by Emma Savant
No one here matched the physical description that had been written at the bottom of my mission. I didn’t know why anyone even bothered with physical descriptions on these things, though. When a tiny bit of magic was all it took to change your haircut and skin color, appearances meant nothing.
I stepped aside, away from the crowd, and lifted the lapis lazuli pendant that hung from my necklace, next to a simple brass dagger charm. The pendant’s energy thrummed alongside my own. Lips barely moving, I incanted a simple charm under my breath. The stone flashed warm for a moment, then cooled. I let it fall back against my skin.
Across the room, I caught Ginger’s dark eyes. She was another of the Daggers, and dressed like she worked here, but she hadn’t come for the casting call. Her job was to watch me.
I took a deep breath and tried to pretend she wasn’t there. Acacia and her assistant were sorting the models into groups now, and the stone’s gentle heat seemed to pull me toward Group B. The models clustered in a corner of the room, some of them on their phones and others nervously adjusting their hair.
My black suit bearing the crimson Carnelian logo on the lapel made me as good as invisible. To anyone’s eyes, I was some intern or apprentice, free to move about and with the authority to give orders like I knew what I was talking about. I drifted toward the group, occasionally making nonsense notes on my clipboard. They barely noticed me. The stone grew warmer, then, suddenly, it was hot enough to burn my skin.
I ignored the pain and took note of the women standing closest to me. They were all beautiful in the generic way of models. Their complexions and hair varied, but every last one was tall with sharp cheekbones and wide eyes.
Couture fashion or not, Grandma needed to get some variety up in here. I made a mental note to talk to her about it later.
The first woman turned when I tapped her on the shoulder. I tucked my clipboard closer to my chest.
I should have been taking real notes so I didn’t have to worry about the nonsense on my clipboard. I was stupid. This was why it had taken me so long to get my first job.
“Excuse me—” I glanced at her name tag. “Chrysta. Madame Carnelian asked me to select a few of you for a separate group. Would you mind coming this way?”
Her eyes widened, and the women around her turned to admire the one who’d been selected. “Of course.” She smoothed her shirt and tucked her phone in her back pocket.
I examined her. She more or less matched the description I’d been given, but it was hard to tell if she had other glamours disguising her features.
It didn’t matter. All I had to do was get anyone the amulet marked as being glamoured out of this room, figure out which one was actually my target, and then get her cuffed and into the vehicle waiting on Carnelian’s private floor of the parking garage next door.
Chrysta followed me, her heels clicking on the lobby floor. I smiled warmly at her and asked her to wait by the elevators. I went back to the group, again following the pendant. Of the other women who had been near me, only one made it flash hot. Her name tag said Sovanna. I pointed her toward the elevators. The stone stayed warm against my chest until I’d selected a third, Kim, and then it cooled and its energy subsided.
In a perfect world, that would have meant that the last woman was my target.
In the real world, amulet magic wasn’t an exact science, and the stones’ timing didn’t always match mine. I returned to the group. Ginger’s gaze followed as I ushered them into the elevator, and she pulled out her phone and texted something.
“Madame Carnelian has a few special pieces to show in this collection, and she’s looking for a particular kind of woman to display them,” I said. The elevator doors slid closed on us. “She’s asked me to review your walks and see if you have what we’re after.”
“Wow, how exciting,” Sovanna said. Her voice was mild and pleasant, but her hands twisted together in front of her. She seemed young—young enough that this might be her first ever show, if she was chosen.
I’d feel bad turning these models away after getting their hopes up. But the work of a Dagger required sacrifices, and the emotions that came with our work would never be simple or easy.
The elevator opened onto a floor of mostly meeting rooms and employee break lounges. I’d picked one of the conference rooms earlier. It had a good lock, and the only windows were tightly sealed and looked down nine stories to the street. It was the kind of place that would be hard to leave if a Dagger was blocking the door.
I welcomed the women into the room and had them line up on the far side. I stayed against the wall, near the door.
“If you could just walk down the floor toward me, then turn and back up,” I said. “Then the second time I want you to do a little twirl in the middle.”
They nodded. Chrysta went first, her dark-blonde ponytail swinging and her face set in a stern expression. She’d done this before. I watched her carefully, waiting for the stone to tell me something, but it stayed cool and ordinary against my skin. I touched it, hoping the charm hadn’t worn off.
“That’s perfect, thank you,” I said. “Sovanna, I’ll have you go next. First, do any of you have glamours or anything you want Madame Carnelian to be aware of?” I poised my pen over the paper on my clipboard and surveyed them, hoping it would buy me a few seconds to notice anything that might hint at my target.
Kim raised her hand. “I can conjure a butterfly cloud from my aura,” she said. “Any color you like.”
I raised my eyebrows. “I’ll make a note of it.”
Sovanna glanced at Kim with what I thought might be jealousy. “I just have the usual range of beauty glamours,” she said. “I’m sorry, were we supposed to have something else prepared?”
“No, I’m just asking,” I said.
“Just the normal range for me, too,” Chrysta said, although it didn’t seem to bother her. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”
“You’re Glims,” I said, taking a moment to observe them carefully. “You’re all out of the ordinary. That’s why the house of Carnelian is so glad you’re here auditioning today.”
