Stiletto Read online

  Her voice hitched a little bit. I kissed the top of her head and kept rocking.

  “It was a spell,” I said. “A powerful one. Not even one of the grown-up Daggers would have known the counter-spell. But you were brave and strong and didn’t listen. How did you manage not to listen?”

  “I ran,” she said. “Into the house. But I could still hear her no matter where I went. So I hid in the parlor and plugged my ears and just kept saying tick tock tick tock to myself really fast.” She sniffled and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “I was looking at the grandfather clock, and it was the only thing I could think of.”

  “That was smart.”

  “And then after a while I didn’t hear her voice anymore, so I checked outside, but all the other girls were gone. And I was scared she would come back and maybe I wouldn’t be able to say tick tock fast enough, so I went to the attic since that’s farthest away from the door outside.”

  I exchanged glances with Mom, whose furious eyes betrayed the calm expression on her face.

  “I brought a lot of food with me,” she said. “I remembered my survival training and made sure I had a lot of food and water. And I’ve been sneaking water out of your bathroom at night,” she added, glancing up at me with a slightly guilty expression.

  All this time, all these sleepless nights, she had been only a few rooms from me. I hugged her tight.

  “Staying hydrated is important, especially when you’re on a mission where you have to hide out like that,” I said solemnly.

  “You’re a real Dagger,” Mom said, leaning forward.

  Alev’s mouth quirked up in a little smile. The front door banged open, and footsteps pounded into the foyer.

  “We’re in the kitchen,” Mom called, and I barely had time to let go of Alev before her mother was in the room and snatching her out of my arms.

  Poppy burst into tears and squeezed her daughter so tightly I thought Alev might suffocate. Mom glanced at me and nodded toward the door. I didn’t need telling twice. I slipped out of the room and pulled out my phone to give Grandma an update.

  19

  Alev’s return seemed to light a fire under the mansion. Getting one child back was something to celebrate, but it also made it clear how much better it would be to have all the children back, and we couldn’t get through a dinner or conversation in the hallway without someone coming up with a new idea.

  Most of the ideas were terrible, and none of them would work, but it felt like only a matter of time before the right plan would break through.

  We had plenty to do while we waited. Grandma had put in an order for silver bullets, and the coven’s gun range membership was getting more use than it had in years. Rowan was busy trying to devise clever charms made of garlic, and several of the teenagers had started experimenting with the grow lights we used to keep conservatory plants alive during the gloomy winters in the hopes that maybe artificial sunlight would work just as well on vampires as the real thing.

  None of these strategies besides the silver bullets were quite as successful in real life as rumors and legends made them out to be, but I encouraged every suggestion anyway. Sienna had an army of vamps at her command, and whatever clever strategies the Daggers came up with could only help.

  Brendan had taken our cause to heart, too, and had werewolves patrolling the grounds around the clock. Whenever it was time to go handle Sienna and anyone who had her back, he assured me, the Wildwoods would be ready.

  “We’re the best allies you could have in this fight,” he’d said, when I’d first told him about Sienna’s vampires.

  I’d studied enough magical beings to have already had that thought. Vampires and werewolves were ancient enemies. The law-abiding ones managed to get along well enough in public, but it was a biological fact that vampires had almost allergic reactions to werewolf scratches.

  Unfortunately, it worked the other way around, too. Vampire bites could cause nasty problems for humans and witches, but werewolves were especially susceptible. I’d heard of wolves dying within hours from a single untreated bite, and, unlike infected humans-turned-undead, werewolves never came back.

  “We’re your allies, too,” I’d reminded Brendan. “We’re in this together.”

  We were focused but not hasty. The children I’d heard at the arena had sounded all right—not home, not safe, but comfortable enough that they’d been willing to accept graham crackers and demand movies. Whatever Sienna’s plans, they didn’t seem to involve murdering the girls.

  Not as long as they could be used as bait.

  But Sienna was no longer part of our coven, and she didn’t fight her impatience as hard as we did. The night she reappeared, it took only moments for Alev to sound the alarm.

  Rowan and I were doing dishes after dinner when she started screaming in the hallway.

  “Tick tock tick tock,” Alev shouted. A moment later, she burst into the kitchen, wild-eyed and with her fingers shoved in her ears. “She’s here again and trying to make me go!”

  I turned off the water and listened, hard, but couldn’t hear anything besides Alev hollering tick tock and water dripping into the sink. Rowan frowned at me, not sure how to respond, and then soft footsteps pattered outside the kitchen.

  I grabbed a dishtowel and ran into the foyer, drying my hands as I went. Camellia was there, with Peony toddling behind her. They stared up at me with fear written all over their small faces but kept marching toward the door.

  I wrapped a hand around the charm hanging from my necklace and sounded the silent alarm to the house. Instantly, doors banged overhead, and voices began calling out names and barking orders.

  Rowan scooped up Peony, who seemed torn between cuddling in and wriggling away, and I grabbed Camellia from behind. She struggled, but in a half-hearted way, like she was struggling against herself as much as me.

  “Start screaming,” I said right next to her ear. “Scream like your life depends on it.”

