Nameless tobam-1

by Lili St. Crow

  She had a name for what she was, now. And it was not Vultusino. It had never been, but now she was old enough to know.

  “Mr. Nico will be relieved.” Very careful, as well. Like she might break if they said the wrong thing.

  Or as if they were warning her.

  She reached for the handle, ignoring Trigger’s sudden surprised movement, and the lock obligingly chucked up before she pushed the heavy armored door wide. Fresh snow was falling, the flakes spinning lazily, and her stomach did a queer double-hop inside her.

  She slammed the door, maybe a little harder than she had to. Scuffed her still-damp boots across the pavement, the whiskaway charms on the stairs waking in brief flurries to push the snow aside before it could ice the stone and make it dangerous.

  Is that why I don’t like stairs? That memory wouldn’t come. Instead, the smell of fresh-cut apples and thick cloying incense spilled through the cold, and a dark curtain filled her head.

  The wind cut off as she stepped inside the house. The foyer was hushed and dark. Maybe she could get up to her room before he—

  “Cami.” Nico sat on the stairs, a shadow in the dimness. His hands dangled loosely, his forearms braced on his knees. Only the gleams of his eyes and the paleness of his throat showed. No—there was the gleam of the signet, too. Just as bloody as when Papa had worn it. The Heir’s ring was in the ancient strongbox in the library, behind the painting of Vidario Vultusino, the Eldest of the Seven of New Haven.

  Waiting for an Heir. And la Vultusina’s ring was right next to it, probably waiting for a Family girl to wear it. Once Cami was . . .

  . . . what?

  What am I thinking? Immobile, frozen, she waited for the explosion. Her coat was sliced, her leggings torn to ribbons, her boots sodden with melted snow and alley ick, her skirt ripped too. Strings of black hair fell in her face, reeking of the smoke in the nightclub, and she probably smelled like the holding cell too.

  “Say something,” he persisted, soft and coaxing. She couldn’t see him well enough to find the anger in him; the sense of the world sliding away underneath her returned, her knees loosening and her breath coming short and hard. “Mithrus Christ, Camille, I’m not mad at you.”

  Was he actually lying to her? The whirling inside her intensified. “Y-yes y-you are.”

  “Nah.” Now he moved, but very slowly. He straightened, touching the banister, and her heart thundered as he stepped down, paused, stepped again. “I never thought of what it’s like, for you. Watching Papa go. You were in there every day with him, weren’t you?”

  You think this is about that? Her teeth found her lower lip, sank in. The pain was a bright star, a silver nail to stop the whirling. It didn’t make it go away, but at least it gave her something to hold onto.

  Nico kept talking. The very softest of his voices, the one he kept just for her. “I was gone. And when I was here, you were holding me together too. Being brave.” He reached the bottom of the stairs. Stepped cautiously toward her. “Hell of a job, babygirl.”

  If you knew what I was, would you be saying this to me? “N-nico . . . ”

  “I’m listening.” Another step. Edging up to her. What did he think she was going to do, run? That would be like dropping a burning lucifer into gasoline.

  “I w-w-went w-w-with T-t-tor.” Her heart was going to explode.

  He went very still. Red sparks firing in his gaze, deep in the back of his pupils where the Kiss would eventually burn through after years of service to the Family. He would belong to them even after his breathing stopped.

  Where would she belong?

  “I f-found out. I’m B-b-b-biel’y.” She couldn’t get the word right. But it was close enough. “I esc-c-c-caped. I-in the s-s-snow. N-Nico—”

  “Was it Stevens? Did the ghoul open his mouth?” His hands were curling into fists, she could see that. The dimness was hiding less as her eyes adapted. There was a moment’s worth of comfort—if he was angry, she knew how to deal with him.

  Or do I? “T-t-t-tor—” How could she even begin to explain?

  “I’ll kill him.” Very quietly.

  Oh, no. “N-n-nico—”

  “Shhh.” The bloodring glimmered as his hand came up, as if he wanted to put a finger to his lips. Stopped. “I will kill him.”

  Why won’t you listen? “I’m B-b-b-biel—”

  “You’re not. They can’t have you.” Still very quiet, the words drained and pale but still smoking. Like a faust, something inside them too furious to be corralled. “You’re not one of theirs.”

