Past the changing-house, down a leaf-shaded pathway, the slate pavers gritty and warm underfoot, she was almost clear when she heard a rustle.
It was the garden boy. He must have cut around the back of the changing-house, even though it was a tangle of thorny-wild rosebushes. Cami flinched, stared at the pavers, and hunched her shoulders.
“Hey.”
He was actually speaking to her. Mithrus, what was she supposed to do? She pulled further into herself, hunching more, and he’d somehow stepped right in her path.
“Hey,” he repeated, very low. Confidentially. “Princess girl. Can I talk to you?”
Oh, God. She weighed her options. Walking through him was one, but he might try to touch her. Retreating was a better option, but then Ruby would ask her what the hell and Ellie would probably guess what had happened and sooner or later Nico would find out—
Caught between several unappetizing alternatives, she had a wild idea of diving into the rosebushes pressing against the side of the path and the changing-house. There was no good reason for him to be talking to her, and if someone found out there would be trouble. Not just trouble but Trouble, underlined and in neon.
“Shit,” he muttered, just as Thorne and Hunter bailed around the corner.
“Hey, Cami, take us with you!” Bursting with energy and a haze of warm water, they splattered up to her, Thorne halting and shaking his head. Cami flinched from the spray of droplets, and the garden boy had vanished.
It wasn’t until later, pleasantly buzzed on honeywine and watching as Ruby leveled herself effortlessly into a clean skimming dive, that she realized she was almost disappointed about that.
SEVEN
TWO DAYS LATER, NICO WAS FINALLY WILLING TO TALK about why he was home from Hannibal. “There was some trouble. Fighting.” He lounged on paint-splattered carpet, the cut-crystal ashtray balanced on his stomach. “It’s just a couple weeks, Cami. It’s already smoothed over. And Papa wanted me home anyway. Something about . . . well, he’s worried about something in the city.”
She might have asked him about that, except she knew Nico wouldn’t tell her about anything upsetting or dangerous. She knew things, of course, picked up around the edges, heard in corners. You would have to be blind, deaf, and terminally stupe-Twisted not to overhear . . . things . . . in a Family house.
Right now, though, that wasn’t her problem. You keep picking fights and the Family might do something big to you. “I w-wish you’d b-be c-careful.” Rain swept the window, restlessly, false summer fled as if it had never been. Ellie was grounded again, the Strep using some bullshit something-or-another; Ruby’s grandmother had caught her sneaking out of her window at midnight so she was grounded too, and Nico was . . . Nico.
“Your tang’s all tungled again.” Nico propped his head up on a pillow dragged from his hacked-up bed and waggled his eyebrows. His suite had been in dark green, a Family Heir’s traditional color. Nico, however, had taken black spray paint and an edge to pretty much everything, and after a while Papa had told Marya not to repair or redecorate.
Marya obeyed, of course. But she also tried sneaking pillows and pretty things up to make Nico happy. Cami could have told her it was useless. When he was determined to be an ass, there was just nothing to be done about it.
“You’re mean.” At least she didn’t stutter over that. It was all she could say.
He ground out the Gitanelle and curled up to sit cross-legged, his eyes dark. “I’m sorry.”
It was the same conversation, started so many years ago. You’ll never be a pureblood! I hate you!
You’re m-mean, she’d yelled back, shocked at her own daring but on fire with the injustice. They were the first words she’d spoken since coming to live in the house on Haven Hill, and Nico had balled up his small fists. Coming home from yet another expensive boarding school for the winter holidays and finding everything suddenly arranged around another child hadn’t been high on his list of favorite things, and he’d even shown his baby fangs.
But Cami had flinched, her eyes widening, and Nico had immediately dropped his hands. He had stared, horrified, as she shrank back, his mouth falling open and his fangs retracting. Don’t . . . hey. Oh, hey. Don’t cry. Drawing himself up, little-boy proud. You don’t have to cry. I don’t hate you.
Marya had found them an hour and a half later, curled up together in a faded-rose, velvet-curtained window seat in the dim whisper-haunted library, Nico stroking Cami’s long black hair soothingly, both of them sleepy-eyed. Cami had blinked, slowly, and said M-m-Marya, pointing like a toddler.
That’s right, Nico had replied. Marya. Book. Candle. Nico.
M-Marya. B-book. C-c-c-candle. Nico.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “Mithrus. I don’t mean to be. Not to you.”
Everyone else, but not me? “I kn-know.” She was curled in the one leather chair he hadn’t taken a straight razor to, her special chair in his room. Big and wide, and deep enough for both of them as children, it was a smaller ship to sail rougher seas now.
Thunder muttered in the distance. The storm was sweeping in. Nico sighed, hauled himself up, and turned out the electric lights. He moved around, lighting candles and sticking them anyhow in a collection of holders or just in built-up wax charm-softened with a muttered curse.
Family didn’t Twist, like fey. There were other dangers—the sickness of too much Borrowing, the Kiss finding one of them unworthy, a faust’s terrible fire-breath doing what the sun couldn’t to daywalkers and Unbreathing alike. Also like fey, their Potential was a part of what made them . . . different, and they swam in it without worrying about anything toxic.
Except the Waste. They were human enough to have to worry about that, at least.
He knocked a chunk of wax down from his scarred wooden dresser, kicked it skittering across the room. Why shouldn’t I ruin things? he’d said, bitterly, once. None of it matters. It’s just stuff.
It m-matters, she’d replied. It’s b-b-beautiful.
Not to me. And there they had left it.
When he had enough candles lit to suit him, he crouched in front of the chair, watching her, mossy eyes dark. They played the game, holding eye contact for as long as possible, until their breathing melted together. When he shifted his weight she shifted too, and in a little bit he let out a long sigh and settled down on his knees. He leaned into the chair, and Cami stroked his hair, pushing her fingers through the dark waves. The candleflames danced like charmer’s foxfire, and when she shivered he did too.
“Book.” His tone was soft, thoughtful.
“B-book.”
“Candle.”
“C-c-candle.”
“Nico.”
“Nico.”
“See? All better.”
Even if it wasn’t a real charm, it worked. “You’re so angry.”
“Born that way.”
Maybe you were. “We l-love you.”
“You do. Them? I’m just another piece to shove into the Seven.”
“They may not. If you . . . ” Her throat refused to fill with the words. She couldn’t imagine what they would do to him, but it would be dire. The “punishments” administered when he incurred Papa’s displeasure were bad enough.