Wicked Ever After
Author: Delilah S. Dawson
Date: 2015-10-05 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Steampunk; Romance; Paranormal Romance; Vampires; Fantasy; Urban Fantasy; Paranormal; Magic; Fantasy Romance; Steampunk Romance
Description: Delilah S. Dawson’s award-winning Blud series comes full circle as Tish and Criminy, stars of Wicked as They Come, embark on a sexy and harrowing final adventure in a world RT Book Reviews called “delightfully edgy with hidden charms.” Ever since landing in the magical world of Sang and falling in love with dashing ringmaster Criminy Stain, Tish has been waiting for the axe to fall. Until her dying grandmother’s last breath on Earth, Tish can’t bring herself to give up her all-too human frailty and commit to life on Sang as a youthful, long-lived Bludman like her handsome husband. But when a p
Publisher: Pocket Star

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This one’s for the Bludbunny Brigade. Criminy loves you all, poppets!

1

There were no fences, no walls, no high, striped tent for this night circus. There wasn’t even a sign, but the crowd knew what to do, tramping down the aisle neatly mown through the high grass and forming an orderly line at the single beribboned turnstile. No one dared step beyond the charmed velvet ropes and into the darkness, knowing full well what dangers awaited beyond. They jostled and whispered, keeping their elbows tight to their sides as they stood on tiptoe to see what waited in the puddle of light ahead. Alone on the moor, ringed only with a circle of fairy lanterns strung on posts, the caravan waited for me like a hungry friend whose teeth had grown too sharp.

But I wasn’t scared of sharp teeth, so I smiled back.

The ground bumped along under my worn boots, the tall grass rustling against the hem of my taffeta skirt. It was almost my turn to pay. In front of me stood a stout matron with a lace parasol, her tiny husband clinging to her arm. Behind me, a crowd of young ruffians in short jackets whispered about how easy it might be to sneak in. And then, after noticing the cleverness of the eyes of the fellow at the turnstile, they turned to discussing how much simpler it would be to steal my purse.

I turned my head, just a little. “I wouldn’t.”

A smallish foot pinned my skirt, just to show it could.

“Course you wouldn’t. Ol’ lady.”

Quick as a blink, quicker than I should have been able to, I snatched something from the tall grass and spun to brandish it at the clutch of would-be thieves. “Say hello to my little friend.”

“I ain’t scared,” spit a brave one. But I noticed the foot was gone from my hem.

With a little shrug, I inspected the rabbit I held by the scruff of the neck, pointing it at them like a weapon. “Good for you, lad. Hold out a finger, then. Let’s see how not scared you are.”

He shook his head. And stepped back. One of his fellow gangsters sniffled and wiped a nose on his sleeve.

My grin grew, and I shoved the rabbit at them. “Just a bunny, boys. Who wants a little?”

When the rabbit’s jaw dropped open, revealing dripping fangs and blood-crusted lips, they screamed and ran for the back of the line. It was all I could do to keep from lobbing the bunny after them, just to watch them scatter. How easy it was to forget the very real danger of a frightened crowd running willy-nilly into the waiting night.

“Well played, rabbit,” I muttered, turning the bludbunny to face me and watching its jaws work as it snapped at plain air.

“You can’t pay with that, you know.”

A strange pull turned my attention to the front of the line, where a brightly striped pavilion rose from the moor like a night-blooming flower. A little tremor ran over my skin as I turned to find the barker staring at me, his red-gloved hands curled possessively around the bar separating me from the carnival on the other side. Seeing his face, I dropped the rabbit and gave my attention to the real predator. I, apparently, was next in line.

“Whyever not? It was a perfectly good rabbit.”

“Meat’s not currency, no matter how delicious.”

I let my smile match his and leaned closer. “Blood’s currency.”

The rabbit went for my ankle, and I speared it with a heel without even looking down.

With a low chuckle, the man leaned over his turnstile, his grin encircling me like a snake, strong and silky and ever constricting. His dark hair rippled in the moor wind but somehow never covered his cloudy gray eyes.

“Oh, I’ll take your blood and gladly, poppet. Just not his. Especially not now. Dead things have no spice.” He dragged a velvet-tipped finger over my cheek, and every hair on my body rose under the thick cloth covering me from chin to toes. “But you have plenty of spice, don’t you, love?”

That broke the spell. I pulled away, turning my face with a blush. “Not anymore,” I muttered.

Dropping a copper coin into the box, I pushed through the turnstile and tripped, falling hard on my hands and knees. The blasted rabbit was still speared on my sharp heel. Stupid. I knew better than to wear stilettos outside of a city’s stone streets. With a grunt, I yanked the still form off and threw it into the waist-high grass, its passing marked by shuddering green blades as the rest of the warren tidily devoured their brother’s remains. They’d have stripped my bones as happily.

I ran.

A tall black boot cut the grass before me, punting another soft brown rabbit into the night before a red-gloved hand appeared in my tear-blurred vision.

“My lady?”

He’d followed me from the turnstile, resplendent in his ringmaster’s kit and high top hat. I took his hand, cursing him for how smooth I knew it was under his glove, how unmarred his handsome face was by time and his many cares. Bludmen had all the luck in the looks and near-indestructibility departments; this dangerously gorgeous specimen would live to be at least three hundred and would look just as suave right up to two hundred fifty or so, provided no one tossed him into the salty and poisonous sea or drained him for impertinence. Whereas I was thirty-two, looked sixty, and would die before forty if my curse continued to cause supernatural aging. A human, and a poor excuse for one at that. It did not pay to bargain with witches in this world.

“Your lady? Ha! Your wrinkled apple, more like,” I muttered as he helped me to my feet.

I wobbled, but then again, I was wearing stiletto-heeled boots. Because surely it wasn’t that come-hither look in his eye that made me feel all wobbly in the middle.

But it was. Even after six years by his side, I still got chills when he looked at me like that.

“Fine wines only grow sweeter with age, Letitia,” he said gently.

I snatched my hand from his grasp. “Don’t call me that!”

“But it’s your name.”

“It’s an old-lady name!”

“And you’re not an old lady.” As I stomped toward the caravan’s circle of warmth, he paced alongside me, barely out of breath. “Or at least . . . you needn’t be.”

Ripping off my dirt-smudged glove, I felt the skin around my eyes with my fingertips. Wrinkled, pitted with lines of laughter and sorrow, lines that had deepened in six short years from the good-natured grin of my thirties to the crepey ditches of a woman in her sixties. It wasn’t fair, dammit, and how dare he say that, much less in public? The only other woman he’d ever loved had been a Bludwoman and beautiful. If Merissa had appeared before us just then, she would have looked half my age and had twice my magic and talents. It was unbearable, being trapped in a body that didn’t feel like mine and constantly comparing myself with the unattainable Bludwomen who threw themselves at Criminy as if I were just a tired old plaything.

“Again with that ‘immortal kiss’ crap? ‘Oh, I’m such a sexy vampire. Let me drink all your blood and spit it back into your mouth, and blah blah blah, you can never go back to Earth and see your grandmother again, much less help her die with any kind of dignity, even though you live with insane amounts of stress every single day that you’re in Sang with the devilishly good-looking ringmaster you love while your grandmother is two wheezy breaths away from kicking the damn bucket.’ ”

Firm hands settled on my waist, snatching me backward, lifting me in an effortless swirl of skirts that felt oh-so-Disney, or would have if he hadn’t been grinning at me with fangs in his mouth, lust in his eyes, and a mostly ornamental whip coiled on his hip.

“The moment I blud you, love, those wrinkles that I definitely don’t see will melt right into soft, youthful skin like fresh cream kissed with roses. You’ll still be terribly young, for a Bludwoman. Until that moment, I’ll love you, just as I do now, just as I always have. My ‘immortal kiss,’ as you call it, just waits for your word. This problem will solve itself.”

He tucked my hand into the crook of his elbow, checked that Vil was tending the turnstile, and towed me toward his damn caravan. And I let him, because despite the fact that I’d just had a hissy fit, I knew in my heart he was right.

Criminy Stain was always right.

I couldn’t enjoy the caravan after that. I should have known better. The magic I’d felt my first night there could never be replicated. More and more often these days, I found myself chasing old joys, hunting for thrills that had dissipated. I drank more red wine than usual, persuaded Emerlie to teach me tightrope, and spent evenings testing my edibility and resilience by wandering the moors to see which blud creatures might challenge me. I’d had enough of Criminy’s blud by now to be not quite human, and I required at least a few drops a day to stay sane. The blud madness crept closer with every sip, urging me to drink deeper and release the beast waiting, curled, within me. Urging me to hunt. It was the worst of both worlds: I had to remain human to visit my grandmother on Earth, but every day I waited aged me a week and hurled me deeper into what felt like an abyss of monstrousness. Some nights, I woke up on the moors, fingernails ripped and bloody, mouth redolent of cabernet, surrounded by fanged forest creatures I couldn’t remember tearing to shreds.

After being forced to kill a particularly hungry bludstag and carry it home on my shoulders for the cook pot, I’d kept closer to the safety of the caravan lights. I still couldn’t accept that parts of me were slowly edging into bludded territory, even though I was haunted nightly by my fortune-teller vision of my own hands turned black and clawed. Which was worse, to age unnaturally fast or to accept that you were becoming something different against your will?

I’d asked Casper about it once, when we were in London. When he’d first sampled blud from every Bludman he’d met, my fellow Stranger from Earth had merely thought to render himself unappetizing to his friends. Eventually, however, it had taken him over completely and nearly driven him mad. And yet that recklessness had helped bring him his perfect match, his Ahnastasia. Becoming a Bludman had ensured that all his dreams had come true.

“Do you regret it?” I’d asked, not quite meeting his too-bright eyes.

He’d laughed the Bludman’s carefree laugh, leonine head thrown back and dimples deeper than ever. “Darlin’, just be what you are,” he’d said. “Come to the Dark Side. We got cookies.”

Criminy never stopped glaring at his onetime rival for my affections, but he did mutter, “Bloody bastard’s got a point.”

I thought that visiting the caravan the way the humans did, with fresh eyes, might wake me up a little. But the way Crim was looking at me now, with pity and sorrow—so not magical. In a bad mood over ruining my boot and my night, I slipped my hand from his arm. “Go run your damn caravan. I’m going to visit Nana.”

“Shall I tuck you in, love?” Sharp black eyebrows waggled, and my skin went on red alert at the dark promise in his eyes.

“There should be nothing sexy about visiting my grandmother. You can tuck me in later. I’m too . . .” I waved my hands as tears threatened. “Too damn human to go to bed with you right now.”

Faster than lightning, he caught my hands, threading his gloved fingers through mine, and spun me around to press my back against the cool wood of the nearest shadowed caravan wagon. His lips found mine, hot and greedy, and I melted against the urgency of his hips through layers of fashionable petticoats. Every nerve in my body rose to his touch, the breath catching in my throat at the sweet wine taste of his tongue. His kiss drove every thought from my head, pushed me out of my constantly worrying mind and straight into animal mode, all lust and teeth and hunger hammering to the clatter of calliope pipes.

“Didn’t say anything about going to bed, poppet,” he murmured, teeth grazing my ear.

“Bludhoney trash,” someone muttered, passing by with the crowd. It was impossible to forget what humans thought of Bludmen, and especially of the women who kept company with them.

Criminy growled, and the spell broke as he spun around with murder in his eyes. I reached for his coattails to tug him back.

“Crim! You’re not allowed to kill customers.” I yanked almost hard enough to split the heavy fabric, and he turned back to me, the beast fading in his eyes.

“They paid for a show. It’s my job to give them one.”

I stepped out from the wagon’s overhang, adjusting my hat and blushing. “Not now. Not murder, not sex. I still need to feel human sometimes. Any messages for Nana?”

Without a hair out of place, he grinned the most charming grin a predator could possess. “Tell her my next move is Knight to Pawn Three. Let the old bat deal with that.” And with a tip of his hat and a whirl of his cape, he was gone.

2

Back in Criminy’s bloodred wagon, I unpinned my hat and slipped off my remaining glove. I’d lost or destroyed more pairs of gloves than I could count since arriving in Sang. Most humans grew up covered from head to toe to keep the scent of their blood hidden from Bludmen, but I knew that was pointless and hated being confined. The magic that allowed me to move between Earth and Sang was peculiar, but I knew from experience that there was no point in suffering from sweaty fingers or crushing a perfectly good bonnet when I’d lie down, put on my locket, and awaken to my other life on Nana’s couch in my scrubs, seconds after I’d fallen asleep. I lost no time on Earth, which meant Nana never even knew that I was gone.

The fact that she was still alive defied everything we’d been told about her third round of cancer. She was old, impossibly frail, and barely hanging on by a thread. As her hospice nurse, I felt it was a privilege to help her die with as much comfort and decency as possible, in her own home. For a magically cursed woman traveling between two worlds where time made no sense, it meant that six years in Sang was only a few weeks on Earth, and to her knowledge, I’d been by her side almost constantly, except for when I went home to feed my cat.

Nana believed she was playing chess with my new boyfriend, who texted his moves to me via iPhone. It was one of my greatest sorrows that she would never get to meet Criminy herself, as I thought she would have adored his devil-may-care attitude and, as she called it, sass. And I knew he would have charmed the heck out of her with his suave near-British accent and sly remarks.

Clad only in my night shift, I used the key around my neck to open the coffin-sized box hidden behind a sliding panel in our wagon. The inside was padded with a lovely velvet Criminy had obtained from a Turkish merchant, the locking system cleverly designed by our own Mr. Murdoch, artificer extraordinaire, so that only I could open it from the inside . . . or Criminy from the outside. We’d grown a little paranoid about keeping me safe when I was unconscious and traveling between worlds. After all, just after Criminy’s locket had magicked me to Sang six years ago, a genocidal maniac had stolen the necklace and kidnapped me as part of his plan to destroy the race of Bludmen and return Sang to humans.

That man, Jonah Goodwill, had been from Earth. Like me. And now he was dead. That was perhaps the first step on my journey from human to beast: I had killed the human Goodwill to save Criminy and predators like him, predators like I would one day become. And I had no regrets whatsoever.

At first, the box had felt like a coffin, my heart beating frantically and claustrophobia descending each time Criminy kissed me gently and closed the glass top. But now, knowing how little time my Nana had left, it felt like Willy Wonka’s great glass elevator, and I all but slammed it closed before slipping on Criminy’s charmed ruby locket and sprinkling a few grains of his sleeping powder over my head. Sleep fell like a bludbunny on an unclothed ankle.

Almost instantly, my eyes opened. I was on Nana’s old striped couch, facing the only non-flat-screen TV I’d seen in years. Her favorite news channel was on, muted so that I could sleep through all the righteous indignation. Under the ticking of the clock, I heard soft sobs.

“Nana?”

A surprised and guilty snuffle was followed by the sound of a Kleenex box falling to the floor. “You didn’t hear nothin’, sugar,” she said. “Go back to sleep.”

I sat up, my back aching and my arm asleep. Each time I woke up on Earth now, I learned a little more about what it felt like to be old, to feel your body giving up. The magical aging meant my hips popped and loosened when I walked, and I could feel arthritis settling in my knuckles. I couldn’t imagine the kind of pain Nana was in, even on her high doses of morphine.

And that meant, of course, that she wasn’t crying from pain.

Her health had gotten worse quickly, and we both knew what that meant.

Despite my protesting body, I was on my feet and in her room in seconds. There was barely anything left of the Nana who’d mostly raised me and who’d been my savior when I left an abusive fiancé. She was all bones and stretched skin and sunken yellow eyes. Even though she’d been crying, she barely had enough juice for tears, and I went immediately to switch out her IV.

“Nothing my butt, Nana. What aren’t you telling me?” I crossed my arms and loomed over her, hoping she hadn’t noticed my new wrinkles and the age spots on my hands. Without her glasses, she was practically blind, but she was still sharper than she had any right to be.

Nana took a deep breath and leaned back against her pillows, thin lips turned down in grim determination. “You want to do this now, you go to the cabinet over the fridge and bring me the bourbon.”

“You can’t drink. You know that.”

“Don’t tell me what I can’t do! I’m dying here, pretty damn soon, and we both know it. I’d rather meet my maker full of good whiskey, so you get your sassy little ass into that kitchen and pour it.”

I was too shocked to move. The anger, fear, and cuss in her voice told me just how close she was, and before I knew what I was doing, I was on tiptoes feeling around the high cabinet over the fridge until I found a heavy glass bottle. I didn’t even know she drank, and there was no way she could have reached it without a ladder, but the damn thing was half empty. I slopped some into a jelly jar, sniffed it, took a sip, and added another pour. Then, on second thought, I poured myself a glass, too. I needed it.

She reached for the jelly jar but couldn’t hold it, so I helped her with shaking hands. My sweet old Nana took down the ninety-proof bourbon in deep gulps until the glass was empty, then doubled over in a coughing fit.

“You’ve got a fifty-percent chance of vomiting that up and a forty-percent chance of getting alcohol poisoning, so you’d better make it fast,” I said, mainly because if we both focused on being angry, we wouldn’t break down crying.

“Guess that gives me a ten-percent chance of saying what needs to be said, then.”

She took a swipe at my glass, so I followed her lead and chugged it. It went straight to my head, and I went and poured us each another glass. After we’d both glugged it, I hopped up on the other side of the bed, leaning against the headboard and letting my hand hold hers where it had fallen on the flowered coverlet.

“When I’m gone—” she started.

“Don’t say that.”

“Somebody has to, sugar, and for a hospice nurse, you’re pretty bad at saying it. When I’m gone, you know all this is yours.” Her hand flapped up like a waving queen’s at her two-bedroom mill house, and she gave a short laugh. “Ain’t much, but there’s some money set aside, too, and it’s bigger than your apartment, anyway. Now, don’t let that cat of yours mess up my afghans. Your great-grandmother made those herself, you know.”

“I know.”

“Closed casket. It’s in the will. Nobody needs to see me looking like a damn shrunken head on a pencil. You invite folks here after. Food’s already in the freezer.”

“The food . . . is in the freezer?”

She nodded fiercely. “I know you can’t cook for shit, and I wasn’t sure if Ella Bird would die first and be able to make the right spread, so it’s all in labeled Tupperware. Table’s already pulled out, you see.”

I stood, wobbly after the bourbon on my empty stomach, and headed for her kitchen. I’d been so busy focusing on Nana that I hadn’t paid attention to keeping house; it must have been weeks ago, when she still had enough strength to heft a casserole. Hell, maybe she’d done it before I’d come back to take care of her. The table’s leaf was in, making it big enough for twelve people, and the freezer was packed solid with foil-wrapped blocks labeled in Nana’s scratchy writing.

“When the hell did you do all this?” I asked, sliding back onto the bed.

“While back. Food’ll keep six months, and I knew I wouldn’t have that much.”

I hadn’t even noticed, and it broke me. “Oh, Nana. I’m so sorry there’s nothing I can do for you.” I clutched her hand hard enough to make her wince and pull away. “I only know how to help people die. I can’t fix anything.”

“Some things, nobody can fix ’em. Except that Eric Northman. Mm-hmm. Wish he’d come to Georgia instead of Louisiana.”

“Wait. What did you just say?” My head rolled over to stare at her, and I was surprised by the dreamy smile on her lips. She winked at me.

“You stay in bed for a few years unable to sleep, and see if some tall, handsome vampire on TV doesn’t start to look pretty good. I never got why Sookie wouldn’t become a vampire. Fool girl.”

“You watch True Blood?”

“I did up till I couldn’t lift the damn remote.”

Guilt shot through me as I noticed it half-buried in her blankets, just out of reach. I instinctively turned it over and slid it under her hand, but she shoved it off the bed and grinned, all sly, when it broke on the parquet floor.

“Nana.” I paused, drunkenly considering how to phrase it. “Are you saying that if a vampire would show up and offer you his blood, you’d take it?”

The old lady snorted. “Hell, yes, I would. You look death in the face for a while, and see if being young and healthy forever wouldn’t look mighty fine. Teeth’re better than needles, ain’t they? It’s not like I get to see the sun much these days, anyway.”

I jerked to my feet and pointed a finger at her chest. “Can you stay alive for five more minutes?”

She shrugged. “I reckon. Maybe. If you bring me more bourbon.”

I couldn’t bring Criminy’s sleeping powder with me to Earth, but Nana had a buttload of sleep aids in her cabinet. Desperate times called for desperate measures, so I dry-swallowed an Ambien and lay down on the couch, willing my frantic mind and body to still. It took entirely too long for me to fall asleep, and the moment my eyes were open, I sat up and bonked my head on the thick glass. It took even longer to unlock the box, considering the alcohol and excitement in my system, and I dropped the locket onto the velvet and jumped out, quick and clumsy.

As I frantically hunted through Criminy’s cavernous pigeonhole desk, he appeared as if summoned. Which, after all these years, further confirmed that he’d put an intruder-alert charm on the cabinet that held much of his magic in its multitude of drawers—or at least had his clockwork monkey guarding it most of the time.

“Looting for something in particular, love?” he said, a possessive hand on the scarred wood. “Mind that drawer—things tend to disappear in there. And come back dead.”

I softly burped bourbon. “Shh. Looting.” I switched drawers, found what I wanted, and held it up for him to see. “Hepzibah’s potion.”

His smirk turned into a stern frown. “Whatever you’re doing with that, darling, it looks terribly rash. And although I’m generally in favor of you doing terribly rash, sexy things, this exercise does carry the peculiar stink of liquor and permanence.”

He tried to snatch the potion bottle from me, but I held on to it for dear life and hurried back to the box, talking in a slur I could hear but not stop. “I traded my cute butt to that witch for this dumb bottle, and now I’m going to use it. Nana said she wanted to be a vampire, and you’ll make her a vampire, right? I mean, blood’s blood, right? Because there’s not much time. I need to get back. You will, won’t you?”

“Love, if I’m correctly interpreting your drunken ravings, you wish to bring your grandmother to Sang and have me blud her, yes?”

I nodded viciously and almost fell over as I stepped into the box.

“And you actually believe there’s a possibility that Hepzibah told you the truth regarding how this charm works?”

I slipped on the locket and arranged the nightgown around my legs. “I do.”

“And you don’t anticipate any sort of trouble arising from this brash action?”

I grabbed his ponytail and yanked his face to mine, kissing him ferociously, with the fire of bourbon still hot on my tongue. “Trouble doesn’t matter,” I said, releasing him and closing the top of the box. “I have to save my Nana.”

“But, Letitia—”

I popped the top off the bottle and poured its contents into my mouth. The liquid was red and viscous, like blood mixed with metal filings and harsh herbs. I knew well enough, after my first time smuggling liquids between worlds, that the bottle wouldn’t translate. I had to keep it in my mouth and not swallow, no matter what. A sprinkle of powder later, and I was asleep before I even had time to take Criminy’s warning to heart.

And then I woke on Nana’s couch, groggy and disoriented and panicked. I almost swallowed the bottle’s contents, but I still had enough self-control to lurch into Nana’s room. She was splayed against the pillows beside a little yellow dribble of vomit, all acid and liquor.

“Sugar, you okay? Look like you’re about to puke up my good bourbon, and I already had enough of that today.”

I shook my head and made calm-down motions with my hands. I couldn’t speak, thanks to the potion in my mouth, but it’s not like any explanation I could offer would make her understand that I was here to answer her prayers. Maybe I wasn’t a seven-foot-tall ex-Viking vampire, but I could get her to Criminy, which was the next-best thing.

She didn’t shrink back or struggle when I laced my fingers with hers, both hands, making a complete circle. She didn’t flinch when I brought my face to hers. Even when my lips touched her withered ones, she didn’t react at all. But she didn’t open her mouth, either. Already formulating my apology for later, I pinched her nose closed, and when she opened her mouth to holler at me, I set my lips against hers and let the magic liquid rush out between us, just as the witch had ordered, snatching her hand back up to make the circle complete.

3

Everything went dark and thick, like it does in dreams, and the only thing I could feel was Nana where my hands and mouth touched her. It was like falling for just a moment, and then I slammed onto my back, crushed under what felt like a ten-speed bicycle. Opening my eyes, I found Nana flopped on top of me in her long pink housecoat, Criminy’s face staring down at us over her shoulder through the glass of the box.

Nana moved against me and muttered, “What was in that bourbon? I’m a married lady. Not you again. None of that funny business, now.”

When Criminy got the box unlocked, he gently lifted Nana off me, and wherever she was in her head and her drugs, she didn’t question being cradled against the waistcoat of a vampire version of Mr. Darcy in the Victorianesque parlor of a carnival wagon.

“Hello, Nana,” he said cheerfully.

She blinked at him like an irritated baby bird and said, “Hello, Vampire Bill.”

Criminy raised his eyebrows at me over her shoulder, and I said, “Nana, this isn’t True Blood. Meet Criminy Stain.”

“Your boyfriend?” She reached for glasses that weren’t there and pushed herself away to inspect him. He delivered her to his bed, our bed, and placed her gently on the silk quilt. “The one who thinks he can beat me at chess?”

“I’m her husband, actually. Nice and legal. We’re so sorry you couldn’t attend the ceremony, but you were regrettably in another world at the time.”

“You’re better-looking than Vampire Bill, at least.”

He stepped back, and she squinted around the room. I climbed from the box, still in my night shift and stockings, and came over to check Nana’s pulse. It was racing, but she was alive enough to smack my hand.

“It’s my dream. Don’t you medicine at me, young lady.”

“It’s not a dream, Nana. This is . . . well . . .” I looked to Criminy, who merely grinned and shrugged. Smug bastard was always amused when I was at a loss for words. “This is the world of Sang. When you said you’d rather get turned into a vampire than die on Earth, I brought you over here. Criminy’s a Bludman.” I tilted my head at him, and he obliged by opening his mouth to show shiny fangs. “He’s not undead, though. Here Bludmen are simply predators. If you don’t mind drinking blood for the rest of your life, you can probably live another two hundred years without pain. Right?”

“Right.” Crim obligingly leaned close, and Nana pressed a withered finger against one of his pointed canine teeth. “Whatever’s eating you from the inside will disappear, and you’ll experience a rejuvenated body and spirit. And you don’t even have to kill anyone to survive. If you don’t wish to.” Nana snorted as if she didn’t believe him, and he admitted, “Although murder can be quite refreshing, from time to time, if they deserve it, you can live quite happily on vials of donated blood.”

Nana pulled her finger away and stared at a tiny bead of blood at her fingertip, where she must have punctured herself on Crim’s tooth. On purpose. Little did she know that most Bludmen would have been driven to snack on her by that sort of misstep, but Criminy was known for his self-control . . . at least when it came to anyone in his caravan.

“I was hoping for Eric Northman,” she mumbled.

Criminy looked to me, one sharp eyebrow raised.

“Sorry, Crim. I guess she likes ’em big and blond.”

“We’re a bit short on Bludmen at the moment. I’m afraid it’s me, Charlie Dregs, a two-headed nutter, or the kitchen girl, unless you wish to go into town and find yourself a beau. But I can guarantee that I have more control and kindness than any stranger.” Criminy bowed, and Nana nodded regally.

“You’ll do, I reckon. Just make it quick. Whatever brought me here got my heart sputtering, and the damn thing’s likely to stop soon.”

I reached for her hand, clasping it warmly between my own. “Are you sure, Nana?”

She squeezed once. “Why the hell not, sugar?” she said, a wicked glint in her eye.

Judging by the fact that she was weaker than ever, was still high as a kite, and might change her mind if she lived long enough to get sober, Criminy and I elected to blud her on the spot. Well, after borrowing some tarps from Mr. Murdoch’s workshop. I hovered around with various throw pillows and blankets, trying to make her as cozy as possible in a cleared-out corner of our parlor. She smacked my hand as I tried to prop her up more comfortably, and Crim muttered, “It’s not a cushy activity, love. Best just get out of the way and let us get on with it.”

“I thought you said it didn’t hurt much.”

He silenced me with a firm shake of his head and leaned close. “With you, there are certain things I can do to take your mind off the process. Fluid is fluid, after all. With your grandmother, however, I’m going to keep it as straightforward as possible.” He gave me a meaningful look and handed me his top hat, then, on second thought, stripped to the waist.

“That’s what I’m talkin’ about,” Nana murmured as she nursed the glass of red wine Criminy had given her to further lower her inhibitions.

With more awkwardness and less predation than I’d ever seen him exhibit, Criminy pulled off his boots and crawled to my drunk grandmother’s side in his black breeches and argyle socks. “Now, Nana,” he said, “you must understand that there’s a fair amount of give-and-take here. It may hurt a little bit.”

“Everything’s hurt me for ten years past, boy,” she said, eyeing him.

“And although my general practice is to follow a lady’s wishes, I will not stop once I start, no matter what you say or how you push me away. To do so would ensure your almost immediate demise. Do you understand?”

Nana tossed back the last of the wine and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Talky feller, ain’t he? I would’ve figured you for a man of action, Mr. Bill. Now, let’s get this over with.”

Criminy looked at me and smothered a grin. “Reminds me a little of you on your first day here, love. All business.”

“As a famous man once said, get busy living or get busy dying,” I muttered.

“Mm-hmm. Morgan Freeman,” Nana said, all dreamy, settling back and crossing her arms. “Do you think he’s God in this world, too?”

I pulled up a chair before my legs gave out. This process had terrified me ever since the future had revealed that I would one day be a Bludman, too. Discovering I was a glancer had turned out to be a boon in many ways, considering that whenever I touched someone’s skin for the first time, I was afforded a vision of their destiny. It certainly helped me earn my keep in the caravan. Glancers weren’t supposed to see themselves in the future, and yet, touching Criminy all that time ago, my hand flat on his chest, I had.

It wasn’t even the pain of bludding so much that worried me. As he’d heard but supposedly never experienced, adding a little sex to the mix made the whole thing more enjoyable for both parties. No, what really bothered me was giving up my humanity, the core of who I was.

Back on Earth, I was a hospice nurse, providing comfort and strength when people needed it most. Here in Sang, a world with no germs, I was a ringmaster’s kept wife with a gift for fortune-telling. As much as I loved Criminy and wouldn’t go back to Earth permanently even if I could, becoming a Bludman meant I stood to lose my home world and the very root of my being. Instead of helping people, I would have no choice but to take from them—even if they gave the blood willingly.

I had always been fiercely proud and self-reliant, especially after I’d left Jeff and his suffocating ways. Nursing was my calling. And Sang had no use for nurses. With Nana in this world and on her way to being nearly indestructible, there was no logical reason to remain human. Nothing to stand in my way of dropping the twenty years of unnecessary aging the witch had gifted me in exchange for the potion I’d just used. Nothing to stop me from learning to laugh as recklessly as my husband. I couldn’t even have children, thanks to a dangerous miscarriage years before on Earth. All I had to take care of was Crim, and he could take care of himself perfectly well and laugh his way through any challenge. I’d have to find a new and satisfying way to be truly useful.

But he wasn’t laughing now—he looked like a bull in a china shop. Carefully, kindly, he leaned over Nana, trying not to touch her fragile bones, probably because I’d told him often enough how easily she bruised these days, how paper-thin her skin had grown. A small flare of jealousy reared up in me, for just a moment, when I saw his lips press to her neck, but when I saw the grim set of her mouth and the fearful cast of her eyes, the way her hands were primly folded in her lap and shaking, I remembered that this was as vital an operation as any she’d undergone on Earth, her one chance to keep going. And I wasn’t ready to let her go, so I held my breath as Criminy’s lips spread and covered the fluttering pulse in her throat.

When Nana’s body jerked, I did, too. Her fingers wrapped around Crim’s shoulders, and she tried to push him away. As promised, he didn’t let her, holding her firmly but as gently as he could, his throat working as he swallowed her blood. There couldn’t be much in her, tired and frail as she was. Her eyes went from terrified to slack, a little misty, her hands loosening from his skin. And then, with the sweetness of a father tucking in a child, he let her swoon to the pile of pillows, where she lay too much like a corpse.

“Crim?”

