shimmering veils through which ghostly faces pressed, half-heard whispers and screams spilling through cold night as the veil between living and dead thinned.

Every cemetery and graveyard was jammed with willo’wisps and families feasting in celebration, the gauzy shimmers of ancestral spirits hovering above the altars erected by their descendants, piled with hothouse flowers and sugar skulls melting in the damp even under the temporary canvas roofs. The first masked and gowned trick’s-treaters rang bells or knocked, and the first cry of Trick’s-treating! rang out; the first jewel-bright bits of wrapped candy showered into waiting bags. The first charmpoppers exploded against pavement, flung by shriek-laughing children.

The limousine slowed to a crawl, one of a line of shining glossy expensive cars flowing toward the Stregare’s palatial main house. Cami shivered, her tissue-thin fey-woven veil tucked aside for the moment so she could breathe. The veil hung from a silver-tinsel crown; the dress’s heavy length was brocaded with silver thread, the wand with its small golden crescent at the end, the reticule, and the fan secured at her belt. This year Marya had made Cami’s costume in the style of the Renascence, high-waisted and bound with silver ribbons at the sweeping sleeves, as if she had known what the new Vultusino had planned to wear.

Nico lounged next to her, sipping at a whiskey and calf. The new Vultusino, ill-luck be damned, had chosen to dress as pallid Pierrot. White velvet tunic, white close-fitting breeches, white glove-boots, his face smeared with white and gray and his dark hair frosted, the red-thread bracelets at his wrists and the dagger-shapes of the black cloak alluding to the Little Lover’s suicide, driven mad by the Moon-maiden who had promised . . . and left him.

Cami sighed. Nico was even being careful to sip instead of bolt his drink. If it spilled on him, the stain would never come out.

No fights, no running off, no explosions of temper. This was a new Nico, and one Cami wasn’t quite sure about.

“You’re worrying.” He frowned, took another sip. The bloody gleam of the Vultusino’s ring sent a dart of ruby light against the limousine’s roof, and Chauncey whistled tuneless between his teeth, a familiar sound of concentration. “You look great.”

The heavy weight on her left hand was the Vultusina’s ring, its stone merely blushing instead of bloody. It clasped her third finger gently, lovingly, and the metal was warm. It should have been comforting, even if there was a party looming. Her tongue was a knot, so she didn’t answer, just looked out the window.

At least la Vultusina couldn’t be openly insulted. Etiquette would demand she be treated with distance if not warmth, and Cami was fairly sure she could handle smiling and nodding. It didn’t take a lot to be agreeable, even in the Family.

Despite the rain and the fear, there was a throng on the wide pavements of the Helhurst neighborhood, where the Stregare had settled. It was lower on the Hill than the Vultusino residence, and older, but just as beautifully kept. The smaller trick’s-treaters were in groups, with more adults hovering over them than Cami could ever remember seeing on a Harvest night.

Another disappearance had been all over the newscasts. A teenage girl, full of charm-Potential, vanished on her way to the corner market to buy a quart of fey-milk for her apartment building’s concierge, a brughnie which couldn’t have comfortably gone itself.

Brughnies, like Marya, were housebound fey. Marya went a-marketing, but always with a stone or three from the Vultusino household to anchor her so she didn’t lose her way.

“Say something,” Nico persisted. He drained the dregs, a slight flush rising up his freshly shaven cheeks and a dim red gleam lighting in his pupils for a moment before retreating.

What can I say? “J-j-just w-w-wishing w-w-we c-c-could s-stay. Home.”

“What fun is that?” He grinned, and the crackle of the canines retreating and his jaw shifting was loud in the stillness. Outside, an adult dressed like an Armored Bear hunched his shoulders and “roared” for the delight of his childish audience, his broad paws spinning noisemakers, and charmsparks popping in a brief shower.

You’re trouble tonight. And I don’t know if I can stop you. So she said nothing, staring at the costumes outside the smoked charm-proof glass.

“Cami?” His fingers slid between hers. Warm and hard and familiar, the Family strength humming in his bones. Was he being careful of her mortal flesh, just as Papa always had been?

What would it be like to live with that strength, day in and day out? Sooner or later Nico was going to slip.

What would happen then?

“Th-thinking.”

“Are you wondering if I’m going to run off with the boys tonight? That’s finished.” It was the new tone, the one he’d used the night of Papa’s transition. Almost questioning, as if he wasn’t sure she would believe him.

If you get a few more whiskey and calf in you, will you still stay? But she nodded, touching her veil with her free hand. A twist of her fingers would loosen the silver clip, and she could spend the evening behind its blurring safety. Another group of children, all dressed as free fey, danced down the sidewalk, glittering with charm-sparkles carefully applied by their parents. A harried-looking mother in a wet mackintosh spread her arms, hurrying them along the sidewalk, and as her hood fell back her pale hair darkened under cold water.

Cami’s heart leapt into her throat, throbbed there for a moment. She blinked furiously, and the traffic constriction eased. Chauncey touched the accelerator, a featherlight brush, and they slid forward.

“I mean it,” Nico persisted. He squeezed her hand gently. The Vultusina’s ring would scrape his palm, but maybe he didn’t care. “Pierrot follows the Moon. All night, and always.”

Her smile took her by surprise, and when he leaned over to kiss her cheek, his breath freighted with copper and the tang of whiskey, everything in her jumped again. The unsteady feeling went away, the world regaining its solidity. “All r-r-right, P-pierrot.”

He looked pleased, and poured himself another drink.

Crush of lace and velvet of every hue, the newly finished dance floor whirling with color and motion—this was not a formal occasion, as her birthday had been. No, it was a revel, and the waiters and bartenders were the young ones among the Stregare, in their traditional blue and gold, instead of mere-human servants. The only mere-humans were security, like Trigger, and consigliere, some round and some stick-thin, all with the faraway look of those a Head could inhabit.

Cami kept her fingers lightly on Nico’s arm, ready for him to give her that half-apologetic glance and step away, especially when the crew of lean Family youngbloods called his name and surrounded them in a warm haze of liquor and feverish heat, their canines out and their pupils holding sparks of high excitement.

“Nico!” Donnie Cinghiale clapped Nico on the shoulder, then swept Cami a wide, mocking bow, the black robes of his Haxemeister costume already disarranged and a drabble of spilled vodka and lamb splashed on his white shirt-front. “And the Moon Herself! Hey, bound for Taxtix tonight. Hot fight. You coming?”

“Only if la mia signorina wants to,” Nico replied, hooking his arm over Cami’s shoulders and giving a wide, brilliant smile. His other hand held a single glass—more whiskey and calf, but he’d been nursing it since they arrived. Which was not usual. “Pierrot and the Moon, get it?”

Their laughter had teeth, and one of the Vipariane—Bernardo, the one who had cornered her once at a coming-of-age party and breathed how sweet, how sweet drunkenly into her hair—pressed close. “Ah, you’re not hanging it up and leaving the nightlife to us, are you, Niccolo? We’ll be lonely!”

Tresar Canisari, short and bandy-legged in his springhell-Jack costume, the oilskin over his dark curls knocked awry, let out a hiccupping laugh and slung his arm over his cousin Colt’s broad shoulders. “Pierrot and the Moooooon!” he crowed.

Cami’s breath came short and fast. She tried to step away, but Nico’s arm tensed. “My lady Moon, Tres.” Still with that bright, unsettling smile, both amusement and warning. The Vultusina’s ring spat a single bloody spark, but the sound was lost under the waves of crowd-noise.

“Lady Moon!” Baltus Destra elbowed his cousin, lean dark Albin, and they managed wide drunken bows as well.

