was blood on the walls. But Mirabilis had sent Stanton away, alone and unprotected. What if Caul found him?
That thought alone was disturbing enough. But then a different thought, slanting at an odd angle to the first, disturbed her even more.
What if Caul meant something different?
What if the words weren’t a threat?
A Warlock of questionable dependability, half a sangrimancer …
Emily closed her eyes, shuddering at the memory of the magic Stanton had worked to cleanse Grimaldi from his blood … acrid words, hot swirling winds, long fingers making gruesome patterns in the dust. Of course it had been sangrimancy. She’d known it the moment she’d seen it. Any fool would have. But she’d pretended blindness. Not out of ignorance or naïveté, but because she …
Because there was nothing else she could do, that’s why. She’d pushed it out of her mind because it could not be considered at the time. Unless she’d been willing to follow the consideration through to its logical conclusion and leave him, walk away right then and there … and how could she leave him, after everything? After all they’d been through?
Half a sangrimancer …
What if Mirabilis had sent Stanton away because he didn’t trust him?
A sudden coruscation of light illuminated the room through the heavy silk curtains, followed by an echoing explosion that made Emily’s ears hurt. She buried her head deeper in the soft pillow. It smelled of honeysuckle and starch.
Well, I trust him, she thought fiercely. After all, she owed him that much. Maybe he did know blood magic, but that didn’t mean he was a sangrimancer, not even half of one. He’d been shot and almost burned at the stake … and there had been so many opportunities to redirect the situation to his advantage, if that was his true aim. To think him untrustworthy was ludicrous.
These attempts to construct a bulwark of certainty kept Emily’s brain feverishly active for a long time. But just when she thought there was no way she would be able to catch a wink of sleep that night, sleep reached up and caught her, folding her in blackness, dragging her deep.
Night. Low swinging lamplight.
She dreamed she was on the train, curled close to someone warm. She breathed pleasantly, until she realized that she was really alone after all.
She sat up, looking around herself. There was no other living creature on the train, just murky yellow light and the sound of a fiddle playing.
“Sweet, Sweet Spring.”
Moonlight through the train’s shutters sliced her white nightgown into strips. She looked out the windows at the rolling landscape. Aberrant jackrabbits were easily loping alongside, their long ears laid back flat, their eyes red and glowing.
There was a voice muttering around her … through her … in her …
But I try before!
It was a strange voice. Familiar. Unfamiliar. Masculine when she remembered it as feminine. Looping and perfumed.
That rock in her hand, it interfere. It did no work …
T-T-TRY AGAIN.
The voice that broke in was different. Hard, harsh, and edged with insanity, it filled the compartment, echoing off the walls. It went upward, like a bubble of gas released from beneath viscous mud. Emily looked up, watching it go, and saw that the train had no roof. Above, the sky was velvet black, seeded with stars.
God, her head ached.
I tell you, it will no work!
AND I T-T-TOLD YOU TO T-T-TRY AGAIN.
At the far end of the compartment, a dark figure was standing, a huge man. He moved toward her in a hobbling shuffle. He looked lumpy, malformed. Emily wanted to run, but she could not. She could not speak. She could not scream.
The jackrabbits laughed.
The man was not a man.
Rather, it was two men pushed together into one. It was as if each man had been made of clay and a child had wadded them up together. Half a face was squashed up against a flattened skull; one old brown eye leered at her and one insane red one appraised her.
The thing lifted a hand. Its hand was strong and large. The fingers sank into the soft part of her throat, finding the edges of her windpipe. It squeezed.
Carissima mia.
It held her for a long time, each vastly different eye boring into her in its own way. Her head pounded as if it would explode. She writhed under the tightening grip, whimpering. Light sparkled at the corners of her eyes, flashes of suffocation. They resolved themselves into horrific images, knives in brutal hands, honed razors, hollow sharp silver needles. They were