Nameless: A Tale of Beauty and Madness (4 page)

I
T WAS DUSK BY THE TIME
N
ICO SHOT THE
I
VRIELLE
through the slowly opening iron gates, barely avoiding taking off his side mirror. The pavement, shiny black and freshly sealed every summer, rippling with almost-visible defenses, was a ribbon between torch-burning trees, their leaves on fire with fall. Cami stared at the bandage—so white, Nico had done a good job wrapping it up. Then he’d taken down three shots of whiskey and calf and played for money the remainder of the afternoon, getting more and more worked up.

He locked the brakes, skidding to a stop, and Cami heaved an internal sigh. There was Mr. Stevens on the front steps, a thin stick in a dusty black suit, his slicked-down gray hair glinting a little as the sunset died.

“Just in time.” Nico kept the engine idling, his foot on the brake. “And look who’s here to greet us. My, my.”

Awkwardly, she grabbed at his shoulder with her bandaged hand. He checked, caught in the act of reaching for the door handle. His profile, with its proud nose and sullen mouth, didn’t change.

“Nico.” It was a miracle, something came out right. “P-please.”

“He’s gonna have my ass for taking you out.” His chin set.

“I’ll—”

“Yeah, you’ll work on him. I know. It’s okay.”

It’s not okay, the way you look is not okay.
“He l-l-loves—”

“I’m
disappointing.
We’ve had this conversation. The ghoul’s waiting, you’d better go on in.”

Stevens can’t be a ghoul. He’s not even dead.
She got the string of words together inside her head, let them out. “P-papa wants you t-to have a ch-childhood.” Why couldn’t he
understand
?

“I don’t know if you noticed, babygirl, but I’m not a kid.” He sighed, heavily, and some of the tension left him. “You go in. Have Marya take a look at that hand, too. I’ll see you later.”

“Nico—”

He cut her off. “Go
in
, Cami. I’ll deal with Papa. It was my fault anyway.”

Oh, for Chrissake.
But there was no arguing with him when he was like this, so she shrugged, leaned over, and gave him a peck on the cheek—at least he looked happy with that—before she popped the lock and the car door.

Stevens looked a bit green—of course he would be worried, it was dusk. The sun was actually touching the horizon, and of course Nico would feel it. He probably had judged their arrival time within seconds. Just to get close to that edge.

Stevens would feel it too, Papa’s attention becoming heavier as the sun sank.

Her schoolbag slipped, and she hitched it higher on her shoulder. Nico carefully waited until she was clear before he gunned the engine and peeled toward the garages.

Cami sighed.

The steps were wide and low enough that they gave her little trouble, and this close you could see the surface of the front door shimmering a little, like the haze above hot pavement. “Hi, S-s-stevens.” She dredged up a smile—one she hoped wasn’t as tired as she felt.

“Good evening, Miss Camille.” The sticklike consigliere bent at the waist, and his seamed face under its skullcap of oiled hair held no glimmer of expression.

Nico was just being nasty. Stevens wasn’t like a ghoul; he was just . . . closed off. He was a blank door to everyone. Except probably Papa, who called Stevens the perfect well. You could drop secrets in and hear the ripple, but then they vanished.

I never want to find out.
“Nico p-picked me up f-from sch-school,” she offered tentatively, as he turned and preceded her to the massive doors. “W-we g-g-got—”

“Mr. Vultusino requested your presence.” Stevens touched the door, running his spidery fingers over it. The house’s defensive haze shimmered, and the
chuk
ing sounds of locks and bolts sliding free fell out toward the circular driveway. “Mr. Nico was instructed to bring you directly home.”

Oh, no.
Cami stifled a sigh.
Why does he have to do this?
She dug for some kind of excuse to offer, but Stevens didn’t pause, simply bowed again and indicated the door. Hitching her schoolbag up higher, she trudged in to face the music.

She was still no closer to figuring out how to smooth the waters as she climbed the carpeted stairs—these gave her no trouble either, their edges weren’t so sharp—to the red hall. Trigger was at Papa’s door, of course, and he tipped her a lazy salute. Against the rich crimson of the carpet and the heavy velvet of the muffling drapes, his baggy chinos and blue and red plaid jacket were just shabby enough to be familiar and comforting. “How was school, Miss Cami?”

