Nameless

THE IRON IN THE SKY HAD BLACKENED. NIGHT CAME early in winter, and it was so close to dusk the streetlights were beginning to flicker into grudging life.

Legs on fire, feet raw, her back aching, she rounded the corner and sighed. The Hill had been a bitch—it seemed so simple in a car. Someone else would just press the accelerator, the engine responded with a throb, and up went all the metal and charmfiber and glass, and the people inside it too. Her right heel slipped a little bit inside her shoe—it was numb; she didn’t know why it was sliding around so loosely. Her shoe didn’t seem to be broken.

The dogs kept barking. Maybe she was the only one that could hear them, full-throated howling or pathetic whimpering. There were a lot of them, and sometimes they were nearer, sometimes further away. If she rounded the wrong corner she might see them, and that had made her run before she figured out running just tired her out more.

Almost there. The gate was three blocks away, scrolled iron dripping with icicles. It had never looked so wonderful. Her schoolbag weighed a ton, and homework tonight was going to be a—

“What are you doing?” He appeared out of nowhere, and Cami shrieked, backpedaling despite her exhaustion. He grabbed her arm, and she found herself faced with a tall, trembling Torin Beale, who was dead pale and breathing as hard as she was. “Mithrus Christ, do you know what time it is? The whole house is—” He broke off, and for a second Cami thought he might shake her.

“I d-decided to w-walk home.” Her heart thudded, and her head felt clearer than it had all day. “The p-pin. T-t-t-tor, I’m suh-suh-sorry. The p-pin b-b-broke.”

“The pin.” He addressed the air over her head. “She’s worried about the pin. They called the Vultusino. Whole house is like an anthill. Miz Marya’s roaming around looking for you, checking the study every five minutes and wringing her hands. The security guys are . . . ” He made a quick movement with his head, tilting it.

She heard it too. Dogs barking, hysterical yaps and yowling. She didn’t know if any of the neighbors had security hounds. It wasn’t out of the question, they were popular even if they could be charmed.

But she had never noticed them before.

“D-d-dogs,” she whispered. “A-all afternoon.”

He stared at her like she’d just grown another head. “All afternoon?”

She nodded. Wiped at her nose with a mitten, not caring if it was gross. She was cold, and tired, and apparently they had noticed she hadn’t come back.

Well, you kind of thought they would. Was that the point?

Tor let go of her arm, as if it was Twisted, or red-hot metal. “You . . . ”

Telling him about Ruby and Ellie was out of the question. But at least she could tell him how she’d scraped together enough guts to do this. “I’m s-s-sorry. I w-wanted to s-s-see what it w-w-was l-like to w-walk home.” Even her teeth were numb. “L-like you.” She pointed at his chest, hoping he would understand. We’re more alike than you think. “S-scars,” she managed. “Th-th-they hurt. I-i-i-ins-side.”

“You . . . ” He kept looking at her like she’d Twisted, or something. He finally shook his head, his leather jacket creaking. Snow caked his jeans all the way up to his knees, and there was a scratch on his cheek.

Maybe from thorns.

Cami swayed. “I h-have t-to g-g-g-go.”

That snapped him back into himself. “I’ll say you do. Come on.”

NINETEEN

THE SECURITY TEAMS MARKED THEM AS SOON AS THEY were through the gate, but it was Trig who appeared at the bottom of the front steps, lanky and older than ever, deep lines graven on his lean face. His sportscoat was the baggy yellow, orange, and brown one with shiny patches at the elbows he wore sometimes to shoot skeet, and his knife-sharp cheekbones were blushed with cold.

He didn’t say a word until they were inside. “You found her.” Flatly, brushing snow from his shoulders. His hiking boots were clotted with mud and snow, and he took in Cami with one passionless, sweeping glance. “Thank Mithrus. Miss Camille, honey, what the hell happened?”

I don’t know. She shrugged, miserably. The foyer was warm, and her fingers and toes were tingling with pain. Her socks were probably ruined. I couldn’t explain it even if I tried.

“Mr. Nico’s on his way home. You . . . ” Trig visibly groped for Tor’s name. The butt of a Stryker showed briefly under his coat as he ran a hand back through his thinning hair. “Beale, right? You found her?”

Oh, no. If they’d called Nico from Hannibal, they must’ve thought something bad was happening to her.

Maybe even a kidnapping.

She should have thought of that. Miserably, Cami sighed. He was going to be unmanageable when he got here.

“Down the street, sir.” Tor’s sullen politeness was at once normal and terribly embarrassing. “My shift was over, I was walking home. Since the road’s cleared.”

A relieved smile, and the tall man clapped the garden boy on the shoulder, gingerly. “Well, head to the kitchen. Marya will be overjoyed. Get something to eat, huh?” With that, Trig seemed to forget Tor’s existence, and he offered Cami his arm. She took it, grateful for the support.

The high narrow foyer was all at once terribly alien and familiar as well. The parquet floor was alive with crackling charm, and the whole house was seething. Little whispers ran between the walls, and the sense of hidden motion and hurrying swamped her.

Tor didn’t take himself off to the kitchen just yet, though. He paused, his fingers on her elbow, digging in through the black cashmere and the navy Juno wool underneath. Not brutally, just to get her attention. “You gonna be okay?”

Braced between them, she tried not to sag with relief. “Y-yes.” Now that I’m here. “T-t-tor. Th-thank y-y-you.”

“Anytime.” He let go, took a step back, two, staring at her face. “I mean it. Anytime.”

Thankfully, her flush could just be a reaction to the sudden warmth. Her fingers were cramping, her toes felt wet. Trig had gone very still next to her, but she didn’t care. “T-t-tomorrow. After sk-k-k-school. Okay?”

“You got it.” He made a curious little movement with his right hand, stopped himself, and turned on his heel. This time he didn’t vanish, he just took the hall that would lead him back to the kitchen.

“Well.” Trig sounded thoughtful. He stared after Tor for a long moment or two, and his face was set. “You walked? From St. Juno’s?”

Cami nodded. Now she was shivering, great waves of shudders gripping her. Her skirt and shoes were dripping with melted snow, and her hair was a heavy frozen weight. “I w-w-w-wanted t-t-to—” Her tongue just would not work. Even if it did, how could she explain to Trig? It wasn’t the sort of thing he’d understand. “S-sorry,” she finished, lamely. “I’m s-s-s-s—”

The old man took an experimental step, bracing her as she hobbled. “No need. Just glad you’re safe. Let’s get you upstairs.”

Her socks were ruined. The blisters had broken and bled, and the blood had greased the inside of her shoes. That was why they were so slippery. Marya, her white-streaked dandelion hair standing up and writhing, black shawl-fringes moving on an angry breeze, made little spitting sounds as she bandaged Cami’s feet. “Walking. All the way from school. What were you thinking? Silly, naughty little thing.” The cameo at her throat shivered uneasily, its carved surface changing.

“S-sorry.” Cami sucked in a breath as the antiseptic stung. For all her scolding, Marya’s hands were exquisitely gentle.

“So worried!” Marya’s long fingers flicked, and the gauze crackled with charm. “Late little girl, and your redheaded friend came. She told the long one you had disappeared. The Gaunt was beside himself. Whole house upside down. Looking and looking for our naughty little sidhe.” Wrapped with deft quick movements, Cami’s feet began to resemble mummies. “The long one” was Trig, and “the Gaunt” was Stevens. Most fey were bad with names. Cami could look forward to being “naughty little thing” for a while now.

“Going wandering, hmm? Wayfaring blood in our naughty girl. Terrible worry, little mayfly.” Marya sighed.

“W-w-wayfaring b-blood?” Does she know where I came from? Cami had never asked.

There had never been a need.

“Oh yes, it’s all over you. She smells like a wanderer, our little thing.” Marya glanced up. “Eat, eat!”

The tray on the small table at Cami’s elbow held a small mountain of buttered toast, hot chocolate steaming in a charmed bone-china cup, and strawberries like bloodclots in a thin crystal dish. The white bedroom held its breath, purple-gray dusk gathering at the window, touched with orange citylight as the snow began again.

“Wandering. With dogs, too.” Marya sniffed. She’d insisted on Cami taking a bath, even though the hot water stung so bad she could have cried, if there had been any tears left. Now, warm and dry, clean and bandaged, crunching on toast and sipping hot chocolate, the afternoon seemed like a bad dream. Her Babbage glinted on the stripped-pine desk, waiting for her to switch it on and enter chat. Ruby was just going to tear her ears off.

Cami settled back into the chair. The bleeding had stopped now. She had a rash on her shoulder, where the schoolbag’s strap had been rubbing and rubbing, even through her coat and blazer and blouse. God. The watered-silk footstool with a plain white towel draped over it was just right for her battered feet, and every muscle in her body was twitching a little. The twitches ran through her like the shivers did, and there was a coldness down in her marrow where the bath and the house’s warmth didn’t reach. “D-d-d-dogs,” she echoed, softly, hoping Marya would say more.

“Hounds. They were hunting you, naughty thing.” Marya nodded. “Hear them all the time. Worse in winter, always. I told el signor, he heard them too.”

An unpleasant jolt. “P-p-papa?” He never said anything about dogs.

“Oh, yes. Yesyes.” Marya capped the antiseptic and finished wrapping Cami’s left foot. Flicked her fingers again and feycharms crackled blue-white, to stave off infection and speed healing. “Nasty dogs. Hate them. Won’t have them here. Cats. Cats are proper, yes? Not dogs.”

“The P-p-pike,” Cami breathed. Tell me about Tor. Have you noticed anything on him? If Marya was disposed to be chatty, she could probably—

“Told him too. No dogs. He reeks of them. He’s a hunter, that one, lean and angry.” Marya shrugged. She gathered up her materials, whisking the towel gently from under Cami’s feet. “Sit, eat. Little wayfaring naughtiness.”

“W-wayf-f-faring?” Tell me something else, anything!

“Said too much.” Marya clapped a hand over her mouth. She stared at Cami, the oddness on her suddenly pronounced. Sometimes she looked more human, but right now she was all fey, the tips of her ears poking up through wild white-streaked hair, her cheeks bloodless-pale. She shook her head, long jet earrings swinging, and rocked to her feet.

Good luck getting her to give anything more now. But Cami was going to try, opening her mouth and taking in a deep breath.

There was a single splintering bash on the door before it flew open. “Cami!”

It was, of course, Nico. Fangs out, eyes blazing, he hadn’t even changed out of the Hannibal uniform. His white button-down was torn though, his tie askew, and his hair stood up anyhow. Little crystals of snow had caught in it—he had probably run from the car to the front door.

“I’m ok-k-k—” I’m okay. Calm down.

“Leave,” he snapped at Marya, who bowed her head and hurried past in a wash of floating spidersilk. “Mithrus Christ, Cami. What the hell?”

Deep breath. “I w-w-w-walked—”

“Walked home. Yeah. Do you have any idea what could have happened to you? This is New Haven, Cami! And you’re Vultusino!”

I wasn’t born Family. She looked down at her pajama pants—Marya had insisted on the pink silk pj’s. A flannel robe too, the belt securely knotted. As if she would freeze to death sitting in here.

Nico took another two steps into the room. His anger filled everything up, made it hard to breathe. “I’m talking to you! Mithrus Christ, Cami—”

“No!” Her own yell took her by surprise. “You’re n-not talking!” Shocked silence rang between them. She wet her lips, quickly, with a nervous flicker of her tongue. “You’re s-s-s-screaming,” she finished. The last syllable broke, and a tear trickled down her cheek.

So she did have a few left after all.

“Fuck it.” Nico rocked back on his heels. “Do you know what it’s like, driving from up-province and worrying over where you are, what’s wrong, if someone’s snatched you? And you’re walking home! You’re bleeding, too!” Of course he could smell it. “Tell me what happened.” Dangerously quiet, now. “You’d better start, Cami. Or I’m gonna . . . ”

Apparently no threat was too dire. He ran out of words, for once, and stared at her. Another tear slipped out, ran hot and shameful down her face. Was it just because the room was warm? Or was it relief that he was finally here? Irritation? The empty hole in her chest, aching to know where she came from, where she belonged?

She couldn’t tell. She searched for something to say. To make him understand. He’d understood plenty before, why not now? What was wrong with him?

Or was it wrong with her?

“I d-d-don’t know wh-who I a-a-m.” The words tripped over each other. “I w-was j-j-just f-f-found—” Just found in the snow. Like trash, picked up and carried here.

“I know who you are.” Quietly, but everything in the room rattled. Or maybe it just seemed like it did, because when Nico got quiet like this, it was just before he went over the edge and nothing would calm him down. Once, when she’d been trapped in the hallway to the bathrooms in Lou’s by a Family bravo who reeked of whiskey-calf, Nico had gotten this quiet. “I know exactly who you are, and if Papa hadn’t found you, I would have.”

You don’t know that. “Y-you c-c-c-can’t—”

“Oh yes I can. I’m the Vultusino, Cami, and I am telling you, I would have fucking found you.” His tone dropped still further, and the deep growl behind the words was enough to drain all the air from the room and leave her gasping. “Whoever did that to you, I’ll find them too, now that I’m old enough. And I’ll make them pay.”

“I—”

Instead of the stutter stopping her, it was him. She couldn’t get a word in now, for love or hexing.

