Nameless

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.