by Emma Savant
“There you go,” I said. “All fixed.”
I met Brick’s eyes, and he peered down at me with his thin lips quirked into an uneven smile.
“Would you get the door for us, please?” I asked.
I kept my voice light and friendly, as if I believed every good thing I’d ever heard about him and had no doubt he’d be every bit the gentleman he looked.
“Why go back inside so soon?” he said. “It’s nice to get a little fresh air.”
“It’s cold,” Kamala said. Despite her smile, there was a slight quaver to her voice.
I put a reassuring hand on her back. Ginger and Cerise were there, I reminded myself. They would intervene the instant Brick shifted or threatened us. He’d as good as confirmed he owned the club; now all we needed was proof of his werewolf nature. If I could establish those two pieces of information, we could begin to draw lines—between Brick and the illegal mesmer parlor, between the mesmer parlor and the werewolves who seemed to always be here, and between those werewolves and the attack at the bamboo nursery.
He unbuttoned his jacket and shrugged it off, each gesture elegant and no movement wasted. He held out the jacket to Kamala.
“I wouldn’t want one of my guests to be cold,” he said with a courteous nod.
I nudged her toward him, and she took a stumbling step forward and turned around. Her eyes were wide, and I met her gaze and gave her the tiniest of nods. The jacket slipped over her bare shoulders, and she wrapped it around herself and smiled back up at him.
“Thank you,” she said.
We all fell silent. The conversation was over, and it was time to leave, but Brick didn’t move. He watched us, the corner of his mouth still stitched up in amusement, and then he took a step forward.
“You seem awfully young to be at my club,” he said, mostly to Kamala and Adamine.
He reached out a hand and touched Adamine’s cheek, then gently lifted her chin so he could see her better in the light. The touch wasn’t even on me, and I still wanted to wriggle away. It was like she was an animal, and he was examining her for flaws.
He didn’t seem to find any. He took another step forward and brushed Adamine’s hair back from her face.
“You’re pretty, though,” he said. “I like pretty girls at my clubs.”
He leered down at her, and she smiled up at him. Only I could see the way her feet inched backwards as he leaned in.
“Are you their chaperone?” he said to me.
I laughed. The sound felt grotesque coming out of my mouth.
“That wouldn’t be any fun.”
As if anything happening could be described as fun. Dagger jobs usually involved at least moments of excitement or accomplishment. This one felt gross all the way through, and the way Kamala was looking around for an escape told me I wasn’t the only one who thought so.
“I heard a rumor about you, Mr. Brick.” I took a step forward, and his attention shifted away from Adamine. “Can I ask you a personal question?”
I tried to make it sound like a dare, and that seemed to appeal to him.
“If I can ask you one in return,” he said.
His eyes flickered down to my cleavage and up again. I stepped even closer, silently praying that my perfume was enough to mask any familiar scent.
“I heard you’re a werewolf.” I looked up at him through my lashes, trying to fill the words with desire instead of revulsion. “Is that true?”
“Do werewolves frighten you?”
I leaned in even closer, close enough that he could kiss me if he chose to close the gap.
“I think they’re exciting,” I said.
Adamine edged away, and he let her go. His eyes locked onto mine, and I tried to keep mine wide open and my lips parted.
I’d drilled in these exercises a thousand times: look sad, now scared, now curious, now innocent, now threatening. I heard Cardinal Saffron’s voice in my head: Lift your eyebrows just a hair, smooth your forehead, smile only with your eyes, no, that’s too much, back off a little—there.
I bit my lip, took in a quavering breath, and focused on the spot between his eyes like I’d find the answer there. He reached out a hand and ran his fingernails down my throat. The sound of a car driving out on the street barely broke the silence between us.
Then the door to the club slammed open, and the sound of a woman’s heels clicked sharply on the pavement. I jumped away from Brick as my heart leaped to a gallop.
He didn’t seem startled. Instead, he let out a breath and smiled, this time in a way that seemed genuine.
“Joseph?” a woman said.
My stomach clenched at the sound of her voice in remembered fear and anger.
“Yes, my dear?” He turned around.
Sienna stood in the light of the open door, a sparkling gold dress clinging to her curves, and thick bangles ringing her wrist. She surveyed us with cool eyes, taking in Adamine’s frightened expression and Kamala wearing Brick’s jacket before her attention landed on me.
The glamour wasn’t enough to shield me from her gaze. We’d spent too many years practicing disguises together, and we each knew the Daggers’ many faces as well as we knew our own.
She held out a hand to him.
“You’re needed inside,” she said, then looked over at Kamala. “Kammie, sweetie, we’ll need the jacket back. Can’t have anyone casting spells with it.”
Kamala removed the jacket in silence. Sienna waited coolly until Kamala had handed it over, and then she took Brick’s hand and led him back into the building. She glanced over her shoulder as the door began to fall shut.
“Have a good evening, girls,” she said.
26
I stormed through the forest behind the mansion, trampling saplings and ferns underfoot. The delicate branches bent and cracked beneath my boots, and it was a relief to destroy things—even things as tiny and innocent as the plants that ventured to grow on the path to the Wildwoods’ den.
