“We have a problem,” said Calin.
“Where is she?” demanded Bex.
“Gone.”
“And you didn’t go after her?”
“Couldn’t,” he said. “She closed the door.” He nodded at the faint scar in the air as he said it. He might not have even noticed the echo of it in the dark, if he hadn’t seen the door with his own eyes, the place where it had come—and gone.
“So she did have it.” Bex tried to hide her surprise, but Calin saw it, memorized the arch of her eyebrow, the slight part of her lips. One day when I kill you, you’ll make that face for me. His mouth twisted at the thought, but Bex was already kneeling on the alley floor, unrolling a city map.
“What are you doing?”
“That lying little bitch owes me a finger,” she said, drawing a series of marks on the map. Calin had never bothered much with spells. The way he saw it, you could be decent at a lot of things, but only great at a few. He’d rather spend his energy on killing. Plus, a spell like this took the fun out of the hunt. And yet, as he stood in the alley, waiting for Bex or a better idea, he admitted, if only to himself, that a finding spell came in handy at a time like this.
He watched her pull the knotted lock of hair from her pocket, the one she’d cut from the girl’s head, and tug free a strand, dropping it into the center of the map. She said a few words and the marks and the hair caught fire, turned to cinder. This was the part, he guessed, where the cinders were supposed to point the way, to draw a line from them to the girl.
But they didn’t. They just sat there, waiting for a light breeze to blow them away.
“Anesh?” he asked, impatient.
Bex kept her eyes on the map, but he saw her shoulders tighten, hackles raising the way they did whenever she was mad. Normally he would have savored it, but his head was beginning to ache where it had met the shop wall, and he’d lost a perfectly good knife.
Bex was muttering to herself.
“Well?” he asked again.
Bex sighed. “For once in your life, you’re right about something,” she said. “We do have a problem.” She looked up. “According to this map, the girl’s not here.”
“Obviously,” he said, gesturing at the empty alley, but Bex was already shaking her head.
“She’s not just not here, you mindless lump of coal.” Bex swept the ash from the map. “She’s nowhere. It’s like she doesn’t exist.”
“Maybe you’re just shit at spells,” offered Calin. “Or maybe I killed her.”
He had seen the knife go in, right before the door slammed shut.
Bex shot him a dark look. “Let’s hope, for both our sakes, you aren’t that stupid.” She stood, staring down at the blank map for a long moment. “Fuck this,” she muttered, shoving past him. As she did, she made a half-hearted attempt to slide a dagger between his ribs.
Calin knocked the blade away.
“Where are you going?” he asked, trailing her out of the alley.
“We’re going,” she said, “to tell the boss.”
VII
WHITE LONDON
Everyone had the sense to let the queen go, except, of course, for Nasi, who trailed her up the spiral stone stairs until the hall below was out of sight.
Kosika wasn’t in the mood. “Go back,” she said as she passed the first landing. “I’d hate for you to miss the party.”
“You did not have to scare Reska like that,” said Nasi. “It was petulant, and small.”
Kosika rounded on her friend, the air tightening around them both. She hadn’t even meant to conjure it—lately things had begun to follow the shape of her mood, the curve of her temper. Nasi stiffened, sensing the change, but unlike the Vir, she didn’t retreat. Instead she continued up the steps, stopping on the one just below so they stood eye to eye. She studied the queen’s face. “Why are you so mad?”
Kosika’s gaze dropped to the stairs, the sounds of revelry rising from below. “The people down there are opportunists, following the current. Half of them knelt to the Danes before they knelt to me.”
Nasi shrugged. “If you punished every soul who bent their head as evil passed, there would be no one left to follow you. But there is a difference between fear and devotion.”
“Devotion,” muttered Kosika, sagging against the wall. “Forgive me if I’m in no mood to be paraded through the castle like a puppet.”
Nasi quirked a brow. “Last I checked, you had no strings. You cut them all away.”