I hate this. She pinched Nico on the ribs, but gently, her fingers slipping against white velvet—her private signal for I have to go. “P-powder r-r-r-room,” she managed, over the music. The beginning bars of a tarantelle had struck, and that was a man’s dance. The wives and daughters usually retreated during the tarantelle and the gipsicala, and the young men were allowed to shout and misbehave while the elder men gathered in the smoking room to transact Family business. When the moresca played, the women would re-enter, and the boys would have had enough time to blow off their steam and act reasonably again.

That was what was supposed to happen. Some of the Family girls—the Wild ones—danced the gipsicala, but not many, and those who did were taken home early, if their mothers could drag them away.

Nico hugged her closer for a moment, before pressing his lips to her veiled forehead. The youngbloods hooted and catcalled, but he didn’t seem to mind, and the veil hid Cami’s blush.

At least, she hoped it did. Nico let her go, and Cami stepped away, a current of retreating Family women bearing her along.

Halfway to the powder room, a hard shove from behind in the crowd and someone stumbled into her. A flood of whiskey and calf splashed from a full glass. Cami staggered, almost falling—and whoever bumped her was whirled away on a tide of young Family men, their pupils gleaming with colored sparks and their heels, no matter what costume they wore, drumming the wooden dance floor in time to the driving beat.

“Tarantelle!” one shouted; the answering cry rose from the others’ throats in a wave of copper-laced heat. A violin wailed, and the gitterns began to strum harder.

The veil stuck to her damp cheeks, and Cami struggled to breathe. The powder room had to be in this general direction; she felt along the wall for a doorknob, a latch, anything. Bumped and pressed, feathered masks and high tinkling laughter as the music spoke from the Family’s distant past, igniting the creeping fire in their veins. The musicians, behind carved screens, were older Family men, and those who showed musical promise almost never developed the Kiss, even if they served the Family well. You cannot serve the Kiss and the music, the Family said, and the proverb meant much more. It meant being caught between a rock and a hard place, or trying to serve two masters. Sometimes it meant betrayal, and other times it meant Fate.

The Family had some funny ideas about Fate, and try as she might she could never get Papa or even Nico to explain them. Maybe you had to be born in to understand.

Sweat slid down her back, soaking into velvet. The dress was too heavy, and it dragged the floor. If she danced, it would have to be a slow waltz, or she’d trip over the material.

Oh please, come on, the powder room. Please. Her tongue was a knot, and so were her lungs, struggling against the noise and the glare and the veil’s gauze, plastered to her face. Her questing fingers slid against a crystalline knob, she twisted savagely and shoved the door open. Stumbled into welcome cool, dark quiet, pushing the veil aside and gulping in dusty air full of neglect and stillness. The door swung shut behind her and she leaned against it, not caring where she was as long as she could breathe.

The darkness, after all the whirling color and motion, was a shock. Her ribs heaved; her wrists twinged sharply. It took a little while for her heart to stop pounding, and the dripping from her abused costume was loud in the stillness. Whiskey and calf, of course. It was never going to come out. Marya would scold and scold.

As soon as she could breathe again, she patted at her belt. The reticule was there, with all the supplies for the evening. She could dab at the dripping with the small charmcloth in her reticule, but it was all down her front. She probably looked like Bloody Scot Mary, for God’s sake.

She clipped her veil aside and took stock. Where am I?

A parquet floor. Shrouded shapes of furniture, antique gasjets jutting from the walls. Tall narrow windows choked with heavy rotting velvet drapes—what was this room? It looked like it hadn’t been open for ages. The furniture was low, and there were high lamp-shapes with ancient, cracked tubing dangling from them.

Oh. It’s a Borrowing room.

They didn’t have them in all the Family houses anymore, just the older ones. There was the fireplace with its carved screen, and above the dangling tubes were the glass canisters, filthy with dust. The vessel, Family or human, would lie on the higher couch, the Borrower on the lower and wider one with the flowerlike cup to their mouth, and the red light from the canisters would grow dimmer and dimmer as the vessel was drained. This wasn’t the private Borrowing between a Seven and one of their honored servants; this would be where the Festas Scarletas would be held and treaties would be cemented. It was also where an Elder would Borrow from a breathing Family member, with other Unbreathing in a circle around the two to make certain the Borrower didn’t take too much.

The furniture was likely as old as New Haven itself, and the drapes were probably so rotten they would fall at a touch.

I shouldn’t be here. She reached behind her for the doorknob, but it slipped against her sweating fingers. I really should not be in here. Powder room. It can’t be far away.

But it would be full of slim bright-eyed Family girls and their lacquered mothers, all of them knowing who Cami was but few deigning to speak to her, and never without a sneer. At least they didn’t actively do anything like some of the girls at school—it was beneath the pureblood girls to even notice the Vultusino foundling. It would be different if she’d been from a charming clan, married into the Family to cement an alliance or to strengthen the bloodline. Papa’s dead wife had been a Sigiled charmer, a shining mortal star among them, from what Cami could tell.

What did they think of Papa giving her that name? She’d sometimes wondered. There was nobody to ask, and the wondering always led her to a deeper, more uncomfortable question.

What’s my born name? Her wrists ached, sharply. She twisted at the knob again.

It refused to budge. Her sweating hand couldn’t grip properly, and the music throbbing outside was oddly muted. Cami’s dripping skirts brushed the deep dust griming the parquet. Nobody had walked in here for a long time.

Alcohol fumes rose from her ruined costume, she could almost see them; her Potential moved uneasily in the dimness around her, its heatripple haze almost visible as well.

What is that?

One of the curtains was slightly askew, and a cold white glow edged the folds of velvet. An outside window? Not in a Borrowing room. And it’s raining, there’s no . . .

A shudder slid through her entire body, crown to soles. The music had changed. It wasn’t the tarantelle or the moresca, not a waltz or a foxtrot, not even a tango or a capriccine. It was a queer atonal moaning, several voices piled atop one another and echoing, a soft drip-drip-dripping with no pattern stitching the chant together.

And yet . . . it was familiar, in some way. The cold touch of her nightmares down her back began, ice cubes against sweating skin.

I can’t . . . Cami stepped away from the door. The dust-thickened curtains moved slightly, as if touched by a hand or a vagrant breeze, and her footsteps—the Moon wore silver slippers with metal at heel and toes, so they chimed while she walked—were muffled and grit-crunched.

Skritch-scratch. Fingernails on glass, maybe? A small scrabbling sound.

The stone in her throat was dry. She smelled apples, wet salt, cold stone. Shadows moved at the window, brushing across the faint powdery silver light.

They’re calling me, she realized. Chanting voices, the rustles and drips from her costume blurring, and there was another sound underneath it. Faint and far in the distance, a train’s lonely whistle, perhaps.

No. Not a train. A howl, lifting cold and clear on a snowy night. Not a wolf’s uncivilized cry, though. A dog’s voice, a hunter’s song, one she had heard before.

Skritch. Skritch-scratch.

A thumping. Cami took another step. How had she gotten halfway across the room? The crouched couches on either side watched her with no interest. Her footsteps had become silent, even the scratchy gauze of her veil not whispering as it rubbed against the Moon’s dress, silver ribbons fluttering from her sleeves as if she was running. Her scalp crawled, her braided hair twitching as if every individual one wanted to stand up.

Apples. A breath of heavy, perfumed smoke.

The window was smeared with dust. Shadows and shapes moved behind it, whirling dancers and staggering drunks. A single bloody gleam—not the Vultusina’s ring, but something else—pierced its foxfire glow, and the curtains shivered uneasily.

Wait. The cold was all through her, and a trembling like a crystal wineglass stroked by a wet fingertip. It’s not a window. Not in a Borrowing room.

Glass. Flat glass full of light.

