23.
I was used to pulsating crowds and bone-jarring bass inside Winter’s confines. Instead, I was greeted by the hum of a vacuum cleaner as staff scurried in all directions, getting the place ready for opening. I dodged a delivery guy rolling a steel keg on a lift and climbed the long, circular staircase that ringed the outer edge of the dance floor. Ice-blue runners and bars of light guided me to the top, while the LED screens along the wall hung dark and dead. At the top, a balcony curled like a painter’s palette, up to the edge of a glass DJ booth that hung from steel cables over the floor below.
“Stop fidgeting, darling,” said a familiar voice.
“I am not fidgeting,” Caitlin replied.
Caitlin stood with her arms wide, a vision of designer elegance. Her dress was pure couture, a shimmering gown of silk tailored to her curves, midnight-black, with a quality that caught the light and turned it into a faint rainbow sheen. A ruffled drape drew the eye down to an asymmetrical hem, perfect for a tango under the stars. Fredrika Vinter knelt at her side, dressed to kill and squinting behind a pair of bifocals as she adjusted pins along the fabric.
“Really, darling. Just another minute or two and you’ll be all set. I’m almost done, I promise.” Freddie looked my way and broke into a grin. “Dahling. You caught me with my glasses on. That’s mortifying. Go away. No. Come here. Come here and hug me once I’m finished making your lover a vision of absolute beauty.”
I stepped around her, leaned in, and Caitlin’s lips brushed against mine. “Too late, she already is.”
“You know my policy: all women are beautiful, but a House of Vinter gown can improve even upon perfection.” Freddie stood up, took a step back, and looked Caitlin up and down with a dubious eye. “Maybe the hem isn’t exactly right—”
Caitlin laughed. “Dances, you’ve been fussing for an hour. Enough. It’s wonderful, I promise.”
“Well, if you say so.” She slipped off her bifocals and yanked me into a bone-crushing hug. Her lips felt like chips of ice against my cheek. “And you. Look at you. You’re moving up in the world, darling.”
“That’s what they tell me. I didn’t expect to see you here tonight. I mean, you’re not part of the courts.”
Freddie trailed her fingertips across her emerald décolletage. “No, but I am nobility. I’m the Queen of Chicago.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not a real thing.”
“I wanted to wear something special tonight,” Caitlin told me. “And seeing as Dances has been asking me to model at one of her shows…”
“Quid pro quo,” Freddie said. “Caitlin gets me tonight, I get her in Chicago next month. This party is a test run for my new design. And I’m still not sure about that hemline. Maybe another tenth of an inch?”
“Perfectionist.” Caitlin offered me her arm. Tailored suit or not, I felt like a dumpster fire standing next to her. That, and the luckiest man on Earth.
“Guilty.” Freddie fell in on my other side as we walked to the stairs. “Also, my always-wise BFF thought you might want another friendly face in the room. And while you are now obliged to follow the rules of demonic high society—”
“You give no fucks,” I said.
Freddie put her hand over her mouth and gasped. “Darling. Such coarse language. But no, I left all my fucks in Chicago for safekeeping. So point out anyone who dampens your sunshine, and I’ll be happy to eat them for you.”
“You will not,” Caitlin said. “You’re here as my guest. Please remember that.”
“I’ll eat them outside, of course. Clearly I wouldn’t do it here.”
“Okay,” I said, “what do I need to know?”
Caitlin contemplated the question for a moment as we descended the winding staircase.
“Obviously, be on your best behavior. And then some. Decorum is everything. Now, throughout the evening people will be giving you gifts; that’s the traditional method of honoring a new inductee to the infernal courts.”
“I like presents,” I said.
“Also, the gifts are all cursed.”
I gave her the side-eye. She shrugged.
“That is also tradition,” she said. “Everything is lethal and will most likely kill you. Sort of a…welcome to demonic politics. Poison in every gift, a dagger behind every smile. It’s all meant in good fun, really.”
“And at the end of the night, I have a big pile of cursed junk.”
“Well, that’s the second part of the tradition,” she explained. “Now that you’re one of us, you’ll get invitations to other parties, where you’ll be expected to pass on the gifts you received tonight. Some of these tokens have been circulating for centuries; they accumulate little stories, a legacy of sorts. Passing along a cursed gift that was given to you by someone in high esteem is a sign of great respect to its new recipient.”
Now Freddie looked genuinely shocked. “You…regift? You all regift? Caitlin, darling…there’s evil, and then there’s just simply unacceptable.”
“So be on my best behavior, and don’t touch anything,” I said. “Got it. Fun city.”
Caitlin gave me a long, almost wistful look.
“I really am proud of you, you know.”
I knew. And even though I wasn’t feeling it, I mirrored her smile and gave her arm a squeeze. I didn’t know why Prince Sitri had knighted me—beyond his usual deranged sense of humor—but it was a big deal to Caitlin and her people. She wanted to celebrate. So we’d celebrate.
* * *
While Winter prepared to open its doors to the public, the party down below was in full swing. Past a code-locked door, down a sweeping staircase, the second level of the nightclub was by invitation only. It was a maze of honeycomb-shaped rooms, onyx lit with pipes of golden neon. Tonight the central chamber had a fresh addition: an open bar and long tables piled high with catering dishes.
“Don’t eat anything from the table with the red cloth,” Caitlin murmured in my ear. “It’s…not for you. The food on the table with the black cloth is human food.”
“What’s on the red table?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know.
On my other side, Freddie sniffed the air and grinned.
“If my nose doesn’t betray me,” she said, “some of it is human food.”
She split off to investigate. Caitlin and I descended into the social whirl, moving between knots of conversation as she introduced me around. At one point she needed to catch up with Emma, so she left me to my own devices. Never a good idea.
