Stiletto

by Emma Savant

  “That might be best.”

  Business concluded, I stood. We made our thanks and goodbyes, and then I marched back the way we’d come, cord held out into the darkness before me.

  13

  “You need sleep,” Alec had said, once we’d found ourselves back in Nancy’s basement.

  “A Dagger doesn’t need sleep,” I’d argued, and then he’d said he wasn’t going to come with me if I didn’t get a few hours in first, and then I’d said that was fine, and then he’d snatched the cord away and said I could have it back in the morning.

  I’d been about ready to bite his head off for that, but now, as I kicked my motorcycle to life in the chill morning air, I was glad for the rest. Things felt clearer now, and I was ready to face Sienna when we found her.

  And we would find her.

  I’d told Grandma—and only Grandma—where I was going. There was no point getting the Daggers keyed up and sneaking along behind us. I knew some of the mothers would force their way into this mission. Grandma and I agreed an investigation like this would go better with one person moving quietly, but I couldn’t imagine the rest of them would agree.

  The Daggers obeyed Grandma, but only to a point. The minute her orders came between them and their daughters, I had a feeling there was nothing that would keep them in line.

  I checked my phone. No new message, just Alec’s quick There in 5 text.

  That had been twelve minutes ago. I glanced up at the mansion, waiting for his figure to come jogging around the building.

  At fifteen minutes, I was about ready to go searching for him when movement at the edge of the forest caught my eye. Alec emerged from the trees, tailed by Brendan. Alec spun around and say something, and then they both headed my way again. I walked the motorcycle slowly across the driveway toward them.

  “Did you really find her?” Brendan asked once he was close. “Give me a few minutes, and I’ll come with you.”

  “I haven’t found anyone yet.” I held out my hand, and Alec gave me the braided cord. It hung limply from my hand, giving no indication of how it was supposed to work.

  “Give it a snap,” Alec said.

  I flicked the cord, and it wriggled to life. It slithered like a tiny snake up my hand and twined its way around my wrist, and then the tail end poked up in the air and pointed down the driveway.

  “Looks like it knows where it’s going.” I turned to Brendan. “I don’t want help on this one.”

  He tried to interrupt, but I cut him off.

  “This is recon,” I said. “I’m not going to make contact with Sienna. We just need to figure out where she is and what kind of spells she has guarding her, and I can do that best alone. But you can let the pack know we might need their help. Volunteers only. I won’t know what I’ll need from them until I get back, so best be prepared for anything.”

  “We will be,” Brendan said.

  “You sure you don’t want backup?” Alec asked, and Brendan frowned sharply at him.

  I stared them both down.

  “Get the wolves ready,” I repeated. “And don’t mention this to the Daggers. Grandma’s handling them.”

  Brendan nodded, and he and Alec stepped back. I roared down the driveway, and the little cord on my wrist eagerly pointed me to the right.

  “Whatever you say, little guy,” I muttered.

  The cord led me downtown, and I tensed. Part of me had been hoping Sienna was hiding somewhere outside the city, in the kind of place we could attack without attracting the attention of Humdrums or risking outside casualties. But country living had never been Sienna’s style, and the cord seemed insistent that we should head to the busy area surrounding the art museum and city library.

  The streets were lined with old buildings with busy shops on the first floors with overpriced apartments above. The city was full of morning traffic, and the sidewalks were crowded with pedestrians.

  We’d have to come back later, maybe in the middle of the night. Sienna was a formidable enemy, and I wanted to be as inconspicuous as possible. We had numbers on our side, but adding the element of surprise wouldn’t hurt.

  The cord spun quickly around my wrist. It seemed to be getting more and more excited as I rode—perhaps suggesting that we were getting closer.

  I stopped outside a soccer stadium. The cord on my wrist appeared thrilled to be here and pointed its tail vigorously over and over toward the gated entrance.

