by Emma Savant
Someone appeared in front of the bars, a short man with a stocky build, probably a dwarf. He had a big ring of keys hanging from his belt. He unlocked my door, and the bars opened with a creak. I swung my legs off the edge of the cot.
“Where am I?” I demanded. “How long have I been here?”
“Faerie Ring Correctional Institution Annex, about six hours,” he said.
“Why am I here?” I said. “Why was I unconscious? What happened?”
He looked blankly at me, and I got the impression he usually wasn’t faced with so many questions.
“Someone’s here to collect you.”
I jumped up, a little too quickly. My head lurched, and I stopped and pressed a finger to my temple.
“Did that dude punch me?” I said. “I had him pinned.”
“Gilt security determined you were a disruption,” the man said.
He snapped his fingers and waved at me to come over to him. The snapping got my hackles up, but I knew better than to try to take a guard down without a good reason. Grandma would murder me. He handcuffed me with two thin silver chains, then gestured at me to follow him down the hallway.
This wasn’t much of a prison, not that I deserved to be in jail anyway. There were only a few cells on either side of us, each with its own cuckoo clock and set of silver bars.
“Nice place you got here,” I muttered.
“Yeah, you’re going to have a better day if you keep your mouth shut,” the man said, but he didn’t seem to care enough to make it a real threat.
We walked out into a small lobby that featured some straggly potted palms, a handful of glossy magazines, and…
My mother.
I felt my chest cave in. She did not look happy. She didn’t look close to happy. She looked like happy had stolen her wallet and insulted her family’s honor, and she was about to take it down with one swift jab to the throat.
“Hey,” I said cautiously.
“Don’t you dare.”
I pressed my lips shut.
Mom strode over to the officer. He released my cuffs—delicate or not, I was pretty sure they’d slice my hands off if I tried to escape—and stepped back.
“The Faerie Court has decided to let Miss Hunter off with a warning,” he said. He eyed me like he wasn’t sure what to make of that. He turned to Mom. “Whatever strings you pulled, ma’am, I don’t think they’ll work a second time. The Queen doesn’t generally approve of vigilante justice.”
“Nor do I,” Mom said.
She shot me a glare that was sharper than the dagger I knew she had tucked inside her purse.
“Scarlett,” Mom said, nodding sharply toward the guard.
I wrapped my arms around myself.
“Thank you, sir,” I said.
“Keep yourself out of trouble,” he said. Then, to Mom and with a lot more respect in his voice, he added, “Have a good day, ma’am.”
He shuffled off, back toward the desk that overlooked the lobby. Mom stalked out of the room, and I skittered after her.
The car ride home was long and silent. The overcast sky only seemed to add weight to Mom’s mood.
“I stopped a drug deal,” I finally said in a low voice.
“No one asked you to.”
I slouched back in my seat and tried to become invisible. I was an adult, I tried to remind myself, but it was a thin consolation when she kept shooting me glances like that. When we got to the mansion, Mom waited impatiently for the gate to open and then sped up the long driveway. She skidded into the garage, slammed on the brakes, and cut the engine, then twisted in her seat.
“What the hell were you thinking, Scarlett?” she shouted. “Assaulting civilians in public? Lighting a club on fire? Do you have any idea how much that could have cost in damages?”
“It was a witch flame,” I said. “It wasn’t going to damage anything.”
“You think the owners are going to care about that?” she said. “What if it had gotten out of your control?”
“It didn’t.”
“It could have!”
She slammed her hand against the steering wheel, probably to keep herself from slapping me.
“And that’s to say nothing of the drinking,” she said. “The club reported that you were completely intoxicated, and the prison confirmed it. The prison, Scarlett. You were in prison today.”
“I shouldn’t have been the one to end up there,” I said. “Those guys were doing a drug deal. They weren’t even being that discreet about it. Isn’t that what the Daggers are for, to stop crime and keep the Glimmering world safe?”
“You think you were going to save the world over a pouch of moon dust?” she said. Her voice was almost as shrill as the cuckoo bird’s had been, and it made my head ache. “Scarlett, we are not fly-by-night vigilante volunteers. We are Crimson Daggers. You are a Crimson Dagger now, and I have clearly failed to impress upon you the importance of that job. We act when we are called upon. We follow the rules of the coven. We don’t go flying into interactions that are frankly none of our damn business. I cannot fathom how you thought that was a good idea.”
“I wasn’t exactly myself,” I muttered.
“And whose fault was that?” She narrowed her eyes. “Where did you get that alcohol, anyway? The club doesn’t serve it, and I know they didn’t have any because the bar got raided after their bouncer hauled you out of there. You’re not welcome back at Gilt, by the way; they were very clear about that.”
My stomach sank. I’d spent half my teens there, and they were one of the only spots in town where I could dance and be surrounded by other Glims and pretend I had the same kinds of hopes and worries as the rest of them.
I slouched even farther into my seat. “Doesn’t matter, it’s not that great anyway,” I muttered.