“Oh,” she said in parting, “Emma doesn’t know about Melanie’s little field trip this afternoon. And she doesn’t need to, agreed? Let’s not add any extra friction, considering recent events.”
I locked my lips and threw away the key. I was checking out the spread at the black-draped table—and trying to ignore the spicy, inviting smells drifting over from its red-draped twin—when a couple of familiar faces came by to say hello. Nadine, poured into a tiny black dress, with Royce serving as her arm candy. The aristocrats from Prince Malphas’s court both carried ring boxes wrapped in golden foil and tied with bows.
“Welcome to the big leagues,” Nadine told me. “How long do you think you’ll last?”
I took the box from her outstretched hand and gave her a casual smile in return. “Time me. Let’s find out.”
Royce shook his head. “Poor choice, signing up with the Jade Tears. We could have made you a better offer.”
“Hey, you were there when Sitri knighted me. Did it look like I had a choice in the matter?”
“No, fair enough.” He leaned in, conspiratorial as he clapped me on the shoulder. “Just remember, old sport, defection is always an option.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“And if you sign up willingly,” Nadine said, her attention on the milling crowd, “Royce and I can protect you from whatever horrible scheme of vengeance Naavarasi is undoubtedly cooking up at this very moment. Now where is…Nyx! Come here.”
Nadine’s daughter—thankfully in her Nordic-goddess human disguise, not the monster I knew was lurking under her porcelain skin—trudged across the room. She had a box in her hands, wrapped in black, and her fingers squeezed it hard enough to crush the edges.
“Be appropriate,” Nadine told her.
Nyx thrust the box at me and stared at the floor.
“This one,” she grumbled, “offers you congratulations on the auspicious victory of your knighthood.”
She was sore, and it wasn’t hard to see why. She’d been one of the hunters on my tail when Naavarasi slapped me with a bounty, and I slipped out from under her claws just before the contract was revoked. Then I’d bluffed her, in this very room, and embarrassed her in front of her rivals. I would have felt raw about it too. I figured it wouldn’t cost me anything to play nice.
“Hey,” I said as I took the box, slowly building a pile in my arms, “Thanks, Nyx. You didn’t have to say that, and I really appreciate it.”
“This one did have to say it,” she snapped, then stomped away. Okay, we weren’t going to be friends. At least I tried.
I was looking for a table to set my growing collection of cursed presents down, when another familiar face dropped by. Well, a familiar voice. I didn’t recognize the guy—a surfer type in his twenties, fish-belly pale, with the Y-shaped stitch of an autopsy incision showing at the collar of his over-starched dress shirt—but I knew him the second he opened his mouth.
“Have to tell you, friend, this is not the future I saw in the ol’ crystal ball.”
“Hey. Fontaine, right?”
“In the borrowed flesh,” he drawled. “Congrats on the big promotion. You’re a smart cookie, though. You know your new prince just slapped a juicy target on your back.”
“I hope you’re not here to take a shot,” I said.
He cracked a smile. “Not unless it’s a legal contract and I’m getting paid to do it. Nah, I came by to make sure there weren’t any hard feelings. I mean, I did almost bleed you out like a prize hog.”
“Forget about it,” I said. “You were just doing your job.”
“And thankfully,” Caitlin said, returning with Emma in tow, “now we’re all one big, happy family. Hello, Fontaine.”
“Ah! Ma chère, enchanté.” He kissed her hand, bowing low, then turned my way. He held out a business card: pale cream, with a single monogram F in black. “And now that you’re an esteemed member of the courts, hang on to this. You can always call upon me for your bounty-hunting needs, be it a formal challenge through the Order or a bit of freelance work.”
Emma folded her arms and glared at him. “Really? You came by to drum up business?”
“It’s a hard life out there for a working man, darlin’. Always gotta be hustling. And who better to solicit than a person who knows the quality of your work firsthand?”
“True,” I said. “You did capture me when nobody else could. So where’s your little friend?”
Fontaine curled his lips, irritated. “My partner? She murdered somebody she wasn’t supposed to. Had to put her in time-out.”
Emma brushed past him with a small box cupped in her palm, like the evil queen with a poisoned apple. She offered it to me.
“Congratulations, Daniel. We’ve had our differences, but you’ve been a good friend to our court, and more importantly—to me, anyway—a good friend to Caitlin. I’m glad you’re one of us now.”
I wasn’t on board with the “one of us” thing, but I thanked her as I took the present.
“Go on,” she said, “unwrap it.”
We parked by a spot of empty table so I could set down the rest of the gifts. I tore into Emma’s, peeling the paper back, and lifted the gray velvety lid of a jewelry box. Inside, a platinum tie clip, studded with diamonds, glimmered on a bed of white satin.
Caitlin’s jaw dropped and she pulled her friend into a hug. “Oh. Emma. You’re the sweetest.”
I glanced between them, looking for an explanation.
“That clip was given to Emma by her mentor, when she was just finding her feet,” Caitlin told me.
“And it was given to my mentor by…” Emma said with a grin.
“Me,” Caitlin said. “And now it’s home again, full circle. Deliberate full circle. Oh, Emma. Seriously. You’re wonderful.”
I felt the cultural divide shift beneath my feet like tectonic plates. Across worlds, across species. I understood enough to grasp that Emma had just honored me, big-time, but without the social cues I would have been lost. This was the world Sitri’s knighthood had hauled me into, with customs and rules and expectations I was barely beginning to understand.
If those plates kept shifting underneath me, they could tear me in half. I needed to find my footing fast. I was looking for something to say, to show my thanks, when I saw another familiar face on the far side of the party.
My blood ran cold. Then burning hot.
“Pet?” Caitlin asked, catching the expression on my face. “What is it?”
“Naavarasi,” I said.