Nameless

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh. It’s a Borrowing room.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is that?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Skritch. Skritch-scratch.

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

Apples. A breath of heavy, perfumed smoke.

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

Wait. The cold was all through her, and a trembling like a crystal wineglass