He was, quite simply, too determined. “I’m finished at Hannibal. I’m staying home. I’m taking care of things now. Don’t you dare pull another stunt like this, Cami. I swear to God I’ll . . . ” He ran out of threats again, his fists clenching and unloosing, like he wished there was something caught in them.

Do what? “You’ll what? H-hurt m-m-me?” Because when you get like this, that’s what I’m afraid of, Nico. The idea was as crystalline and terrifying as the first howl she’d heard, a few blocks away from St. Juno’s, lifting on an icy wind.

That brought him up short. He actually sagged, deflating. The growl behind his words stopped. “I would never hurt you.” Whispered, as if she’d been the one shouting and raging.

“You’re g-g-going t-to.” As soon as she said it, she knew it was true—and she wished she hadn’t. “If you d-d-don’t learn to c-c-calm d-d-own.”

It was a day for guys staring at her like she’d lost her mind. Nico’s gaze burned, locked with hers for long endless seconds.

Then he turned and stamped out, slamming the door so hard she was surprised the crystal knob didn’t shatter. Cami let out a long, shaking breath and sagged into the chair. She shut her eyes. The darkness was better than the glare of the white bedroom.

But it made the sound inside her head worse. The roaring. The howl of dogs, the clicking of their nails on cold pavement, the deep huffing of their breath as their reddened tongues lolled. Dogs—and Marya said Tor reeked of them.

All the noise in the world boiled down to a single question, stark and black as the night pressing against the windows.

What is happening to me?

TWENTY

DAWN ROSE GRAY AND PINK AND GOLD, AND FOUND her stutter-stepping toward the window seat. She could hobble with the bandages on, and it made her think of the Eastron section of World History, the little inset about lotusfeet girls. Charmed cloths around a baby’s tiny feet, and the deformity, a chosen Twist.

To make them more beautiful. Was that what it took?

You do, too.

The snow was blank, featureless, deceptively smooth. Unbroken, it poured over the gardens—or, no. Not unbroken.

Someone had trudged through the snow. She could tell because of the line of footsteps, their edges chipped free of a layer of ice forming on the drifts. She could also tell because he was still there. A sword of darkness against all the white, his leather jacket inadequate against the cold, his hair a wild blue-tinted blackness. His breath plumed, and he looked up at her window.

Even at this distance, his gaze was a dark fire.

Cami’s breath fogged the glass. She lifted her right hand, pressed it against cold translucence.

Tor lifted his. Five fingers, spread, just like hers. A star of flesh. The frozen glass burned, and she found herself shaking. A thrill all through her, Potential rippling like heat-haze. Or maybe it was an ordinary electricity, like the natural, predictable stuff lightbulbs burned.

What is he doing?

There was no way to ask him, and he turned and trudged back the way he’d come, stepping carefully from footprint to footprint. The fog of his breath turned to ice, falling with tiny flashing tinkles. How cold was it out there?

The sound inside her head was a deep chanting, voices lifted in a sea-swell of ecstasy. She smelled fresh-cut apples, and salt, and a peculiar heavy incense. It scraped the inside of her skull clean, filling her with cotton. Whatever name they were singing, she couldn’t . . . quite . . . hear.

Cami turned. The sun’s red rim lifted over the horizon, and she could almost feel it, as if she was Family. Directionless blue winter-morning light pushed past her, filling the white room to the brim. The gauze over the mirror fluttered, and she found herself stepping gingerly across plain carpet.

She tore the scarf down. The mirror, clear and flawless, was a blank screen, not even reflecting her.

Not a mirror. An eye.

A gleam in the depths of the thin glass. Trembling, Cami lifted her right hand again.

There was a snap, felt in the chest more than heard through the ears, and the white room glared at her from the mirror’s surface. She blinked, and found herself standing, fists curled, her hair messed by the restless tossing she’d done instead of sleeping, her face hectic with color and her eyes blazing blue.

It was there, standing and not-quite-thinking, her brain humming with the sharp edges of a puzzle forming around her, that Cami had a very odd thought.

I need an apple.

The kitchen was curiously deserted. Marya was not humming near the hearth, nor was she at the stove. She could be anywhere in the house, dusting or flitting from room to room, engaged on whatever charms a house-fey used at dawn. The important thing was she wasn’t here, and the copper-bottom pans hanging shiny from their rack were still and quiet.

The fridge was tomato red, its door fluttering with yellowed photographs—a shyly smiling nine-year-old Cami in white eyelet lace, Nico glowering behind her in his small but exquisitely tailored suit, his hair slicked down. Papa with Cami on his lap in a white silk sundress, squinting slightly in the garden sunshine, and Nico tall and straight-faced at his left shoulder. A baby Nico, with a rare smile, lifting up a dirt-clotted bulb of garlic from the herb garden and shaking it. Papa, younger and solemn, straight as a poker and holding the hand of a smiling young mortal woman with Nico’s proud tilt to her head. Papa and three of the other Seven, their mouths all the same straight line.

The pictures of Cami herself were newer, and they fluttered uneasily, interlopers against the red enamel.

She found what she needed in the crisper. She pulled out the cutting board, selected Marya’s favorite wood-handled butcher knife. Placed it, gleaming-sharp, next to the scarred block of oiled wood and weighed the apple in her hand. Satiny and red, it was too heavy. She set it down and looked at it, her brain still caught in that peculiar humming, head cocked, ink-black hair a river down her back.

Tip it over.

So she did, one trembling finger touching the apple until it toppled. It was not perfectly round, so it rolled with a bump and lay there, as if it knew a secret.

It does. Are you sure you want to know one, too?

Her fingers curled around the knifehilt. She blinked.

Cloven horizontally, the apple fell open. She saw the seeds, each nestled in its own hollow, making a five-pointed star. Deep foulness bubbled up in the recesses of her memory. A screaming, a hissing, gouts of perfumed smoke that filled the cup of the skull with cotton numbness, and the crisp scent of a just-sliced apple all mixed together.

That’s what she smells like. Smoke and fruit. Because she’s the Queen. Shudders rippled down Cami’s back.

Not just any queen. The White Queen. The shaking was worse. It held her in its jaws, snapping her back and forth. The knife clattered against the counter, and her left hand smacked the apple halves and sent them flying.

It was too late. The knife’s poison-polished blade flashed, a dart of white cruelness straight into the center of her skull, and Cami let out a soft birdlike sound. She couldn’t scream because she couldn’t breathe, it was too bright, there was smoke in her throat and the chanting was full of nonsense syllables instead of meaning and she couldn’t . . .

Her legs gave out. Her head clipped the edge of the tiled counter on the way down, and the brief starburst of pain turned into wet warmth. The knife spun, teetering on the edge, then fell with another chiming sound. It missed her nose by a bare half-inch, but she never knew.

Her muscles locked, and the sound wouldn’t stop. It was a child’s voice too broken to scream any further, and its chirping made words as she curled into a ball on the russet floor.

“Mommy no Mommy no Mommy no Mommy noooooooooo . . . ”

TWENTY-ONE

“SHE PASSED OUT.” NICO, BUT . . . DIFFERENT. LIKE there was something caught in his throat.

“Are we sure that’s what it was, sir?” Stevens, now. Dry and reedy, his throat needed oiling. Would he be Nico’s consigliere too, a glove for Nico’s consciousness, the well that a new Vultusino would drop secrets into?

What secrets would he have now that he couldn’t tell her? Plenty. Even Papa had sometimes sent her to Marya, when things were happening a little girl shouldn’t hear. She’d been able to guess around the corners, but to be the Vultusino was to have secrets. Lots of them.

Bad secrets.

Are mine bad too? They must be.

Cami sighed. She was warm, and it was soft around her, and the noise had stopped. All of it, even the roaring and the barking dogs. Her head was only full of ringing silence.

They were quiet, and she kept her eyes closed. Her breathing came in deep even swells. She was so glad she wasn’t choking that she just kept doing it, drawing the air in, letting it out.

“If you have something to say, Stevens, spit it out.” Nico still sounded different. She couldn’t figure out just how. The question kept her occupied much as breathing did.

“Black as night. Blue as sky. Red as blood.” Stevens paused. “White. As snow.”

“We’d know, if she was—”

“Would we? Would you?”

“Be careful.” The difference was sharp and hurtful now, but without the usual edge of flippancy. “Be very careful what you say, ghoul.”

That’s it. She was so pleased she moved, turning over and pulling the covers up. He sounds like Papa. Won’t he be surprised to know that.

But she wouldn’t tell him. Not yet. He was still too angry.

They were silent until she had settled.

“She is far too young, and there are none of the signs. Still, she may have been . . . marked.” Stevens, ponderously slow and so dry. If Papa was angry, or speaking quickly, Stevens would space his words further apart, stringing them between pauses to force Papa to slow down. She could have told him that wouldn’t work with Nico.

“Just what the hell are you saying?” Now he was more like himself. Angry—and she wasn’t sure when that anger had become a comfort. If he was sharp and furious, at least she knew what to expect.

“I am saying caution is called for, if we are not to lose what we have.”

She could almost see Stevens clamming up, pursing his thin lips. The air was heavy, oddly dead, but it still tasted wonderful. A ghost of bay rum, a familiar comfort, and the softness all around her.

“Biel’y.” Nico all but spat. “They can have anything else in the goddamn city, but not her.”

No answer from Stevens. Had he nodded in agreement? Cami buried her face in a pillow. Why don’t you just go away so I can sleep? I need it. I don’t feel good.

Not good at all. Clear-headed, certainly. Like a broom had swept through her jumbled thoughts, pushing them out and away, smoothing her like Marya would smooth a sheet of phyllo dough.

I dropped the knife. She’ll be furious.

No, Cami did not feel good. She felt like she’d just run a race, one too fast and too long for her. Her legs were still going and the rest of her hadn’t caught up.

Nico finally spoke up, decisive. “My calendar should be clear today. Did you call St. Juno’s?”

“I did. Sir, the Stregare wish for your—”

“They can wait.” Impatient, now. “Get out. She’s waking up.”

I’m already awake, thanks. It was no good. Cami stretched. It wasn’t her bed. It felt all wrong. Too soft, and the covers were too heavy.

A door closed, softly. “He’s gone. You can open your eyes now.”

It was the Red Room, still holding the silence of Papa’s transition. Nico was in the chair by the bed. Cami pushed herself up on her elbows. Someone must have carried me here. Marya probably found me in the kitchen.

The silence was immense, and there was a new thing in it. A breathlessness, like the static just before a Waste-born lightning storm. His anger had never felt so . . . unsteady before. As if it might be directed at her, instead of just dangerous on its own.

But that was ridiculous. If he was here, she was safe.

“I’m not gonna ask what you were doing.” Nico leaned forward, elbows on his knees. His eyes were dark, no colored sparks in the pupils, and narrowed. “I’m not even gonna ask if you’re okay, because you’re obviously not. I should take you to the hospital, except I know you don’t like needles and poking. Trig says you didn’t give yourself a concussion, so I suppose that’s all right.” He paused. “I am, however, gonna ask you about him.”

About who? She stretched, pulled the covers up. Her pajamas were all rucked around. “Who?” The word came out whole, surprising her.

Nico’s gaze was dead-level, but there were no pinpricks of red in his pupils. “The boy.”

What boy? “W-what?”

“The garden boy. Beale, right? The Joringel scholarship boy.”

Oh. Tor. How do you know he came from there? But of course, he would. She gathered herself. How could she even begin explaining?

Nico kept going, though. “Because I really don’t mind you hanging out with the help, babygirl, but you should know what he’s probably thinking.”

She pushed her hair back, strings of darkness clinging to her fingers. Why here? It’s on the other side of the house from the kitchen. And what do you think Tor’s thinking? It’s not like you’ve asked. I know you better than that. “What w-w-would he b-be—”

“You’re a sweet girl, Cami, and you could be a lot of help to a kid from near the core. You’re la Vultusina, all right? People are going to see that. They’re going to want things.”

They always have. You don’t know, you’re always away. Doing important things. Family things. “N-nico.” She sounded annoyed even to herself. And I’m not la Vultusina yet. “He’s m-m-my f-f-friend.”

“You may be his friend. But I don’t think he’s yours.” Nico leaned forward. There were shadows under his mossy eyes, and his fangs were out, just delicately touching his lower lip. “It doesn’t matter. Just be careful. Wouldn’t want any accidents.” His smile widened, and it was the grimace he used when he wanted to scare someone. An animal showing all its teeth, white and sharp and perfect.

The unsteadiness was all through her instead of just underneath her feet. She couldn’t even figure out what to call it, when it was vibrating in her own bones. Her back straightened. The covers fell away. The room was utterly still, and it had even begun to smell a little neglected. You could tell nobody had breathed in here for a while. “L-l-leave h-him alone.”

“If he behaves himself, I’ll be his new best friend. I’ll take him out with the boys and give him a taste of real nightside.” The grin didn’t go away. “If he steps out of line, though, Cami, there’s gonna be trouble. I guarantee it.”

“Why a-a-are you b-b-being l-like this?” He doesn’t even matter, he’s just a friend! He’s just . . .

What, exactly, was Tor? Every time she talked to him, she ended up confused. And there were the dogs.

What about the dogs, Cami? Marya said . . .

To hell with it. She pushed the covers aside further, sliding her legs out of bed. The bandages were still crisply charmed; their whiteness dyed by the Red Room’s gloom.

“Like what?” Nico didn’t move. If she wanted to stand up, she would have to push past him. “You tell me exactly what I’m being like.”