He glanced at me, panting, with eyes gone nearly feral, and shook his head. This was the tricky part, he’d explained once. Did the Bludman have enough control to stop when the human’s body was on the brink of death, and did the dying person have the good sense and the proper chemistry to accept blud into their system? Criminy’s red-splashed teeth ripped into his wrist, and I cried out at seeing the man I loved dripping with a fresh wound.

Beautiful and mostly naked, he draped himself beside her and pressed the wound to her lips, but she wouldn’t drink. The urge to check her pulse was strong, but just as in the OR, my interference could be what tipped the scales, possibly in the wrong direction. I barely breathed, watching viscous blud dribble from my grandmother’s mouth as she stubbornly refused to swallow, her lips pursed tightly just as they’d been when I’d tried to give her the witch’s potion.

“Nana, please,” I whispered.

“You must drink,” Criminy said in his commanding voice, talking around his fangs, “or believe me, you will die.”

Nana shuddered, and her throat moved. I was holding my breath, expecting every rise of her chest to be her last. I’d always assumed that moment would happen in her bed on Earth, while I was there to hold her hand and smile and ease the transition as I had for so many other patients. I had never in my wildest dreams expected to watch her latch onto Criminy’s naked, bloody arm and start drinking, greedy as a baby at the breast.

It was downright disturbing.

At least at first. And then I had to stop myself from cheering.

Nana’s eyes had gone rheumy and jaundiced recently as her body started to give up the fight, but now they were pinned to Criminy and beginning to sparkle a glimmering grayish blue. As she gulped, her insubstantial puff of hair seemed to turn like fall leaves reversing their transformation, from grayish white to tan to brown to a brilliant chestnut shade I’d seen in pictures of her wedding. Her gulps were audible and insistent now, her strong fingers clutching tightly where she held Crim’s wrist to her mouth, where he was trying to pry it away.

I’d been so busy watching her that I’d forgotten to watch him, and he was drained and beyond pale. I couldn’t tell if the hand he was using to pry her off was being uncommonly gentle or rapidly losing strength. My gut told me it was the latter, and after calling his name several times and receiving no response, I hurried to help.

Nana was stuck to him like a tick, her eyes resentful as I approached. When I put a hand on her forehead and one on his arm, I thought she might snap at me.

“You’re taking too much, Nana. It’s his turn to drink again, or it won’t work.”

I yanked hard, and she hissed at me and muttered, “Mind your own beeswax.” She clamped down harder and shook me off.

And so, like any well-bred Southern woman and experienced nurse, I pinched her nose closed, put an elbow in her face, and tried to pry her decidedly less fragile body away from my declining husband.

It worked finally, and she popped off and jerked back against the bed, nostrils flaring wide. “Sugar, you’d best get out. You smell just like a big, juicy steak just now.” Nana licked her lips and started to move into a crouch, her eyes glued hungrily to me, and that’s when Criminy pounced right back onto her neck.

She growled and pushed him away, but even with her newfound strength, she was no match for him. I could only watch, fascinated, as they kept on like that, trading blood and blud and barbs, alternately drinking and yanking away and being drunk from. It was like watching a nature documentary about a particularly foreign creature that you couldn’t quite understand but couldn’t stop watching, and they kept rewinding the bloodiest bits and forcing you to watch them in slow motion.

Finally, Crim yanked his arm away from her and somersaulted backward to a standing position, leaving Nana looking perplexed . . . and about forty pounds up from the seventy-pound bag of bones she’d been when I’d brought her here. She didn’t quite look young—there was something soft around her jaw, some smoothing of her wrinkles—but she had a woman’s shape and looked altogether more healthy and strong than I’d ever seen her. Criminy held out a hand, and she looked at it as if she might bite his fingers off, then took it and let him pull her up to stand.

“How do you feel?” Criminy asked, back to his usual level of murderous politeness.

“Like getting out of this old-lady dress and eating a goddamn hamburger.”

Criminy smiled, and Nana smiled back, her teeth shiny and strong and framed by fangs.

“I can help with that,” he said.

4

Time always ran strangely when I was on Earth. When I’d run away from Criminy tonight, it had been dusk, right as the crowd arrived and the night’s show started; but Nana and I had reappeared in the glass box in the morning, just in time to whisk her, half-naked and bloody, through the empty caravan as the carnivalleros finished their usual late breakfast.

Nana had always been stubborn, both in dealing with my parents when I was a kid and in facing off with cancer three times and refusing to die. Now she turned her hell on the caravan’s costumer, our third in six years. The position was apparently cursed. The first one I’d met, Mrs. Cleavers, had been killed by Coppers who were hunting for me. The second, Criminy’s former best friend Antonin, had run off with a murder-minded automaton lover (don’t ask). And the third, well . . .

I knocked on the door of the costume wagon, waiting for the usual irritating hmph from inside before ushering Nana into the crowded, spangled space.

“What’s this, then? New act for the freak show?”

Her voice grated on my nerves, as it had since my first day in the caravan.

“Emerlie, this is my grandmother, Ruby.”

“You sure you’re not her grandmother, dove?”

Emerlie leaned back on her chaise and smirked, high pink boots crossed and an apple in her gloved hand. Our cockney tightrope walker had sucked up to our previous costumers in order to design her own outlandish getups, and the last one had eventually just brought her in as his assistant so that she’d be forced to sew her own lurid leather tutus. Now she languished in the solo wagon she’d always coveted and made anyone who approached her feel like a burden. The costumes had become decidedly brighter and altogether more difficult to obtain since Emerlie Fetchings’s reign had begun, and I’d looked forward to the larger cities we approached so I could deal with costumers who didn’t try to punish me with haberdashery and take joy in poking me with pins. I had money enough, but I was out of patience when it came to Emerlie.

Born into a circus family, she still couldn’t let go of the fact that I’d stolen Criminy’s heart, stomped on Casper’s, and become the star of the caravan without really wanting to. Glancers, after all, were higher on the totem pole than unicyclists.

“If I were your grandmother, missy, I’d wipe that smug smile off your face and teach you some damn manners. Now, are you gonna dress me or leave me standing around in my drawers?” Nana finished her tirade with an overly pointy smile that I still wasn’t accustomed to. She was looking younger by the minute, and it didn’t escape me that her hands were now smoother than mine. Her tone was almost as sharp as her chin—but at least it seemed she was that way with everyone, not just me.

“Another bloody Bludman,” Emerlie muttered, standing and dusting off her turquoise pantaloons. “Suppose you’ll be wanting to dress in illegally bright duds, eh?”

Nana held out the sides of her polyester dressing gown as if she couldn’t stand to touch it for another second. “I was thinking a pair of pants like yours might suit. Tight fit but darker colors. Never did get the hang of floof.”

My head swiveled to stare at her. I’d never seen my grandmother in anything but shapeless slacks and housedresses, and the thought of her in Emerlie’s tight leather ballerina costumes was mind-boggling. Emerlie looked her up and down, eyes narrowed, but then she nodded and went to rummage in her trunks. When she turned around with an armload of leather and cloth, she had a smile friendlier than anything she’d ever given me.

“Nice to hear someone ’round here has taste. See what takes you, and I can hem up whatever works.” And she winked.

And then possibly the most terrifying thing I’d ever witnessed occurred: I watched my grandmother strip naked.

The second most terrifying thing? Thanks to her recent transformation, she had a hotter bod than mine under her housedress. Soon she was laced into tight leather pants, with Emerlie pinning the ankles. She waved a hand at corsets and bound up her chest with a long strip of linen before putting on a man’s shirt and waistcoat and an old pair of Crim’s boots, their toes stuffed with rags. My little old Southern grandmother was cross-dressing as a vampire dandy, giggling with one of my worst enemies, and letting Emerlie cut her auburn hair into a vixen’s sharp bob and line her eyes with kohl.

The world was upside down. I had everything I thought I wanted, but it wasn’t what I wanted at all. And then something even stranger occurred.

It happened while Emerlie was helping my grandmother put on earrings. They were having trouble with the clip, and Emerlie was cursing in her cockney gibberish, and my grandmother jerked away and went over very still.

“You yellow-bellied hussy!” she shouted, pointing at Emerlie. “He’s a nice boy. What’s wrong with you?”

Emerlie went red with fury and then white with fear, backing away. “Witch!” she hissed, pointing first at Nana and then at me. “Just like that one!”

Nana swiveled to me. “She’s sleeping with that nice Charlie Dregs on the sly. Right here in this room! But she won’t even sit with him in the dining car, no matter how he begs. Won’t make him an honest man.”

“Nana,” I said, sounding more like her mother than her grand-daughter, “did you get a little jolt and see her future?”

“Not exactly her future.” Nana thought about it, cutting her eyes at Emerlie. “More like her present and her past, all rolled up in a ball. But who’s Lydia?”

“Get out,” Emerlie growled, and I held open the door.

Nana took a last look around the jumbled wagon, grabbed a heavy black cape off a dummy, and sashayed out the door. As I followed her, she grumbled under her breath, “Can’t stand a damn hypocrite.”

Once we were safely on the trampled grass, I looked her up and down. “Nana, did you know that you’re a glancer, like me? That you can touch people and see their fate?”

My grandmother, now looking like a fabulous, forty-year old, cross-dressing flapper, cocked her head and considered me with cloudy blue eyes, so like my own but glittering with a Bludman’s magic.

“Call me Ruby, sugar. I don’t feel much like anybody’s Nana anymore.”

She frowned and walked away. She didn’t answer my question.

She didn’t have to.

“She’s a glancer, Crim.”

He stroked my hair back, curling it over my ears. “What of it, love?”

“My grandmother is a glancer, and a Bludman, and a cougar, and maybe a MILF, and she says I need to call her Ruby.” Hard as I’d been trying to keep it in, a hot tear streaked down the side of my nose.

“Don’t know what a GILF is, but I fear I’m going to have to give you a speech similar to the one you gave me about Demi when she wanted to leave the caravan. Time to let the little bird fly from the nest?”

I sniffled. “This little bird jumped out of the nest, landed among the bludbunnies, and is now spitting out their bones and whistling ‘Yankee Doodle.’ ”

“Is she happy?”

I had to look away at the frankness of his gaze. He could always see right through me. “She walked away before I could really ask. I don’t even know where she is or what she’s doing. I thought . . . I don’t know. I thought I could show her the caravan, get to see her enjoy the magic for the first time. There’s no magic in our world, on Earth, not really. I thought she would be grateful. Or at least friendly. That she would still want to spend time with me. But she doesn’t even seem to like me.”

He pulled me closer, wiping tears away with a glove. “What did you think would happen, darling? You would bring her to Sang, and I would turn her, and she would remain a happy old woman content to bake cakes for you? She was a corpse, and now she’s a predator. She’s been dying for years. Maybe she wants to live a bit now.”

“But I miss her.”

The corner of his lip lifted. “So join her. If you truly want to know what she feels like, let me blud you. You’ve always said she was the only thing that kept you human.” He leaned over, and the rasp of metal on wood brought my attention to my locket, where he dragged it around on the bedside table. The bright-red stone was gone, just a curled black smudge twisting the metal where it had been set. “You can’t go back now, you know. It took me years to find that ruby and bewitch it, and we both paid dearly for our happiness. I believe I can say with confidence that your world is permanently closed to you. The witch’s magic always takes its price. So whatever’s left to hold you back from being bludded is merely . . . fear.”

“No, it’s . . .”

He waited, patient as ever. I racked my brain. As was my tendency, the worst images pushed to the fore: Bludmen stoned in the ghettos of large cities, the violence and mess of my grandmother’s recent bludding, the thought of putting aside coffee and ice cream and rabbit dumplings and chocolate mousse and ingesting nothing but human blood for the rest of my life. I’d never wanted it, never longed for Eric Northman and glittering eyes and Gothic sensibilities. Perhaps, faced with terminal cancer and trapped in a frail body, I would have seen it as Nana—sorry, Ruby—had. But even here, in my rapidly aging body that ached and wrinkled more than it should have, I wasn’t done being human.

Criminy held my bare hand up, turning it to show me the age spots speckling the back before he kissed it. “Think about it, pet. The process is different between lovers. You’ll enjoy it. I promise.”

But still, I wasn’t ready.

I found her in the dining car—after I’d cleaned up the tears and picked my guts up off the floor. She’d raised me to have a spine, and I wasn’t going to turn tail just because she’d hurt my feelings. I had to try seeing things from her point of view: she’d been given a second life, and it wasn’t reasonable to expect that her first priority would be her granddaughter’s desire to take her to the fair.

The wagon smelled of stew and was mostly empty, as the carnivalleros had acts to practice, props to maintain, and a ringmaster who wouldn’t hesitate to excoriate them in public if they spent too much time being lazy. My friends Imogen and Jacinda shared a table, both writing furiously as a small swarm of butterflies floated lazily around their hats. Eblick the lizard boy was stretched out in a booth, asleep, tongue flapping. My grandmother sat with Catarrh and Quincy, the two-headed Bludman, her head thrown back in an unselfconscious laugh. Although I’d come here intending to bond with her and didn’t want to say anything negative, I couldn’t help disapproving of her choice of friends. Catarrh and Quincy were unpredictable, dangerous, and constantly in trouble with Criminy, who refused to fire them, as they were the only known conjoined twins currently on the caravan circuit. As Crim put it, we needed them but didn’t need to like them.

As I approached, the twins glared at me over my grandmother’s shoulder, and Quincy hissed. My grandmother turned around, her face set in a snarl that disappeared as soon as she saw me. Not that she smiled, but at least she put away her teeth.

“Oh, sugar. It’s just you.”

She relaxed and sat back, her elegant fingers toying with the delicate porcelain of her teacup. Blood vials littered the table, some empty and some full, far more than the daily allotment for the three of them. Her eyes didn’t leave mine as she tossed back the dregs of her cup and poured in another vial, as if daring me to say something. She’d always been proudly frugal, back home.

“Can I sit?” I asked.

She smirked and slid over to make room. Catarrh muttered something rude under his breath, and Quincy chittered. They both gulped and went silent when my Nana kicked them under the table.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

Nana cocked her head at me, and I fidgeted with the wedding ring she’d never seen before. It had once fit perfectly; now it spun freely on my bony finger. Feeling silly and more fragile than ever, I dropped my hands under the table, to my lap.

“I think you know how I feel, sugar. I was dead, and now I’m alive.” She sipped her blood, drew a deep breath, closed her eyes, and smiled that same old smile I remembered, the one that meant the pie had set just right or her Christmas present was perfect. A rare smile of satisfaction. “Haven’t felt hope or hunger in twenty years. This new world of yours is mighty fine, you know.”

I turned toward her, but my hand stopped before I could pat her shoulder. Something told me she didn’t want to be touched. “I thought you might like to see the caravan tonight. We could put you in a cravat and gloves and go in with the audience together. My first night was so amazing. I swear there was glitter in the air, and—”

“Wait. Cravat and gloves?”

With a chuckle, I pointed to her hand, which had already turned a medium shade of gray as her transformation settled. Soon her hand would be covered in fine black scales and tipped with sharp white talons like a cat’s claws. It took some getting used to, but once I’d seen Criminy stalk and attack a deer five times his weight, I understood the usefulness of the Blud adaptation.

“Humans here tend to get riled up around Bludmen. If you’re going to join a crowd, it’s best to pretend you’re harmless.”

She jerked away and scooted back on the bench. I’d been close enough to lean my head on her shoulder, but now she was looking at me as if she’d bite me for trying. “Hide? Just to make some small-minded idiots feel safe? Sugar, that’s not how I’m going to live my life here. If this is what I am, and if this is what saved my life, then I’m damned well going to be proud of it.”

“Damn straight,” Catarrh said, and Quincy gave an embarrassingly bad salute.

“I’m not saying you shouldn’t be proud. I’m just saying that you don’t need to go looking for trouble. If gloves and a tie allow you to have a wonderful night at the circus, I really don’t see a problem.”

My grandmother rolled her eyes to the ceiling as if asking Jesus for help, but when she turned her kohl-rimmed eyes on me, smoothed back her bob, and licked her fangs, she looked more like a creature straight out of hell.

“Look, sugar. If there’s one thing I learned in eighty-six years on Earth, it’s that you got to start standing up for what you believe early on, or else you get in the habit of doing what’s easy, of going along just to get along. I got a chance to start over from scratch. New person, new body, new world. You’re the only one from Earth who knows me here, and I find that I don’t so much care what you think anymore.”

My eyes burned. “What are you saying, Nana?”

She shook her head, hard. “I told you. Don’t call me that. Your grandfather came up with that because that’s what he called his grandmother, and I always hated it. I wanted to be Gigi or Mimi, something sweet and sassy. Nana just sounds like banana, like that dang dog from Peter Pan. What I’m saying here is that my name is Ruby, and I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be the same person I was. I’m going to be me. I’m going to be Ruby.” I must have looked pretty horrified, because she tried on her old, sweet smile and cupped my cheek. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends, sugar. Tish. Honey. It just means that you’re going to have to accept that I’m not the world-weary, exhausted old lady you got used to bossing around and drugging at night.”

“Nana, I—”

She let go of my cheek, and I put my hand there as if hunting for something long gone. “It’s okay. I know it was for my own good—that’s why I never said anything. Seemed to make you feel better when I got me some sleep. I did have some peculiar dreams, though.” She shook her head. “Something about this place is so familiar. The way the air smells. Did you ever think we’re maybe just dreaming? Or that this is heaven?”

That set my lips tight together. “It’s not heaven. I’ve seen too many bad things here. It’s real. I used to go back and forth, but now I’m stuck here.”

“There! That right there.” She pointed at my mouth in triumph. “ ‘Stuck here.’ How can you say that? You got so much more than you ever had on Earth. All that history, all those mistakes—gone. Jeff never existed here, and you never let yourself give up your life for that bastard. You got your own caravan, a good man. I can’t figure out why you’d ever choose to go back there.”

There.

She was already thinking of it as . . . a bad dream. This thing that happened.

The tears came then, hot and fast. My chest was full, my jaw aching. “I went back for you, Nana,” I said softly. “No, that’s not right. You’re not my Nana. I went back for her. Not you. You’re Ruby. And I left all this to make sure the woman you used to be didn’t have to die alone. Do you know what that’s like? Never knowing when it’s going to happen, when another plate is going to fall? It killed me! But I did it, always hoping for some sort of miracle.”

She caught my wobbling chin in firm fingers tipped with claws. “And you got that miracle,” she said softly. “I’m starting over. You should, too. I love you, honey. But not enough to give up my freedom again. Not for you. Not for anyone.”

“Do you even care? Do you care about me at all? About what I did for you?”

Her eyes looked deep into mine, and it was like seeing a different version of myself through a fun-house mirror. Those were my dark-blue eyes, but they glittered madly and had no wrinkles, no crow’s-feet, no purple smudges. That was my nose, my cheekbones. The hair was different, a bright auburn chestnut instead of my dark brown, but everything else was like seeing a doctored photograph. Just as I had once been a better, younger, more refined version of her, now she was an improvement on what I’d become.

“Oh, sugar.” She dropped my chin, stood on the bench, hopped onto the table to get around me, and landed on the floor with more energy and grace than I’d ever seen in an octogenarian. “I care. I’m grateful. But we don’t need those kinds of ties between us anymore, weighing us down. I guess you never thanked me for giving birth to your mama, but I did it anyway, and here you are. Let’s just move on.”

“Move on?” The tears had turned to rage at whatever this . . . thing was. This creature my grandmother had become. I didn’t see love and affection in her eyes, that proud warmth she used to exude when she saw me. We were strangers. And it was unbearable. “How can I move on when my grandmother doesn’t love me anymore?”

Catarrh and Quincy were openly laughing, and everyone in the dining car was staring at us. I stood, just so we’d be on equal ground. My old, failing hips popped with a crack in the silence, reminding me that even though I was only thirty-two, I felt, looked, and acted like a fussy old lady. My hands were in fists, but Ruby just crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes at me.

“Love isn’t a debt. We’re even, sugar. I gave life to your mother, and now your man gave me a new life. I like you fine, I just don’t want to be your pet grandma, dragged around on a leash. I got to find myself on my own. I got plans.”

“We’re not even. You have no idea what I’ve given up for you! Years of my life here, my body, whatever beauty I had. I don’t want a pet grandmother; I want a friend. You owe me that much. And you never even said thank you.”

She considered me, bit the inside of her cheek the way she’d always done when she was thinking hard about something that wasn’t easy. I’d seen her do it a million times in the Piggly Wiggly, her hand hovering over the cart as she decided what had to be put back to stay on budget.

“Thank you, Letitia.” It came out formal and cold, as if she had become the willful child and I the foolish old woman who demanded undeserved respect. “I’ll find a way to make it up to you. Just don’t hate me too much.”

My head fell forward as the tears came back. “I don’t hate you. I just miss you.”

“You never knew me,” she said, and the door slammed behind her.

5

Dressed in a Bludwoman’s low-cut gown and wearing a hideous mauve turban, I rearranged the phony props in my fortune-telling booth for the hundredth time, shining a spot on my crystal ball and fanning out the tarot cards in a perfect arc. As Criminy’s wife, I had to put in my time working in the caravan or suffer horrible gossip and social ignominy. Last night, I’d had a hissy fit in line and run off to another planet, so tonight’s performance was not up for discussion. I kept waiting to see Ruby among the carnivalleros or maybe wading through the moor grass to investigate her first magical night at the caravan, but thus far I hadn’t even caught a glimpse of her, not since she’d stormed away.

Far across the field, the bus-tanks vomited forth their city-dwelling occupants, and I took deep breaths and rubbed my hands, glad at least that there were no germs in Sang, as I’d be handling the flesh and coin of hundreds of strangers tonight. The props were fake, but my ability to see truth when touching people was one hundred percent real.

Soon I was utterly surrounded by the crowd, unable to hunt for a dapper auburn-haired Bludwoman as I gave out fortunes cheerful and bleak, boring and tragic. One woman who seemed no older than I looked would die within the week of what Sang physicians would call an apoplexy, but there was nothing I could do to prevent it. Her aging heart would give out, and she would fall to the cobbles in an alley while tossing out scraps to the bludrats.

“Try to stay inside,” I said with a pasted-on smile. “And treat yourself this week. You deserve it. Your family will see a windfall soon, so spare no expense.”

The windfall, of course, was her inheritance, but she wouldn’t be around to enjoy it. She might as well use it up while she could, and it made me feel unbearably sad as she pressed gloved fingers to her chest, dimpling with pleasure as she swore she’d finally buy that bonnet she’d been coveting.

As a fresh-faced girl settled across from me, cheeks rosy with youth and daring, I felt as wrinkled and useless as an old apple.

“Stay away from black horses,” I warned her. “And boys with blue eyes who promise you rings.”

But my heart wasn’t in it. The only futures I cared about right now were mine and Ruby’s, and I didn’t even know if they would be entwined. I looked over the top of the girl’s huge hat for my Nana but saw only an endless line of frail humans waiting for tragic ends and impossible windfalls in their easily bruised, easily broken bodies.

As the young girl left, replaced with a blue-eyed cad whose gaze followed her bustle a little too closely, something tugged on the hem of my skirt. It was Pemberly, Criminy’s pet clockwork monkey, her tiny green fez askew. A curl of paper clicked out of her mouth, and I pulled it out to read it.

Torno missing. Any information?

With a hiss of breath, I reached for a plumed pen and scribbled on the back: Did not see anything bad when glanced 6 years ago. Have not seen tonight. What do we do? The monkey’s copper paw clicked around the paper, and she skittered away into the crowd to find her master.

Perhaps it was uncharitable, but the first thought that entered my head was that perhaps my grandmother, newly bludded and hungry, had chosen the largest creature in the caravan as her first kill. My second thought was that even if she’d caught our strong man unaware, the ensuing fight between a starving predator and the biggest, strongest, most heavily muscled man I’d seen in six years in Sang would have attracted plenty of attention and probably become the most popular attraction at the caravan.

But Torno, for all his might, was a kind and tragic soul, the sort of man who would probably hold my grandmother up by her ankles and politely ask if she needed a teacup of blood from the dining car while her jaws snapped on air. Thinking back, I hadn’t seen him all day, but that was perfectly normal in the caravan. Until the crowd arrived, each performer’s time was his or her own, and thanks to my grandmother, I hadn’t been in the dining car for the usual company meals. Torno the gentle giant being absent during the show? I’d never seen it happen, not in six years with the caravan. Even Eblick the lizard boy took yearly vacations, but Torno was a constant. When I’d glanced on him, I’d seen only his tragic past and a possible incident with Catarrh and Quincy. Which had to mean he was fine, right?

I grew more and more agitated, omitting the theatrical flourishes of my act and giving each person the bare minimum. My tips were pathetic, but what did I care? No one looked at old hags, so it wasn’t as if a new gown or hat bought with my earnings would change anything. I was basically a kept woman, my needs covered by the caravan’s room and board—and her master’s undying sweetness. If everyone in my line had given up and left to see the other acts, I wouldn’t have minded, but a true glancer was so rare that they would accept a muttered sentence of unpleasant truth if that was all I grimly offered. I bravely soldiered on.

After Pemberly had finally shooed away the last lingering customers with a monkey-sized umbrella, I stood and stretched, my back and hips cracking in a dozen places. The caravan always felt so empty at night, once the crowds shuffled back onto their bus-tanks and trundled toward their cities. Gaily striped cups rimmed in cocoa and fluffy balls of dropped popcorn danced over the trampled grass, caught in the same soft breeze that ruffled my graying hair and made the strings of lights sway gently against star-strewn skies. I was startled as a velvety red bludsquirrel darted out of the high grasses to grab half a wrappy sadly dropped on the ground. In the cities, the small beast was considered a dangerous pest hell-bent on draining innocent humans, but out on the moors, it was just a comical furball with an oversized fuzzy tail struggling with a chunk of sandwich. Thanks to enterprising creatures like him, we never had to hire a janitor. All trash, big and small, just . . . disappeared.

“You get ’em, buddy,” I said. In response, it dropped the wrappy and chittered through snake fangs before snatching it back up and disappearing into the darkness.

I usually loved this time of night, loved waiting for Criminy to come find me and carry me, laughing, to our wagon. But with Torno missing and my grandmother strange and predatory, I felt off-kilter and trapped in a way I hadn’t for years in Sang, not since Jonah Goodwill had stolen the necklace that let me pass between worlds.

When Crim didn’t arrive with his usual flair to escort me to our wagon, I walked around the outside of the caravan train’s large circle by myself, passing empty acts and gaudily painted sets. Everyone was gone, and a shiver arced up my spine as a pair of bludbunnies tumbled out of the high weeds just beyond the bright lights, fighting over a bit of pink flesh. I hurried around to the striped backdrop where Torno’s weights and blocks were arrayed and wasn’t surprised to find most of the caravan gathered around the ringmaster. Up front, of course, was Emerlie in her lime-green tutu, with Charlie Dregs the Bludman puppeteer almost close enough to put a hand against her back. The denizens of the freak tent huddled together, many of them new: Patrick the human pincushion; a young, heavily tattooed Bludman named Peter with a thick beard and a huge curling mustache; Zazu the mermaid; and a very unfortunate fellow named Murgatroyd with a horrible case of elephantiasis. Veruca the Abyssinian sword swallower and Eblick the lizard boy were aloof on the outskirts, as always, alone even among their fellow freaks.

The crowd parted. Abilene the bearded lady edged away from Catarrh and Quincy as our artificer, Mr. Murdoch, hurried to the door of Torno’s wagon with a magnifying glass in hand and his goggles pulled down over serious eyes. Scurrying beside him, his wife, Imogen, still wore the scarlet and black Monarch costume that matched her butterfly circus as she flipped through a book, looking for answers. On the periphery, the knife thrower, Marco, paced nervously, a dagger held between his fingertips and his unnaturally violet eyes watching the moors with suspicion as if Torno’s kidnapper or killer might appear at any time and require skewering.

Marco’s girlfriend, Jacinda, walked up to me, her journalist’s notebook at the ready. “As a glancer, Tish, you’ve surely seen a glimpse of Torno’s future. How did he die?”

I rolled my eyes and patted her shoulder. “If I knew, I would’ve mentioned it by now. I only saw his past and one incident that we were able to prevent. It happens that way sometimes. There’s no rhyme or reason. Doesn’t mean he’s dead.”

“Scuttlebutt says the last carnivallero to disappear from this circus was a tattooed girl named Lydia. Do you know where she went?”

I went cold and pinned her with my glare. “We don’t talk about it. Charlie Dregs buried her. The bludding didn’t take—it was messy. That was before my time. And she wasn’t the last to disappear.”

Before she could shoot her next question with the cool aim of Marco’s knives, I pushed through the throng to Criminy, who stood in Torno’s open door.

“No sign of struggle. Looks like he may have packed a bag.” Crim’s grin quirked up, just a little. “His mustache wax is gone, which tells me he had some say in the leaving, at least.”

He held out his hand, and I let him pull me into Torno’s wagon and shut the door on the curious onlookers. I’d never been in here before; most of the carnivalleros were fiercely protective of their only private space. Torno shared his wagon with Eblick, but they were fortunate to have a carriage that was divided on the outside, like a duplex. Inside, the room was as tidy, spare, and masculine as Torno himself: sturdy wooden furniture, a coat rack, a few pinned-up posters of Italian strong men of old who looked suspiciously like past generations of Torno.

Criminy walked to the bed and flipped up the edge of the bed skirt to show me where the dust on the floor was disturbed in exactly the shape of a suitcase.

“That’s not like him,” I murmured. “Leaving without giving you notice.”

“Which tells us something unusual has happened.”

I stepped back to the doorway and looked through the peephole at the whispering crowd waiting beyond.

“And no one knows anything at all?”

“You’re the glancer, love. They figure that between your magical powers and my general sovereignty, we know everything.” He sighed and knelt to run a finger over a tiny dot on the worn wooden board. When he stood, he held it out.

I sniffed. Blood.

Criminy put his tongue to the red smear on his glove. “It’s not Torno’s, oddly enough.”

“So Torno . . . killed someone in a fit of passion and ran away?”

He didn’t even try to smother his bark of laughter. “You should’ve been a penny-dreadful novelist, love. That’s downright dastardly. Doesn’t seem like our Torno—same fellow who once found a crippled baby bludrabbit and nursed it back to health. Remember how surprised he was when it bit him? If you didn’t see him kill anyone in your glancing, is there a chance Ruby might’ve touched him and seen it? New glancers often wish to try out their powers, whether by stealth or for coppers.”

“I haven’t seen her. We argued. I thought maybe she had . . .” I tilted my head toward the floor, where the drop of blood had been.

“Such a deliciously diabolical mind.” He pulled me close and kissed my forehead, and my boot skidded on something. There were worse places to fall than into Criminy Stain’s arms.

Bending down, I held up the culprit. A pin. Beside it, another, nestled between the wood boards.

“Pins? This would make more sense if he’d had the good sense to kill Emerlie in the costume wagon,” Crim said, holding up the slender bit of metal.

“Just our luck he didn’t,” I muttered.

His answering chuckle was balm to my soul. At least Crim still liked me well enough.

I walked to the wall, put a hand to an empty space between “Luigi the Strong Man” and “Mario the Magnificent.” The blue-striped wallpaper was dotted with tiny holes. “Did he have . . . a map here?”

Crim joined me, cocking his head and pointing. “I think you might be right, love. If this was Sangland and this the mainland, the pinholes would mark all the places we’ve stopped over the years. See how many of them are clustered on London? Here’s Manchester and Glasgow. And this would be Paris, where we visited the cabarets. And here’s Italia, where he’s from.”

“So he took a suitcase and this map. Which means he’s . . . somewhere in this hemisphere. Grand.”

With a deep breath, Criminy went from amused, doting husband to whip-wielding ringmaster. He threw open Torno’s door and stood on the top step, arms crossed. “Torno is missing. Everyone visit your wagon and see if anything was taken or if anyone else is gone. Report anything unusual to me directly.”

“Is he—” Emerlie started, but Criminy cut her off with a hand.

“We don’t know. As of now, we don’t suspect foul play. See what you can find.”

As the crowd turned to go, I put a hand on Crim’s arm and whispered, “Can you ask them about Nana?”

