“I will.” Margrit stood and found herself fighting the urge to bow slightly, as Janx might have done. “I’m glad to have met you. Good luck.”
“Thank you.”
“Were they glad?” Kate’s voice arrested her at the kitchen door. The auburn-haired woman sounded young and uncertain, as if preparing herself for a disappointment she didn’t think she could face.
Margrit turned back, one hand on the doorframe. “They were both furious with Alban for not telling them your mother had survived the fire. That you’d survived. They were…I don’t know if glad is the right word. Greedy. They were greedy for news of you.”
Kate nodded, and after a moment Margrit took that as her dismissal and slipped away.
She turned back at the street, looking at the twins’ home; looking at the other houses that stood straight and tall alongside it. There was nothing to hint that the women who lived at the corner house were anything less or more than human.
Four centuries of pretending. A shiver lifted bumps on Margrit’s arms. She had enough trouble with a few weeks of hiding and lying. Being condemned to a lifetime of it—more than a lifetime—was difficult to contemplate.
But that was what she was signing on for, if she wanted to make a life with Alban. It would be a lifetime of secrets and hidden worlds, and despite some bold words to Daisani weeks earlier, Margrit doubted that the Old Races would ever see the kind of emancipation that slaves once had. Slaves, at least, had been a part of society, ignorable but not actually invisible. It was far more difficult to bring fairy-tale creatures into the light of day and create for them a chance to survive long enough to build tolerance and acceptance. Margrit would be alone in a fundamental way, if she went with Alban.
Less fundamental, though, than what the twins had faced, perhaps. Daisani’s gift of one sip of his blood only brought health, not long life: he’d been very clear about that. She wouldn’t face the near eternity the twins had already lived, and the Old Races, at least, knew who and what she was. She might have to disguise her life from the human world, but she could belong, as much as any human could, within the hidden world she’d been shown. The twins had been cast aside from both, unable to share their true natures with humanity and forbidden to join the world their father belonged to. Unlike them, Margrit wouldn’t be forbidden either world, only forced to be cautious in both.
That, she thought, was a price she could live with.
A sharp gust of wind twisted around her as she finally stepped back from the gate, leaving the brownstone behind. Margrit tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, then slowed, suddenly too aware that the morning was still. Too aware that she’d felt a breeze’s touch repeatedly in otherwise quiet areas: cooling her in the subway, whispering around her in the twins’ home. Her voice cracked as she whispered, “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” and turned, watching the street as though she might be able to pick out an airy form nearby.
Then she was running, toes curled hard against the soles of her heeled shoes to keep them on her feet. Back toward the twins’ home, not because a solitary djinn—and she believed it was only one, too little shifting of air for more—not because one could endanger them physically, but because if she had been followed, if their location was known, then the balance had changed and there would be no hiding, not anymore. They would be tracked wherever they went, and perhaps used or manipulated, and the point, the whole point, it seemed to Margrit, was to allow these two women to enter the Old Races on their own terms and as their own people. Anything less was a failure.
She vaulted the fence rather than stop to unlatch the gate, and her heel dug into the dirt, clinging and threatening her ankle. Impatient with the human frailty that was her only natural legacy, she jerked her foot free and felt her ankle shriek in protest. For the first time she ignored it, trusting wholly in Daisani’s gift: there was no need to walk it off, no need to pretend that the injury wasn’t as bad as it felt.
Momentum, nothing more, lent Daisani strength. Her own speed was nothing like enough to knock down a sturdy front door, though the ruckus of her arrival drew both twins to the door fast enough. Kate jerked it open so hard the hinges protested.
“Djinn. Someone followed me, knows where you are—” Urgency, not breathlessness, spluttered her words: the race down the block was nowhere near enough to wind her.
Fire blazed in Kate’s eyes, deepening hazel to jade and then through to crimson. Her throat and ribs expanded, contorting impossibly as she drew in more breath than human lungs could conceive of. Wisps of blue smoke appeared, streaming around the corners of her mouth: inhaled, as though she drew heat from the air and turned it deadly. Janx’s, Margrit realized in a bolt of triumph. She had no agenda tied to learning their parentage, but knowing, being the first to know, carried its own thrill.
Humans, she found herself thinking, were strange creatures.
Then, in a blur of speed, Ursula smacked a fist into Kate’s stomach. The redhead’s eyes bugged and she made a sound mixed between a burp and a hiccup that left her discombobulated. Ursula drew her lips back from her teeth, pure animal warning for her sister, then simply disappeared, leaving Margrit agape and Kate still wheezing for air.
Wind whipped behind Margrit. She twisted around, watching a dervish dig a hole in the front lawn, as though a miniature and highly directed tornado had been given the task of landscaping. Flashes of color moved within the whirlwind, moving far too quickly to actually be seen. Kate jolted forward, coming as far as Margrit’s side. Without thinking, Margrit lifted a hand, stopping the other woman. Only after she’d acted did she glance at Kate, who lifted a sharp eyebrow at Margrit’s audacity, but didn’t continue on.
The funnel erupted, expelling a slender body so quickly it had smashed into the brownstone wall before Margrit could fully register that something had moved. A column of air shot skyward and dissipated, and Ursula slid down the wall of her house to land in flower beds with a dull thud. Kate flowed to her side, the same graceful shift of a large creature’s attention from one place to another that Margrit had seen repeatedly with Janx.
“Nothing to hold,” Ursula said groggily. Contusions were rising along the arm that had hit the wall and an already-purpling bruise ran down her cheek like overly dramatic goth makeup. “I couldn’t get hold. He got away. Sorry, Kay. Sorry. I wasn’t fast enough.” She put one hand against the brownstone and the other into Kate’s, then shoved herself upward. Her eyes swirled in their sockets, dizziness overcoming her, and Kate caught her easily as she fell, scooping her into a bride’s carry as though she weighed nothing.
“Nobody’s fast enough to hold the wind.” Margrit heard wry sympathy in her voice as she stepped forward to offer a hand, though Kate clearly needed no help. “Are you all right? Should I—” Her own words caught up with her and she broke off, staring, then said, “Shit!” with so much enthusiasm she clapped her hands over her mouth. No one was fast enough to hold the wind, but Ursula Hopkins had done one hell of a job trying.
Kate gave her a steady look over Ursula’s head. Margrit parted her fingers to whisper, “You’re not twins.”
“Of course we are,” Kate said derisively. “We just have different fathers.”
The scornful comment followed Margrit the rest of the day. She’d accompanied Kate back into the house to make certain Ursula was all right, but the twins had resisted her prying into their heritage. Margrit was torn between understanding and disappointment: even if the prurient details were nearly four hundred years old, they still made a good story. They left at the same time Margrit did, none of them under any illusions: the djinn knew both where the twins were now, and whose children they were. They would be unlikely to disappear again, and so their only choice was to decide quickly how to establish themselves, and to do so.