Stiletto Read online

  A tiny voice in my head spoke up: Are we sure it’s not worse?

  Ginger waved at me to follow her, and we walked quickly toward the side of the house, where Mom was crouching and staring intently at something on the ground.

  “We called everyone for dinner,” Ginger said. “Half of them never showed up. Seven of the children are gone, and the others have no idea what happened to them. The wolf patrol didn’t see anything. Their alpha has the Wildwoods scouring the forest now for something they might have missed.”

  Her voice hardened, and I knew that, if the werewolves had missed something, I would have a hell of a time trying to convince my sisters that whatever happened to the children hadn’t been their fault. We’d come so far in uniting our families; I couldn’t let it fall apart now.

  “What about locating spells?” I asked.

  “That’s what your mother’s doing now,” Ginger said.

  We stopped next to Mom and waited silently. A handful of runes lay on the wet grass in front of her, and she picked them up, took a few steps forward, and cast them again. They landed, showing the scratchy figures for a moment, and then the runes’ surfaces shifted in quick succession to other symbols. I couldn’t interpret them—I wasn’t in the right headspace for it, and I’d never had Mom’s affinity for runes anyway—but after a moment, she glanced up.

  “The answers are mixed,” she said, voice tight. “There’s confusion. But I don’t think they’re here.”

  “If they’re not here, where are they?” Ginger demanded.

  “If I knew that, I’d be halfway to them already,” Mom said.

  Ginger closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them again, she was calmer and ready to take orders.

  “What do we do now?”

  Mom looked at me. “Call your grandmother and tell her to come home.” She turned to Ginger. “Send a few women to help with the wolf patrol. Our magic might catch something their noses missed. Have everyone else meet me in the parlor for assignments.”

  Ginger nodded sharply and was gone in an instant. My knees wobbled, but one frown from Mom had me straightening my shoulders and taking deep breaths.

  This was no time to fall apart.

  “Go the parlor,” she said. “Tell them I’ll be there in a moment. The other children are gathered in the kitchen right now; send them to the playroom and have Rose guard them. Have Rowan go with her. She’ll do a better job than of any of us at getting the little ones to calm down.”

  My boots squished into the lawn with every step across the grass. I gathered Daggers as I went, passing on Mom’s orders. Fury rose in me to replace the panic of a moment before.

  The children were gone, and I had to save them.

  9

  “We found one trail leading from the road to the gate,” Brendan said to the gathered Daggers and Wildwoods. They filled the parlor, nudged against one another, and covered every upholstered surface and open patch of floor. “But it didn’t go past the gate or around it.”

  “We found the same,” Roux said. “I performed a shadow spell on the trail.”

  I perked up. A shadow spell was a difficult piece of conjuration. Only a few members of the coven had the aptitude to pull it off.

  “Sienna’s image materialized by the road,” Roux said to a room that had gone silent to listen. “It was her, no question. She walked up to the gate, stood there for maybe a minute, and then went back to the road. She said something, but whatever it was, she went to some lengths to hide it. The shade’s footsteps made sound, but not her lips. Her face didn’t look right; the mouth kept blurring.”

  “Do you think she used a spell to get in?” Mom asked, and Roux shrugged.

  “Seems logical, but there’s no way to tell.”

  “What about the children?” Grandma said from where she stood by the fireplace. “Did the shadows show them?”

  Roux shook her head. “Just her. Whole thing took less than two minutes.”

  “We should have had a guard on the gate,” Ginger muttered next to me.

  I agreed. And we should have had someone watching all the children at all times. And we should have locked the whole mansion down like I’d wanted to in the first place. And, and, and—it was impossible to count the number of things we should have done, and equally impossible to go back in time and change what couldn’t be fixed.

  “We have to move forward,” I said to Ginger.

  She pursed her lips and nodded, still watching Roux closely, as if her body language might give away an extra clue.