“Oh, and if you should see a Bludwoman in a frilly pink dress—”

“In a gentleman’s suit,” I interrupted.

“In a gentleman’s suit.” Crim tried not to break his stern face. “Do send her along to my wagon. She’s my gran-in-law, and she’s also missing. Good night.”

6

Back in our wagon, Criminy sat at his desk, throwing his scrying bones like dice and clucking over whatever answers he read there. I paced, still dressed in my glancer’s costume and horribly worried. I liked Torno but felt he could take care of himself, plus my glancing had thus far not disappointed in regard to carnivalleros meeting unhappy ends in our caravan. My grandmother’s disappearance, on the other hand, terrified me. Sure, she was a Bludwoman and therefore mostly indestructible, but we hadn’t had time to explain life on Sang. She didn’t know that in the cities, she might be ghettoized, arrested, or worse. She didn’t know how to buy blood by the tube or that she could live off blud animals, if necessary. She didn’t know that drinking from humans was expressly forbidden and could result in public draining.

We had planned to sit her down and tell her all that tonight. But she was gone.

When the knock came, I startled and spun. Emerlie stood in the doorway, Charlie Dregs lurking mournfully behind her, as usual. Criminy stood back to let them in.

“My wagon’s been ruffled,” Emerlie said, blue eyes wide. “Only stuff missing’s a bunch of old city clothes, a gentleman’s large boots, and a huge bonnet.”

“Are you sure? It’s a dump in there.”

Emerlie drew herself up tall and tossed me a disdainful look. “You supposedly know your business, I might as well know mine. A messy wagon’s a sign of creativity, they say.”

“Or laziness,” I mumbled.

“So we’ve a strong man and a new Bludwoman gone missing, and a human’s city clothes have been stolen. Which means . . .” Crim looked at me, grimly amused.

“My grandmother’s run off with a younger man,” I finished lamely.

“They’ll be headed for a city, then. Probably hopped on one of tonight’s buses along with the audience.”

“The bus back to Birmingham? Whatever for?”

“Mebbe they’re getting married! Or mebbe they stole something and need to pawn it. Perhaps they’ll have a love child . . .” Emerlie’s eyes roved over the innards of our wagon hungrily as she contemplated the juicy possibilities, but I felt like vomiting at the thought of my grandmother pregnant . . . or even having sex at all.

“Let us know if you find anything else, eh?” Crim said coldly, bowing toward our open door.

“She’s your gran!” Emerlie shouted as she left. “You ought to keep track of ’er like a proper relative.”

Charlie winced on my behalf and tipped his hat.

I kicked the door closed. “I just don’t understand it, Crim. I go to all the trouble to bring her here, use that dreadful potion, not knowing what it’s going to do to me—and I think it took a few more years off, because I swear I’m getting a hunchback—and then she just up and leaves? Without saying anything? After an argument? In which she was wrong? That wasn’t how she raised me.” I passed into our bedroom and slumped on the bed. “I’ve spent years of my life nursing her, changing out bags of her shit, feeding her. And now this. It’s like she said—I guess I never even knew her at all.”

Crim sat by my side and snaked an arm around to hold me tight. “Now, love. Try to see it from her point of view. She’s been trapped in a bag of bones, stuck in a bed, and forced to watch someone else clean her embarrassing filth, and suddenly she shows up in a new world, gets drained, learns to drink blood, and feels like a person again. Did you think she would be content to sit around the cook wagon, skinning bludbunnies and talking about those pie things you love so much? You probably weren’t born until she was an old woman. You never knew her as a girl. Life’s different when you suddenly have choices.”

“But it’s good enough for me, here in the caravan. Why can’t it be good enough for her?” I traced the pattern on the quilt square. “And why didn’t I glance on her when we appeared in the box and were touching all over?”

Criminy kissed my forehead and stood, going over to the box. I’d ignored it since he’d pulled Nana and me out. What good was it now? He reached within and chuckled.

“What’s so funny?”

He looked up and gave me an apologetic smile. “Ah, my love. I must’ve forgotten to tell you. The thing is, when two glancers touch, the strongest one gets both glances. Which means that if you didn’t glance on Ruby, she knows a lot more about you now than you know about her.”

“But she could be anywhere! What the hell good is glancing if it can’t help me get the things I need most?”

I broke down in sobs, and Crim returned to hold me like a child curled against his chest. I could feel the hard, aching knobs of my spine against his young, well-muscled arm, and it only made me cry harder.

“The thing about glances, my love, is that some are more helpful than others.” He held out his hand to show a scrap of paper with scribbling on it. “But notes are infinitely more useful.”

I uncurled it and read the familiar spidery handwriting. Went to London to visit my old friend Hepzibah, I’d tell you not to follow me, but I know you will anyway. Ruby.

Not Love, Ruby.

Just Ruby.

Criminy had found the note in the exact spot where I’d left the scorched remains of my locket—which had also disappeared. And since the locket had come from Hepzibah, the same witch who had given me the potion and stolen twenty years of my life, I could only assume my spitfire of a bloodthirsty grandmother had gone to London to murder Hepzibah for some reason she hadn’t shared with me. If her glancing was stronger than mine, perhaps she’d seen the horror the witch had wrought on my life and had gone after her for revenge. And she’d taken Torno with her, which was problematic not only for our lack of a popular performer but also because it was nice to have an enormous strong man around when you had to leave the caravan and its denizens unguarded to go hunt down your naïve but dangerous grandmother before she got herself in trouble.

“We have to hurry. They can’t be too far yet,” I said, pulling my traveling bag out from under our bed. With shaking hands, I opened my armoire and started pulling out the clothes that would travel best.

Crim watched me, silent as a hawk and just as inscrutable.

“My darling . . .”

“You only call me that when you’re about to say something I don’t like.”

“My best beloved, does it occur to you that if Ruby wanted our help, she could’ve easily asked? And that instead, she wrote a note and left in secret?”

“So she made a mistake. She doesn’t know anything about us, about Sang. She’s a sitting duck.”

“She’s a fanged duck with a tower of muscle by her side. And Torno can tell her anything she needs to know.”

“Fine. She has muscle and info. But she’s never tangled with that goddamn witch. She’s going to get herself killed.”

Fingers light on my shoulders, Crim firmly massaged the tension from muscle and aching bone.

I sighed back against him, tears burning my eyes.

“My darling . . .” he started, and I growled. “Look, poppet. Of the four of us, you are by far the most likely to get herself killed should we go after them. Leave it to Charlie and me. We’ll even take the twins, if you believe more teeth are necessary.”

I swept a hand toward my suitcase. “She’s my grandmother. She needs me.”

His fingers left my shoulders. So, so gently, he said, “She doesn’t seem to think so.”

I spun, furious. “Don’t act like I’m the bad guy. This whole thing is your fault.”

His smile went brittle, his arms carefully crossed. “Oh, yes, my sweet. I do apologize for delivering your drunk and decrepit ancestress over to this wretched plane of existence and forcibly exsanguinating her as cruelly and messily as possible for my own personal amusement in order to give her two hundred more years of life with which to abandon you. I’m an utter cad.”

“Not that. Everything. You brought me here, to Sang, against my will. You said to give her time and space. You took a damn nap and let her escape!”

“I was rather overcome by the drugs and drink in her system, yes. Not to mention the exhaustion of that particular event, when I, too, was drained. I had no way to know she’d run off with my strong man. Definitely wouldn’t have bludded her if I’d known she was going to turn my life upside down and make you so unhappy.”

“Fine. Fine! Then do it. Do it now. You know you want to. You’re goading me into it. Turn me!”

His face was as flat and blank as an unmarked gravestone, neither amused nor angry nor smug. He was looking at me the way he looked at anyone who challenged him, and it sent a shiver up my spine. “Into what?” he said.

I tried to dig fingers into the collar of my dress, but I was still in costume, still wearing the audaciously low-cut blouse I could freely wear once I was a Bludwoman. No human with any sense of self-preservation would expose their neck in public. My fingertips scraped down my neck, nails biting into skin, daring him with the blood welling in the scratches. “Blud me! So I won’t get killed. So I can join your morbid little hunting party. So I can fetch my grandmother from the only person in this goddamn world who’s got any power over me. Get it over with.”

He shook his head. “No.”

That caught me up short. “What do you mean, ‘no’?”

“I mean I’m not going to give you this gift out of spite or because you’re in a hurry. I wish to share my life with you, and I long to give you my blud, but it’s not some knee-jerk reaction to trouble. This is your life. And you’ve resisted being bludded for half a decade. I’ll not have you resenting me for a choice you made when you weren’t seeing clearly.”

“You would’ve done it and gladly this afternoon.”

His eyes burned, hungry. “Oh, yes.”

“Then do it now.”

“I think not.”

I looked down at my hands, spotted and veiny and trembling, and anger surged through me. Hooking my fingers into his cravat, I pulled Criminy close, so close our lips were almost touching, my head leaning back to look up into his cloudy, flaming gray eyes. I closed my eyes and kissed him, hard and punishing.

At first he resisted, but then he met me with full force. We usually held back, knowing that although certain magic lessened his ravenous need to kill and drain me, there was always a chance he could lose control and do real damage. But this time I gave him everything I had, clashing teeth and a taunting tongue and my front plastered to his, my hand slipping down his shirtfront and under his waistcoat.

“Careful, poppet,” he hissed as I went for his breeches.

My lips skittered sideways, and I nipped his ear. “No. You’ve always wanted to taste me more deeply. So do it. If you won’t listen to reason, listen to lust.” I knocked off his top hat, dragged my mouth down his throat, and lifted my hair to show him my neck, where the fresh scratches still burned. “Kiss me here,” I breathed.

“Letitia, you know very well that goading me won’t work,” he said, but it came out ragged, almost pleading, and I undid the buttons of his shirt, kissing my way down. When I hit his waistcoat, I dug my fingers between the buttons and ripped it open. Soon his chest was exposed, right down to the V of his hips, pointing me farther down. His head fell back, and I ran my thumbs around the high waistband of his soft, tight doeskin pants as I licked a long line from his navel to his throat and claimed his lips again.

“I’m not goading. I’m just giving a rather eloquent argument,” I said between deep, hot kisses that rocked me to my core.

Criminy slipped the loose blouse off my shoulders and pushed the fabric down to my waist, revealing my corset. His teeth scraped over my clavicles as he kissed his way down between my breasts, pressed up and together by the tight stays. I forgot to feel self-conscious about my aging body as his tongue dipped below the thick satin and sought a nipple. All I could do was moan and push his shirt and waistcoat off his shoulders so I could revel in his body, which was spare and muscular and as tight as that of a man of twenty. If I could just push him a little harder, push him into biting down for the first time, he’d have to give in. My body would return to its youthful smoothness and fullness, too.

I tried to slip my hand down the front of his breeches, but he pushed me back onto the bed with the force of his mouth on my breast, sucking and licking and driving me mad. One hand on either side of the busk, he popped my corset open, and I took a great gulp of air that caught in my throat as he jerked up my voluminous skirts and ran bare knuckles over the wetness there.

“You do seem very ready, Letitia.”

“I am ready. Do it.”

With a rustle of fabric, he was there, as ready as I was, fiercely pressing and rubbing. His mouth found my neck as he sank into me, and I turned my head and rose to meet him, as anxious for his teeth as I was for our joining. Yet he only kissed me as he entered me, slow and sure, barely teasing me with the scrape of teeth over the thin skin and veins in my throat, the warm rasp of his tongue over the scratches I’d made to tempt him.

“Now who’s goading whom?” I cried, breath coming fast as he began to move, slowly at first and then building into his rhythm, pounding into me, again and again.

“Ah, but I’ll give you at least some satisfaction, darling.”

I rose off the bed, already starting my first climax, as always amazed that he knew my body this well. He didn’t slow his rhythm; he knew it undid me to keep going, to never flag, to let the echoes play out as the next wave built. I wrapped firm fingers through his fine, long hair, pulling his face to my neck. “There. There. Just do it. Please. Now.”

In response, he only thrust into me harder, and my whimpers became more frantic. I tried to scratch myself with all-too-human fingernails, tried to give him the blood he craved, but he only pulled my hands away and pinned them to the pillow over my head as he rode me. I dared to look at him, and he was a feral masterpiece of bared teeth and wild hair and stormy gray eyes, grinning fiercely as I came again, bucking beneath him. At last, his head fell back, and I felt him jerk inside me as he groaned and let loose my hands, his forehead to my shoulder and his breath hot and sweet on my skin.

Before he had opened his eyes, I pushed him off me and stood, pulling my skirt back down and my blouse back up, red-hot with shame and frustration. What good were a cascade of multiple orgasms if I still couldn’t get what I wanted from the one man who could give it to me?

“Letitia, my love, if you’d like to talk about it now—”

I shook my head and ran for the small water closet, slamming and locking the door behind me. Criminy had never denied me anything, and I felt an utter fool, more human and breakable and old and fragile than ever.

“Letitia?”

The soft whisper of his hand on the door nearly broke my heart. The first time he’d made love to me, we’d started like this, with nothing but a thin wooden door between us. It had happened on a submarine lined with posh red velvet, and I’d been partial to red velvet ever since. Now, as I wiped myself clean down below and splashed water on my face to rinse off the kohl-tinged tear tracks, I wondered if we’d ever be equals again.

“Go away, Crim. I have to get cleaned up so we can go find my Nana. Before I get old and die.”

“You’re not going to get old and die, love. Glances don’t lie.”

I swallowed hard and looked in the mirror. My glance, the very first time I’d touched his skin, agreed with everything that had happened to us thus far. Everything except the part of the glance I’d always feared so much: a black-scaled hand clutching Criminy’s in our bed.

And, for the very first time, it occurred to me that I’d only seen Criminy and another Bludman’s hand.

Perhaps it wasn’t mine at all.

7

“Just . . .” It was hard to keep my voice steady. “I need to be alone for a minute.”

With his usual gentlemanly consideration, Crim murmured his love through the door and left. After the wagon door had closed, I emerged from the tiny bathroom feeling as transparent and breakable as a porcelain teacup. I dressed hurriedly in my nicest city clothes, the sort of thing any wealthy human woman would choose. A brightly colored dress in aqua and green with a high neck, a firm leather corset to fend off those dangerous Bludmen, high leather boots, and a hat that covered my ears.

It was ridiculous, I knew, as most Bludmen had more than enough self-control to resist an old woman’s flappy earlobes, but it made traveling in the city easier for me, as no one noticed me at all. And if Nana’s note was correct and she’d gone to London to find the witch, then I didn’t want to arouse any sort of suspicion on the way into town. Hepzibah had spies everywhere, considering that she paid better for information than she did for years, which she could steal with a touch. I’d given her five in a fair deal, but the spell she’d put on the locket had taken at least thirty.

Since we were just a few hours from London, I didn’t pack a trunk. We would go, face the witch, fetch my Nana, and either come back to the caravan or die trying. When I stepped outside into the gloaming, everything was as it should be. Twin columns of smoke barreling toward us across the moors signaled the approach of the evening’s city folk, while the scents of popcorn, caramel, and warm apple cider floated on the breeze to lure them closer, despite the slight fear that made them shiver at the turnstile. Last night, I’d been among them, one of them. Now I prepared to say my good-byes. The facts were these: my human body was old and frail, the witch was dangerous, and Criminy was right about the danger involved. If I didn’t come back to the caravan, I wanted to tell Imogen and Jacinda how much they’d meant to me and wish them well.

My first stop was the dining car, which was mostly empty, aside from two heads nestled close together in the corner. Catarrh and Quincy, the two-headed boy. One head turned and snickered, lips painted red. He—they were the most hotheaded, hungry, uncontrolled Bludmen I’d ever met, and even after six years with the caravan, I still didn’t trust them or know how to handle their pronouns. Crim kept them on a steady schedule of three times the usual amount of blood, as they’d been known over the years to drink from the odd spectator. I ignored them and hurried to what was left of the evening meal, still spread out on the buffet line. A few apples and oranges, a bowl of bludrabbit stew, a couple of hard rolls. I couldn’t eat now, but I could pack enough food to get me to London and the street vendors of the hot wrappy sandwiches I’d come to crave like McDonald’s whenever we were near a proper city.

Something rustled in the corner, and I looked up. The two-headed boy had switched to the other side of the bench to watch me. A chill went down my spine, much like a mouse must feel when a hawk’s shadow passes overhead.

“M’lady,” Catarrh said, his voice mocking.

Quincy snickered and dipped his head in a faux bow.

“Lads,” I acknowledged with a nod. Crim had taught me long ago that the only way to deal with them was to show them a hard, haughty front. They could smell weakness. And they liked the spice of it.

“Master Crim went to fetch a conveyance,” Quincy said, ending with his usual odd chitter.

“Said he’d be back shortly,” added Catarrh.

The heads met each other’s eyes, and they grinned, slow and creepy, showing more fangs than most Bludmen possessed.

“Shouldn’t you boys be in the tent for the show?” I asked.

Quincy shrugged. “No master, no consequences.”

“I’m the master’s lady,” I reminded them.

Another furtive look passed between them, and they stood. Their shared body had extra-wide shoulders tapering to a trim waist and average-sized legs spaced just a little farther apart than usual. Since we’d lost our more talented costumers, their clothes had gotten a little ratty. Everything they wore had to be built from scratch, but Emerlie refused to have them in her wagon, much less be alone with them. One hand reached to scratch a tuft of dark hair on their chest, and Quincy snickered again. They moved to block the door.

The only way out.

My eyes shot to the kitchen window, betraying me. “Cook?”

“Cook’s asleep, hen,” Catarrh said.

“All alone, all alone,” Quincy crooned.

I ran the count in my head as I stepped backward and reached for a three-pronged fork. Criminy: fetching a conveyance. Charlie Dregs, the stolid, good-hearted Bludman: in his puppet booth, minding his own business. Wee Pammy, the new but honest Blud child: collecting tickets. Marco the knife thrower: throwing his knives at harmless targets. Mr. Murdoch the artificer: locked in his wagon with his tinkerer’s tools. Torno the strong man: gone with my grandmother. My old friend and now Bludman, Casper: long gone, married to the Tsarina of Freesia. Criminy’s best friend, Antonin, the Bludman costumer: run away with a robot and presumed dead. Tattooed Peter, the newest Bludman: completely unaware of my peril and most likely far away in his booth.

All my champions, all the carnivalleros strong enough to fight Catarrh and Quincy? Were gone. It was just me and him—them. The two-headed fanged monster approaching me, step by menacing step, across the dining wagon.

I had a fork. I had a thick corset and a high, buttoned collar. And that was it. The dining wagon held no knives, no weapons, because why would we need them under the care of Criminy Stain? As I retreated backward, eyes desperately bouncing from one head to the other, my gloved hand dragged along the buffet line. There had to be something I could use as a weapon.

And then I found it among the spices. Quickly sidestepping a table, I grabbed a ceramic pitcher of water and, with my back to the approaching monster, dumped as much salt into it as possible, hands shaking.

“How ’bout a kiss, then, missus?” A velvet-gloved hand landed on my shoulder, untrimmed claws pricking all the way through his gloves and my jacket, straight into my flesh.

I took a deep breath, spun around, and dashed the hastily mixed salt water into the closest face.

Catarrh shrieked and stumbled back as Quincy hissed and grabbed for my neck. Salt water, after all, was poisonous to Bludmen. I’d managed to cripple half the creature and infuriate the other, more animalistic half. With a feral growl, Quincy shoved me in the chest, hard, and I fell back onto the sturdy table. I struggled to get up, but a firm palm pressed down on my corset, a wide torso angling to urge apart my thighs. Revulsion and fear squirmed through me, and I thrashed as my body rejected the possibility of rape and feeding with equal disgust.

“Kill her! Kill her!” Quincy yowled, and Catarrh struggled to loosen the buttons of my tall, thick collar with one clumsy hand, opting for food over lust. I fought back, ripping at his arm with my hands and kicking with my boots as much as his closeness would allow.

And then I remembered that the walls of the wagon were merely wood and started screaming. “Help! Help! Get Criminy! Pemberly! To me!”

“Enough of that,” Catarrh said, covering my mouth with a filthy glove.

I looked up at his face and shuddered. I’d never seen the effects of salt water on a Bludman’s skin, but Crim had sworn it was like acid to a human. Catarrh had never been a handsome man, but now his face was pink and bubbly, as if it might drip off his sharp bones. His eyes were red all around with burst vessels, pink-tinged tears rolling down his cheeks. But even more frightening was the hasp of one collar button unslipped at my throat, followed by Quincy’s snicker.

“Never tasted Master’s finest vintage,” he said, giggling.

“Blood’s blood. Always better hot. Always better when you can reach the last drop,” Catarrh added.

As if they truly could read each other’s minds, Quincy moved to hold me down while Catarrh’s far cleverer fingers stuffed a dirty hankie in my mouth and went after the rest of my buttons. I grew frantic, terrified, spitting vowels around the hankie and scrabbling with my hands at whatever I could reach. Quincy shook my hand loose and slapped me hard, my head banging off the table. My fist pounded the wall behind my head, at first with Crim’s secret knock and then, after another slap, with inarticulate drumbeats that destroyed my gloves and pulverized my knuckles. By the time my collar and jacket had been unbuttoned down to my corset, I was running out of air and skin. And hope.

“Now, then,” Quincy said, and Catarrh nodded in agreement. “Much better. Let’s?”

“Let’s.”

My vision went over spotted as the two faces descended, one monstrous with calm eyes and the other calm with monstrous eyes, twin mouths open to show long fangs. I squeezed my own eyes shut and clawed for their faces, but they each pinned an arm to the table. I shrank back, shook my head, flailed, trembled, but still their breath rolled over me like hot pennies.

When their teeth drove into my neck, one mouth on each side, I screamed around the wad of cloth, a muffled cry of anger and fear that shredded my throat. It hurt. So bad. Like having fire in my veins, pulling, sucking, drawing out every bit of who I was, what I was, and replacing it with burning acid and emptiness. I thrashed and fought, going weaker and weaker and feeling so very, very foolish. I had forgotten the number one rule of Sang: without Criminy around to protect me, I was either food or chattel.

Right before everything went over in a haze of red, I gave a sad, quiet chuckle. A few hours ago, I had begged my husband to do this very thing. Now, against my will, I had my wish.

The only difference was that Catarrh and Quincy weren’t going to give back what they had taken.

8

I was floating in a warm pool, drinking the most delicious margarita. The sun shone hot on my face, and I was stretched out and weightless, my body bronzing and suffused with comfort. Eyes closed, I curled my toes and sighed.

“Drink more. Come on, damn you!”

Warm porcelain pressed to my lips, and I agreeably sucked down more of the tangy, sweet liquor. It ran down my throat to pool in my belly with the heat of pepper-infused tequila. So good. I needed more. With greedy fingers, I sought the cup, pressing it closer, drinking deeper.

“More! Come on, Letitia. Come on, love.”

“Crim?” I murmured around the sun-warm cup, and a hand rubbed my back.

“Yes, love. It’s me. Come on, now. Keep on.”

I breathed in deep, recognizing his particular scent of honeyed Cabernet wine, growing vines, and sweet spices. I blinked and saw white and red, the world bleary and smeared and dreamy. Trying to focus and fight up from the warm pool, I squinted at his set lips and stubbled throat, splashed with blood. One of my hands curled possessively around it, the other trailing dead on the wood floor of the dining car.

I closed my eyes.

No.

The dream. The pool. The margarita. The margarita was red. The pool was red. The sun was red. I was floating in blood, and it was glorious, and I wanted to drink it all dry, suck it up until I was full as a tick. I gulped, empty and dying of thirst, and I tried to imagine the sun shining, but all I knew was the heat of Criminy’s skin. Why was I so cold?

He held me like a baby, cradled in his arms, rubbing my back and murmuring. As he spoke eloquent nothings, the cords of his neck twitched under my tongue. He was the pool, the drink, the cup, the sun, the world. When I opened my eyes again, he wobbled, and strong hands pulled me away from him with a sudden pop.

“Here, m’lady. Try this.”

Red gloves held hard porcelain to my lips and forced my head back. The blood that slithered into my mouth was dead and cold and wretched. I struggled to get away, to fight back to the warm flesh and hotter blood I craved, but still the teacup pressed and poured, forcing it down my throat.

“No!” I spluttered, trying to push it away.

“You must,” a voice said. I opened my eyes to confirm it. Charlie Dregs supported my back with a wiry arm, looking just as kind and sad as ever, possibly sadder.

“No. It’s cold. It’s dead. I need—”

“You can’t, m’lady. He’s nearly drained. You need more volume to complete the process.” He gestured to the warming cauldron of blood tubes left out for the Bludmen at each meal in the dining car, and I shuddered at the thought of all that disconnected nothingness slipping down my throat like the juice that dripped off Styrofoam trays of past-date chicken. The cauldron kept it warm, but warm wasn’t the same as fresh. It wouldn’t do. I thrashed my way upright, hunting for the source of warmth and joy.

Hunting for prey.

What I found was my husband, ice-blue and barely breathing on the ground. I’d never seen him limp, drained, sick. It was possibly the only thing that could have moved the beast squirming in my guts, hungering for life.

He had no life left to give.

“Is he—”

I couldn’t ask, but Charlie knew what I needed to know.

“When you’re full, he’ll drink from you, m’lady. Once the process is started, equilibrium must be reached quickly.”

Drink from me? Memory jolted down my backbone and clenched my teeth, and I suddenly remembered what fear was.

“Where are the twins?”

Charlie’s mournful John Lennon face quirked up in a rare smirk. He wrapped my hands around the teacup, reached down, and held out his arms. In each hand, he clutched a shock of blood-soaked hair. The faces of Catarrh and Quincy stared at me, sightless, bone-white, and bruised purple. Their bodies were not attached.

“He drank them dry before feeding you. Wanted you to have your revenge in the form of their purloined strength.”

Part of me was disgusted to have anything of the freakish monsters inside me, but something new writhed deep in my gut, rising like a sleepy dragon and infusing my veins with fire and power. It was right, taking their blud. Drinking it into me, straining it through my strong heart. And it came from Criminy, and all things that came from Criminy were good.

I nodded and gulped down what was left in the teacup, knowing that the longer the blood sat, exposed to the air, the clumpier it would get.

“More, please, then,” I said, holding out the cup with a wobbly smile.

Charlie tossed the heads into a corner, where they bounced like bruised melons. With a flair I hadn’t seen in him before, he selected two blood vials, popped the corks with his thumbnails, and poured their contents into the teacup with the coordination of a seasoned bartender.

“It goes down better warm, m’lady.” He gave a genuine smile as I gulped it all down.

“How much more does she need?”

I spun, startled to hear Criminy’s voice. On one level, it was ragged and weak, barely a whisper as he sprawled on the floor. On the other, deeper level, it was like hearing violins, the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard, multidimensional and echoing in my veins.

“Just a few more vials, m’lord,” Charlie said, hurriedly emptying four more vials into my teacup until the blood nearly overflowed the gilt rim. Then, to me, in a whisper, “Hurry.”

With my eyes on Criminy, I gulped the blood down. The last few sips seemed to barely fit into me, as if I’d run out of room inside. I burped softly and smiled. I’d always expected blood to taste coppery and meaty, but it was delicious, like the finest red wine, velvety and rounded with just a hint of . . . was it butter?

Charlie touched my face, turning it left and right in the light, and nodded. “Now, m’lord.” Crim didn’t move, and Charlie jerked his chin toward my husband’s still form. “You’ll have to help him at first. Be gentle, m’lady.”

I was cozy warm all over, as full as I’d ever been after a Thanksgiving dinner. It was strange, remembering how to navigate my limbs, which seemed to move more fluidly, more powerfully. I was sitting cross-legged, and then, as if lightning had struck me, my legs were underneath me, and I was crouching over Crim, hands on either side of his fine face. I took a moment to wonder at the smooth, unmarked skin of my hands. The knobby veins and age spots that had sprung up in the last year were fading, and my hands looked like a teenager’s. Only the faintest shading of gray told me that the process was truly ongoing, that I wasn’t already a proper Bludman and might still botch the process.

“Beautiful,” Crim whispered, and then his cloudy gray eyes rolled back in a swoon.

“He needs you now. He gave too much,” Charlie said, indicating a line along his own throat.

I nodded. “He always does.” Taking a deep breath, I plucked Crim’s hand from the ground and used the talon from his pointer finger to score a deep scratch along my neck; my nails hadn’t yet found their points. I felt the blood—blud?—well up hotly on my skin and set my throat against his cold lips. “C’mon, Crim. You can do it. Goodness knows you’ve waited long enough.”

I felt as if lightning was coursing through me, making me twitch, forming new connections and reknitting the parts of my body that had grown old. And yet, at the same time, a chill pool of fear was seeping up my throat the longer Crim lay there, unmoving, not drinking. I rubbed my neck over his lips, scored my skin more deeply, dipped fingers into the blood, and slipped them into his mouth. His tongue barely curled around, too dry, and I worried the wound to make it flow.

He could only lick feebly at first. When his fingers wrapped around my neck, I could have cheered. But something in me knew that my place was to hold still, to give, to be the vessel for the man I loved, who had drained himself for my benefit when he’d claimed he wouldn’t do it until we were both ready.

Death had a way of hurrying along readiness, I supposed.

A long, soft sigh whispered over my skin, and I quivered and felt heat pool in my belly. I knew that sound, a sound we only shared alone, behind closed doors, or in the wilderness, pressed against a tree or crushed over a patch of flowers. His tongue dragged over my throat, and I gave an answering sigh, almost a begging whimper, and then I heard a door close as Charlie Dregs prudently left the wagon.

“About damn time,” Crim purred, and he hooked a leg over mine and flipped me onto my back.

In response, I let out a loud, careless laugh and ran my hands down his shoulders.

“Welcome back,” I said.

His fangs brushed over the wound, worrying it wider, and he drank deeper and slipped a hand under my skirts. My breathing sped up, and I felt wet all over and thrumming with new energy. Eyes closed, I saw the red sun again, and Crim washed over me like hot water pressing for entrance at every gate of my body, my being. I moaned and caressed the nape of his neck, urging him to drink faster, deeper, harder, trying to edge closer and closer to the red-hot wire, deep inside, that he was so close to plucking like a guitar string.

“Waited forever for this,” he murmured, breaking from his thirst to kiss me with blood-painted lips, a finger held tight over the wound on my neck.

“Don’t stop. So close.”

He chuckled and opened my eyes with his thumbs, gently, hunting for something and smiling when he found it. “You don’t know what you’re close to, love.”

With a ragged growl, I dug my fingers into his hair and yanked his face away, forcing it back to my throat.

“Drink,” I growled.

“If I drink too much, you’ll die,” he murmured. “This bit’s chancy.”

“Don’t take it this far and be gentle. Finish it, you bastard.”

“So demanding, my love. But it’s almost your turn again. I think you’ll like that even more.”

And then he was drinking above and teasing below, working his fingers under my skirts, slipping them inside me in time with his tongue’s lapping at my neck. He found that red-hot place, stroked it, drew a climax out of me along with my blood. As the echoes and my screams died away, he withdrew his fingers and pulled me up from my swoon with an arm around my shoulders.

I’d never felt so empty, so light, so beautiful, so clear. I was floating in the blood again, suffused with bliss and seeing nothing but heady red darkness.

“Drink now, love.”

“Mmmmargarita,” I murmured, and wetness pressed up against my lips, and the first taste of salt and sweetness and glory washed over my tongue in a haze of power. I drank my fill to fullness again, and then, without weakening his hold, he gently held me away and moved back to my neck to take his own turn. We went on like that, back and forth, the frenzy and fear replaced with purposefully sensual, thoughtful care.

I drank and drank and then suddenly sat back, licking my lips.

“Keep drinking, sweetness.”

I sniffed and wiped my mouth with the back of a dark gray hand.

“I think I’m full.”

Crim held me away and inspected me carefully from eyes to mouth to fingertips. He ended with my hand, holding it up to the light, turning it this way and that to admire the fine, light scales and sharp white talons. Eyes locked on mine, he licked the blood I’d just wiped off from the back of my wrist and smiled, radiant and true.