  I’d never been to a game, but Ginger and Cerise were rabid Portland Timbers fans and attended whenever they could. They were also Orbs fans, and that gave me pause. Orbs games were held here, too, in a glamoured stadium buried far beneath this one.

  “We supposed to go downstairs?” I asked, and the cord responded by eagerly plummeting its tail toward the ground.

  My heart sank. An underground stadium meant fewer exits. It meant we couldn’t fly in on brooms and zoom back out with the children before Sienna realized what was happening. It meant we couldn’t simply shove the kids out the doors of a building to the Daggers waiting to whisk them away.

  Underground was harder, and that was why Sienna had chosen it.

  I parked my bike a block away and disguised it with a glamour just in case. Then I tucked the braided cord beneath the sleeve of my black hoodie and followed its gentle tugging back to the stadium.

  The gates were locked, of course, so I glanced both ways and then climbed the fence. The entrance to the Orbs stadium was discreet; the door looked like it led to a maintenance closet. This door was closed with a deadbolt, too, and no surprise. The stadium was only opened on game nights, and I knew from Ginger that the next home game wouldn’t be for almost a month. I unlocked the door with a quick spell and ducked inside onto the landing of a glittering spiral staircase.

  Orbs was a game exclusive to the Glimmering world. It was played with muscles and magic, with opposing teams using spellwork to control the orbs that tried constantly to knock players out of bounds. The goal was to get any of the orbs through the goals on either end of the large playing field, but that happened far less often than nosebleeds and concussions and other side effects of having a ball of magical energy run into your head at seventy-five miles an hour.

  I’d enjoyed the few games I’d attended or caught on Glimmering television, but these days, I barely had time to glance at scores—and Sienna had never even cared enough to do that. Clearly, she had other uses for this stadium.

  I slipped down the wide spiral staircase, keeping to the walls in case any of the silver steps creaked. The bottom of the staircase opened onto a wide, vaulted corridor made of gleaming white marble and lit with glowing emergency light orbs that clustered at the top of the high ceilings and filled the space with eerie blue illumination. Shuttered archways lined the walls on the way to the stadium, and signs inlaid with animated logos sparkled above each archway: Burgers of Bewitchment, Transfixing Fixins, Cap’n Hypno’s Hot Dogs ’n’ Nachos. On either side, half a dozen stadium food options sat ready to tempt people as they made their way to their seats.

  I kept to the shadows. The end of the corridor opened onto an expansive view of the field, and it was lit with a warm, peachy light. It wasn’t bright enough for an actual game, but enough for practice or maintenance or cleaning. And enough that anyone looking out over the field would have no trouble spotting me. Once I was out of this dim corridor, I would have nowhere to hide.

  Cautiously, I pulled my wand out of a pocket sewn to the inside of my hoodie and cast an invisibility glamour on myself. It wouldn’t shield me from Sienna for long, not if she got suspicious and started actively looking for me, but it might buy me a few minutes.

  The grass on the field was emerald green and lush, kept alive deep underground by enchantments and artificial lights. The seats surrounding the oval field were empty, but off to one side, not far from one of the players’ entrances, Sienna was lying and staring up at the ceiling. Far above us, yellow and pink orb lights floated lazily across the domed ceiling like so m
any bubbles.

  I remembered Fauna’s words, she’s in a green meadow. And she was. The grass surrounded her elegant frame, and the orbs cast a sunrise-like glow against her skin.

  She wasn’t alone. Someone was lying next to her, a man with pale skin and dark hair. They were talking, just loudly enough for me to catch a faint murmur that didn’t quite form into words. I ducked behind a row of seats and crawled toward them.

  “I never really liked their music,” Sienna was saying.

  I froze, too close for comfort but exactly the right distance to eavesdrop on their conversation. The children weren’t with her, which meant they were somewhere else—in this stadium, or maybe somewhere entirely different. I held my breath and listened.

  “Everyone else seems to, but all their stuff kind of sounds the same to me.”

  “That’s fair,” the man said. He had a smooth, silky voice. The hair on my arms prickled. “I liked their earlier work, but these last few albums—meh.”