Before I reached the den, though, I stopped and turned around.
I didn’t want to talk to Brendan or Alec or Cate or any of the other wolves. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. There was no point. I’d already given my report to Mom and Grandma of the whole stupid failed venture, and that had been more than enough talking for one night.
Everything had fallen apart. I hadn’t managed to trick Brick into revealing his werewolf form. I hadn’t even managed to prove he was more threatening than any other everyday creep who thought it was okay to flirt with underage girls.
I’d failed, dramatically, and in front of my sisters.
And Sienna.
I swatted at a bramble obstructing the path. It sprang out of my way, but not before slicing a thin gash into my hand. I sucked on the injury and tasted the sharp copper of blood.
It wasn’t just that things had gone wrong. It was that they had gone spectacularly wrong—so much so that I couldn’t have even imagined myself in that situation. Fury and humiliation swirled into a toxic cocktail inside me.
How had Sienna gotten out of jail? How had she outsmarted me again? Why did she seem so utterly determined to be the central problem of my life?
I stumbled out from under the trees and onto the edge of the backyard. The comforting scent of a campfire greeted me. Someone in a bulky red sweater was sitting next to the fire pit, stirring the logs.
No, not someone.
Grandma.
She was the only person I could stand to be with right now. I approached and dropped myself into one of the lawn chairs at the edge of the pit, and she handed me a thermos of hot tea like she’d just been waiting for my arrival.
“Long day, sabre?”
“The absolute longest,” I said.
She took a sip from her own thermos. “You know nothing that happened today was your fault, right?”
I picked a piece of grass and started ripping it into tiny ribbons. “Don’t see how it’s not.”
“I didn’t know Sienna was out of prison
,” Grandma said. “Why should you?”
“But how is she out?” I demanded. “And why didn’t anyone tell us?”
“She’s an adult,” Grandma said. “No one was under any obligation to inform us, and she clearly didn’t decide to reach out.”
“She was supposed to be in prison for years,” I said. “She murdered people.”
“No justice system is perfect,” Grandma said. “If she’s involved with Joseph Brick, I have no doubt his influence or his money worked in her favor.”
“Even after murder?”
She made a noncommittal noise and stirred the logs again, although they didn’t need it. Her face was tight, and I realized with a jolt that this had to be affecting her at least as much as it did me.
“Do you think she’s part of the wolf pack?” I said. “Brick has to be a werewolf.”
“You didn’t see him transform.”
“I didn’t have to,” I said. “The wolves we were with definitely let him know we were out there, and—” I tossed the thin strips of grass into the fire. “It was his shoes,” I said finally. “His shoes on the pavement. I knew that sound.”
“I believe you,” Grandma leaned forward, elbows propped on her knees, and looked into the flames. The light from them reflected off her glasses, covering her eyes with a screen of dazzling orange.
“I put Sienna in prison, and she’s still out there,” I said. “Living her best life.”
I picked another piece of grass and ripped it into shreds.
We sat in silence for a long moment. A log popped, vaulting an explosion of swirling embers into the air.
I had been trying to investigate this werewolf on my own, but I hadn’t really saved anyone until I had called all my sisters to my side. I had defeated Sienna more or less on my own the first time she’d shown her true colors, but now she was out, and I knew it was only a matter of time before she came to get her revenge.
“We’re all in danger,” I said.
Grandma nodded, like this wasn’t news or even something to get worked up about.
And it wasn’t, not really. We were always in danger. The Daggers had enemies across the globe, and I had more than one childhood memory of some furious troll or sorcerer trying to break past the enchantments around Grandma’s property to take revenge on a Dagger who had wronged him.
This was different, though.
This was personal.
And I wouldn’t be able to handle it alone.
“We need every witch in the coven working on this,” I said. “Except for Garnet.”
“Even Garnet,” Grandma said.
Garnet was Sienna’s mom, and my aunt. She’d been in Australia for much of the past year, studying a dangerous and evasive creature called the Garkain. She’d been informed when everything had gone down with Sienna, and had briefly flown home for Sienna’s trial before the Faerie Court, but had gone back to Australia almost immediately.
“Are you sure?”
“Garnet is angrier with Sienna than I am, I think,” Grandma said. “They’re not speaking now, not since Sienna learned her mother didn’t support her cause.” She sighed. “Garnet is safe. And perhaps she can help us when she comes home.”
“When will that be?”
“Who knows,” Grandma said. “I think she’d be just as happy to avoid her daughter right now.”
“Wouldn’t we all.”
I took a long drink of my tea. It was one of Grandma’s chamomile blends, and I knew she’d chosen it specifically because she knew I’d need help calming down.
I didn’t feel better about everything that had happened tonight. But I did feel loved.
I offered the tea to Grandma, but she shook her head and lifted her own thermos.
“Hot toddy for me,” she said.
I snorted and leaned back in my chair. The warmth from the flames was as soothing as the tea, and my body slowly started to release some of the anger that half an hour storming through the woods hadn’t been able to touch.
