Crimson Daggers- The Complete Trilogy

by Emma Savant

  “What’s happening at Carnelian?” Alec asked.

  I shrugged. “Cherry’s still working on coming up with obituaries and fake causes of death for Mom and the kids before we announce anything. Sounds like they’re going to go with carbon monoxide poisoning.”

  It felt like the kind of thing I should laugh at, but laughter felt as impossible as tears.

  “Josette’s handling the fashion house for now,” I said. “After Grandma got kidnapped, we came up with a better plan for handing off responsibilities in case she ever got ‘sick’ or ‘stranded’ again.”

  At least Carnelian wasn’t likely to end up in my lap, not for several years. I didn’t have the experience to run it. Josette did. She’d handle the next few collections and make us all proud.

  It was hard to feel like any of it mattered.

  Alec kept holding me, and I kept letting him. Being held by Alec wasn’t the same as being held by Brendan. There were no sparks, no tension.

  Not that I could feel sparks now.

  “How are the moms?” Alec asked quietly.

  I shrugged.

  Down below us, a couple of dark figures crossed the lawn. One was Sorrell, coming back from one of the training missions the teens went on a few times a month, and Roux was with her as chaperone. I remembered those missions, back when Blaze or Poppy or Mom had taken me out and let me practice my skills on a young manticore or vampire who just needed a good talking to.

  Now, the thought of Mom and vampires made my throat close up.

  I stood abruptly, shaking Alec’s arm from my shoulder as I went.

  “I need to go figure out assignments for next week,” I said. “You can stay out here if you want.”

  I left him there, sitting on the roof under the stars.

  Grandma’s home office was deeply familiar, and once I was inside with the door shut, it was possible to almost pretend everything was normal. I kept feeling as if she’d walk through at any moment. And then she didn’t. And then she didn’t again.

  I sat in her chair behind her desk and pulled up the Daggers’ schedules. They were all kept in a sturdy calendar book, and their obligations and assignments faded in and out in black ink whenever something changed. I could adjust any of the calendars with Grandma’s enchanted silver pen, and I spent the next hour going through the overflowing inbox of reports and requests and letters of inquiry. Grandma only accepted requests from new clients in hard copy, and it wasn’t a normal day unless at least a few folded paper airplanes were pecking at the window and letters were being dropped down the chimney by ravens.

  For what was supposed to be a secret society, we sure had a lot of people trying to get in touch. I wondered what would happen when the word of our losses got out.

  I sorted out the most pressing cases and assigned them as best as I could. Some of the mothers whose children had been murdered had agreed to let me take them off duty for a few weeks or maybe months, and some of the others had begged me to give them something, anything, to focus on. I tried to balance the jobs with the Daggers, and always felt a tugging anxiety in the back of my mind like I had done something wrong.

  Someone knocked on the door, and I called for them to come in. Brendan stepped into the office and closed the door quickly behind himself.

  “I found her,” he said. “Sienna. I found her.”

  23

  I paced back and forth in the office, thoughts firing at a rapid pace at odds with my sluggish heart.

  “It’s too risky,” I finally said.

  Rowan sat still while I strode past her.

  “It’s the best idea we’ve had in a while,” she said.

  “This is why you wanted her here?” I said to Brendan.

  He’d told me where I could find Sienna, and then Alec and Rowan and Cate had all showed up, because apparently Brendan didn’t know how to keep his big mouth shut.

  “It’s a good idea,” Brendan said.

  “It is a good idea,” Cate said, even though no one had asked her.

  “It’s insane.”

  “Doesn’t mean it’s not good,” Brendan countered.

  The fireplace in Grandma’s office gave off a warm, crackling light that illuminated Rowan’s face and made her dark eyes more fervent than usual.

  “This is the closest we’ll get to perfect timing,” Rowan said.

  She twisted to look at me as I strode around the back of her chair. This office wasn’t big enough for the kind of marching around I felt like I needed to do. My legs were jumpy, and I wished I’d managed to talk myself into going for a run earlier. I wasn’t used to sitting around, cooped up, grieving and avoiding grieving in equal measure. I had to act.

