Our host looks dapper for a dead man, I’ll give him that.
“Ah, there. See? I told you she was fine,” cries Theodore Nash. The new senator for the Outskirts lounges back in his chair with the smug satisfaction of a man who has everything. He’s got a cigar in one hand and a snifter of spirits in the other, while his bow tie has come undone and hangs down alongside his neck like a deflated balloon. The tux he wears is impeccable, and though he doesn’t don a mask like the dancers in the ballroom, I’d swear his is the most deceptive of all.
Because just a few weeks ago, Theodore Nash sat before us sweating and patchy, clearly about to hurl into his end days: Plague-struck. Today, though, he’s fine.
I can tell when they’ll fall sick, when they’ll die. It’s one of my gifts. Or curse, more like. Sure as Sunday, Theodore Nash was halfway to death last time I saw him. Today, he sits calm and happy as you please, cheeks bright with health, eyes shiny and clear.
No one who Splices would look that good so close to death’s door. So why does Nash seem so healthy?
Nolan Storm pulls himself from the desk to greet me. Though his voice was not among those I heard, I can tell my guardian is angry. A swirling, spectral rack of antlers rises into a crown over his head. Molten silver eyes, one of his most peculiar traits, roil like a storm-tossed sea. In his suit he looks like a prince of the Upper Circle. But as his foot impatiently stamps the floor, I see him for what he really is: the most powerful True Born in Dominion and beyond.
“Well,” drawls Nash. “I think that pretty much concludes our business for today. Wouldn’t you agree, Mr. Storm?”
Storm looks as though he’d prefer to rip Nash’s head from his shoulders, something I’m certain he could do in ten seconds flat. Instead he dips his spectral crown in assent. It’s a strange sight, and stranger still to think that I can see the weight he carries when others can’t. His branching horns are visible to only a handful of people, I’ve been given to understand. Only True Borns…and me.
His father was the First, we’re told. The first of the True Borns, maker of Kings. Storm once showed Margot and me a stone etching, tablets from Babylon carved thousands of years ago. In the stone, trapped for an eternity, there were leopard men, and men who looked like Egyptian deities: half man, half beast. Though our genomics professors will tell us that our DNA devolved to allow some small part of humanity to survive the Plague, Storm tells us a different version of history.
True Borns are the old gods returning, Storm says. They come back when needed, the ancient DNA reasserting itself into family lines and allowing the children of gods to reign once more. And Nolan Storm, my guardian, would be king of them all.
If he can survive the two-faced wrath of Theodore Nash, that is.
“You were worried about me?” I ask, confused. “I was downstairs dancing with a boy named Gordon Preston. The Third,” I add.
Nash snorts a laugh. “Ah, Preston. Such a fine boy. See? I told you everything was fine.”
“You tell me that, Nash. But then you muck it up by sounding vaguely threatening.”
Nash makes a show of feeling hurt. “I would never,” he says unconvincingly.
“At any rate, our business is concluded. Wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes, you’re right. I’ve made my decision. The water project contract is canceled. Effective immediately.”
Storm’s voice is deceptively flat. “Jared, escort Lucy to the car, please.”
Jared tugs my hand, but as I brush by Storm I whisper under my breath, “Please don’t kill him.” The subtle upturn of Storm’s lips answers me. And then I’m swept from the room like a leaf, past the men with big machine guns and ill-fitting blue suits.
Jared escorts me nearly as far as the long, wide entrance that empties into the massive ballroom when I stop and squeeze his tuxedoed arm.
“One more dance, Jared. Please?” I plead.
And maybe it’s the moonlight. Maybe it’s the glitter on the mask. But for just about the first time since I’ve known him, Jared Price doesn’t snark before doing as I’ve asked. Instead he sweeps me into his arms.
The band strikes up a stirring song, and the packed ballroom, filled with the very crème de la crème of high society in and outside of Dominion, executes the steps in unison. And while I’ve observed that the country folk of the Outskirts are not quite as fashionable as Dominion’s Upper Circle, Nash’s home could certainly give some of Dominion’s senators a run for their money.
