Nameless

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.