  “You don’t really like alt rock anyway, though.”

  “It’s not my favorite.”

  I pressed my lips together to stop an annoyed sigh from coming out. I was here to gather info on a bunch of kidnapped children, not to get the lowdown on Sienna’s new boyfriend’s musical tastes.

  Still, knowing who he was might give me something to work with. I crawled to the edge of the row of seats while they kept yammering on and poked my head out just enough to get a good look at them.

  Sienna was on her side now, looking at the man next to her.

  A man who, I decided after a moment of close observation, was most definitely a vampire.

  14

  Werewolves, vampires—it was like Sienna was trying to collect every monster the Daggers had ever fought.

  Not that all vampires were evil. Most were ordinary people who just didn’t like the sun much and preferred their meat extra rare, just like most werewolves were people like the members of the Wildwood pack who led normal lives until it was time to go running under a full moon.

  But now and then, someone went rogue. And vampires seemed to go rogue at a higher rate than other beings like faeries or wizards, probably because they had hungers that couldn’t be satisfied in polite society.

  And this guy, in particular, was friendly with Sienna, which meant I wasn’t about to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  So now I had two pieces of information: Sienna was camping out in an off-season Orbs arena, and she had at least one vampire on her side. But the information I’d really come for, the most important piece, was still missing: Where were the children?

  I checked on my invisibility glamour. I could see myself just fine, but the air seemed to ripple around me when I waved a hand in front of my face. It was still working.

  I raised myself to a crouch, then edged slowly out from the protection of the chairs. Sienna’s face was tilted my way, but she didn’t seem to see me. I stood and moved as quietly as I could down to the grassy field, timing my footsteps so that they’d be covered by the sound of their voices.

  The player’s entrance nearest Sienna and the vampire seemed like the most likely avenue, so I walked carefully that direction, taking big steps to minimize the number of footprints indenting the grass.

  The corridor that led from the field to the players’ locker room was brightly lit, so I crept that way. The first locker room door was locked, and the room beyond was silent, but a strip of light glowed underneath the second. Voices murmured inside—children’s voices, and at least two adults. I dropped to my knees and pressed my ear against the crack at the bottom of the door.

  “Give her some more graham crackers,” someone said in a bored voice. “She can’t whine if her mouth is full.”

  Someone grumbled in response, and then I heard footsteps and the rustling of a package.

  “Here,” another adult said. “You want another cracker?”

  There was some light whimpering—Sakura, I thought as my heart clenched, or maybe Coralie—and then the sound of quiet.

  “I want to watch another movie,” Rosie whined.

  I recognized her voice. She was five and feisty. She and her sister, Flannery, had both been kidnapped, and now they were behind this door while their mother, Cardinal Cherry, paced the halls back home and tried to stay calm.

  One of the adults sighed, and then there were footsteps and fumbling, followed by the opening musical number of some children’s cartoon.

  I knew I shouldn’t jump in and try to save them. I was vastly outnumbered, and rescuing children, even Dagger children, wasn’t like rescuing adults. The youngest ones wouldn’t be able to follow instructions, and even the older girls were likely to panic if I wasn’t careful. They might get scared and start screaming, or refuse to budge. So I fought back the itchiness in my bones and didn’t let myself barge through the door.

  But I had to check on them, just to be sure they were okay. I had to see them with my own eyes.

  Carefully, cautiously, I pressed a hand to the door. The painted metal shifted, more than I’d meant it to, and I held my breath and waited.

  No one had noticed. The cheerful cartoon music continued, and the adults fell into a conversation. I pushed again, opening the door one silent millimeter at a time, until light cracked through. And then I kept pushing until I could make out a figure.

  It was one of the adults, a beautiful woman with dark skin and hair. She was scrolling on her phone and half-listening to an equally attractive blonde. Both women were elegant and sharp, as vampires tended to be, and also seemed bored. But I couldn’t make out the children, who were behind the door.

