Hands of Flame (22 page)

Kate led them into a kitchen-dining room at the back
of the house, where a bowl of cereal was growing soggy on the table. She picked it up and dropped into a chair, then gestured with her spoon. “There's water or juice if you want some. Or cereal. Or toast.”

Ursula gave her sister another hard look and went to fill a glass with water, handing it to Margrit. “Would you like anything else?”

Margrit curled the glass against her chest and shivered as a draft caught her. “No, this is fine, thanks. I ate breakfast before I came out here.”

“All right.” Ursula poured granola into a tub of yogurt and joined Kate at the table, inviting Margrit to join them. Feeling slightly overwhelmed, she did, and clutched her water glass as she studied the sisters.

They weren't identical, but nor did Margrit doubt they were twins. They looked to be somewhere in their twenties, younger than Janx and certainly younger than Daisani, though like them, there was something about their hazel eyes that hinted at more years seen than their faces acknowledged.

They shared a high roundness of cheekbone that must have come from their mother: neither Janx nor Daisani had any such roundness to their features. Kate's hair was a flawless shade of auburn, so perfectly caught between brown and red it was impossible to say one or the other dominated. Ursula's was black, reminding Margrit that she'd heard red hair was only one genetic marker off being black. Even though Kate was barefoot, they'd both stood taller than Margrit. Given that they'd been born in an era where the average height was considerably shorter than in modern day, that struck Margrit as unfair.

“So whose are we?” Kate said when she evidently thought Margrit had looked long enough.

Ursula rolled her eyes. “Don't be rude.”

Margrit, too curious to be cowed, shook her head. “I honestly can't tell. Don't you know?”

“Of course, but we hardly ever get to ask. What are they like?” This time, despite Kate's bluntness, even Ursula sat forward, a shard of interest changing the color of her eyes.

Surprise thumped through Margrit. “Alban hasn't told you?”

“Of course he has, but he's a gargoyle. Ow!” Kate glowered at Ursula, whose weight shifted again as she drew her feet back under herself. “This woman wouldn't be here if she didn't know about all of us, Urs.”

“Margrit,” Margrit said. “Margrit Knight.”

“I knew that,” Kate said with asperity. “You do know about us, right? You see?” she added in triumph at Margrit's nod. “So tell us about them.”

“Katherine, if she's here, she's got something more important to discuss than their personalities.”

“Oh, now I'm in trouble.” Kate rolled her eyes, making her look even more like Ursula. “She dragged out the full name. Mother got to do that successfully, not you, Urs.” She turned her attention back to Margrit, expectation lifting her eyebrows.

“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.”

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, explain
ing 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.

“Djinn. Someone followed me, knows where you are—” Urgency, not breathlessness, spluttered her words: the race down the block was nowhere near enough to wind her.

Fire blazed in Kate's eyes, deepening hazel to jade and then through to crimson. Her throat and ribs expanded, contorting impossibly as she drew in more breath than human lungs could conceive of. Wisps of blue smoke appeared, streaming around the corners of her mouth: inhaled, as though she drew heat from the air and turned it deadly.
Janx's
, Margrit realized in a bolt of triumph. She had no agenda tied to learning their parentage, but
knowing
, being the first
to
know, carried its own thrill.

Humans, she found herself thinking, were strange creatures.

Then, in a blur of speed, Ursula smacked a fist into Kate's stomach. The redhead's eyes bugged and she made a sound mixed between a burp and a hiccup that left her discombobulated. Ursula drew her lips back from her teeth, pure animal warning for her sister, then simply disappeared, leaving Margrit agape and Kate still wheezing for air.

Wind whipped behind Margrit. She twisted around, watching a dervish dig a hole in the front lawn, as though a miniature and highly directed tornado had been given the task of landscaping. Flashes of color moved within the whirlwind, moving far too quickly to actually be seen. Kate jolted forward, coming as far as Margrit's side. Without thinking, Margrit lifted a hand, stopping the other woman. Only after she'd acted did she glance at Kate, who lifted a sharp eyebrow at Margrit's audacity, but didn't continue on.