  “That’s enough for us to have our answer.” Grandma drummed on the mantlepiece with her crimson nails.

  “We should have done more,” Poppy said.

  She looked on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and I couldn’t blame her. Both her daughters, Coralie and Alev, were missing.

  Poppy spun on me, her eyes wide. “Why were you gone?” she demanded. “All your plans, and we still had two of the Stiletto line away from the mansion at once. You should have stayed to help protect the house.”

  I flinched. Her words mirrored the ones already running on a loop in my head.

  “This isn’t Scarlett’s fault,” Alec said from the doorway. He leaned against the frame with his arms folded.

  A few other Wildwoods glanced at him, then shuffled, clearly not wanting to get involved. I shot him a grateful look.

  “No, it’s not,” Cherry said.

  Two of her daughters, Rosie and Flannery, had also been taken, and her support hurt almost more than Poppy’s accusations. I couldn’t stand being surrounded by these mothers. Their missing children had been my responsibility, and now their pain also felt like mine.

  “We took precautions,” Cherry said. “They were the wrong ones. We can’t pin the blame on any individual. We made these choices together.”

  “And we need to figure out our next actions together,” Mom said. “I suggest we begin by putting all our efforts toward finding Sienna. If we find her, chances are good we’ll find the children.”

  “Chances are good I’ll tear her limb from limb,” Ginger said under her breath.

  I couldn’t have said it better myself. Out of all the emotions jostling in my chest for space, rage was holding its own.

  I wished I’d killed Sienna when I’d had the chance. Back then, the thought of killing one of my sisters as if she was just another monster for the Daggers to destroy had felt like sacrilege. Now, I could destroy her without a second thought.

  I couldn’t get the image of Sakura, age two, out of my head. She was tiny, fierce and funny and full of demands, and I wanted to scream at the thought of her being out there with Sienna.

  Thoughts of what my cousin might be doing to those children crowded my head, and I pushed the tide of thoughts back. I couldn’t think about the pain and fear they had to be experiencing. I couldn’t imagine what would happen to them if Sienna managed to dig up more werewolves who liked to feast on human flesh. I couldn’t think about any of it or I would shut down entirely.

  I had to think about the task at hand, and then the next.

  Right now, that meant figuring out a plan.

  “I’ll help with the search,” I said, raising my hand. “Some of Joseph Brick’s nightclubs and mesmer parlors are still active, and I’ve been keeping tabs on their locations and new management. I’ll start there.”

  Mom nodded at me, and then Roux raised her hand and said she’d team up with a Wildwood volunteer and perform more shadow spells on any trails they found. Then Cerise offered to set up traps for Sienna in spots around the city, on the off chance we were lucky enough to have her walk into one.

  I listened carefully to each idea, all the while aware of how heavy my heartbeat felt in my chest and conscious of the thoughts running in circles through my mind. What if we didn’t find them? What if we did find them, only to discover the worst had already happened? What if Sienna came back and managed to take more of the girls?

  By the time the last
assignment was made, I couldn’t stand sitting there any longer. I jumped up the second we were dismissed and headed for the door. I already had one leg over my motorcycle before Alec called out to me to wait.

  He jogged up to me, his hair rumpled.

  “Don’t bother with the clubs,” he said. “I have a better idea.”

  I paused, willing to listen, but he seemed to be taking forever to speak. I waved at him to hurry up and out with it, and he shoved his hands in his pockets.

  “So listen, I didn’t want to bring it up with everyone else there,” he said. “It’s kind of sensitive. But you know I’m a magician, right? Or at least I was born one before I was turned as a kid, and so I’m mostly werewolf now but still kind of magician?”

  I waved at him again. His Glimmering identity felt beyond irrelevant right now. My hands itched against the handlebars, and I jiggled my foot on the far side of the motorcycle as if I could shake off some of the impatience crawling its way across my skin.

