Stiletto

by Emma Savant

  I swore under my breath and kicked dirt into the fire pit. The flames crackled merrily, ignoring my tiny tantrum.

  “I know her,” I said. “You know her. She wouldn’t do anything to hurt us.”

  “The Rowan we know wouldn’t.” Alec rubbed his hands together and held them out in front of the fire, then glanced sideways at me. “But she’s a vampire now. None of us know what she’s capable of.”

  “Shut up,” Brendan said.

  “You were just saying the same—”

  “No,” Brendan snapped. “Shut up.” He made a cutting gesture in the air with his hand and tilted his head. The tip of his nose quivered.

  Alec sniffed the air, too, and then both of their shoulders tensed. I could almost see the hair of their wolf forms standing on end, and it seemed for a moment as if one or both of them was about to shift.

  My dagger was in my hand in an instant. I stood, pointing my blade toward the trees where Alec and Brendan were now staring.

  “What?” I whispered.

  Brendan cut me off with another sharp gesture, and then a crackling footstep sounded out in the darkness beneath the trees. There was another, and then another, and I tensed, waiting for Sienna to emerge, feeling the adrenaline that came with her course through my blood.

  And then Rowan stepped out into the firelight and squinted against its warm glow.

  “Hey,” she said mildly. She looked between us, from Brendan’s tense posture to Alec’s alert eyes to my dagger pointed straight at her. She shoved her hands into her pockets. “Everything okay?”

  “I don’t know,” Brendan said. His shoulders tensed a bit more. “Is it?”

  I sheathed my dagger. “Down, boy.”

  Alec smirked and relaxed. Brendan didn’t move, but I ignored him and held a hand out to Rowan.

  “Sorry, we’re all a little on edge,” I said.

  “I heard you guys talking,” she said. “My ears are, like, super good now.”

  “It’s the bat thing,” Alec said. He pointed to his own ears knowingly, and Rowan stared at him for a second and then cracked a grin.

  “I guess, yeah,” she said. She kicked at the ground. “Can I join you?”

  “Of course,” I said, just as Brendan said, “Depends on your intentions.”

  I walked back to the fire and bent to look him in the eye. “You have to chill.”

  His jaw twitched a little, and I could see the effort it took him to not react. He was being a bit of an asshole, but he was also an alpha wolf, and we were ten feet away from the entrance to his pack’s den. I understood his caution.

  But caution or not, this was Rowan. I was the alpha of my own pack—or one of the alphas, anyway, now that Mom and Grandma were back—and she was one of my own.

  “I don’t like it,” he said, the words sounding strangled through his tense jaw.

  “I know,” I said. “So hold me responsible. Whatever she does, I do.”

  “You trust her that much?”

  I nodded, still holding his gaze. He considered this for a long, tense moment, and then he glanced away.

  It was every bit like asserting dominance over a strong-willed dog, and I had to admit I liked the feeling.

  A little too much, maybe. I turned away before he could see my skin flush.

  “There’s room by me,” Alec said. He patted the log he sat on as if he were offering her a comfortable seat in the parlor.

  She stepped forward, but with hesitation, as though she had to force herself closer.

  I realized a moment later what was wrong.

  “Is it the fire?” I said. “Does it bug you now?”

  She squinted, and even the warm glow from the flames couldn’t quite give back the rosy glow her cheeks had once held.

  “I used to love sitting by the fire and I’m going to keep loving it,” she said. Her voice held more determination than even her face, which wore the same expression the younger Daggers’ faces always did the first time they approached a dangerous magical beast or the crept to the edge of the mansion roof during flying lessons. “It’s just brighter now.”

  She sat next to Alec, clearly fighting the urge to lean away from the flames.

  It was hard to watch.

  “You don’t have to push it,” I said.

  “Yeah, I do.” She looked sharply up at me. “Becoming a—” She gestured down at herself, then made a face and forced the word out. “A vampire—it changed me. It gave me new strengths. It’s not going to give me new weaknesses.”