“We’re not just dealing with Sienna,” I said. It had been easy to forget that. My mind had been swarmed with thoughts of her from the first moment she’d stepped out into the alley, but she hadn’t been alone, and I hadn’t gone to the club tonight looking for her. “If I’m right, she’s got an entire wolf pack behind her. Brick seems wrapped around her finger.”
“We don’t know he’s a werewolf,” Grandma reminded me. “Let alone the alpha. I thought you said a woman at the poker table seemed like she was in charge?”
“She did,” I said. My brain hurt to think about it, but I pushed my way through the memories of the night anyway. “The other wolves definitely obeyed her. Maybe Brick is part of another pack. Or maybe he flies solo. Maybe he’s turned Sienna and she’s the alpha now.”
“That’s a lot of maybes.”
I nodded and used the toe of my boot to push the edge of a log deeper into the fire.
“I think we need more than the coven on this,” I said.
“Law enforcement won’t do anything,” Grandma said. “The palace has chosen to stay out of the mesmer games, and we don’t have enough proof to get anyone involved in the birthday party attack arrested. We don’t have any proof aside from Dagger testimony, and if Brick is protecting the wolves and it comes down to your word against theirs…” She trailed off. She didn’t need to say more.
“Not law enforcement.” I wrapped my hands tightly around my tea and let the heat soak into my fingers. “The Wildwoods.”
Grandma raised her eyebrows at me, inviting more.
“They already know about the Crimson Daggers,” I said. “They’re also the ones who helped me learn about that attack on the Humdrum party. Well, Brendan was, anyway, but they all do what he says. They’re on our side, and if we’re going up against an entire pack of werewolves, maybe we should do that with an entire pack of werewolves.”
She took a long, pointed drink, looking at me over the edge of her thermos.
“What?”
“That’s a lot of people,” she said.
“You know me,” I said. “You know I’d rather do it on my own. But we’re up against someone who knows us, and our weaknesses.”
“Sienna hasn’t done anything to us,” Grandma said.
“Yet.”
The Burnside pack hadn’t done anything to us, either, but they had tried to do something to a whole party full of Humdrum children.
I wasn’t naive enough to think that Sienna couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with that.
Even if she hadn’t, though, that didn’t change the enemy I’d been after in the first place.
“The Burnside werewolves are dangerous,” I said. “I think we’ll do better if we have the Wildwood werewolves keeping their eyes and ears open.”
Grandma stretched and settled back in the chair. “All right, sabre,” she said. “Bring them in. Do what you think is best. This is your mission.”
27
I felt trapped in the parlor. It wasn’t just the bodies, although we had enough people in here to fog up the windows. More than anything, it was the way everyone in this room was glaring daggers either at me or each other. The two groups clustered on opposing sides of the room like boys and girls at a middle-school dance.
“This was a stupid idea,” I muttered to Rowan.
She gave me a sympathetic look that her next words didn’t quite match.
“Well, it wasn’t exactly smart,” she said. Her voice was low, but still loud enough to carry in the almost-silent room.
She continued to slide squares of lemon cake onto small paper plates. The table we’d set up near the fireplace was loaded with cake and lemonade and a giant veggie platter, and everyone so far had avoided the food.
When Daggers and werewolves alike wouldn’t even get a piece of cake for fear of running into each other, I knew things were serious.
“Here,” Rowan said, giving me two plates. “Go hand these around. It’ll give you something to do.”
Grandma’s eyes focused on me as I walked across the room. I gave one slice to Brendan and another to Cate.
“Could you maybe back me up here?” I said in an undertone.
Brendan raised an eyebrow. “I’m not sure I want to put myself in that line of fire.” He shifted and glanced toward the door, and I got a fleeting impression that he was actually nervous.
And why shouldn’t he be? One of my coven had murdered members of his pack not that long ago.
“Cate?”
“Don’t look at me,” she said. “I’m not talking to those crazy witches. They’ll stab me as soon as talk to me. No offense.”
I let out a deep sigh and went back for more cake. As many people rejected the offer as accepted it, and I came away with the impression that half the werewolves thought I was trying to poison them. Even wolves I knew seemed shifty and unwilling to meet my gaze, and my sisters weren’t much better.
“You want to tell us what they’re doing here?” Ginger asked tightly when I handed her a plate. She spoke like she and I were about to be in on a plan together—but my plan tonight wasn’t just for my sisters, or the wolves, or the Cardinals of the coven. It was for everyone, and everyone would hear it together.
I couldn’t afford to play favorites. Not now.
I smiled a little and shook my head, and Blaze scrunched up her eyebrows at me like I was a puzzle she just couldn’t figure out.
Finally, the last of the coven trickled in and found seats on the folding chairs we’d dragged down from the attic. The air was too hot and thick in here to breathe.
Rowan put a comforting hand on my shoulder, and I nodded at her and forced in a deep breath.
“If I could have your attention,” I said to the room at large.
I hadn’t needed to ask; no one had been distracted in the first place, and the room was already silent except for the occasional hiss of the radiator in the corner.
I wiped my sweaty hands on my jeans. Dozens of pairs of eyes stared at me, and only Grandma’s and Mom’s seemed less than antagonistic.
“What are they doing here?” Rose demanded.