“Not really,” Grey said. The remnants of yellow crime scene tape fluttered in the wind as they ran by. “No one’s asked me for any of that.”
Laurent tried to minimize his mistake. Grey was always happiest when he felt connected. “Well, people probably think they already know you well enough to be direct. You were born here—I’m an outsider, remember?”
“Right,” Grey said, looking over his shoulder to the dark gap in the trees. “I’m sure that’s it.”
“What happened over there?” Laurent asked, nodding back at the dark space in the trees.
“I can’t see enough to tell,” Grey said, turning and running backward for a few steps to better see the crime scene. But all that was visible was the bedraggled police tape.
“Did you hear about that woman who was murdered and had all her finger bones removed? Maybe that was where she was found.”
“Huh,” Grey said. “Maybe.”
“So creepy, right? Like, who steals someone’s finger bones? That is, like, Brothers Grimm shit.”
“Seems like,” Grey said, turning back around.
“Anyway, back to strategy, do you have any advice?” Laurent asked. “Who I should trust, that sort of thing?” He could tell from Grey’s face that had been the right question to ask.
“Hard to go wrong following a winner,” Grey said.
“Merlin, you mean?”
“It’s the oldest House. That kind of history, that’s power and standing. Plus, Miles knows all the secrets, everything that goes on.”
“I thought your family hated him.”
“Miranda hates him. Point in his favor, as far as I’m concerned.”
Laurent laughed.
They finished the loop and slowed to a walk. “One other thing,” Laurent said. “I’ve been thinking it might be smart to challenge each other now, while things are still low-key.”
Grey coughed, spitting water on the ground. “What the fuck! Low-key? If you have too many losses, you don’t advance. One of us could knock the other out. Forget it.”
“It’s forgotten.” Laurent drank from his own water bottle. “This whole thing is so weird.”
“Weird or not, you better figure it out fast, and stop coming up with crazy shit like that.” Grey slapped his friend on the back and headed for his subway stop. “Fortune’s Wheel keeps turning!”
Laurent stood in the cooling air, the wind drying his sweat against his skin. Fortune’s Wheel did turn, and it didn’t always leave people on top. Sometimes it rolled right over them. Shaking the stiffness from his limbs, he started for home.
? ? ?
“Anything for me today, Henry?” Sydney asked as she crossed the lobby of her apartment building.
“Yes, miss.”
She stopped, raised a brow. She didn’t generally order things for delivery. The pool of people who knew her actual address was two, and she didn’t think Shara would ever use the postal system, so the question was more a habit than something she expected an affirmative answer to.
“Well, not a thing, miss, so much a person. She said you weren’t expecting her, and so she’d just sit right down and wait.”
Sydney shifted her weight back on her heels. She was definitely not expecting a visitor. Nothing had triggered her wards, but not every unpleasantry had to be caused by magic. It would be easier to protect Henry if she was closer to him. “She?”
“That’s right, miss. Right over there.”
The white-haired woman wore all black, perfectly tailored for her straight-backed frame. Her lipstick was as red as Sydney’s, and while the passage of time had marked itself on her skin, power and beauty went bone-deep beneath it. She rose from the chair, as poised as a queen. “Hello, Sydney. I’m Verenice Tenebrae.”
Sydney knew the name. And that was why her wards—keyed to magicians who used the magic that came from Shadows—hadn’t gone off.
“Thanks, Henry. It’s fine.” He nodded his acknowledgment, and Sydney walked closer to the waiting woman. She shaped a minor silence with her left hand as she did, making sure no one would be able to overhear their conversation. “Tenebrae. You’re the other Shadow who got out.”
“Indeed.” She inclined her head. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I was hoping we could talk.”
Now that she was closer, the signs of Verenice’s origins were unmistakable. Sydney saw them herself in every mirror: the way Verenice held herself, the lines of her spine and the awareness in her eyes. The magic that ran closer to the surface than it did in those who’d never had to be a channel for others. The ragged edges of her shadow. “There’s a very good bakery, about a block and a half away, if you don’t mind the walk.”
“I do love pain au chocolat. And you don’t want me in your apartment and you’re too diplomatic to say. I quite understand.”
Sydney said nothing because it was true. She didn’t want Verenice in her apartment. Shara had told her, when she left, to look for Verenice, had mentioned that the other woman could help her navigate the Unseen World. Sydney trusted few people to begin with, and trusted anyone Shara recommended even less. So she had not gone looking for Verenice, and while she wasn’t surprised to have been sought out, she wasn’t pleased, either.
She watched Verenice as they walked, but the older woman gave away nothing. It would have been a shock if she had. Shadows was nothing if not thorough in its training.
After they were seated, Verenice with hot chocolate to accompany her pastry and Sydney with rose and violet macarons, Verenice said, “My debt is paid. Fully. Shadows has no hold on me, and I have no loyalty to that place.” The last word bitter as salt. “I’m here for myself, because I was curious about you, not because Shara asked me to spy.”
“I’m hardly anyone worth being curious about,” Sydney said.
“Forty years,” Verenice said, stirring her hot chocolate.
“I’m sorry?”
“I left Shadows forty years ago. Before you were born, even. No one before me and no one in between walked out of those doors. You and I both know to a nicety what the other endured to be here. False modesty does not become us.” She looked up then, directly at Sydney.
“Fine. Then tell me how I can satisfy your curiosity.”
Verenice smiled. “I do like you. So precise. So careful. So much like I was. Though you want more, I think. No, don’t interrupt. I know it makes you uncomfortable that I know what you are, and you’d really rather not be here. You want to deny, to deflect, to try to draw one more layer of ‘don’t see me’ around yourself. I’d be willing to bet that the only reason you haven’t warded this conversation is that you don’t want it to be important.