“Congratulations, Letitia Stain.” He stood smoothly and pulled me up with a hand. “Welcome to the superior species.”

I stretched, reveling in the fact that my back and hips weren’t popping, that I felt as sleek and strong as a tiger. All my aches and pangs, all my frailness and fretting, had disappeared. I sashayed to the buffet line with a new bounce in my step and a swagger to my swaying hips. There were no mirrors in the dining car, so I dumped out a dozen blood oranges from a silver bowl and turned it this way and that until I caught my reflection in the light. Even distorted, I could see a difference, as if I was somehow more real, more me. My eyes glittered, and my hair was a riot of dark waves.

“Did I grow more hair?”

He ran his fingers through it, and I wriggled like a kitten being stroked.

“Feels like it. I wouldn’t have told you this a few hours ago, but your hair’s been thinning in the last year, going puffy as a dandelion. All the gray’s gone now. You’re sleek as a racehorse, love.”

“I feel like I could run like one, too.”

His grin was fond as he curled a lock of dark hair around one finger. “You can. You will. We’ll hunt together under a full moon, naked and free.”

“Sounds positively barbaric.”

His sharp eyebrow quirked up. “Doesn’t it just?”

Our eyes locked, and it was almost as if the air shifted. He wanted me. I could taste it, feel it, like a silent telegraph tapping at my every entrance. But that wasn’t what I wanted, what I needed. “Let’s find Nana first. I’m ready. Let’s go.” I took a few steps toward the door, and he caught my wrist.

“Wait, darling. It’s getting late. The process is draining, and the twins nearly killed you. You’re not fully recovered yet. You haven’t slept. How do you feel?”

I shook off his hand, drew in a deep breath, and snarled at the press of my stays. How could I take stock when my body was bound so tightly? With a hand on either side of my corset, I popped the busk open, tossed the corset to the ground, and yanked open the few buttons remaining on my dress so I could inhale properly.

“I feel overdressed,” I said. “And anxious for a fight.”

“There’s only one thing that feels as good as a fight, you know.” Criminy’s eyebrow quirked up knowingly. “And you definitely won’t feel overdressed for it.” He stepped closer, his voice going lower. “Your mouth says you don’t want it, but your body says you do.”

I ran my tongue over my fangs as heat bloomed all over my skin. He was right, damn him. “Promise?”

He caught my hips and jerked me against him. “Oh, I do.”

“But we have to hurry. My grandmother—”

With a bark of a laugh, Crim spun me around so that I was facing the closest table. Step by step, he walked me forward until it bit into the fronts of my thighs. “Don’t talk about your grandmother when I’m about to make love to you, pet. She’ll wait.”

With a hand firm on my neck, he gently pressed me down until I was bent over the table, ass up, and I obligingly clutched the edge and spread my legs. Before I could catch my breath, he’d lifted my skirts and run clever fingers in all the right places. Not that he needed to—I was ready, had been from the second the timbre of his voice had changed. He’d told me a Bludman’s body was more responsive, more attuned to pheromones and scents, but I’d had no idea how warmly my senses would welcome the onslaught of the alpha predator I knew so well as my husband. Even though I’d climaxed recently, I ached for him, jutting my hips back to tell him so. He chuckled as he undid his buttons and entered me in one rough thrust.

All I could do was groan. It had never been like this. So simple, so animal, so pure. I could feel him in my pores, in my veins, in my blood, pulsing like a heartbeat, as if drinking from him had lifted what few barriers had separated us. We moved in time like a furious symphony, hot and wet and perfectly tuned to each other. My talons bit into the wood of the table as I bucked against him, as he rubbed me, as his other hand pressed flat into my back, holding me down. It was fast and savage and perfect, and I was coming already, groaning, howling, slamming against him to draw it out longer, riding the sweetness for as long as possible. With his usual perfect timing, he came at exactly the right moment to trigger another, deeper orgasm, and I screamed and went limp and boneless, my cheek against the cold, scarred wood.

“Why didn’t I do this a long time ago?” I muttered, flexing my claws.

“We did this a few hours ago, love. Although I’ll admit I enjoyed it more than usual, just now.”

I arched my back and stood, sitting on the table and filled with contentment as he rebuttoned his pants. “I meant getting bludded, not having sex, silly. Why’d you enjoy it more, though? Because we weren’t angry this time?”

My husband’s eyes glittered as he cupped my jaw. “Because this is the first time I didn’t want to kill you,” he said.

9

Even though I was anxious to get on the road, I never wanted to leave the mirror. After years of watching my body age five times faster than it should have, it was a relief and a joy to see the crow’s-feet and eye pouches gone, my dark-blue irises swirling and sparkly like the star-strewn night sky. My laugh lines had disappeared, replaced by actual laughter. My hands were smooth, if covered in small black scales, and my neck wattle and varicose veins and knobby old-lady toes were back to the graceful lines I’d taken for granted in my twenties. I’d inspected every inch of my body and felt that the curving fangs were worth the trade, even if I still slurred a little around them when I talked. I wanted to spin on a mountaintop, dance at a ball, and kill something large and vicious, all at the same time.

“Darling, I can give you a hand mirror to bring with you, but the witch won’t wait for vanity.”

“Oh, now that you’ve been properly serviced, you’re suddenly in a hurry?”

He laughed his wild laugh, and I answered it with my own. “You’re beautiful, love. Always. Now, come on.”

With a becoming rosy flush, I turned away from the mirror, already hating the high neck on my old dress. But the same concept applied: whether I was a Pinky or a Bludman, appearing to be human would make travel to and through the city so much easier. I finally understood Criminy’s distaste for pretending to be human; hiding who and what I was made me want to rip the heads off the puny men in leather armor who would be hiding behind glass, guarding the grand gates of London.

Criminy leaned against our wagon door, tidied up in a fine new suit after the mess of our trading blood and blud. The shirt he’d been wearing had gone right into the fire, and it was strange now, seeing him in a human man’s starched high collar and tightly tied cravat. More than ever, he resembled an extra-naughty Mr. Darcy, and I hurried across the room to kiss him hard, pressing him into the wood with a newfound freedom and confidence.

When he pulled away, he ran a knuckle down my cheek and smiled. “Blud becomes you, love.”

“It does. I don’t know why it took me so long to convince you.”

He laughed and snaked an arm under my legs, swinging me up into his arms and carrying me through the open door of our wagon and out into the pink-tinged morning like a husband with a new blushing bride. As much as we’d both wanted to hurry, we’d been exhausted by the blood exchange, and no one set out on a journey at night in Sang, thanks to brigands and large, lurking predators. I’d slept like the dead, deep and long and hard. And today I felt like a million bucks, ready for the same fight I’d wanted yesterday.

Parked outside was a high, two-seated wagon with a fat, dappled gray bludmare jigging in place under harness. In back, an old trunk was strapped on. But it wasn’t traveling clothes; it was the remains of our main sideshow attraction, the heads of Catarrh and Quincy tossed on top of their bloodless body. The best way to dispose of murder victims in the wilds of Sangland was merely to drop them on the moors among the bludbunnies. Not that Catarrh and Quincy had anyone to notice their disappearance. Crim had already ordered the signs on the Freak Tent repainted, and the other carnivalleros were not likely to miss their most dangerous and creepy coworkers.

“Three strikes, you’re out,” I said, thumping a fist on the trunk and making the horse snort against the metal cap over her dangerous muzzle. Crim raised an eyebrow at me, waiting for an explanation. “When I glanced on Charlie, I saw Lydia. I know she didn’t make it. If the twins hadn’t gone after her that night, she wouldn’t have died. He’d still have her.”

“That’s only two strikes, darling.”

I bared my teeth. “They both bit me. That makes three.”

Crim swung me up into my seat and kissed my hand with a wink. “Ah, Letitia. I didn’t think I could love you more, but this bloodthirstiness is ever so beguiling.”

It felt quite nice, sitting high up on the carriage with Criminy, enjoying the benefits of clear eyesight and the most stunning thrum of health and wellness I’d ever known. I could almost hear the blood—no, blud—pumping in my veins, feel the fantastic efficiency of my upgraded body. The only real negative was that, instead of a picnic basket filled with cheese, bread, and bludbunny jerky, now a small traveling blood warmer sat at my feet, filled with a week’s worth of corked glass vials for Crim and me, should London prove challenging. I still felt full from last night, although Crim had pushed a vial on me the moment I woke up. He was apparently concerned that, since he’d drained the bloodthirsty twins before feeding me, I might have inherited some of their mad and uncontrollable hunger, but thus far I hadn’t been tempted to attack any of the humans around the caravan. I did feel a slight twinge of hunger upon hugging Jacinda in her sleeping robe, but it was more a polite urge than an insane craving. London would be the first true test of my calm and control as a Bludman.

I could see the high hump of it, still miles away, rising from the moors in a haze of fog. It was the biggest city in Sangland by far, vast enough to see from half an island away. It looked like nothing so much as the work of a busy hermit crab, layer after layer of topsy-turvy buildings built into and on top of one another, spiraling ever higher. The top echelons were hidden by smog from the factories nestled around the base of the wall. In most cities, the apex of the layer-cake-like, maze-riddled structure would be the cleanest part, where only the highest-ranking and wealthiest humans could afford to live, while the squalor was down near the walls and surrounding the Darkside ghettos reserved for Bludmen. But London had grown so large that the top was as filthy as the bottom, and the finest, most highfalutin folks lived in the sparkling white middle, almost like a piece of thick chocolate cake with a small strip of delicious vanilla filling.

The thought of cake turned my stomach, and I shook off the fancy.

Man, I missed cake. Or at least the idea of cake.

“Penny for your thoughts, love?” Criminy asked.

“Oh, I was just contemplating how stupid these cities are. I mean, they seemed silly when I was a human, but knowing what it’s like to be the most terrifying creature on two legs, now I see that the Pinkies are just fooling themselves. No walls could keep us out, if we really wanted in.”

Crim picked up my hand and kissed the black scales. “Now you know our secret. Welcome to the cabal.” He set my hand down and jingled the reins to hurry the horse along. “But the most terrifying creature on two legs is actually a cassowary. Bloody buggers have leg daggers and poison spit and will eat anything.” And then, much to my surprise, my husband shivered. “Ugh. Oz. Terrifying place. Nothing but giant spiders, monsters, and death.”

It was freeing to be on the moors as a predator instead of prey. I hadn’t suffered a bludbunny bite since the day I’d arrived in Sang, naked and still convinced the whole thing was a dream. But the number of rabbit carcasses left on the hooks of the dining wagon and the handfuls of copper coins Crim handed out for killing the edible monsters added up, as did the number of human guests and carnivalleros who reported to the artificer’s wagon to be patched up after they let one of the adorable little buggers get too close.

Sang would always be dangerous, but for me, now, a little less so. As the bludmare trotted on, snorting bloody froth into her muzzle cap, I actually found the ride toward an evil witch and a city that maligned me somehow restful. Pleasant. What would happen would happen, and I was ready for it.

No wonder Crim was in a good mood all the time, if he was constantly consumed by this sense of supreme confidence and peace. I could get used to the idea of two hundred more years feeling this way.

“So what’s the plan?” I asked.

Crim sighed. “We have to find the witch in order to find your grandmother. Last I heard, Hepzibah had established a lair in London, but I don’t know where it is, and it’s most likely well hidden and better guarded. I suggest we hit Deep Darkside and visit the shadiest magician we can find. Either we’ll pay for the information or we’ll steal it with your palms. Your glancing should be unaffected by your recent transformation. Or it might even be heightened. We’ll check it unobtrusively before it becomes necessary.”

“So we waltz through the gates, talk to people, and then attack the bitch? Doesn’t sound too hard.”

“Ah, a Bludman’s perpetual optimism. Let’s hope it’s not. We deserve another honeymoon to enjoy your newfound—”

“Body?” I supplied with a smirk.

He nudged me with his shoulder. “Attitude, I meant. Although, yes, you might find your appetites rejuvenated in all sorts of lovely new areas, as you’re already noticing.”

“I’ve never seen Deep Darkside in London before,” I mused. “Probably all sorts of interesting marital aids for sale.”

Crim gave me a scandalized side-eye. “Darling, London’s Deep Darkside isn’t a place for amusing gadgets, unless you want them made of human bone and cursed to crawl up inside the user. This is business. Although . . .”

“ ‘Although’?”

“I’ll confess, I was rather hoping to find time to stop by Demi’s cabaret. With our two-headed boy gone, there’s room in the caravan for a new act, and she did mention in her last letter that she had a rather promising daimon in her ballet who’d been born with wings.”

“Oh, my God, you gossipy old woman!”

“Darling, I’m not a gossipy old woman. I’m an apex predator with a show to run who needs to check in and make sure that the French brigand she picked up in Paris is taking proper care of the closest thing I have to a daughter.”

I erupted in laughter, and after a moment he joined in. Once we fell off into giggles, I put my head on his shoulder. I was still a bit sleepy after nearly dying.

“Just out of curiosity,” Crim asked as I was on the verge of a sunny nap, “what are these ‘marital aids’ you wish to shop for, and don’t you think Mr. Murdoch could make better ones?”

I perked up immediately and tried to describe a Magic Bullet to a man who’d never heard of gunpowder.

10

The Demimonde was London’s first cabaret, and I’d never seen Criminy as proud as he was the night it opened under the careful tutelage of his adopted daughter and protégée. Demi had been an unhappy college student on Earth when she passed out, overly depressed and suicidally drunk, and woke up in Sang. Luckily, Criminy had been near enough to hear her screams. Unluckily, she’d already been mauled by the bludbunnies by the time he reached her, and his only choice was to blud her on the spot. She became his star contortionist, a Bludwoman with all the power of a vampire and all the sass and independence of a college freshman with a minor in women’s studies. And honestly, I’d missed her ever since she’d left for Franchia and, now, London.

At the moment, she sat across from me in a silk kimono that dragged on the floor, a hideous one-eyed cat purring on her lap. It was a new experience for me, reclining on a velvet cushion and sipping blood from a painted teacup among others of my kind. When Criminy held out a candy dish of sugared red curls, I selected a sliver and chewed it thoughtfully.

“A gift from Her Royal Tsarina,” Demi said with a wink to Crim. “Her majesty’s favorite candied liver.” She paused dramatically. “Human liver.”

I almost spit it out, but frankly, it was too delicious. It had only been a day since I’d died, but I already missed chewing.

Crim snatched the dish back and shook it. “From Ahnastasia? It looks fresh.”

Demi rolled her eyes and shooed him with a hand. “Yes, dork. Your idol is currently staying in her suite, and Casper is playing in the show that debuts later this week.”

“Did I hear my name, Mistress of the House?”

The Bludman who pushed past the swoopy curtains and grinned at me with the deepest dimples I’d seen in years did a double take when I grinned back to show my fangs. There had been a time when I thought I might love Casper Sterling—for at least ten minutes. He was a damn fine-looking specimen, like the best parts of Matthew McConaughey rolled up with the best parts of Brad Pitt, and he could play the piano better than anyone in the entire universe of Sang, mainly because he’d come from Earth. They didn’t have a Mozart here, so Casper was basically a god. And a rock star. Not that it mattered. Despite Criminy’s ongoing jealousy and my occasional what-if interest, he clearly belonged with Ahnastasia, now the Tsarina of Freesia, and I more than belonged with Criminy.

“Howdy, Maestro,” I said around my fangs, and he shook his head and held out his arms. I gave him the sort of polite hug that passes between cousins in the South, because that’s more or less what we were now. Crim only gave a small growl, which was a nice change.

“I promised you blood cookies when you finally picked the right team. Didn’t I, darlin’?”

“Candied liver will do just fine.” I sat back down, held up another curl of sugary red, and popped it into my mouth.

“Wait until you try the blood slushies. All the treat, none of the cavities.”

Criminy suddenly went on point like a dog, and Ahnastasia swept into the room with all the haughty magnitude of a glacier, in an ice-blue gown spangled with tiny crystals. Her white-blond hair had grown long and was up in intricate braids, and she gave me a small nod and slipped her arms around Casper as if marking her territory. Her upturned nose quivered across his shoulder, and she narrowed sky-blue eyes at me accusingly.

“You didn’t mention a party,” she said to Demi, one eyebrow up.

Demi stood. “Ahna, I’d like to introduce my godfather, Criminy Stain, and his wife, Letitia. Criminy owns the caravan where I trained.”

“Where I started out,” Casper added. “Tish and I are from . . . the same place.”

“A Stranger,” Ahna hissed, eyeing me. “I saw you. On the Demi Monde’s opening night. But you were a human then.”

The statement contained both an insult and a question, and I nodded. Once this she-beast queen might have riled me, but now? “I was here, yes. And things changed.” My fingers sought Criminy’s and squeezed.

She cocked her head and looked me up and down. “Still in human clothes. But you seem unafraid, which is good. Casper was like that. Some, I hear, don’t take to the metamorphosis. ‘To die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.’ ”

“She do that a lot?” I asked Casper. “Quote dead Earth poets?”

But he was already scribbling it down in a pocket-sized notebook that looked half-filled and had Blades of Grass embossed on the leather cover.

“Darlin’, you have no idea.” He grinned. “I sometimes accidentally call her Walt. So are y’all staying in London for a while? Did you come to see the show?”

He looked to Criminy, but Criminy was still mooning over Ahnastasia. I’d gotten used to it. The man was a sharp, canny predator for ninety-nine percent of his life, but the ruler of the Blud world turned him into jelly, much like I’d been when I’d seen the Backstreet Boys in concert as a tween. It was kind of adorable, and I was struck with a sudden pain when I realized that, in another life, he might have one day looked at our children with that peculiar mix of worship, affection, and awe. But I was barren after a bad surgery on Earth, and I doubted even the magic of a Bludman’s body could solve that problem. Reverse aging? Sure. Re-create twisted, destroyed, surgically removed tissue? Probably not. It hurt my heart every time I thought of what beautiful babies we could have had if things had gone differently long before I ever met Criminy Stain.

“We’re here to hunt a witch,” I supplied, jostling my husband with my elbow to get his attention.

“Will any witch do?” Demi asked with a smirk.

Criminy grinned at the closest thing he had to a daughter. “No, love. We need one in particular. Her name is Hepzibah, but she also goes by Madam Burial and plenty of other names. She’s a dangerous Stranger whom I had the misfortune to blud many years ago in exchange for a tricky bit of a spell. She works almost exclusively in dark magic and is rumored to have a lair somewhere in London.”

“Deep Darkside?” Casper asked, and Crim rolled his eyes.

“Oh, yes. I’m sure it’s that simple. I’ll just waltz through the gates with a bucket of salt water, ask the first miscreant I come across for directions, and storm her well-advertised storefront. Honestly, I don’t know why I didn’t think of that sooner.”

Ahna tapped a long talon on her chin. “Why are you hunting this creature?”

“She has my grandmother,” I said.

Casper stared at me as if I had two heads. “Your grandmother is here? Like, here here?”

“Long story.” Criminy waved a dismissing hand. “Point is, we’re in a bit of a time crunch and need to know who’s the most dangerous magician in London these days.”

“Mr. Sweeting,” Ahna said, her voice as cold as snow.

“He’s the cousin of Monsieur Charmant,” Demi added. “You know, the dude who almost killed me in the Paris catacombs? Not a nice guy.”

“We don’t need him to be nice. We need him to be foolish enough to touch Tish,” Criminy said.

“Mm. Yes. She’s terrifying.” Ahna snorted and booped my nose with one finger, and the glance came on stronger than it ever had, crystal clear and ultra-bright.

Casper and Criminy focused on me, waiting. They’d both seen me glance often enough to know what had just happened, why I’d gone suddenly still. The twin fear reflected on their oh-so-different faces told me that giving Ahna any clue whatsoever that I’d seen inside her mind would basically be suicide. People weren’t allowed to simply access the Blud queen’s destiny as if it were a radio station. But I knew well enough to feign ignorance.

As for Ahna, she had no idea what had happened and merely laughed a wild laugh and said, “Silly Strangers. Pick that poor man’s jaw up off the floor and come upstairs, Casper. I wish you well, but I do not give lectures or a little charity.”

He was already scribbling but soon tipped his tall hat to me. “See anything good?” he whispered.

I’d seen more than I’d ever tell him, but for now I just smirked. “How do you feel about twins?”

“Soon?” He gulped, eyes to the door.

I shrugged. “It was winter, but considering we barely age, who knows what year?”

Looking distracted, charmed, and dazed, he patted me on the shoulder and hurried in the direction Ahna had flounced toward, tossing a “Thanks, darlin’!” over his shoulder.

“Well?” Criminy asked as soon as they were gone, back to his usual quick self once he was out of Ahna’s orbit.

Demi leaned closer, eyes twinkling for scandal.

I thought back through the piercing jumble I’d seen in the glance. “Another royal wedding, between Ahna’s brother, Prince Alexi, and a younger Bludwoman dressed all in brown. Ahna’s going to have twin girls and, later, a boy who’ll get into a ton of trouble and have Casper’s dimples. Casper’s finally going to write an original song.” I smiled. “No tragedy that I could see. Good, long lives.”

“Tragedy? Looks like we arrived right on time to divert it, yes?”

Hearing Vale’s voice, Demi bolted up from the couch like a kid at Christmas and threw herself into the Franchian brigand’s arms. I’d seen him dressed up in tux and tails and in the traditional all-black of his Dread Pirate Roberts look, but today he wore a workingman’s clothes, striped pants, and an open-necked shirt with an old, stained waistcoat. When he went to hug me as usual, I automatically recoiled. He was half Abyssinian, and my body knew it. His blood would have the same effect on me as rabies on a dog, which meant that he smelled sharp and repellent, like bug spray hitting the back of my throat.

The man at Vale’s side was unfamiliar, but he piqued my immediate interest. Not only because he looked like Thor in a kilt but also because a grackle sat on his hat, blinking at me with curious golden eyes. Demi introduced him as Thom, a London firefighter who had rebuilt most of her theater from the bones up.

“And who is this fine fellow?” I asked, with a nod to his bird. Tame pets were rare in Sang, and as much as I liked Crim’s copper monkey, I missed real animals.

“Oh, that’s Archie.” I liked Thom even more when I heard his thick Scottish accent—and his affection for the bird. “Wee fellow hatched out in m’wife’s shop, the runt of the litter, as it was. I took te feedin’ him worms and bits of food, and he never would fly away. So now he stays with me always. Right fine for finding lost nails, aren’t ye, lad?” He held out a finger, and the bird stepped up and rubbed his beak along Thom’s thumb. When Thom held him out to me, I let the handsome creature step up onto my hand.

“Oh, who’s handsome? Who’s a handsome bird?” Archie preened and made some satisfied noises, and I realized that while rats and bunnies now hissed at me and ran away and horses looked as if they wanted to fight me, the bird didn’t seem to care that I was a predator. And it was refreshing.

“Your wife raises birds?” Crim asked, more politely than I was used to in his dealings with unknown humans.

Thom nodded, removed his hat, and tidied his queue. “Aye. Frannie runs a pet shop on the edge of the daimon district.”

“Next door to Reve’s shop. Casper introduced us to Frannie and Thom,” Demi added helpfully, and I did the complex connections in my head, remembering that Reve was a lovely daimon who helped Demi with the complicated wardrobe of her cabaret.

Crim smiled at me and stroked the bird’s sleek chest. “Perhaps we should stop by. You’d like a pet, wouldn’t you, love?”

Having accidentally destroyed the last three clockworks Mr. Murdoch had designed for me, I grudgingly nodded. “I can keep an animal alive. They squawk when you nearly sit on them.” With his blond hair pulled back and his hat firmly in place, Thom whistled, and the bird flew from my finger back to his master. “But aren’t we in a hurry?”

Crim grinned. “Our next step is Deep Darkside and the most dangerous folk therein. I suspect most of these scoundrels do dealings with someone who sells exotic animals, yes?” Thom nodded. “A magician needs a familiar, you see, and the right food to feed it. So your Frannie might know the witch or at least have heard something of her.” He stepped behind me, rubbing my shoulders, which had risen around my ears as I contemplated more time until the hunt for my grandmother began in earnest. “Relax, love. The more we know, the more we take into battle.”

“But my grandmother—”

“Is just as powerful as you and might not know how to find the witch, either.”

“The wife has a new batch of kittens,” Thom added helpfully.

“I haven’t seen a kitten in six years,” I said, suddenly wistful.

And that pretty much sealed it for me. Kittens and info it was.

Frannie’s pet shop was one of the most wonderful things I’d seen in Sang. Truth be told, I’d missed interacting with cute animals that didn’t want to suck out my bone marrow. From the moment we stepped into the brightly painted store, greeted by the songs of birds and wild barking from a gaily striped bin of rowdy corgi pups, I wanted to plant myself on the ground and just be mobbed by warm, excitable, wriggling things. Criminy was immediately taken with the ink-black crows and set about inspecting them like the judge at a county fair.

“Frannie, lass! We’ve visitors,” Thom called, but she was already hurrying through a curtained door and into his arms.

Thom was covered in the sort of grime a man collects during a day of hard work, and as soon as I saw Frannie nestling against him despite the muck—and covered in her own coating of tweed and feathers—I knew I would like her.

“This is Criminy and Letitia Stain. Friends of Demi and Vale. Fine folks.”

Frannie stepped back to smile at us, small and brown and quick as a London sparrow. “Nice to meet you, then. Are you looking for something in particular? You’ve the look of a conjurer about you, sir, if you don’t mind my saying.”

“I don’t mind, love, and you’re correct. I’ve never had a familiar before. But my lady could use some proper companionship. Keeps breaking her clockworks.”

“I did ask you for a rhinoceros,” I said primly. “Instead of all those dainty things.”

Frannie chuckled and rustled around in a box, then pulled out a wiggling burrito of a puppy and dropped it into my arms. Unlike the corgis in the bin, this creature was mostly black fur and excitement, of no discernible breed. And it was approximately half tongue. And I never wanted to put it down.

“He’s the last of a litter of mutts. No idea what’s in ’im. But you seem like the softhearted type who cares more about fun than family trees.”

“Are you a glancer?” I asked, noting her chapped, bare hands.

She shook her head. “Spend enough time around animals, and you can read what any creature needs on its face. And your man there wants something more than a crow to match his fine hair, don’t he?”

Thom smothered a laugh, and Criminy nodded in confirmation and gave the girl a small bow. “Right again, lass. We’re looking for a dark conjurer, a witch named Hepzibah, very old but with a Bludman’s smooth skin. She a customer of yours?”

“Not mine, no. But I won’t sell a creature to anyone who seems to wish it ill. The birds can tell, you know. Even the lizards scramble away from hungry hands. Those as want animals for the crueler uses, they go to Mr. Sweeting.”

“That’s the second time his name has come up,” I said.

“And it won’t be the last if you’re up to your elbows in evil. But I might have a wee something to help you wring what you need out of the bastard.”

“Fran!” Thom said, shocked in a most polite and Scottish manner.

She just nudged him in his huge rib cage and went to poke around among a beautiful arrangement of cylindrical glass terrariums and bell jars that reminded me of a candy shop, if a candy shop held lizards and frogs and bits of moss instead of actual candy. Which I already missed, considering I couldn’t eat it anymore unless it was sugared liver or candied kidneys. After plucking a smaller jar from the back, she carried it to us at arm’s length, and I placed the wriggling puppy back in his box so that I could concentrate on the bone-white creature staring at us intelligently through the glass, claws upraised.

“A scorpion?” Crim asked, taking the jar from her.

Frannie nodded and stepped back. “Yes, but a particular kind. Their venom is rather similar to a daimon’s, and a sting from this little fellow will make anyone, even a fully grown daimon, terribly ill.” She dimpled evilly. “Daimons can’t vomit, since they don’t eat, but they can turn some very amusing colors.” When Crim raised an eyebrow at her, she just shrugged. “I like to be paid, which means there must be consequences to not paying. More than one dark daimon has found that wee fellow or one of his friends waiting on the ledger.”

“And what will he do to a Bludman?” I asked carefully, as I was making a mental catalog of all the new things that could or could not harm my lovely new body.

Frannie opened a drawer and brought out a sturdy wooden box about the size of a hamburger, a lovely thing carved and polished in dark mahogany. Taking the jar back from Criminy, she tidily dumped the angry scorpion into the box and slammed down the lid.

Easy as pie, she said, “He’ll kill you dead. Me, too.”

Crim picked up the box, turning it this way and that and flicking the clasp with one finger while holding the top tightly shut. “So you’ve a death wish, lass?” he asked.

“Maybe a little,” Thom said fondly, leaning in the doorway.

Frannie replaced the glass jar among the other terrariums and laughed. “Not a death wish. Merely the drive to keep what’s my own. This is London, my lad, and there are plenty of creatures as would take what I have. I fight for what’s mine. I might not look like much, but you’d be surprised what I have up my sleeve.”

Criminy smiled and shook his head. “How is it that every woman I know is a deadly, cunning, beautiful virago?”

“You’re just lucky, I guess,” I said.

11

You can’t take a puppy to a scorpion fight, so I had to leave the sweet little thing behind with a promise to return once I’d found my grandmother and kicked the witch’s ass for good. Criminy did take the scorpion, though, and also spent quite a while stroking a certain crow’s chest and whispering with the clever thing and, yes, laughing along with it. When Frannie whistled, the crow immediately leaped off Crim’s sleeve and flew to her hat, where it sang a few bars of a bawdy street song.

“You wouldn’t want to join a traveling caravan as an animal act, would you?” Crim asked Frannie, and she just laughed and shook her feather duster at him.

“I’ve fought for my place here. It’s where I belong. But perhaps you could send tickets next time you’re outside the gates?”

“You’ll never pay at my turnstile, lass,” he said with a kind smile. “And I’d like to put down a deposit on that bird.”

The man never failed to surprise me. Perhaps it was the bookshelf he had found in the kitchen, stuffed with penny dreadfuls, that had melted his heart. My dark and dangerous husband would always have a fondness for women who loved books.

Our next stop was just next door to visit Reve, a talented daimon costumer much loved by all our London friends and, surprisingly, also by Tsarina Ahnastasia. Her skin shimmering over in glad pinks and purples to meet us, Reve led us through her glittering showroom and up to the workroom, where she dressed me in the sort of outfit the upper crust of London’s Bludwomen favored.

“How is it that every adventure requires a new costume?” I said, turning this way and that in the three-way mirror and admiring my corset-enhanced curves in the low-cut black dress. So refreshing to see true style, after suffering Emerlie’s ministrations.

Reve grinned through a mouthful of pins, reminding me so much of Crim’s old friend Antonin that my heart hurt. “Costumes make the adventure possible,” she said. “And if you went to Mr. Sweeting wearing old rags, he would treat you like offal. Always be the best-dressed person at a battle. Or a ball.”

“Same thing, really,” Crim muttered, tugging again at the high cravat Reve had tied on him with a tighter knot than he preferred. City styles had changed again while we roved the countryside following our own rules, and now my poor, wild husband was sewn into a tight jacket and breeches and a hat so tall he had to duck through doors. He looked razor-fine, and whenever his hands weren’t occupied tugging at his clothes, he held the scorpion’s box, turning it over and over as if flipping a giant coin over his knuckles.

He’d already tried to lure Reve to join the caravan, and she’d just laughed at him, as Frannie had.

“That’s two rejections today. I’m not scary anymore, am I?” he asked me.

“You’re never scary when you like someone,” I told him with a smile. “You’re just not accustomed to liking so many people all at once.”

Reve finished hemming my dress and fluffed the skirt over my petticoats. She’d already provided me with a boot knife and had tried to strap one to my thigh, but there was no way I could get under all my skirts in time to do any damage. I’d probably just carve up my own legs if I tried.

“Why is everyone so certain that we’re going to end up in a fight?” I asked.

Crim helped me down off the hemming box and twirled me around, ending with our hands clasped. “Because people who assume they’re going into a fight tend to live through the fight. This Mr. Sweeting is a dangerous character, and the witch might be more dangerous still. Are you sure this is the proper course, love?”

