Stiletto Read online

  While Brendan and Alec sniffed the air and checked the map on my phone for the fifteenth time, I glamoured the car to make it look like a different vehicle. With any luck, the unkempt tree and garbage bins on either side would keep it from catching anyone’s notice.

  “She’s still there,” Alec said quietly, handing me back my phone.

  I quickly clicked off the screen to keep the light from illuminating my face.

  “We’ll hide better if we cut through backyards. Can you keep people’s floodlights from turning on?” Alec said.

  “Sure. You positive a couple of werewolves in private backyards won’t stand out more than three people on the sidewalk?”

  “We’ll stand out if people see us,” Brendan said. “So let’s be fast and quiet and not catch attention. With any luck, most people will have their blinds closed at this hour.”

  I shrugged; it felt to me like every path was just as dangerous as the next.

  “If we get caught, just make sure it’s after Rowan’s safe and not before,” I muttered.

  Alec gave me a sidelong look, his eyebrows knit in concern, but Brendan shook his shoulders out and nodded. He shifted, his form changing from broad-shouldered man to broad-shouldered wolf in an instant. Alec put a hand on my shoulder, like he wanted to say something but didn’t think we had time, and then his wiry frame had grown and hunched over, too, and he was nudging me with his wet nose.

  I climbed onto his back and settled in, making sure I had my hands free for spell casting. I leaned forward, and he took off.

  26

  It wasn’t like the time we’d gone running in the forest. Then, Alec had shifted for the joy of it, and we’d streaked through the trees with the speed and ease of a strong wind. Now, he was cautious. He darted down the street, then stopped under the shadow of a willow tree. Brendan darted ahead of us, nose to the ground, and Alec followed him in a series of bursts. Each time we came to rest, it was under concealment—behind a bush, in the shadow of a minivan, in the narrow gap between houses. I kept my hands up, directing darkness glamours toward every motion-activated floodlight or inconveniently placed streetlamp we came across.

  Cloaked in shadow, we moved deeper into the neighborhood. I was amazed at how well the wolves could conceal themselves. Brendan was large, even for a werewolf, and yet he seemed to slink low enough to the ground that he almost disappeared at times. They were subtle and elegant, both of them; they’d been right to travel this way.

  Eventually, off the end of a twisting road lined with houses set back from the street, deep in a thick stand of trees, Brendan stopped. In front of us, the forest opened to a small lawn surrounded by dark, heavy pines whose needles whispered against one another in the nighttime breeze.

  The building in the middle was clichéd enough that I cringed. It was a castle—a mansion, technically, but one covered in stone façades and featuring not one but three separate towers with spiky caps that just about punctured the sky. In the darkness, with the black sky and sharp trees surrounding its hard angles and weather-beaten walls, the place was like something off a dollar-store Halloween card.

  “Classy joint,” Brendan said the instant he’d shifted back to human form.

  I got the impression he’d shifted back just so he could make this comment, and Alec shook his shaggy head in warning.

  I climbed down, and Alec shifted back, too. We all stared at the ominous house, and I scanned it for weaknesses—a low window here, a side door that looked like it could be forced there. Above the house, small bats dove through the sky. I couldn’t tell whether they were hunting for insects or guarding the property against people like us. I knew vampires didn’t shift into bats nearly as much as movies would have one believe, but the possibility still had me on guard.

  I opened my hands and clenched them again as magic pooled across my skin. If we needed a darkness glamour or jet of fire, I’d be ready.

  Alec drew back farther under the cover of the trees. “Maybe we should come back in the daytime.”

  I shook my head. Rowan was in there now.

  “We’re going in,” I whispered. “This house is old. There are probably back staircases that don’t get used much.”

  “Unless they do,” Brendan said. “Sounded like she had a lot of vamps in the Orbs arena. Maybe they all live here.”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  We were silent for a moment, watching the house. Most of the curtains were drawn, but there were enough lights behind them to let me know more than a few people were home. Someone passed by a window, casting their shadow on it for a moment.

  “We just have to get Rowan out. Then we go get the Daggers and the pack.”

  “Or we could just get them now and grab Rowan when we come in for the attack,” Alec suggested.

  It was a better idea. I knew it was a better idea, and I rejected it instantly.

  “I don’t trust Sienna with her for a second.”

  I turned to Alec, waiting for his next argument, but he only nodded.

  “I’m going in through that side door,” I said. “There’s a window right beside it, and the room’s most likely empty. I’ll crack the curtains so you can see in, and if the coast is clear, you follow.”

  I waved a hand over each of them, and the gossamer weight of an illusion settled over their bodies. “I can’t keep you invisible,” I said. “It’s too much to maintain. But this will keep anyone’s eyes from settling on you too quickly. It should be enough to let you hide if someone comes into the room.”

  “Cool,” Brendan said, holding up his arm, which appeared exactly the same to me as it had before. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t rely on it.”

  I tossed the same glamour onto myself and crept out from the cover of the trees. The bats overhead continued to dart and dive, unaware of—or unconcerned by—my presence.

