Nameless

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What would happen then?

“Th-thinking.”

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

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

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

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

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

He looked pleased, and poured himself another drink.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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