“I didn’t bring my grandmother here just to let her die alone with the person I hate most in the world. We’ll all be able to relax once the witch is gone. And I’m harder to kill now.” But the way he was looking at me, face open and eyes gleaming with worry . . . he’d never looked at me like that before. I put my hand to his cheek, and he leaned into me for a moment before kissing my palm. “What’s wrong, Crim?”

Reve swiftly disappeared down the stairs. It was still strange to me, dealing with daimons. They were, at their core, people who needed emotions as sustenance and were therefore attuned to every minor change in feeling. Perhaps our worry and anxiety tasted as repellent to her as tuna and capers to me; Reve was, after all, a daimon who dined on delight.

Once she was gone, Crim laced his fingers through mine and pulled me close. “Thing is, love, I’ve already played my hand. When you were still human, I always had an ace in my pocket. If something hurt you, it was in my power to turn you into a Bludman. But now that you’re a Bludman, I’ve nothing up my sleeve. If Sweeting shoots you with seawater, you’ll burn and scar. If the witch stabs you in the heart, which is the sort of thing a witch would do, you’ll die. And there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. And that makes me worried. And furious.”

“Then let’s go now and get it over with. I’m not scared. I feel . . . amazing. Impossibly strong. Confident. Like I could fight anything, destroy anyone who got in my way.” To make my point, I flexed my biceps—or tried to. The current bodice style in Sang had tight sleeves and a deep V-neck with slightly exposed shoulders. I felt a little bit like an evil Ariel in The Little Mermaid.

“Bravado is fine and well, but it’s no way to go into a fight with a dangerous foe, darling. Courage is silly and will fool you into making all sorts of mistakes. The trick is to feel the fear and do it anyway. As you are now, you’re likely to make a foolish mistake, to bank your decisions on the fact that you’ve never experienced this new body damaged to the point of death or hindered in any way. You can’t feel the stakes, so to speak. You feel invincible, but you’re not.”

“So what, then? We just sit around waiting for me to understand the full potential and weakness of my new body and then, when I’m full of doubt, rush in and throw a scorpion at him?”

“Something like that. I wouldn’t race a horse I’d just caught, savvy?”

And he was right. I did feel different, although mostly in a good way. But I kept catching my trimmed claws in the cloth of my skirt and rasping sharp fangs over my tongue, cutting my own lips. There was a clumsiness to my ferocity that wouldn’t serve me in a fight. My muscles worked faster, but my brain hadn’t caught up; I tripped going up stairs too quickly. When I looked in the mirror again, I didn’t see a young, beautiful, smooth version of Tish. I saw an inept monster decked out in ruffles and ribbons, better suited for wild places where bloodstains didn’t matter. I felt the loss of my humanity keenly just then. I was a new creature, and although my body and heart were finely tuned, my mind hadn’t quite made the leap.

“I feel silly,” I muttered, fluffing my skirts like a child in a too-fancy dress.

“You’re never silly, love. You’re different. Change is inevitable. And this change is much better than the slow alternative. It ate at you, daily. I saw it in your eyes, caught you rubbing the veins on your hands and frowning. Be glad of it.”

“So we can’t go now because I’m fragile?”

“We can’t go now because it’s Sunday. Sweeting’s shop will be closed.”

“Goddammit.”

Crim stifled a laugh and pulled me in to peck my lips gently but with promise. “I have a better idea, anyway,” he said. “To help you get the hang of this fine new body of yours.”

And the wolfish, hungry look he gave me was enough to make me shiver with anticipation for what he had in mind.

He wouldn’t tell me where we were going, but I followed him willingly through the twisting streets of the daimon district and onto the wider streets of London Proper, as they called everything that didn’t belong to nonhumans. The cobblestones were actually dirtier here, thanks to the Pinkies’ food wrappers and detritus. It was my first time personally experiencing the sneers and whispers that dogged a Bludman’s every step, but the high quality of our clothes and the costly earbobs I wore kept anyone from throwing an old cabbage.

“You’re not shagging me against Big Ben, if that’s what you were thinking,” I said as the giant clock came into view.

“No Big Ben, no Tower, no ravens, no Thames,” he all but sang. “Not even a quick rogering on the carousel.”

I was panting as we walked ever upward, but he didn’t slow down. Then I saw what he had in mind and stopped in my tracks, hard enough to nearly yank him backward.

“No.”

“Letitia, my love. Live a little. You’re practically indestructible. You said so yourself.”

I dug in my heels. “No.”

He swung me up into his arms, my petticoats foaming and rustling, and carried me onward. I looked up and up and up and shivered, but was it truly in fear, or was it perhaps in excitement, too?

“I’ve never been up in a hot-air balloon before,” I murmured, and he kissed me quickly and kept walking.

“Has that ‘no’ become a ‘yes, please,’ then?”

“It’s a ‘maybe.’ ” But we could both hear my sped-up breathing, and history had taught me that he could smell my response to his touch. And couldn’t I smell something myself, the heady breath of musk and desire that rolled off him like a fine cologne? I pulled down his cravat and dragged my nose along his neck, breathing in deep. And then licked him.

“Almost there, darling,” he said, voice all husky with promise. “They actually frown on public displays of devourment among civilized people.”

“Screw civilized people,” I growled, and he laughed.

“That’s what I had in mind, love.”

We’d reached our destination, and he swung me down gently to the ground. My knees wobbled, and my thighs clenched together. I’d had no idea that being a Bludman would heighten my sensations, responses, and hunger for sex. It was a wonder Crim and I ever left the damn bed, if he felt like this all the time. He was more of a gentleman than I’d ever assumed. The past six years must have been maddening for him.

I smoothed out my skirts while he went to talk to the fellow at the ticket window. Up above, dozens of balloons and dirigibles in all shapes and sizes bobbed merrily on the evening breeze, tethered to the wooden docks by ropes and winches. Some were large, with enclosed gondolas to carry passengers safely over the wild moors toward other grand cities. Some were rough and fierce-looking, ready to deliver expensive cargo at great speed and height. Some were smaller pleasure balloons, gaily draped in colorful pennants to attract the eyes of rich children. And attention-seeking hedonists like us, I supposed.

My husband was having more trouble than usual getting what he wanted out of the balloon man, who mainly just shook his head. Their whispered argument carried on the air, ended by the clink of coins spilling on wood. Soon Crim returned to me clutching two rectangular tickets edged in gilt.

“Which one is ours?” I asked.

He grinned and pointed. I followed his finger up and up to a light-blue hot-air balloon so trimmed out in ribbons, pennants, and paint that it looked like a wedding cake.

“Such a romantic,” I muttered sweetly.

As I watched, the balloon descended to the dock, pulled by a long rope on a huge winch turned by draft-sized bludmares in rusted muzzle caps. We walked to meet it hand in hand. I hadn’t been sure, until he pointed, that he meant to simply rent one of the high fliers. I’d been worried that we would be on a metal-cladder or dirigible, possibly the world-famous Maybuck, an airship bordello shining bright gold among the clouds. For all that my Bludman’s body made me more daring, that didn’t change the fact that my tastes didn’t run to kinky. Luckily, Crim’s didn’t, either, unless you counted sometimes tying me to our brass bed with silk cravats. Or hiring a by-the-hour hot-air balloon that was even now being wiped down for our use.

The operator tossed his rag onto the ground and stood in front of the basket, brandishing a wrench at us. “Don’t touch the mechanisms. Don’t pull the levers. Don’t untie the rope. No hanging from or standing on the edges of the basket. And don’t be leavin’ no blood on my balloon,” he growled. “Blood stains.”

Criminy swung me over the edge and into the creaking wicker and jumped in beside me. “No blood,” he agreed, handing over our tickets. As the operator shouted at the drovers and the winch began to release us into the sky, Crim added, “But that leaves quite a few other fluids, doesn’t it?”

The look on the poor man’s face was priceless, and Crim and I burst into the loud, carefree laugh of Bludmen who don’t give a damn.

It was my first time in a hot-air balloon in my world or in Sang, and it was exhilarating. The basket swung and creaked below us, the fabric above flapping a little and burping heated air. It was an unusually lovely day to be in the air, especially once we’d floated above the London smog and burst out of the brownish fug into a twilight shimmering with purple and gold. We caught glimpses of other balloons and airships here and there, but the airfield was large and the vessels well spread out among feathery white clouds. The Maybuck flashed her giant wooden tits at us, but the only sound was the whoosh of air and the cries of birds hurrying past the city, high above the squalor. The wicker was slightly cold through my black velvet gloves, the brisk wind whipping my cheeks as the balloon jerked suddenly, at the end of its tether.

Crim’s hands settled outside of mine, left and right, his body pressing against my back, a wall of heat and hardness.

“And how does flying suit you, poppet?” he whispered in my ear.

“Well, it’s no submarine, but I suppose it’ll do. At least we’re alone.”

“That we are, love. That we are.”

He nibbled down my neck and along the curve of my shoulder, his bare hands skimming my corseted waist and curving over my hips. With just the right amount of roughness, he spun me around to face him, held my face in his hands, and kissed me, hard enough to bruise my lips and make me growl. I went for his buttons, but he caught my hands and wrapped them around the ropes on either side of me.

“Hold on,” he said against my lips.

“What?”

Strong hands on my waist hefted me up to sit on the edge of the basket, and I struggled not to topple backward out of the balloon to my death.

“I thought you didn’t want me to die,” I said as he slipped off his gloves and ran bare fingertips up the insides of my calves, skimming over the fine Parisian stockings Reve had tied on.

“Just a little death, love.”

With a delicious wink, his fingers found the crux of me through my bloomers as his mouth claimed mine again, hungry but not pressing so hard that I might lose my balance. I’d learned well enough to talk around my new fangs, but kissing was another thing entirely, and it took me a moment of his tongue’s lush pull to figure out how to kiss him back without hurting either one of us. Meanwhile, he was working me down below in that clever way of his, knuckles brushing here, fingers pressing there, making me gasp into his mouth. As if reminding me to hold on tightly, his fingers wrapped around mine and the rope briefly before disappearing in a rustle of fabric.

“I can feel how ready you are, love.”

“I can, too,” I panted. “I’ve never . . . I just . . .”

In a controlled, torturous, measured push that made me gasp and shudder, he was all the way inside me and moving with a slow, punishing cadence. His lust enveloped me, enrobed me, my own passion rising to meet it. As if he could read my mind and my worries, he wrapped both his hands around mine, around the ropes, and increased his speed, his depth.

My muscles were tensed as I struggled to keep my balance and he struggled to undo me completely. His mouth traveled down my neck to nestle between my breasts, teasing my nipples through the fabric. My heart pounded with the exhilaration of the height, the wild wind, the sinking sun, his lapping tongue. I could already feel a climax coming with a ferocity I’d never known, and I held my breath as it overwhelmed me, my eyes closed and my thighs pulsing. If he hadn’t been holding my fingers tightly, forcing them to stay clutched around the ropes, I would have fallen back through the air without a care in the world.

As it was, I was already floating.

Of course, that was never enough for Criminy. Still inside me, still hard, still taking his sweet goddamn time, he pulled me down from the side of the basket, unwound my hands, lifted my voluminous skirts, and murmured, “Turn around, will you, love? There’s a lovely view.”

Seconds later, I was bent over the basket, skirts flipped over my back, with a breeze over my bare bum, and he was pushing back into me with a groan. With my boots on the wicker and my hands curled around the basket’s edge, I felt giddy relief, but that never lasted. Not with Crim. He started slowly, agonizingly slowly, and I trembled with each thrust. My eyes were filled with indigo sky, my insides writhing with building want, my exposed skin cool in counterpoint to the warmth of the man taking me, mastering me, torturing me to new dizzy heights with each stroke.

“Come on, Crim,” I urged, and he laughed.

“All in good time, love. Ah, yes. Here’s what I was looking for.”

I couldn’t have been more surprised when I heard a low buzz . . . until I felt it. My legs almost collapsed as warm, smooth metal vibrated over my clit.

“Jesus, Crim! What . . . where . . . oh, my God.”

“I take it this is what you had in mind as a marital aid?” He said the last two words with a haughty emphasis that made my knees buckle.

“Where’d you get that?” I managed to sputter.

He did something that nearly made me scream. “London,” he said absently.

The cool air, the heat of him, the slowness of his inexorable pounding, the buzz of the metal. I’d never been so wet, so turned on, so in tune with my body, and I couldn’t stop myself from pushing back against him, demanding that he take me harder, deeper. He grunted and obliged, as he always did, battering into me with such power that I slammed against the basket and moaned.

The climax took me quickly, and I screamed as he sped up to draw it out as long as possible. As the echoes faded, he kept going, soon shuddering against me, arms wrapped tightly around my waist as he bucked into me. I couldn’t help myself—I came again, this time high and sweet and leaving me laughing as my insides trembled.

“I’m fairly certain they heard that all the way back at the caravan,” he observed, pulling out and rebuttoning his pants with a satisfied grin.

“And I’m fairly certain you made good on your threat to the little lame balloon man,” I shot back.

He looked down at the wicker floor. “I agreed there would be no blood, so he should be well pleased. That was delightful. I’ve always wanted to roger you in a balloon.”

Reaching down, he pulled a bright red flag that had been latched to the wicker and stuck it into a holder to wave in the wind. Seconds later, the wicker creaked as the balloon began its descent.

“He can see that little flag from the ground?” I asked, shielding my eyes to look around. Sure enough, I could see the angry operator at the dock, the drover and the mares, and all the people milling about the airfield. Until then, I hadn’t actually looked down, as I’d always had a small fear of heights. “Wait. Does that mean they can see . . .”

“Oh, yes, love. They can see us. Some of them even have telescopes for such sport. That’s part of the allure.”

Down below, a sound reached me, an echo of the feral howl I’d unleashed as I’d come, followed by a crowd’s laughter.

“Oh, God,” I said, blushing hot and red. “We had an audience.”

But when the balloon landed on the docks, people were clapping and whistling.

“At least they appreciate a star performance,” Criminy said, helping me out of the basket.

12

Despite the fact that he’d recently driven me to screaming with passion on a balloon, Criminy Stain looked like a fashion plate as we hurried down the sidewalks of London. The sun was scurrying down, and the gaslights popped on, one by one, giving the cobbles an eerie green glow.

“We need to go faster, love. It’s getting late,” Crim said blithely, as if discussing the weather.

“But I don’t want to go fight an evil wizard in the dark,” I whined. “I’m tired now, and it’s creepy, and I just want to drink a bunch of blood and take a nap.”

Crim shook his head at me and patted my glove. “We’re not going to see Sweeting now, pet. His shop’ll be closed. I want to hurry so we can see the show at Demi’s cabaret. We need new acts, if you’ll recall. And yes, you can have all the blood you want once we get there.”

“Mm.” I sighed. “Amazing sex, a full belly, a great show, good friends, puppy snuggles, and a good night’s sleep. That’s my kind of . . . wait!”

“Hmm?”

“This is starting to feel like a bucket list.”

“A what, love?”

“A bucket list. It’s basically this thing they do in my world when people start to feel like they’re running out of time to do all the things they’ve dreamed about. So they make a list of stuff they want to do before they kick the bucket.”

I could tell by his silence and the squeeze of his hand that I’d come closer to the truth than he’d have liked. “Your newly perfected instincts leave little open to discussion, darling.”

“So what else is on your list? Because I don’t think you’re going to drink from the Magistrate or steal the jewels in the Tower.”

Criminy sighed deeply and tucked my hand into his elbow to guide me around a fetid pile of bludhorse manure.

I couldn’t help feeling as if I’d found a Mr. Darcy on the streets and a Mr. Willoughby in the sheets; he had such a habit of getting proper and stilted when discussing something he knew I would hate.

“Perhaps you’re a little right, love. I’ve waited so long for you to be a Bludman so that I wouldn’t be constantly worried about keeping you alive in this wretched world. And now here you are, beautiful and clever and sexy and rather hard to kill, and the first thing you want to do is challenge the two most dangerous creatures in this town to a fight. So perhaps I am indulging myself, and you, just in case. But if there’s anything wrong with giving us both pleasure and making sure the caravan is comfortable before throwing ourselves to the wolves, then I do apologize.”

We turned a corner, and I was relieved to see the Demimonde cabaret rising above us, a daimon in full costume selling tickets out front.

“So you think we’re going to lose?” I asked, in a tinier voice than a born Bludman would ever use.

Crim slipped his arm around my waist, goosing me in the process. “I just think there’s a reason a man’s passion is stirred before battle. There’s a bone-deep need to connect with life, to taste the best of the world before throwing oneself into danger. And there’s no one I’d rather connect with than you. We’ll deal with Sweeting tomorrow morning, when he won’t be expecting it. Until then, let’s not think about it at all.”

He held open the door to the cabaret, and I sashayed in, heading straight for Demi’s toilets, just across the lobby. Hand on the loo door, I turned to face him, chin high. “Then I guess I forgive you,” I said, tossing curls loosened by the balloon’s plucking wind. “But I’m telling you now: we’re going to win.”

After a glorious cabaret show that had the entire crowd standing, stamping, and whistling for an encore, Criminy drew me backstage to walk among the brightly colored, happily laughing daimons. I was on my third glass of blood and champagne, a house drink called the Tsarina’s Kiss in honor of Ahnastasia, who had brought it over from Freesia. Full and happy and giggling with the bubbles, I was content to watch my husband in his element, complimenting performers and attempting to feel out any defectors who might like to spend a season traveling the wilds of Sangland with Criminy’s Clockwork Caravan.

Just as he’d hoped, the daimon with small, fine wings was intrigued by the riches she might earn on her own. Her name was Annelise, and her wings were almost translucent. When her skin changed, they flapped and shifted like the rainbows in a soap bubble. He also persuaded a magically gifted teenage daimon named Blaise to join us, although the lad’s mothers seemed alternately worried and thrilled to have the mischievous creature out of their nest.

“’E will terrorize you,” one said, her face green and lined with worry.

“Better ’e learn to use ’is magic than keep blowing holes in his blankets,” said the other, in a low, musical voice tinged with a Franchion accent, her blue lips turned up at the corners.

Demi just laughed. “Bea and Mel have never had a moment alone. I’ll send them off on a long-overdue honeymoon, and you can take Blaise with you and teach him how to conjure properly.” She rubbed her hands together giddily. “Why didn’t we think of this ages ago? I can finally stop buying new bedspreads.”

Soon the cabaret girls had gone to bed in their dormitory. Their sisters in Paris were required to stay up half the night satisfying the desires of their human clientele, but Demi was an Earth feminist in a Sangish Bludwoman’s body. Her girls were free to choose where, when, and if to share their favors, which meant the joy daimons were just as happy as the lust daimons. Such high morale, plus Casper’s music, meant that Demi’s shows were always sold out. Criminy Stain could not have been prouder.

He and I were ensconced in Demi’s spare room, the one not reserved for Casper and Ahna, who kept a private suite on the premises. Ever since Tsarina Ahna had threatened to rip out the Magistrate’s throat during a trade discussion in Parliament, she was technically forbidden to visit London, but the crowds loved Casper so much that they kept sneaking in anyway. As far as Criminy was concerned, this only made Ahna all the more worthy a leader for the Blud people.

The bed was big and fluffy, the fire cozy, and my belly full to bursting. In a borrowed night shift, I turned to fit myself against Criminy, my arm thrown over his waist and my chin on his shoulder. He was reading, of course, something new from Demi’s library, and he stroked my arm absentmindedly.

“If you poke me too hard, I’m going to start leaking blood,” I groaned.

“Oh, I think you’ve been poked more than enough today, love.” He kissed my head and turned the page.

“I had no idea sex could be better than it was as a human,” I said. “That was insane.”

“Well, it’s always better for you when you’re in season.”

I stopped my snuggling and pulled back to stare at him. “Uh, what?”

“Can’t you sense it? When you’re fertile?”

I swallowed and looked down. “Look, Crim, I told you a long time ago. No matter what my hormones or my scent or whatever tells you, I’m never fertile. Something broke inside me. It doesn’t matter what we want. I can’t get pregnant.”

He put down his book and turned to face me, sniffing along my neck, down my armpit, and right, oddly, to my groin, which made me pull the covers up higher and stare at him as if he’d gone mad.

“So you say, love. But I know what I smell, and there’s nothing broken about it.”

I huffed. “Look, you probably don’t know how biology works. The eggs and pheromones, they’re normal. But my uterus is too scarred to carry a child. The doctors all said so. A physical problem, irrevocably damaged. Even if egg and sperm meet and get fertilized, it’s not going to stick. It’s been oblated. It’s like . . . like trying to climb up a slick wall.”

He cocked his head and stared at me. “Love, you’ve watched me climb up a slick wall. Many times. There are hidden handholds, places my claws can dig in.”

“My goddamn eggs aren’t claws, okay? I’m sorry! I know you want kids. But . . . it’s just not going to happen. And I’m sorry. I’m just sorry.”

Feeling guilty for shouting at him in Demi’s house and overcome with self-pity and wretchedness, I rolled over and turned off the bedside light. Carefully, as if I might randomly explode if jostled, Criminy slid down under the covers, not touching me. I could hear him breathing, feel the tension in his beautiful body.

It was strange for us both to want something so bad and never discuss it, never be able to make it happen. With all his magic and all my medical knowledge and all the amazing things in Sang, it was still impossible. And I felt guilty about it, all the time. I guessed I’d hoped that would go away, once I was a Bludman. I had hoped that I would be enough for Criminy. Still, he’d have made such a marvelous father.

As I was drifting off, tears drying on my cheeks, he put a hand on my belly, soft as a feather, and whispered, “You never know, love.”

I allowed myself one glorious moment of hope. Maybe he was right. I’d seen the blud transformation cure my grandmother’s cancer, after all, not to mention changing living tissue and growing lustrous hair, right before my eyes. Was it possible that I could still have children? That the damage inside could be reversed by the topsy-turvy magic that ruled this world?

I put my hand on top of his where it lay over my navel and moved them both to the bed. I didn’t have time for hope right now.

Sometimes hope just made things harder.

I had to save Nana first.

We woke at dawn the next morning, grim as soldiers. Criminy helped tighten my corset laces, and I tied his cravat, making him gag just a little for fun. Breakfast was a small affair in Demi’s parlor, as the daimons slept late and didn’t eat, anyway. It felt like a council of war as Crim, Demi, Ahna, Casper, and I sipped hot blood and Vale quietly devoured a wrappy of eggs and sausage that now turned my stomach. How strange that he was the last human among us, and the only one that could never be turned, thanks to his poisonous blood.

“He is proud,” Ahna said, breaking the charged silence. “This Sweeting. Thinks he knows everything. Use that against him, I beg you.”

“He has a clockwork fox,” Casper added. “Sneaky little bastard. You might not see it until it attacks. The damn thing has wings, although it can’t fly.” He pulled back his sleeve to show four evenly spaced white scars. “It has teeth, too.”

Criminy took the scorpion’s wooden box from his pocket and rolled it around on the table. “You lot are all assuming the worst. Perhaps he’ll be willing to tell us where the witch hides just to get rid of an enemy easily.” His grin quirked up. “Or maybe we’ll hit it off, trade some magic.”

With a shake of her head that was all American teen, Demi said, “Yeah, and monkeys might fly out of my butt.”

Casper had warned us about the peculiar key required to access Mr. Sweeting’s shop in Deep Darkside, and we were ready. Our walk there was dreary and quick under an oppressive gray sky, and even the umbrella with a cleverly concealed sword in the handle that Criminy had bought for me on the way didn’t raise my spirits. I couldn’t help wishing I was outfitted for a fight the way cops were in movies: guns strapped to everything strappable, bulletproof vest under a sharp coat, grim-faced slow-mo walk.

But then again, I had my own sort of sharpness. My corset was pretty damn close to bulletproof, and I came equipped with razor-blade teeth and newly grown talons. And there was the scorpion in its fine wooden box; I’d taken the liberty of naming him Sourpuss, considering that he was very grouchy and that it seemed a fitting way to take down someone named Sweeting. And best of all, I had Criminy Stain, one of the most dangerous creatures I’d ever had the pleasure of meeting.

And doing other things with. Other things I couldn’t stop thinking about, even though it was distracting. Reve’s clothes made him look like half rakish earl, half vampire Lothario, and everyone we passed had to recognize and admire the predatory swagger in his walk as he contemplated ripping out the daimon’s throat in a loud sort of fight—after we had our answer regarding the whereabouts of a certain witch, of course.

As we passed through the gates to Deep Darkside—and London was said to have the deepest Darkside in all of Sangland—I carefully inspected every shopfront, every sign, every hag at a pushcart, for evidence of the villainous bitch who’d temporarily stolen my youth and my grandmother. The last time I’d seen Hepzibah, she’d been smoking a long pipe on the back of her wagon and laughing at my folly, a few lines on her ancient face erased by the years she’d absorbed from my life. It didn’t matter how young she seemed now. I wanted to punch her in her smug teeth.

No.

More than that.

I wanted to rip out her throat with my fangs, feel her blud spray across my cheeks and catch in my eyelashes.

Killing her would feel as good as a goddamn shampoo commercial in my world.

Criminy had explained long ago that an enemy’s blood or blud tasted sweeter, and considering that I’d never drunk from a living creature (other than my husband, which surely didn’t count), I was anxious to test his theory and rid the world of someone who brought destruction wherever she went.

But of course it wasn’t that easy. Nothing worthwhile ever is.

Darkside started out like a charming flea market that quickly became a charred, sinister abattoir. The bricks went from dark red to shiny black, and a thick, strange fog rolled along the slick cobblestones. The pushcarts hawking violets, blood slush, and secondhand jewelry were replaced by vendors selling a secretive mix of potions, polished bones, poisonous flowers, and treats that, unlike blood, couldn’t be donated freely and legally—because humans can’t live without their livers or hearts. I was a little ashamed to drool over one such cart featuring a small brazier, but damn if it didn’t smell a lot like bacon.

Criminy had the scorpion’s box in his hands, flipping it back and forth in his black-gloved fingers as he stalked the streets. Over the years, I’d seen him in everything from a polite disagreement to a straight-up brawl, but I’d never seen him this nervous. When he stopped suddenly and spun to me, hand on my shoulder, I wasn’t really that surprised. Something about being a Bludman allowed me to sense the movement before it happened.

“Love, this is folly. Let me face him alone. Go back to the cabaret. I’ll call you a cab on the other side of the gate.”

I cupped his face and smiled. “Um, you’re Criminy Stain, right? Dangerous magician and ringmaster? Because it sounds a little like you’re scared.”

“I’m not scared for me. I’m scared for you.”

“Same thing.”

His eyebrows drew down to an evil point. “It’s really not. Surely I have already impressed upon you the gravity of this situation—”

“Shh. Calm down, Crim. You get so formal when you’re flustered.”

With a grunt, he took off his high topper and smacked it on his leg. “Dammit, woman! You’re the most important thing in my world, and I don’t care to lose you. Not here, not now, not ever.”

“Dammit yourself. I’m just as hardy as you, just as vicious. Just as hard to kill. And that bitch has my grandmother. My Nana was the only thing that tethered me to Earth, and now she’s somewhere nearby, and whether she knows it or not, whether she actually wants my help or not, she needs me. So just accept that I’m your equal and I’m coming with you. Because I am.”

“My equal? Hmph. Not according to the courts.”

“Fuck the courts, Crim. We live outside the law, remember?”

He made a noise of dissent deep in his throat and slapped the hat back onto his head. “I knew you would say that. All of it. Every word. But, my darling”—my eyes slashed distrustfully sideways at his cloying tone—“you’ve just mentioned that she may not want your help, which makes me curious about why you’re so determined to provide it. She wasn’t very kind to you, after all.”

“Then why did she leave a note?”

He took my hand in his and swung it as we walked, as if neither of us had a care. “Perhaps she left the note so that you would understand that she had a quest. The note did not say, ‘Stolen by witch, please come save me.’ It told you exactly what she was doing. Everything that happened after that was of your doing. Perhaps that’s why she was unkind. Maybe she was trying to push you away.”

“But why would she do that?”

“Dearest love, didn’t you tell me yourself that your gran is a glancer?”

“Sure. She glanced on Emerlie and accused her of using Charlie. So?”

“So . . .” He eyed me carefully and slowed his pace, which meant we had to be near Mr. Sweeting’s shop. “So I told you that the more powerful glancer steals the glance, yes?” I nodded. “And you didn’t feel the jolt when you first touched her in Sang?” I shook my head. “Do you understand what that means?”

“She’s more powerful than me. She got the glance. So what?”

He cleared his throat. “It doesn’t work exactly like that, darling. It’s a rare and unusual situation. As I understand it, the more powerful glancer absorbs all the glances, in effect, their own and that of the other person. Which means that your gran glanced on your life . . . and on her own.”

I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, and someone behind me jostled my skirt and said something rather nasty, to which Crim turned around and did something that made the stranger gasp and walk away quickly in the other direction—no small feat in Deep Darkside. As I stood there, thoughts flashing through my head, Criminy gently guided me into a shop, one hand on my waist, and sat me down in a chair.

When I looked up, I found we were in a sip shop, the Blud version of a tea shop. I’d never actually been in one before, as they were frequented by thirsty Bludmen. Taking a human into a sip shop was as much of a faux pas as pushing a pretzel cart into a sit-down restaurant. This particular shop was not the one I would have chosen for my first visit, considering it was in Deep Darkside and thus catered to a more ghastly clientele than those who preferred doilies and fluffy ottomans.

The tables were all black, the chandeliers were all black, and the menu advertised more than blood, mixed with certain magic procurements that wouldn’t be available outside of the heavy black gates that frightened away the fine folks of the city proper.

“Good gravy. Are these ladyfingers made of actual lady fingers?”

Criminy tutted and whisked the menu out of my hands. “If you have to ask, you’ll never know, darling. Two hot cups of Earl Grey, please.” The waitress nodded and hurried off, and he leaned over. “Not actually made from the blood of any earls, I promise. They just steep some bergamot in to give it a little taste.”

Until our drinks arrived, I stared at the paintings lining the walls, all delicate watercolors of beastly murders. It was more pleasant than contemplating the mysterious information my grandmother had that I couldn’t begin to guess at. Criminy wrapped my gloved fingers around the hot cup, and I drank reflexively. It was better than I’d anticipated, especially after Crim showed me that the sugar and creamer parts of the tea service were filled with skull-shaped sugar cubes and bludmare’s milk, respectively.

“Are you taking it well, love? I was afraid that if we stayed on the street gawking, we’d attract a scene, which is exactly what you don’t want when you’re doing what we’re doing.”

I sipped the scalding blood tea and shook my head. “I just don’t understand why you didn’t tell me sooner.”

“Consider this a last-ditch effort, as I’m feeling a bit desperate. Bludmen are known for rationality and a merry sort of selfishness. Chasing someone who made it clear she didn’t want to be chased is the grandest sort of folly. I honestly thought you’d have come to your senses by now as the metamorphosis took full effect.”

I straightened up and glared. “Well, excuse me for harboring some lingering human feelings and loyalty to my grandmother, Mr. Immortal Kiss.”

Crim sipped his tea and muttered, “Tell them a little louder, love. Only the entire shop can hear you.”

I flushed. I’d forgotten that the blud transformation was considered a taboo topic among Bludmen, something that should never be shared or discussed, especially in public. To Criminy’s people, and now mine, humans were mostly fools, bullies, and walking blood bags. I could sense a few dark looks thrown our way, and I lowered my voice, feeling flustered and out of my element. And yet, strangely, not a bit embarrassed.

“Look, Crim. You once told me a glancer sees everyone’s future but her own, and you never said there was an exception to that rule. Now I feel like Nana knows all my secrets, and I’m missing what I need to know about her. What if my sweet little grandmother saw . . .”

“What happens in a marital bed?”

I smacked his hand. “Well, more than that. My past, our future. I glance on hundreds of people at the caravan every week, but I don’t tell them everything I know. Just something helpful, some little tidbit that’ll make them tip more. They never consider every tiny detail I see of their lives and tragedies, and if they did, they would never step into my tent. It’s . . . deeply personal.”

“But you do it anyway.”

I stared up at him, unblinking, daring, unashamed, registering a strange new core of anger in me. “Yes, I do.”

