Emma’s head was whirling. She could not be drawn in, though the scientist in her longed to investigate it all. A veil separating mortal and magical worlds, held in place by a power below ground. Mortals and immortals sharing the same space, feeding from one another. Thought of as an ecosystem, it was beyond fascinating. It would be groundbreaking to study.
“And there’s still so much wedon’tknow about the Night City, that’s the thing.” Saskia propped herself on her elbows for a long, gleeful slurp of brandy. “I bet they don’t tell us half of what’s really going on. I’ve heard stories…”
“Get out of it.” Nancy chuckled. “Our Saskia is a bit of a conspiracy theorist.”
Saskia bolted upright, grinning. “Am not. And just because we haven’t seen the filament spiders in the sewers, that doesn’t mean…”
Emma nestled close to Nancy, watching the debate spark. A cozy sort of feeling was settling over her. She realized, to her horror, that it was contentment. Something about this room, and these companions, felt like home. Perhaps it was not so bad to find a little comfort, for the time being. She would be no more likely to escape by staying tense and lonely. Perhaps the fox maidens and their knowledge might even be the key to helping her escape. She held out her glass for another round of brandy.
In the end, Nancy forbade them to sleep on the sofas, even as the firefly brandy was making Emma a persuasive case to the contrary. Nancy swatted Saskia to her feet. “It’s our own beds we need. You’ll thank me for it later.”
Saskia peeled off at a doorway covered with a moth-eaten velvet curtain. Nancy led Emma down a third flight of stairs, to a door decorated with deep-scored claw marks, and left her there. Staring uneasily at the violent pattern, Emma braced herself to be brave. She opened the scarred door.
A face glared through the darkness. The threat it emanated was quite undimmed by a long ruffled nightgown and the bow that topped its nightcap.
“Who are you?”
“I—This is my bedroom, I thought?” Emma trailed off.
The fox maiden in the bed looked at her scornfully.
“I am not,” she said, enunciating each word as if for somebody particularly slow, “sharing my room. Go tell Nancy to put you somewhere else.”
“I don’t know where Nancy is—she said to go here, so—?” Emma stammered.
“For Night’s sake,” snapped the girl. Then she seemed to makean effort to speak softly. “Fine, you can stay. Whoever you are. But first, could you step outside so I can get changed?”
“Oh, of course,” Emma moved toward the door. “Sorry, I understand, I’m—”
The door shut in her face with a slam. Surprise turned to rage as she heard the unmistakable sound of a lock snapping into place. She pounded on the door, to resounding silence.
Planning ten kinds of revenge, Emma stalked the darkened corridors of the house. She tried door after door. None would open. And with a tearing inside that felt like relief, her fury poured out. She’d had no room to feel it, not as the Boars dragged her off, or as the Judge stared at her with those clever eyes. It had not been safe then to feel something so fierce and all-devouring. Another door, slammed in her face. Another hour of wandering, footsore, heartsick, with no place to call safe. Because of them.The Turnbulls.The hiss seared her throat. They would pay. And she would be the one to make them.
There had to be a way back to the mortal world, with or without the City’s permission. In thousands of years, someone must have managed it. Every city had an unwatched exit; an illicit trade route; an underbelly. There would be stories. She just had to find them. And then the Turnbulls would be the ones made heartsick and afraid.
Then a door slid open beneath her hand. The room was carpeted with a layer of dead leaves. Its only contents were a four-poster bed festooned with drapes of spiderweb, and a corner given over to a mound of bones, laced with shattered twigs and the skulls of small rodents.
Emma looked at the bed, uneasily aware she ought to have beenmore drawn to it. Her eyes were heavy. She was ready to sleep. But something about that mound of bones and twigs called to her. It smelled of earth, of juicy worms and warm burrows.
safe smell
burrow smell
She knew that voice in her mind as well as she knew the shape of tail and pelt and paws. But she was not a fox now. She was a girl-shaped being and she ought to have wanted a bed. The other fox maidens read books and wore fine fabrics and ate from shining platters. They did not sleep on bones, she was sure of it.
safe
the voice insisted, a sinuous brush of fur in her mind.
Well. There was no one around to see. Wrapping herself in her cloak, Emma curled up on the bones and fell deeply asleep.
CHAPTER 23
When she woke, Emma stepped back into the corridor. She might have slept for minutes or untold hours, for all the difference she saw in the House of Foxes. The rosy lamps, dotted along the walls, cast the same soft light as before. The wood-paneled passages were just as deserted. There was no way to tell if it was night or day. The only windows faced onto earth packed with roots and stones.
If I were a plant, I would die here,thought Emma. But then again, a plant was a living thing. And she was—not. Was it possible to exist and not be alive? Pausing on the staircase, Emma fumbled for her pulse. It was still beating. Her breath still slid into her belly. It was possible, then, to not be mortal and yet not be dead. In a world that had changed, a life with no roots, a home with no night or day: Still her body followed the same physical commands. It was an anchor. She had not changed, even if her world had.
As Emma reached the door to the common room, the twins pushed past, small faces horror painted.
