Iron Kin: A Novel of the Half-Light City (4 page)

“As a matter of fact, I do have another appointment this evening,” I said.

“Anyone we know?” Guy asked, head tilting like his glass. His eyes, paler than his brother’s, were suddenly coldly intent.

“I doubt it. She doesn’t move in these circles.” I lied glibly. No need to bring the Kruegers up at this point. If I learned anything useful about them, I would pass it on, of course, but until then what the DuCaines didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. I didn’t have the patience for hashing over whether or not I should risk a trip to Beast territory tonight.

Guy relaxed, mouth twitching. “I should have known.”

“Don’t tell Holly. She wants me looking after Regina.”

“Reggie’s doing very well,” Simon said. “Holly hovering over her isn’t going to help her.”

I tipped my glass in his direction. “I’ll let you tell Holly that. If you dare.”

“I’ve said as much to Lily.”

Braver man than I. I didn’t understand how or why, but Holly and Lily were friends. Or friendly, at least. A wraith befriending a half-Fae former spy. A dangerous combination. “Oh yes? What did she say?”

“That fussing made Holly feel better and that Reggie would put her foot down when she wanted to. And that we should stay out of it.”

We all sat silently for a moment, none of us wanting to contemplate crossing Lily.

Guy roused himself first, setting his glass down and leaning forward. “You won’t have to stay here until the end of the ball anyway,” he said. “Holly and I are staying here tonight and Mother has invited Reggie to sleep here as well.”

“Good,” I said with a nod. “Which brings us back to the topic at hand. Why am I here?”

“We want you to be part of the human delegation,” Guy said bluntly.

Brandy burned my throat as I coughed. “Me? Why?” I’d known they wanted to use my visions to their advantage, but I’d never expected this. It wasn’t completely unheard of—or against the rules—for members of other races to be included in a delegation, but it was unusual. Including someone like me, who didn’t even strictly belong to any race, would be even more unusual. Not that that would stop Simon and Guy from doing something if they decided it was right.

“We need every advantage we can muster, Fen,” Simon said. “Anything you see might help us.”

I swallowed as I regained my breath. “No.”

“Why not?” Guy asked. His voice had deepened, cooled. Not a good sign.

But still, was he seriously asking why not? Why not put myself in the very center of whatever it was that was coming? A healthy sense of self-preservation for a start. Feeding information to the DuCaines under the table was one thing. Being an acknowledged member of the humans’ side of the fight was another altogether. “We agreed that we would keep our association . . . quiet.”

Guy tilted his head at me. “We all knew that you would be discovered at some point.”

“Hasn’t happened yet.” I was stalling. Truly, I hadn’t wanted to think about what would happen if someone ferreted out the truth of what I was up to. I’d been telling myself no one would. Apparently I’d been happy to believe me.

Fool
.

“I don’t think I would be particularly helpful,” I said. I gestured toward the wall closest to the ballroom. “In crowds, my sight is less than reliable.” I wasn’t going to mention the pain. Not just yet. Not if I could talk my way out of this without giving myself away.

“Don’t you care about what happens?”

“I care about what happens to me,” I said. “And mine.”

Guy’s eyebrows lifted. “If ‘mine’ includes Holly, then she’ll be at the negotiations.”

Of course she would be. She’d thrown in her lot with Guy’s, for better or worse. And her skills as a spy and someone familiar with the players of the Night World would no doubt prove an asset to the humans. But just because she’d lost her head, that didn’t mean I had to volunteer to lose mine.

But what would she and Reggie think of me if I didn’t?

The brandy suddenly soured in my mouth.

I put down my nearly empty glass, then rose. “I need time to think about this. Now, if you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, I promised Reggie a dance.”

For a moment I didn’t think they were going to let me go, but neither moved as I crossed the room. I kept my pace slow and steady, not giving in to my urge to run from the building. I didn’t think I had heard the last of this particular request, but for now at least I was still free.

* * *

The night air was cool as I stepped out through the double front doors several hours later and crossed the marble portico, feeling the weight of the visions ease like a change in weather. I let out a breath of relief. There was still a thunder in my head and flames flickering at the edges of my vision—after almost five hours surrounded by hundreds of people it would take a while for the visions to retreat—but it was easier to bear.