Crim cocked his head like a crow and regarded me through laughing eyes. “My, my. It’s amazing, watching you become a predator.”

“Am I doing a good job?”

He set down his cup, took my hand in both of his, and pulled off my glove with a slow, strange sensuality that reminded me of the first time he’d ever removed a glove for me, biting the fingertip to pull it off and turning me into a puddle. This time, he revealed a dainty hand covered in shiny black scales and tipped with slender, sharp talons, like a hawk’s claws. I wasn’t yet accustomed to this visible evidence of my change and, to be quite honest, had mostly forgotten about it, considering that long gloves were still the norm for Bludmen and the inhabitants of Sangland as a whole. I couldn’t help noticing that the compass rose that had once been tattooed on my palm was gone, replaced with smooth, unblemished, shining black.

“Beautiful hands, deadly talons.” He caressed my cheek and lifted my lip gently with his thumb. “Sharp fangs.” He released me and let his eyes graze me up and down. “An attitude based on truth and the rejection of shame and guilt? Priceless. Yes, my love, I’d say you’re coming along quite well. If only you’ll learn to let sleeping dogs lie.”

I smiled, replaced my glove, and drank down the rest of my steaming blood tea. “Excellent, then. Forget Nana. Let’s focus on the real prey. Considering that I’m a predator like yourself, then you’ll agree that we should go focus our deadliness on someone who deserves it, yes? As a public service and to reduce overall anxiety?”

His eyes narrowed when I stood. “Nowhere in our marriage vows did I agree to have my compliments turned against me,” he said.

“For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, for kicking ass and killing witches.”

Eyes pinned to mine, he finished his tea, dabbed the blood from his lips with a handkerchief, tossed down his coppers, and stood. “I’m onto your ruse, love. Pretend all you want. I don’t have to be a glancer to see where your goal truly lies. At least, let me be the first one through the door.”

“I thought it was women and children first?”

He shook his head and offered me his arm, murmuring, “Women and children last.”

13

At first, it looked like any shop in the deepest Deep Darkside, but then you looked through the windows. The glass was dusty and draped with moldering black cloth. Trapped there as if frozen on a stage was a young Kraken fighting a unicorn foal, a battle that could never have happened on land or sea. The preserved body of the octopus was stretched out and posed, eggplant-colored tentacles dried and spread with the care a painter would give them on a Grecian urn, their lacy pink edges glistening with lacquer. The unicorn foal was likewise forever rampant, its knobby knees bent in fighting position and its tiny horn poised to strike the Kraken in its eye. Criminy and I both stopped to stare, and the moment didn’t end until the unicorn blinked.

“Right, then,” Criminy said. “Let me handle the door.”

There was no knob, handle, or latch to the grave-black megalith, although rough holes showed where hardware had once been. Instead, a heavy knocker shaped like a biting bludbunny sat in the dead middle, its teeth stained red as if it had recently eaten.

Criminy reached into one of the many pockets inside his coat. Even after six years of marriage, I’d still never explored the depths of the treasures and curses that garment held. The vial he pulled out was much smaller than the ones from which we traditionally drank, with barely a few drops of blood or blud therein. With the tip of his glove, he dabbed the red liquid onto one of the bludbunny’s teeth, then smeared it on the black wood, where it was instantly absorbed. He’d tossed the tiny vial before the door began to swing open with a sinister screech.

“Cheaters,” said an amused voice from within.

I held out my hand to Criminy, but he didn’t take it. The slight nod he gave me seemed to say, in the language of the long married, that I needed to keep both my hands ready for a fight. We stepped in side by side, as much as my belled skirts would allow. Although the shop had seemed cavernous and dark from the street, once we were inside, it was tidy and decently lit, a showcase of terror that immediately raised my husband’s sharp eyebrow and my own gorge.

Mr. Sweeting was nowhere to be seen, but the clockwork fox Casper had mentioned stepped smoothly from behind a jewelry counter and sat, copper wings folded, to stare at us in a politely demanding manner.

“Oh, do manifest,” Criminy said. “We haven’t much time, and I detest speaking with uppity clockworks.”

Something stroked my shoulder with an impersonal creepiness, and I spun, claws out and hissing. The dapper daimon stood just outside of reach, long arms folded, in a natty pinstriped suit. He was the very personification of the devil, right down to his red skin, black anchor beard, and waving, barbed tail. His acid-yellow eyes had horizontal pupils like a goat’s, and they seemed rather amused by me in a way that I found deeply insulting.

“Not much self-control in this one,” he said. “Tsk. At least I keep my pets on a leash.”

“Do you know why we’re here?” Criminy asked in his most polite tone.

“I know you’re not the unfortunate Pinky whose blood you painted on my fine door. And I can smell magic rolling off you like smoke from a fire, so you’d best tell me what you want before things get dicey. I’m trying to run a business here, and smarmy gits like you are bad for it.”

Crim gave an elegant shrug. “Oh, la.”

The daimon’s tail curled up to float over his shoulder, and he held out his bare red hand, wiggling six long fingers with altogether too many joints. “You know I’ll know if you’re lying, so let’s just get down to business, eh? Tit for tat. You know how it works, I’d wager.”

With his sly cat’s grin, Crim took the daimon’s hand, the red velvet of his glove matching almost perfectly the daimon’s own red skin. “I’m looking for an old acquaintance, a Blud witch named Hepzibah. Do you know where she is?”

“Not exactly,” Mr. Sweeting said blandly. “And now it’s my turn.” His head cocked like a mantis’s to stare at me with fiery eyes. “Tell us one secret you’ve purposefully kept from your wife.”

Crim chuckled to himself. “Clever. Very clever. I should’ve been more specific. Let’s see.” His eyes met mine, and something dark and sinister writhed in their depths, as if many such suitable secrets lurked in the pit of his heart. “Remember that hideous hat you had Antonin make? The one that looked like something a pirate might wear?”

My eyes narrowed. “The one that disappeared?”

He grinned. “I took it out on the moors and gave it to a bludelk. He looked so dapper with it shoved down over his antlers. When he attacked me for my crime against elk fashion, I ripped out his throat, drank him dry, and left him and the bloody hat for the bunnies.”

“I liked that hat, you bastard!”

A blithe shrug. “Guilty.”

Mr. Sweeting sighed. “Tit for tat, indeed. And now it’s the lady’s turn.” He released Criminy’s hand and wiped his palm off on his pants, then turned to me. As much as I wanted to take off my glove and steal the information I needed, it would have drawn his suspicion. Who, after all, would touch a dark daimon’s skin on purpose?

I cleared my throat, took his hand, and watched the venomous barb of his tail bob over my heart. “Where exactly will we find the Blud witch Hepzibah?” I finally asked.

“Underground,” he replied promptly. “Now, you will give me one of the following: your dearest wish, your favorite memory, or your firstborn child. Choose one.”

“You said tit for tat, you monster. A question for a question,” Crim growled.

Mr. Sweeting’s tail bobbed to focus on my husband. “Show me in a dictionary the definition of ‘tit for tat,’ then. You foxed me, and now I’ve foxed her. Let the lady answer.”

“Letitia, don’t—”

Mr. Sweeting snapped his fingers, and Crim’s voice went silent, although his mouth kept moving. “Only the lady may answer.”

I shrugged. “My firstborn, I suppose, since I’ll never have one.”

The daimon’s grin was monstrous and wide. “Oh, lovely.” He sighed. “Now . . .”

He was still holding my hand when Criminy leaped at him, knocking the daimon and me to the polished black boards of the shop floor. Crim’s mouth opened in a feral howl, but no sound came out. Sweeting was fighting like a roach being sprayed with poison, flailing with long limbs and muttering curses under his breath, his deadly tail struggling to sting Criminy even as it was trapped under them both.

As soon as he loosed my hand, I was up in a bestial crouch and looking for the clockwork fox, which had razor teeth around Criminy’s boot and his now bleeding ankle. I’d been with the caravan long enough to know Mr. Murdoch’s favorite way to disrupt an automaton, so I sneaked around behind the thing, wrapped my arms around its plated abdomen, and grabbed one paw with both hands, yanking the metal foot pad loose from its ankle joint.

The thing didn’t notice, as it continued to shred my husband’s fine boot, but I didn’t smell blud yet, which meant I had time. I hunted around for two wires, one white and one black, and touched their twisted copper ends. A spark lit up and traveled over the finely made clockwork, ending in two puffs of smoke from its eyes. It went still, and I pried its jaws from Crim’s ankle, freeing him up to kill the bastard daimon he straddled, his fists pummeling Mr. Sweeting’s smug red face.

Mr. Sweeting put up more of a fight than most creatures that encountered my husband. As soon as his metal fox was down, he bucked Criminy off, rolled to his feet, and lurched toward a bookcase of pickled monstrosities in jars. Hard on his heels, Crim leaped up and shoved him hard, right into the shelf. Jars rained around them, crashing on the ground in a sparkle of broken glass and rubbery pink grotesqueries. The scent of alcohol and formaldehyde filled the air, and my predator nose itched horribly, even as I rubbed it on my sleeve. Crim had Sweeting by the lapels now, and he shoved the screeching daimon into the bookcase again, even harder, and the whole thing started to tip forward with a terrible squeal. I grabbed the back of Criminy’s coat and tossed him across the room as the entire shelf of jars fell on top of a screaming Mr. Sweeting.

Even then, he didn’t stop fighting. As he tried to crawl out from under the heavy wood, I heard the slurred language of magic in his rasping voice, and the squishy things from the jars began to twitch and writhe toward me as if coming alive. Crim was yelling at me, but no sound came from his mouth, and I had no idea what he wanted me to do. Finally, he ripped off his glove, pointed to his hand, and then pointed to the daimon’s long red fingers curled around the edge of the bookshelf, struggling to prop it up.

“Oh!”

I ripped off my glove and plopped my bustle on the bookshelf, earning a muffled “Oof!” from the crushed Mr. Sweeting in between his spells. My fingers brushed his, and the jolt struck me.

“There’s a boulder outside London, by the wall. You touch it, and it opens into catacombs. He wasn’t lying. She’s underground. And my grandmother is with her.” I gulped. “Behind iron bars.” Crim was still staring at me, his mouth clearly enunciating words I couldn’t hear. “What else do you want, for goodness’ sake? Just kill him!”

Criminy rolled his eyes and leaned over to check his boot, which the clockwork fox had all but savaged. His mouth took a decidedly grim turn downward. He stomped on the crawly jar-things that were approaching him, shot his cuffs, ran, and jumped on top of the bookshelf, right over where the daimon’s chest must have been.

There was a massive crunch, and the muttering went silent. Like a child on a trampoline, my deadly husband jumped up and down a few good times, his knees almost reaching his chest. Each time he landed, there was another crunch, until finally there was only a sucking squish, and blackish blood seeped from under the bookshelf, making me step back as it ate holes in the dark wood.

“Well, that’s better,” Crim said with a grin.

“Oh, you can talk again?”

“Means he’s dead. Which is good, because we need to chop off his tail.”

“His tail?”

“Yes, love. The one with which he stung me.”

And then my elegantly attired husband, grinning like a possum, pointed to his neck and fell to the ground, unconscious.

14

I’d lived with Criminy Stain long enough to know that whatever was happening, I just needed to follow his directions. The best thing I could do was to chop off the daimon’s tail and get the hell out of that shop. At least sharp objects were plentiful. Judging by the array of knives and saws hanging on the wall of the back room, Mr. Sweeting did a good bit of his own taxidermy and meat processing. The hardest part, of course, was getting the huge bookshelf off his crushed body, but my newly bludded muscles were a good bit stronger than my old ones, so I eventually just fetched his rusty-edged ax and hacked the wood to bits around him, cussing at him with every stroke.

The wound was easy enough to find, thanks to the fact that one side of Crim’s neck was red and swollen under his cravat. I didn’t know whether to pull out the barb or leave it, and no matter how much I shook my husband and yelled at him, he wouldn’t wake up.

Even in a world without gangrene, that wasn’t good.

Soon I had the entire length of Sweeting’s crushed tail wrapped in a sackcloth bag I’d found behind the counter. In addition to the surgical table and cutting instruments, the back room held the sort of treasures one would expect to find in the attic of a haunted house, and after a bit of digging I uncovered an ancient wheelchair that looked as if it belonged in an asylum. I lugged Criminy into it, draped the bagged daimon tail across his lap, and hurriedly wheeled him out the door, leaving nothing but wreckage and a smashed and bloody daimon behind the closed door.

My first thought was that I had to find someone who could fix Criminy.

My second thought was that it was a damn shame he wasn’t conscious to rifle through the daimon’s goods, because the Bludman in me instantly recognized that such delicious, magical plunder of his enemy’s belongings would have made Criminy ecstatic.

Maybe we could come back, if he lived through this.

If it was strange for a Bludwoman to push a dead man in a wheelchair holding a blood-spattered package through London’s Deep Darkside, no one showed it. Even in the nicer part of Darkside, no one stopped me or offered to help. Had I passed a chirurgeon or a midwife, I would have begged for help on my knees, but as it was, I continued with single-minded, ferocious determination to Demi’s cabaret.

And yes, we did attract some attention once we reached the nicer streets. But I didn’t stop, not even when a Copper blocked my path on his heavy-boned bludmare. I just curved the wheelchair right around them, shouting, “My husband is sick, sir. Please excuse us.” My desperation and tears must have been convincing enough to warrant pity, as I waited to feel the salt spray of his water gun across my back but never did.

The cabaret was closed until showtime, and the wheelchair couldn’t navigate the narrow alleys to the open back door. Even though I knew it was bad for Demi’s business, I had no choice but to bang on the door with my bare fist, howling, “Open up, y’all! Criminy’s hurt. Open this goddamn door!”

Blaise appeared, his face turning dark blue as he looked down at Criminy’s still body. “Poison, oui? Bring him to a bed, madame, and quick.”

We soon had Criminy laid out in Ahnastasia’s bed, as it was the closest one on the ground floor. If he’d been conscious, he would have loved the excitement of reclining on the silver fur coverlet where the queen of the Bludmen dreamed . . . and more. As it was, his wiry arms were limp, his face gone whiter than white. And Ahnastasia wasn’t pleased a bit.

“Once he’s not dead, I’ll get him off your royal bed,” I snapped when she’d sighed her annoyance one too many times.

“He can live or die, so long as he’s out of my chamber. With equal cheerfulness, I can wait,” she muttered, and Casper made for his little notebook but noticed the look of death in my eyes and left it alone.

Soon Reve arrived with Bea and Mel, and they took the heavy, blood-soaked bag with trembling hands.

“So zis is what’s left of ze great Sweeting, eh?” Mel said.

Bea shook her head. “As bad as Charmant. And just as dead.”

“And the world is better for it,” Reve said with great finality. “Let us work.”

The daimons, it seemed, kept their magic as secret as the Bludmen kept theirs. The Demimonde had a small kitchen with a butcher-block table, and the daimons took the tail there and urged me to stay with Crim and say my good-byes, just in case. I sat on a wingback chair pulled close to the bed, his bare hand limp and cold in mine, trying to come to terms with the fact that my ageless, fearless husband might actually die. As a human, I’d basically considered him a superhero. I’d seen him shot with arrows, scaling impossibly high walls, and fighting with animals that weighed ten times as much as him, laughing all the while. He’d never backed down from a fight—not with me, not with his customers, and not with anyone else. And now here he was, still and barely breathing, his face waxy and his fine gray eyes rolled back in his head behind purple eyelids rimmed in smeared kohl.

Demi came in with a tea tray and urged a cup into my hands. “You’re too new, Tish. You’re no good to him feral. You have to keep up your strength.”

“He is my strength. They’ll fix him, won’t they?”

She shrugged, put hands to her belly, and chuckled. “Oh, I was going to pull up my shirt to show you a scar, but I forget we’re always in these damned corsets here. Monsieur Charmant stabbed me in the back with a blade smeared in his tail’s poison, and I lived, so I don’t see why Crim wouldn’t. He’s a tough bastard.”

“Don’t I know it. He specifically said he was worried about me in there, and he’s the one who got hurt. And mangled his favorite boots, too. At least, if he lives, I’ll get to do the world’s best ‘I Told You So’ dance.”

Demi ran her fingers over the ripped leather where the fox’s metal teeth had done their damnedest to saw through his leg. “He’s going to be pretty pissed when he wakes up, isn’t he?”

“He was pretty pissed before he blacked out, too. But I know where the witch is. So I guess we succeeded. Cheers?”

I picked up a steaming teacup beribboned with melting pink foam and held it up. Demi picked up her own cup, and we clinked them gently and drank. She was right—I gulped down the entire cup almost instantly and licked the blood-tinged whipped cream off my lips. Elsewhere in the grand old theater, doors opened and closed, boots and heels stomped, voices called out in welcome and annoyance. But none of it touched me. I didn’t feel the crushing fear I’d known when he’d last tasted death, an arrow shot through his throat. My training as a nurse had informed my worry then, assuring me that he had no hope of living. But he’d popped up like a goddamn jack-in-the-box, his body healing, his skin resealing before my eyes.

No, this was something beyond my experience. A daimon’s poison wasn’t part of my nursing degree and training on Earth. And my Bludman’s heart felt removed, cold and detached in the way that only a creature with a long life can feel. He’d die or he wouldn’t. Nothing I could do would change it. Which made me want to crush things in my talons, clutch him by the shoulders, and shake him until his eyes popped open in rage.

And yet I was surprised when the porcelain cup shattered, because I was, in fact, crushing it with my talons in rage.

I opened my hand and bent to scoop up the sodden chips. “Sorry.”

“It happens more than you’d expect,” Demi said with an understanding grin. “The entire time I’ve been in Sang, I’ve never seen a nice, heavy mug. Not even one that says ‘World’s Best Boss.’ I looked, you know.” She inclined her head to the bed. “For him.”

Tears struck me, hot and fast, and I dashed them away.

The door opened just then, and a parade of daimons hurried in, with Reve at the front, her skin the bright fuchsia of sunsets and triumph and a black leather doctor’s bag in her arms. I hadn’t let myself look in a while to see if Crim’s breathing was slowing or worse, but now I looked hard, grateful that his chest still stirred.

“Did it work?” I asked, and Bea waved me away.

“Daimon magic is a secret thing. Wait outside, chérie, and we will see.”

“If you think for one cotton-picking minute that I’m going to leave his side, you’re—”

Demi grabbed me under the armpits, Blaise trapped my feet, and together they hauled me out of the room, kicking and spitting.

“Désolé,” Mel said, slamming the door in my face.

“What the hell!” I roared, fingers curled into claws around the doorknob.

I took to pacing the halls, my boots tapping on heavy wood planks and soft Moravian carpets. Demi and Blaise disappeared and reappeared, and I at turns put my ear against the thick door and punched the solid beams ribbing the walls.

I had just stopped to pummel a dent in the flowered wallpaper when Demi came up behind me and grabbed my wrists.

“Tish, seriously. You have to chill. You’re annoying as hell out here. It takes time. Only daimons know the antidote to daimon poison, and they don’t have to help him.” The corner of her mouth quirked up, so much like Criminy that it hurt. “Well, they do if they want to work here, I guess. But still. Let them do their work. You’re not going to help Criminy by pitching a damn fit.”

“Vraiment,” Blaise said. He reached for my hand, massaged the bruised knuckles, and kissed it with a gentleman’s flair. And then he grinned and held out my wedding ring, which I hadn’t even noticed he’d removed.

“Dammit, Blaise,” Demi muttered.

I took the ring back with a nod of respect. “You and Crim are going to get along just fine, if he lives through this.”

“Then my hopes are doubled, madame.”

When the door opened, it was softly. Not the exuberant bang of victory but the quiet click of a sickroom. I spun around to find Reve a lackluster mauve shadow of herself.

“What happened? Is he dead?”

She shook her head sadly. “It isn’t taking as well as we’d hoped. Sweeting was powerful. Who knows what potions he may have ingested to strengthen his vitriol? The fox’s teeth were also tampered with, according to the gash on your husband’s leg. His neck wound came straight from the stinger, and his ankle is swelling with a different kind of poison. I’m doing everything I can—we’re doing everything we can—but . . .” Reve looked down, and Demi put a hand on the daimon’s shoulder. “It doesn’t look good.”

“What can we do?” I asked. “What can I bring you? Is there a daimon witch, a chirurgeon, a goddamn miracle worker? Whose soul do I have to sell to get more powerful magic?”

The daimon’s skin flashed red as she drew herself up tall. “The problem is not my magic. I can’t work miracles on dead bodies. No one can.” She stalked down the hall, the black bag swinging fiercely at her side.

Demi held out a handkerchief. “Uh, Tish? Just a pro tip. Don’t piss off daimons. They feed on good emotions and can’t work for shit when they’re upset.”

Rage boiled up from my toes, and I was surprised my own skin didn’t turn red to match Reve’s. “I don’t give a shit if they’re happy. If they can’t save Criminy, they’re no good to me.” I kicked the door, satisfied at the gasps that came from the other side. “I’m a nurse. If I can’t help someone live, I help someone die. And I can’t help him die. I have to do something. I can’t just sit here, helpless.” Demi grabbed my hands and pulled me away from the door and into a hug. I dug my face into her shoulder and bawled like a baby.

“I can put you to work in the cabaret. The floors always need polishing, and the harder you punish the wax, the brighter the wood will shine. The costumes need mending, if you want to stab something. And I’d consider it a great favor if you’d bug Ahnastasia until she has a hissy fit. Her tantrums are more interesting than our shows.”

I spluttered a laugh. “None of that’s real. Those are just reindeer games.”

“So go for a walk. Dress as a Pinky and buy a new parasol and feed the pigeons.”

“I can’t leave. What if he . . .” I couldn’t finish the sentence. Not with “wakes up” and not with “dies.”

“Bea and Mel are here. I’m here. I’ll get Ahnastasia to read him a bedtime story in which all the children get eaten. There’s really, seriously, literally nothing you can do to help him. And frankly, what you’re doing now is just making it harder on everybody else.”

“I don’t care if it’s hard!” I shouted, and the entire building went so quiet you could hear a pin drop.

Demi sighed. “Helping Crim is daimon business, and running this cabaret is my business. Your business is finding a way to deal with your frustration that doesn’t get in anyone’s way.”

“Fine!” I barked.

And for good measure, I grabbed Demi’s teacup and threw it against the wall.

Just for the satisfaction of seeing it shatter.

Much like Criminy, Demi had a way of pissing me off until I admitted, to myself at least, that she was right. No matter what my mouth said, my feet took me to the costume room and the faded old daimon who mostly ruled there.

“Quite a set of pipes you’ve got,” Blue said, looking up from her sewing machine with sharp, perpetually mournful eyes.

“Criminy taught me to project for a crowd,” I said, then choked when I realized I was talking about Crim in the past. “Can you dress me like a Pinky, please? I need to get out of here, and if anyone looks at me sideways, I’ll rip out their liver.”

Blue smirked and stood, her old bones cracking. With a ballerina’s long-standing grace, she walked to one of the dozens of racks and plucked out a bright red dress that matched my current anger. I took it behind a changing screen and violently ripped off the dress I’d been wearing, which I’d rather liked and which was now splattered with daimon blood, formaldehyde from the broken jars, and worse. I couldn’t help thinking about the first costumer I’d met in Sang, when I’d still been a human woman so certain that she was dreaming, utterly in ignorance of her powers—and of reality. Mrs. Cleavers, the caravan’s long-dead Bludman costumer, had possessed the face of a vulture and clever gloved fingers that had dressed me like a balky child, long ago. But Blue knew well enough to just toss me all the various parts of my outfit and keep a good distance. I knew my way around a corset and crinoline now, and I was much more likely to bite off her fingers than she was to bite off mine.

“Where do you plan on going?” Blue asked as she sat me down and brushed out my hair.

“I don’t know. Does Buckingham Palace have those funny guard guys in the furry hats?”

Her clawed fingers plucked something nasty from my hair and tossed it away. “No palaces in London. But I can give you the address of a fine milliner, if you’re wanting a new hat.”

“Ugh. No more hats. There’s no changing of the guards if there’s no palace to guard.” I slumped further down on the stool. It was always calming to have my hair done by someone else, but what was the point of getting dressed up if everyone thought I was a human and I wasn’t adventuring with Criminy? Part of me longed for a messy bun, a pair of gray sweatpants with worn-out elastic, and a bowl of ice cream to cry into.

“Look, kid. You can’t do anything about your man. Best thing you can do is go buy yourself a smile somehow. Take care of yourself. Find a treat.”

“I don’t wanna.” The brush ripped through my hair hard, and I jerked upright and growled.

“If you can’t stop being sad, might as well choose anger,” Blue said, her eyes twinkling in an annoying sort of way. “Anger gets things done. Anger has purpose and direction.” She jumped in front of me suddenly, pointed at my face, and shouted, “What do you really want?”

“Criminy.”

“What else do you want?”

“My grandmother.”

The quickness of my answer surprised me. But it was the truth.

Blue smiled, and I did, too.

“So go get her,” she said.

And now I had something useful to do.

Even though I was outfitted as a Pinky, I was still the wife of Criminy Stain. Back upstairs, I asked Bea and Mel for a moment of privacy, and when they left, I rifled through my husband’s coat for goodies. After six years with him, I still didn’t understand the complicated system he used for keeping the hundreds of pockets in his coats and the dozens of drawers in his desk in order, and whenever I asked about it, he distracted me with kisses. Luckily, I had noticed that he kept certain common magical ingredients in the most obvious, easy-to-reach pockets, including the powder that made cloaking puffs of smoke and the one that made shoe soles silent. And I also knew he kept sheathed knives in both of his boots when we traveled. Maybe I’d turned down a few weapons the last time I’d put on a costume, but without Criminy by my side, I’d take every blade I could carry.

By the time I kissed his cold, dry lips and whispered my love and apologies, I had one knife in my corset and the one in my boot and a reticule stuffed with coins and tiny bags of powder. Focusing on saving my Nana didn’t lessen the pain of seeing Crim like this, of leaving him behind. But Blue had hit the nail on the head. Anger could solve problems, while sadness accomplished nothing. If I didn’t hurry, I might lose the two people I loved most.

I slipped out the back of the cabaret and followed the alleys to a main road, where I hailed a horseless carriage and rode in silence all the way down to the gates of London. The guards gave me no trouble when I showed them my papers; they didn’t care so much who left. Large crowds always milled about down here, at the base of the city, and as a human, I’d been wary of the tinkers, lawyers, vagabonds, and ne’er-do-wells waiting to steal papers or coin. But as a Bludwoman pretending to be a Pinky with somewhere to be, I simply held my umbrella like a weapon and cut through their ranks like a shark in water, headed for the rocky rubble I’d seen in my glance on Mr. Sweeting. The circumference of the London wall had to be hundreds of miles, and yet I knew without a doubt that the particular boulder I was looking for was in this direction and not very far.

What I hadn’t seen, however, was the thief stalking me, the pale sun glinting off his slender blade.

15

Once upon a time, I would’ve been scared. My heartbeat would’ve ratcheted up, and I’d have looked around for a strong guy in a uniform to cower behind. Or I might have just clutched my keys aggressively and started yelling for help. Oh, but I had changed in the past week. As it was, I continued walking as if I wasn’t aware of him, which a normal human woman very well might not have been. Of course, a normal human woman wouldn’t have dared to leave the orbit of London’s protected gates without the company of a chaperone or, more likely, her man, her knight, her champion.

I was ready to be my own champion.

And I was hungry.

Recognizing the correct boulder up ahead, I stalled, as if messing with my parasol, putting it up to shield my fair skin from the sun. All of a sudden, a gloved hand shot around my mouth, a fillet knife hovering just above my neck, which was protected by the high, stiff collar currently favored by Pinky ladies for this exact reason, among others.

“Not a squeak, sweetums,” the man growled into my ear. “Give me your papers, your money, and your jewelry, and I might let you live.”

“Is that how you sweet-talk all the ladies?” I muttered, grinning.

He smelled of leather and sweat and the pulsing, coppery tang of hot blood. If only the humans knew that a bald man was what most invigorated Bludmen, they’d all take to wearing even sillier hats and higher wigs, instead of bothering with gloves and cravats.

“It ain’t gonner be sweet when I slit your throat and take ’em anyway, Bessie.”

He used the blade to push down my collar, and the metal was a hot line of rage against my throat. I’d had just about enough, and it felt as if I were being taken over completely by a rabid dog, a feral beast intent only on blood and revenge. A wash of red fell over my eyes, and I opened my mouth against his hand and bit down hard on the meat of his fingers. I did not hold back, as a human would.

The blade sliced me, just a little, as he reeled away, his hand dripping precious blood into the dirt. I ran my tongue over my teeth. I could taste London in him, cold stone and coal and waxed newspaper.

“You’re going to pay for that, you are,” he said, head down like a bull about to charge as he flicked the blood away.

His knife drew pictures in the air, flashing and singing in the sunlight, but it didn’t sing like the beast inside me. My beast sang only for his blood. I would write sonnets with his screams and paint masterpieces with whatever I found inside him. When I laughed, low and dark, his smile faltered, and he took a step back in his cheap, patched boots. In the way of all kung fu movies, I held out my flat hand and beckoned him with curling fingers.

Quick as a blink, he had another knife, this one short and stubby as a pit bull, a knife built for punching holes that never closed again. As we circled each other, I drank in the joy of a fight about to happen, as if the world was holding its breath to see who would emerge the victor. Just to be kind, I let him lunge first. Dancing back from the knife’s swipe, I ripped off my gloves and admired the curl of my white claws, much finer weapons than anything a man could make over a forge.

“Psh. Shoulda known. Bloody Bludmen,” he said, spitting in the dirt at my feet.

“That’s the idea.”

I launched myself at him, claws outstretched, mouth open, knocking his long, shiny knife into the dirt. He landed hard on his back and tried to stab me with the squat knife, but I pinned that hand down and beat it against a rock until it opened like a flower. Now it was just us, me and my assailant, and my mouth was a thing of smiles and teeth and laughter as I struck for his neck, bit down hard, and yanked.

Only one feeling I know comes close to the ecstasy of the enemy’s blood, and I finally understood why Criminy was such a good lover.

I drank and drank, gulping down hot blood as fast as his body could pump it up through his arteries, and he danced beneath me, bucking and blubbering and blowing bubbles of snot and spit. I had never been so thirsty, and I could almost feel the life flowing from him into me, making me stronger and tougher and infinitely more mad, powering the beast that purred on a dying throne of grubby clothes and hot flesh. The jolt of glancing merged with this river, and I was gratified to see that his life had been a long, unbroken streak of taking from others and giving them only pain and death in return. This? This was a creature who needed to die, and I had fulfilled my duty to the world, destroying a bad seed so that others could live and flourish.

His arms and legs stopped shaking and fighting, and his face went still and white, and I lapped frantically for every last bit of blood I could take in, and then it was all gone and I stood up and threw back my head and laughed and laughed and laughed.

I had never felt so powerful, and now I understood why this act was forbidden. Why the humans dressed as they did, why they built their walls and sifted us out in the dark and carried their weapons. Gazelles who dreamed lion dreams could only shit themselves and die of heart attacks. Bludmen were terrifying and in every way superior, and if I killed a bad guy every day, nothing in the world could stop me from my ambitions.

But.

Slowly, I came back to myself. At first, it was the itch of drying blood on my chin, urging me to reach for my handkerchief. Then it was the way his eyes were open and empty and going dry. Then it was the strangeness of standing alone in a barren wasteland outside a thriving, filthy metropolis, alone with a corpse. It was almost like being peeled apart into two people and left with the more boring, confused one.

That . . . was no good.

“Bother. Now I see why we don’t do this,” I said to no one in particular.

Putting on my gloves and grabbing my assailant under his armpits, I realized that he was bigger than I had assumed when my beast was in charge. It had been six years since I’d had to handle senseless bodies, turning over coma patients to clean and bathe them or helping rehab patients support themselves. But I had never done this with a dead body, never tried to pick one up and move it. And he was all floppy as hell and had no good handles, and I couldn’t help thinking that if there were video cameras in Sang, the whole rigmarole would have ended up on YouTube set to Benny Hill music.