They were mirrors, behind the age-stiffened curtains. The crawling under her skin intensified, every inch of her alive with loathing but miserably compelled forward. The voices rose, a chorus with no music to it, echoing strangely as if the walls had pulled away. As if she stood in a vast cavernous space, the silvery foxfire gleam strengthening. Not moonlight, but a diseased glow.

The mirror. The calling was coming from the mirror. She couldn’t decipher the word. My name. The mirror’s saying my name.

Her born name. But she couldn’t hear clearly. Come closer . . .

Her right hand lifted, trembling. The ring on her left was a millstone-weight, its stone cold and dead, and her fingertips hovered an inch from the glass. Half an inch, and when she touched it, she would know—

The locked door barged itself open. Giggling, a Family girl staggered in, a burst of golden haze behind her. It was Mocia della Sinistra, and one of her clan-cousins, the Sinistra boy who always wore calfskin driving gloves. They stumbled, his mouth at her ear, her hair half-undone, and his gloved hands had worked themselves into her bodice—she had dressed as Esmerelda Gipsicana, and he was in a tuxedo and a shining mirrored half-mask, pushed aside as his face rubbed against her.

Their dance was a drunken whirl, and the music from outside was a blare that covered Cami’s footsteps as she darted aside, taking shelter behind a long row of canister-trees and higher-backed couches. They would be dazzled from the sudden darkness too, and it looked like they were in a world all their own.

Her cheeks scalded. The inebriated pair fell on a low shrouded couch, and dust rose thick around them. Cami’s breath jolted in her throat. Neither noticed her ghosting past; they were knotted together and murmuring with thick smacking sounds, and Mocia—she was Wild, there was no doubt about it—moaned as her cousin’s fangs scraped her throat. Was he going to Borrow from her?

Her mother is not going to be happy with that. It was a sane thought, a comforting thought, and Cami clung to it as she hurried along, her skirts pulled up and the Vultusina’s ring waking again with a ripple.

The door was closing, its slice of golden light and noise narrowing, but Cami ducked through just in time. The noise burst through her head, the clanging chimes of the capriccine—had she missed the other dances?

“There you are.” Nico appeared out of the crowd. “Mithrus, Cami, what happened to you?”

She couldn’t quite remember, her head full of buzzing noise and her bones cold. Ice under her skin and muscles, chilling her from the core out, and it was difficult to think. “H-home.” She could barely force the word out. “I. W-want. T-t-t-to g-g-g-g-go—”

“You’re covered in it.” He was a rock in the middle of the crowd, and she clung to his arm. He’d had more, it was obvious from the burning red pinpricks in his pupils and the way he too-carefully tipped his head back, avoiding the smell from her dress. “Did someone throw something? What the hell?”

“H-home,” she kept repeating, but he wanted to stay with the Cinghiale boys and drink a bit more. In the end he handed her into the limousine and Chauncey drove her silently through Dead Harvest night, and when she woke Nonus Souls morning, Nico had already left for Hannibal.

Pierrot did not follow the Moon, after all.

THIRTEEN

THE MONTH OF NONUS WAS SERE AND COLD, DRY AND achingly bright. Icy flakes began falling a week after the Festival’s orgy of candy and parties; Cami almost shuddered every time she had to walk outside. Ruby drove her home with mind-numbing incaution every day. Stevens, dry and sticklike, was looking particularly gray. Marya wore layers of fine thin spidery black, her long fine hair scraped back and her usually apple-blooming cheeks pale. Trigger and his security teams were unseen, but it didn’t mean they weren’t there—a prowler was chased away the first night it snowed, a Twisted beast found just at the edge of the property another night.

It was a sign that it was going to be a hard winter, Trig remarked, if things were so desperate to try even a Family estate’s boundary.

The snow kept falling, and the plows and harnessed titons came out. Slump-shouldered, massive gray Twisted things, the titons were chained every winter, dragging plows along, their tiny yellow eyes alive with charmlight and their horny knuckles scraping the icy concrete. They ate bones and offal, as well as gravel and lumber with their broad flat black teeth, and were mostly docile if kept fed. They were trapped out in the Wastes between cities and provinces by teams of jack bounty hunters, and kept in pens on the edge of every city’s blighted core. Rumor had it they were sometimes pitted against minotaurs in the cages, and the betting was fierce.

Nico would probably know. But he would never tell her.

“Mithrus be careful!” Ellie shrieked, grabbing at the dash. The radio reeled off names—it was the three-thirty newscast, and two more charmer girls had vanished last night, one right from her own bedroom. No suspects, the announcer said, as Ellie let out a short jolting scream.

Cami just held on grimly as tires spun, the car sliding. Ruby yelled a cheerful obscenity, goosed the accelerator, and steered into it. Tire chains and silvery octopus-leg catchcharms gripping again, ice crackling on the window as Cami, wedged uncomfortably in the glossy black Semprena’s tiny concession to a backseat, found her lips moving silently.

Praying, she had decided, would not hurt.

“It’s just snow!” Ruby crowed, and shot them through a yellow light with half a second to spare. The newscast crackled through the speakers.

—brings the total toll of disappearances to seventeen. The mayor’s office had no comment, but Captain Ventrue of the New Haven Police Department—

Titons reared, their horns stabbing empty air, a plow behind them creaking as the zooming little car startled the giants, and Ellie and Cami screamed at the same time, in oddly perfect harmony. Their cries swallowed the end of the ’cast and the Red Twists came on, the bassline of “Born Charmed Enough” thumping the windows and rattling Cami’s teeth.

Driving with Ruby was always an adventure, but it was better than the small, cushioned but stifling buses Juno used to take less fortunate girls straight to their doors. Private schools did not like losing their students, and if there wasn’t a transporter or two on file you had to use a bus. Walking home in New Haven was risky—in other words, it was only for the public school kids.

Like Tor, Cami thought, and squeezed her eyes shut.

She’d seen him around the house, of course. Things weren’t quite upside down with Papa gone, but they were definitely not the same. Some of the maids had been let go, Marya piqued about something or another they did wrong or didn’t do right. Chauncey had caught the head groundskeeper “intoxicated, Miss Cami,” and asked her if he should be fired.

Like she knew. But with Papa gone, Marya sulking, and Nico off at Hannibal, she was the only one to ask. N-n-no, she’d told him. N-not unl-less it h-h-happens ag-g-gain.

And he had nodded, looking profoundly relieved, and walked away whistling as if he’d heard it from Papa’s mouth. She squirmed at the memory.

She’d even turned Ruby down when it was time to skip and head to Southking again. And Rube was not happy over that.

Stop being a foot-dragger, Cami. Mithrus, you’re turning into an old lady overnight. Being engaged makes your brain soft.

Missing Nico was never pleasant. And before he left, he’d been odd. Treating her like . . . what, exactly?

Like she was something new. Something strange. And he hadn’t even bothered to say goodbye. Just vanished like a Dead Harvest dream, and Marya had scolded Cami both for her own costume and for the shredded ruin of Nico’s.

He’d gone out with the youngbloods after all.

Think about something else.

Something had happened to her at the Stregare party, but it had vanished just like the nightmares, and all she could remember was the Borrowing Room and the dust choking her as Mocia and her clan-cousin writhed on the couch. A bolt of queasy heat went through Cami’s belly whenever she thought of it. Had Nico ever, with a Family girl . . .

Ruby shrieked, a wild joyful cry, and Ellie cursed with colorful inventiveness as the Red Twists harmonized about being born with flippers or fins. The car lifted as if it intended to fly.

Cami let herself think about Tor the garden boy instead.

He sometimes fetched things for Marya, carried things into the cellar, and the feywoman had started to ask for him. Not by his name, of course, she called him the Pike because he was long and dark.

Hearth-fey didn’t like big changes inside their domains. Marya was . . . upset.

And me? What am I?