  She leaned toward the fire and rested her elbows on her knees. I could see the willpower it took, and I wanted to cheer for her. Instead, I leaned forward, too.

  “Cool,” I said. My voice was a shade too light, a shade too casual, and the creases in her forehead unknit a little. “In that case, welcome, glad you’re here, and I think I’ve mostly convinced Brendan you’re not one of Sienna’s minions.”

  Rowan snorted, sounding every bit like her old self. “Sienna just hand-crafted an enemy she’s going to regret,” she said. “Her boyfriend bit my neck.”

  “Yeah, jugular’s usually where folks keep the blood,” Alec said.

  “Well, it was disgusting.” She rubbed the spot on her neck, which was as pale as her face but dotted with two tiny scars. “I had issues with her before but now I’m done playing.”

  Rowan stared across the fire pit at me, and the reflection of the flames danced in her eyes.

  “Sienna’s going down,” she said. “And I know how to do it.”

  34

  Morning sunlight poured through the windows of Grandma’s home office. She had reclaimed her space, and I was gleeful. I loved her office, but I didn’t want it to be mine. Not yet. Not for a long time.

  Rowan sat in one of the chairs on the other side of Grandma’s desk and clenched her hands together. She laced and unlaced her fingers and massaged her palms and otherwise seemed to send all her nervous energy into her hands so her face could stay calm as the Cardinals and Stilettos stared at her. Alec sat in a chair with the rest of us, while Brendan stood behind us all with his arms folded.

  I reached over and grabbed one of Rowan’s hands. She squeezed it, digging her nails into my skin.

  “Just tell them what you told me,” I said.

  Saffron gave her an encouraging smile, and Rowan took a deep breath.

  “Before I say anything, I want to make it really clear that I haven’t changed,” she said. She looked down at her lap, then up again at Grandma. “I’m still a Dagger. Always have been, always will be.”

  “I know,” Grandma said. She didn’t smile at Rowan; instead, she gave her a slight, serious nod, and something invisible passed between them. Rowan’s vice grip on my hand loosened.

  “The Dagger children weren’t the only children Sienna captured,” she said. “The basement room you were held in was one of many. The rest of the basement—it’s like a prison. There’s a room, somewhere beneath the rest of their house, that’s lined with cells and—” She swallowed and had a hard time pushing the next words out. “They’re full of kids. I saw into Sienna’s partner’s mind for a minute when—when he was changing me.” She leaned forward. “And I heard her talking while I was in and out of consciousness. She was giving instructions to him and talking about the kennels—that’s what she called them.”

  Cherry seemed about ready to vomit, and Mom’s face grew hard. Saffron’s eyebrows knit together.

  “What do you mean, you saw into his mind?” Saffron said. “Transitioning to vampiric states can involve a degree of hallucination. We all know that, or at least we should from our training.” She gave both Rowan and me severe looks, the same ones she’d given us throughout our childhoods whenever we’d missed obvious answers during our magic lessons.

  “I know what I saw,” Rowan said. “There’s a moment during transition. It’s intimate. It’s personal.” She shuddered. “It’s closer than I ever wanted to get. I saw into his mind, and into what Sienna had told him of
her emotions and thoughts and plans. It wasn’t long, but it was real.”

  Saffron pressed her lips together into a thoughtful line.

  “You haven’t experienced it,” Rowan said, more quietly. “Even if it’s a hallucination, what I saw deserves investigation. They’ve been harvesting those children for blood. It’s a factory farm. They’ve got Glimmering kids and Humdrum kids both, and they’re using them as food. The older ones will eventually be pushed into slave labor for the vampires, if they haven’t been already. And the most promising ones, the ones who Sienna thinks she can do something with—they’ll get turned. Sienna wants to grow her army and she wants them to be loyal. So she thinks, what better than to raise her own army the way she was raised, in something they think is a family?”

  Grandma’s jaw hardened. “That is nothing like the calling of a Dagger.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  A long, uncomfortable silence followed this, and Rowan sighed.