Pretty boring. We did icecharms in Potentials class and some of the beakers shattered, that was about it.
It would have been nice to talk, but her tongue was a knot of anxiety by now. She shrugged, ducking her head and spreading her hands. Then she mimed inquisitiveness—pointing at the door, raising her eyebrows.

“Nico’s in for it,” Trigger said shortly, and stepped aside. “He was supposed to bring you straight home. Sir wanted to see you.”

Well, I’m here now.
Another shrug, this one with a helpless motion.

“I know.” Trig patted her shoulder, awkwardly. “God only knows what Nic was thinking. If he
was
thinking. Go on, sweetie. He’s tired today.”

He’s always tired. I wish . . .
But she knocked, softly, on the carved-oak door. The knob was red crystal; she turned it gently and stepped in.

The windowless room was lit only by a single candle on the nightstand. It smelled of copper, bay rum and leather, and the faint everpresent tang of illness and age. For a moment her throat closed to a pinhole, the air dead-still and the dark wainscoting and heavy maroon brocade wallpaper threatening to fall in until they crushed all her breath out.

It passed, and she inhaled deeply. The closeness was scary at first, but then it was comforting. Like a heavy coat on a cold day.

Nothing bad could happen to her here.

Papa Vultusino, close to the culmination of the Kiss, lay on the massive four-poster bed. His barrel chest rose and fell steadily, and his breathing wasn’t a wheeze today. The candle flickered as she approached, and he opened his eyes.

Propped on the snowy pillows, he didn’t
look
very ill until you got close. Then the red spark in his pupils, strengthening daily, became apparent. So did the papery thinness of his skin, and the deep-scored wrinkles as well as the fine dry lines.

The Kiss took its own time, and it was burning away his mortality. When it finished he’d be one of the immortal Unbreathing, an Elder instead of a daywalker, and his only son would take his place as the living Vultusino of the Seven.

If Nico could just stay out of trouble long enough.

The chair pulled up to the bedside had a thick pink cushion and a straight back. The fireplace was empty, so he wasn’t cold today. That was a good sign. A large leatherbound book with yellowing pages lay open on the red silk comforter, and Papa’s wide capable hands—bony and spotted now, but still hard and solid—lay discarded on either side of it.

Those hands held all the gentleness in the world. She remembered Papa bandaging a scrape on her knee as Marya fluttered in the background.
Little girl sometimes need Papa to bind up the wound, Marya. Let me
.

Cami lowered herself down, gently. Her left hand was awkward with the bandage, but she scooped it gently under one of Papa’s, closed her other one over it. His skin was cooler than hers, and dry, calluses rasping.

The rasp reminded her of the wooden man, but she didn’t want to think about that. So she just patted Papa’s hand, watching his face as it shifted and the red spark dimmed a little.

He came back, bit by bit. Wet his lips with a paper-leaf tongue, and she glanced at the cut-crystal water pitcher on the nightstand next to the candle, rainbows shimmering in its angles. His hand squeezed a fraction—no, he wasn’t thirsty. His left eyebrow lifted a tiny bit, and he squeezed again. Very, very gently, with the strength of the Family that could injure or crush running in his bones, especially as he lay so close to the Kiss.

He could feel the bandaging.

Cami patted his hand once more, very gingerly. “It’s a-all r-right,” she whispered. Her stupid tongue wasn’t too bad in here. Papa had never told her to hurry up. He had always waited, with no trace of impatience. “J-just a scratch.” She decided to plunge right in. “N-nico b-b-bandaged it. D-don’t be m-m-mad—”

Papa’s eyebrows drew together, a faint thundercloud. Cami stopped. Listened to the dry hiss of the candle burning, to his breathing, to the absolute stillness.

She decided to risk a little more. “He w-w-wants you t-to be p-proud of him, Papa.”

Papa sighed.
If he only knew
, that sigh said, and Cami nodded in agreement.

Should I tell him about the wooden man? Maybe not. It’ll upset him, and he’ll be even madder at Nico.

So instead she told him about Potentials class and the shattering beakers, how Ruby’s of course had broken with a terrific crack and Cami’s own had crumbled into fine crystalline dust—proof that she had Potential, and further proof that it hadn’t settled yet. You could never tell where someone’s ability to charm would end up. Air, water, earth, sometimes fire, metal, wood, crystals and light, Affinities showed up generally about the end of puberty. Always assuming, of course, that you didn’t Twist.