  But this kind of acting was ridiculous.

  “She just murdered eight people,” I said. “Six children. My mother. Nelly.”

  “I know that,” Rowan said.

  Her voice was measured, and it was the same voice she used to talk to one of the children when they were having a hysterical breakdown over not being able to find a stuffed pony toy or getting kicked out of a game of hide and seek. I didn’t like her using it on me, and I especially didn’t like the way it made me feel calmer.

  “The thing is,” she continued, “your mother and Nelly didn’t have an opening like we have. Sienna has given us an opportunity. Let’s not waste it.”

  “I think you’re out of your mind.”

  “You can’t just not do anything,” Cate said.

  “I don’t even know why you’re here,” I said.

  Her eyebrows shot up, and I could see her wanting to argue, and I was torn between guilt over snapping at her and a hunger to do it again.

  Brendan put a hand on her knee and shook his head a little, which annoyed me even more.

  “Let’s assume we were going to move ahead with the plan,” Alec said. “Can we think of a better time to do it?”

  “It’s not about the timing, it’s about Rowan not getting murdered,” I snapped. “Rowan, no. The plan’s good, but I’ll do it.”

  Rowan snorted, and I shot her a glare.

  It didn’t seem to faze her.

  “You are the absolute last person in the coven who could pull it off,” she said. “I know you like to do stuff on your own, Scarlett. But you don’t get to do this one.”

  Suddenly exhausted, I dropped into the last open chair next to the fireplace.

  “It’s too risky.”

  “It absolutely is,” Rowan agreed. “I’m going anyway. I want to protect this house just as much as you do, and if I get killed, it’ll be less of a blow to the coven.”

  I opened my mouth to argue, but the words died on my lips.

  She was right, awful as it felt to think about it. Rowan was a valuable member of the coven, and I loved her perhaps better than I loved most of my sisters, but the Stiletto line had been almost destroyed.

  I was the one Grandma and Mom had been training—in arranging the schedules, in making contact with other entities in the Glimmering world, in the spells that helped the Stiletto keep the coven running smoothly. Until I could pass that knowledge on to someone else, I couldn’t risk it being lost.

  At least, I couldn’t risk it too much.

  “I’m coming with you,” I said finally.

  “I assumed,” she said.

  It was a gesture meant to make me feel like I’d won, and I pretended I didn’t see right through it.

  “That’s that, then,” Rowan said, as if she hadn’t just thrown her fate to the winds. “We leave tomorrow night.”

  24

  “Don’t worry,” Alec said, putting a hand on my arm. “We’ll be there to protect her.”

  Brendan brushed past us in the darkened alley outside the mesmer club, checking Alec with his shoulder.

  “Sorry,” he said, clearly without meaning it.

  I grabbed Brendan’s arm and whirled him around to face me. My grip was stronger than I’d planned, and his eyebrows shot up.

  “What?”

&nb
sp; “This,” I said, waving a finger between him and Alec. “This thing here, whatever this is? It has to stop. Now. My mother was just murdered. I don’t have time to referee some stupid competition, especially when you both seem to think I’m going to end up as the prize.”

  I’d been trying to play nice with the two of them for too long. I didn’t have energy to keep it up. Politeness was for people who weren’t about to send one of their best friends into a vampire nest.

  “I’m no one’s prize,” I said. “Got it? Not yours. Not yours. So either you two figure out how to work together or I’m calling this whole thing off.”

  Cate clapped slowly. “Well said. Keep it in your pants, boys.”

  “You can shut up,” I said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Rowan?”

  “I’m ready,” she said. She was dressed simply and wore no glamours.

  It wasn’t like glamours would have helped; Sienna could recognize us all beneath them. But I was nervous, knowing she was going in there without even the pretense of a disguise.

  No, not nervous.

  Terrified.

