Lili St Crow - Nameless

“Pour her a drink?” Trigger suggested. It was not sarcasm—he simply didn’t know what else to do. A jolt of liquor to fix shock was the best idea he could come up with.

Papa made a small snorting sound. He withdrew inside himself, his stillness becoming a living thing in the limo’s interior.

Trigger waited. The little girl smelled of rubbish and abuse, but underneath, Trig once said, there was a heavy spice. Like incense, clove-caramel smoke, a drugging aroma.

He did not recognize it until much later.

“Stevens.” The name was also softly accented, and Papa’s mouth moved slightly. His consigliere would be standing, stiff and tall, in the house on Haven Hill’s quiet dimness, hearing the Vultusino’s voice. “Meet me at Harborview. We’ll be there soon.”

Chauncey, however, waited until Papa returned fully to himself. He knew better than to anticipate.

Papa lapsed into silence, staring at the girl shivering on Trigger’s lap. The snow came down in thumb-sized flakes, spinning lazily in thick curtains. The dogs bayed and yapped, their voices muffled but still urgent, knifing the blanket of soft white.

He finally spoke again, the tone of a man accustomed to command. “What’s your name, bambina? Where do you live? Where is your momma, your papa?”

The little girl shook her head. When she tried to speak, she only made a small sound, like a bird caught in a net. And the tears welling in her blue eyes kept splashing onto her dress, dewing the thin material. Her knees were knobs, crusted with scabs. Some of the marks were cigarette burns, raw and ugly.

Outside the window, snow fell over the empty warehouses. This was not a part of town for children. Now that it was dusk the smoking, demon-infested fausts and Twisted hulks of minotaurs would be creeping forth to hunt. The regular Twists, too—those of them who lived by violence, anyway. There might even be Family hunting tonight, those who preferred their Borrowing hot and from a struggling victim.

The little girl raised a trembling, tiny hand as she flinched to ward off an invisible blow—even her fingers were bruised—and Papa saw something else. Trigger saw it too, and hissed out through his teeth.

Familiar deep marks on the child’s wrists, red and weeping. Handcuffs.

The train sounded its long lonely whistle again, perhaps in relief at having crossed the Waste safely, and the girl shivered, blanching. The dogs’ full-throated cries faded in the distance.

They had found other prey, perhaps. A minotaur—but who would be so foolish as to hunt one of those after dark?

“How old are you, bambina? Do you know?” Papa’s tone was carefully, softly kind, and her shivering eased a little.

Gravely, the child held up one hand, wincing as if it hurt. She spread her fingers wide, concentrating, her face a mask of effort. Then she lifted the other hand, one finger up.

“Six years old. Well, bambina, we will take care of you.” Papa nodded. “Chauncey?”

“Yessir?”

“Turn around; take us to Harborview.” Papa turned inward again, into whatever dark thoughts occupied the freshly voted leader of the Seven. “Stevens will let Evelyn know.”

“Yessir.” Chauncey knew better than to think his wife would take offense. It was Mithrus Eve—but working for Papa meant that no day was safe from a favor called in, or a sudden emergency. The little girl lay in Trigger’s lap, something hard digging into her side—the butt of the wooden dagger, smooth and dark. If it was uncomfortable to have a filthy, wet child shivering on him, Trigger’s lined gaunt face gave no indication.

Enrico Vultusino, a fresh whiskey and calf in hand, watched the child as she fell into a light sleep, or shock. Eventually he moved as Chauncey turned the car up Harbor Hill. He set the drink carefully in a holder, and freed a few buttons. His suit jacket rustled as he leaned forward and tucked it around the girl, so she lay wrapped in cologne and expensive tailoring.

There was no human child reported missing in the wilderness of New Haven that night. While I lay in a private hospital room, fed by tubes and monitored by beeping machines and crackling watch-charms, under a steady glow of healcharming, Trigger stood guard in a chair by my bedside. Stevens and Papa conferred in low tones. Once it became apparent I was feral, things became easier. A human magistrate was rousted, papers signed, and I’m sure money changed hands, as it always does in New Haven. By the time the sun rose, I was legally if not the property then at least under the protection of Enrico Vultusino, who left early that morning with Stevens and Chauncey. Trigger Vane stayed, and when I was brought to the house on the hill two weeks later, it was Trig who rode beside me in the big black car, staring out the window. I still had not spoken.

Whatever had happened to me before the alley I could not or would not remember, and I seemed to have forgotten how to talk—if I had ever learned. A hired psychologist came while I was in the hospital, a human woman with long blonde hair—and I cowered away from her into the bed, making a small whimpering sound.

I never saw her again.

The snow lasted two months, shrouding New Haven in white and making traffic difficult. But the snowplows and the drags ran night and day, and by the time winter raised its icy back higher and New Haven crouched submissive under its grip, I was safely in the house on the Hill, settled into my new life.

Papa named me Camille. It was his dead mortal wife’s name. And so I was rescued from the snow, on Mithrus Eve, by the man they called “the Vulture,” one of the living Seven of the Families.

ST. JUNO’S WIDE GRANITE STEPS COULD CRACK YOUR head like an egg. Which was maybe why Cami always slowed down, dragging her glossy black maryjanes over the white and black linoleum squares, when they hit the wide, high-ceilinged main hall, minnows in a sea of girls set free for the afternoon.

And it was definitely why Ruby always sped up, tugging Cami’s arm, her candygloss lips going a mile a minute. Ellie ambled alongside, always gliding at the same clip. Lockers slammed, and the surf-roar of girlchatter was a comforting blur punctuated by squeals, catcalls, laughter, and groans.

In the middle, Ruby’s running narration, a bright thread as she batted her eyelashes, heavily mascara’d in defiance of both St. Juno’s archaic rules and her grandmother’s iron old-fashionedness. But everyone forgave her. “And so I thought, oh my God , if you’re going to do this you might as well do it right, and of course Hunt was there—”

You just had to forgive Ruby. She would cock her head and smile at you, the grin that lit up the world, and that was that. Cami’s long heavy braid swung; she tugged at her skirt with her free hand, getting it to fall right, and juggled her notebook. There were never enough hands for what you needed to get done at the end of a school day.

“Hunt’s always there,” Ellie threw in, tucking a bit of sleek blonde hair behind her ear. “And of course Thorne didn’t like it. You’d think they were best friends or something.”

Ruby tossed her auburn curls, tugging at Cami’s arm. “Who’s telling this story? Anyway. Come on, we’re going to be late.”

For what? But Cami grinned. Ruby was on her own clock, and it was at variance with the rest of the world more often than not.

She finished wedging her notebook safely into her bag and got the strap settled. As long as Ruby was on one side and Ellie on the other, she didn’t have to think about where she was going, and she didn’t have to talk. They would take care of it for her.