Nameless

without the misshapen lump of an extra piece forced into it?

She took a deep breath. The ghost of breakfast lingered all through the cottage. Everything in here was trim and tidy, except for the explosion of Ruby’s room. The living room was deep blue starred with gilt-silver and touches of full-moon yellow, overstuffed chairs and a tapestry of a charmer’s sun-and-moon along one wall. The hearth was wide and scrubbed clean, a burnished copper kettle set precisely on the stone shelf before it and firewood neatly stacked in a holder shaped like clasped hands.

Sometimes, imagining where she came from, she’d pretended she was the heir of a great Sigiled charming clan, stolen by a competitor. She would daydream about her faceless birth-parents living in a cottage very much like this, searching for her tirelessly, only the evil competitor had sent her to another city across the Waste, and it would only be through some stroke of luck that they saw her and recognized her. Then there would be crying and hugging, and she would have a family of her own, and . . .

That was a kid’s dream. Like playing banditti in the barn.

Cami wiped at her cheeks. Stood staring at the empty fireplace. Gran, like most really strong charmers, didn’t want a lot of open flame while she was working. There was too much Potential that could just latch onto a fire and do odd things.

She could go up into the spare bedroom and lay on the tightly made blue and white bed, maybe. Or take up Ruby’s suggestion about the liquor cabinet. Go up to Rube’s room and turn on the stereo, hope that the noise would drive away the sound of Nico screaming inside her head. Or . . .

A chill raced down her spine, drawing every inch of skin tight. She hugged herself, and the cottage shivered too. The tapestry rippled, and from the kitchen she heard dishes clinking and rattling.

What is that? But she knew. Instead of a daydream of a Sigiled charming clan, the nightmare of reality was slinking closer and closer. You couldn’t run from that. It would sniff you out.

Like a dog.

Three raps on the front door. Cami’s mouth went dry.

Another two. It was four steps to the window, and she made them on rubbery legs. Tweezed part of the curtain aside—the Semprena’s tracks were already lost in a mess of churned-up white. The front garden was just the same, still and secretive under a white blanket.

And there was a shadow on the front porch. The angle was wrong, she couldn’t see.

No more knocks, but she could feel the waiting. A deep pool of it, ripples of silence spreading out. Don’t open the door, Ruby said.

But where could you hide when this came knocking?

And if I don’t answer, will they tear the house down? The trembling was all through her. She realized she hadn’t taken her coat off, though the cottage was warm and snug, and she still had her boots. The same boots that had carried her through snow and filth and the holding cell.

I wanted to know where I belonged. Now it’s calling me . . . home? Is that the word for what you can’t escape?

Her hand reached for the knob. The foyer rippled around her, and the charms in the cottage walls made a low warning sound.

The locks slid back, each with a faint definite sound, bones clicking together. A sliver of white winter sunlight glared through a crack, widened, and Cami blinked in the sudden assault of light.

They regarded each other for a long few moments.

“I’m sorry,” Tor whispered. The bruises on his neck were livid, and the cut across his cheekbone had leaked blood, dried to a crust. He was shivering too, steam rising from his skin—he wore tattered jeans and the remains of a white T-shirt, sliced and burned. “I’m sorry. She knew I could find you.”

Cami’s hands were numb. His hair was stripped back, plastered down with crud she didn’t even want to think about, and she finally saw what had snagged her gaze on him all along.

His jawline was heavier, but it was familiar. So was the arc of his cheekbone, and the shape of his mouth, especially the space above his top lip. There was the shape of his eyes; their color had distracted her, but they were catlike and wide.

And just like hers.

I look like him. We’re the same. That was the feeling of hand in glove, of broken-in trainers. They looked . . . similar.

Related.

His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Don’t step outside.” The whisper came through cracked lips. “Please. She can only push me so far. You’re safe in there.”

I’m not safe anywhere. She found herself touching her face, wonderingly tracing the shape of her upper lip. Just like his.

Why hadn’t she seen it before?

“Run.” Tor coughed, and something moved in his black eyes. Sharp alien intelligence peered out of his drugged gaze, and he shuddered. “Please. I don’t . . . don’t want . . . Run.”

I ran once, didn’t I. Ten years ago, Mithrusmas Eve. Not far enough, though.

Never far enough. What was it the Family said?

Blood always tells.

If he went back without her, what would happen to him? And what would the Queen send next time?

I have to stop this. Cami braced herself. She slid out of her coat, and stepped outside into the cold. It was too small for him, but she wrapped her coat around his shoulders as his shivering infected her.

Tor’s hand closed around her wrist, unhealthy feverish heat scorching her skin. He let out a tired, hopeless sigh. Their footsteps crunched on the charmed path, and as soon as they stepped past Gran’s gate, his head dropped forward like a tired horse’s. Woodsdowne was deserted, and in the distance, the baying of dogs began.

The first fat flakes of the day’s snow began to whirl down.

PART III: The Sacrifice

THERE WAS NO SNOW UNDERNEATH.

The dogs hadn’t come after all. Instead, Tor had led her through the maze of Woodsdowne, west toward the core. Not for very long, though—he’d stopped at the intersection of Columbard and Lamancha Avenue. The piles of snow and ice to each side, broken by titon-plows, imitated small mountain ranges. The buildings were tall and dark here, festooned with icicles and whispering with the chill breeze. Any one of the boarded-up windows could have exploded outward, giving birth to a jumble of dog-shapes salivating and snapping their steelstruck teeth.

But it was in the very middle of the crossroads that a round slice of frozen street had silently opened its dark eye—a manhole cover, ice crackling away from its circumference, pushed up by an invisible force. Tor moved her toward it, not ungently, and she’d seen the iron rungs going down.

New Haven’s surface swallowed them, pleating closed overhead and smoothing itself like a freshly-laid sheet.

Tor took her wrist at the bottom of the ladder again, and her coat fell away from his shoulders, landing on a sodden pile of something stinking. It was almost warmer down here, but her breath still came in a cloud and thin traceries of steam. Cami stopped, and he tugged at her arm.

“N-n-n-no.” She tried to peel his fingers away, but they wouldn’t come. “I’m n-not g-g-going to r-r-run.” She would follow me. There’s no point. “H-Here.” Her voice echoed oddly, and she managed to work his hand down so his fingers laced through hers.

We’re Family, too. Every scar on her twinged heatlessly, and she wondered if he had nightmares too. Who held him when he woke screaming?

Did anyone?