  I could recognize the fear. I could give it a name. But I couldn’t give in. If I stepped back now, I’d never find it in myself to step forward again.

  “Cate?”

  “Headed to the back exit.” She gave me a finger-gun salute that would have been stupid coming from anyone else. She slipped down the back of the alley and melted into the shadows.

  “Boys?” I said, mimicking Cate’s tone.

  “I’m ready,” Brendan said. “I’ve been ready all day.”

  Alec just nodded. The tiny camera hidden inside one of his shirt buttons winked at me, but only because I was looking.

  It was a Humdrum technology—not the kind of thing the Daggers usually used and not the kind of thing Sienna would be on alert for. I checked my phone, made sure the low-quality feed was live, and ducked back into the cover of the shadows. Rowan stepped out onto the street, Brendan and Alec behind her.

  I waited for a few long breaths. Cherry and Saffron, the two remaining Cardinals, were the only ones who knew where I was.

  If this went south, they had instructions to get the rest of the Daggers out and into hiding.

  I didn’t know what kind of hiding, and I didn’t know where. That was up to them. My not knowing meant they’d be that much safer if I ended up captured.

  I sank to the dirty alley pavement with the brick of the building against my back, put in my headphones, threw up a quick glamour of darkness that would hide my phone’s light from passersby, and watched.

  Rowan spoke to a bouncer outside a nightclub that had neon pink and purple signs in the windows. The bouncer frowned at her, and the soft silk of his voice was apparent even through the scratchiness of the hidden camera.

  “Can’t let you in without the password,” he said.

  “I’m here to see Sienna,” Rowan said, total confidence radiating from her. “You’re one of hers, right?”

  Alec wasn’t standing far enough back for me to see the man’s face, but his voice instantly changed.

  “My apologies, I misunderstood,” he said. “Lady Sienna’s guests are always welcome.”

  She had them calling her Lady Sienna now. It was so stupid it deserved laughter, though I couldn’t muster any.

  The image on my screen became erratic as the dim light of the club entrance was replaced by darkness interspersed with flashing lights. Music crackled in my headphones.

  Sienna might have power, but she didn’t have much imagination. Of course Brendan had been able to find her; what surprised me was that I hadn’t thought to look here first.

  It wasn’t a club I’d been to before, but I’d known about it for a while. It was one of many of the city’s illegal gambling dens. The man who had owned all of them, Joseph Brick, had sold off a few after he’d been imprisoned. But he’d held on to a couple, including this one, and word on the street was that he was still managing his empire from his prison cell.

  We might have destroyed most of Brick’s pack, but his dens were still thriving under Sienna’s care.

  The bouncer led Rowan and her bodyguards through the club. The large bulk of his back blocked most of the camera’s view, and then he stepped to the side and revealed a door with VIP written on it in thick gold letters.

  “Stay here,” he said and left them for a moment with the door shut in their faces. He came back and waved them in, and while the camera was too close for me to catch the look on his face, I did see the hunger written plainly on the features of other people in the room.

  They weren’t all vampires. There were some well-dressed witches here, and a few faeries in gossamer evening gowns, and the usual assortment of creatures that only showed their true faces in Glimmering spaces. But there were a lot of vampires, enough that I almost grasped the necklace hanging at my throat and messaged Rowan to get out of there.

  I gripped my phone more tightly and watched them approach.

  Sienna rose from her seat in one graceful movement, the folds of her blood-red gown spilling around her legs.

  “Rowan,” she said, her voice full of an artificial honey. “You’re the last person I expected to see tonight.”

  “I figured,” Rowan said. “No one ever thinks I’m going to surprise them. I’m tired of that. You said we had a chance to join you, and I’m taking it.”

  Her voice took on a hard edge, and for the first time I realized: Rowan could act.

  She stepped forward and reached out to Sienna as if for an embrace. Sienna held back and tilted her head curiously. Then she glanced up at Brendan and Alec, and her eyes narrowed.

  “Alpha,” she said coldly.