Like . . . this. I don’t even know how to say it. “L-like m-mean.” Like you think you can order me around too, or something. Or like you don’t even see me, you just see . . . what?

He didn’t flinch, but his stillness became its own creature, hunching between them like a titon hunched over a pile of cow bones. “I don’t want to be mean to you.”

Then why are you being nasty? Everything was knotting up again, the inside of her head getting all jumbled. So she just shrugged, and pushed her feet out further. Her toes brushed his leg; she scooted for the edge.

He didn’t move.

“Cami.” His fingers touched her knee. They were hot through the silk of her pajama pants, and the hurtful strength in his grip was restrained.

Still, it was there. He was Family.

And she wasn’t. She was something else, from somewhere else. Cami halted, staring at the nightstand. The bone comb wasn’t there, but the candles in the two heavy iron holders were flaming steadily. The room was trying to be the same, but it couldn’t.

Papa was gone.

Nico exhaled softly. “I’m not gonna let anyone hurt you.” The grin was gone. The words were serious, very quiet, and suddenly everything inside the Red Room suffocated her. “Ever.”

Except you, right? You won’t be able to stop yourself one of these days. And you’ll be sorry about it. But you’ll do it, and I’ll be the one hurting.

Unless I do something about it.

She pushed forward and he finally moved, sliding the chair back on the plush carpet. Her feet weren’t too bad, she only hobbled a little. Nico made a frustrated little sound she knew from long experience—he was annoyed, but he wasn’t going to explode.

Well, thank God for that, at least. She made it to the door. Her bandage-shuffling footsteps fell into the dead silence.

“Say something. Mithrus, Cami, get mad at me, throw something, do anything, just say something!”

I can’t. Haven’t you noticed? “I’ll b-b-be c-c-c . . . ” She stopped, her own frustration rising bright and metallic to her back teeth. Took a deep breath, tried again. “Careful. I’ll b-be c-careful.”

It probably wasn’t what he wanted, and she probably shouldn’t have left him in there staring at the Red Room’s paneling and the red bed. But she had to get out of there, because the buzzing in her bones had mounted another few notches, and she still didn’t have a name for it.

And for once, Nico could deal with his own fury. It was, Cami thought as she headed grimly for the stairs, about damn time.

TWENTY-TWO

SHE PRETENDED SHE WAS SICK AND STAYED HOME FROM school, and Nico didn’t push. Neither did anyone else. Marya’s careful charming took care of her feet. Stevens kept bringing up messages from Ruby, from Ellie, written in his crabbed hand on the traditional thick linen paper; Cami just glanced at them and nodded. She didn’t even turn on her Babbage.

Nico was angry. Ruby and Ellie were probably angry too, but who cared? Let them go on without their third wheel for a while. It wasn’t like they would miss her deadweight.

Plus, Nico was busy with Family business, too busy to care what Cami did or didn’t do. Marya kept sending lunch and dinner to the study on trays; they returned uneaten. There was a steady stream of visitors from the other Families, and from the lower ranks of the Vultusino.

They were hunting the child-takers, since the police had no clue.

Cami avoided them. Let Nico take care of that. If he was going to start working like Papa always had, it was probably high time. She heard enough whispers around the edges to know the vanishings were still going on, but there was nothing on the news. Whoever was snatching kids had to know that meant the Family had been asked to step in.

Or maybe they didn’t. Either way, it was only a matter of time. Once the Family began hunting, you couldn’t hide. Even Papa said so.

We are the scouring of the earth, he had said once to Stevens, as an eight-year-old Cami perched in his lap and played with his tie. As we always have been.

What was there to do all day, when you didn’t go to school? A pile of nothing and brooding. Which left her sitting up in her room staring out the window at the snow. High stacked billows of iron-gray cloud moved in every evening, the temperature rose slightly, and from a flat-beaten sheet of metallic dark infinity the flakes would come whirling down. After midnight the sky cleared, and the drifts were frozen stiff.

Tor didn’t show up, even when Cami dragged herself down to the kitchen. Where Marya, when she wasn’t happily scolding everyone, was humming to herself as she fussed over the stove, supremely oblivious to Cami’s sullen silence. Of course, the benefit of sullenness was taken away when you couldn’t talk much anyway. If it had been Ruby shutting up, everyone would have noticed.

So, Tor wasn’t going to come to her. Fair enough. One day after lunch, she decided she might as well do a little scouring of the earth herself, and look for him.

What did you wear when you went chasing a scarred garden boy from Simmerside? She decided jeans were acceptable. A chunky green wool jumper Marya had knitted her for Mithrusmas last year. The black boots with the fake fur at the top, doubled socks over her tender still-healing feet, and her cashmere coat.

She cut through the empty, quiet ballroom and found a back hall, letting herself out through a servant’s door. The problem of where to find him solved itself—the groundskeeper’s barn and its sheds were just down the hill from here, tucked out of sight behind a high hedge of windbreak firs but still close to the puzzle-garden, which needed constant babying in spring. She could remember being lost with Nico in its depths, her heart beating high and wild in her throat, and Nico’s grin.

I’m Family. I’m never lost, he always said, his hand warm in hers and his presence banishing all fear. Come on.

Not this time. This time, Cami crunched along alone, her boots breaking the icy crust, her nose and cheeks immediately numb. Her fists, stuffed deep in her coat pockets, were slippery. Her breath came short, the air was knife-cold, and the clouds for the afternoon snowfall were riding in fast, low in the sky like a steel-colored headache. Winter sunlight thrown back from the drifts scraped through the inside of her head, left it aching.

Even if it wasn’t expressly forbidden, she’d never dared to play much in the barn. She’d played banditti with Nico there, sometimes. He was the fearless bandit, she was the girl from the town, smuggling him food and drink or aiding his daring escapes. The barn was good for that, but the groundskeeper would shake his gnarled fist if he found them among the machines and implements, fascinated by the riding mower or the oozing, dozing gray grinmarches whose job it was to eat pests, insect or rodent—and sometimes, bigger things.

Stevens wasn’t the only dark hole to drop a secret, and once something went into a grinmarch, it didn’t come out except in tiny gray pellets spread on the gardens in spring. And they ate anything organic.

The side door was unlocked, and she heard male voices, laughter. A clanging, the crack of a leather strap.

Cami grabbed the knob, twisted it firmly, and stepped into the hay-smelling dimness. It was cold, but not as frozen as outside. Her breath plumed, and she blinked, trying to adjust.

Dead silence. For a moment she thought the place was deserted, but her vision cleared slowly and she saw the lean brown groundskeeper, his mouth ajar, staring at her from where he bent over a red-shining mower, its hood lifted and the engine a collection of fascinating alien metal bits. Two garden boys were feeding the sluggish gray-skinned four-legged grinmarches, pilfer husks drifting from the shovels, crawling with charm-caught insects and the occasional small mouse. They stared at her agape as well. The oil-sheened grinmarches snorted and champed, snuffling in the husks and making little crunching noises when they came across anything with a skeleton or carapace.

Tor straightened slowly. He was crouched by a pile of shiny things, and as he stood, she saw they were blades. He had a whetstone in one hand, and his messy black hair was shaken down over a glower. Another garden boy, this one blond and husky, was hanging up bits of leather—she didn’t know what they were, but they looked important, with jingling metal bits.

Embarrassment flooded her cheeks with heat. “Hi,” she managed, awkwardly. “I’m l-l-looking f-for T-tor.”

The groundskeeper cleared his throat. “’E’s done.” Gruff and gravel—was this the same man who had been a figure of terror while she tagged behind Nico, never daring to look at his face? Now he was a stick with scanty white hair and a pair of overalls hanging loosely on his frame, a bulky colorless jumper underneath and his hands spotted with black grease. “G’on.”

Does he stutter too? She regarded him curiously, and Tor dropped a shiny blade and the whetstone. Metal clanged, and she almost flinched.

Tor zipped his jacket up—it was the same dun-colored leather jacket with its scuffs and missing hardware, and she suddenly longed to see him in a new one. Would he take it the right way?

You got Ellie in trouble, you want to get him in trouble too? You’re good at that, Cami. A spot of hot acid shoved behind her breastbone, an accusing finger.

Tor’s scowl didn’t change. “Clock me out, Derek?”

“You bet.” But the blond was staring at her, as if she was a summerfey appearing past the Dead Harvest—a violation, something that shouldn’t be.

Like a minotaur. Or a Twist.

Tor approached with long loping strides, and there was a dark bruise on the side of his neck, peeking past a ratty red knitted scarf. She stood, not quite sure what should happen next, and he tilted his chin a little at the door. She groped for the knob, and in a few heartbeats the cold hit her afresh. So did the glare of sunshine, and she began to shiver.

He barely waited to sweep the door closed before snapping at her. “You shouldn’t be here.”

Well, isn’t that welcoming. “I th-thought—”

He apparently didn’t care what she thought. “It’s dangerous.”

“I w-w-won’t l-let N-nico do anything.” To you. Just so you know.

A dismissive movement. His boots, at least, looked sturdy. Not tattered like the rest of him. “You think I’m worried about him, princess? Not likely.”

This time, she minded the name. She raised an eyebrow, an imitation of Ruby’s do-you-know-who-you-are-addressing expression, and for once her tongue didn’t eat a word whole. “P-princess?”

“Up in your tower, watching the rest of us. Never mind. Come on.”

I thought you said it was dangerous. “Why? If I sh-sh-shouldn’t b-b-be here.”

“We can talk. A little, at least.” He raised a hand, flattened it against his chest—high up, just where a pendant would rest. A curious look of relief passed over his sharp, wary face. “But after that, we shouldn’t. It’s not safe.”

“I th-thought you w-w-were the r-right k-kind of trouble.” I can’t believe I just said that.

I can’t believe he stood there and let me get it all out.

“I thought I was, for you.” He glanced around. “Not anymore.”

The shed by the south pond was ramshackle, and unlike the barn, it was familiar territory. Near the wall at the very edge of the property, it was as far away from the house as Cami could comfortably go on a summer’s evening—which meant it was too far while winter lay on New Haven.

Afterward, she wasn’t quite sure if Tor led her there, or if she led him. They just . . . set out, and naturally arrived there in the middle of the brambles, a slice of land left fallow inside the Vultusino’s massive wall. Every house of the Seven had a charmed property boundary, gray stone from the quarries upstate threaded with ancient barriers against trespass and stray charm. The security crew walked the boundaries every dusk and dawn, with wooden daggers and other weapons, searching for any attempted breach.

It was frigid inside the shed, and the weight of snow on the roof was about to cave it in. Thorny vines clasped the walls—they had played Reeve and Wasteland here as children, Nico as hunter and Cami as herbalist, fighting off mutants and wild Twists. She knew the floor was sagging but not quite ready to give yet; the hole in the ceiling where the swallows nested spilled a trickle of diamond snow.

The coils of rope on the wall, slowly rotting, were old friends. The stain in the back, on the packed-earth floor, still gave her a chill deeper than the cold outside. Just the size of a body, Nico had said once, casually, and she was never sure if he knew something she didn’t.

“We can’t do this again.” Tor folded his arms. “It’s dangerous.”

What’s so dangerous about you? “What if I don’t c-c-care?”

“Maybe I care.”

“M-maybe you d-d-don’t.” But she had other questions. She pointed at his throat—no, slightly below, where the pendant would gleam. “An apple. C-c-cut in h-half.”

He actually went white, even the rawness at his nose and the corners of his mouth paling. “You don’t know anything about it.”

“I d-d-don’t. But I n-n-need—”

He took two steps toward her, and his hands curled into fists, dangling naked at his sides despite the cold. “What do you think you need? Take my advice—stay where it’s safe. Don’t go outside. Don’t go places with strange men. Stay away and hope . . . ” His throat worked. He’d run out of words, so maybe she could get one or two in.

So Cami swallowed hard, and went for it. “Wh-what’s B-b-biel’y?” She couldn’t pronounce it like Stevens had.

She didn’t need to. If she thought he was pale before he was ashen now. His throat worked as he gulped. His shoulders hunched too, defensively. “Do they know?”

Know what? I don’t even know, how can I tell what they do? I’m not one of them. You said it yourself. She swallowed, the bitterness all through her hard and frozen as the ground outside. “I h-heard them t-t-talking.” I don’t have to say what they were talking about, now do I? Or even who “they” are. “I d-d-don’t know anything. B-b-but I n-n-need to. I . . . I h-have d-d-dreams. Bad ones.” Her fingers shook as she unbuttoned her coat. “W-wait.” Even though he wasn’t going anywhere. The cashmere fell open, and she lifted the thick woolen jumper and her T-shirt underneath. Her belly showed, so pale the veins were blue through the skin—and not only that, but the scars from burn and welt and slice were plainly visible.

The breath left him in a rush, a white cloud. The wind rose, fingering at the shed’s edges. A low moan, eerie and unmodulated.

“Y-y-you’re n-not the only o-o-one with sc-c-cars.” God, why can’t I just talk?

He stared until she lowered her shirt and sweater. It was too cold, but she didn’t feel it. Her fingers shook even more as she buttoned her coat back up, her gloves making her clumsier.

“They f-f-found m-me in the s-s-snow.” Now it was easier, because she had his attention. He was listening like Nico did, leaning forward, the rest of the world shut out. “I’m not F-f-family. N-not a p-princess. I w-want to know wh-what’s h-h-h-happening t-t-to me.” Because something is. Something terrible.