  There was nothing for it. I kept pushing, slowly enough that the motion wouldn’t attract the vamps’ attention.

  And then, with an abrupt jolt, I was flung backward by a protection charm I hadn’t sensed before. My body slammed against the stone wall opposite the locker rooms, and the world spun while I tried to get my bearings. By the time the stars cleared and I figured out which way was down, Sienna was standing over me with fire in her eyes.

  “Look who dropped by,” she said.

  Her voice was calm, and for a fraction of a second, I thought I might be able to salvage the moment. Then common sense caught up to me, and I shifted to a sitting position. A quick wave of my hand confirmed that whatever spell had knocked me backward had also destroyed my glamour.

  “You have something you shouldn’t.” I scrambled to my feet, head still spinning a little. “I have a dozen Daggers in this building and law enforcement from the Waterfall Palace positioned outside.”

  The lie slipped off my tongue easily, and I watched her believe it for only a second before she turned to her vampire boyfriend.

  “Go find out if that’s true.” She smiled at me. “I suspect it’s not.”

  “Shouldn’t matter,” I said. “Any decent person wouldn’t need the threat of violence to convince them to give up kidnapped children.”

  “But you don’t think I’m decent, so it sounds like your expectations don’t apply to me.” She folded her arms. “It’s kind of cute that you thought you could get to the kids that easily. Dagger arrogance is so reliable.”

  “What are you doing with them?”

  “I’m starting up a blood farm,” she said, face bright and sarcastic. “Vamps have to feed somehow, so I’m tapping into a new market. I’m going to be an entrepreneur and make my own hours!”

  She rolled her eyes, and I realized the question had been pointless. No matter what I asked, she wasn’t going to give me an honest answer—assuming she was doing any of this for a reason in the first place. For all I knew, she’d kidnapped the girls just to get back at me for putting her last boyfriend in jail. Or maybe it was for that time I’d gotten her arrested. Or maybe she’d just gotten bored.

  I steadied myself against the wall and decided that this time, jail would be too good for her.

  She punched me in the gut. I should have seen it coming, but my head was still spinning
from the protection charm, and I dodged a second too late. I doubled over and stayed down there a moment until the spinning feeling cleared. Behind the door, children’s voices rose in excitement or maybe fear: What was that? I heard something. Open the door! Where’s Sienna?

  I couldn’t risk the children getting in the line of fire. I stared at the floor, hands on my knees, and then I made a break for it.

  15

  My feet pounded on the cement floor, and then the echoing footsteps disappeared as I broke onto the open expanse of the Orbs field. I spun around and jogged backward, drawing Sienna out and away from the kids.

  She strode toward me, raised a finger, and pointed a bolt of crackling lightning in my direction. I blocked it with a shield of white light, and she seemed almost surprised.

  I’d never been much good at these witch duels, not in all the years we’d sparred together.

  But I’d been practicing. And if she wanted lightning, I was happy to provide.

  I kept dancing backward and felt into the air around us for water—from the air, from the grass, from the drinking fountains down the entrance corridor by the bathrooms. There wasn’t much available, but I pulled what was toward me and formed it into a shimmering bubble of water that hovered in the air. I launched it at Sienna, and it splashed around her, soaking her clothes and leaving her red-tipped hair soggy against her shoulders.

  She looked down at herself, then back up at me. She started laughing.

  “You got me wet?” she said, holding up a soaked arm. “What a powerful witch you’ve turned out to be.”

  I smiled tightly. Electricity tingled in my fingertips. I might not have been the most powerful witch in the coven. I definitely didn’t share Sienna’s facility with magic. But I did have a brain and a cursory knowledge of sixth-grade science.

  And I knew that water and electricity brought out the best in each other.

  I shot a bolt of witch lightning toward her, and it connected. Dazzling white bolts sparked and crackled around her body, and she vibrated with the force of it. By the time she’d managed to get the electricity under control and sent it down into the ground, her hair was singed, and she was unsteady on her feet.