Nothing but the pin holding the house up. A tired, shivering pin. If she was a Family girl, would it be easier?

That was another incredibly uncomfortable thought, one she did her best to shove away. The Semprena slowed, banking like a plane and gliding to a stop. Ruby twisted the volume dial down to merely “overwhelming” instead of “minotaur roar.”

“You can open your eyes now, Cami.” Ruby sighed. “That wasn’t even very fast.”

“Death by cardiac arrest, induced by vehicular shenanigans.” Ellie waited for a few seconds, unclicking her seatbelt. “There’s the Strep.”

Cami’s eyelids fluttered open. The world poured in, full of the peculiar flat blue-white of snowlight. The Sinder house on Perrault Street was a fantasy of four stone spires and a sort of grim medieval feel, not helped by the tall curlicue wrought-iron gates. Ruby’s Gran had a teeny, welcoming, very expensive cottage in Woodsdowne, but this was Perrault and the houses had serious, carnivorous faces. A tall line of firs frowned over the charm-smoothed stone wall enclosing the estate, and the glowing Sigil on the gates was a pair of high-heeled shoes.

The Strep was a famous charmer, after all.

Ellie’s dad was a lawyer specializing in inter-province negotiations, and gone an awful lot. At some point the Strep was probably going to get herself knocked up, probably by one of the boyfriends she brought in when Daddums was working late, and the hormonal shifts were going to make her even more of a pain in the ass for Ellie.

In one of the towers, a shadow moved across the golden glow of electric light. The Strep had a carefully fertilized mane of frosted-blonde hair, and it always sent a shiver down Cami’s back.

“Thanks for the ride,” Ellie said finally. “Babchat later?”

“But of course. Let Cami out, it’s her turn to pound on my dashboard.”

Great. But she wriggled out while Ellie held the door, then hugged her. “C-c-courage,” she whispered. “T-t-t-tis only the St-t-t-trep Monster.”

The tired old joke wrung a tired old laugh out of Ellie. Her dad had been gone for two days, to New Avalon up north at the edge of the province, for high-powered negotiations. Something about inter-province trade agreements, fighting over who would pay to send rail-repair crews out into the Waste.

The smudges under Ellie’s storm-gray eyes were getting awful dark. “Someday I’m gonna walk home and get kidnapped just to avoid her.” She tried to sound light, but there was a terrible flat ring to the words.

“D-d-d—” Stupid words. “Don’t,” she finally got out, her breath pluming in the cold air. The iron gate was opening, sensing Ellie’s nearness.

“Shut the damn door, it’s freezing!” Ruby yelled, but Cami waited, leaning on the car door until she saw Ellie trudge, slowly and safely, up the paved drive and heard the dull thud of the front door slam behind her. “Come on, Cami! She’s not gonna get snatched in her own driveway.”

You just never know. Some of the vanished weren’t charmers, just young mere-humans, but the entire city was on pins and needles now. Cami privately wondered how many people would be concerned if whoever was doing the snatching hadn’t started taking young charmers. None from Juno yet, but there were a couple girls gone from Hollow Hills. One had even disappeared between the Hills’ bus and her family’s front door, the snow scuffed as if a struggle had taken place and the branches of several nearby bushes broken.

The tabloids, for once, weren’t screaming about celebrity follies or Twists. Cami avoided reading them, but there was only so much you could ignore.

She dropped down into the front seat, pulled the door to, and took Ruby’s scolding all the way home with several nods, one or two uh-huhs, and five full minutes of cursing when Ruby opened up the Semprena on the straight shot of Grimmskel Boulevard. Remarkably, she didn’t stutter once while she was terrified.

Ruby told her it was a goddamn miracle, blew her a kiss, and the Semprena vanished toward the downward slope of the Hill before the large iron gate had finished scraping itself open.

Camille shivered, the wind nipping at her bare knees. The gate groaned, creaked, ice falling from its scrollwork and the charm-potential under the surface of the metal running blue with cold. The defenses here were old and thick, laid in with the stones when the Seven had first come to New Haven and added in layers with each successive generation. Papa had remarked once that the Family had been in New Haven before it was New, and once a long time ago, when talking to the wide, perpetually smiling Head of the Cinghiale, he had paused and looked into the distance.

I remember when we were hunted, before the Reeve made us citizens. We should all remember thus.

And Marcus Cinghiale had nodded, his own iron-gray hair slicked back and his bullet-eating grin turning cold. You are always cautious, old friend. We trust in that.

Neither of them had noticed Cami playing in the corner of Papa’s study, stacking wooden blocks.

She returned to the present when another gust of wind nipped at her knees, and the sound of cold air rushing over winter’s surfaces modulated into an eerie wail.

Almost like a wolf-cry. Or voices in a chorus, rising through a word that would explain . . . what?

For a bare millisecond she toyed with the idea of turning away and walking down into town. Going into the core’s diseased brightness, step by step, and seeing with her own eyes what the chaos-driven Potential in there would do to her. Would it make her a minotaur? Would she go running through the streets, bellowing, thick blankets of mutating Potential clinging to her body and her head swelling with bone and horn?

She was in-between, just like a jack. Not Family, not charmer-clan, not Woodsdowne clan, who knew if she was fully mere-human? Who would notice if she simply vanished? Would they say her name on the newscasts? Or would she be gone without a ripple?

Blank static filled her head, tugging at her fingers and toes. It formed words, spoken low and soft, so caressingly soft.

. . . nobody. You are nothing.

“You gonna stand out here all day?” he said, quietly, and she jumped, letting out a thin shriek. Her schoolbag almost fell, she clutched at it and found Tor the garden boy watching her, leaning against the gate.

FOURTEEN

THE IRON MOVED RESTLESSLY, SENSING HER AND ALSO testing him. He was allowed to be there, true . . . but the gate didn’t like it, not the way it liked Family.

Not the way it liked her, either.

She dropped her gaze, suddenly acutely aware that he was in a battered, scuffed tan leather jacket and jeans that probably did nothing against the cold. Aware as well of her black wool-and-cashmere coat just long enough to cover her skirt, a gift from Papa at Dead Harvest last year, and her expensive silver-buckled maryjanes. She edged for the gate, and he watched her.

“I’m not gonna bite you.” Now he sounded . . . what? Desperate? Angry, like Nico.

They’re not even remotely alike.

Then why did she think of them together? And why was she blushing, uncomfortable heat prickling at her throat?

“I kn-kn-know.” The words surprised her. She stepped over the threshold and the gate stopped quivering. “S-sorry.”

The snow was a blanket. Bare branches reached up, the driveway ribboning between their grasping hands. Hummocks and hillocks where there used to be gardens, a deceptive layer of white blurring everything. Waiting to catch an unwary foot, just like her goddamn tongue waited to trap the simplest words.

“You’re not like them.” His boots ground against the driveway, scraped free of ice and snow and sealed with charms. Had he maybe charmed part of it, too? She didn’t see Potential on him, but then again, hers was invisible too.

At least for now, and maybe once it settled too. You couldn’t ever tell with Potential.

What does he mean, not like them? Family? Of course I’m not. She shrugged, tucking her school scarf a little tighter and setting off for the house. Ruby could have taken her up to the door, but she’d been letting her off outside the gate instead. Cami didn’t blame her. Of course Rube was pissed when Cami said no, not today. Because Cami could always be relied on to give in and go with. It was her job.

“Hey. Look, I’m always saying the wrong thing to you.” He caught up with her. The gate screeched a little as it swung to, steel jaws closing gently. “I don’t know what to do. Help me out a little here, huh?”

Oh, man. Here it comes. She swung to a stop and faced him, her heel digging into a patch of odd charming on the concrete, scraping roughly and striking a single colorless spark. A long strand of hair fell in her face, working its way free from the cap Marya had knitted her. “What.” The word came out whole and hard, on a puff of frost-laced breath. “Do you. Want?”