He stared for a long while. She fidgeted, shivering, wishing she could shake him and make him start telling her things.

Finally, Tor let out a ragged sigh. “Okay.” He nodded, his shoulders slumping. “Okay. But not here, for Chrissake.”

Uneasy relief and fresh nervousness mixed inside her stomach. “Wh-where?”

“Not tonight, either. Let me think, all right? Just let me think.” He actually turned in a full circle, looking at the shed’s walls covered with coils of decaying rope and the black hanging driblets of moss that would green in spring.

Just like a dog settling down for the night. Cami shivered even harder.

When he turned back to her, he was still pale. His hands were fists again, and he thrust them in his jacket pockets. “Fine.” As if they’d been yelling, and the fight was over. “Biel’y. Okay.”

“D-d-do you—”

“I said okay.” Quick as a flash of lightning, and the irritation gone just as fast. “I’ll tell you what I know, but not here. The moon turns tonight. Waxing moon’s much safer for . . . both of us. Can you get out after dark? Two days from now?”

She nodded. Nico’s going to be angry.

But only if he finds out. And besides, she had to know. If she wasn’t Family, this wasn’t his business, was it?

Tor nodded, once, sharply. You could tell he was used to planning things, once he made up his mind. “Here’s what we’ll do, then.”

TWENTY-THREE

QUIET, DARK, AND MUFFLED BY THE SNOW, THE HOUSE on Haven Hill crouched.

She carried her shoes down the stairs, holding her breath whenever one thought of squeaking under her weight. Slowly, softly, a mouse in a dark hole, she kept glancing in every direction, nervously halting whenever a breath of sound brushed her ears.

Nico was out, with some of the Cinghiale boys. Clubbing, or who knew? Family business, and Trig was gone too. They’d left that afternoon, and the house was just like when Papa was gone—absent its breathing, beating heart. The Vultusino was missing, and even the walls knew it.

If Papa had been alive, she never would have dared to do this.

The front door grimaced at her, so she turned aside and crept across the foyer. Trig gone with Nico, Stevens already in bed; Marya was in the kitchen humming, and would be for a long while. The servants were bedded down; precious few of them wanted to trudge home through a New Haven winter. It was best just to stay on the Hill. And security wouldn’t do another circuit until dawn—or unless the protections on the walls woke.

The side door was locked, but it recognized Cami and opened with no fuss. The charms were uneasy, but she was allowed.

At least, this once. If she got caught, things might change.

Did Ruby feel like this when she snuck out? Did Ellie feel the risk breathing on her back, tingling in her fingers, her heart beating so hard she thought she might faint? Or was it just Cami the coward who cringed at every sound?

The cold ran down her body like oil. The leggings were good, the skirt was okay, and her coat was warm—but she was looking at being half-frozen already. She pulled the door shut, heard it click, and heard the charmbolt slide back into place.

Well, I’m outside.

Down the steps, around the corner, the snow wasn’t too bad. Expeller charms kept it mostly whisked away, and the wind drifted it against the north side of the house. She crept to the corner and peered out at the driveway.

“Don’t just stand there.” Tor’s breath touched her ear. She jumped, almost letting out a shriek, and saw the white gleam of his teeth as he grinned. “Sorry.”

She balled up her fist and socked him a good one on the shoulder, as if he was Nico. He stopped short, still grinning. Her clenched fist tingled.

That was probably not a good idea.

“Really, I’m sorry.” He even sounded contrite. “Got carried away.”

With what, dammit? Her heart finally settled, pounding high and hard in her wrists and throat. At least with her pulse going like this she wasn’t cold. “F-fine. Where are w-we g-g-going?”

He was an ink-drawing, from the smudge of his hair to the paleness of his hands. “Someplace I’m sure we won’t be overheard.”

“O-o-over—”

“There’s ears everywhere, princess. Let’s go.”

It wasn’t easy to get off the grounds without using the gate, but Tor climbed a tree near the periphery, put his hand down and braced her as she scrambled up. The protections scented Cami and vibrated a little, but subsided, and she finally let out the breath she’d been holding.

He dropped down on the other side, caught and steadied her as she tried not to fall into a snowdrift. His hands were warm against her waist, even through her coat, and a different heat went through her, along with a curious comfort.

Why did he feel so familiar?

He let go of her, slowly, and they trudged along the wall until they reached a small enclosure, saved from the worst of the snowfall by a huge cedar tree. Under its low-hanging branches, in the fragrant chilly dark, stood a motorcycle.

It was sleek and shining, slung low to the ground, and its front wheel was covered with a shield shaped like a silver horse’s head. Its wheels were alive with silver grabcharms, hissing slightly as they touched the cold air.

“You like?” Tor’s grin was proprietary and uneasy all at once. “He was a junked-out hulk. I dragged him halfway across town, remade him from the inside out.”

“Wow.” Cami touched the horse’s head, her gloved finger scratching behind an ear. As if it was real. Charmlight ran in the silvery metal, and she snatched her hand back. Tor, right behind her, was so close his breath was a cloud over her shoulder.

“He likes you.”

“H-how c-can you t-t-tell?”

A shrug she felt in her own shoulders. “I rebuilt him, I can tell. You know how to ride?”

She had to shake her head. Motorcycles weren’t safe. Nico would have a fit if he knew—but she pushed the thought away. He was out, doing God knew what. It was Cami’s Personal Choice to be here, and if he didn’t like it, well, he could just . . .

Bravery only went so far. It would be much, much better if he just didn’t find out about this. It was private, she decided.

Tor’s fingers, awkward, touched her elbow. “It’s easy. I did the charming myself, all through him, he’s pretty safe. You’ll have to lean with me, and you’ll have to be close. Still want to? You can get back into the house if you—”

“N-no.” She stepped back, blundering into him, and the contact sent a shock through her, even through layers of clothing. “I’m n-not going b-b-back.” I’ve come too far. I have to know.

And for once, she was a necessary part of an expedition. She wanted to know, she had sought him out, and she had snuck out of the house on her own. This whole thing wouldn’t be happening without her, and that was a frightening—but kind of pleasant—change.

“Okay.” He pushed past her, swung a leg over the cycle’s padded seat, and leaned it, popping the kickstand free. Another quick motion, and the purr of an engine rasped under the snowy quiet. “Climb up, princess.”

I wish you wouldn’t call me that. It was probably useless to ask any questions, so she didn’t. She clambered carefully up, sliding her arms around his waist. At least she knew that much.

“Closer,” he said over his shoulder. “You’ve got to hold on tight.”

His jacket smelled of leather, but without the bay rum and Nico’s fiery pepper-temper it wasn’t a quite-safe aroma. The cold lay over them both, an almost physical weight. The purr of the engine ratcheted, and the cycle jerked forward. The snow was churned about, broken and dangerous; he half-walked the purring thing toward the road. The grabcharms flung themselves out in sticky lightning-snake tentacles, digging into the frozen surface and tossing up tiny bits of it.

The wind rose, tugging at her braided hair, wringing tears out of her eyes. She wondered how he could see to steer, and laid her head on his shoulder. He tensed, but then relaxed as the motorcycle reached the bottom of a shallow hill, whinnied, and hopped up onto the road as neat as you please.

Cami caught the trick of it—you did have to lean close. Pretty indecently close.

Ruby would love this. The thought made her grin, and she hugged Tor fiercely as the icy, dangerous road slid away underneath them. He gunned it, leaning forward as the grabcharms spat, and the chrome horse leapt to obey.

TWENTY-FOUR

HER CHEEKS STILL STUNG FROM THE COLD OUTSIDE, and she tried to look like she walked into a smoke-dimmed, charm-and-neon lit, bass-thumping inferno every day of the week. The club was on the edge of Simmerside, and Tor was known here—at least, the jack bouncer nodded him and Cami past. Thick with muscle, mirrored shades over eyes that glowed through the polarized lenses, the shaven-headed jack presided over a line of other jacks and Twists, inadequately dressed against the cold, none of them daring to step much out of line under his glare.

Inside, it was a crush of throbbing music, and the smoke drifting around was from burning tobacco and other substances. A few actual fausts were on the dancefloor, jerking as if possessed.

Well, technically, she supposed they were possessed. She had never been this close to real live fausts before, and was surprised to see they looked just like regular people, except for the constant smoke wreathing them. And the way their hair stood up, writhing madly. Even the lone female faust’s waist-length mop tried to rise on an invisible draft.

There were their eyes, too, glowing dull punky unnatural colors as the dæmon crouching inside its human host looked out.

There were Twists here too, most of them congregating along one wall of the club where iron bars ran from floor to ceiling, part of the Age of Iron chic the whole place had. Odd shapes lurked in the shadows as limbs corkscrewed by Potential moved restlessly; shoving and snapping, their eyes glitter-crackling with stray sharp unhealthy charms, the Twists were given careful space even by the fausts. The iron would scorch them, but every once in a while a Twist brushed against it deliberately, and the sick-sweet roasting smell that arose added a sharper note to the funk as the Twist exhaled luxuriously.

What would it be like, Cami wondered, to love pain that much?

The bar was a mess of tubing; the bartender wore goggles pushed up on his sweat-greased forehead; polished sprockets and gearwheels glittered from the circulating waitress’s skirts. The tables were covered with dingy linen, and the jacks on the dancefloor sported feathers, fur, lizard skin, a whole cavalcade of Potential-spurred anomalies that would keep them hidden or creeping in the shadows during daylight.

None of them elbowed Tor, though, and she followed in his wake to the bar. He leaned over and shouted something; the tender gave him a brief dark glance, looked over his shoulder at Cami. The bartender was a charmer, the edge of his Potential flaring with a faint green wreathing glow as it reacted with the charged atmosphere. His dark hair and wide dark eyes made him into an inquisitive river otter, and he yelled something over the noise at Tor, who shrugged. “She’s with me,” the garden boy yelled back, and picked up something shiny from the counter. Two glasses of something fuming with steam were handed over. Tor nodded, didn’t bother paying as he turned away and forced a fresh route through the crowd.

There was another Twist bouncer at the staircase, but this one just stood aside, holding the end of a frayed red velvet rope. The music—if you could call it that—was a migraine attack, but Cami thought she heard Shelley Wynter singing again. Or maybe it was Bronwinn and the Titons, floaty female vocals over a pounding beat and wailing charmesizers.

Nico really liked Shelley Wynter, had every tape she’d put out, even the limited-release demos from when she was a torch singer in New Bransford, a couple province-states south.

When Cami was thirteen, she’d wished for her hair to whiten just like Wynter’s. She’d nerved herself up to ask Marya about bleach and dye, but had never quite scraped together the last drop of courage necessary to actually do it. Ruby had said there would be no problem, but Cami didn’t want to trust her hair to Ruby’s enthusiasm at that point. Not after the Great Clippers Incident earlier that summer. Of course Rube had just looked gorgeous and ethereal, but still.

Behind the rope was an archway, and stairs going up. She climbed after Tor, blinking. Her eyes kept filling up—from the cold, and the smoke, and all the noise.

I’m out, at night, with a strange boy. Near the core, too. Her heart pounded so fast she thought she might have some sort of attack.

Was this what freedom felt like?

There was a close dim hall upstairs; Tor took a sharp right and set off down it. He shouldered open a door to his left, jerked his head at her, and she stepped inside.

It was, of all things, a sitting room. There was a fireplace, but it was cold and empty. Two overstuffed chairs that looked pre-Reeve crouched dispirited in front of it, and a small table sat between them. Peeling yellow-brocade wallpaper hung in strips from the walls, and the whole thing made Cami’s throat close up. If the Red Room was a comforting weight, this sad little room was a strangling crush of poverty and disrepair.

If Papa hadn’t found her, who might have? Or if Chauncey hadn’t bothered with the brakes, what would have happened? Or what if Nico decided, sooner or later, that she wasn’t Family enough, if she made him too angry? He was the Vultusino now, and if he decided she didn’t belong in the house on Haven Hill . . .

It didn’t bear thinking about. But sooner or later, Cami supposed, she would have to think about it.

“Sit down,” Tor said, sweeping the door shut. “I’m pretty sure we won’t be overheard here.”

I doubt anyone could hear through all that downstairs. The music and crowdroar from below was a giant beast’s dozing pulse, as if they were above a rumbling titon pit. “I d-d-d-don’t—” she began, but he just pushed past her, set the drinks down on the table, and stamped back to the door. There was a click, and she realized he had locked it.

Her throat, in addition to closing up to the size of a piece of spaghetti, was now slick and dry as summer-dusted glass.

“Got to be careful. You start talking about Biel’y, people get nervous.” He brushed past her, dropped down in the chair to the left. Reached for one steam-fuming drink, and poured it down in a long swallow. “Gah. Nasty.”

Cami’s boots were still wet with melting snow. His tracks and hers showed up dark on the threadbare, flower-patterned carpet.

“Before I forget.” He dug in his jacket pocket. “Something for you. Since the pin broke. You seemed awful worried about it.”

She lowered herself down in the other chair. “I f-felt b-bad. S-s-since you—”

“I’m not broken up about it. But I figured I’d get you something else, pretty girl. Here.”