The second and third brandies I’d downed after leaving Simon and Guy helped somewhat . . . just enough to make the world feel a bit detached, as though I was part of the mist dampening the cool night air.

I sucked in a few more breaths, clearing my head. I still had Martin to deal with, after all. I checked my watch. I had paid the driver of the hackney to return for me at two thirty. I was about to discover if I’d thrown my money away.

The semicircular drive that curved around the front of the house was empty except for one thing.

Saskia DuCaine.

She stood on the bottom step, watching the front gates. A dark cloak hid the pink dress, but her hair was uncovered and gleamed in the misty light. I could only see the side of her face, as she was half turned toward the house, or the warmth from the gas lamps that hung from wrought-metal poles and chains fastened to the marble portico above her perhaps.

I hesitated, debating whether I should attempt to remain unseen. Moving closer would only bring the visions back, plus she wasn’t the type of girl who loitered with men in the dark. I was surprised there wasn’t a servant waiting with her now. Perhaps she was sneaking away too. It was early for her to be leaving her own family’s party, but who was I to judge when I was making a break for it myself? The thought of her giving her family the slip made me like her even more than I did already.

I squelched the sentiment hard, but it refused to vanish.
Stupid, Fen
. Even Holly had warned me off this girl. A warning that right at this moment, the brandy seemed disinclined to heed.

After all
, it said,
it was only gentlemanly not to leave her standing out here unaccompanied at such an hour. It’s not safe out here
. Of course, I didn’t imagine that Saskia DuCaine was headed off to a rendezvous with a pack alpha, or anybody else for that matter. Well-bred human girls didn’t do that sort of thing. No, she was probably trying to make her curfew at the Guild. If the Guild had a curfew. A safe destination, the Guild of Metalmages. Much like the drive of this house was, most likely, perfectly safe. Still, the stupid side of me set free by the alcohol latched on to the excuse to walk to where she stood.

“Miss DuCaine,” I said politely as I reached her side.

She jumped a little, then made a noise of apology as she turned to see who had spoken. A smile curved her lips briefly. “Technically the correct form of address is Prentice DuCaine.”

“I stand corrected.” I swept a bow, not sure why I felt the urge. “Prentice DuCaine. What are you doing out here all by yourself?”

I waited for the visions to crowd me, but it seemed that the iron was enough to deal with just one person and the air around her stayed almost clear. Flames flickered over her head but they were fainter. Much fainter. And really, flames around a metalmage were to be expected.

I was tempted to push, to look again and see what was to be seen now that her futures weren’t tangled and blurred by those of everybody else in the ballroom, but I stopped myself.

“Waiting for my ’cab,” she said. “It’s late.”

“Likewise my hackney,” I said. “Perhaps something is slowing their travels.”

“I hope not,” she said, frowning. “I have to be up early.”

Whereas I was unlikely to see my bed before dawn. A timely reminder that we were from two very different worlds. I took another breath of that cooling, calming night air. “I’m sure they won’t be long.”

She raised an eyebrow at me. “Exactly how sure?”

I mirrored her eyebrow lift. “I can’t see them turning the corner down the street, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Pity.” She scratched idly at the back of her hand, then made an exasperated face and tugged off her gloves with impatient movements. Once her hands were freed, she shook them, flexing the fingers slowly before stretching her arms out before her. “Sainted earth, that’s better.”

A red weal marred the skin on the back of her right hand. A burn?

“Did you hurt yourself?” I didn’t reach to touch her. One didn’t take the hand of nice young ladies alone in the dark.

“It’s nothing. I was just a little careless.” She made a fist, then dropped her hand to her side. “It will be fine tomorrow.”

Looking at the angry red mark, I wasn’t so sure of that. Burns hurt—I knew that much. I thought of all the time she must have spent tonight with men’s hands pressing on the burn through her gloves as she danced. She’d either numbed it up with something or she was tougher than she looked. Something made me suspect the latter. “You should get Simon to look at it.”

She flicked her fingers in a gesture of dismissal. “We have healers at the Guild.”

“Then you should get one of them to look at it.”