  She opened her mouth and let out a blood-curdling shriek. This startled Peony into tears, and that was good, too.

  I glanced back at Rowan. “Do you hear anything?” I shouted over Camellia’s screams.

  She shook her head as Ginger thundered down the stairs behind us.

  “Get them to the basement,” she shouted. “We’re collecting the others.”

  I nodded, and we wrestled the girls toward the door leading down to the basement playroom. Camellia stopped screaming once we were on our way down the stairs, and I shook her gently and ordered her to keep making noise. She did, the screams giving way to recitations of her times tables and then the lyrics to some obnoxious song all the younger girls had been obsessed with lately.

  “Good girl,” I said into her ear as I shoved her into the playroom. Rowan slammed the door shut behind us. Most of the Daggers and children who were home were already here, and we handed Camellia and Peony into their care.

  Mom opened her mouth to say something, and then Maple, one of the younger teenagers, gasped as though she’d been punched. A slack look came over her face, and then her eyebrows and the corners of her lips twitched.

  “I hear it, too,” she whispered. She started walking dreamily toward the stairs.

  Rowan grabbed her, but by then she wasn’t alone. Another of the teens, Ember, tried to shove her way past us and to the door, and Adamine looked at me.

  “She needs us to go outside,” she said calmly.

  I stopped her as she stepped forward, and she yanked her arm away from me and scowled.

  “I have to go,” she said. “We all do.”

  And then I heard it, too, a subdued voice that sounded like music.

  Come outside, she said. Come and play. I don’t want to wait anymore.

  One of my feet lifted itself and took a step. It didn’t feel so much like I was walking as that the door was moving toward me.

  I had to go. The voice needed me, and it was better to obey.

  My legs weren’t under my control, and neither were
my hands, but I still had my voice. I took a deep breath and screamed like I hadn’t screamed since I was a little girl having contests with Autumn and Sienna to see who could be the loudest.

  The voice in my head faded, drowned out by my own shrill shrieking. Suddenly I could think again.

  “She’s trying to reach everyone,” I shouted to Mom as Cerise’s face softened and she stepped toward the stairs. I jumped between Cerise and the door and shoved her back.

  “Start shouting,” I said.

  The order wasn’t necessary. My scream had frightened a few of the younger children, and a couple of them had burst into tears. Feisty little Flynn had decided to take it as a challenge, and started screaming, too.

  It helped, a little. The combined noise of my shouting and Camellia’s screamed lyrics and Peony’s sobs and Flynn’s excited shrieks took the edge off the ethereal voice in our heads. I would have laughed at the absurdity of the situation if I hadn’t been so angry.

  Sienna was still speaking, out beyond the boundaries of Grandma’s property, but I couldn’t make out the words anymore, and my legs were my own.

  “We need to go deal with her,” I shouted. “But we need noise. A lot of it.”

  “I’ll go get my speakers,” teenaged Sorrel hollered. She raced up the stairs, fingers in her ears and mouth pouring out a steady stream of “Blah, blah, blah, watermelon, watermelon!”

  Kamala dashed after her, reciting a poem at the top of her lungs.

  By the time we had secured the children with adult guards who could holler loud enough to keep control of themselves and the room, Sorrel and Kamala were back, both bearing speakers under their arms. They blasted music through the house, the kind of cacophonous rock that Grandma couldn’t stand but Mom always sang along to. I brought up a different song on my phone and turned the volume all the way up, then waved a hand at the fire alarms posted in every room and sent them all to beeping.

  When the house was shaking so hard from the sound that dust fell from the light fixtures in glittering clouds, the Daggers lined up just inside the door.

  “You find her, you take her, and you don’t stop making noise,” Mom barked, voice almost lost in the din of the house but her lips easy enough to read.

  I nodded sharply, itching to run.

  Mom walked up the row we made. “You deal with her, and I don’t care how. If you see any of us under her spell, you get in there and scream until your sister gets a hold on herself.”

  It sounded easy enough. Mom flung open the door, and we poured onto the lawn, a rush of women screeching like banshees who’d lost their minds.

  Sienna lingered at the edge of the property, just beyond the gate. She watched in amazement for a brief moment, and then she took a step backward and was gone.

  “After her,” Mom ordered.

  Ginger and Cerise were already halfway to Ginger’s car. They blasted out of the driveway, kicking up sprays of gravel with their tires, and disappeared down the road.

  But they were too late. I knew it. They’d realize it soon enough.

  The house was still shaking with noise, but the sudden screaming in my head, the sound I hadn’t even realized was there until it was gone—that sound had disappeared, and Sienna along with it.

  20

  Brendan and Alec came barreling out of the forest a moment after the car’s taillights had disappeared, Cate on their heels.

  “We heard—sounds—voices,” Alec panted.

  The wolves didn’t get out of breath easily. Now all three were doubled over but still ready to fight.

  “Sienna,” I said.

  I rested my hands on my hips. Behind me, the house continued to screech and beat and vibrate. Impatient with it all, I waved a hand back in its direction, and at least half the noises fell silent.

  “What did she do?” Alec asked at the same time Brendan growled, “I will murder her.”

