He smiled, pulled open his backpack, and fished out the night suit. He stripped and pulled on the pants and the shirt. The fabric, stained with dark and light gray, clung to him like a second skin. The first time he’d seen the thing, complete with a hood and a face mask covering everything except his eyes, he’d told Nancy that as far as he knew, he wasn’t a ninja. She’d told him to wear it and like it. He still wasn’t sure if she had even known what a ninja was.
William had to admit, the suit had a certain logic to it. True night was never just black; it was a shifting ethereal mix of shadow and darkness, of dappled gray and deep indigo. A man wearing solid black stood out as a uniform spot of darkness.
He drew the line at the hood and the mask, though. A man had to have standards, and he had no desire to cover his ears or to breathe through a cloth. Besides, it made him look like a total idiot.
Since Cerise went to bed, he’d been passed from one relative to another, with Kaldar checking on him every half an hour or so until he was ready to wring the man’s neck. Kaldar had the slick easy charm of a talented swindler. He said whatever popped into his mouth, laughed easily, and talked too much. During the evening William had watched him steal a hook from Catherine’s basket, a knife from Erian, some sort of metal tool from Ignata, and a handful of bullets from one of Cerise’s cousins. Kaldar did it casually, with smooth grace, handled the item for a couple of moments, and slipped it back where it came from. William had a distinct suspicion that if Kaldar was caught, he’d just laugh it off, and his demented family would let him get away with it. They knew Kaldar was a villain. They didn’t care.
William found a small box with camo paint, and darkened his face, splaying the gray, dark green, and brown on in irregular blotches. That done, he slid his knives into his belt and swiped up the Mirror’s crossbow. He loaded it with two poisoned bolts from the quiver, careful not to touch the complicated mechanical bolt heads. The toxin was potent enough to take down a horse in mid-canter. The bolts’ heads were too large and oddly shaped, and his accuracy would suffer, but it didn’t matter. The crossbow was a weapon of last resort, to be used at close range, when death had to be guaranteed.
Someone in Cerise’s family didn’t play by the rules. Someone had told the Hand about Urow. He was sure that many locals were aware that the Mars had a thoas relative, but only a family member would know that this thoas went to pick up Cerise in Sicktree.
If there was a traitor in the family, he would have a direct line to Spider or someone on Spider’s crew. And given that Cerise had just arrived home with some strange blueblood in tow, the traitor should be dying to tell Spider about it.
The traitor would wait until most of the house had gone to bed for the night, and the Mars seemed to suffer from a critical inability to be quiet. The giant house buzzed like a beehive for most of the evening. It was close to midnight now, and Cerise’s noisy family had finally settled down.
William strapped the sleeper to his wrist. It was a complicated gadget, all clockwork gears and magic, embedded into a leather wrist guard. Four narrow metal barrels sat in a row on top of the sleeper. William pulled three thin wire loops from the underside of the wrist guard and threaded them on his index, middle, and ring fingers. He spread his fingers. The barrels rotated around his wrist like chambers on a revolver. If he flexed his wrist, driving the heel of his hand forward, the lowest barrel would fire, spitting a small canister armed with a needle. The canister held enough narcotic to put a large man into a deep sleep within three seconds.
It was an elegant weapon. He would miss the Mirror’s toys when this was over.
The traitor would head for the Mire. He was sure of it. First, he had already learned that nothing that happened within earshot of the Mar house stayed private. Second, Lark mentioned a monster in the woods. Cerise said Lark thought of herself as a monster, but he wasn’t sure she was right. The kid might’ve been confused. She might’ve seen something in the fog and the trees she couldn’t explain to her sister. Some of the Hand’s agents had enough enhancements to give a grown man nightmares, let alone a child. If Lark had found an odd, scary creature in the woods, he wanted to meet it.
He had a very simple plan: keep watch, identify the traitor as he or she left for the woods, then follow their trail to the wonderful presents that waited on the other end. He might get a drop on the Hand’s agent and follow him to whatever deep dark hole Spider claimed as his lair in the swamp.
Perhaps he might even let the Hand’s agent see him, William decided. Then they would have to have a conversation. Maybe some bones would even get broken. He chuckled soundlessly.
The window slid open without a sound. He eased through it onto the long balcony and crouched down, moving away into the deeper shadow by the rail.
The moon dipped in and out of ragged clouds. In the distance an old gator voiced a lazy roar. The wind smelled of water and the mimosa-tinted perfume of night needle flowers.
It had been a while since he’d hunted, and the night was calling.
Below, past the rail, the yard lay empty. William sat still, quiet and patient.
Minutes stretched like honey.
A faint shiver troubled the cypress branches to the left. A boy with a rifle. No older than twelve.
Another stir, to the right. A young woman in the pine. Judging by the distance between the trees, a third look-out probably waited on the opposite side of the house. They faced out, watching the Mire. None saw him.
A door closed shut with a quiet thump up ahead.
He slipped along the balcony, staying in the shadows, and sank down by the rail again. The spot gave him a view of a narrow slice of the front balcony and most of the staircase.
Measured footsteps, followed by a barely audible second set. He’d learned that second sound very well by now. Kaldar. Ugh.
The wind fetched their scents for him. Yeah, Kaldar and Richard. Those two were on the top of his traitor suspect list. Kaldar had the air of a man who always needed money but never had enough. The Hand paid well. When they didn’t murder their hirelings, that was.
Richard was a different story. William had picked Catherine’s brains while sitting in the library and listened to the family’s chatter for the entire evening until he’d pieced together the family tree. Grandmother Az had seven children. Of the seven, Alain Mar had been the oldest. Alain had three children, Richard, Kaldar, and Erian. When the Sheeriles had shot Alain in the market place, Richard was seventeen, Kaldar was fourteen, and Erian was ten. The family reins passed to Gustave, Cerise’s father. Cerise’s parents had taken Erian, because his brothers had been too young to take care of him.
Richard smelled like a natural alpha. Rational, calm, respected, from what little William had seen. People looked up to him, Cerise included. But Richard wasn’t in charge. Cerise was. Why?
He liked Richard for the traitor. The bulk of Cerise’s relatives consisted of her cousins, their children, and relatives by marriage, but only the core of the family knew about Urow meeting Cerise. He’d managed to narrow it down to eight people: Cerise, Richard, Kaldar, Erian, Murid, Petunia, and Ignata.
Catherine mentioned that Richard’s wife had left him about a year ago. Spouses didn’t seem to last among Mars.
If he had a wife and she left him, he would feel powerless, William decided. He would try to find the biggest, baddest asshole and take him down. It wouldn’t matter if he won or lost the fight. Either way, he’d replace the emotional hurt with real physical pain, something he could deal with, something that did eventually get better. They were similar, Richard and he. They both kept things contained inside. He’d sat next to Richard during the evening for a few minutes. They didn’t say a word to each other, sharing a calm silence. Richard had shown emotion only once. They’d both watched Kaldar slip the knife back into the sheath on Erian’s belt, and Richard had permitted himself a long-suffering sigh.
Maybe Richard wanted to prove to everyone that he wasn’t as powerless as his wife had made him feel.
“The man carries military-grade explosives in his pack,” Richard said quietly. “They came from the Weird. The magic aftershock was so strong, my teeth hurt.”
“Cerise said he used to be a soldier.” Kaldar’s tone was light. “William’s obviously on a hunting expedition. As long as he hunts the other side, we win.”
They were talking about him. Ha!
The two men stayed silent for a long moment.
“I didn’t hit that door,” Richard said.
“Hm?”
“The door to the Bunker. It was all him. He knocked it out, before I hit it. I barely grazed it.”