It was a velvet bag, deep black, the nap worn in a few places. She opened it gingerly, and the shimmersilk spilled out. Opalescent, charm-woven by Waste-witches, the rumor ran—it was pretty rare. The threads were fine, but strong as iron, and the lacework of it could be doubled, turned over itself to make a belt, opened for a shawl. She’d never actually held shimmersilk before.

It made even fey-woven lace look coarse and ugly. Her small wondering sigh was lost under the thumping from below. “W-wow,” she breathed. “H-how d-d-did you—” She was just about to ask how did you afford it, stopped herself. “Th-thank y-you.”

For a bare moment, he grinned without anger, shyly ducking his head. “I saw it in a pawnshop, thought it belonged to you. Took a couple paychecks, but it’s worth it.” He eyed the second drink. “You want that? It’s called a minotaur. Rat-tooth gin, strawberry juice, and cornswell charm. Just the thing for nerves.”

“N-no. Th-thank you, Tor.” His name managed to wring its way free of her lips, whole and undamaged.

“You’re welcome. I . . . Mithrus. I like you.” Did he look uncomfortable? Maybe just a little. He grabbed the second drink, bolted it too. Steam drenched his face for a moment; he wiped it away with his free hand and set the second glass down. The gleam in his hand was the door-key, he set it on the table, pushed it with a fingertip until it was on her side. “Okay, so. Biel’y.”

The shimmersilk slid through her hands. It had tassels, made of smoky floss. Nobody at school had one.

Ruby would just die.

“I only know a l-little,” she hedged. Wait. Did he just say he liked me?

“Look, I was an orphan. I didn’t know. Sometimes it happens, one of them gets lost and grows up outside the cult.”

It’s a cult? There were a lot of them around, leftovers from the Age of Iron, coalescing around charmers gone bad, or Twists with charisma. You couldn’t swing a hexed cat in some provinces without hitting a cult or two. Papa said that even some branches of the Family, like the Stregare, used to be worshipped sometimes, back before the Reeve.

Papa’s gone. A chill touched her back. The shimmersilk was cool, like supple living metal against her sweating fingers. It was waking up, coming alive in her hands as her Potential filled it with heat. Music thumped away below, the beat changing a fraction, becoming more insistent. “Okay.” I didn’t think there were cults here in New Haven, though.

“I’m not one of them,” he persisted.

She nodded. Her braid bumped against the back of her coat. She was beginning to warm up a little. Maybe she should have had the other drink. A buzz would probably help right about now. “I b-believe you.”

Maybe it was the dimness, but he suddenly looked years older. “Well, don’t. Biel’y lie. That’s the first lesson about them—don’t ever trust one who says they’re not, especially a man. Once the Queen gets hold of them, they’ll do anything, say anything, to get her what she wants.”

Her hands cramped. The shimmersilk bit, its thin threads able to slice flesh if enough pressure was applied. She had to force her fingers to relax. “The Queen.” It was a bare, numb-lipped whisper.

An answering whisper, from the well of darkness her nightmares hid inside. You are nobody. You are nothing.

“The White Queen.” Tor was pale. Sweat stuck his messy black hair to his forehead. “The boys serve her, they grow into her huntsmen. The women serve her too, if they come in from outside. But the girls . . . she takes them.” He wet his lips, a quick darting motion of his tongue. “It’s old magic, older than the Reeve or the Age of Iron. Didn’t anyone ever tell you this ghost story?”

“N-no.” Not until now. “They t-talk around the edges. B-but not out l-loud.”

“Sometimes she takes in orphans. There are some kids born into the cult, born underground where they live, like Twists. If they’re not Twisted, if they’re not jacks, if they’re plain human or charmer, they’re kept.” He shuddered. “The born-below boy babies are special huntsmen. Her Okhotniki.” The word was funny, swallowed into the back of his throat, almost French but not quite. “The girls . . . when they’re six . . . it’s not pretty.”

How old are you, bambina? Where is your momma, your poppa?

Tor’s black eyes glazed. He stared at the empty fireplace like he could see the story he was telling played out in its shadowed depths. “Sometimes, only sometimes, the White Queen consents to her most favored Okhotnik. Sometimes after that there’s a baby, and sometimes, only sometimes, a special baby girl born. A princess. When she’s six, the Queen takes her. Then the Queen’s renewed, not just for a little while like with the other girls, but for a hundred years or more.”

“R-r-renewed?” Her hand stole toward the key.

“Oh, yeah.” He blinked furiously, like there was something in his eyes. “It’s not easy, being the Queen. She gets . . . hungry.” He shuddered again. “That’s why there’s huntsmen. They, and the Okhotniki, bring her things. To . . . eat.”

Oh, God. The cold was all through her now. The music below mounted another frenetic notch, a vibration running through the floor and the chair, rising up her spine.

This one’s heart is fiery.

You were dead. She ate the heart.

The apple, cut in half, its seeds forming a star. A flat medallion, sparking, a red stone in the middle—the only one with a jewel, because she was the Queen.

The others had medallions too, but they were plain. Plain silver, not-quite-round.

“You h-had one,” she whispered. “A n-n-n-necklace.” A huntsman. Bringing her things to eat.

“Since I was in the orphanage. I was an orphan,” he said. He was shaking now, his hands clamped on the chair’s arms. “I was—”

But whatever he would have said next was drowned in a crashing from below. The music rose on feedback-laced squeal, and the screaming started.

Cami grabbed for the key. Her fingers scraped the table, draped in shimmersilk, and Tor’s eyes rolled up into his head. Under the sudden chaos from below, the sound of the chair’s arms cracking as he heaved at them, struggling against something invisible, was only guessed-at, not heard.

She let out a high-pitched cry, lost under a wave of cracking that shuddered through the frame of the nightclub, and bolted for the door, the shimmersilk waving like seaweed as she ran.

Down the stairs in a rush, her wet boots smacking, Cami hit the bottom and went over the frayed red velvet rope with a leap that would have made the gym teacher, Sister Frances Grace-Abiding, very proud. Landed, skipping aside as a faust crashed to the floor right in front of her, for a moment she couldn’t understand why everyone was screaming . . .

. . . then one of the steel-toothed dogs leapt, foam splashing from its muzzle and its fawn-colored hindquarters heaving. It crunched into the fallen faust, chewing as the dæmon inside the flesh let out a shattering wail. Bone splintered, and the faust curled up, throwing the dog aside with a snapped charm that sparked red in the gloomy interior. The charmlights had mostly failed; the bleeding neon glow was barely enough to see by, and the crowd pressed for the doors as the dogs bristled, leaping at will.

A lean half-familiar figure in a tan trench coat stood in the middle of the dance floor’s writhing mass, dogs flowing around him in a stream—brindle, black, splashed with white, big and small, all of them with the same mad gleam in their white-ringed eyes, crunching and howling as their steel-laced teeth champed. Cami skidded to a stop, nailed to the floor as the hounds set up a belling, braying cry that punched through the feedback squeal and swallowed it whole.

The door. But it was choked with fleeing Twists and jacks, a melee breaking out as they panicked and elbowed for room. The fight was going to spread; she’d seen enough of Nico going crazy to know that.

If things go sparky, babygirl, look for the back door.

It was something he always said when he took her into Lou’s on a particularly nasty-tempered day, or to the dives and bars he could prowl with relative immunity as one of the Seven’s boys. She heard it now as if he was right next to her, his lips skinned back in the most dangerously amused of his smiles, the good-natured one that said he didn’t much care who he hurt next.

There. It was to the right of the bar, a fading exit sign that guttered and went out just as the feedback died and the only sound was the dogs’ crunching and yapping, howling and snarling. She bolted for it, her boots squishing, and the shimmersilk in her hands turned treacherous again, its fringes somehow lengthening, waving wildly and jabbing at her eyes, scraping at her wrists, tearing at the cashmere coat.

She hit the door hard, and it opened—thank Mithrus Christ—spilling her out into a cold close darkness. The latch clicked as she shoved it shut, and she gulped in a reeking mouthful of frozen outside. It was sweeter than the fug of breath and smoke and terror inside.

The howling behind her ratcheted up a notch, and she didn’t have to be told they had seen her.

It was the man. The wooden man Nico had thrown out of Lou’s.

She ate the heeeeeeeeart!

But Cami’s heart was pumping in her chest, knocking like it wanted to break out through her ribs and escape the crunching of dogs piling into the jammed-shut door behind her. Her breathing came in quick hard white puffs, and she found herself in a trash-choked, narrow alley, the door behind her shuddering as more dogs hit it, and the sound of sirens lifting in the distance as someone noticed there was a riot starting on the edge of Simmerside, too close to the core for comfort.

This kind of spreading chaos so close to the blight could even trigger a minotaur.

Shimmersilk bit at her hands, its fringe turned to claws as it struggled, a live thing in her grasp. It was trying to eat her face, for God’s sake. She struggled free with a despairing little cry, every inch of skin crawling with revulsion, and flung it to the cobbled floor of the alley.

It rebounded, alive with charm and spitting peacock-colored sparks, nipping at her knees. The edge of Cami’s Potential flashed, a colorless ripple; she skipped aside, banging into a metal dustbin. Fine snow sifted across the alley, icicles festooning the walls wherever heat leaked out of the buildings arching overhead, and her breath came harsh and tearing in her throat.

“NO!” she screamed, and tore away from the shimmersilk. It bit through her leggings, opening bloody stripes and scratches all the way up to her knees, but she managed to kick it loose just as the metal door groaned, buckling.

The dogs might not be able to open it, but the wooden huntsman could—and if enough of the beasts crashed into it, even a fire door wouldn’t hold. Sooner or later one of them would hurl itself against the bar that freed the latch.

Cami let out a sob, her cheeks slick with hot wetness, and gave one last kick. The shimmersilk went flying, hissing in frustration. Sirens howled—the cops had arrived, thinking there was a riot starting. Maybe there was.

She put her head down, and ran.

The holding tank wasn’t that bad. Well, sure, it reeked of cigarette smoke and stale vomit, and it was full of a crowd of jacks, some of them bloody and bruised from the scramble inside the nightclub. Still, it was brightly lit—and there were no dogs.

Her wrists throbbed with pain, and so did her shoulder—one of the cops had bent her arm back, savagely, snapping charmed cuffs on her. Cami hadn’t resisted. She was sobbing too hard, anyway, and besides, she wanted them to take her away from the thin stick of the huntsman and the leaping, yapping, barking, steel-toothed—

She shuddered, pushed her back more firmly into the concrete wall. The benches were for the people who would fight for them, so she had just picked a corner and retreated into herself. A few catcalls and pokes, but as soon as they figured out she wasn’t going to respond they left her alone.

It was kind of like school. Except they didn’t throw burning cigarettes at her there.

The holding cells were jammed. The Twists were on the other side, behind bars crawling with vicious bright golden charmwork; the charms on the jack cages were dull red. She had no idea why they’d put her in with the jacks; maybe they thought she was one, even though she had no mutation? Or maybe there hadn’t been any mere-humans left? Or charmers? She hadn’t seen any but the bartender, maybe he . . .

Just don’t think about it.

She wanted to squeeze her eyes shut, couldn’t afford to. The harsh buzzing light was her friend, it kept the shadows away. And if she closed her eyes one of the jacks in here might think she was sleeping, and try to do something to her.

Clash of keys, screams and a rising mutter.

“You! Girl, in the back!”

She raised her head, strings of damp black hair falling in her face, free of her braid and tangled into knots.

It was a heavyset jack cop, his skin scaled in rough patches and the low ragged edge of his Potential sparking against the bars. He jingled the keys again, his yellow fur-hair smoothed down under the uniform cap; his brass badge held a mellow gleam. “Yes, you. Come on.”

She hauled herself to her feet. The jacks quieted, bright-eyed with interest. The hallway pulsed with noise, burrowing into her head. It was preferable to the other sounds, the ones she wasn’t sure were actually physical.

Like the chanting, and the dripping. Plink-plink, water against stone.

The jacks edged away, and she made it to the barred iron door.

“Back up!” the cop snapped. “No, not you, kid. You’re coming out.”

“She got bail. Lucky charmer girl.” This from a gawky male teen, bone spurs on his cheekbones slicing out through peeling skin, the wounds suppurating freely and by all appearances perpetual. He was one of the loudest inmates, and the others in the holding tank mostly did what he said. Behind him, two other jacks—his friends, maybe, since they wore the same multicolored jacket he did—grinned and mouthed nasty words.

“Cryboy, if I want shit out of you, I’ll squeeze your fuckin’ head,” the cop snarled. “Back up, or we take you to a room.”

Cryboy laughed, made little kissy noises . . . and turned his back, took a couple of mincing steps away. His friends laughed too, hyena noises and crude jokes about things they’d like to do to the charmer-girl.

The door clanged and clattered, slid sideways just enough for Cami to slip out. She did, stood blinking in the hall while a fresh wave of hysterical screaming went through the cages on either side.

“Come with me, ma’am.” The jack cop actually touched the brim of his hat, and the imprisoned jacks burst into derisive laughter, catcalling madly. Her cheeks were hot. Some of the things they said were pretty anatomically impossible, but it didn’t stop her from wondering if they would, somehow, perform these weird acts if given a chance.

There was another heavy metal door with a barred window at the end of the hall; the observation slit darkened briefly and there was a clatter from the other side. It opened, Cami was prodded through—not ungently—and she found herself in a quieter hall floored with peeling gray linoleum. The guard—another cop, this one pure human—took his hand off the butt of a gun, and she was absurdly comforted. The motion reminded her of Trig.

