“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 co
uldn’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.