  “I still have contacts in that world,” he said. “I mean, I spent years wanting nothing to do with my pack, so I got pretty involved in the magician scene, right? And I have a good idea that Sienna was using magician magic when she kidnapped the girls. That’s why Roux’s spell couldn’t tell what she was saying.”

  “Magician magic is all about disguise and deflection,” I said. Comprehension dawned, not enough to let me really understand what he was saying but enough to believe he had some kind of point worth following.

  “If my understanding of how your magic works is right, Roux would have been depending on some kind of sympathy between Sienna’s magic and hers,” Alec said. “And that worked, insofar as Sienna is a witch and her very presence is, you know, witchy. But when she spoke—I don’t think that was witch magic.”

  “So why magician magic?” I said. “Why not sorcerer or faerie or whatever?”

  Alec shrugged. “I’m just hoping. But it seems like it might make sense. Joseph Brick was a magician. He’s still in prison but he might have taught her something, right?”

  That was good enough for me. I slid forward and nodded at him to get on the bike behind me.

  10

  “Right here,” Alec said, pointing over my shoulder.

  I turned the bike right, onto a quiet street lined with comfortable houses. Alec directed me into a cul-de-sac, then pointed to a pale-blue house with a tidy lawn and neat display of autumn decorations on the porch.

  I frowned. “You sure this is the right place?”

  Glims weren’t supposed to stand out, but it seemed like most of them couldn’t help it. I’d never seen a faerie dwelling that didn’t have a riotous garden or an abundance of stained-glass wind chimes cluttering up the place, and no self-respecting witch would live somewhere more than a week without putting up some kind of moon or pentacle imagery, no matter how subtle.

  But this place—the neatly clipped grass, the boring mailbox, the plain garage door—nothing about it said Glimmering.

  “Trust me,” Alec said.

  He’d gotten me this far. I shrugged and parked my motorcycle on the driveway.

  I noted with relief that the lights were still on. It would be late for guests, but at least it didn’t seem like the home’s residents were asleep.

  “We should have called first,” I said in an undertone as Alec knocked on the door.

  A dimple graced his cheek. “Already did.”

  Footsteps sounded, and then a woman opened the door. She looked every bit as suburban as her house, with generic blonde highlights in her shoulder-length hair and a pastel-pink cardigan over her plain white T-shirt. I shot Alec another skeptical look, but he was already smiling at her like they were old friends.

  “That was fast,” she said.

  Past her, I caught a glimpse of off-white walls decorated with the kinds of framed family photos that could have only come from a department store portrait studio.

  The woman took me in with a quick glance and opened the door farther with a smile that seemed pasted on. “Please, come in.”

  I hesitated for an instant, then followed Alec through the door. The woman closed it, flipped the lock—and abruptly, so quickly my mind couldn’t catch up, the house switched. The off-white walls were now wallpapered with antique bronze patterns of rabbits and ribbons. The ordinary ceilings had been swapped for pressed tin plates, and the family photos were still there but now in ornate copper frames and featuring people who were decidedly Glim.

  “Sorry about that,” the woman said. “I guess he didn’t warn you?”

  I turned and realized with a jolt that she, too, had changed. Her face was the same, but now her hair was slicked back into a low bun, and her lips were the same stunning red as her collared tank top. She laughed.

  “We’d never get any peace from the homeowners’ association if we flew our freak flag all the time,” she said brightly. Footsteps thundered on the ceiling ahead, and she leaned over the railing of the stairs. “Jeremy!” she shouted. “Grayson! What did I tell you?”

  “We’re going!” a child’s voice called back. It dissolved into giggles and then a scream, and the footsteps pounded back the way they’d come.

  The woman gave us a long-suffering grimace.

  “Excuse me, I have to go murder my children,” she said. “There’s food in the kitchen. Please, eat.”

  She took the stairs two at a time. I glanced over at Alec. He didn’t laugh—we were still too caught up in the kidnappings for that—but he did smirk in a way that got under my skin.