  The grass on this lawn was just as soggy as the grass back home had been lately, and I silently prayed that it was too dark for anyone to see my footprints. I unlocked the side door with a spell, and it was easy—maybe too easy. But then, Sienna could hardly be expected to cover this house with the kinds of fresh security spells we coated the Dagger mansion in every few months. Keeping a whole house protected took the work of several witches. I wasn’t sure I’d bother, either, if I had an army of bloodthirsty minions at my command, ready to devour anyone who dared break in.

  The interior of the castle—I couldn’t think of it as anything else—was just as dark and foreboding as the outside. Most vampires lived ordinary lives in ordinary houses; the only things that made them truly different from the rest of us were their tendency to sunburn and the bottles of blood in their fridges. The blood thing kind of turned my stomach, but then, Grandma had once pointed out, they probably thought drizzling honey over tuna fish sandwiches was gross, too, and that had never stopped me.

  I missed her. My whole soul ached in a way I couldn’t afford.

  The first room on the other side of the door was small, lined with shelves full of muddy boots and jackets. Its one small window was covered with a thick curtain, and I pushed that aside so Brendan and Alec could see in—fat lot of good it would do them.

  The mudroom led into a sort of maintenance space filled with tools and rakes and buckets and all the little objects necessary to keep a mansion like this in good shape. I could make out their silhouettes in the dim lights from a power tool charging station on one wall and a nightlight that someone had plugged into a dark corner.

  I wondered, as I felt my way through the room, whether the vampires performed castle upkeep themselves or if they had hired help. Or maybe it was all done by slaves. I wouldn’t put it past Sienna to kidnap Humdrums and enchant them into servitude. My arms prickled with goosebumps.

  I cracked the door leading from the room open and could make out a dim corridor. The lights were off, but voices murmured from elsewhere in the house. I made sure my glamour was still strong, then crept out of the maintenance room, leaving the door just bar
ely open behind me.

  Most of the doors in this hallway were closed. The walls were decorated with old-fashioned tapestries featuring gloomy scenes of ancient vampires and shadowy landscapes. Thick carpets covered the hardwood floors and muffled my steps.

  One room I passed seemed to be a kind of sitting room or parlor; the door was open, and furniture sat in front of an empty fireplace. A few used wine glasses cluttered side tables. Another room was filled with books on shelves that stretched to the high ceilings, and the hair on my arms prickled again as I caught sight of the dark, leather-bound tomes. I didn’t want to know what was in those pages.

  The voices led me down the corridor and around a corner that opened into a small vestibule flanked with a giant pair of double doors. I stopped dead, my heart pounding, and pressed myself back into the shadows. A young vampire woman passed through the vestibule and disappeared into the ballroom beyond.

  It looked like a ballroom, anyway, or maybe a banquet hall. I could only see a sliver of the room from my place in the corridor, but it was clear that the space was enormous and the ceilings were high and shadowed. Classical music in a minor key was playing from within, mingled with the sound of voices, and everything inside was lit with the dim red glow of candles.

  Footsteps padded behind me. I spun around, but it was only Brendan and Alec, creeping along in my wake. I held a finger to my lips. Alec peered over my shoulder, squinted, and then crouched and tilted his head. I had no idea what he was doing, but then he turned back to Brendan and me. He put two fingers on his other palm and walked them like legs, and then mimed them stepping up an invisible staircase. I shook my head in confusion, but Brendan waved his hands to catch our attention and beckoned us back down the hallway.

  He led us into a small alcove I hadn’t noticed before. It was dark, and I’d assumed it led to another room with a closed door. But the shadows gave way to a narrow staircase, one I had missed without his werewolf senses of sight and smell.

  We darted up it as quickly as we could without risking noisy footfalls and stepped out into another corridor. I immediately understood what Alec had been staring at. To the right, closed black doors lined the hallway. But to the left, stone lattice windows looked down and onto the grand hall. The gloomy red light from the hall filtered through the lattice, casting eerie red patterns on the opposite wall.

  Brendan took a few steps forward and dropped to a crouch. He tilted his head, listened, and then sniffed the air. When he was sure the coast was clear, he waved us forward.

  “There’s no one up here,” he said, his voice barely audible.

  Alec was already standing up against one of the windows, watching the scene below.

  “She has a throne room?” he whispered, sounding somewhere between incredulous and disturbed.

  The idea was cringeworthy and sounded exactly like Sienna. She’d always been a little too eager to remind me of her role as the appointed future Stiletto. For her, it hadn’t been about following a family legacy or emulating our incredible grandmother. It had been about power, and I wondered if things would be different if Grandma or Mom or somebody had realized her motivations sooner.

  I could only imagine how thrilled Sienna was with her position now. Below us, in a hall lined with long tables and filled with vampires talking in small groups, Sienna was the queen. She had a literal throne, a giant sculpture of a thing carved of black-stained wood and deep-crimson velvet. Attendants stood on either side of her. She held out a hand. and one of them gave her a glass of something that might have been wine and might have been blood.

  Then I tensed as I realized that Rowan was standing in front of the throne. Her hands were bound behind her back, and Sienna was ignoring her completely and talking to a woman off to one side instead. And then the woman stepped up onto the dais and clapped.

