by May Peterson
The rush of sensations was so intense I almost didn’t hear it. A door jangling open. A pointed knock at the doorjamb. My thoughts couldn’t catch up. Someone was at my door. Rosemary or Cecilio—
I bared my teeth to indicate it wasn’t the time, but the shadow that appeared wasn’t either of them. It was taller, sleeker, and the aura of silver wafted off it.
It was a hand, holding a pistol. Shining with silver.
By reflex, I whirled, shifting Mio behind me on the sofa. Recognition all but impaled me. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Oh, don’t get up.” Ginger snap’s voice was like a velveteen whip, crossing the distance to bite me. “I was just looking for the lavatory. Only I thought you might like to know your conversation was a little loud.”
* * *
It was like dream logic, going melty and distorted. Tibario standing across from me, face lit with a grin, finger on a trigger, with Mio half-dressed and gasping behind me—a curious, surrealist nightmare.
“Brother?” Mio stepped down, tried to go to Tibario, but I snarled, covering him with an arm.
“Wait.” I tried to caution Mio with my expression. This could be the incubus.
“Actually, I’ve thought better.” Tibario slid into my room, gesturing with the barrel of the gun. “Do get up. And step the fuck away from my little brother.”
Mio gripped my shirt but stayed behind me. My pulse rattled in my ears. “Ginger snap, I don’t know what your education was like, but if you came in here hoping a silver-tipped bullet or three was going to scare me, you’re not—”
Force blared from the barrel. Piercing heat punctured my upper abdomen. The right side, a great yawning weal of pain that flamed across me. I clenched my jaw, swallowed an involuntary scream.
“That. Hurt.” I snapped my neck, already covering the wound. Blood seeped down my belly. At least it didn’t feel like it’d been a hollow point. Then I probably would have had to bear-shape to force it out. “Do you have any idea how rude that is?”
Tibario threw off spite like a cloud. He cleared the pistol again. “Maybe one in your brain will trouble you a bit more. But we could make this easy. Get. Away. From Mio.”
I didn’t move. Definitely not the incubus. And it also meant that whoever our mystery killer was, if they really were forestalling an attack on Mio...they now had a much easier prey.
Mio slipped out from behind me. He raised both hands, as if to show he wasn’t armed. “Brother. Stop. You have no idea what you’re doing.”
Tibario’s hiss practically steamed. “I’m going to get you out of here, Mio. You’re going to be just fine.”
“Yes. He is.” I had to stop and catch up to my body’s recovery.
“As for your question about what I’m doing here, well. I hope you didn’t think that you were an elusive quarry.” Ginger snap sniffed. “You all but handed me your address. I’m a spy. You could be living under a rotten log in a hedgerow and I’ve found you by now. You can’t believe that there are that many giant, mysterious houses full of foreign dignitaries in Vermagna.”
No, I didn’t exactly blend in. “Mio can leave any time he wants.” I looked down at him. “If you want to go with ginger snap, you know you’re free to.”
A throaty, unpleasant laugh punctuated Tibario’s grit lines. He was halfway into the room now. “Oh, good Lord. Yes, I’m sure you’ll let him leave. After you’ve bogged him down in feelings of obligation, charms and promises and sad stories.” The barrel’s tip lifted. “You have outrageously bad timing, by the way. My catching all of that cannot be simple luck.”
Mio took a few steps forward, arms still upraised. “Calm down, Tibario. I can explain the situation, just put the gun away.”
Tibario’s gaze flicked repetitively between me and his brother, as if undecided what mattered more. “I know it wasn’t your fault, Mio. Mamma pushed you too hard, and she understands that now. I talked to her. She doesn’t blame you, she just wants you back home. Safe.” Mio bridged the gap, and Tibario seized his wrist, maneuvered himself in front of Mio protectively. “Did this man make you feel like you had to let him touch you?”
Tibario blinked, glancing at Mio. “Wait. Is that handspeak? I’ve been able to understand you the whole time.”
That was the half-second gap I needed. Streaking forward, I swatted the firearm from his grip, knocked his feet from under him. He slammed back on the floor, and I caught the gun with my foot, twirling it through the air behind me. It landed with a thud.