  “Bitch,” he said.

  Sienna’s eyebrows went up, and a few of the vampires around her moved in subtle ways; a slight shift of the feet here, a sideways glance there. She held out a hand as if to hold them back.

  “You want to join me, too?”

  Brendan scoffed. “Hardly. I’m here to make sure you don’t snap Rowan’s head off before she’s gotten her chance to speak. Then I’m out.”

  “To tell the Crimson Daggers how it all went down?”

  He gave her a disgusted look that I could just barely see in the corner of the tiny screen.

  “I’m not going back to the Daggers,” he said. “Place has gone to hell in the past few days, and I’m sick of dealing with Scarlett. She’s been leading me on. I’m done with it.”

  I’d helped him rehearse the lines, but they still made me wince.

  “We’re here as a favor to Rowan,” Alec said. “Once we know she’s safe, we’re headed out. Got a property east of here, and we’re clearing off the Dagger lands before morning.”

  Brendan took a small step toward Sienna. “And if you ever, ever come onto my territory again, you’ll wish I’d only killed you.”

  She smirked, and my tense shoulders relaxed. It never would have worked for Brendan and Alec to pretend to be on her side. Outright hostility was the only thing that could keep them safe.

  Sienna crossed one arm over her body and cradled her chin on the other fist. She observed Rowan, taking her in and silently waiting for her to crack.

  Rowan let her stare.

  Behind Sienna, the mesmer game had been suspended by the players watching at the unfolding drama with interest. Sienna noticed and glanced over her shoulder.

  “Play,” she ordered, and the dealer hurriedly shuffled tarot cards for the next round. Sienna turned back around and considered Rowan. “Why do you want to join me?”

  “The Stiletto’s dead,” she said. “I was only sticking around for Nelly. Now Scarlett’s in charge.” She shrugged. “I don’t hate Scarlett, but am I really supposed to think she’s going to keep us safe? Am I really supposed to go on whatever missions she thinks are right for me? She hasn’t even been training for the role a year, and, like, no offense, but it’s not like she was Nelly’s first choice.”

  Again
, the words stung, and I was glad. It was good to feel something, especially when it meant Sienna just might buy the story we were spinning.

  “I don’t totally agree with everything you’ve done since you left,” Rowan admitted. “But you clearly want us to take sides, and—I mean, we grew up together. I know I don’t ever want to be on the opposite side from you.”

  “Especially without Nelly’s protection,” Sienna said, somehow making it sound like an insult.

  Rowan shrugged. When Sienna stayed silent, Rowan shuffled her feet.

  “I mean, yeah,” Rowan admitted.

  Sienna walked around the three of them, eying them up and down and checking their hands none too subtly for weapons or spells. Rowan held her hands up in surrender.

  “I’m not here to fight you,” Rowan said. “I just want to survive the next year, and to be honest, I don’t think I will if you decide I’m not with you.”

  “You’d give up the noble calling of Dagger, just like that?”

  “It’s not like anyone was going to name me Stiletto anyway,” Rowan said. “You know I always came in last in our age group. Well, me and Scarlett. I was raised to be a Dagger, but that doesn’t mean I have to be one.”

  She said this last little bit with defiance, and it was enough of a delicate touch to make it seem like she was coming to her own epiphany and speaking the truth for once.

  My faith in her wavered for a moment.

  I’d certainly felt like I didn’t have a place in the Daggers if I wasn’t going to be the Stiletto. I couldn’t imagine how it would have felt to know I wasn’t even in the running.

  “Give me your necklace,” Sienna demanded.

  Rowan didn’t hesitate. She tugged the tiny gold charm from beneath her shirt and lifted the slender chain over her head. The chain coiled into Sienna’s palm like a snake.

  “That’s a good start,” she said.

  Rowan nodded with a visible relief I felt like we hadn’t quite earned yet.

  Sienna looked sharply up at Brendan and Alec. “You can go.”

  “Not until she’s safe,” Brendan said.