On the fifth evening, someone knocks on my door.
“Hi, Misery.” It’s Mick—the older Were who was talking with Lowe at the ceremony. I like him a lot. Mostly because, unlike my other guards, he doesn’t seem to want me to go stand outside and get struck by lightning. I love to think that we bonded when he took his first night shift: I noticed him slumping against the wall, pushed my rolling chair into the hallway, and bam—instantly BFFs. Our three-minute conversation about water pressure was the apogee of my week.
“What’s up, friendly neighborhood warden?”
“The politically correct name is ‘protective detail.’?” There is something off about his heartbeat—something dull, a slight drag that’s almost despondent. I wonder if it’s related to the big scar on his throat, but I might be imagining it altogether, because he smiles at me in a way that turns his eyes into a web of crow’s feet. Why can’t everyone be this nice? “And there’s a video call for you, from your brother. Come with me.”
Any hope I have that Mick will take me to Lowe’s office and leave me alone to snoop around dies when we head for the sunroom.
“Ready to come back?” Owen says before “Hi.”
“I don’t think that’s an option, if we want to avoid . . .”
“Pissing off Father?”
“I was thinking full-on war.”
Owen waves his hand. “Ah, yes. That, too. How’s marital life?”
I’m very aware of Mick sitting across from me, intently monitoring everything I say. “Boring.”
“You got hitched to a guy who could kill you any second of any day. How are you bored?”
“Technically, anybody could kill anybody, anytime. Your obnoxious friends could pull out a garrote on you tonight. I could have poured triazolopyrimidines in your blood bags a million times over in the past twenty years.” I tap my chin. “As a matter of fact, why did I not?”
Something flickers in his eyes. “And to think that we used to like each other,” he murmurs darkly. He’s not wrong. Before I left for Human territory, every Vampyre child who chose to be a dick about my soon-to-be Collateralship tended to encounter curiously karmic events. Mysterious bruises, spiders crawling in backpacks, mortifying secrets bared to the community. I’d always suspected it was Owen’s doing. Then again, maybe I was wrong. When I returned home at eighteen, he seemed less than happy to see me, and he certainly didn’t want to associate with me in public.
“Can you please just be terrified to be living among the Weres?” he asks.
“So far, Humans are worse. They do shit like burning the Amazon rainforest or leaving the toilet seat up at night. Anyway, anything you need from me?”
He shakes his head. “Just making sure you’re still alive.”
“Oh.” I wet my lips. I doubt he gives a fuck about whether I continue to exist on this metaphysical plane, but this is a good opportunity. “I’m so glad you called, because . . . I miss you so much, Owen.”
A stutter of incredulity flashes on his grainy face. Then understanding dawns on him. “Yeah? I miss you, too, honey.” He leans back in his chair, intrigued. “Tell me what ails you.”
Every Vampyre in the Southwest knows that we are twins, if only because our arrival was originally celebrated as a dazzling source of hope (“Two babies at once! In the prestigious Lark family! When conception has been so difficult, and so few of our young come by! All hail!”) and later briskly swept under a thick rug of truculent stories (“They murdered their own mother during a two-night labor. The boy weakened her, and the girl dealt the final blow—Misery, they named her. More blood flowed on that bed than during the Aster.”). Serena had known, too, when I first introduced her to him after she pestered me to meet “The guy who could have been my roomie for years, if you’d played your cards better, Misery.” They’d surprisingly hit it off, bonding over their love for roasting my appearance, my clothes, my taste in music. My general vibe.
And yet, even Serena wasn’t able to shut up about how unbelievable it was that Owen, with his dark complexion and already receding hairline, was even related to me. It’s because where I take after Father, he . . . well, I suppose he looks like Mother. Hard to say, since no pictures seem to have survived her.
But whatever the differences between Owen and me, those months sharing a womb must have left some mark on us. Because despite growing up with fewer interactions than a pair of pen pals, we do seem to understand each other.
“Remember when we were children?” I ask. “And Father would take us to the forest to watch the sun set and feel the night begin?”
“Of course.” Neither Father nor the army of nannies who looked after us ever did anything like it. “I think of it often.”
“I’ve been reminiscing about the things Father would say. Like: That thing I lost. Do you have any news about it?” I shift smoothly between English and the Tongue, making sure not to change intonation. Mick’s eyes glance up from his phone, more curious than suspicious.
“Ah, yes. You used to laugh for minutes and say, I have not. She hasn’t returned to her apartment—I’ll be alerted if she does.”
“But then you’d get mad because Father and I weren’t paying attention to you, and wander off on your own, grumbling about the oddest things. Let me know if that changes. Have you been talking with the Were Collateral? Has she mentioned anything about Loyals?”
He nods and sighs happily. “I know you’ll never believe it, but I always say: I have no contact with her. But I’ll see what I can do. Father always loved you best, darling.”
“Oh, darling. I think he loves us equally.”
Back in my room, I pull out my computer, wondering if I could pilfer a Wi-Fi chip off someone’s phone. I fuck around a bit, writing a flexible script to scour Were servers that I might never be able to use. Like always while coding, I lose track of time. When I look up from my keyboard, the moon is high, my room is dark, and a small, creepy creature stands in front of me. It’s wearing owl leggings with a chiffon tutu, and stares at me like the ghost of Christmas past.
I yelp.
“Hi.”
Oh my God. “Ana?”
“Hello.”
I clutch my chest. “What the fuck?”
“Are you playing?”
“I . . .” I glance down at my laptop. I’m building a fuzzy logic circuit seems like the wrong kind of answer. “Sure. How did you get in here?”
“You always ask the same questions.”
“And you always get in here. How?”
She points at the window. I stride there with a frown, bracing myself against the sill to look out. I’ve explored it before, in my desperate quest for some unsupervised espionage. The bedrooms are on the second floor, and I’ve checked multiple times whether I could climb down (no, unless I got bit by a radioactive spider and developed suction cups on my fingers) or jump out (not without breaking my neck). It never occurred to me to look . . . up.
“Through the roof?” I ask.
“Yes. They took away my key.”
“Does your brother know you’ve been climbing like a spider monkey?”
She shrugs. I shrug, too, and go back to my bed. It’s not like I’m gonna tattle her out. “Which one is it?” she asks.
“What?”
“A spider monkey. Is it a spider that looks like a monkey, or a monkey that looks like a spider?”
“Hmm, not sure. Let me google and—” I pull my computer onto my lap, then remember the Wi-Fi situation. “Fuck.”
“That’s a bad word,” Ana says, giggling in a delighted, tickled way that has me feeling like an improv genius. She’s flattering company. “What’s your name?”
“Misery.”
“Miresy.”
“Misery.”
“Yes. Miresy.”
“That’s not . . . whatever.”
“Can I play with you?” She eyes my laptop eagerly.
“No.”
Her pretty mouth curves into a pout. “Why?”
“Because.” What are we even going to do? Long division?
“Alex lets me play.”