So did ginger snap. If it weren’t for the potential catastrophe of his presence, the look of shock on his face would have been adorable. But he didn’t stay down. He produced some striking dancer’s maneuver and vaulted through the air and back to his feet.
Then, he was dragging Mio into the corridor. “Mio, just run. Run!”
Lemon drop limped after him, snared by one arm, and cast a helplessly wide-eyed look back at me, as if to say, We have got to get him out of this house.
“Fuck.” I sped after him.
The hall forked, him taking one path and me bobbing into the other, and I leapt across the passage and rolled upright right before the banister. Tibario sprang out the end of his route, gasping and staggering back a step.
I planted a long arm over the stairwell. “All right. You’re staging jailbreak. Fine. Except I know what you’ve been willing to do in the name of Mio’s best interest, and last time it also involved bullets. He can go with you if he wants, but dragging him headlong down the stairs is not convincing me that he actually does. So, let’s—”
Tibario bounced off his feet and launched a kick at my stomach. By instinct, I caught his foot, pitching him to the side. Brat needed to let me finish a goddamn sentence.
A knife flashed into existence from his palms, deft as a sleight master’s trick. He struck unexpectedly—molten pain lanced across my chest. With a roar, I cuffed him to the floor.
Except he didn’t hit the floor. I’d hit at the wrong angle, and too hard. It knocked the wind from him all at once, and he flew into the railing. His face was a blur of panic.
The impact struck his lower back, sending him ass-up over the railing to the floor.
All I had was a shredded vision of neck break, and an instant to throw myself down the stairs. The fall would kill him. And the incubus would enjoy the snack.
Mio was at the railing, filling the air with soundless motions. I was moving too slowly. Tibario would hit the floor first. The next second split into hundreds, clawing me with their edges.
And on those edges, something changed. A plume as fine as steam was rising from Tibario’s mouth.
The temperature had dropped.
Before the second shards could piece back together, diamonds flash-formed across the hall. A sudden fist of winter shattered the moment, dissipating it into snowflakes. And there, faster than thought, was Eirlys. Catching Tibario midfall.
Frost closed over him as she took hold. Tibario coughed, covered his face. And Eirlys careened to the floor, a sheen of ice in her wake and ginger snap secure in her grasp.
Eirlys’s dark eyes angled toward me with a quick, meaningful nod.
Mio met me on the stairs, and I carried him down to where the snow was already gathering. Tibario’s head was lolling nauseatingly over his chest, but then I saw his chest rising and falling. Mio hurried to his brother, lifting his face up.
Cecilio and Rosemary materialized at the door, eyes wide as serving platters. They held hands like children who’d heard a noise. “God in Heaven,” Rosemary rasped.
Eirlys sent me a furtive glance. This was bad. If we got Tibario out of the house this second, he’d probably bring his mother next. The cease-fire was over.
I scowled at Rosemary and Cecilio. “How did he get in here?”
Mio’s signs cut them off. “It would have been easy. He probably
climbed to the attic and stalked downstairs from there. I should have expected him to follow me.”
Tibario lurched into jagged motion, briefly seizing as if caught by convulsions. Eirlys slid back, leaving room for Mio to cradle his head. Then Tibario slackened, and his eyes fluttered open.
“Brother.” Mio helped him to sit up. “Are you all right?”
The laughter that pealed from Tibario sounded...off. And familiar. “Oh, heavens, dear, I’m fine.” He stood with surprising celerity, brushing off his shirt.
Ginger snap tilted a smile in my direction. An acid smile. It made sense, all at once.
“It’s just that I think I will have to do this myself.”
His grin widened, and blood-red light bloomed in his left eye.
* * *
“Signora Gianbellicci. How public-minded of you to visit me at last. Can I get you a drink? Plenty of ice.”
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
Her glare nailed me to the spot, shocking in its lack of heat. “No, no. If you’ll only forgive my inviting myself in.”
Her movements through her son’s body were unnatural, off kilter. Eirlys’s blade snicked into place, threatening Tibario’s bare throat.