“Bingo.” His smile was instant, and it looked genuine. His nose was raw-red from the cold, and he stuffed his hands in his pockets, hunching his muscle-broad shoulders. “Hi. I’m Tor.”

I know that, do I look subnormal? “I know.”

“And you’re Cami. You’re beautiful, and you don’t talk because you’re nervous. So people end up talking to you a lot, because you listen. And because they want things out of you.” He dug one toe into the pavement, stopped. Tilted his dark head. Snowflakes stuck to his hair, some melting. He was crowned with winter.

Well, don’t you get a prize. Irritation stung her, but she kept her mouth shut. Instead, she just nodded. The wind grabbed at her knees, sinking into unprotected flesh—the cashmere was barely longer than her skirt, and the knee socks were pure wool but didn’t help as much as they could. She spared another nod, and started taking mental bets about what game he was playing. Would he want money? A date? Something to do with Nico, maybe—more than a garden boy’s scholarship?

If I went to public school, would Nico ever look at me? Or would I be invisible to him, like the maids?

More and more these days, Cami was wondering about that.

“I want to talk to you. And hear you talk, too.” His shoulders hunched even further. “I want to hang out sometime, maybe. If you can stand to be seen with a poor kid. That’s it.”

That’s never it. Her mouth opened. “That’s n-never it.” And maybe I was a poor kid too. There was no way for him to know that, really, but it still bugged her. People always had all these thoughts. Assumptions. And her stupid tongue would never let her make them see, even if she felt like doing so.

A shrug and a wry expression, as if he understood. His nose was red from the cold and their words were clouds, hanging uneasily between them as if on singing wires. “Yeah, well, you can get me fired. You’ve got all the power here. I’m not even supposed to look at you. I know that.”

Chip on your shoulder much? But she knew what he meant. She hitched the bag strap higher. A cup of hot chocolate and one of Marya’s scones sounded really good right about now, and there was double HC Calc homework. Plus there was Ruby’s French to get in before it was Babchat-time. “Why?” Why me?

“Because you’re not like them.” Patiently, but not as if she was an idiot. “I dunno. I just . . . it’s stupid. Fine. Never mind.” He took two steps back, then shook his dark head, dislodging little crystals of snow. Had he been waiting for her? Out here in the cold?

Maybe not. But she could ask.

“D-d-d-do you w-walk here?”

Tor actually blinked, as if she’d said something extraordinary. Another head-tilt, and those eyes of his were really black, she decided. Not just too dark to tell, not just a deep brown. Black.

Was it a Twist? But Marya was thorough and careful. Fey could smell Twists, and didn’t like them. Some said it was because they were unpredictable, like the fey themselves. Marya was predictable, really, but she was a hearth-fey. Her world was the kitchen, her universe pretty much bounded by the house walls. Even Cami was only worth noticing because she belonged to the house.

“The bus drops me off on Hammer. Then I walk.” He paused. “It’s not bad.”

“Aren’t y-you af-f-fraid?” Maybe boys didn’t have to worry so much.

“Why? This is a good neighborhood. It’s not Simmerside. Or the core.”

Simmerside. Where the Twists lived next to the normal too poor to live anywhere else. Where the sirens and gunfire spilled out of the core and into the waking world. “The c-c-core?”

“No, I haven’t been there, you think I’m crazy? I’m a Simmerside kid, Joringel Street Orphanage. So out here, nothing much to be afraid of. Plus, those wackos kidnapping kids mostly go for girls. See? We’re talking.”

Kind of. But she nodded. She’d heard of Joringel; another branch of the Mithraic Order used to run it before there was some scandal and the city had taken over administration some ten years ago. It was still a bad place to grow up.

Would she have ended up there?

“It’s not so rough, right? You look like you could use a friend. Or at least someone to talk to.”

And you’re going to fill that gap, right? Riiiight. “I h-h-have f-friends.”

“Yeah, ones that leave you on Southking alone. Or who don’t even wait for you to get inside your gates.” He made a dismissive gesture, his hand chopping down. A healing scrape across his knuckles was vivid red, the skin a little chapped.

“D-d-do y-you have f-f-f-friends?” At least he waited for her to get all the words out, and didn’t act like waiting was a big deal.

“No.” Quiet and very definite, like he’d thought about it. A lot. He unzipped his jacket, and she almost took a step back. When he lifted up his T-shirt—how was he out here in just that, without shivering too hard to speak?—Cami actually did step back.

Welts and burns crisscrossed his torso, most of them scars and a few still ugly-colored, as if his skin hadn’t forgotten them yet. A wave of nausea pushed hot bile up to the back of her throat.

She knew those scars.

“No,” he repeated. Not angrily. He pulled his shirt back down, zipped his jacket up. “Now you know about me. I’m angry, and I’m mean, and I’m halfway to Twisted, rich girl. I’m not gonna lie. Come on. Your nose is red.”

He turned, and set off down the black streak of the driveway. Snow whirled down, and Cami finally made her voice work.

“Wh-wh-who d-d-d-did—”

That brought a scowl, and he was suddenly familiar. “Don’t know. Had ’em when I got to Joringel. Come on.”

He doesn’t know? I don’t know who did mine, either. So she followed. There was really nothing else to do. He silently walked her to the front steps, and as soon as she reached the massive ironbound doors he trudged off toward the side of the house.

To the servants’ entrance. Leaving Cami standing there openmouthed, wondering what kind of friend he thought he was going to be.

FIFTEEN

THE QUEEN, HER LONG GOLDEN HAIR GLOWING, paces down a long corridor full of mirrors. Velvet swishes as her skirts swing, and everything around her is a soft glimmer. The smoke in the air is incense, perfuming the hallway; she halts before a particular mirror.

Writhing cherubs twist their wings together on the mirror’s iron frame, flakes of rust drifting free and whirling down to the plush carpet. The Queen’s white face floats in its water-clear depths, and it reflects nothing but her. This is her favorite one, you can tell by the way she leans in, smiling a little. The medallion at her chest glows, and the roundness of it is not quite perfect. There is something about it . . .

But wait. The Queen frowns slightly. She does not do so often, for it mars the perfection of her soft features. The skin, dead-white, is drier now. She leans much closer to the mirror, jerking back with a hiss as she finds what she does not expect.

For a moment the edge of the smoky heavy perfume lifts, and a sharper, drier scent underneath rises. It is an edge of rot, a fruit left in a wet dark corner for too long. The Queen’s lip curls, and she whirls away from the mirror. Yet it holds her image as a cup holds wine, a long shimmering, and I can see what she saw. What she fears, what has struck her with terror and fury.

A wrinkle in white skin. A single line, at the corner of her right eye, radiating. And I know I am to blame.

There was no Nico. She sat up, clutching the white down comforter, her ribs heaving. There was no Papa either, and she must not have screamed because the house was quiet. Not even a breath of wind moaning at the edges, the absolute muffled silence of snow over everything. The nightmare retreated, and the blue gauze over the mirror fluttered slightly.

Cami didn’t notice. She was too busy gasping, her throat a pinhole. No wonder she hadn’t made a sound. She couldn’t breathe. Her lungs were full of perfumed smoke. The chanting receded, a seashell-moan fading into the distance.

Constriction eased. She dragged in great gulps of clean air. No incense here. Her wrists twinged, and she caught herself hunching as if to ward off a blow. Her heels scraped against the soft sheets, and she was out of the bed before she thought of it.

Skritch-scratch.

A soft scraping at her door, loud in the hush. She padded across her room, heart lodged firmly in her just-recently cleared throat, her fingers and toes made of clumsy ice, her nightgown fluttering. The silk was raspy with sweat under her arms, its straps cutting her shoulders and the hem behaving oddly, swirling as if it were heavier.