Chrysta smiled at me. Of the three, she seemed the most confident, and the most likely to be able to pull off the kind of counterfeiting my target had been doing for years.
“Are any of you wearing glamours right now?”
All three shook their heads. It was standard to come to these auditions with naked faces and no magical help, but one of them had to be lying. My target had light-brown hair, hazel eyes, and a pale, freckled complexion. Chrysta was blonde and blue-eyed with creamy Scandinavian skin. Sovanna’s and Kim’s hair and eyes leaned toward black, and they both had darker skin with golden undertones. None of them were a match. I tried to focus my energy, but I couldn’t get a read.
Stupid pendant must be malfunctioning. I touched it, as if adjusting it, and pushed more of my energy into the stone.
Still nothing.
I fought back a wave of irritation and waved Sovanna forward.
“Same thing, please,” I said. “Back and forth, then repeat it with a twirl.”
She nodded and took a deep, nervous breath before shaking out her ponytail and walking forward. She had a good stride and the kind of attitude Grandma liked in her models.
The lapis lazuli pendant burned, and I hissed in a sharp breath as I shoved it away from my body. The smell of burning flesh lingered in the air, and pain flared white-hot against my skin. The models stared at me for a moment. Sovanna stopped mid-stride. Her eyes darted from my face to the pendant and back again, and then she bolted.
I threw myself in front of the door before she could get it open. The pendant dropped again and singed me, and I yanked the necklace off and shoved it in my pocket. The other two women backed up to the wall, watching with wide eyes.
“You’re not going anywhere,” I said.
Sovanna raised her arm, but my decade of training kicked in long before she could land the punch. I ducked aside, then grabbed her arm and
twisted it, pushing her into a tight hold.
“Let go!” she screamed.
I held her arm tighter and walked her to the side of the room, then looked over at the other models, who had both gone pale.
“Pardon me, ladies,” I said. “This has nothing to do with you. You’re free to get out of here if you want.”
I jerked my chin toward the door. They hesitated only a second, then scurried out of the room.
“Aurelie Steel, you are under arrest on suspicion of counterfeiting and money laundering,” I said.
I reached into my deep blazer pocket for the handcuffs I’d been carrying around all day and burned my finger on the stone. It was still scalding hot. I jerked her hands behind her back, and she wriggled and screamed.
The door burst back open. Sienna entered.
“How exactly did you lose control of this situation so quickly?” she demanded. “Two of our models just ran into the lobby like they were being chased, and one of them was screaming about assassins.”
My stomach twisted.
I hadn’t known Sienna would be here today. Had she been assigned to watch me along with Ginger? She’d only been the future Stiletto for a few months. She couldn’t possibly be in charge of me already.
I opened my mouth to tell her to get out and that I’d deal with the other models in a minute, but that instant was all my target needed. She yanked her hands free, elbowed me hard in the jaw, and darted through the door, slamming it into Sienna as she passed her.
Sienna stumbled and then shot me a sharp look.
I ran after Aurelie, but Sienna was faster. She slid in front of the stairwell door a split second ahead of the faerie, slammed her body against the frame, and then leveled my target with one swift blow to the head. The punch wasn’t enough to knock Aurelie out, but it was enough to send her stumbling backward onto the floor, and then Sienna was on top of her and had her cuffed before I could yell at her to get away from my mission.
I stopped and took in the scene in front of me, Aurelie kneeling on the floor with her hands bound behind her back, Sienna standing over her with a triumphant expression, and my mission shattered all around them.
“I had it under control,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Clearly not,” Sienna said. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and put it to her ear. “Yeah, Pepper? Bring the car around. I had to step in.”
“I’ll take it from here,” I said. My voice was too loud and carried an edge of desperation that let me know I’d already lost.
Sienna gave me a severe frown as she put the phone away.
“This isn’t an exercise, Scarlett,” she said. She let out a sharp sigh, as though she wanted to strangle me but was choosing patience instead. “Why don’t you go see if you can help Ginger calm down your collateral damage? Those models are freaked out, and I don’t need to tell you that Grandma isn’t going to want that kind of press. Especially not so close to her big show.”
I clenched the stone in my pocket. It was still hot enough to hurt, and the pain was good. It let me focus. I clenched my teeth, gave Sierra a curt nod, and turned around. I could feel her eyes on me as I walked toward the elevator. The stone burned in my hand.
5
I knocked the motorcycle kickstand back into place and tore out of the parking garage. A cool evening wind whipped at my hair, and the early autumn skies were heavy with clouds. It had been raining on and off for a few weeks now, the June weather shifting the city from gloom to sunshine and back again.
The wind felt as cold as I was hot, and I tried to focus on the way it whipped at my cheeks and cooled my skin as I rode the red bike away from Carnelian. Blood still pounded in my ears, all adrenaline and anger.
How could she dare step in on my mission like that? Right when I’d captured my target, the moment before I was about to cuff her and finish my job? Sure, I hadn’t handled the situation perfectly. The other models had taken a while to calm down, and I’d had to feed them a whole made-up line about how I was an undercover law officer before they’d agreed to keep their mouths shut, but I’d done it in the end. And even if I hadn’t been able to catch them, weren’t little mistakes like that why Ginger was there?