  “N-n-n-nico—” I remember. I remember being chained after I tried to escape. I remember the handcuffs and the beatings, then there’s something horrible, and I can’t remember, but then I was in the snow and there was Papa. The enormity of it stuck in her throat, her traitorous tongue strangling the words as she tried to force them out past a snarling maze of blackness, the ground tilting and a Tesla-thunderstorm direct from the Waste, one nobody else could hear, drowning her out.

  “It’s arranged, babygirl.” Still so quiet, she had to strain to hear him over the rushing in her head. “I’ve promised. I’m going to kill him.”

  Then he was gone with the inhuman speed of a Family member, leaving only a trail of unsteady charm-sparks in his wake. She was left alone in the darkened foyer, the cuts and bruises all over her throbbing viciously, her head full of noise, and her cheeks—again—hot and wet, the tears dropping onto her ruined coat as she swayed.

  TWENTY-SIX

  THE LOCK ON THE WHITE ROOM’S DOOR WAS ANCIENT and flimsy, but she threw it anyway. Hot water in the bath stung the cuts on her arms and legs—the shimmersilk’s claws had been sharp.

  Found it in a pawnshop . . . it belonged to you.

  She sat shivering in the steaming cast-iron tub for a long time, hugging herself as the bathwater rippled with her trembling. Her hair flooded over her shoulders, dampness sticking it in tiny curls and streaks to her abused skin, and when she slid under the surface it floated around her just like a mermaid’s.

  She stayed under a long time, everything above the water blurring as the heaviness in her lungs mounted. Burning crept into her nose. She surfaced in a rush, splashing, and the sound of her gasping echoed against white tile, charm-scrubbed white grout, the ecru towels and the blind eye of the misted mirror, the sink like an opening flower, and the gleaming toilet.

  None of this is mine.

  Even the hot water wasn’t hers. It drained away with a gurgle.

  Still dripping, naked because the nightgowns and pajamas weren’t hers either, she crawled into the bed like a thief. Some other girl belonged here, a girl with clear unmarked skin and a carefree ringing voice, one of the Family girls with their bright eyes and disdainful smiles. A girl who could make Nico less angry, a girl who could have kept Papa on the breathing side of transition, a girl the house could close around like the well-oiled machine it was.

  She curled up and stared into the darkness. There was a faint edge of gray under the curtains—sunrise approaching, a late winter’s dawn. The gauze over the mirror, a stolen thing like everything else in this bloodless room, fluttered teasingly.

  What will you see if you take the gauze off and look? Dare you to do it, Cami.

  Except that wasn’t really her name, was it? She didn’t even have a name.

  My Nameless. A slow, easy hissing whisper, a familiar stranger’s voice, in the very center of her brain.

  Another steady whisper rose from the cuts and bruises, becoming audible in fits and starts. The gauze rippled, rippled, and behind it the mirror was a water-clear gleam. The muttering from the mirror mixed with low atonal chanting, blended with the throb and ache of contusions, scrapes, and thin slices, and now, at last, she knew what it was saying.

  You are nobody.

  Over and over again.

  You are nothing.

  And it was true.

  The light under the curtain strengthened. The door rattled. Someone said something on t
he other side of it, but she closed away the sound of the voice.

  They weren’t talking to her, anyway. Maybe to the ghost of the girl who should have had this room.

  The girl she had tried, and failed miserably, to be.

  After a while the sound stopped. It came back, twice, then the light under the curtains faded and welcome darkness returned.

  It was dark for a long time. Her stomach growled, and she tried not to move until she couldn’t stand the jabbing pains, muscles protesting.

  Soft taps at the door. “Cami?”

  She squeezed her dry, burning eyes shut. Hearing him hurt almost as badly as the stiffened-up bruises and drying scabs.

  Nico said other things, but she turned her brain into a soft droning hum. The door gave a sharp banging groan, shaking on its hinges, but she counted the words inside her head, rolling them like small metal balls on a dark-painted surface.

  You are nobody. You are nothing.