The exasperated look returned to her face. “You sound like my brothers.”

I wasn’t sure if that was insult or compliment but before I could ask, a ’cab chugged through the gate and came to a steaming, heaving halt before us. I stepped down and reached to open the rear door.

“Prentice DuCaine,” I said and, unthinking, stretched out my hand to help her into the cab.

As her fingers touched mine, the thunder in my head disappeared, the flames flicking at my vision snuffed like candles. Stunned, I stepped back, releasing her hand, but before I could speak, the ’cab took off and she was gone.

“Did Saskia leave?” It was Holly.

I started, eyes still staring at the gate where the ’cab had turned and rumbled out of view. Had I imagined it? That sudden respite from the visions?

They were back now, back as soon as I had let go of Saskia’s hand, rising around me like shredded ghosts once more. I reached for my wrist to press the iron closer.

“Fen?” Holly’s voice sounded concerned.

I shook myself, trying to break the trance. There was no logical explanation for the touch of Saskia’s hand stopping my visions. I must have imagined it. “Yes. She left in a ’cab just now.”

“And you?” She tilted her head, eyes shining bronze gold in the gaslight, matching her dress. The unusual color didn’t distract from the worry they held.

I shrugged. “Reggie said she was staying the night here with you.”

“She is.” Her tone suggested that wasn’t the point.

“She had plenty of partners in there.”

“You said you’d stay.”

“I—” I turned back to the gate, my palm tingling with the remembered sensation of Saskia’s skin. “I have somewhere I need to be.”

“Fen, you’re not going to do something stupid, are you?” Her voice held more than a hint of censure.

My hand clenched, sensation fleeing. I turned back to Holly. “Such as?” I asked silkily.

She jerked her head toward the gate. “She’s not one of us, Fen. You can’t toy with someone like her.”

“Guy is hardly one of us,” I pointed out.

“I’m not toying with Guy.”

“You were when you first started.”

“It’s different.”

“How?”

“She’s human. She’s grown up with all this.” Holly gestured at the pillars that supported the domed portico. At the expensively intricate gas lamps and impeccably manicured topiary standing in enameled pots at their feet. It was a long way from the back alleys of the border boroughs, from the sweaty, stuffy attic rooms above the brothel where our mothers had worked, from hunger and learning survival the hard way. A long way from the childhood Holly and Reggie and I had shared.

“Too good for a gutter rat like me?” I couldn’t quite keep the anger from my tone. Holly was supposed to be on my side. Had always
been
on my side before now. Until Guy had come along.

“I think she could hurt you,” Holly said softly, stopping my anger in its tracks. She was worried about me, not about what I was going to do. Or maybe a little of both.

“What makes you think I’m even interested?”

Holly laughed. “I know you, Fen.”

“Do you?” I tilted my head at her. We’d shared that childhood and had kept each other safe in the years since then, but she was leaving our world now. Joining Guy’s. Keeping secrets.

She looked hurt and I regretted my temper. “Sorry.” I took a deep breath and pressed my fingers into the base of my skull where brandy and the visions had joined forces to make my head ache like hellfire.

Holly’s gaze followed my hand, narrowing as if she wanted to see through my shirt to the chain beneath. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

I shrugged.

“You have to do something about it, Fen. You can’t just drink yourself unconscious every night.”

“Why not? You don’t seem to approve of my other choice of distractions.”

“Screwing the entire female population of the border boroughs won’t help either,” she said tartly. “You need to learn to control your visions.”

“And would you recommend I go groveling to one of the packs or to the Veiled Court for that? Just whose slave should I become, Holly?”

She looked away, mouth twisted. “You’re going to kill yourself.”

“Then I’ll die free.”

“Don’t even say that.” She blinked rapidly, hugging herself, and I cursed under my breath. Holly had lost everyone except for Guy and Reggie and me. I didn’t want to be her next loss.

But nor was I willing to find the type of cure she recommended. My mother had been a whore, selling her body in lieu of any other talents; her life, after my appearance, governed by the demands of Madame Figg and the threat of being cast out into the streets. If I was going to sell myself, then it would be on my own terms and I would be the one to profit from it.