  The musicians in the corner brought their notes to a close, and the dozens of conversations in the room died down. The vampires turned to face the dais, and I bit my lip and strained to listen.

  “The last of the clan has gathered,” the woman said. She had the kind of voice that could fill a room like that, and her ringing words seemed to reach every corner. “Close the doors.”

  Someone did, and the click of the heavy latches echoed through the hall.

  “Bring out the queen’s trophies,” she said.

  Another, smaller door opened on the other side of the room. A tall vampire with broad shoulders entered, followed by a string of people bound together with steel shackles.

  The woman at the front of the group glared daggers at the guard as they passed. My knees turned to pudding, and my blood ran ice cold and then hot and then cold again. I pressed my face up against the lattice and blinked, hard, trying to force the image to fade.

  But it stayed solid.

  Grandma.

  27

  “You’re okay,” Alec whispered. He put a hand on the small of my back. The touch was just enough to bring me back to reality.

  But this was reality. Grandma was there at the front of the line, looking a little worse for wear but as strong and angry as when I’d seen her last. And Mom was behind her, with her dark hair bound in a tight braid and her shoulders drawn proudly back. And behind her—I counted their heads, searched their faces, strained to see the face of the smallest child who was being carried in the arms of a vampire.

  They were there. They were all there.

  Tears jumped to my eyes, and my skin tingled, and it took Alec wrapping his arm around me and pulling me in to keep me from collapsing completely.

  “It’s them,” Brendan said, as if he could see the way my brain couldn’t quite accept what was there in front of my eyes. He put an arm around me, too, and then he and Alec tried to subtly jostle each other away from me.

  This was enough to bring me back, and I swallowed a sudden hysterical laugh and swatted them both away.

  “Come on, guys,” I whispered. “Read the room.”

  Joy swept through me, an irrepressible feeling that made me afraid I was going to start screaming, and so I bit my knuckle instead and focused in on what was happening below.

  I couldn’t give in to happiness. Not yet. It ran the risk of making me stupid, and I’d need all my wits to get out of here with them in tow.

  “This just became a rescue mission, didn’t it?” Brendan said.

  It wasn’t a question, and I didn’t bother with an answer. I leaned forward until my nose pressed against the lattice.

  Sienna stood, her gown pooling around her just as it had back at the club. She was wearing the same dress here, but now she had on a necklace dripping with rubies and was crowned with a matching tiara. She surveyed her assembled subjects—I couldn’t think of them as anything else—and held up a hand.

  “Tonight a new member will be born into our clan,” she said. Her voice echoed through the room.

  I could barely catch Rowan’s profile from here, so it was impossible to tell how she might be feeling. She stood up straight, and she didn’t fidget or seem like she was trying to find a way to run.

  “State your name for the assembled clan,” Sienna ordered.

  “Rowan Hunter,” Rowan said.

  “You seem surprised to see our prisoners,” Sienna said.

  Rowan hesitated. “I believed they were dead. Yes, I’m surprised.”

  “Is it a happy surprise?”

  Rowan was silent for a long moment. I held my breath, and then Rowan seemed to straighten a little.

  “I’m glad they’re alive,” she said. “It doesn’t change my decision.”

  “You only wanted to join me because you thought Scarlett didn’t have it in her to lead.”

  Mom shifted a bit in her shackles, though I couldn’t make out the expression on her face from here. My shoulders tightened as I silently urged Rowan to find the right words.

  “This feels like a trap,” Brendan muttered.

  Alec shushed him.

  “I have the utmost respect for Nelly Hunter,” R
owan said.

  My shoulders tensed a bit more as Rowan nodded toward Grandma, whose face was unreadable.

  “She recognized my potential when I was young and adopted me into her family. I’ll always be grateful for the home we shared.” She looked at Sienna, emphasizing the we. “But I’ve felt like I didn’t belong in the coven for a long time now. I definitely trust Nelly more than I trust Scarlett. I also can’t ignore that she managed to get herself kidnapped twice in the last year. I think she was a strong leader once. But she’s getting old.” Rowan’s shoulders lifted and fell as she sighed. “My decision hasn’t changed. I think you’re the better leader. I want to follow you.”

  Sienna put a hand to her heart, and I had no idea whether she was touched or just sarcastic.

  “That makes one member of my old coven with common sense,” Sienna said. “My own mother wouldn’t follow me here, but you did. That counts for something.”

  Rowan nodded, but Sienna wasn’t done.

  “But I demand commitment. You swore your loyalty to the Daggers once, too, and see where you are now.”

  I scoffed at the irony and the arrogance, but Rowan stayed calm.

  “I swore allegiance to the line of succession in place during my initiation,” she said. “I’m still loyal to the end of that line.”

  Brendan nudged me. “She is still on our side, right?”

  I didn’t answer. I couldn’t tell.

  But I knew Rowan, and I’d decided to trust her.

  “I’m not giving up on her just because she knows how to think on her feet,” I muttered.

  Sienna put a thoughtful finger to her lips. “I have to be honest,” she said, and I bit back a snort. “The Daggers are devious. This might all be some trick.”

  “It’s not a trick.”

  “Then you’ll be willing to prove it,” Sienna said.