As if it was motheaten velvet, brushing her skin.

She twisted the crystal knob and jerked the door open.

Tor twitched back. His eyes were live coals, his hair a wild mess, and he was in a black tank top and hastily buttoned jeans.

She hadn’t seen him for two days.

They stared at each other for a long moment, and she finally discovered what made her gaze catch on him all the time.

He looked familiar, somehow. He reminded her of something; she just couldn’t figure out what with her head full of the rushing of a nightmare’s passage.

The stasis broke. Tor pressed a finger to his lips, his boots dangling by their laces from that hand, bumping his chest. There was a hole in his white socks, right over his instep.

Cami’s jaw fell. He’s not supposed to be here. How did he—But then, she realized, he probably stayed overnight because of the snowfall. Some of the garden boys, like most of the maids, did. Especially if they lived in the Old City—the parts of pre-Reeve Haven that hadn’t blighted into the core.

He held something out with the other hand. A thin black velvet case, worn down to the nap at its corners. She took it automatically, and his indrawn breath as their fingers touched was a twin to hers. His skin was cold, and he seemed to be trembling.

Am I dreaming?

She couldn’t tell. Her hand curled around the case. It was too heavy. He nodded, gravely, and backed away before the smile broke over his face. It was oddly sweet, a winter sunrise all its own, white teeth gleaming. Then he went ghosting on quiet sock feet down the hall, melding with the darkness. There wasn’t even a betraying creak from the floorboards.

Cami let out a long shuddering breath. She shut the door and brought the case up to her mouth. Velvet pressed hard against her lips.

I don’t know him. I’ve never seen him before. Then why did he feel like a glove? Like a sock or a broken-in pair of charm-laced trainers, like the familiar faces of the books in the library or . . .

I don’t know him. This is a dream, one I won’t even remember tomorrow. She was sure of it.

Until she surfaced to her alarm tinkling “Wake Up Charmgirl,” the streets plowed clean, school resumed . . .

. . . and a long thin bone hairpin, a fall of glittering crystals fastened to one end with smoky golden wire, sitting in its velvet case on the pillow next to hers.

SIXTEEN

THERE WAS, AS USUAL, A STEAMING MUG OF HOT chocolate and a porcelain plate with a delicate fey-lace doily spread over it, two fresh croissants nestled against the snowy paper. Sometimes Marya even did pain au chocolat, when she was feeling especially appreciated. But today the feywoman fluttered around the kitchen, her spiderweb shawl moving on invisible drafts of Potential, muttering to herself and obviously piqued over something.

Cami’s nose and cheeks were stinging; she set her schoolbag down on the stool and slid into her accustomed place with a sigh. The surprise test in High Charm Calculus had not gone well, nor had the French quiz. Her braid, heavy and damp, lay against her back, and beads swung as she turned her head. The bone pin’s point, carefully threaded through her braid that morning, scraped at her nape. “Y-yummy,” she tried, tentatively, cupping her icy hands around the hot mug. It stung, but pleasantly.

“Yesyes.” Marya stopped, put her hands on her ample hips, staring into the fireplace. “I cannot find it. The Gaunt will not be happy, but I cannot find it.”

Stevens? I don’t know if he ever looks happy. “What c-can’t you f-find?” She blew across the top of the hot cocoa, her shoulders relaxing in tiny increments. Ruby had kept up a vociferous stream of obscenities all the way home, not letting Ellie or Cami get a word in edgewise. Her French test must have been just as dire, or something else was pissing her off. Ellie was wan and tired, and she kept giving Cami little sideways looks, as if she suspected her of something.

At least Cami had been able to sneak away at lunch and go to the office to arrange the surprise. I hope she likes it. The thought of Ellie’s delight over a new blazer made Cami all but wriggle on her seat and smile.

Marya’s glance was sharp, her mouth pulled tight. Her face was not so round now, the fey in her shining through sharp and glittering, a diamond under lace. The tips of her ears twitched. “Nothing. Not for little sidhe. Eat, eat. I make them special for you.”

Fine. Another sigh, this one internal, and Cami stared at the small, delicate plate. Golden, buttery, and exquisite, the croissants were almost too pretty to eat. And she wasn’t hungry, anyway.

Still, she dutifully nibbled one. Between sips of scalding-hot cocoa, she watched Marya flutter through the kitchen, touching the copper-bottom pots, fussing with the fire, the stove bubbling as usual and the heavenly aroma of fresh bread just beginning to fill the entire kitchen. It looked like beef stew for dinner, thick and heavy and seasoned with feycress. That was Trig’s favorite, and since Nico was gone it was just Trig and Stephens and Cami at the too-big, highly polished rosewood dining table, unless there was Business.

Which there had been every night this week.

Which meant tonight she would probably be eating here in the kitchen, at the breakfast bar.

I like that better anyway. Any Business was kind of . . . troubling. There hadn’t been any more disappearances the last few days—at least, not in the news. From what Cami could gather, the Seven had taken over from the police, even though they were only six in the city now. And Stevens had pleasantly asked if Miss Cami wouldn’t prefer Chauncey to bring her home from school?

She’d just shaken her head, her braid bumping her back, and said very carefully, N-no, R-ruby will d-dr-drive m-me. And that was that, though Stevens looked . . . dissatisfied.

As dissatisfied as a man with a thin frozen face could look, that is. A consigliere without a Family Head to inhabit him, since Nico wasn’t officially back from Hannibal.

When Nico did come back, would he have any time for her either? He’d be busy doing Family things. Things he would probably discuss with Stevens and Trig and the Family bravos and the other Seven . . . but most definitely not with Cami. She’d hear more on the news, if Ruby ever turned the radio on in her Semprena again, instead of playing Tommy Triton’s debut tape over and over again.

Cami sighed, her skin prickling all over like it had been all damn day. Maybe it was her blazer. She was warm enough to take her coat off now, and was just in the middle of struggling out of itchy Juno wool when the swinging door from the servant’s hallway opened and Tor stamped through, icy crystals caught in his messy hair and his arms full of firewood. “Hey, Miz Marya. Figured it was time.”

“Pike!” Marya stopped fidgeting and fussing, beaming through the careful examination and placing of each chunk of firewood in the big beaten-copper holder on the hearth. She dusted her hands together afterward while her shawl-fringes waved lazily and her black skirt fluttered on an invisible draft of Potential. “Cellar. Will you go into the cellar? Old Marya’s knees are not good.”

“Absolutely. Just give me the list.” He stole a look at Cami as Marya bustled to the shining tomato-red refrigerator, its gloss alive with preservation-charms and yellowing pictures held with magnets and stickcharms.

She sat up straighter, pulling the blazer’s shoulders back up defensively and shaking her head a little so the pin’s colorless beads shivered. His answering smile was shy and warm, and Cami found herself grinning, ducking her head and staring into her cup.

Marya plucked a sheet of paper covered with spider-scratches from under a stickcharm. “Wait. Wait while Marya thinks and writes, yes?”

“Take your time.” Tor straightened, brushing wood debris from his leather jacket. His nose and cheeks were bright red, and the melting ice in his hair made him into a faunlet. Except he didn’t have fangs, or claws. “Hello, princess.”

Oddly enough, she didn’t mind the name now. “H-Hello.” She peeked up from the cup’s depths. “W-want s-some hot c-c-cocoa?”

A shrug, the snow-darkened leather creaking. He looked miserably cold. “Maybe in a bit. How was school?”

She shrugged, then raised her eyebrows. He caught the question—not as quickly as Nico would have, but still. He was paying attention.

At least someone was.