Gold braid plaster edges the exquisitely wallpapered walls of the ballroom. The rugs are the most sumptuous money can buy. Huge, ancient vases, the painted kind that used to store grain, run the length of the long entrance hall with its highly polished marble. And hovering over all that wealth are a half dozen three-tier crystal chandeliers. Still, I can’t help the feeling that something is off about the whole place, right down to the polished servers wielding silver trays overloaded with food.
“Notice anything interesting about this place?” I ask my partner, who hasn’t bothered to pull his mask back down over his beautiful indigo eyes that simmer with a hint of emerald as he looks back at me.
“Yes,” Jared replies seriously. We stop moving. I try to mentally adjust to the sudden shift between us. He looks at me as though he’s dying of thirst, and I wonder if my face betrays my confusion.
“I’m serious,” I say, clearing my throat. We sway, our bodies just touching. I can feel the pull between us, a current as sure as electricity. And just as able to shock me.
“So am I,” Jared rasps. For a moment I’m caught up in the sheen rolling over his eyes, a dead giveaway that he’s caught up by some strong emotion. Sometimes I think that’s what he feels for me. Other times, I remember that Jared Price will never lay claim to me. I’m a girl from the Upper Circle, intended to make a brilliant match—a political union. No hearts and roses for me. And Jared Price is my merc.
Once again I’m about to show just how different our backgrounds are, I muse with an inward sigh. I turn and run my gaze back down the hall, trying to scratch away at my instincts.
“What did you see in the gallery?”
Jared frowns down at me. “Lots of those urn things.”
“They’re not urns,” I tell him.
“Well, cups, then. Cups for giants.”
I hold back a smile. “Vases,” I correct. “What else?”
“Some paintings. Mostly these country scenes that look like they’re from a thousand years ago.”
“Exactly,” I say as clarity washes over me. Jared continues to look mystified.
I ponder the scene before me. “Country scenes. Country vases. It’s the perfect country seat, isn’t it?”
Jared looks around him at the glowing opulence. “Well, yeah.”
“You know what comes with country seats like this?”
The True Born shakes his head, amused. “I bet you’re going to tell me.”
I cock an eyebrow, giving him a haughty look. “It’s a country seat, Jared. This is an ancestral home. It certainly looks like it’s stood right here for generations. So where are they?”
“Who?” Jared’s hands reflexively curl tighter around me.
“His ancestors. His family.”
No portraits of long-dead patriarchs with their silvering hair and rounded country bellies line the halls. No idle housewives in finery stare down at the guests from the walls. The pictures are all expensive, yes, but not personal: There are only paintings of harvested wheat, ploughs, fields…
Nash was an upstart in the last election. He was an unknown, some third-rate senator who all but barreled over his competition. From nothing to king overnight.
What I still didn’t know is, is that normal for the Outskirts?
I go up on my tiptoes and whisper in Jared’s ear, “Where are all the dead relatives, do you reckon?” before giving his earlobe a not-too-gentle nip. I leave off the puzzle for now, knowing it will be easier for me to figure it out later. When I’m not so dis
tracted by my proximity to Jared.
He doesn’t pluck me away, but as I lean back, Jared’s dimples appear as he bites back a smile. “Do that again and I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” I taunt. Grumbling under his breath, Jared closes his eyes and shakes his head. “You’ll what?” I ask again, though this time I loose a silky voice on him as I run my fingers up his tuxedo-shirted chest, down his stomach. I slip two fingers between buttons. Along with the raised ridge of a long, puckered scar, the heat rising from his skin fascinates me. I close my eyes and feel as though I’m being washed out to sea as our bodies drift together across the floor.
Jared claps a hand down over mine, stopping my explorations, though our détente lasts a moment longer. His chest heaves a little more than usual, as though he’s been running. But it’s enough to shame me into stopping.
If we go any further I’ll claim you. And then there will be no more choice for you, he’d said to me. We were in a cabin when he said those words, thick in the Russian woods. It would have been so easy to take advantage of me—to be with me, a willing and all-too-eager novice. And he didn’t because he cares.