  It was almost a relief. No more struggling with her stupid tongue. No more being the third wheel. No more jumping at shadows. No more flinching.

  Yelling, finally. But she clutched her hands over her ears. They, at least, belonged to her, and the yelling ended with a thud. The doorknob screeched, the ancient lock groaning against the doorframe. She curled even more tightly into herself, around the empty rock of her stomach, the smell of her own body wrapping in a close comforting fog.

  My hands. I can’t be nobody if I have hands.

  She tried to shove the thought away, but it wouldn’t go. Her bladder ached too, a steady relentless pressure. Her lungs, stupid idiot things, kept going even though she tried to stop them. Her hair lay damp-sticky against the back of her neck—she was sweating.

  You are nobody, the whisper insisted. You are nothing.

  Then who the hell was it talking to? Her fingers tensed, fingernails digging into her scalp. Her scalp, and the stinging was welcome. Some of her nails were broken, she could feel the sharp edges. Her mouth tasted bitter and nasty, there were crusties at the corners of her eyes.

  My eyes. My hands. My mouth. She shifted restlessly, every part of her jangling a discordant song of ache and pain, and her bladder informed her once again that it was not happy. Her stomach rumbled loudly, insistently.

  Her stomach didn’t stutter. Her breath moved in and out, despite everything she could do. There was a thumping, regular and insistent, and she kept her eyes shut. Traceries of false light burned against the inside of her eyelids.

  You are nobody. You are nothing.

  The tha-thump, tha-thump irritated her. It interfered with the whisper, shoved it aside, and demanded to be heard along with the need to pee. What was it? Someone banging on the door again?

  Don’t be an idiot. It’s your heart.

  Tha-thump. Tha-thump. The rhythm didn’t vary. She felt it in her wrists, her throat, the backs of her knees. All through her, scarlet threads twitched as the beating in her chest went on. It was whispering too, and as soon as she realized it she moved again, restlessly, trying to figure out what it was saying.

  Her bladder was going to explode, and the murmur from the mirror was getting more insistent. Was it hoarse now, a little desperate? It was scratchy, like a smoke-filled throat. She shook her head, slowly, every muscle in her neck shrieking, trying to figure out what the thumping in her chest was saying. It was a song, maybe? One of Nico’s favorites, with thumping bass shaking her into jelly?

  No.

  Her arms spasmed. So did her legs. Muscles locking, moving restlessly, annoyed at her. The whisper from the mirror pushed against the gauze; the torn material billowed, fingernail-scraping the wooden frame.

  Cami scrambled out of the bed, tripping and going down, banging her knee on the floor. She lunged up, bare feet smacking the carpet, and just barely made it to the bathroom.

  It was there, sitting on the toilet and a glorious relief filling her, that the noise in her head died down, and she figured out the thumping in her chest.

  Tha-thud. Tha-thud. Tha-thud.

  I am. I am. I am.

  The pace quickened. The aching and cramping in her bladder subsided.

  I am. I am. I am.

  She flushed, her hands moving automatically, and the chugging cascade of water drowned out the mirror’s fuzzy staticwhisper. As soon as she stepped into the white room, though, she could hear it. The gauze fluttered to the floor, stroked by an invisible hand, and the mirror’s surface was full of gray vapor, pouring out from the glass in defiance of its own unreality. Heavy, perfumed smoke. It crawled along the floor, reaching for her with begging, sharp-nailed fingers.

  White fingers, on a broad soft hand.

  Nobody. Nothing. You are nobody. Nothing! YOU ARE NOBODY NOTHING NOBODY NOTHING NOBODYNOTHINGNOBODYNOTHING—

  “Noooooo!” The wail burst out of her. She flung herself across the room.

  Punch from the hip, Nico said in her memory. Teaching her how to fight one lazy summer day, while they played banditti in the woods. That’s my girl. Hit ’em so they know they’ve been hit.

  Her fist met bulging, smoke-bleeding glass. Her scream spiraled up, drowning out the other cry of female rage—the one coming from the mirror as it broke, crashing, a red jolt all the way up her arm.