He laid a work-roughened hand carefully on the countertop, moss clinging between his fingers. “Some kid got knifed in the bathroom, and one of the girls in my Chem class is pregnant. The History teacher had to shout over a bunch of jack-yobs to tell us about the Battle of the Marne and the first wave of the Reeve. Just another day.” But his expression robbed the words of any anger. “I was glad to get out.”

I’ll bet. Was that what happened in public schools? She’d heard stories, but never anything like this. She searched for something to say. “Y-you l-look n-n-n-nice.” Oh, Mithrus. Can’t even talk, and when I do, I say something useless. His jeans were soaked to the knee from snowmelt, and he was covered in wood guck. But it was the only thing she could think of that didn’t seem likely to get her in trouble.

His smile turned lopsided, but his black eyes were warm. “So do you.”

Everything inside Cami loosened a fraction, then a fraction more. The feeling was so new and unexpected she actually grinned, forgetting to duck her head to hide her expression.

Marya’s forehead was creased as she turned away from the sink, the paper in her hand covered with yet more scribbles. “List! Pike, tall and dark, down into the cellar with you. Big brughnie-shouldered boy, to lift for poor old Marya.”

“Yes ma’am.” But he was still looking at Cami. He seemed about to say something else, but just then Trig slid in from the other hall, his step light and ghost-quiet, his baggy sportcoat red and green today and deep smudges under his tired eyes.

Every night a different something, Twist or strange or other, pressed against the borders of the Vultusino house. A hard winter, indeed. As soon as dark fell the security teams were working harder than they ever had.

As if everything in New Haven could tell the Vultusino were without a Head. Some of the younger cousins were showing up at the house at odd hours, too, the boys eyeing Cami and the girls trying to be friendly. Stevens dealt with them, but she just wished Nico would come home.

When he did, what would happen? The Vultusina’s ring was safely locked up; occasions and parties were fine, but she wasn’t going to wear it to school.

The loosening inside her clenched up again. Tor disappeared on the other side of the kitchen, and Marya immediately began fussing at Trig about whatever she couldn’t find. Cami sipped at her cocoa, hoping the bright red on her cheeks wasn’t too visible. Trig barely glanced at her, just nodded at Marya’s nervousness and set about soothing the feywoman, and ten minutes later, neither of them noticed when Cami escaped, carrying her bag and her coat, the croissant and sugary milk curdling in her stomach. All the way up the stairs to the warm white bedroom, she thought of that funny lopsided smile, and the tinkling of the beads from the pin was ice chiming against glass.

So do you, he’d said.

Did he really think so?

SEVENTEEN

TWO DAYS LATER, CAMI WAS STILL THINKING ABOUT that funny smile of his. A present, from someone who didn’t have a whole lot. Someone who couldn’t really afford a bunch of presents. Someone she didn’t owe something to.

It was a new thing. Unfortunately, she wasn’t left to brood in peace.

“You don’t look so good,” Ruby whispered, reaching over to touch Cami’s forehead.

Cami ducked away, her braid swinging. “I f-feel fine.” The stutter wasn’t so bad today. The bone pin, slid through her braid, was oddly heavy, and everything seemed too colorful to be real.

She hadn’t seen Tor since. There had been another alarm in the middle of the night, Trig and his security team arriving to find that charms laced through the ancient stone walls had forced something back, again, from the Vultusino grounds. She wouldn’t have known if she hadn’t been already awake from yet another bad nightmare, sweat-soaked and gasping, hearing soft commotion elsewhere in the darkened house.

But Marya wouldn’t tell her what had happened, and Trig didn’t show up. And Stevens only asked her again if she wouldn’t prefer Chauncey to drive her to school?

No, she’d snapped, without the stutter for once, and he had nodded and retreated.

Weak winter sunlight slid through high windows; Sister Grace-Redeeming’s classroom was brimful of the quiet murmur of girls bent over paper, pencils scratching. Ruby shrugged, the gold dangles on her earrings winking. She hunched back over her Provincial History book. It was odd—the only thing looking washed-out today was her friend’s bright copper mane. Every other edge pressed against Cami’s skin even through empty air. Even the dust was painful.

Plus, Cami was itching all over. Maybe it was the wool of the blazer, or just her wanting to be gone. She didn’t even want to go back home, it was too far. Just a closet, or maybe a forgotten corner. Any quiet dark place would have done, just so she could sit and breathe a bit.

She tried to read, but the letters were dancing on the page. The itch was somehow under her skin. A steady irritation, building, a hot prickle of temper.

If I’m angry, why does it scare me? She took a deep breath, staring at the paper in front of her.

The door opened, and a ripple passed through the classroom. Ellie, her eyebrows drawn together and a terrific bruise glaring on the left side of her face, shook her sleek blonde hair down and stamped for the head of the room. She handed a slip of pink paper to Sister Grace, who woke up long enough to nod and murmur something that sounded kind.

Ellie shrugged and hitched her schoolbag up on her shoulder. Turned, her skirt flaring, and stamped to her seat. Her knees were bruised too, and the way she held her bag said that it hurt.

Ruby was bolt-upright. “What the hell?” she mouthed, but Ellie wasn’t looking. She dropped down on Cami’s other side, fishing a pair of shades out of her blazer pocket and jamming them on.

It didn’t hide the fact that someone had socked her a good one. The Strep didn’t hit her in the face often. Maybe it was one of the boyfriends. Who knew?

I know. A terrible, nasty, guilty heat bloomed behind Cami’s breastbone. The blazer.

Maybe it wasn’t that. Don’t leap to conclusions.

She slid her book over, so Ellie could get the page number. She also silently slid her notes over. Sister Grace went back to dozing, the girls went back to scratching with their pencils—and whispering about Ellie’s arrival. The ghoulgirls were hungry for gossip, the bobs would be asking about it, and the fluffs were ready for talk-meat, as always. Gossip was juicy, and even Ruby’s glower couldn’t keep all of it away.

The irritation under Cami’s skin mounted another few notches.

Ellie just sat for a few moments, her shoulders shaking imperceptibly. Cami’s heart was in her throat. Her friend was in her ancient school blazer, shiny-collared and wearing down, fraying beginning at the elbows.

She could suddenly see it, in vivid color—the Strep tearing the new blazer away. You little slut, where did you get the credits for this? Ellie’s hands like little wounded white birds as they fluttered ineffectually, the Strep screaming as Potential flashed and the new blazer shredded to ribbons.

Anger, hot and vicious, sank sharp claws into the back of Cami’s throat. The itching all over her threatened to pop out through her skin. She fidgeted, and Ellie’s head slowly, very slowly turned.

The mirrored lenses of Ellie’s shades showed her reflection. Cami didn’t look like herself—her eyes too big, her face dead-white, the stray bits of hair pulled free from her braid lifting on a breeze from nowhere. The bone pin stuck out, its little colorless dangles gleaming, and its sharp tip jabbed at her nape again. There was a little raw spot where it kept rubbing.

God damn it. She reached up, yanked the pin free, and laid it carefully in the pencil groove at the top of the ancient wooden desk. Ellie shifted, her blank lenses following the pin.

Cami flipped to a fresh sheet of paper. You OK?

Ellie fished a pencil and her history book out. Her notebook was battered too, but she opened it and made the date notation. She leaned over, and Cami’s anger evaporated like steam from one of Marya’s kettles.

NO, Ellie scrawled on Cami’s paper. Later. Who gave you that?

Cami shrugged. Now that the terrible fury had subsided she was queasy, her head aching and the discomfort all over her like crawling razor-legged insects. A guy, she wrote.

Don’t take anything else. Ellie flipped her textbook open. Cami swallowed her retort—she could feel the stutter knotting just behind her lips, a brick wall between her and anything she might want to say. Ellie paused, then leaned over and wrote carefully: There might be charm on it.