The funnel erupted, expelling a slender body so
quickly it had smashed into the brownstone wall before Margrit could fully register that something had moved. A column of air shot skyward and dissipated, and Ursula slid down the wall of her house to land in flower beds with a dull thud. Kate flowed to her side, the same graceful shift of a large creature's attention from one place to another that Margrit had seen repeatedly with Janx.

“Nothing to hold,” Ursula said groggily. Contusions were rising along the arm that had hit the wall and an already-purpling bruise ran down her cheek like overly dramatic goth makeup. “I couldn't get hold. He got away. Sorry, Kay. Sorry. I wasn't fast enough.” She put one hand against the brownstone and the other into Kate's, then shoved herself upward. Her eyes swirled in their sockets, dizziness overcoming her, and Kate caught her easily as she fell, scooping her into a bride's carry as though she weighed nothing.

“Nobody's fast enough to hold the wind.” Margrit heard wry sympathy in her voice as she stepped forward to offer a hand, though Kate clearly needed no help. “Are you all right? Should I—” Her own words caught up with her and she broke off, staring, then said, “Shit!” with so much enthusiasm she clapped her hands over her mouth. No one was fast enough to hold the wind, but Ursula Hopkins had done one hell of a job trying.

Kate gave her a steady look over Ursula's head. Margrit parted her fingers to whisper, “You're not twins.”

“Of course we are,” Kate said derisively. “We just have different fathers.”

 

The scornful comment followed Margrit the rest of the day. She'd accompanied Kate back into the house to
make certain Ursula was all right, but the twins had resisted her prying into their heritage. Margrit was torn between understanding and disappointment: even if the prurient details were nearly four hundred years old, they still made a good story. They left at the same time Margrit did, none of them under any illusions: the djinn knew both where the twins were now, and whose children they were. They would be unlikely to disappear again, and so their only choice was to decide quickly how to establish themselves, and to do so.

Margrit tried to put those questions out of mind as best she could for the morning, taking second counsel on the trial she'd missed the first full day of. She'd been right: her coworker was well prepared, her presence more psychological reassurance than necessary. Watching him, she was more than aware that her failure to attend the day before had wiped out any confidence she might have provided. Guilt stung her, bringing a wash of tiredness that fed into a cycle. Part of her mind rang with recriminations: she should have been there to do her job. More profoundly, though, lay the awareness that, though she wasn't entirely comfortable with it, she felt more strongly about protecting and guiding the Old Races than she did about doing good for her own people. The two might be one and the same at some juncture, but for now, she had chosen Alban and his people's battles as her own, and had to trust that her coworkers and others like them could fight humanity's wars.

She had wanted to change the world. She'd simply never imagined she might do it in the ways she'd been offered.

Her cocounselor was one of several who took her to a celebratory, bittersweet lunch when the judge called
recess. Assuring her he could handle the case, after lunch he sent her back to the office to finish packing and to find a small bouquet of daisies and pink flowers. A card lay at the vase's base, and Margrit read it, then went back to the front desk to smile at the receptionist.

“The pink ones are sweet-pea flowers,” he said, before she asked, then smiled sheepishly. “Sweet peas and Michelmas daisies. They're for farewells.”

“Sam,” Margrit said in genuine surprise and delight. “I didn't know that. You know flower symbolism?”

Sam's smile grew even more sheepish. “Me and Google, anyway.”

Margrit laughed and pulled him from behind his desk to steal a hug. “Thank you. They're beautiful, and I'm going to dry them when I get home so they'll last.”

“That's not very farewell-like.” Sam grinned and returned the hug. “We're going to miss you.”

“I'm going to miss you, too.” Margrit sighed and passed a hand over her eyes. “I'm going to miss this job. This new thing for Mr. Daisani will give me a lot of opportunities I wouldn't otherwise have, but I'll miss this place.”

“Well, we'll take you back if you decide the air up there is too rarefied for your Legal Aid lungs.” Sam bumped his shoulder against Margrit's, sending her back to her packing. “You
are
coming out tonight, right? The party's planned. We'll see you off in style.”

“I'll be there for a while, at least. I've got another thing later tonight.” And there were waters to smooth with her housemates, if that was at all possible. Margrit shook herself and said, more firmly, “Right after work. I'll be there.”