There was also a burly, graying man, pure human, in a cheap suit. He looked almost relieved to see her, and Cami stared at him curiously. She’d never really seen a detective before, and he didn’t look at all like a creature deserving of the scorn sometimes heaped on the cops among the younger Family, especially at parties where the whiskey and calf flowed freely.

“Miss Vultusino?” The detective held up the student ID. It had been yanked from her coat pocket after they cuffed her, before they lifted her and threw her bodily into the van.

Abruptly, she ached all over. The cuts on her arms and legs were singing with pain, and her head was heavy. She managed a nod, and almost swayed.

“I’m Detective Haelan. Let’s get you out of here.”

“No shit?” The pure human cop eyed her like she was an exotic pet. “It’s one of them? Why wasn’t—”

“Shut up, Sullov.” The detective ran a hand back through his hair, a fume of cigarettes and cheap cologne clinging to him. His stubble was salted with gray too, and the pouches under his eyes could have held soup. “This way, Miss.”

So she was Miss now. Well, that was good. Except they’d found out who she was. Cami approached him carefully, held out her bruised hand, and the laminate of the ID crumpled slightly in her sweating fingers. He also had her coat, which he handed over.

“Would you like some coffee? A Danish?” He had kind eyes, she decided.

“Why not just give her a foot massage, too?” the blond guard muttered. When Cami glanced back, though, he was peering through the observation slit in the door. “Animals,” he said, a little louder. “Look at them. A bunch of animals.”

“Don’t mind Sullov. He’s subnormal, that’s why we have him working down here.” The detective’s half-grin was not pleasant at all, and the words had the quality of a challenge. He ushered Cami past another heavy locked door, swiping his hand over a charmplate near the handle and nodding as it clicked. “They’ve sent someone to fetch you. Not often we see Family in this part of town.”

She winced inwardly. Would it be Nico? No, he was the Head, he couldn’t come down here personally. Nor could Stevens—even though the Seven owned the law, there were appearances to be upheld. One of the younger Vultusino? Trig? Maybe, but that would mean Nico knew about this, too.

Haelan kept talking. About how they hadn’t known who she was, and how he hoped the holding cell hadn’t been too bad, and was she sure she didn’t want a cup of coffee? She finally agreed, just to make him be quiet, and the relief passing over his face when he heard her stutter was thought-provoking.

However mad Nico got, it was better than the dogs. And the way things inside her head were opening up. Curtains lifting, the things behind them leering and capering, full of scorched skin, the blossoming of red pain, the filth and the chains.

This one’s heart is fiery.

She ended up perched on a battered leather couch in a paper-choked detective’s office, listening to the phone ring and clutching a paper cup of boiled, ash-smelling coffee. Haelan had disappeared, and after a while Trigger edged into the room, his hair stuck up anyhow and his jacket dusted with melted snow. He gave her a brief look, nodded, and cocked his head.

That was, at least, one signal she knew how to decipher. She was on her feet somehow, tossing the slopping-over cup of coffee in the overfull wastebasket with a splash.

Time to go.

TWENTY-FIVE

THE HOUSE ON HAVEN HILL WAS DARK.

Chauncey brought the limousine to a soft, painless stop before the front steps. Older now, but still a careful, competent driver, was he thinking about another snowy night and a shivering girl in the car?

Trigger hadn’t said a word the entire way, and Cami, huddled on the seat across from him, wasn’t sure if that was a good sign. Or . . . not.

Her head hurt. Everything else hurt, and she just wanted to lie down somewhere. Just to think about all of this, or ignore it, without the jumble in her head getting worse and worse.

Trig sighed, heavily. “He was . . . upset.” Slow, evenly spaced words. “Was all set to come down himself.”

“He c-c-c-can’t.” How can I sound so normal? “I’m s-s-sorry, T-t-trig.”

A shrug, his jacket rubbing uneasily against the leather upholstery. His first act on getting into the car had been to slip a gun into the holster under his arm and let out a sharp relieved breath. “Figured sooner or later you’d want to run a bit, Cami-girl.”

I ran all right. I ran for my life. If she told him, what would he do?

Nothing, probably. I’m not Family. There it was, as plain as day. Trig was loyal to Papa, and to Nico by default. Even though he was there each time the punishments had been meted out.

Did Nico hate him for it? Was it any of Cami’s business?

I’m not Family. It can’t be my business.

The smoked, bulletproof glass between them and Chauncey lowered a little. “Is the Miss all right?” A sleep-roughened voice, familiar as her own. She could still remember sitting on Chauncey’s lap as the car jerked forward, thinking she was controlling the limo as his broad hands covered the wheel and his foot eased off the brake. A born driver, he would say, and Papa would beam, hearing Cami laugh and crow with delight.

“A little shaken, but she seems okay.” Trigger rubbed at his face. He must have been yanked out of bed to come fetch her. Had someone figured out she was gone, or had it been someone the Family owned on the police force—maybe the detective, maybe not—calling to let them know one of their possessions had wandered?

She had a name for what she was, now. And it was not Vultusino. It had never been, but now she was old enough to know.

“Mr. Nico will be relieved.” Very careful, as well. Like she might break if they said the wrong thing.

Or as if they were warning her.

She reached for the handle, ignoring Trigger’s sudden surprised movement, and the lock obligingly chucked up before she pushed the heavy armored door wide. Fresh snow was falling, the flakes spinning lazily, and her stomach did a queer double-hop inside her.

She slammed the door, maybe a little harder than she had to. Scuffed her still-damp boots across the pavement, the whiskaway charms on the stairs waking in brief flurries to push the snow aside before it could ice the stone and make it dangerous.

Is that why I don’t like stairs? That memory wouldn’t come. Instead, the smell of fresh-cut apples and thick cloying incense spilled through the cold, and a dark curtain filled her head.

The wind cut off as she stepped inside the house. The foyer was hushed and dark. Maybe she could get up to her room before he—

“Cami.” Nico sat on the stairs, a shadow in the dimness. His hands dangled loosely, his forearms braced on his knees. Only the gleams of his eyes and the paleness of his throat showed. No—there was the gleam of the signet, too. Just as bloody as when Papa had worn it. The Heir’s ring was in the ancient strongbox in the library, behind the painting of Vidario Vultusino, the Eldest of the Seven of New Haven.

Waiting for an Heir. And la Vultusina’s ring was right next to it, probably waiting for a Family girl to wear it. Once Cami was . . .

. . . what?

What am I thinking? Immobile, frozen, she waited for the explosion. Her coat was sliced, her leggings torn to ribbons, her boots sodden with melted snow and alley ick, her skirt ripped too. Strings of black hair fell in her face, reeking of the smoke in the nightclub, and she probably smelled like the holding cell too.

“Say something,” he persisted, soft and coaxing. She couldn’t see him well enough to find the anger in him; the sense of the world sliding away underneath her returned, her knees loosening and her breath coming short and hard. “Mithrus Christ, Camille, I’m not mad at you.”

Was he actually lying to her? The whirling inside her intensified. “Y-yes y-you are.”

“Nah.” Now he moved, but very slowly. He straightened, touching the banister, and her heart thundered as he stepped down, paused, stepped again. “I never thought of what it’s like, for you. Watching Papa go. You were in there every day with him, weren’t you?”

You think this is about that? Her teeth found her lower lip, sank in. The pain was a bright star, a silver nail to stop the whirling. It didn’t make it go away, but at least it gave her something to hold onto.

Nico kept talking. The very softest of his voices, the one he kept just for her. “I was gone. And when I was here, you were holding me together too. Being brave.” He reached the bottom of the stairs. Stepped cautiously toward her. “Hell of a job, babygirl.”

If you knew what I was, would you be saying this to me? “N-nico . . . ”

“I’m listening.” Another step. Edging up to her. What did he think she was going to do, run? That would be like dropping a burning lucifer into gasoline.

“I w-w-went w-w-with T-t-tor.” Her heart was going to explode.

He went very still. Red sparks firing in his gaze, deep in the back of his pupils where the Kiss would eventually burn through after years of service to the Family. He would belong to them even after his breathing stopped.

Where would she belong?

“I f-found out. I’m B-b-b-biel’y.” She couldn’t get the word right. But it was close enough. “I esc-c-c-caped. I-in the s-s-snow. N-Nico—”

“Was it Stevens? Did the ghoul open his mouth?” His hands were curling into fists, she could see that. The dimness was hiding less as her eyes adapted. There was a moment’s worth of comfort—if he was angry, she knew how to deal with him.

Or do I? “T-t-t-tor—” How could she even begin to explain?

“I’ll kill him.” Very quietly.

Oh, no. “N-n-nico—”

“Shhh.” The bloodring glimmered as his hand came up, as if he wanted to put a finger to his lips. Stopped. “I will kill him.”

Why won’t you listen? “I’m B-b-b-biel—”

“You’re not. They can’t have you.” Still very quiet, the words drained and pale but still smoking. Like a faust, something inside them too furious to be corralled. “You’re not one of theirs.”

“N-n-n-nico—” I remember. I remember being chained after I tried to escape. I remember the handcuffs and the beatings, then there’s something horrible, and I can’t remember, but then I was in the snow and there was Papa. The enormity of it stuck in her throat, her traitorous tongue strangling the words as she tried to force them out past a snarling maze of blackness, the ground tilting and a Tesla-thunderstorm direct from the Waste, one nobody else could hear, drowning her out.

“It’s arranged, babygirl.” Still so quiet, she had to strain to hear him over the rushing in her head. “I’ve promised. I’m going to kill him.”

Then he was gone with the inhuman speed of a Family member, leaving only a trail of unsteady charm-sparks in his wake. She was left alone in the darkened foyer, the cuts and bruises all over her throbbing viciously, her head full of noise, and her cheeks—again—hot and wet, the tears dropping onto her ruined coat as she swayed.

TWENTY-SIX

THE LOCK ON THE WHITE ROOM’S DOOR WAS ANCIENT and flimsy, but she threw it anyway. Hot water in the bath stung the cuts on her arms and legs—the shimmersilk’s claws had been sharp.

Found it in a pawnshop . . . it belonged to you.

She sat shivering in the steaming cast-iron tub for a long time, hugging herself as the bathwater rippled with her trembling. Her hair flooded over her shoulders, dampness sticking it in tiny curls and streaks to her abused skin, and when she slid under the surface it floated around her just like a mermaid’s.

She stayed under a long time, everything above the water blurring as the heaviness in her lungs mounted. Burning crept into her nose. She surfaced in a rush, splashing, and the sound of her gasping echoed against white tile, charm-scrubbed white grout, the ecru towels and the blind eye of the misted mirror, the sink like an opening flower, and the gleaming toilet.

None of this is mine.

Even the hot water wasn’t hers. It drained away with a gurgle.

Still dripping, naked because the nightgowns and pajamas weren’t hers either, she crawled into the bed like a thief. Some other girl belonged here, a girl with clear unmarked skin and a carefree ringing voice, one of the Family girls with their bright eyes and disdainful smiles. A girl who could make Nico less angry, a girl who could have kept Papa on the breathing side of transition, a girl the house could close around like the well-oiled machine it was.

She curled up and stared into the darkness. There was a faint edge of gray under the curtains—sunrise approaching, a late winter’s dawn. The gauze over the mirror, a stolen thing like everything else in this bloodless room, fluttered teasingly.

What will you see if you take the gauze off and look? Dare you to do it, Cami.

Except that wasn’t really her name, was it? She didn’t even have a name.

My Nameless. A slow, easy hissing whisper, a familiar stranger’s voice, in the very center of her brain.

Another steady whisper rose from the cuts and bruises, becoming audible in fits and starts. The gauze rippled, rippled, and behind it the mirror was a water-clear gleam. The muttering from the mirror mixed with low atonal chanting, blended with the throb and ache of contusions, scrapes, and thin slices, and now, at last, she knew what it was saying.

You are nobody.

Over and over again.

You are nothing.

And it was true.

The light under the curtain strengthened. The door rattled. Someone said something on the other side of it, but she closed away the sound of the voice.

They weren’t talking to her, anyway. Maybe to the ghost of the girl who should have had this room.

The girl she had tried, and failed miserably, to be.

After a while the sound stopped. It came back, twice, then the light under the curtains faded and welcome darkness returned.

It was dark for a long time. Her stomach growled, and she tried not to move until she couldn’t stand the jabbing pains, muscles protesting.

Soft taps at the door. “Cami?”

She squeezed her dry, burning eyes shut. Hearing him hurt almost as badly as the stiffened-up bruises and drying scabs.

Nico said other things, but she turned her brain into a soft droning hum. The door gave a sharp banging groan, shaking on its hinges, but she counted the words inside her head, rolling them like small metal balls on a dark-painted surface.

You are nobody. You are nothing.

It was almost a relief. No more struggling with her stupid tongue. No more being the third wheel. No more jumping at shadows. No more flinching.

Yelling, finally. But she clutched her hands over her ears. They, at least, belonged to her, and the yelling ended with a thud. The doorknob screeched, the ancient lock groaning against the doorframe. She curled even more tightly into herself, around the empty rock of her stomach, the smell of her own body wrapping in a close comforting fog.

My hands. I can’t be nobody if I have hands.