I finally got him stashed between some gray boulders and dropped fallen stones and brick chunks and bits of greenery on him until he was mostly camouflaged. I felt as if I needed to say something, because human beings are trained to say things when they stand over dead bodies, but no one had ever trained me for being an almost-vampire who rightly killed her almost-killer.

“You shouldn’t put knives to people’s throats,” I finally said. Before I walked away, I swiped a finger over the blood on his shredded neck.

When I reached the right boulder, I smeared his blood into the pitted stone.

It disappeared, revealing a deep, dark chasm into nowhere.

I did not like deep, dark chasms.

I did not like walking into my enemy’s lair without backup, without my deadly and delightful husband by my side, squeezing my trembling fingers with his strong ones, flashing that dashing smile framed in fangs.

But I was going to do it anyway.

It was a tunnel meant for walking . . . and also meant to scare people away. Ever so gently sloping downward, it was dry and hewn from solid rock, smelling of dust and age and long-ago rotting. And of all the potions and weapons I had brought, I’d forgotten the one thing I needed most underground: a damn lantern. The boulder behind me reappeared, and I found myself in total and complete darkness that gave me vertigo.

Living with the greatest magician in the country, however, had its perks. For six years, I’d watched him pinch his powders and slur his spells, and that sort of thing starts to sink in after a while. In the world of Sang, magic began with the daimons and skipped over humans entirely, but Bludmen could learn it if they had the knack. And I had no idea if I had that knack, but I had a fantastic memory and a desperate need.

Taking a deep breath, I focused my mind and heart on the fingertips of my right hand. Mimicking Criminy’s accent and tone exactly, I muttered a few words of Sanguine and snapped my fingers.

Nothing happened.

I tried it several more times, my desperation building to a frenzy as the cave closed in around me, and I imagined I heard claws on stone and wet, white cave monsters and heavy breathing, somewhere farther down the tunnel.

There had to be some other secret, something I hadn’t noticed in Criminy’s spell casting. Or maybe I just didn’t have the knack. Maybe my glancing was my only magic.

I put my hands over my eyes and tried not to cry . . . and remembered I was wearing gloves.

Of course.

My hands shook as I took off my right glove, almost as if I were going to glance on someone in the caravan. I stilled, focused, closed my eyes, said the words, and snapped.

A flame flickered from my fingers, bathing the stone walls in cool blue.

I looked up, laughing.

Right into the face of the witch herself.

16

The witch cackled, just like the fairy tales said she would.

“Where’s your Hansel, Gretel?” Hepzibah trilled, her overly smooth face more beautiful and youthful than when I’d last seen her. I had been human then and frightened of her.

Now I was a Bludman, and I was godalmighty pissed off.

“Where’s my grandmother?” I asked, my flame-tipped fingers curling into a fist between us.

She shook her head and grinned like a fanged pumpkin. Her eyes were lined in black, with swooping corners, her lips matte red. During our last encounter, her hair had been in red and black dreadlocks, but now it was dark and disturbingly glossy, set in pin curls. I couldn’t imagine how many hundreds of years she must have stolen from innocent people to look this young. And if the situation had been different, I would have clawed for her eyes and pulled her hair and gotten into a horrible fight.

But the stakes were too high. She had my grandmother.

And I still had a grudge that couldn’t be settled with a resounding bitch slap.

“Ruby’s in my parlor with her boy toy,” Hepzibah said, and it struck me as utterly bizarre that she was from Earth, like Demi and Casper and me, but had somehow ended up a wicked vampire witch. People from Sang did not say things like “boy toy,” especially not about the most well-muscled strong man on the entire island.

“Can I have her back?”

In response, she threw back her head and laughed the wild, unselfconscious laugh that firmly differentiated a Bludman from a human.

“For a price,” she said, amused. “But you might want to talk to her first.”

With a flip of her hair, my archenemy, the evil vampire witch, spun around and stalked down the pitch-dark corridor, her skirts dragging on the stones. I had no choice but to follow her, holding my blue light in front of me as she ducked down side tunnels and disappeared around columns. The fear was replaced with suspicion, with doubt, with anger.

She could have killed me in the dark. But she hadn’t. She seemed amused.

Which meant she was up to something, and history had proven that such situations went badly for me.

As I hurried, I realized that we were in catacombs much like the ones Demi had used in Paris and had incorporated into Sang’s first production of The Phantasm of the Theatre. But she had described the Paris catacombs as morbidly beautiful, with intricate designs constructed of skulls punctuated by delicate finger bones and fine mosaics of glittering stones that could only be seen by lantern light. These catacombs sleeping under London were heavier, thicker, more utilitarian. At least it didn’t smell much like dead people and dripped only when we passed under thick pipes. I concentrated on following Hepzibah’s skirts, lest I remember that the enormous, towering, hermit-crab-like sprawl of London was above me and might shudder and implode and crash at any moment, squashing me like a bug.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked to pass the time.

“I have my reasons.”

“Duh. But why do you need my grandmother?”

Her cackle echoed down the tunnel. “I don’t need her. She came to me.”

“She came to you to kill you.”

Another cackle. “Not quite.”

I turned a corner and saw the witch silhouetted in orange light. There were voices echoing beyond her—familiar ones. I recognized my grandmother’s laugh, albeit much younger and more carefree than I’d ever heard it on Earth. The rumbling voice that answered her had to be Torno, then. And they didn’t sound as if they were being imprisoned and tortured by an evil witch. My heart and feet sped up as I hurried to make sense of it all.

“She’s here,” Hepzibah said.

With a dramatic flounce, she sprawled onto a settee in front of a grand fireplace. I could only stand in the doorway and gape, because it wasn’t often one saw a doppelgänger of the Beast’s library in the catacombs under London. Bookshelves went up at least two stories, complete with rolling ladders and a gold chandelier, although I did note that in addition to books, scrolls, and grimoires the shelves held urns, bones, and candy jars full of fluid and subtly writhing flesh like what I’d seen and crushed at Mr. Sweeting’s shop. Furniture and rugs were placed just so near the fire, and I was gratified to see a black cauldron bubbling over the flames. I couldn’t help wondering if it was really part of her witchcrafting or just an affectation from someone who’d seen Disney movies and assumed that any decent witch ought to have a bubbling cauldron full of toil and trouble.

The other side of the picturesque room, however, was a combination dungeon and mad scientist’s laboratory. Iron bars were set into the stone, and behind them were my grandmother and Torno the strong man.

And then my grandmother did the strangest thing I could imagine.

She opened the door to the cell and walked out, laughing.

“Nana?” I said, and she held her arms open and laughed a Bludman’s laugh.

“You always were the damnedest child,” she said in her new voice, which was notable for its lack of a dying person’s puckered, toothless wheeze. She sounded sharp and amused. And somehow . . . wrong.

I stepped into her embrace with the strangest feeling running up my spine, as if I were about to hug the monster under my bed. “Nana?” I said again, unsure as hell.

Firm fingers dug into my shoulders as she held me away, inspecting me. She must have liked what she saw, as she grinned and winked a kohl-lined eye.

“I told you, sugar. My name is Ruby. And you weren’t supposed to come here. This is between me and Elizabeth.”

“Hepzibah?”

My Nana—Ruby—snorted and pulled me back into a hug of sharp edges and no comfort. Quick as a blink, she whispered in my ear, “Stay out of my way,” before pushing me back.

I stumbled over the cave scree and stared at her beautiful smile, trying to see my Nana’s kind face and sweet eyes in this hard, mysterious Valkyrie. She pulled a slim cigarette case out of her trouser pocket, lit the end of a cigarette, and blew a smoke ring at me, arms crossed.

“She told you her name was Hepzibah? What a crock. Her name’s Elizabeth. Elizabeth Merrywell. And she’s my mother’s sister. Which makes her your . . .” Nana looked up at the ceiling. “Great-great-aunt?”

“Once removed,” the witch said from her settee, twirling a bored hand as one booted foot dangled over the edge.

“Okay, so if we’re all one big, happy family, why is this so weird?” I asked.

Torno stepped forward, a hand the size of a grizzly paw heavy but gentle on my shoulder. “She needs to know, cara mia,” he said, kind eyes flicking back to Ruby.

“Come on, then.” Ruby sighed and strode to the witch’s carefully placed sitting room, taking up the other sofa and curling into the corner, leaving room for Torno. When he sat, she snuggled back against him, content as a cat in a sunbeam.

What the hell was happening?

The witch didn’t sit up or move, and Nana inclined her head toward the lone wingback chair. When I didn’t immediately sit, she jabbed her cigarette to shoo me. As if in a dream, I joined them.

“Well?” I said, feeling very much like a prim and confused Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole.

The witch finally sat up, looking very bored in every way except for the overbright way her eyes glinted. “If we must,” she said. When she clapped her hands and shouted, “Tea!” a clockwork lemur emerged from the darkness, pushing, of all things, a laden tea cart. Its long tail, striped copper and silver, curled overhead, holding a steaming teapot.

“You’re the youngest. You serve,” the witch said, inclining her head to me, and I knew exactly how Alice must have felt at the Mad Hatter’s tea party.

I stood stiffly and took the first cup and saucer from the cart, holding it dumbly.

“Two lumps and a splash of milk,” Hepzibah said, and I used the tongs to place two heart-shaped lumps of sugar in the cup with an echoing plink. The milk was pale pink, and when I went to take the teapot from the lemur, the thing somehow managed to look affronted and poured the hot blood for me with a superior air.

I added a dainty spoon to the cup, turned to the witch, and threw the cup’s contents right into her too-smooth face.

Hepzibah screamed and scrabbled at her eyes. My grandmother laughed, and Torno made the sort of tsk, tsk noise old men make when young women do silly, thoughtless things. The clockwork lemur let out a tinny sigh and hurried into the darkness, returning seconds later with a pile of neatly folded tea towels.

“Shouldn’t have done that,” Ruby said, trying to hold in her laughter and smoke. “You’re only making it worse.” A few beats later, the laugh escaped her, and she rode it like a wild horse until she was gasping for breath and coughing. “Not that I blame you.”

“Sorry, Auntie Elizabeth,” I said, obviously not sorry at all.

“I should’ve killed you when I—”

My grandmother threw a towel in the witch’s face. “Shut up, Aunt Lizzie. Haven’t you learned yet that you can’t order people around?” Sitting back down, Ruby looked at me, and something cold in her eyes struck me to the core. “One lump for me, no milk. And if you throw it at me, you’ll be sorry.” She took a long drag and smiled an icy smile.

My fingers twitched in defiance, but I fixed her tea and placed the saucer gently in her smooth, clawed hands. “You want me to mash up some Ambien and put it in your blood pudding? You need a suppository? Anything else I can do for you, my poor, dying grandmother?”

She turned her face as if I’d slapped her. “Probably deserved that.” She sipped her tea and nodded approval of the grand gesture of a sugar cube. “I didn’t enjoy dying slowly any more than you enjoyed watching me do it.”

“Yeah, well, you stopped saying thanks a while back, didn’t you?” It felt stupid and movie-foolish, standing there by the fire, so I held out a trembling cup to the lemur. It poured with elegant tidiness, and I gulped down the lava-hot blood without adding any sort of civility to the gesture. I held it out again, the lemur poured, I drank, I thanked it for some strange reason, and I hurled the dainty cup into the fire, finally strengthened enough to say what I had to say. “Look, you wanted to be young and healthy, and you are. You wanted to be free of me and my lovely little caravan, and you are. You want to hang out with our aunt, the bitchy witch who almost ruined my life here and made every day full of worry and self-loathing? Great. But I’d like to get back to my life without you, if you don’t mind. Maybe Criminy has a spell that can help me forget I brought you over.”

Hepzibah laughed and tossed the bloody towel onto the ground. Her face was burn-pink, lit lurid orange by the fire, but she seemed too amused with the overall proceedings to focus her anger on me. Without standing, she snatched another cup. The lemur hurried to fill it, and she plunked in her own damn sugar and sat back watching Ruby and me as if we were a riveting but ridiculous soap opera.

“This isn’t how it was supposed to go,” Ruby said.

“Such fire,” Torno said, sounding almost awestruck. “It must run in your family.”

And that’s when I realized what to do, how to stop this purgatory of confusion and me being the only one who had no control, the only one who didn’t know the next step, the glancer whose glance had been stolen. I grabbed Hepzibah’s arm with both hands, jerked her up from the sofa, and threw her into her fire.

17

My grandmother dropped her cigarette and jumped up, looking genuinely shocked. “What on earth?”

“This isn’t Earth. It’s Sang,” I said, dusting my hands off. “Guess your glance didn’t show you that part, huh?”

“Not this part, either,” my grandmother muttered, looking past me at the fire.

As I turned to give her a good talking-to, something slammed into my shoulder, driving me to the ground. It was the witch, and she wasn’t on fire, not even close. She wasn’t even abnormally warm. But she was furious and clawing for my eyes as if she’d forgotten she had fangs at all, thank heavens. I hadn’t forgotten, though, and my beast rose and hissed, and everything went over in that strange red haze, in slow motion, with the thump of my head on the settee and the witch’s boot kicking over the tea cart. We tussled like cats, hissing and clawing, slapping and yanking out hair. She got me onto my back, her bony arm pressing the breath out of my throat. I kicked her over, tried to snap her wrist like a pencil, and failed. I finally managed to crawl on top of her, pinning her hands, and my fangs grazed her neck with delicious victory.

And I stopped.

Somehow . . . it didn’t feel right.

I wanted the victory of ripping out her throat, but the feral domination I’d experienced during my fight by the boulders was missing. This almost felt like . . . like a play. And I didn’t know the right lines. I’d glanced on this woman’s life, and although certain parts of this scene matched what I’d watched in that fearful, sucking jolt all those years ago, neither one of us was poised to do any damage. This wasn’t how she was going to die, and we both knew it. Ruby and Torno sat on their couch, watching us with polite interest as if we were tussling puppies.As if they weren’t remotely worried.

I guessed my grandmother had had her own jolt, too.

“Are you done yet, sugar?” Ruby asked.

I stood up and brushed down my skirts. “Why are we even here?” I said, grouchy, returning to my chair as the fight drained out of me.

Hepzibah rolled over and stood, and I couldn’t help noticing that her movements were very much like mine. Even her swiftly healing face, in the firelight, showed commonality with mine and with Ruby’s. Had I really almost killed my own great-great-aunt on the floor of her witch’s parlor?

“When I touched you,” Ruby said, “I saw that I needed to come here. Not only because no one had seen my aunt since she died in a coma but also because it’s part of . . . destiny? Whatever it is I see when I touch people.”

“You saw us sitting here?”

She shook her head at me. “This part is just waiting. Something else is supposed to happen.”

“At least tell me why Torno is here.”

Ruby looked at the enormous strong man fondly—in a way that she’d never looked at my grandfather, actually. Their hands were clasped together, and thus far he’d just seemed like a benevolent mountain.

“You know, sugar, your grandfather was a harsh man from a different time, and I married too young. Until the day he died, I served him and danced on the end of his string. And soon after we buried him, I got sick. Didn’t really get to enjoy freedom much and never knew the love of a kind man who saw me for what I was.” She looked up at the strong man with more affection in her face than I’d seen for me since she’d landed in Sang. “My glance told me Torno was the one, and when I found him in the caravan, it was love at first sight. After that, he wouldn’t let me go alone.”

“Ah, cara mia. That is not so true,” Torno said gently, rubbing her arm. “It is you who would not leave me behind.”

I had glanced on him, long ago, in the caravan, but I had no control over what I saw when I touched someone’s hand. With Torno, I had seen that Catarrh and Quincy were going to betray him, and Criminy had somehow handled it. Well, and now that problem was permanently handled, I supposed. How would my life have gone differently if I had seen a vision of Torno and a young woman who looked a little like me and more like my grandmother’s old black-and-white pictures? Perhaps there was a reason glances left so much to mystery.

“I’m glad y’all found each other, and congratulations on being a hell of a cougar, but I still don’t see why I had to come here and why I’m not fighting that old bitch to the death. Why are we just sitting around, drinking blood tea and talking?”

“We’re waiting,” Ruby said in her don’t-defy-your-grandma voice.

“For what?”

The lemur appeared with the witch’s pipe, and she settled back to smoke, just as smug and cozy as she’d been the first time I’d met her. Her smoke rings floated up and up into the darkness of her cave, and she grinned a Cheshire cat’s grin and pointed her pipe into the murky darkness outside the fake fire’s dancing light.

“For him.”

A shadow coalesced, and I was drowning in joy and fear and adrenaline.

“Hello, love,” said Criminy Stain.

18

I leaped to my feet and hurried into his arms. My husband held me with a polite gentleness that I couldn’t stand, and I wrapped my arms around him and clung to him, struggling to get closer still.

“I thought you were going to die,” I whispered.

“There’s still time for that, love,” he whispered back. “Be gentle.”

I pulled away. “Crim, it’s actually not what I thought. The witch is being nice, and she’s my great-great-aunt, and Ruby knows her.” I sat back down in my chair and pointed to the tea tray. “It’s basically just a family reunion, but everybody’s an asshole.”

Criminy’s recent strain was evident in the paleness of his skin, the smudges around his eyes, the way he wouldn’t really focus on me or unclench his fists. And why should he expect anything less than a fight? The witch had been nothing but trouble for as long as he’d known her, which had started with him bludding her, a long time ago. My senses quivered with wrongness, as sure as a dog whose hackles rise before he’s heard someone on the porch. My grandmother and Torno were calm, Criminy was stretched as taut as a rubber band about to break, and the witch . . . well, she looked like a kid at Christmas, waiting for the lights to come on.

“Oh, it’s not a family reunion,” she said, with a cackle for emphasis. “More like a lovers’ reunion.”

“I saw him this morning,” I mumbled. “And he’s not even looking at me.”

“Hepzibah’s not talking about you, love,” Crim said. “She’s talking about her.”

He was glaring at the fire, and I watched in utter surprise as a tiny auburn-haired woman stepped out onto the rug, knocking ash off her boots and brushing down her skirts.

“Hullo, Stain,” she said in a husky voice like opium smoke.

“Hello, Merissa,” he answered.

19

I was on my feet in a heartbeat.

“What is it with all your psycho exes?” I shouted, my beast rising to the fore in a wave of jealousy.

Merissa was Crim’s first love, I knew, and as ageless and beautiful as a china doll in a ballgown. I wanted to smash her to bits.

“What can I say, pet? I’m a hot commodity.” But it came out hollow, resigned. I’d never seen my husband look weak, but something about her seemed to punch him in the stomach, hollow him out. I knew he’d never loved Tabitha Scowl, as much as she’d wanted him to and as dangerously cloying as her love potion had been. But, looking at him looking at Merissa, I understood that she’d broken his heart.

And now I wanted to break hers, but with my fist.

When she next opened her lush rosebud lips to speak, I howled and leaped at her. My arms closed on air, and I tumbled to the rug. The little bitch had sidestepped me and stood before Criminy, close enough to touch. Close enough to kiss.

“No!” I shouted, all ragged on the floor, and the witch landed her knee in the middle of my back, pinning me down.

Criminy wasn’t moving, wasn’t saying anything, didn’t even seem to see me.

Merissa was saying something low and slurry, the slithering Sanguine tongue of magic spells, and Criminy didn’t blink as she lifted his fine hands and slipped a gold rope around them, tying a complicated knot. Hard as I fought, the witch wouldn’t budge and seemed to take great pleasure from grinding her bony knee into my spine.

“Criminy! Fight back!” I shouted.

The witch laughed. “Lived with a magician this long and don’t know a spell when you see it? He can’t fight back, fool. Just watch.”

Merissa led Criminy to the chair I’d been in earlier, turned him around by his shoulders, and shoved his chest to make him sit down. His eyes were wide, their pupils a sea of black.

“Nana! Help him!”

But Ruby just sipped her blood. “You’ve seen glances, sugar. Events unfold as they’re meant to. Nothing I can do about it.”

“Torno?”

The strong man shrugged. “I like you, my lady, but I cannot fight magic. I am only muscle.” He wiggled and frowned. “Also, I do think the sofa was magicked. I cannot stand.”

“Me, neither,” Ruby said.

I screamed, and the witch said, “Silence!” And suddenly my voice, like Criminy’s in Mr. Sweeting’s shop, stopped working. No matter how hard I yelled or how softly I whispered, nothing came out. It was the most maddening thing I’d ever experienced, and I bucked under the witch like a mad bull, although it did no good.

Merissa was moving around the parlor now, sweeping everything off the top of the tea tray and laying out packets from the pockets of her coat. My gorge rose when I recognized a chirurgeon’s kit with various scalpels and knives. But Criminy didn’t move a muscle, said nothing, merely sat there peacefully, his bound hands in his lap.

“Ah, Stain,” she said, as if they were alone. “How long has it been? Thirty years? I lose count. You’ve done marvelous things with old Bailey’s caravan. The clockworks, the new engine. It’s so much nicer than the last time I saw it. And do you know where I’ve been?” He didn’t answer, and she prodded him with a finger and said, “Speak, Stain.”

“Where have you been?” he asked placidly.

“Well, first I had to help Phaedro heal from your mauling. Then I had to learn his foul necromancy. Then I had to kill him, chop him up into tiny pieces, and spread them far enough around Sang so that they could never rejoin. And then I had to find you.” She caressed his face with sick fondness. “But that wasn’t hard, was it? Your posters are everywhere. The greatest circus in all of Sangland! And then that journalist published her little tell-all book last year, and I had pages and pages of your own words, telling me how very proud of yourself you are. Not one mention of me, of the caravan you took from me, which I had cultivated and held in my grasp.” Her sweet voice had become a bark, and with this last line she whirled back and slapped him, hard enough to make his head wobble.

“I never even loved you, and you ruined everything! And so I waited. I waited until you had everything you’d ever wanted in the palm of your hand, and now I’m taking it back. All of it. Your precious caravan. Your beautiful wife.” She walked over to me and let her boot tip dig into my cheek. “Your unborn child.”

Incredulity washed over me, and I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. But she went on.

“I’m going to strip them from you as you stripped my greatest dreams from me, and then I’m going to do to you what I did to Phaedro, when he was still great.”

She got very, very close to his beautiful face.

“I’m going to carve you into tiny pieces, scatter them, and laugh.”

20

At first, I was too stunned to process anything she’d said after “unborn child.” I had always assumed that my body on Sang was just as damaged as it had been on Earth, and for six years Criminy and I had enjoyed unprotected sex with no hope of little halfbluds running around the caravan. After the bludding, I told myself it was still impossible, because hoping for something that would never happen hurt too much. Criminy had always dreamed of having children, and it hurt my heart, too. But we had the carnivalleros, we had Demi, and we had a fondness for taking on orphans and outcasts and giving them a better life free from the cities’ oppression.

But hadn’t he told me flat out that I was in season?

Hadn’t I had . . . signs?

Sure, it had only been a few days, but still. Criminy had warned me that I would be more aware of my physicality, and he’d also mentioned that I was highly fertile, as much as I’d denied it.

I’d been drinking blood like crazy, for one thing. Just today, I’d had breakfast, then drained an entire assailant, then had two cups of blood since entering the witch’s lair, but I still felt a little parched. I reached my new senses deep inside me, focusing. Could I feel a new life there? Was a tiny heartbeat beating alongside my own? No, of course not. That was impossible. It couldn’t have been more than a few days along—if so, barely a cluster of cells. And yet . . . I did not feel entirely alone.

I looked to my grandmother, to Ruby. She was watching me fondly, and she must have seen the question in my face, because she smiled and nodded her head. Yes. Whatever she’d seen when she glanced on me, she knew.

And that meant that I had more to fight for than ever.

21

Merissa reached for a scalpel, and I wanted to throw up. Criminy was the most attractive man I’d seen in my entire life spanning two worlds, and he clearly couldn’t stop her from whatever her tiny white hands wanted to do to him. But even on the floor, trapped under a witch, I had my own weapons.

I couldn’t reach either of my knives, as the witch had a knee in my back. But as Merissa inspected her scalpel by the firelight, I feigned a struggle to escape and reached for one of my earbobs. They were cunning things shaped like hummingbirds, a special request I’d begged from Mr. Murdoch. After I’d destroyed several clockworks, all by accident, he had taken on the challenge of giving me metal weapons that I couldn’t accidentally sit on. The hummingbirds were my favorites, dangling prettily from my pierced lobes. The witch on my back was too busy keeping me on the ground and watching Merissa prepare to carve up her nemesis, and it was all too easy to poke her leg with the bird’s long beak and press the button that injected a very potent but not-too-damaging sleeping potion, chosen so that if I were to puncture myself by accident, I wouldn’t be harmed.

“What was that?” Hepzibah said, looking down and catching my wrist in her iron grasp.

I turned my palm up and showed her: nothing. I’d already dropped the bird, and I still couldn’t speak. In fact, every move I made was utterly silent.

“You poked me with something,” she muttered. “A pin? So childish.”

By the time she’d managed to frantically shove her skirts and petticoats aside and fumble with her stockings, she had started to slump over. Soon she was flopping across my back and snoring gently. Merissa hadn’t looked up; she was focused on Criminy. Ruby and Torno watched the scene, rapt, as if they were at the theater. From the ground, all I could see of Merissa were her psychotic smile and the professional detachment in her eyes while she did something horrible to my husband. I didn’t have much time; she could have already disfigured him, but he was still alive, still upright, and no blud yet dripped to the floor.

Hating my silence but grateful for my undesired stealth, I felt for my reticule and fished around inside it for two small bags that I knew by touch. The first held the same invisibility powder Crim had used when we’d journeyed to Manchester so long ago to take on the Magistrate, and the second held spell-breaking powder, a handy little something Criminy kept around for nullifying the minor magic others had put into effect. It was one of the few magical objects that anyone could wield, whether they had the knack or not, and I slipped silently from under the witch’s sleeping form and edged into the shadows.

I had the disappearing powder in my fingers when I remembered that I couldn’t speak. A dab of spell-breaking powder first, and then my breath thundered in my ears as I sprinkled the invisibility powder on top of my head and murmured Crim’s spell with my regained voice, grateful for the familiar, melty feeling as I went invisible. The first time he’d used this powder on me, I’d been new to this world and helpless as a newborn kitten. Now I was a predator with a family to fight for, and even the puddle of blud now forming at Criminy’s feet couldn’t scare me into waiting a moment longer.

I paused only for a second to sprinkle a little spell-breaking powder over Ruby and Torno before turning to Merissa. Rage burned inside me, my vision went over red, and I snatched a knife from the tea cart and stabbed her in the neck. The blow knocked her sideways, and she staggered and tried to stand up. But I only had eyes for Criminy. The last bit of spell-breaking powder in the bag I poured directly on him, and the first thing he did was scream, a sound I’d never heard from him before. A sound that chilled my bones. My hands went to my mouth, and I realized I was no longer invisible—the powder had broken my spell, too.

In front of him now, I barely recognized my handsome husband. The tip of his nose had been cut off, along with most of one ear. She’d just started drawing a line from his forehead down through an eyebrow when I’d stopped her. I bent with trembling hands to help him get rid of the gold rope that bound his hands, and he was shaking, too—with fury.

“Get back,” he said. “All of you. She’s mine.”

I was no longer spelled, but I couldn’t move. Ruby and Torno stood in front of their sofa, hands linked, not budging. Criminy’s face was a sheen of red, his eyes on fire with rage, his teeth bared.

Merissa was unsteady on two feet as she pulled the knife out of her neck and put a hand to the ragged hole. Her Bludman’s flesh was already at work, healing with superhero speed as her fine lips pulled back over shiny fangs.

“Never was yours,” she hissed. “Never will be.”

They circled each other before the fire, somehow managing not to trip on the sleeping witch. Crim grabbed a knife off the cart, and it began to look like a fight from West Side Story, each of them going for a feint or a slice and accomplishing nothing. My eyes met my grandmother’s, and she nodded. Her mouth was turned down, a signal of disapproval. We might politely take tea with a witch, but Merissa wasn’t family, and she definitely wasn’t giving up. We were taking her out.

Ruby held up three fingers and counted down.

Three.

Two.

22

One.

When my grandmother’s last clawed finger went down, the room exploded in movement. I went for my old friend the teapot, pulling off the top and tossing the steaming-hot blood within at Merissa’s face. Ruby and Torno snatched her arms to pull her back, and Torno’s huge hands squeezed Merissa’s wrist until she dropped her scalpel. While they held her pinioned, Criminy drove his knife into her chest, aiming, I was sure, for her heart. If she even had one.

Merissa gasped, and Ruby and Torno let go as she staggered back. I snatched a tea towel from the cart and held it out to Criminy, who murmured, “Thanks, love,” and mopped away the blood pouring into his eyes from the eyebrow gash. I went up on tiptoe to see how bad it was, and that was when Merissa attacked.

The knife Criminy had put into her chest stuck fast, right in my side.

I looked down, confused. The bitch had somehow managed to slip the blade in between the steel bones of my corset. Before my nursing training could kick in, I pulled it out and dropped it. It seemed like more blood—blud?—should have gushed out, but it was such a small wound, just an inch wide, the same size as the one now pink and scabbed over on her neck.

A pain shook me, deep inside. Like cramps . . . but worse.

It was a long knife. Ah, but Merissa knew just how to hurt me and Criminy the most.

Ruby led me to the couch, pushed me down. “Stay still. Don’t move. Let it heal. You can get through this,” she said.

“It’s not me I’m worried about.” My eyes flashed from Criminy to my belly.

She nodded in understanding. “Getting up to fight won’t help anything. See? Torno’s there.”

Merissa was trapped between the two men like a feral cat, her bright green eyes hunting for another weapon, for a way out. Crim blocked her access to the knives on the tea cart, and Torno blocked the door. Finally, they made the decision for her. Torno caught her by the shoulders, and with one deft movement Criminy snapped her neck, a move I’d only ever seen in action movies. She let out a small sigh, and Torno dropped her body, looking nauseated and disgusted by such violence.

Criminy was at my side in a heartbeat, holding my hand with both his own. “Are you all right, love?”

“The baby—” I started, and he shook his head.

“I’m worried about you now. The world’s full of babies.”

“But—”

From the ground came a strange, mad sound: Merissa laughing.

Criminy let loose my hand and turned to her slowly. “Why won’t you die?” he asked, exasperated.

She sat up, put a hand on either side of her face, and twisted her head until it was facing forward, although something about it was still eerily skewed. Clearing her throat, she said, “I told you, Stain. I’m a necromancer now. You can’t kill me. I possess—”

“No,” he said simply. He bent over, and with the knife I’d pulled from my side—the same knife he’d put in her throat—he slit her neck open from ear to ear.

“Finish it this time,” I muttered.

“Damn skippy,” my grandmother added.

With a dark look between them, Criminy and Torno grabbed Merissa’s arms, dragged her into the witch’s workroom, and threw her thrashing body onto the scarred wooden table. After her first scream, someone stuffed something in her mouth, and the door closed. The sounds I heard—sawing and wet thumps—were too much. I was going to throw up if I had to keep taking it all in.

“I’m going to pass out now, Nana,” I said.

“Go right ahead, sugar. You’ve earned it.”

23

When I woke up, I was curled on the witch’s sofa under a mound of dusty blankets. The fire burned just as cheerfully, smokeless and cold. Across from me, Hepzibah the witch was awake and tied to the wingback chair with the golden rope that Merissa had used to bind Criminy. The magician himself was flat on the ground at my side, still clutching my hand in sleep as the knife slices on his face faded to pink scars.

“Do you know what else I saw in your cards?” Hepzibah said, a cruel smile on her lips.

“I don’t want to know.” I let go of Criminy’s hand and gently placed it on his chest before cautiously sitting up, one hand to my belly. The wound hurt, and I was sore inside, but I’d know if the baby was gone, wouldn’t I? Did predators bleed or just reabsorb their losses? I’d barely lived through a miscarriage on Earth, and I was terrified of the emotional and physical desolation it would put me through on any world.

“I can tell you the truth of it, if you like.” Her eyes shot to my belly and back to my face, taunting.

