“Janx eats up all the air in the room,” Margrit said. “Just by being there. It’s hard to breathe, as if your chest weighs a hundred pounds more all of a sudden. He likes to tease. Eliseo’s sort of more ordinary, except he bulldozes you to get what he wants and you’re kind of left wondering what hit you. They both subscribe to getting more flies with honey, but Janx is better at making people laugh. They’re lonely,” she said, surprising herself with the qualifier. “And they just learned that you survived.”
CHAPTER 23
Both women went still with a fullness that removed any question of their heritage. It wasn’t a gargoyle’s absolute immovability, but it went far beyond human, coming from their centers and moving out until they were wholly encompassed by it. Their gazes were locked together, giving Margrit the eerie sensation that they communicated wordlessly. Twins, she knew, were reputed to share each other’s thoughts and mental processes to a greater degree than other siblings. Adding nearly four centuries of practice to that made her imagine their ability to come to silent agreements was quite literally inhuman. A draft spun through the air, chilling Margrit as she watched the two.
Ursula, clearly the dominant of the pair, broke away and returned her attention to Margrit. “What happens now?”
The question, so pointed and pragmatic, surprised her. “I’m not sure. I don’t think anyone will come hunting you, if that’s what you’re worried about. The injunction against breeding with humans was lifted just a few weeks ago.” She hesitated, struck by the enormity of what she was about to say. “I think you’re basically full citizens now. You could be part of Old Races society, if you wanted.”
“And if we don’t?” Ursula asked, words weighted and cautious.
Margrit shrugged. “I don’t know. Janx and Eliseo are going to start looking for you now they know you survived. But you’ve got a three-hundred-fifty-year head start on hiding. You can probably keep it up for quite a while.”
“But not forever.”
More dourly than she intended, Margrit said, “Nothing is forever.” Ursula arched an eyebrow and Margrit passed her own moodiness off with a wave. “There are, what, seven billion people on the planet? I honestly don’t think that’s enough to hide among if Eliseo Daisani really wants to find you. He’s got unlimited funds, a great deal of motivation, and he’s faster than a bat out of hell. I think he’ll catch up with you eventually, and maybe even sooner rather than later. In fact, if you’re really unlucky, he’s already having me followed and knows where you are. Sorry,” she added to two near-identical expressions of shock. “I only just thought of it. I’m not that good at cloak-and-daggering.”
“What would you do in our position?” Ursula had evidently been voted spokeswoman in their unspoken discussion; Kate still sat wrapped in a thoughtful silence.
“I’d decide what I wanted from the Old Races and then present myself, fait accompli. Everybody is going to want something from you. You may as well start out as strong as you can.”
“When you say everyone…?”
“You can assume pretty much all the Old Races in the city know about you by now.” Margrit sat down, explaining how the twins had been discovered as briefly and thoroughly as she could, then outlining the chaotic state that had developed over the past few weeks. The twins absorbed her words with little more than occasional glances at one another, waiting until Margrit finished before Ursula nodded.
“We’ll consider your advice. And you won’t find us here again, Margrit Knight. Don’t bother looking.”
“Should I tell Alban anything?”
The not-young women exchanged looks again, Ursula finally replying, “Tell him we’ve gone home.”
“I will.” Margrit stood and found herself fighting the urge to bow slightly, as Janx might have done. “I’m glad to have met you. Good luck.”
“Thank you.”
“Were they glad?” Kate’s voice arrested her at the kitchen door. The auburn-haired woman sounded young and uncertain, as if preparing herself for a disappointment she didn’t think she could face.
Margrit turned back, one hand on the doorframe. “They were both furious with Alban for not telling them your mother had survived the fire. That you’d survived. They were…I don’t know if glad is the right word. Greedy. They were greedy for news of you.”
Kate nodded, and after a moment Margrit took that as her dismissal and slipped away.
She turned back at the street, looking at the twins’ home; looking at the other houses that stood straight and tall alongside it. There was nothing to hint that the women who lived at the corner house were anything less or more than human.
Four centuries of pretending. A shiver lifted bumps on Margrit’s arms. She had enough trouble with a few weeks of hiding and lying. Being condemned to a lifetime of it—more than a lifetime—was difficult to contemplate.
But that was what she was signing on for, if she wanted to make a life with Alban. It would be a lifetime of secrets and hidden worlds, and despite some bold words to Daisani weeks earlier, Margrit doubted that the Old Races would ever see the kind of emancipation that slaves once had. Slaves, at least, had been a part of society, ignorable but not actually invisible. It was far more difficult to bring fairy-tale creatures into the light of day and create for them a chance to survive long enough to build tolerance and acceptance. Margrit would be alone in a fundamental way, if she went with Alban.
Less fundamental, though, than what the twins had faced, perhaps. Daisani’s gift of one sip of his blood only brought health, not long life: he’d been very clear about that. She wouldn’t face the near eternity the twins had already lived, and the Old Races, at least, knew who and what she was. She might have to disguise her life from the human world, but she could belong, as much as any human could, within the hidden world she’d been shown. The twins had been cast aside from both, unable to share their true natures with humanity and forbidden to join the world their father belonged to. Unlike them, Margrit wouldn’t be forbidden either world, only forced to be cautious in both.
That, she thought, was a price she could live with.
A sharp gust of wind twisted around her as she finally stepped back from the gate, leaving the brownstone behind. Margrit tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, then slowed, suddenly too aware that the morning was still. Too aware that she’d felt a breeze’s touch repeatedly in otherwise quiet areas: cooling her in the subway, whispering around her in the twins’ home. Her voice cracked as she whispered, “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” and turned, watching the street as though she might be able to pick out an airy form nearby.
Then she was running, toes curled hard against the soles of her heeled shoes to keep them on her feet. Back toward the twins’ home, not because a solitary djinn—and she believed it was only one, too little shifting of air for more—not because one could endanger them physically, but because if she had been followed, if their location was known, then the balance had changed and there would be no hiding, not anymore. They would be tracked wherever they went, and perhaps used or manipulated, and the point, the whole point, it seemed to Margrit, was to allow these two women to enter the Old Races on their own terms and as their own people. Anything less was a failure.
She vaulted the fence rather than stop to unlatch the gate, and her heel dug into the dirt, clinging and threatening her ankle. Impatient with the human frailty that was her only natural legacy, she jerked her foot free and felt her ankle shriek in protest. For the first time she ignored it, trusting wholly in Daisani’s gift: there was no need to walk it off, no need to pretend that the injury wasn’t as bad as it felt.
Momentum, nothing more, lent Daisani strength. Her own speed was nothing like enough to knock down a sturdy front door, though the ruckus of her arrival drew both twins to the door fast enough. Kate jerked it open so hard the hinges protested.