  The White Queen stumbled back, almost tripping on her long dress, her face graven, runneled with lines, a contorted picture of hatred. She screamed, and the mirror in front of her showed a withered, slobbering hag, the jewel at her throat dark heartsblood, flickering as her life faded.

  Cami came to on her knees, her bleeding right hand clutched to her chest, the pale carpet silvered with glass. Running feet in the hall, a splintering jolt against the door. She hugged herself, sobbing, as the acrid smoke in the room thinned.

  And through it all, her heart thundered.

  I am. I am. I am.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  IT WASN’T NICO. IT WAS STEVENS, WITH TRIG RIGHT behind him. The gaunt consigliere stabbed two fingers at the broken mirror, snapping a charm that flashed venomous-red in the darkness as the broken shards on the floor quivered; Trig’s hand closed around Cami’s arm and he lifted her bodily out of the glass, fingers slipping against blood and sweat. Her hand bled freely, and there was a stinging in her knees.

  Stevens hissed a curse in another language, a long sonorous filthy-sounding term that ended with him jabbing his fingers at the mirror and hissing once more. Glass shards trembled as if they wanted to fly up from the floor; a shudder worked its way down the consigliere’s dusty, black-clad back. “Avert, Bianca mala,” he muttered, finally. “Avert.”

  “Mithrus Christ!” Trig had a handful of material—it was her old terrycloth bathrobe, and he bundled her into it with quick efficient movements before half-carrying her toward the bathroom. He reached around the edge of the bathroom door and flicked a switch; sudden golden light stung her eyes. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

  “I do not like this,” Stevens said, slowly but very loudly.

  “S-s-s-s-s—” The stutter matched her frantic pulse. Sorry. I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I just know I—

  “CAMI!” Nico broke what was left of the door, skidding on the carpet, bare-chested and in his ragged pajama pants, his hair standing up and the red pinpricks in his pupils guttering like candleflames in a draft. He stopped dead, thinning smoke shredding and cringing away from him.

  “Biel’y.” Stevens turned on his heel. Even at this hour he wore mirror-polished wingtips, and his suit wasn’t creased or wrinkled. The only thing missing was his tie, his collar unbuttoned instead of cutting into the papery skin of his throat, and it made him look, for the first time, oddly fragile. “The maggots are here. In New Haven, yes, and they dare to break the sanctity of this house.”

  Nico’s nostrils flared. He wasn’t listening.

  He inhaled, deeply, and Trig went very still.

  “Oh, fu—” Trig shoved Cami through the bathroom door. He didn’t even get to finish the word bef
ore Nico was on him, a thundering growl throbbing in the new Vultusino’s chest and his fangs out.

  Cami fell, barking both bleeding knees on white tile. Nico tossed Trig aside like the older man was made of paper, Trig’s head hit the doorframe with a sickening crack. A blink and the Vultusino was there, his fingers sinking into her arms like iron claws, and Cami kept screaming breathlessly, scrabbling to get away as his teeth champed just short of her throat.

  It was Stevens, one thin knee in Nico’s back, who wrestled the Vultusino away from her. He had paused to grab the gauze from the floor and twisted it into a noose, pulling back on Nico’s throat as if dragging the reins of a maddened titon, his face set and still as it always was. He heaved Enrico Vultusino’s son back, and the scream of a blood-maddened bloodline Family member turned the air so cold Cami’s breath turned to a white cloud.

  Trigger Vane lay very still, across a shattered door, his eyes closed. And the copper-smelling crimson tide, maddening Nico with its perfume, was everywhere.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  BOTH KNEES BANDAGED, HER RIGHT HAND BANDAGED too—Marya hadn’t even scolded her, just observed a stony, worried silence—Cami clutched at her schoolbag and wiped at her cheeks. Behind her, the limousine purred.

  Nico was locked up in the Holding Room, probably with Stevens standing guard at the door. It was a good thing the walls of the house on Haven Hill were thick, otherwise they could have heard the new Vultusino’s screams in the next province.

  The cries had ceased, as if cut by a knife, the instant she closed the front door behind her.

  Chauncey slept in a small apartment over the cavernous garages; Cami’s tentative knocks hadn’t even woken his wife Evelyn.

  I need to go to Ruby’s, she’d told him. It’s an emergency.