  “I don’t think it’s the same,” she said. “I know you don’t. But Sienna does. It’s not a bad thing to her—it’s just, like, she was raised for someone else’s mission, so why shouldn’t she try to raise other children for her mission?”

  “Yes, because clearly children like Sienna never rebel against their parents,” Cherry muttered.

  “I didn’t say it was a foolproof plan,” Rowan said. “Just that it’s hers.”

  Brendan drummed on the back of my chair a few times with his fist. “Obviously we have to go in and deal with this,” he said. “But there’s a complication.”

  Grandma glanced up, her eyes sharp and waiting. Whatever had happened between them in the past, a level of confidence now existed between the leaders of the pack and the coven. Brendan gripped the back of my chair.

  “You remember when Sienna was with Joseph Brick, and we thought she might have become a werewolf. Then she never turned in front of us and we gave up on the idea, right?”

  He waited, and finally Mom gave him a tiny nod.

  “Well, this time, we thought Sienna might have become a vampire. But when we saw her at their lair, she didn’t look like one. She hadn’t gone all pale, and she didn’t smell like the rest of them. Not exactly. Not like her,” he added, nodding at Rowan.

  She made a face, and I patted her hand.

  Cherry frowned. “So?”

  “What does that mean?” Mom said at the same time.

  I could feel Brendan’s reluctance to say the next words. When they came, though, they were blunt. “She smells like a vampire,” he said. “She smells like a werewolf, too.”

  Saffron’s eyebrows almost disappeared into her hairline, and Brendan held up both hands in a shrug.

  “I can’t explain it. You know it’s not possible.”

  “It’s never been done,” Saffron said. “That doesn’t mean it’s not possible.” She stared at his face for a long moment, then let out a low whistle.

  “That settles it,” Grandma said.

  We all turned to her, and she folded her hands and rested them on her desk.

  “It doesn’t matter whether what Rowan saw was a hallucination or the truth. We’re monster hunters. I’d say a hybrid beast with a track record like Sienna’s certainly qualifies.” She nodded briefly to the Wildwoods and Rowan. “No offense to present company intended.”

  “None taken,” Rowan said.

  “We’re all on the same page here,” Alec said.

  “I think most of my pack will volunteer,” Brendan said. “I suggest the Daggers rescue the kids while we keep the vampires off your backs. Once the children are out of the way, anyone who’s able can come back and help wipe the nest out.”

  “Gather your pack,” Grandma said. “Cherry, collect the rest of the Daggers. We’ll meet this evening to plan our approach. Ruby, use whatever divination you can to gather information. Saffron, research vamp-were hybrids. Search everything we’ve got. Go through the private collection,” she added, nodding toward a bookshelf I knew to be protected with a variety of wards. “There might be something there.”

  The Cardinals rose, ready for action. I stood, too, but Grandma caught my arm before I could go out the door with the rest of them.

  “You come with me,” she said in a low voice. “We have things to discuss.”

  35

  The hidden closet at the back of Grandma’s craft room was forbidden territory to everyone, including Mom and me. We were welcome only at Grandma’s express permission, and I caught my breath a little, as I always did, when I stepped over the threshold.

  It wasn’t a large space, barely bigger than some of the walk-in storage rooms that branched off her in-house fashion studio and held fabric and machines that didn’t have a place at Carnelian downtown. Unlike the home studio, which was open and full of light, Grandma’s craft room was cozy and lit with lanterns that had glowed to life with a wave of Grandma’s hand. The clean smell of sage permeated the space, mingling with the sweet scent of wicker baskets and the sharp odor of herbs drying in a corner.

  Grandma nodded at me to close the door, and I felt the room seal as soon as the latch clicked shut. The room contained its own energy, built up over years of magical workings, and I always felt dwarfed by the power in the air.

  “I have something for you.” Grandma moved to the countertop along one wall and pulled open one of the many drawers underneath.