“I don’t suppose you want to do that, my lady.” Tibario—Serafina—sketched a bow. “One hears you’ve had something of a problem with guests rudely dying in your home.”
I traded glances with Eirlys. She didn’t lower her weapon, but our brief contact spelled agreement. If Serafina knew that we wouldn’t risk a cursed death, that was all the armor the witch needed. Threats would be empty dance-room gestures.
Especially since she could kill her own son at will and abandon his body, leaving us—and him—to deal with the Verge opening.
Mio surged up, fingers scrambling a blizzard of epithets.
“So this is what you’ve been reduced to.” Her narrowed gaze seemed to focus everything on the occhiorosso, the red promise of torture. “Pantomiming like a street performer. This is what you’d rather do than sing? Like I paid for you to do. With gold, blood, and tears.”
Mio’s hands dropped, stunned. No one else in the room moved.
I wondered numbly if she could read my mind, to what extent her powers worked. “My offer of a drink still stands. Maybe we can sit down, have a chat. You can tell me, my good lady, what I can do for you on this crisp spring evening.”
She laughed demurely; the sound was distorted and distant through the borrowed throat of her son. “Oh no, I really cannot stay. I merely came to collect a few trifles. My boys—” she gestured at Mio, and Tibario’s possessed body “—and one other thing.”
I inspected her stolen face. How like confronting the incubus this was. “And that is?”
She smiled. Venomously. “That would be a secret.”
Through Tibario’s senses, she’d heard everything.
Mio sprang into motion, dashing for her arms. Serafina caught him around the neck, turned him roughly. “Do you recall the saying about how a teacher’s proudest moment is for a student to surpass him? Well. You didn’t just surpass some instructor. You outwitted your own mother. No words exist in any language for how proud I am. Truly. You’re in the process of becoming a first-class witch. But for the moment? Obey me and be still.”
A swirl of a hand, and crimson bands sparked into being, spooling around Mio and pulling him to the floor. Tears gleamed in his eyes. My paralysis felt like literal ice, hardening my body until it could break.
“I wondered what your angle was,” she went on. “Of all the scandals I imagined for you, none were quite so banal, nor so simplistic, as you simply being pink as a strawberry tart. Yet you, Lord Bedefyr? You could supply shame for any five people.”
I couldn’t stop looking at Mio. How helpless and beaten he was, his head down over his chest. She was taking him away, just like that. After all the bluster about my desire to protect him.
“But then I find—you have so much more in store for me.” That burn crawled over the ice. “A curse that cannot be named. A line of mysterious murders. A trophy wife as dead as my conscience. An even bigger secret you’re just sitting on. Like the egg of a golden goose.”
Rosemary hovered tentatively forward. “One thing you may have neglected, signora. Attacking a Malloric officer in his home is an act of international violence. Are you certain you wish to pull that rope?”
Well played. Not a hint of worry in her voice. Cecilio stood, guardedly, in front of Eirlys, whose cold gaze had not flinched from her target.
Serafina’s consideration was like a spider in wait, eerily unmoving. Finally, she said, softly, “Not when your plaintiff is here.” She gestured at me. “And he will never confirm the story. Not now that I can control him at will.”
So it was true—I was food for the occhiorosso now. Darkness was spreading through me, acceptance. In its depth, there was one move left.
She didn’t wait for a response. “I will allow you this choice. You explain to me your tawdry ghost story. You reveal your hand, Lord Orso. Or?” She jerked Mio’s bonds, causing his head to loll back and forth. “I tear it from your dirty little mind myself.”
Check. But not mate. I sniffed. “I’ll take the bullet, please, your honor.”
Her grin widened. “You will? How droll.”
“You’re welcome to ferret around in my mind as much as you want.” I shrugged, spreading my hands as if she were holding a gun to my head. “First of all, it’s full of thoughts about your son that will make your face redder than your eye. That will be fun. Second of all—” I took one provocative step closer. “It will be the worst move you could possibly make.”
She paused. “Will it, now?”