But there is no choice for me, I think a little bitterly. I am Lucinda Fox, daughter of Lukas Fox, the power behind Dominion’s closed curtains. Daughter of Antonia Fox, social queen of the Upper Circle. My duty has always been clear: to make a good match that will help further my family’s ambitions, to take care of my twin sister, Margot. It isn’t fair for me to toy with Jared any more than it is for him to toy with me.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him breathlessly.
Jared just shakes his head at me, lips pressed closed and flat, as he laces his fingers through mine and guides me off the dance floor toward the front door.
…
In the back seat of Storm’s vehicle, Penny, whom I secretly call Mohawk on account of her intriguing hairstyles, sings off-key at the wheel while Jared and I avoid looking at each other. Or sitting near each other. Still, by the time Storm opens the door and bids me to move over, our fingertips have met on the seat between us, where Jared had been stroking the sensitive skin of my palm. Storm doesn’t seem to notice our fingers recoiling, nor the blush that steals across my cheeks as we’re pressed up against each other once again.
My guardian appears to have other things on his mind.
“Jared, when we get back, I want you to run another check on our good friend Senator Nash.” Storm practically bites the name.
“Sure. Anything specific I should search for?”
“There’s something not right here,” Storm says, echoing my words as he rubs a hand over his cheek and chin in apparent frustration.
“Yeah, I get that,” Jared replies, meeting my gaze.
Storm abruptly swings his attention my way. “Have you ever been wrong before?”
It’s not an idle question. Not long ago, when I’d first met Theodore Nash, I’d called him a goner dead to rights. I always know with the Lasters—which ones will come down ill, though it’s often just days before the Plague strikes with its vicious hammer. Sometimes I can even tell which Splices won’t do the job of cleansing the body of the deadly rogue DNA.
“No,” I answer truthfully. There hasn’t been a single case of my knowing a person was going to fall full-on Plague-struck who has lived.
Not a single one.
Storm goes silent beside me. The vehicle pulls out from the pack of country cars, mostly open-topped jalopies and trucks with long beds for farming, and heads down the long paved drive to the gates. The moon is a wraith behind the white-gray veil of the sky. Out here, the night look darker, and every now and again I catch a pocket of thinner cloud cover where I see a glimmer of stars. For someone who’s grown up with Dominion’s constant cloud cover, this patch of midnight is a gift.
Storm breaks the silence. “People don’t recover from the Plague; they survive it a little longer. See if you can trace Nash to Leo Resnikov or Lucy’s father. I’m beginning to think we were too late.”
Storm’s words startle me out of my reverie. Too late.
Are we too late? Leo Aleksandrovich Resnikov was a business partner of our father’s. Then he, or someone working for him, sliced open Margot and stole her eggs. Then he’d stolen my sister. Later, after we burned Leo Resnikov’s factory to the ground, I had high hopes that we’d sent him to hell. But if Storm’s instincts are right, not only could Resnikov be alive—some of his so-called “cure,” harvested from my sister’s body, could be circulating the Upper Circle and the even higher echelon, the Gilt…all the way through the ranks to the mysteriously risen Senator Theodore Nash.
I look over at the stern, unyielding profile of Nolan Storm. He shimmers with power and, I see now, carefully controlled anger. A shiver runs through me, cold as the grave. Could Resnikov be alive? And if we hadn’t managed to destroy everything…what then?
The endless loop of questions is followed by one horrible thought. How will I tell Margot?
2
Pearly midmorning light breaks through the slatted blinds of the lab by the time I find Margot. Her long auburn hair is squashed in a ponytail, then squashed again by the elastic of the safety goggles she wears. Her arms are lost in the long white lab coat Doc Raines forces us to wear when running experiments.
She doesn’t hear me approach, nor when I call her name. There’s been a lot of that lately. Since we returned from Russia, Margot has become all but unreachable. For the hundredth time I find myself wondering what it was like—being held like a science experiment in Resnikov’s factory.