She tried to shove the thought away, but it wouldn’t go. Her bladder ached too, a steady relentless pressure. Her lungs, stupid idiot things, kept going even though she tried to stop them. Her hair lay damp-sticky against the back of her neck—she was sweating.

You are nobody, the whisper insisted. You are nothing.

Then who the hell was it talking to? Her fingers tensed, fingernails digging into her scalp. Her scalp, and the stinging was welcome. Some of her nails were broken, she could feel the sharp edges. Her mouth tasted bitter and nasty, there were crusties at the corners of her eyes.

My eyes. My hands. My mouth. She shifted restlessly, every part of her jangling a discordant song of ache and pain, and her bladder informed her once again that it was not happy. Her stomach rumbled loudly, insistently.

Her stomach didn’t stutter. Her breath moved in and out, despite everything she could do. There was a thumping, regular and insistent, and she kept her eyes shut. Traceries of false light burned against the inside of her eyelids.

You are nobody. You are nothing.

The tha-thump, tha-thump irritated her. It interfered with the whisper, shoved it aside, and demanded to be heard along with the need to pee. What was it? Someone banging on the door again?

Don’t be an idiot. It’s your heart.

Tha-thump. Tha-thump. The rhythm didn’t vary. She felt it in her wrists, her throat, the backs of her knees. All through her, scarlet threads twitched as the beating in her chest went on. It was whispering too, and as soon as she realized it she moved again, restlessly, trying to figure out what it was saying.

Her bladder was going to explode, and the murmur from the mirror was getting more insistent. Was it hoarse now, a little desperate? It was scratchy, like a smoke-filled throat. She shook her head, slowly, every muscle in her neck shrieking, trying to figure out what the thumping in her chest was saying. It was a song, maybe? One of Nico’s favorites, with thumping bass shaking her into jelly?

No.

Her arms spasmed. So did her legs. Muscles locking, moving restlessly, annoyed at her. The whisper from the mirror pushed against the gauze; the torn material billowed, fingernail-scraping the wooden frame.

Cami scrambled out of the bed, tripping and going down, banging her knee on the floor. She lunged up, bare feet smacking the carpet, and just barely made it to the bathroom.

It was there, sitting on the toilet and a glorious relief filling her, that the noise in her head died down, and she figured out the thumping in her chest.

Tha-thud. Tha-thud. Tha-thud.

I am. I am. I am.

The pace quickened. The aching and cramping in her bladder subsided.

I am. I am. I am.

She flushed, her hands moving automatically, and the chugging cascade of water drowned out the mirror’s fuzzy staticwhisper. As soon as she stepped into the white room, though, she could hear it. The gauze fluttered to the floor, stroked by an invisible hand, and the mirror’s surface was full of gray vapor, pouring out from the glass in defiance of its own unreality. Heavy, perfumed smoke. It crawled along the floor, reaching for her with begging, sharp-nailed fingers.

White fingers, on a broad soft hand.

Nobody. Nothing. You are nobody. Nothing! YOU ARE NOBODY NOTHING NOBODY NOTHING NOBODYNOTHINGNOBODYNOTHING—

“Noooooo!” The wail burst out of her. She flung herself across the room.

Punch from the hip, Nico said in her memory. Teaching her how to fight one lazy summer day, while they played banditti in the woods. That’s my girl. Hit ’em so they know they’ve been hit.

Her fist met bulging, smoke-bleeding glass. Her scream spiraled up, drowning out the other cry of female rage—the one coming from the mirror as it broke, crashing, a red jolt all the way up her arm.

The White Queen stumbled back, almost tripping on her long dress, her face graven, runneled with lines, a contorted picture of hatred. She screamed, and the mirror in front of her showed a withered, slobbering hag, the jewel at her throat dark heartsblood, flickering as her life faded.

Cami came to on her knees, her bleeding right hand clutched to her chest, the pale carpet silvered with glass. Running feet in the hall, a splintering jolt against the door. She hugged herself, sobbing, as the acrid smoke in the room thinned.

And through it all, her heart thundered.

I am. I am. I am.

TWENTY-SEVEN

IT WASN’T NICO. IT WAS STEVENS, WITH TRIG RIGHT behind him. The gaunt consigliere stabbed two fingers at the broken mirror, snapping a charm that flashed venomous-red in the darkness as the broken shards on the floor quivered; Trig’s hand closed around Cami’s arm and he lifted her bodily out of the glass, fingers slipping against blood and sweat. Her hand bled freely, and there was a stinging in her knees.

Stevens hissed a curse in another language, a long sonorous filthy-sounding term that ended with him jabbing his fingers at the mirror and hissing once more. Glass shards trembled as if they wanted to fly up from the floor; a shudder worked its way down the consigliere’s dusty, black-clad back. “Avert, Bianca mala,” he muttered, finally. “Avert.”

“Mithrus Christ!” Trig had a handful of material—it was her old terrycloth bathrobe, and he bundled her into it with quick efficient movements before half-carrying her toward the bathroom. He reached around the edge of the bathroom door and flicked a switch; sudden golden light stung her eyes. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“I do not like this,” Stevens said, slowly but very loudly.

“S-s-s-s-s—” The stutter matched her frantic pulse. Sorry. I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I just know I—

“CAMI!” Nico broke what was left of the door, skidding on the carpet, bare-chested and in his ragged pajama pants, his hair standing up and the red pinpricks in his pupils guttering like candleflames in a draft. He stopped dead, thinning smoke shredding and cringing away from him.

“Biel’y.” Stevens turned on his heel. Even at this hour he wore mirror-polished wingtips, and his suit wasn’t creased or wrinkled. The only thing missing was his tie, his collar unbuttoned instead of cutting into the papery skin of his throat, and it made him look, for the first time, oddly fragile. “The maggots are here. In New Haven, yes, and they dare to break the sanctity of this house.”

Nico’s nostrils flared. He wasn’t listening.

He inhaled, deeply, and Trig went very still.

“Oh, fu—” Trig shoved Cami through the bathroom door. He didn’t even get to finish the word before Nico was on him, a thundering growl throbbing in the new Vultusino’s chest and his fangs out.

Cami fell, barking both bleeding knees on white tile. Nico tossed Trig aside like the older man was made of paper, Trig’s head hit the doorframe with a sickening crack. A blink and the Vultusino was there, his fingers sinking into her arms like iron claws, and Cami kept screaming breathlessly, scrabbling to get away as his teeth champed just short of her throat.

It was Stevens, one thin knee in Nico’s back, who wrestled the Vultusino away from her. He had paused to grab the gauze from the floor and twisted it into a noose, pulling back on Nico’s throat as if dragging the reins of a maddened titon, his face set and still as it always was. He heaved Enrico Vultusino’s son back, and the scream of a blood-maddened bloodline Family member turned the air so cold Cami’s breath turned to a white cloud.

Trigger Vane lay very still, across a shattered door, his eyes closed. And the copper-smelling crimson tide, maddening Nico with its perfume, was everywhere.

TWENTY-EIGHT

BOTH KNEES BANDAGED, HER RIGHT HAND BANDAGED too—Marya hadn’t even scolded her, just observed a stony, worried silence—Cami clutched at her schoolbag and wiped at her cheeks. Behind her, the limousine purred.

Nico was locked up in the Holding Room, probably with Stevens standing guard at the door. It was a good thing the walls of the house on Haven Hill were thick, otherwise they could have heard the new Vultusino’s screams in the next province.

The cries had ceased, as if cut by a knife, the instant she closed the front door behind her.

Chauncey slept in a small apartment over the cavernous garages; Cami’s tentative knocks hadn’t even woken his wife Evelyn.

I need to go to Ruby’s, she’d told him. It’s an emergency.

Chauncey hadn’t asked any questions, just rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and yawned, grabbing the limousine’s keys off the pegs. He was used to being awakened to drive someone somewhere.

Now her stomach growled, and she lifted the brass knocker again. The garden lay under snow, the ruthlessly trimmed holly along the east boundary glowing green under a scrim of ice. The fountain, its snout lifted and its concrete jaws wide, was festooned with artistic icicles.

The gate was wooden and the fence was low, but you got the idea it was because she liked it that way, and furthermore, that Mrs. Edalie de Varre, Ruby’s formidable grandmother, needed no wall or gate to bar and no security guards to eviscerate any Twist or jack who stepped onto her property.

There were powers in New Haven even Family respected, and one of them rested here in Woodsdowne.

The locks clicked, the door opened, and a pair of bleached-gray eyes under a fall of bone-white hair, braided and banded across the top of her head, peered out. Gran was in her high-collared dragon-patterned silk housedress and embroidered slippers, and she examined Cami for a few moments before stepping back.

“Camille.” A faint smile, her parchment skin barely wrinkling. “Come in.”

She really does have very sharp teeth, Cami thought, and stepped over the threshold. The limousine dropped into gear out on the street, and Chauncey pulled away.

Inside, it smelled of hot griddle and blackcurrant jam, frying eggs and bacon. “I’m making breakfast,” Gran said briskly, taking Cami’s coat and stowing it in the cedar-scented closet, just like usual. She never seemed surprised or ruffled, which was probably a blessing since she had to deal with Ruby all the time. “You like them scrambled, I recall. Ruby will be down as soon as I make coffee.”

“Th-th-thank y-y-y—”

“Oh, don’t,” the Wolfmother of Woodsdowne said, her faint steely smile widening a trifle. “Nobody has good news this morning, my dear. I can smell as much on the wind. Come and eat.”

It took some time. Gran didn’t make coffee until near the end of Cami’s stuttering recitation—unlike Ruby, she couldn’t lie to Gran, and she didn’t want to. There was just something about those pale eyes and the way the old woman moved, with such precise economy, that warned against any such impropriety. Spending the night at Ruby’s meant walking on eggshells, though Mrs. De Varre had never even raised her voice in Cami’s presence.

You got the feeling you didn’t want her to. At the same time, there was a curious comfort. Gran hadn’t batted an eyelash when Ruby brought Cami home one day after school. Yes, the Vultusino girl, she’d said. You are welcome in my house, young one. Sit down, have a scone.

Cami left out some things, certainly—the flush that went through her every time she said Tor’s name, just how bloodcrazy Nico had gone, the wooden huntsman’s blue, blue eyes, the dreams . . . and Trig’s awful stillness, lying in the shattered doorway.

But she told about Tor and the pin and the shimmersilk, the mirror, and the smoke. Gran listened, her eyebrows coming together fractionally as she refilled Cami’s glass—milk for a growing girl, she always remarked—and snapped a charm to flip the pancakes on the griddle.

“And so,” she finally said, switching the coffeemaker on, “you came here.”

I couldn’t think of where else to go. I just need to sit for a little while. Just get myself together.

And even if Nico wanted to, he couldn’t step inside Gran’s door without her blessing. Not even Papa would have. Here was the safest place Cami could think of, even if she wondered just what might follow her out to Woodsdowne.

If some bad charming, bad magic, could reach through a mirror in the house on Haven Hill, it might be able to come here too. Cami’s midsection clenched at the thought. “I n-need h-help.” Her tongue had eased. At least Gran was invariably patient. She let you get everything out.

“Help. Well. Hm. You did well, coming to me. Shows you have some intelligence.” Gran poked at the fresh strips of bacon sizzling in their pan. Dawn, creeping through the wide window full of terracotta pots holding green herbs, was iron-gray. More snow before long. “But . . . them. The Pale Ones. Theirs is an . . . old magic.”

Here, in the cozy sun-yellow kitchen, warm and chewing on pancakes with blackcurrant jam, it almost seemed like she could handle all this. Maybe. “O-older than th-the R-r-reeve.” She nodded. Her scalp itched, her hair felt greasy. But her stomach had quit growling. It wasn’t like Marya’s oatcakes, but then, nothing was.

Marya probably wouldn’t ever talk to her again.

If Trig hadn’t been there, if Stevens hadn’t been there . . . Nico’d never Borrowed from Cami before. Ever. But still.

The coffeemaker gurgled, and a thread of heavenly scent stitched every other fragrance together. “It may be possible to buy you passage to another town. A place to hide.” Gran tapped one finger alongside her nose. “But they have very sensitive noses, les Blancs.”

Like dogs, you mean? “L-leave N-New Haven?” Go through the Waste, maybe? To another province, another city?

It was another nightmare. Only this time, she couldn’t wake up.

“Perhaps. I don’t know, Camille. And it is no guarantee.” She snapped at the pancakes again, and they obediently charmed themselves off the griddle and onto a waiting, charm-warmed yellow plate. “Les Blancs n’oublient rien, ma cherie.”

Her accent wasn’t the same as Sister Mary Brefoil’s, but Cami had no trouble with the words.

Les Blancs, they forget nothing. “Is . . . ” She reached blindly for her milk glass. “Is th-th-there . . . I m-m-mean, h-how m-many of th-them are th-there?”

“They are carrion.” A slight wrinkle of Gran’s aristocratic nose. “There are as many as the suicides and the desperate will support. If a woman survives long enough in their halls, she may become a Queen herself. Like ants, or another insect. It is . . . not easy. Or pleasant. Good morning, ma petite fille.”

Ruby halted in the kitchen doorway, yawning, her hair a tangle of bright copper curls. She blinked and stared at Cami, pulling up the strap of her blue pajama tank-top.