  “That’s Nancy,” he said. “She was my foster mom for a year after I left the pack.”

  I took another step into the home, noting the red velvet curtains at the living room windows and the gleaming bronze chandelier that hung above us.

  “You lived here?”

  “Lucky me, huh?”

  I didn’t know about lucky. It looked like a good place to take in a cabaret or get your fortune told, not like a house. But Alec seemed comfortable here, and he traipsed into the kitchen with me on his heels.

  The kitchen island’s surface, a brown marble threaded with gold, was covered with the leftovers from a recent dinner. A plastic sippy cup half full of milk suggested at least one of the kids who lived here wasn’t much older than Sakura or Coralie. My heart twisted in my chest.

  “All signs point to tuna casserole,” Alec said, lifting a sheet of tinfoil from a casserole dish. “You hungry?”

  I hadn’t gotten to eat before the crisis had hit, and I realized with a sudden pang that I could devour twenty tuna casseroles and still have room for dessert. I nodded at him and slid onto one of the tufted leather barstools beside the island.

  We ate in silence while I surveyed the kitchen. It was full of the ordinary countertop clutter of most kitchens: junk mail, an open box of cereal, and a blender with the lid missing. A few small toy cars were scattered across the island, and Alec pushed one back and forth absently on the countertop while he ate. I inhaled my food and, when I hesitated at taking seconds, Alec pushed the casserole dish toward me.

  “She’ll be thrilled if you finish it all,” he said. “Her youngest kid has been refusing to eat anything but dry ramen noodles for like two weeks now, and she’s starting to take it personally.”

  A while later, Nancy came back into the kitchen. A strand of blonde hair had fallen out of her bun, and she smiled grimly at Alec.

  “They’re in bed,” she said. “They’re pretending to be asleep. It’s very convincing.”

  She stood on the other side of the island and cleaned up while she spoke.

  “So what brings you here tonight?” She shot Alec an incisive glance. “This isn’t a social call.”

  “Sorry.”

  She waved a hand at him. “It’s fine, you’re busy with your fancy design studio and your sexy wolf pack and your—” She paused and looked me over. “Girlfriend?”

  “Nope,” I said, too quickly, and went back to my tuna casserole.

&nbs
p; Nancy shrugged and kept clearing the counters. “Your not-girlfriend, then. Well, I’m glad you’re busy. We little people don’t need attention.”

  Alec snorted. “Come on, Nance.”

  “No, it’s fine, it’s fine, nobody here’s been missing you.”

  She winked at me and dumped a few dishes in the sink.

  I finished clearing my plate and handed it to her. She turned on the faucet and squirted a bright purple jet of soap into the sink. A stream of hot water poured from the faucet, accompanied by billowing steam.

  The sink sprang to life in an instant. Acting on its own, the water shifted the plates around in the suds, and the steam formed hands that lifted the plates from the suds and rinsed them under the jet of water. More steam foamed around the plates after they’d been set on the dish rack, which seemed to dry them almost as soon as they’d been set down.

  I’d seen people wash their dishes using magic before, of course. But this was a new level of theatrics.

  Alec explained what had happened while the dishes did themselves and Nancy put them away with practiced movements. I felt like I should offer to help, but also got the impression I would be in the way.

  His explanation included telling Nancy briefly about my family and our feud with Sienna. He didn’t use our coven name, or reveal who anyone was besides me, but I still winced every time he danced around the subject. The coven of the Crimson Daggers was secret, even within the Glimmering world, and Alec knew that. He also seemed inclined to trust this woman implicitly.

  I could only hold my breath and go along with it.

  “We’re thinking that since Sienna was all cozy with Brick, she might have been using spells she picked up from him,” Alec said. “Or spells she bought from someone else in the magician community.”

  This seemed to mean something to both of them that didn’t land with me. Nancy turned off the water and propped her elbows on the counter.

  “You need help figuring out the spell?” she said.

  He nodded, and she bit her scarlet lip.