Ellen’s beaker had turned into a solid jewel of water and glass, scintillating, and Sister Frederick’s Sainthood had nodded with warm approval, her apple-cheeks glistening.

Papa listened, breathing steadily, and she plunged onward, into the stupid paper she had to do. His expression lightened as she spoke, slow and halting, the stutter receding as she relaxed and he began to look a little less gray. His hand warmed too, and when she talked about the Reeve a different gleam entered his gaze. After a little while his hand loosened, and Cami picked up the bone comb on the nightstand. She set his salt and pepper mane right again with careful, gentle strokes, leaning over the bed and smiling every time she glanced at him.

It was just like crouching under his desk, in the long-ago. She would hide there, playing with his mirror-polished wingtips or just half asleep and listening as he made phone calls and attended to paperwork, Stevens murmuring advice or giving information in a monotone. Marya had turned the house upside down a few times looking for Cami until she started checking under Papa’s desk first; Nico had sometimes tried hiding there with her but was always summarily dragged out into the hall and sent back to his practices with Trigger.

A Vultusino man must fight
, Papa would say.
Go learn how.

Well, Nico had. Now Cami wondered if he would ever learn how to
stop
.

When she’d set his mane to rights and talked about Ruby and Ellie some more, and explained the current crop of High Charm Calculus problems, she took his hand again. Lifted it gently, and pressed it against her cheek. “I’m s-sorry I w-was late,” she whispered.

Papa was still for a long moment. His other hand lifted, slowly, and he patted her hair, very gently. Once, twice. She smiled, and his thin lips twitched in his still, pale face. The red sparks strengthened, and he gently took his hands away.

She rose, slowly, lit a fresh candle from the old one. Left both burning, and gave his hand one last squeeze before padding quietly to the door.

The hall was bright and oddly loud after the hush of the Room. She blinked, pulling the door shut, and found not just Trigger but Stevens too, standing poker-straight and staring unblinking at the mirror at the end of the hall, and Nico, who had changed into a light woolen suit, cloud-gray, and a maroon tie. His hair was slicked back, and his shoulders slouched just a little. He looked miserable, his chin set defiantly and the bloodring gleaming on his left middle finger.

The Heir’s ring, worn for formal occasions.

Uh-oh
. She brushed her hair back, tugged at her skirt, and basically stalled for a second or two. “H-h-he’s—”

“Expecting us,” Stevens said. The flat tone took on a richness, and the gaunt man’s dark face slackened a little.

Which meant Papa was inside him, looking out.

“Marya’s got your dinner, sweetheart.” Trig had folded his arms, and was staring at Nico. “Run along.”

There was nothing else she could do. But she dragged her feet, lingering a little so she could brush by Nico, hoping he could tell she’d done all she could. Before she was halfway down the hall the door had opened and closed behind Vultusino’s wayward son and his consigliere, and Cami flinched at the little snick of the lock echoing all the way to the stairs.

Outside the windows, dusk had finished falling into night, and a chill soaking rain pressed against the panes. The red-tiled kitchen was a relief, warm and full of the smell of tomatoes and fresh bread. “
There
she is!” Marya cried, spidery six-fingered hands on her ample hips and her hair floating fine around her head. Her ears came to high points through the dandelion-burst, and if that didn’t give it away you could tell she was fey by her eyes, black from lid to lid. “Naughty little girl out until dusk. Worrying us all to death, yes!”

For the first time that day, Cami’s shoulders relaxed completely. She stood still as the housekeeper enfolded her in a hug redolent of heat, clean cotton, and the peculiar muskiness that was just plain and simply
Marya
. Fey always smelled of the earth, at least the low ones did. High fey didn’t come out of the Waste, or if they did, it was only to make mischief or steal babies and leave changelings.

Passing from Waste to city was a fey trick, and one they never shared the secret of.

The feywoman clicked her tongue, brushing at Cami’s hair, examined the bandage critically. “And what is this? Trouble? Ah, Nico.” A long theatrical sigh. She could give Ruby lessons in the sigh department.

“W-w-wasn’t his f-fault,” she began, but Marya waved her hands.

“He
knows
better. Wild, that boy, just like a Twist.” Her eyes—no iris, no pupil, just sheer glossy darkness—briefly swirled with opalescence, oil on black water. Her blue silken dress fluttered, a sure sign of agitation. “And he probably took you to horrible place, and you—what
is
that, little thistledown? What did he do?”