She’s going to be so mad. Cami searched for another apology, her tongue tangling over itself. “R-r-r-ruby—”

Ruby let out a whoop and leapt across the intervening space, flinging her arms around Cami. “You bitch!” she finally yelled, laughing, attempting to shake Cami and kiss her cheek at the same time. Gran made a spitting noise and rescued the dangerously toppling milk glass. “I should have suspected when I smelled bacon! Goddamn I’ve missed you!”

It was classic Ruby. Gran sniffed. “Language at the table must be cleaner, Ruby. Let the poor girl eat. She has enough problems.”

“Did you hear about Ellen?” Ruby could barely contain herself, plonking down in her usual cane-bottom chair at the breakfast bar. “Her dad. Train crash, out in the middle of the Waste. The Strep has custody. It’s horrific.”

The bottom dropped fully out of Cami’s stomach. Mithrus. Oh, Ellie. She stared at her plate, sticky with blackcurrant jam and half-eaten pancakes. “Oh.”

“Ruby!” Gran didn’t quite raise her voice, but her tone could have sliced through the walls. Every dish in the kitchen rattled. “Do not add bad news to her troubles!”

Ruby’s jaw dropped. Her eyes narrowed, and Cami braced herself for the explosion. Gran turned back to the coffeemaker and the griddle, the straight bar of her spine somehow expressing disdain and disappointment.

“Mithrus Christ,” Ruby breathed. “Cami, honey, what kind of trouble are you in?”

The heat and prickling behind her eyes almost overflowed. She took a deep breath.

Maybe, just this once, Ruby would let her talk.

“I f-f-found out wh-who I am.”

Gran vanished halfway through Ruby’s breakfast, reappearing in a long black coat and a jaunty blue hat perched on her pale, rebraided hair, and left them with the dishes. “Sparkling,” she said sternly, and Ruby waved a hand. “And no, your friend will not do them all while you chatter.”

“Mais oui, chère grandmère, mais oui.” Ruby’s accent was cheerfully atrocious, and Gran sniffed again before sailing through the kitchen without even glancing at Cami, moving through the utility room and into the garage. An engine roused with a sweet soft purr, the garage door rumbled unhappily, and she was gone.

“Thank God for bridge club. If she had to stay home Saturdays I’d kill myself.” Ruby applied herself to the rest of her breakfast. “What did Gran say? I mean, really say?”

“Th-there m-might be a w-way.” I’ll have to leave New Haven. She shivered. She knew there were other provinces outside the city’s borders, but it was like knowing there was a moon. She’d never expected to visit. “It’s d-dangerous.”

“Well, if anyone can get you through the Waste or overseas and into another province, the Valhalla Bridge Club can. But what about Nico? Why doesn’t he get off his ass? Family’s got to be good for something, right? Plus, you’re Vultusino. This charm-white bitch, queen, whatever—seriously, Cami, you think you might be related?”

Maybe I just belong to her. She shivered, staring at her coffee cup. “I d-d-don’t know. T-t-tor s-s-said—”

“Oh, yeah. The garden boy. I’m with Nico on this one. Shame, too. He had nice shoulders.” Ruby crunched at bacon with her strong white teeth, so like her grandmother’s. You could see other similarities, their high cheekbones and long eyelashes.

What would it be like, to look at someone and see her own face reflected? Or even just a piece of it? It nagged at her. Something familiar; if she could just sit and think she could tease it out.

Why bother? You know what you have to do.

But oh, she didn’t want to.

“Seriously, though,” Ruby had her stride now. “Why doesn’t Nico just deal with this?”

He can’t. Besides, he . . . She ran up against the memory of his teeth snapping close to her throat, his arms stiff as he held her down and away, struggling with himself and the bloodrage. The screams as Stevens locked his blood-maddened Vultusino in a safe room, until the hunting insanity wore off. But there was a simpler reason.

She found out she could say it, after all. “I’m n-n-not F-f-f-family.” I wasn’t ever supposed to be here.

Ruby actually stopped chewing and stared. After a full ten seconds of silence, Cami began to wonder if she had, in fact, struck her speechless. It would be the first time ever.

She’d dreamed of such an occasion for years, but it didn’t seem quite worth it now.

Ruby took a giant mouthful of hot coffee, winced, and swallowed. “He said that?” Very quietly, and her dark eyes narrowed.

“N-n-no. B-b-but—”

“But nothing. You’re his family, dammit, and if he’s not gonna step up it’s his loss. You’re my family too, Cami, and if these child-beating weirdos want you, they’re going to have to come through me.” She nodded, coppery curls falling in her face. That’s that, the motion said, now don’t be silly, Cami. I know best, I always do.

Except this time Ruby didn’t. What if the dogs came while she was here? Or something worse? Gran’s house was seriously charmed, but so was the house on Haven Hill. The White Queen had reached through the mirror with . . . something. If she could do that, break into the Vultusino’s fortress, what else could she do?

What could she do to Ruby? Or to anyone Cami turned to?

I shouldn’t have come here. But where else was there to go, for God’s sake?

Only one place. You know where.

“Now.” Ruby crunched on a fresh piece of bacon. “Drink your milk. We’ll do the dishes and set up the guest room for you. I’ll see if I can call Ellie. I might be able to sneak her out, or talk the Strep into—”

“No.” It burst out so hard and clear Cami didn’t have a chance to stutter. “D-d-dangerous. It’s t-t-too d-d-dangerous, R-rube.”

“So’s her stuck in that house with the Strep, dammit. I’ve been planning a jailbreak for a while, this is as good a time as any. And she’ll have ideas. She’s all practical and shit. Drink your milk.”

Cami just sat and stared at it. White milk in clear glass, and a sudden sweat broke out all over her. She probably smelled unwashed and desperate, too.

Was Nico still screaming, locked up and crazed by her mere-human blood?

Or was she mere-human? So far, nobody had told her exactly what the Biel’y were, except a cult. Maggots, Stevens had said.

Well, wasn’t that a lovely thought.

The man in the tan trench coat definitely wasn’t just-human, though. At least, not completely. Wood and sap and sawdust, and his blue, blue eyes.

Huntsmen, Tor had said. Okhotniki. Gripping the arms of his chair, shaking. Giving her poisonous presents, scars all over him.

Scars like hers.

The boys are Okhotniki.

Ruby kept up a running commentary. Cami just put her head down and did as she was told, washing dishes while Ruby dried and put them away. She was thinking so hard she even let Ruby bully her upstairs into the blue guest room, and the mirror at the vanity with its frame of enameled water lilies gave her a chill all the way down to her bones.

TWENTY-NINE

RUBY SWITCHED HER BABBAGE OFF WITH A PRACTICED flick. “Ell’s sneaking out a window, the Strep is on a charmweed bender and won’t notice until tomorrow. Now’s the best chance I have to spring her, and then we’ll fix this right up. All of it.” She shrugged into her black woolen school-coat, pulling her hair free of the collar with a quick habitual yank. “Don’t open the door to anyone.”

Cami nodded.

“I mean it. Don’t answer the doorbell or the phone. Just hang tight.”

Cami nodded again, following her down the stairs. Her scalp itched. She wished she’d had time to take a bath, at least. But the idea of water dripping from the tap made her cold all over.

“It’s iced over bad out there, so it might take some time to get her out and back here. Take a nap, paint your nails. You can wear anything in my closet.”

You must really be worried. Cami assayed a bright smile, picked a piece of invisible lint off her friend’s shoulder.

Ruby bit her lip. “Stop trying to look so brave.” She picked up her schoolbag, swung it once or twice to gauge its weight. Supplies, she’d said grimly, shoving various odds and ends into it. I don’t care if I have to break a window or two, I’m getting Ellie. I’ve had enough.

“S-sorry.”

“We’ll figure something out.” But she was pale, and she only had one gold hoop earring in. The asymmetry bugged Cami—it was Ruby’s version of a nervous breakdown. “You know where the liquor cabinet is. I’ll be back soon.”

“I kn-kn-know. G-go on. I’ll b-b-b-be f-f-fine.” Go, so I can think. I need to figure out what to do. Coming here was fine temporarily, but . . . The inside of her head tangled, and she traitorously wished Ruby was gone already.

Gone, and safe. The more Cami thought about it, the more she realized bringing all her trouble here wasn’t a good idea.

“You’d better be. Look, don’t drink everything, all right? Save some for Ell. She’s gonna need it.” And with that, Ruby was gone through the utility room. The garage door opened and the Semprena slid out, its chains and grabcharms rasping against churned-up, broken ice and packed snow. Cami made it to the living room window to watch, and was just in time to catch a flash of the sleek black car disappearing around the corner at a reasonable speed.

Never thought I’d see that. But there she goes, to rescue the fair maiden.

Was this what it was like to be a ghost? To watch everything arrange itself neatly without you, like a puzzle without the misshapen lump of an extra piece forced into it?

She took a deep breath. The ghost of breakfast lingered all through the cottage. Everything in here was trim and tidy, except for the explosion of Ruby’s room. The living room was deep blue starred with gilt-silver and touches of full-moon yellow, overstuffed chairs and a tapestry of a charmer’s sun-and-moon along one wall. The hearth was wide and scrubbed clean, a burnished copper kettle set precisely on the stone shelf before it and firewood neatly stacked in a holder shaped like clasped hands.

Sometimes, imagining where she came from, she’d pretended she was the heir of a great Sigiled charming clan, stolen by a competitor. She would daydream about her faceless birth-parents living in a cottage very much like this, searching for her tirelessly, only the evil competitor had sent her to another city across the Waste, and it would only be through some stroke of luck that they saw her and recognized her. Then there would be crying and hugging, and she would have a family of her own, and . . .

That was a kid’s dream. Like playing banditti in the barn.

Cami wiped at her cheeks. Stood staring at the empty fireplace. Gran, like most really strong charmers, didn’t want a lot of open flame while she was working. There was too much Potential that could just latch onto a fire and do odd things.

She could go up into the spare bedroom and lay on the tightly made blue and white bed, maybe. Or take up Ruby’s suggestion about the liquor cabinet. Go up to Rube’s room and turn on the stereo, hope that the noise would drive away the sound of Nico screaming inside her head. Or . . .

A chill raced down her spine, drawing every inch of skin tight. She hugged herself, and the cottage shivered too. The tapestry rippled, and from the kitchen she heard dishes clinking and rattling.

What is that? But she knew. Instead of a daydream of a Sigiled charming clan, the nightmare of reality was slinking closer and closer. You couldn’t run from that. It would sniff you out.

Like a dog.

Three raps on the front door. Cami’s mouth went dry.

Another two. It was four steps to the window, and she made them on rubbery legs. Tweezed part of the curtain aside—the Semprena’s tracks were already lost in a mess of churned-up white. The front garden was just the same, still and secretive under a white blanket.

And there was a shadow on the front porch. The angle was wrong, she couldn’t see.

No more knocks, but she could feel the waiting. A deep pool of it, ripples of silence spreading out. Don’t open the door, Ruby said.

But where could you hide when this came knocking?

And if I don’t answer, will they tear the house down? The trembling was all through her. She realized she hadn’t taken her coat off, though the cottage was warm and snug, and she still had her boots. The same boots that had carried her through snow and filth and the holding cell.

I wanted to know where I belonged. Now it’s calling me . . . home? Is that the word for what you can’t escape?

Her hand reached for the knob. The foyer rippled around her, and the charms in the cottage walls made a low warning sound.

The locks slid back, each with a faint definite sound, bones clicking together. A sliver of white winter sunlight glared through a crack, widened, and Cami blinked in the sudden assault of light.

They regarded each other for a long few moments.

“I’m sorry,” Tor whispered. The bruises on his neck were livid, and the cut across his cheekbone had leaked blood, dried to a crust. He was shivering too, steam rising from his skin—he wore tattered jeans and the remains of a white T-shirt, sliced and burned. “I’m sorry. She knew I could find you.”

Cami’s hands were numb. His hair was stripped back, plastered down with crud she didn’t even want to think about, and she finally saw what had snagged her gaze on him all along.

His jawline was heavier, but it was familiar. So was the arc of his cheekbone, and the shape of his mouth, especially the space above his top lip. There was the shape of his eyes; their color had distracted her, but they were catlike and wide.

And just like hers.

I look like him. We’re the same. That was the feeling of hand in glove, of broken-in trainers. They looked . . . similar.

Related.

His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Don’t step outside.” The whisper came through cracked lips. “Please. She can only push me so far. You’re safe in there.”

I’m not safe anywhere. She found herself touching her face, wonderingly tracing the shape of her upper lip. Just like his.

Why hadn’t she seen it before?

“Run.” Tor coughed, and something moved in his black eyes. Sharp alien intelligence peered out of his drugged gaze, and he shuddered. “Please. I don’t . . . don’t want . . . Run.”

I ran once, didn’t I. Ten years ago, Mithrusmas Eve. Not far enough, though.

Never far enough. What was it the Family said?

Blood always tells.

If he went back without her, what would happen to him? And what would the Queen send next time?

I have to stop this. Cami braced herself. She slid out of her coat, and stepped outside into the cold. It was too small for him, but she wrapped her coat around his shoulders as his shivering infected her.

Tor’s hand closed around her wrist, unhealthy feverish heat scorching her skin. He let out a tired, hopeless sigh. Their footsteps crunched on the charmed path, and as soon as they stepped past Gran’s gate, his head dropped forward like a tired horse’s. Woodsdowne was deserted, and in the distance, the baying of dogs began.

The first fat flakes of the day’s snow began to whirl down.