  They glanced at one other like they were just looking for a chance to take the first swing—at Sienna or each other, it didn’t much matter.

  I got the feeling Sienna had interrupted more than just the coven’s evening.

  “She didn’t do anything,” I said. “Not this time. Not successfully.”

  “But she tried?” Cate said.

  “She tried.”

  I walked back to the house, filling them in as I went. It didn’t take long; it seemed they’d been waiting for something like this.

  I’d known most of the coven and the children were safe in the basement, but it was still a relief to actually count heads and realize that Sienna truly had gotten away with nothing. Most of the young children seemed frightened or overexcited from the evening’s events, and we were still trying to calm the lot down with hot cocoa when Grandma got home.

  I realized, when she entered the kitchen and almost ran into half the coven plus some Wildwoods, that no one had gotten a chance to let her know what was happening. Mom updated her while I sat with Rowan and the Wildwoods and tried to think of how we could have captured Sienna instead of just scaring her off.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Grandma’s face harden as she listened to Mom. They exchanged a few tense words, and then Grandma swept out of the room, Mom right on her heels.

  “I’ll be right back,” I muttered and darted after them.

  Ginger and Cerise had noticed what was going on, and we all gathered in the parlor.

  Grandma rested her hand on the mantlepiece, then snapped her finger. Flames burst into life in the grate, and she watched them for a long moment, then turned to us.

  “We’re going after her,” Grandma said. “Now. Tonight.”

  “She’ll know we’re coming,” I said.

  It felt weird, to be the one urging caution, but I didn’t have to try to squeeze into the uncomfortable role for long.

  “I’m fed up with subtlety and plans,” Grandma said, her voice sharp in a way I’d only heard a few times before. “She came to my house, not once but twice. She threatened my family. She has our little ones. Enough is enough.”

  “I’m coming with you,” Ginger said, and Cerise leaned forward in agreement.

  “Me too, obviously,” Mom said.

  “Same,” I said.

  But Grandma shook her head at me. “We can’t have the whole Stiletto line gone. You stay here and guard the house. Ruby tells me you acted fast and saved everyone in the house. I need you here in case she tries again.”

  I swallowed my objections and nodded.

  It would be a hell of a lot more fun to go into a vampire-infested Orbs stadium, spells firing, but being a Dagger meant going where I was needed.

  And I could protect the house.

  The realization that I could—that I had—flooded me with warmth. I felt stronger, more rooted to the ground, as though I’d grown an extra backbone and it went deep into the earth, keeping me steady in the face of anything Sienna could throw my way.

  The feeling wouldn’t last, but it might get me through tonight.

  “Get the Wildwoods on patrol,” Grandma said. “Not around the whole property; obviously that hasn’t been doing a damn thing. I want the wolves around the house and their den, and for the love of the goddess, make sure they have loud music to keep them company.”

  She walked around the room while she made plans with Mom and Ginger and Cerise, her feet shifting constantly as though she couldn’t bear to hold still. Saffron, the oldest of the three Cardinals, and the Dagger closest to Grandma in age and friendship, agreed to stay at the house to support me, and so did the other Cardinal, Cherry. The rest of the Daggers remained in the kitchen, away from any word of what we were planning.

  “I don’t want word getting out until we’re gone,” Grandma said. “We’re not going in blind, but it’s pretty close, and if things go wrong, I don’t want the entire coven getting wiped out at once.”

  She spoke in a matter-of-fact voice that did nothing to acknowledge the weight of her words.

  If she wasn’t going to acknowl
edge them, neither was I.

  My heart pounded the small group mounted their broomsticks on the front lawn, and I ignored that feeling, too. Mom gave me a quick hug and then pushed me back toward the house.

  “Stay sharp,” she called, and then she kicked off. Aside from the squelch of her boots against the dark lawn, the movement was silent, which was why they’d chosen to go by broom in the first place.

  Their black silhouettes grew smaller against the heavy charcoal gray of the nighttime clouds. I went back into the house and locked the door.

  It was a long night. If I’d known what was to come in the morning, I would have prayed for it to last just a little bit longer.

  21

  I knew how to pull an all-nighter, and I’d done it plenty of times before as part of my Dagger and Carnelian duties, but I never quite got used to the way my skin seemed to vibrate from all the caffeine or the way my eyelids felt like they were coated in sand every time I blinked.

  Rowan was drowsing on a loveseat in the parlor, with little Peony asleep in her arms. Seven-year-old Alhambra had refused to sleep in her room and instead brought her blankets down to the parlor, and she and Camellia were asleep in a tangle with their feet sticking out from under the covers. Blaze was still awake, scrolling through her phone and twitching at small noises, and Roux had been appearing in the doorway and then disappearing for a few minutes before coming back to check on us for the last four hours.

  Outside, the first dusty lavender smudges of dawn appeared above the trees. I went to the kitchen for another cup of coffee, then came back to the parlor and stood at the window as the gray autumn morning took shape.

  I checked my phone, as if I could have possibly missed it buzzing with a message, then played with my necklace.

  The clouds brightened to the soft color of silver pearls, and still, they didn’t come back.