Ellie was just slopping over with Potential, wasn’t she. She’d be able to see charm Cami wouldn’t.

But Tor wouldn’t charm her. He just didn’t have the Potential. Besides, he didn’t have to. She was halfway-charmed already; she liked him. Whatever he was after when he talked to her, at least she knew she didn’t goddamn well owe him anything.

So now I’m stupid. Can’t do anything right. She hunched her shoulders, and the prickling all over her went away as she took a deep breath. Her fingers, tense around the creaking pencil, relaxed a little, then a little more.

Ruby peered around her, a tendril of curling russet hair falling in her eyes. She blew it away irritably, and there were two bright fever-spots high on Rube’s cheeks.

She was pissed.

Sister Grace finally resurrected herself at quarter-till, announced a quiz for the next day, and smiled pacifically at the wave of groans. Her round, plump face, flour-pale, framed in black and white, was a serene moon. The Mithrus beads tied to her sash clicked as she passed to the board and wrote the night’s homework in her flowing copperplate script. Cami’s shoulders twitched and she inhaled deeply—chalk dust, a touch of sweat, the funky smell of a room used to corral kids for long periods of time, a breath of clove and invisible fuming from Ruby on her right. From Ellie, nothing but the faint aroma of harsh soap and the also-invisible smell of misery.

The crystals on the bone pin glinted. She was going to have to ask Tor about—

The pin twitched. Ellie tensed.

It hopped out of the pencil groove. Cami let out a soft sound and grabbed for it, but Sister Grace was saying something, and the slight noise was lost. Also lost in Sister Grace’s droning reminder that chapel is after lunch, ladies, don’t be late, was the sound of the pin splintering as it hit the blue-flecked linoleum.

What the— Cami sank back down in her seat. Broken in three pieces, the bone pin rolled away. She grabbed the edge of the desk to keep herself from diving for it, since Sister Grace had turned around and was scanning the classroom intently, looking fully awake for the first time in months.

Ellie’s breathing had turned rapid, her fists clenched. A tear glittered on her bruised cheek, and Cami could see where the back of her earring had scraped on her neck, probably when whoever-it-was belted her.

It was the Strep. Sudden knowledge rode a cresting tide of nausea. Sweat had gathered in Cami’s armpits, dewed her lower back and her forehead. Everything was too bright, and Sister Grace’s gaze passed over them all like the shadow of a giant drifting bird.

“Ladies,” Sister Grace finally said, “you are excused.” The tinkling charmbell rang to signal the end of third session and the beginning of lunch, and Ruby sighed dramatically.

“’Bout damn time,” she announced as a surfburst of chatter swallowed the room. “Who do I gotta kill, Ellie?”

Cami wriggled out of her side of the desk. The shards of the bone pin were numb-cold, frost-burning her trembling fingers, and the crystal beads had disappeared, rolling away under desks and feet. Her stomach cramped, then eased all at once, and she couldn’t bring herself to throw the remains of the pin away. So she simply jammed the pieces in her bag while Ellie began explaining what had set the Evil Strepmother off this time. Ellie’s cheeks were wet, Ruby was furious, and Cami was secretly, shamefully glad that nobody was paying any attention to her.

EIGHTEEN

RUBY WAS A BALL OF SIMMERING RAGE FROM LUNCH onward, swearing to give the Strep a taste of her own medicine; Ellie admitted it was the new school blazer that had set the Strep off.

The blazer Cami had brought in the money for, so it would arrive charm-boxed at her door the next morning. Which meant Cami was responsible. Though they both kindly refrained from pointing this out, the knowledge churned at her the whole time, hot and sour.

And then there was the pin. Tor’s gift, broken. He’d just given it to her, and he wasn’t asking anything in return, right? Nothing except being her friend.

You need a friend that listens.

She hadn’t stuttered so much when the pin was in her hair, had she? She’d been feeling fine for the entire two days. Better than fine, even. Secretly pleased.

And he wasn’t a charmer—his Potential would be low. He was only a garden boy, after all.

The last bell rang and she dawdled, Ruby and Ellie at their side-by-side lockers. They didn’t stop to preen today—with Ellie’s face the way it was, of course they wouldn’t. So Cami just waited until both of them had their heads deep in their lockers and let the crowd of girls whisk her away, around the corner from the main stairwell.

Today of all days, she couldn’t stand the thought of getting into the Semprena and listening to Ruby fume.

You weren’t supposed to go off Juno’s grounds by foot, but there were ways. She took the back stairs to the gym, slid out past a chattering gaggle of cheersport girls—bright-eyed, smooth-haired, and chirping like Twisted cockatiels. The fire door was supposed to be locked and alarmed, but Ruby had shown her how to slip a bit of charmed tinfoil—one of those things a girl should never be without if she intends to be up to no good, Rube always said—over the connector and slip out while it was resetting itself.

The sudden cold was a blow. The sky was a featureless iron blanket, and the metallic smell of a hard freeze filled her nose. She shivered, but it was too late now—the door thudded closed, and she was faced with a narrow strip of pavement between two frowning brick walls. At the far end, a dustbin crouched, and past it there would be a way down the hill, screened from the lacrosse and football fields by thick spiny heartsthorn, naked without its glossy summer green and bright red berries. The bushes were defense-charmed too, so she had to be careful not to brush against them.

She edged along, carefully, past the dustbin breathing out a reek of garbage even through the killing cold. The heartsthorn rustled a bit as she passed, not-quite-sensing her. Juno’s thick stone wall lifted on her right, veined with long fingers of red ivy. Cami tightened her scarf, her knees already chilled and her coat flapping as she hurried.

But careful, cautious, just like a little mouse.

There was the gate—tiny, wooden, overgrown with heartsthorn. To the side, there was a gap between the post and the wall. It wasn’t used too often—just enough to keep it clear. If it started getting worn through, the Sisters would find out and patch it, and everyone would have to find a new way.

Cami wriggled through, holding her breath.

Outside was a narrow alley, frost-slick cobblestones that probably dated from the post-Reeve rebuilding of New Haven. The windowless back of a warehouse loomed, unmarked except for the occasional schoolgirl graffiti traced down low where Juno girls could reach. Sheela sucks something-scratched-out, and Kill Juno, in black, with arrows pointing to it to show agreement. Something about a Sister Mary Clarice, though there wasn’t a Sister of that name at the school now. Other scrawls and symbols, none of them alive with charm but managing to glow with feeling just the same.

Her feet crunched and slid, and by the time she reached the end of the alley and peeked out into a weedy, snowbound vacant lot, she was shivering from fear and cold.

This is pretty anticlimactic. What did I expect, monsters to eat me the moment I stepped off school grounds?

Well, yes. Wasn’t that what was supposed to happen?

Did Tor feel this cold and alone when he walked? Was he used to it? She could ask him, she supposed. If her stupid tongue would let her.

The wind picked up, and she heard dogs barking.

No, not barking. Baying. Hate that sound. It reminded her of snow, of headlights, of a rat’s plated tail and bright red eyes. She pushed the memory aside, but it didn’t want to go.

That was one thing about school and Ruby and Ellie. They kept her head so busy the nightmares couldn’t creep up through waking consciousness and poke at her.

Another galvanic shudder worked its way down her spine. She pulled her mittens on and set off around the edge of the field. Her maryjanes slipped and slid, and at least her knee socks were wool, but this was looking to be a very long and uncomfortable walk home. New Haven wheeled around her, cold blighted core radiating bright charmed streets, and she put her head down. Her braid lay heavy against her back, as if the pin was still thrust through it.

He walks all the time. It can’t be that hard. She settled her schoolbag higher on her shoulder. Besides, I’ve come this far. I might as well keep going.