  She rummaged around in the drawer for a moment while I stood, careful not to touch anything. It wasn’t so much out of respect for Grandma’s space, although that was part of it. Mostly, I had too many childhood memories of the times I’d accidentally brushed against a bunch of poison sumac and ended up with blisters, or sniffed a jar of crushed witch’s nettle and ended up in a violent sneezing fit. I was older and wiser since the first time I’d been allowed here—but that didn’t mean any of Grandma’s spell ingredients had lost their sting.

  “What do you think of Rowan?” Grandma asked while she dug through what seemed to be a complete mess of random objects and papers in the drawer.

  “About the vampire thing?” I said. “I think it changed her physiology, not her soul.”

  “Good,” she said. “Me, too. Ah. Got it.”

  She stood and held something up triumphantly.

  I had to squint.

  “A needle?” I said.

  “Mm.”

  She held it toward me, and I reached out a cupped hand. She dropped the slender silver needle onto my palm. It landed with barely any weight.

  “I have some of these,” I said, although of course this couldn’t be an ordinary sewing tool. I pinched it between my index finger and thumb and held it up. The metal reflected the light of the nearest lantern back to me in one thin strip.

  “You’ve never had one of these.” Grandma opened another drawer, and this time the thing she was after didn’t require so much searching. She handed me a tiny spool of thread, as silver and glittering as the needle.

  “What is it?”

  “Magic.” She flashed her manicured eyebrows at me.

  “You don’t say.”

  “I can’t tell you how to use it,” she said. “Just seems like the kind of thing you might need in a house of vampires.”

  “I don’t think this is big enough to stake them.”

  “No, but maybe to stitch them?”

  I had no idea what she was talking about. But this wasn’t the first time that had happened, and it wouldn’t be the last.

  Not all magic could be taught. Saffron had told me that a hundred times, and I knew it for myself now. Sometimes magic was a sentient thing, and it would reveal its secrets when it—or I—was ready.

  “Thanks.” I threaded the needle, secured it under a few strands of the silver thread, and tucked the whole thing carefully into the small velvet bag Grandma handed me. I hid it in my jacket pocket next to my wand.

  “I didn’t much enjoy my time with Sienna’s crew,” Grandma said, as lightly as if we were talking about a stay at a hotel she had
n’t found up to her standards. “Didn’t think it was that good for the children, either. Her henchmen just kept the little girls in front of movies all the time. I can’t imagine that much screen time is good for developing minds.”

  “It was the screen time that got to you?” I said. “Not the imprisonment or the bloodsucking fiends of darkness?”

  “Every Dagger has to deal with monsters of the underworld at some point or another,” Grandma said. “But watching The Magical Adventures of Bobbi Bluebell three times a day for weeks on end is bound to challenge the strongest of us.”

  She pursed her lips. I got the impression she was only half joking.

  “You believe Rowan?” I asked. “About Sienna harvesting children?”

  “I have no reason not to.” Grandma pulled a few small jars from a shelf along with a tall vial of golden liquid. “The worst case scenario is that she’s leading us into a trap. So as long as we proceed by assuming everything is a trap, we’ll be prepared.”

  “You don’t think we should call in representatives of the Waterfall Palace for this one?” I asked. “It seems like this has gone well beyond an internal feud.”

  “We should absolutely call them in,” she said. “The Palace can’t send law enforcement in if we don’t have some pretty convincing evidence, of course.”

  “But there’s nothing to stop them from hanging out at the property line to collect children,” I said.

  “Now you’re thinking like a Stiletto.”

  Grandma looked over at me and smiled. She was back to wearing ruby-red lipstick and stylish earrings, and her smile was so familiar I ached inside. Whatever her experience at Sienna’s wannabe-Dracula’s castle, Grandma wasn’t going to let it slow her down. Neither was Rowan. A sudden rush of admiration and gratitude flooded through me, not just for Grandma but for my whole strange, magical, monster-fighting family.

  Sienna was wrong. The difference between the way I’d been raised and the way she was trying to raise her future vampire spawn was simple: I had been born into this, and then I’d been given the opportunity to choose it. Over and over again, when it was easy and when it was so hard I’d felt like quitting, I’d had to fight to prove myself. Every fight had been a choice, and every choice had led me to this moment.