It was my first job. It wasn’t meant to go perfectly.
But it was meant to go, and Sienna had stolen that from me.
I had to disappear. Even these narrow city streets left me feeling too exposed. I needed to hole up somewhere dark, somewhere I could slip into the shadows and listen to loud music until noise and darkness swallowed me whole.
How could she do that? Why couldn’t it have been someone else keeping an eye on me? Anyone would have been better than Sienna. Grandma knew that. Everyone knew that.
I slapped the handle of my bike and skidded around a corner into an alleyway.
The alley ended in a dead end of brick fronted by a giant garbage bin. I narrowed my eyes and sped straight toward it. The front of the bin opened when I approached, revealing a ramp down into an underground parking garage lit by glowing orbs that clustered near the dark ceiling like golden bubbles. I snapped my fingers, and one of the orbs floated down to hover in front of my bike. It drifted forward, and I followed it to a parking spot.
The orb flashed white. I held out my hand, and it shrunk and faded as it dropped. By the time it landed in my hand, it was nothing more than a marble swirled with glitter.
I tossed the marble in the air, caught it, and put it in one of my zippered chest pockets.
I’d traded out my Carnelian blazer for the red leather jacket Grandma had given me. I didn’t feel like I deserved to wear it, but then had decided to put it on anyway, because the thing was cool and it was mine, and if I didn’t walk out of the downtown office with it on my shoulders, Sienna would probably steal it, too.
Goddess, why did she have to be the one to supervise me today?
I jogged up the spiral staircase in the corner of the parking floor. It was made of silver filigree and trembled a little with every heavy step. The first set of stairs opened onto another, this one a long flight wallpapered in silvery green and illuminated with flames that danced from glittering sconces on the walls.
I flashed my Glimmering ID at the bouncer. The gold-edged card showed my face, name, identity as a witch, and age. The bouncer, a tiny woman with bright-pink hair, nodded me up the stairs. I took them two at a time.
Even in the late afternoon, Gilt was alive. Music pounded on the dance floor, and the bar against the far wall had a short line. I joined it. The drinks here weren’t alcoholic—Gilt was an underage club—but they were loaded with fairy dust and dragon tears and all kinds of extras that couldn’t be found in the Humdrum world. I took steadying breaths and tried to focus on the pulse of the music while I waited my turn.
On the floor, an incubus danced in the middle of a group of naiads, who seemed enamored with his attempt at seducing all six of them at once. A few younger faerie girls were taking selfies in a corner, and a witch I vaguely recognized from community events sat at a corner table, idly lighting and dousing a candle with her gaze.
The music beat almost as quickly as my heart. I couldn’t seem to calm my racing pulse, any more than I could calm the heat running through my veins or the fury roaring in my ears. I wanted to strangle Sienna, and then I wanted to strangle anyone who took issue with that, and then I wanted to strangle someone else just for good measure.
It wasn’t a good place for my energy to be, and knowing that did nothing to help me gain control.
Someone tapped lightly on my shoulder. I whirled around and raised my fist, and the muscular guy behind me stepped backwards, hands up and eyes wide.
“Hey, we’re cool,” he said. “I didn’t mean anything by it, it’s just—your turn.”
He gestured toward the bar with his eyes. I realized while heat flooded my face that the faerie in front of me was gone, and I’d been holding up the line. I lowered my hand and shoved it into my pocket.
“Sorry,” I said.
I glanced at his hazel eyes, then quickly away. “Long day.”
Don’t call attention to yourself, that was one of the first rules of being a Dagger. Well, if my bright-red jacket hadn’t been enough to screw that one up, the rest of me was certainly ready to jump in and help.
The bartender raised one eyebrow at me, like he was low-key concerned I’d try to punch him, too.
“Lemon pixie twist,” I said. “Extra mint if you’ve got it, and sweeten with a whole lot of honey.”
“Sure thing.”
His hands were instantly moving like dancers in a ballet, juggling syrups and canisters of pixie dust as if he’d rehearsed it. He handed me the drink, and I scanned the room for the most out-of-the-way corner.
“You didn’t strike me as the extra honey type,” the guy behind me said.
I looked behind me, impressed that he was willing to talk to me after I’d almost flattened him.
“That’s why I need it,” I said. “Maybe it’ll sweeten my friggin’ disposition.”
I flipped him off and stalked toward a tiny table at the back of the room. It was hidden in shadows and seemed like the right kind of place to disappear while I let the lemon and honey work their uplifting magic.
Not that one drink would do it. I needed to be swallowing honey by the hive just to be able to walk back into the mansion and face Sienna. I wished she’d do what half the other Daggers did and get her own place, but of course, the future Stiletto had to stay close to the current Stiletto.
Who knew how long it would be before she stole my grandma from me, too.
I pounded back half of the drink and immediately regretted it. Cloying sweetness suffused my mouth and throat, leaving the lemon flavor all but behind.
The guy sank into the seat opposite me.
“You seem like you’re having a worse day than I am.”