While she was away I spent a lot of time worrying over this. The bond I have relied upon my whole life to tell me what Margot is thinking and feeling had stretched, thin and silent, until it was all but obliterated. It was the loneliest feeling in the world.
…
When we were born, my sister and I, we shared one skin—but that is only the beginning of our puzzle. Although we came into the world connected, stitched together at our big toes, we are not as similar as identical twins should be. Like the marks we bear on our toes, where they tore us apart—Margot’s in the shape of a long, thin skeleton key and my own the perfect pear shape of a lock—we are mysteries of flesh and bone.
In Russia I’d met an old scientist who claimed he had helped bring us into the world. Test-tubers, he’d called us: babies born of laboratory cocktails and Molotov gene Splicing. But whatever they Spliced into us, Margot and I bear the traces of its magic. Whatever Margot experiences, I feel.
I’ve been left with other, even more dubious gifts: Like with Nash, I can tell who next will be gobbled by the diamond-toothed Plague. And sometimes my dreams walk into waking life.
Margot’s talents have always been more useful. She’ll charm birds out of the sky and men out of their mansions. She has but to walk into a room and it’s lit with some indefinable incandescence. Our parents loved this about her. They’ve put her talents to use in the slippery wet world of Dominion politics. But then its tide carried her away.
Margot gives me broad strokes but won’t really tell me what happened. All I know is that she is not the same. Sure as anything, she was betrayed: first by attendants of the Splicer Clinic, who stole the eggs from her body like foxes in the henhouse. Then by our parents, who sold her to the mysterious Russian count Leo Resnikov—sold us both. Margot was betrayed again by Resnikov, who transformed those stolen eggs into pale, lifeless bodies floating in long glass tubes, whose jobs were to pump the next generation of Margot’s DNA into oily pills that could be fed to dupes by the millions.
He was making a cure of sorts. A cure for the ravages of the Plague. Bred from the blood and marrow of my sister’s DNA. It was what we were born for—or so we are being led to believe. Though according to Resnikov himself, this cure would only last a little while.
“Margot,” I say again, tugging on her loose ponytail. The elastic slips, and she turns to frown at me.
“Cut it out,” she says crossly.
�
�Well, I reckon your attention was elsewhere now, wasn’t it?”
Margot’s frown lengthens. “What’s wrong?”
“Why does anything have to be wrong for me to want to see you?”
Margot snorts. “Don’t be daft. Have you forgotten who I am, little sister?”
Ouch. Born just seconds past Margot, I cross my arms at the “little sister” remark. It hurts. “One and a half minutes does not make you elderly,” I retort. We’ve not had this childish fight for ages.
“No,” Margot replies, lightning-quick. “Life has.”
I reel back, struck again by the change in my sister, who I used to know better than myself. The smiling, carefree Margot, the Margot who used to be boy crazy, who’d skip school with her friends and laugh in the face of danger, is gone. Maybe for good. I miss that Margot: the girl who loved going to parties and being the center of attention, the Margot who lit a room when she walked in. A woman who will barely go outside has replaced that girl. This one is a silent stranger who has lived through more than I will ever know or understand.
But for that matter, I reckon I have, as well. Because I am the sister who followed her to hell and back.
My patience at an end, I frown down at my feet. “What is that about?”
“Don’t try to change the subject.”
“Mar, come on.”
“Are you going to tell me?” she grumbles and takes hold of my arms. She’s stronger than she looks. And I suppose she can’t handle surprises that well any longer.
“Senator Nash,” I blurt out, followed by a distinct, “Ow!” I rub at my flesh as she lets go.
“Okay, I’ll bite.” Margot stands defensively, fists on her hips. “What about Senator Nash?”
“Did Father or Resnikov ever talk about him that you remember?”
Margot bites her lip and retreats behind a shuttered expression. “Not that I can remember.”
“It’s important, Margot. Please try.”
Margot stomps her foot. “I said I don’t remember.”
“Fine. Okay,” I say as a silent moat opens between us. “Thanks anyway.”
True Storm Page 2