“This is why Sienna was chosen as the Stiletto,” Mom said. “You know that, right? Because she follows orders. She stays focused. She doesn’t fall apart when things go wrong. Get in the house. And don’t go anywhere near your grandmother. I don’t think she could stand to look at you right now.”
It was like a punch in the gut—but worse, because I knew how to take a punch to the gut.
I had failed, in a way Sienna never would. And Grandma had never been as angry with me as Mom said, not really.
I slowly unfastened my seat belt and opened the door, all the while feeling her eyes burning into me.
Another of the recently initiated Daggers, Autumn, passed me on the stairs. Her eyes widened, and she opened her mouth to say something.
She knew. Of course they all knew, not just about my failure at my first Dagger task but also about the disaster at Gilt. I looked away from her and ran past her before she could get a word out.
One of the cats was asleep on my bed, an older gray tabby who liked to spend the days on quiet cushions in warm sunspots. I threw myself on the bed next to her and buried my face in her fur. She smelled musty and sweet and purred the instant I scratched her favorite spot above her tail.
I had screwed everything up. I had destroyed my own life, and there was no one to blame but me.
And Brendan, maybe. He’d given me the booze. But he hadn’t been trying to screw up my day. He’d been trying to help. He didn’t think I was a worthless screwup.
And that made him the only one.
We’d exchanged numbers halfway through our conversation. Before I could think too hard about it, I pulled out my phone and shot him a text.
Scarlett: You get out of there okay?
A few moments later, the phone buzzed.
Brendan: Yeah. Sorry you got busted. That was badass.
I smiled for the first time. The cat kneaded on the bed, and I shifted away from her to text him back.
9
I didn’t see Grandma for a few days. She’d locked herself in her studio to work on the collection, and I didn’t disturb her. Mom had said she wouldn’t want to see me. I didn’t want to push it.
Finally, though, after the b
etter part of a week had passed in awkward silence from the older Daggers and scandalized curiosity from the younger ones, a note appeared on my bed in Grandma’s handwriting.
I need some clasps made for the red capes. You know the collection better than anyone. Twelve designs.
Beneath that was an address and a name, Alec Forrest.
It was a challenge. The gauntlet had been thrown, and this was one task I was not going to screw up.
I pulled on my jacket as I raced down the stairs. Rowan raised her eyebrows when I passed her, but I didn’t have time to stop and talk. She’d been sweet about the whole Gilt thing, and said she understood how I must have been feeling, but all the understanding in the world wouldn’t fix what I’d ruined.
This, though? This I could do. I did know about Grandma’s collections, all of them, and I knew that this red cape collection was one of the crowning pieces of her Fashion Week show. It was inspired by the first Stiletto, of course, though the rest of the Glimmering world would perceive it as nothing more than a nod to the historical Little Red Riding Hood archetype. I thought it was skating too close to the the edge, in terms of possibly revealing the Daggers to the world, but who was I to say? Grandma was the Stiletto, and she knew what we could handle.
I peeled out of the driveway, and my bike kicked up gravel behind me. The gate opened as I approached, and I took off onto the curving roads that cut through the forest that made up our neighborhood. Just below Grandma’s property were other large, stately houses with gates and hedges, and I had to wind all the way down the hill before I felt like I was really in the city. The address I needed was right downtown, in a tiny shop tucked between a vegan burger joint and a kids’ consignment store.
Before I got off my bike, I took a slow, steady breath and focused my mind on Carnelian: the house, its style, Grandma’s upcoming collection, and what it all meant. I had failed in my mission as a Dagger—failed so spectacularly that no one was likely to offer me a job again for a long time. But I hadn’t failed in my work at Carnelian. I still had my eye for design and an intimate knowledge of the house and its energy.
I let out a heavy sigh and went to the door, which was under a stainless-steel sign etched with the word Forrest Designs: Artisan Sculpture and Machining. The place looked quiet, with a single window displaying a few carved candleholders and a wrought-iron sculpture of an evergreen tree. The door was set with glass panes, which revealed white walls and bright light inside.
The door jingled when I opened it, and the solitary person inside looked up from a workbench. This place wasn’t a shop like I’d expected. Instead, the front section was set up as a tiny gallery featuring pieces for sale. Beyond that, the room was one open studio. Woodworking tools were set up in one corner, and a large venting hood and tools I didn’t recognize ran along the back wall. The man was hunched over at a small table nearer the gallery area, his work surface cluttered with a disorienting array of paints and brushes. A large lamp shone onto his work, and he wore a magnifying headset that shoved his russet hair up at odd angles and obscured his eyes.
I coughed. He didn’t hear me.
“You Alec Forrest?” I said.
He pushed the magnifier up to inspect me. His eyes were almost the same hazel as Brendan’s—who everything seemed to remind me of these days—but much bigger, like he was trying to take in the whole world at once.
“I am,” he said. He blinked a few times as his focus returned to normal, then took off the headset entirely and set it on the table. He shook his head, which tousled his hair in a series of other directions but didn’t do much to tidy it. “How can I help you?”
“I’m here from Carnelian,” I said. “Did anyone schedule with you?”