“This is your whole circus trick, right? You hold people around the heart if you know a secret. Something they swallowed. Well, if you want my dark sin, you’re going to have to share it. There’s something else that has its fangs in me, and I am a lot more afraid of it than I am of you.”
Her jaw set. “Do tell.”
I chuckled. “My incubus.”
Mio’s head shot up. Eirlys hid her face, as if in mutual shame.
Tibario’s face seemed reduced to a blur of shadow. “Most interesting, Lord Orso.”
My hands fell to my sides, and I slid one over the plane of ice nearby. “If you want my black soul, you can have it. But it will eat you alive. The only thing keeping me from hell itself is that I’m immortal. So control me. I’ll wear a collar and eat honey on command. But you get the curse that comes with me. You’ll be drinking in my incubus’s venom. I assure you, it pairs excellently with Avonchoie and soft cheese. And you won’t have the immortality to stand up to it.”
She still had no idea what was at stake. I couldn’t tell anymore if I was trying to scare her or taunt her. Deep where my bear’s growl grew in darkness, it didn’t matter. Not anymore.
I stroked the hunk of ice, dug fingers into the cracks. “And if you ever let up on my leash for a second? I’ll kill you. I’ll fucking rip you in half. Maybe not today. But I swear to the blackest hell, if you keep up this pattern with Mio, if you scare or hurt him anymore? You will be my literal food.” I licked my lips and chomped. “So whatever you do, it better fucking stick. Because I am telling you. I am tired. I am haunted. I am probably insane. I have led to the death of almost everyone I love, and worst of all—I haven’t had a smoke in eight days.”
The fury in the left eye shone like a star. She smirked. “Very well.”
That star eclipsed my senses and drowned them in red.
No one had warned me about the pain. I’d been so convinced of my strength to resist, that I would meet her like a battering ram against my mind. My possession was much quieter than that. It struck not like a ram, nor a blow, nor even a dagger in my back. It was a needle, sliding through a soft spot of pain. The pain of my secret. Imag
es of Piero, of our kiss, of him fucking me in the grass, at the dirt on our joined hands as the affair tangled around a rapidly dying love. Around my descent, the incubus and its calm lies. Scoured by Serafina’s all-seeing eye, as if her glare had been there in those moments. Defenseless, naked, and helpless to change them, I relived those memories until I could have screamed. She needed do nothing to inflame my wounds—only to know them, and they locked into place as sure as manacles.
My vision, smell, taste, all caught fire with crimson transparency, seizing my muscles and choking damp cries from my throat. I could not have struggled. She mastered me less like a puppeteer, pulling on strings I could strain against, and more like an infection. Infusing my every body part and repurposing it. Through the body of Tibario, holding Mio and my whole fate captive, she luxuriously forced me to prostrate myself, panting and slavering before her.
In a way she was like the incubus—tireless, unconcerned, and indefeasible. Like it, I felt her in my last bastion of thought. I do so love people like you, she crooned. Creatures with teeth. Who fight.
The darkness in me rose up like vomit, my change rippling from one end to the other. Her control made the reformation of my body so sharp it was almost numb. Ursine teeth grew in my jaws; black pelt swirled from my head, my claws growing and my muscles swelling. She could not manipulate my change—the spirit may even hurt her if she tried—but she could unbind my own control over it. Without the division between my human and bear selves, our forms ran together. She reduced me effortlessly to thrashes.
Eirlys stepped through the blurs in my vision, pushing the blade back against Tibario’s throat.
“What do you say, Mio?” Serafina leered. “Do you like your new masters so well now? This lady is eager to invoke the family curse.” A swath of heat shuddered through me, the lazy caress of her mind tugging up memories. “Explains how such a vast house becomes so very haunted. An incubus must be a terrible thing to share a room with.”
I saw Eirlys’s grip tremble, and she pulled back her sword. Mechanically, Serafina worked my head up at an unnatural angle to catch a full look at Mio. It was probably to show Mio what she could turn me into more than to taunt me; saliva streamed down my chin, snarls slipping from me. The expression of crushed empathy on his face was enough to cut.