I stood and walked over to her, feeling fragile in my skin. “You’re a shitty aunt, you know that? I mean, I get that you’re a mean old witch and a vampire and you tricked me fair enough before either of us knew we were kin, but what’s your problem now? Why do you want to hurt me so much?”

She shrugged. “I have my reasons. You’ll understand one day. Probably soon.”

And then, like a mad-crazy bitch, she started whistling an off-key song.

“Oh, sweet Aztarte,” Criminy groaned, sitting up and plugging his ears with his fingers. “Will she never stop torturing me? I should’ve left her for the bunnies.” Then he looked up, keen, at the witch. “Speaking of, how did you come to join forces with my darling Merissa?”

Hepzibah giggled. “I was traveling, and she came to me for some powders. We found a shared interest. As it turns out, we both have trouble getting rid of pesky Stains.”

I looked around the witch’s lair. “Where are Ruby and Torno?”

“Distributing bits of Merissa to impossible places,” Criminy said, standing and putting an arm around my shoulder.

“Good,” I said. “Because I’ve got a score to settle, and I’m guessing my grandmother wouldn’t agree with what I’m about to do.”

Hepzibah cocked her head. “Sororicide? Aunticide? You don’t scare me, kid. Besides, you glanced on my death. You know how it’ll end.”

I laughed, one hand to my belly. I’d seen so much over the years, little flashes of lives both happy and sad, of moments quiet and loud and terrifying and beautiful. And yes, I had seen her death when I touched her hand and lost five years of my life. Because of this woman, or whatever she was, the last six years had been a slow death, a constant worry, a heavy tread toward a choice I wasn’t ready to make. All because she couldn’t handle getting old, all because she wanted to be beautiful and powerful and didn’t care whom she hurt on the way there. And for what? Ruling this pathetic underground lair, alone with her stupid clockwork lemur?

It waited patiently by her side, still and nearly silent in the manner of automatons, its eyes blinking occasionally and its tail curled up in a question mark, just like Pemberly’s did at rest. My mouth slowly curled into a smile.

“You’re not going to kill your kin, are you, Letitia?” Her eyebrows went up, daring me. “You do that, and you’re the bad guy. I’m helpless. It’s not even a fair fight. I don’t think you have it in you.”

I stepped close, one hand over my belly. “You don’t fight fair, so I guess this is fair enough.” I’d finally gotten over the lisp of newly grown fangs, and I leaned close, then closer, until my dark-blue eyes were inches from hers. “I’ll never rest safe knowing you exist in the world, not when I have something to protect.”

At the tea cart, my fingers roved over the knives and scalpels Merissa had left behind. Crim crossed his arms and smirked, curious to see what I would do.

“You’ll be a murderer,” Hepzibah hissed. “You’ll have to live with yourself.”

“I already am a murderer. And it’s better than living with you.”

Quick as a blink, I grabbed her clockwork lemur’s long tail and swung the heavy creature with all my strength, bashing her in the face with the bulk of its body. After Merissa, I had to look to be sure. All that was left was pulp and bone shards, and even the beast inside me wanted none of it.

I couldn’t help remembering the day long ago when I told her she should look out for flying monkeys. And yeah, a lemur was not a monkey. But it was close enough.

“Ding dong, the witch is dead,” I said.

24

As Hepzibah had predicted, my grandmother was not pleased.

“You can’t just go around killing your annoying relatives,” she said, peeking under the blanket we’d thrown over the tangled flesh and metal. “And you took out the clockwork, too, which means who has to clean up this mess? We do.”

I spun on her, teeth bared. “You don’t get to tell me what to do anymore. This is your fault. If you’d stayed in the damn caravan, none of this would’ve happened. Crim wouldn’t have been poisoned, no one would’ve been stabbed or cut. He’s going to have a goddamn scar for the rest of his life.”

Criminy traced a finger down the slice mark from his eyebrow to his cheek. “I rather like it,” he said, with his usual smirk. “It’s quite rakish.” At least the tip of his nose and ear had grown back.

“Well, I don’t like my scar. And I’m not too pleased that, in addition to being a lying, life-sucking witch, she set us up with a necromancer who wanted to carve my husband up into tidbits.”

“That was a bit much, I’ll admit.”

I stepped closer, and to her credit, my young and beautiful grandmother didn’t step backward.

“And we’re only here because of you,” I said. “You led us right to her. Based on a glance! You didn’t even ask me first, didn’t even discuss it. You didn’t trust me to do the right thing. I brought you here because I love you and wanted you to have a better life, and you basically betrayed me by almost letting her kill my husband and my unborn child.”

My last word echoed in the silence, and Torno hummed his disapproval from Ruby’s side.

But she was anything but cowed by my outburst. Drawing herself up, she squared her shoulders defiantly. “And you’re fine, Tish. I knew it would end up fine. I wouldn’t have set it into motion if I hadn’t been sure that you’d be better off in the end than you were in the beginning. Look at you! Beautiful and fierce and pregnant, beside a man who loves you. Isn’t this what you’ve always wanted?” She caressed my cheek, and I whipped away from her. “Do you know how hard it was, watching you with Jeff, knowing that he was chipping away at who you were, making you less, just like your daddy did to your mama and just like your grandfather did to me? All I could ever do was be there to catch you when you fell. So yes, when I saw what your future could be, I went for it, sugar. Without asking permission. And I’d do it again. Because you needed this. As much as I don’t feel like your grandmother anymore, this makes us even. I helped you get what you needed. And now I need to be here, where I belong. Taking Hepzibah’s place.”

“Taking what, now?” My jaw dropped as she moved around the space, touching books and flicking dust off a crystal ball.

“She didn’t tell you about the potion, did she? The one she gave to you, the one you gave to me to bring me here. It had her blud in it, among other things. It was meant to draw her successor, just like Criminy’s ruby necklace drew you. Hepzibah needed someone to tend to her magics, to keep her scores, to learn what she knows. Surprise, surprise—it didn’t do what she said it would. She thought it would be you or Criminy, but it turns out it was me.” She grinned and held her hands up, murmuring a word in Sanguine. The chandelier above us lit in one furious burst, throwing the room into sparkling gold light like a disco ball. “This was all meant for me.”

“So you’re just going to take her place?” I sputtered. “That’s going to be your life’s work?”

Ruby patted my cheek, not gently. “It’s a gift, Tish. She gave me youth, strength, power, life, a real purpose. I’m going to enjoy this.”

“No! Criminy did that. Criminy gave you that gift. The witch poisoned you!”

“Her poison was her gift. He was just the conduit.”

Rage sang through me, and I snatched my changeling grandmother by her cravat. “So you’re abandoning me in order to become an evil witch?”

She untangled my fingers from the fabric. “Baby birds got to leave the nest sometime, sugar.” Then, teeth clenched, she growled, “And don’t grab me again unless you want to snatch back a nub.”

Beside me, Criminy chuckled softly. “I see where you get it, love.”

“What? The ability to be annoying?”

“Your power.”

The only noise was the crackling of the fire and the slow drip of the witch’s blood.

“I might understand why you did what you did,” I finally said, “and I guess I’m happy for you. But I don’t forgive you. You’re not welcome in the caravan.”

“But my strong man!” Criminy protested.

“I’ll buy you a new one.”

I started the long walk out of the tunnel, back to whatever sunshine London could provide.

By the time we returned to Demi’s cabaret, it was late at night. More than one person had passed closer to me on the street, concerned for my health and safety until they saw my teeth . . . and then ran away for dear life. For the first time, I was the scary thing haunting the cobbles, and I didn’t care. As if sensing my mood, Criminy followed at a safe distance, close enough to help me if I faltered or got lost but far enough to avoid provoking my rage. Ruby and Torno had simply stood there as we left, saying nothing. Tears coursed down my cheeks, and I dashed them away. I’d lost my friend, my grandmother, and my last real tie to my life on Earth. The woman who’d bandaged my wounds as a child and protected me from Jeff as an adult had become a stranger—and a cruel, dangerous one at that. As Criminy had always warned me, Hepzibah’s magic came with a steep price.

Still, something about being a Bludman now just made me shrug at how things had ended. My Nana—Ruby—had made her choice. Even if it had been influenced by an evil witch’s potion, the choice had to be hers. That was the risk I’d taken, bringing her here. My conscience, at least, was clear. But I already missed the hell out of her. Criminy and I were alive, and that was the most important thing. That and the flutter I imagined in my belly.

I was so hungry we had to stop twice for blood on the way back to the cabaret. We chose far nicer sip shops, this time.

As it was now nighttime, the front doors of the Demimonde were thrown open, flanked by beautiful daimons in resplendent costumes. Their professional masks faltered for only a moment as I dragged my sorry carcass into the foyer and darted through the door behind the Employees Only sign. I met no one, thank goodness, and undressed woodenly before crawling into bed, clumsy and pathetic as a salt-sprinkled slug. Our room upstairs was less posh than the one where Criminy had lain, near death, sprawled among Tsarina Ahnastasia’s fur pillows. I didn’t care. I needed time alone in the darkness to process all I’d been through.

No. That wasn’t what I needed at all.

“Criminy?” I whispered, and the door opened quietly as he slipped in.

“What do you wish, love?” His voice was a sweet whisper in the dark, a tenderness backed by the frantic orchestra and the pounding feet of the dancers below.

“Just hold me,” I said. “Make it right again.”

A low chuckle was followed by the grunt of him pulling off his boots and the thunk of them on the floor, followed by the soft whump of his coat and the thump of his hat, all the little noises I knew so well from six happy years in a train car by his side. He exhaled as he always did when untying his cravat; we both preferred it worn loose and rakish, as I’d seen him for the very first time in a locket in my own world. That locket was a charred chunk of nothing now, back in the caravan, its limning of Criminy all burned away. But who needed a palm-sized painting when the man himself was lifting the covers and sliding in beside me, his arms curling possessively around me and drawing me close so I could settle, like a panicked horse, to the steady thump of his sweetly beating heart?

“Everything is right, love,” he said into my ear. He smelled of victory after a bloody fight, of rage and a predator’s musk mixed with red wine and crushed vines and copper. I exhaled and snuggled back against him, matching my breathing to his. One of his hands found my belly and settled there, soft as a bird.

“There’s one thing I can’t figure out, though . . .” I started.

“Yes, little love?”

“How did you find me in Hepzibah’s lair?”

“Magic.”

“Bullshit.”

He chuckled. “Fine. Not magic. My beloved, you’ve not yet learned the subtlety of a hunter. Demi pulled the entire cabaret together to see who saw you last. Blue told us you were looking for your grandmother. You’d told me yourself that the lair was underground. I went out the gates and followed my nose to the stench of a poorly concealed and inelegantly drained corpse. Then I just had to look for dried blood on the rocks. Rather elementary, really.”

“You’re too clever. But weren’t you too sick to fight?”

He nuzzled my ear and whispered, “Yes. Still am. Fooled you, though, didn’t I?”

“Idiot.”

“But I’m your idiot, Letitia.”

“It all makes sense now, I guess. Except for my Nana.”

His sigh tickled my cheek, and I could feel his smile. “Best beloved, there’s an old saying. If you love something, set it free. If it chases you, it’s yours. In your old world, she was a child again in death, and you knew her only as a broken, needy thing. You gave her a new life, and you can’t be surprised that she took it with open arms and ran with it. The only thing you lost was a burden. In time, when she’s done embracing her new world, or perhaps when she needs the advice of a more accomplished spell caster, she’ll likely come back to visit. But you’ll be equals then. Did you really believe she’d wake up here anxious for a coddled life under your wing? Pish-posh. Even you fought your destiny when you arrived.”

“Well, sure. You kept telling me I belonged to you. So rude.”

“But I was right.”

“But I had to come to my own conclusions.”

He left dancing kisses along my ear and neck. “Took you long enough.”

I settled my butt more firmly into the crook of his body. “Well, as a wise man once told me, easy things are worth nothing. I had to make you work for it.”

“Oh, I’ve had my work cut out for me. Wooing you, running a caravan, fighting off journalists and pianists and equestrienne necromancers. And soon my work will double.”

“Why’s that?”

In response, he rubbed my belly, his warm palm making slow, gentle circles. “Because little Bludmen are incorrigible. And we can only assume our progeny will have your stubbornness and my wiles.”

I swallowed hard and put my hand over his. “How do we know for sure? Maybe Ruby’s glance was wrong, or maybe something happened when Merissa stabbed me, or maybe I’ll . . .” I trailed off, remembering the first hard pains of my miscarriage all those years ago. Since I’d been in Sang, countless people had tried to murder me, but nothing had hurt me so hard, physically and emotionally, as the process of losing a baby. I’d thought the scars would be permanent, but apparently a Bludman’s body could heal more than just age and dire wounds. I still couldn’t quite let myself believe that what I wanted most was possible.

“Can I tell you a secret, love?” It was a worried whisper, a rare thing from him, which set me on edge.

“Yeah, but I can’t promise I won’t get angry. I’m still mad about that hat you gave to the elk.”

“I’ve known since practically the moment it happened. Right after you were turned. There’s a scent Bludwomen give off when they’re . . . quickened. I just assumed that the damage you’d sustained from your world was still affecting you. But I had hope. And once it happened, your odor changed. Can you feel any difference?”

“I think so. But I’m afraid to let myself feel it. Because I might lose it.”

He dragged my hand up to his lips and kissed it, gentle as a butterfly. “Love, you’re a Bludman now. A predator. You were stabbed a few hours ago, and now you’re in bed and practically begging me to kiss you.”

I looked up, aghast. “Begging you to kiss me? Please. We can’t do anything. We might hurt the baby.”

He was already kissing me, his lips dragging down the tender place behind my ear and along my jaw. “You’re too intelligent and well educated to believe that anything we do in bed could hurt a baby, now or later,” he whispered, and my skin came alive as his breath heated me. “If a good stabbing can’t do it, then . . .”

“A better sort of stabbing can’t do it,” I finished for him, breathless already and turning to give him my mouth.

“After all, love . . .” He dragged a finger down my hip and slowly caressed up my leg, under my chemise, my skin all goose bumps and my breath catching as he ran a single finger along the crux of me, which was beyond aching for his touch. “If lovemaking was bad for your body, you wouldn’t want it so badly. That’s nature, is it not?”

One hand made lazy circles on my bare belly as the other made faster circles below. I had to admit to myself, if not to him, that I was possibly more turned on than I’d ever been in my life and knew with a beast’s full certainty that all was well, inside and out, and that I would one day hold this man’s child in my arms.

“You’re stronger than you know, Letitia.” He said it softly and reverently, like a blessing, as he kissed down my neck. “You’re a lady and a tiger, powerful and sweet.”

“Yes,” I agreed, feeling it for the first time.

“How does it feel to have your worst fear realized?”

The breath caught in my throat. “It wasn’t.”

He stopped and slipped a hand up to cup my jaw. “I thought becoming a Bludman was your greatest fear.”

I shook my head and caught his finger in my teeth for just a moment. “No. My greatest fear was losing you, that the black-scaled hand I saw next to yours in the glance wasn’t mine. I have everything I need now.”

“Not everything. I can give you, oh, at least two or three more things.” His finger pushed into me with slow surety, making me gasp.

“I believe your record is six,” I said, almost panting.

“Today is probably a good day for beating records.”

His finger curled, and I clutched the sheets, my talons digging in and catching on the crisp fabric. And something occurred to me that I hadn’t thought of in six years of him playing my body like an instrument. “Wait. How are you . . . oh, God . . . doing that to me . . . ooh . . . with claws?”

“A smart man keeps at least one trimmed, if not . . . two?”

I whimpered.

“Funny that you’ve never noticed that before.”

My only response was a shuddering groan as my body arched up off the bed.

He caught my open mouth in a kiss, drawing the climax out until I fell back down, limp and gasping.

“You know,” I said, voice husky, “I’m learning so much about being a Bludman.”

His eyebrow arched up, even cockier with the rakish scar. “Like what, love?”

I reached under the sheets and carefully curled my fingers around him.

“Like how to use my hands, teeth, and tongue to maximize blood flow,” I said.

25

I couldn’t wait to get back to the caravan, back to the place that had become home. In the past week, I’d had more adventure than in the previous five years combined, and I was ready for a good, long run of boredom and contentment.

My pregnancy was normal, from what I’d read. I felt strong and peaceful, and day by day my belly grew bigger and rounder until it looked like I was smuggling a watermelon. On Earth, there would have been visits to the obstetrician and midwives, sonograms, and listening to my baby’s heartbeat on the ultrasound as a nurse squeezed cold gel on my skin. In Sang, there were midwives in cities, to be sure, but I wanted to stay with the caravan.

Without an older Bludwoman among us, I asked Bea most of my questions, as she and Mel wanted to spend a year traveling with us while Blaise began his apprenticeship under Criminy. Jacinda had a book on pregnancy in her small library, and I read it and frowned at all the silly superstitions. Still, when I was near delivery, I insisted that our old costumer’s abandoned cat, Arabella, come to stay in the wagon with Criminy and me. The way she curled around my belly to sleep was calming, and in both worlds, the old wives’ tales said that having a cat around cut the pain of childbirth, which I dreaded. Bea just laughed and told me that nothing could cut the pain of childbirth, which didn’t help.

I had always assumed I was an epidural kind of girl. And in Sang, there were no epidurals.

My water broke just outside of Liverpool, a soft and velvety pop that made me sit up straight in bed. Criminy woke by my side, claws bared and ready to murder whatever monsters might be attacking us. The poor man would have vastly preferred to fight off velociraptors with swords rather than spend hours enduring my occasional groans and grunts. Childbirth was a lonely struggle, and despite being surrounded by the people I now considered family, it was a battle that every woman fought alone. Bea and Mel bracketed me like colorful bookends as I spent the day walking circles around the caravan wagons, complaining and sipping blood and dripping as the baby churned within me. Criminy walked a good bit behind us, taking his anxiety out on the bludbunnies attracted by my scent. Twice he had to take a sack of furry carcasses back to the cook wagon, each time terrified that I would somehow explode while he was gone.

At sunset, just as the buses were rolling toward the caravan, something changed. It felt as if the baby had dropped a foot, and I crossed my legs, overcome with urgency. Bea and Mel assured me this was normal and hurried me back to my wagon, where the bed was covered with an old tent, with hot water and a pile of rags waiting nearby. I knew enough about labor to know that getting onto my back was the most unnatural position, so I ended up bent over the bed, overtaken by waves of pain and pressure as Crim rubbed my back.

“Sing the song,” I demanded.

“Which one?” he asked.

“The one you sang to me when I first arrived, that night by the fire.”

“The one about—”

“Sing now!” I growled, feeling trapped in my body and more than ready for the baby to get the hell out.

As I pushed and groaned and rested in between, my husband did as I asked, his words sweet and slow and slurry with a song from his boyhood. My mind seemed to go elsewhere, to linger on the ceiling with the smoke from the fire, and I remembered what it was like, waking up here, naked, feeling lost and a million miles from home. Criminy had been there from the start, caring for me, giving me whatever I needed. When my locket had been stolen, he’d taken me on the journey to get it back, even knowing that the locket alone gave me the power to leave him forever and return to Earth.

But he’d helped me get it back. Alone in the dark on the wild moors, he’d sung me this song. For the past six years, he’d been the ideal partner, supporting me while challenging me, taking care of me and everyone in the caravan, and keeping life lively and fun.

I turned to tell him how much I loved him, but what came out of my mouth was “You did this to me!”

“Well, in fairness, you were an equal participant,” he said, a hand still massaging my back, as I’d threatened to murder him if he stopped. “I’ve heard having a baby is like sneezing out of your nethers.”

“Maybe if I kick your junk, it’ll be like having a baby, too.”

“Now, Tish,” Mel said, ever the peacekeeper. “We’re all here for you, chérie. Your husband means well . . .”

“But all men are fools when their wives are hurting,” Bea finished for her, with a fond smile. “Women, too.”

“Did you scream when you were giving birth?” I asked her between pushes.

“I bit people,” Bea admitted. “Many, many people.”

“That sounds helpful. Bring me someone to bite. Ungh!”

Bea peeked under my chemise, well away from my teeth, and observed, “The baby is crowning. Black hair. Like both of you.”

I knew what “crowning” meant: I was close. So I buckled down and pushed, screaming so loudly that I’m sure every human in the audience outside considered hopping back onto their bus and hightailing it back to the safety and surety of the city walls.

It was the worst pain I’ve ever known, and I was rewarded with a slick plop, and then Criminy held up for my inspection a tiny purple person with curly black hair. The first thing she did was stare at me with eyes the color of pencil lead, and the second thing she did was open up her tiny rosebud mouth and scream, even louder than I had.

“She’s got your voice,” Criminy said.

“And your flair for drama,” I added, taking the bundle wrapped in a piece of patchwork quilt and cuddling her close to my chest.

We named our daughter Felicia. It was Criminy’s idea, and when I pressed him, he showed me an old lamp of pierced tin and told me the story of his first encounter with a ghost, when a dark-haired fortune-telling child had told him that his love waited in another world. Me. Caravan records told him the child’s name was Felicia, and that her mother’s name had been Letitia. My name.

I went with it, but not for the fancy or the history. Because it felt right. And because whatever “Felicia” meant in Sang, it meant happiness in my world. I’d been unhappy on Earth, and when I’d first arrived on Sang, I’d still wanted to go back. But I’d found true happiness here, and I didn’t miss a single thing about my own world and time—except perhaps for online shopping and Milky Way bars. Everything else? Meh. I had what I needed.

Felicia was what old ladies call “a good baby” when what they really mean is “not horribly fussy or inconvenient.” At least, until her first fangs came in, which is when we stopped our nursing relationship cold turkey. Criminy was as marvelous a father as I’d always assumed he would be, and nothing delighted me so much as him plopping Felicia into a baby sling and doing his rounds with her strapped to his chest or, later, peeping over his shoulder as she rode on his back.

A few years later, once she’d mostly learned what “no” meant and I’d returned to eight hours of sleep a night, I came up pregnant a second time, with a son. This time, I had recognized my fertility and welcomed the moment Criminy looked at me with wide, wondrous eyes and said, “There. Do you smell that? That’s another little Stain for the wagon.” We named him Anton, after Crim’s childhood friend, our old tailor. Our third was another daughter, and we named her Ruby, mostly because a ruby had brought me to this world but maybe a little for the grandmother I’d known and loved on Earth.

I never saw her again, my Nana. Maybe because Sang was a very big world or maybe because she’d seen something in her glance that she didn’t share, something that told her to stay away, even though I hadn’t really meant it. Perhaps she was tied to the witch’s underground lair, or maybe she took up Hepzibah’s wagon and simply gave us a wide berth. It hurt my heart, but so it goes. I’d given her the best gift I had: more years of improved life, and with a new lover, no less. And she’d given me the best thing she could, I supposed: a reason to get bludded and claim my own reinvigorated youth and, with it, the chance to bear children, which was my heart’s dearest wish. She looked too young to be a great-grandmother, anyway.

For the most part, we were immune to tragedy. Our little family flourished, and so did our big one. We found a new strong man—or, technically, a strong woman. The daimons transferred fluidly between our caravan and Demi’s cabaret, and my glancing ability kept any riffraff away, as we never took on any new carnivalleros until I’d touched their skin and determined if they meant us harm. Blaise became as much a part of our lives as Demi had been, acting as Criminy’s second in command and showing an especially deft hand at finding freaks and building new acts.

The show, as they say, went on.

Epilogue

TEN YEARS LATER

Criminy and I waited, hand in hand, watching blocky shapes approach across the moor from London. Demi’s trio of carriages disgorged a riot of color and excitement: a handful of young daimon girls, Ahnastasia and Casper, Frannie and Thom and their brood of redheads, Mel and Bea and Reve, and all our old friends.

Frannie had a basket over her arm and delivered it to me with a sweet smile. It was a mutt much like the one I’d coveted in her shop but never returned to adopt, thanks to my pregnancy. The pup was a wiggling ball of fuzzy curls and licking tongue, and the children were instantly smitten. As I hugged her and thanked her a thousand times, I couldn’t help noticing how she’d aged, the crow’s-feet that were really laugh lines, the softness of her chin and figure. We each had three children, but she was thirty and looked forty, and I was forty-two and looked twenty.

Why had I ever wanted to be human?

A clattering drew my attention to a fight for the ages: three wee kilted warriors, three ink-haired vampire children, Jacinda and Marco’s two sloe-eyed Lotharios, Imogen and Henry’s spitfire of a daughter, and one green lizard girl in a pinafore of sealskin, Eblick’s daughter Cenna, all attacking one another with sticks for swords.

“They wear nothing under their kilts,” Criminy called to his progeny. “Aim upward.”

“Lure the wee smug monsters with your skin, and then smack ’em in the snoots,” Thom encouraged, and his lads all pulled back their sleeves and began to torment my babies.

Cenna looked at Eblick, who stood always aloof, quiet and watchful. “You’ve a tail, m’lady,” he murmured with a fanged grin. “Use it well.” Cenna smiled back and charged into the fray.

Demi was finally pregnant with her first, and Vale hovered around her, fiercely protective, just as Criminy had been of me. As soon as they’d arrived, he’d helped her out of the carriage and onto an ottoman he’d brought from the cabaret. She sat there, huge and happy, finally able to enjoy a night of entertainment that she didn’t have to supervise. Casper and Ahna stood near her, watching the battle and looking wistful; their young twins and son were back in Freesia with Uncle Alexi and Aunt Keen and a dozen tutors, learning to rule the world of ice and blood that they would one day inherit.

That night, the caravan was closed to outsiders as a special treat. Since only friends were allowed, the carnivalleros took extra risks and put on a show unlike anything I’d seen in my entire time with Criminy’s Clockwork Caravan. The lights were somehow brighter, the music more jolly, each act more colorful and death-defying than the last. The children ran to and fro in groups of their own choosing, mixing up different species and dropping bits of candy fluff, blood slush, and sardines.

When I’d first arrived, the caravan had been full of bad seeds and dangerous folk, but under the last ten years of Criminy’s reign, we’d been lucky enough to adopt orphans, outsiders, and wastrels with good hearts. Emerlie the tightrope walker had settled down with, of all people, Vil, who was actually rather handsome when you got him out of his goggles and leathers. Charlie Dregs had gotten over his unrequited love for the little idiot and had fallen for a quiet but sweet daimon girl from Demi’s cabaret, and Lexi would soon surprise us all with a Bludman-daimon hybrid. Veruca the sword swallower was ageless and changeless, keeping to herself and disappearing a few times a year to ports unknown . . . and I was sure I’d recently seen her casting glances at Louise, our strong woman. Cherie, once half of a contortionist duo with Demi, had found love with a quiet poet in the city, whom she had met while helping Frannie with her crows in the pet shop. In short, almost everyone I cared about had found someone to love, and everyone’s glances had mostly come true.

As I walked through the caravan at midnight, I shared Criminy’s glowing pride. Our subpar calliope player bowed to make way for Casper, who flicked out his coattails and caressed the ancient keyboard before zooming into “We Are the Champions,” a song only Demi and I knew by heart. Ahnastasia growled something threatening at my children, who had inherited their father’s hero worship of the Freesian Tsarina and kept treading on her bejeweled hem. They ran away, giggling, and she sat beside her husband and smiled, possibly for the first time I’d ever seen.

Henry and Imogen had pulled out her butterfly circus to amuse the children, and she even honored them with a visit from her beloved Blue Morpho butterfly. Demi, Vale, and the daimons were huddled around Blaise, admiring his first wagon car, painted blue to match his skin and bearing the words The Magnificent Blaise, Master of Legerdemain. Frannie and Thom had gone off into the woods, hoping to lure some owls for her shop, taking Jacinda’s automaton hound for protection.

And that left Criminy and me as alone as two lovers could be in the midst of a lively carnival. When Criminy pulled me toward the large mechanical bird that guarded our entrance to the tent within the circle of wagons, I smiled and went willingly. We whispered the passcode together and sneaked past the magnificent machine. The other side was quiet, and I thought he might lure me into a private part of the tent to attempt more baby making, but instead he pulled me along the ring of wagons and began climbing the ladder on the outside of the dining car. I’d never been on top of any of the wagons before, so I followed, curious.

“Criminy Stain, you romantic!” I cried.

On top of the largest wagon, he’d laid out a picnic blanket, with pillows and teacups, his clockwork monkey waiting with a steaming pot of blood.

“Me, a romantic? Don’t tell anyone, love. I have a reputation to uphold.”

But I could see the old glint in his eyes, his brows and cheekbones just as sharp as they’d been the day I first saw him in a locket and his smile just as full of dark promise. He reclined gracefully and drew me down beside him, and I curled up among the sultan’s pillows and took the cup Pemberly offered me.

“It went rather well, didn’t it?” he asked, looking down with a fond smile at the clot of children still running about his kingdom way past their bedtime.

“It did. I’m so glad you invited them. It’s wonderful to see everyone together in the same place.”

“True enough, love. But that’s not what I was talking about. I meant . . . everything. Did you ever imagine, when you woke up in the forest all that time ago, that you might have such a happy ending?”

I looked up at the stars, which spun crazily and didn’t quite match up to the constellations I’d known on Earth. The night birds sang sweetly, but the birdsong was eerily off. Soft rabbits waited just beyond the strings of lights below, their eyes red and their mouths drooling for a taste of the humans playing beyond. Sang was a strange place but, by God, it was my place.

“Nope. I had no idea.”

“I told you it would all work out.”

“Well, if you want to be smug about it . . .”

He took my hand, sliding up my sleeve and kissing up my wrist. “Oh, I do. I want to be very, very smug about it. For at least a hundred and fifty years. Just like this.”

“You want to live happily ever after?” I asked.

His grin was sharp, but his eyes were soft. “Wickedly ever after, love,” he said.

And that’s exactly what it was.

Acknowledgments

Looking back, I’m pretty sure I thanked everyone who’s ever existed across the three Blud novels. Still, it doesn’t hurt to thank folks twice.

Thanks to my husband, Craig, for starting me on this fantastic journey into writing novels. Thanks to my parents and grandparents for their support, and to my beloved children for their . . . well, not patience. Thanks for leaving me mostly not insane.

Thanks to Kate McKean, agent extraordinaire. Her carnival skill is some kind of publishing magic.

Thanks to Abby Zidle, superb editor, who always makes sure Sang looks good. Special thanks for letting me close the door to Sang in style!

Thanks to the Pocket publishing team for great edits and support, and to Tony Mauro for fantastic covers.

Thanks to Jennifer Heddle, the editor who bought a little book called Blud all the way back in 2011.

Thanks to FoxTale Book Shoppe for three amazing Blud launch parties.

But the biggest thanks go to the readers, bloggers, and reviewers. There was a moment in time when I thought, What if I’m the only one who falls in love with Criminy Stain? And . . . well, let’s just say I never had to suffer that pain. You’ve been here for every step of the journey, and I thank you. I hope you’ll look for my other books and stay in touch. Just because the ruby exploded doesn’t mean we can’t still dwell in Sang.

Don't miss the rest of Delilah Dawson's Blud series!

Wicked as They Come

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The Mysterious Madam Morpho

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The Peculiar Pets of Miss Pleasance

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Wicked as She Wants

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The Damsel and the Daggerman

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Wicked After Midnight

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Carniepunk: The Three Lives of Lydia

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Three Slices

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About the Author

Delilah S. Dawson is the author of the Blud series, the Hit series, Servants of the Storm, a variety of short stories and comics, and the upcoming Wake of Vultures, written as Lila Bowen. She lives in the North Georgia mountains with her family, a floppy mutt named Merle, and a Tennessee Walker named Polly. Find her online at www.whimsydark.com.

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Also by Delilah S. Dawson

The Blud Series

Wicked As They Come

Wicked As She Wants

Wicked After Midnight

Blud Novellas

The Mysterious Madam Morpho

The Peculiar Pets of Miss Pleasance

The Damsel and the Daggerman

And

“The Three Lives of Lydia” in Carniepunk

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Pocket Star Books

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 by D. S. Dawson

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Pocket Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Pocket Star Books ebook edition October 2015

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Cover illustration and design by by Tony Mauro

ISBN 978-1-5011-0211-0

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author