“Um,” he said, squinting. “No? No, I don’t think so. But that’s okay. I’m just working on stuff.” He waved generally behind him. “I have time.”
“Awesome,” I said. I surveyed the room again. It was loaded with every conceivable kind of tool for making things, even down to the 3D printer tucked into a corner, but nothing let me know whether he was Hum or Glim. “Are you familiar with the house of Carnelian?”
“Fashion house?” he said. “Yeah, of course.” He narrowed his large eyes as if it could let him see through me. “You’re a witch, right?”
I relaxed a little. “How could you tell?”
“The smell,” he said. “No one quite carries that mugwort-and-incense scent like witches.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Excuse me?”
“It’s not an insult,” he said, sounding surprised that I might even take it as one. “It’s a nice scent. Besides, Nelly Carnelian’s a witch. Makes sense she’d have others working for her.”
“She has a variety of races that work for the house,” I said severely. He just smiled, and my shoulders softened a bit. “But yeah, a lot of witches,” I conceded. “I’m her granddaughter.”
He held out a hand, noticed it was smudged with blue paint, wiped it on his apron, and then held it out again. I shook it. He smelled like wood dust and turpentine, and it wasn’t totally unpleasant.
“I’m here about our Fashion Week collection,” I said. “We need cape clasps. Twelve, all different designs. Knowing Grandma, only three or four are going to make it to the final collection, so I want to bring back a big variety for her to choose from. We’ll pay for all of them, of course, not just the final choices.”
He wiped his hands on his apron again. “We can do that,” he said. “What kind of materials?”
“I’d like to see a few in different materials.”
“I can do each clasp in something unique,” he said. “Unless she wants them all to look similar?”
“Depends. What are you able to work with?”
A spark lit in his eyes.
“Let me show you,” he said. He waved me over like he was about to tell me a secret. “C’mere.”
10
He led me to a small seating area alongside one wall. Two chairs sat at angles behind a coffee table. Alec opened a drawer in the table and removed a sleek white binder. His fingers slid with practiced efficiency to a tab and pulled the binder open to about the middle, which held pages and pages of photographs with descriptions to the side.
“We can work with anything in this book,” he said. “And probably any other material you can think of, too, but I may need extra practice to get the hang of it.”
I held out a hand, and he gave me the binder. I began skimming my way down the first list, which was all woods. Alder, ash, aspen, beech—it went on for pages. The next section was metals, everything from gold to adamant to mountain copper. Then came the animal materials, antlers and horns, and a dozen different kinds of leathers, followed by stones.
It was a lot to take in.
“The cloaks are all deep crimson or carmine,” I said. “We’ll need to coordinate around that.”
“Doesn’t narrow it down much,” he said. “Most of this will look good with a rich red. What kind of fabrics are you working with?”
“Velvet, Dupioni silk, damask, angora,” I said. “That’s so far. She’s still experimenting.”
“So maybe we won’t worry about specific cloaks,” he said. “Sounds like she wants to mix and match.”
I nodded and turned another page in the book. “You work with unicorn horn?”
“Once in a blue moon,” he said. “It’s expensive.”
“Yeah, well, Grandma’s willing to spend on this collection,” I said. “Let’s do one in that. And I like the toadstone.”
“You’d need a lot of them to make up a whole brooch,” he said. “That deep of a brown might be nice set in leather and gold.”
I tried to envision it. I had no idea what he might be imagining, but the colors seemed like they’d go together well enough, and it might give a brooch a rougher edge that could set off an otherwise predictable luxury velvet.
“One of those, too, then,” I said. “Are you going to write these down?”
He j
umped up immediately, and was back in a moment with a notebook and pen.
“Has my grandma worked with you before?” I said.
“No,” he said. “Actually, I was going to ask. Did she say why she picked us?”
“She didn’t say anything,” I said.
She hadn’t said anything for days, which was why it was so important that I do my best here and come back with exactly the kind of clasps she needed. Except I didn’t even know what kind of direction to give this guy.
“Are there any themes we need to follow?” he said, his gaze skimming over the page I was on, which showed moonstone, morganite, and mystic quartz.
“The cloaks are the theme,” I said. “Everything else in the collection echoes their color and either shares that kind of flow or is a structured contrast against it.”
“No imagery? Motifs?”
“Carnelian always works with pentacles and athames,” I said. “Our ideal client is a strong, confident woman who knows her power and isn’t afraid to fight for her causes.”
“You’re a witch-targeted house, right?”
“No,” I said, a little too emphatically. “That may have been true in the past, but now we want to appeal to all Glimmers. We’d especially like to branch into the faerie market.”
He glanced up at me. “The Faerie Queen chooses her designers at Fashion Week, doesn’t she?”
I gave him a significant look. “That might have something to do with it.”
“That helps,” he said. He idly pointed his pen toward me. “Should have led with that.”
“Well, excuse me for not knowing what information you deem most valuable,” I said.
His eyebrows flashed up, and then he pressed his lips together, no doubt biting back something that wouldn’t have been professional.
I had that effect on people. I put my hands together in my lap and took a deep breath. “With that in mind, what do you recommend?” I said.
