“You should not have come,” he breathed.
“Seems home isn’t good enough for thejewel of the Souzterain,if it took you this long,” my mother sniffed.
Slowly I stepped around Louis. My mother Penelope had once been beautiful—I’d seen portraits of her likeness when she’d been my age. Blood dens had been plentiful in the outer city up until about fifteen years ago when the Covenant’s reach had expanded to shut them down. Once she had been the prized giver of this region, with hair the same shade as mine and Louis’ and clear pale skin.
There was still a hint of the beauty beneath the deep lines and leathery skin. Wine and spirits had taken their toll along with thenasharoot she and my father smoked constantly. But I always privately thought it was greed that had the biggest impact on her beauty.
“I’ve been busy, as you intended,” I answered, holding my valise in front of me like a shield.
Her eyes dropped to the case and I bit the inside of my cheek to fight my grimace. Sweat dewed beneath my palms. Louis put a hand on my back but didn’t reach for my belongings.
“You must be thirsty,” he said, voice dropping into the hush we used around our parents.
My mother snorted. “We’ve got noserangunah,if that’s what you’re angling for.”
Dread turned my veins to sludge and I fixed my attention to my feet. “I don’t need any.”
“Slacking then?”
I rolled my lips together and shook my head. “No, Maman, I drank some last night before the journey.”
Shrewd eyes flicked over my dress and pinned-up hair. With a huff she turned toward the door and disappeared into the dark house. I ached for the apartment I shared with Lilith and Noah and even more for the music room in Eamon’s estate.
When I’d been a child, the house hadn’t been luxurious but it had at least held furniture. Now, in place of the beautiful wooden dining table we’d gathered around was a small pallet elevated off the ground with a stack of bricks covered in a tablecloth. Worn pillows circled the makeshift table, so packed with dust it was difficult to tell what color they once had been.
The pallet had been here when I’d left, but there had been chairs, which had disappeared along with most of the pots and pans in the small kitchen. There were, however, gleaming bottles of spirits on the chipping countertop, deep ambers and opalescent creams winking in the light that ghosted through the tears in the fabric covering the windows.
Louis slipped in behind me, quiet as a ghost, grabbed acracked glass from the shelf and filled it from the spluttering tap. I took it gratefully, hiding my wince at the metallic taste of the water, and forced myself to drink it in one.
“So,” my mother started, sliding one of the bottles closer to her and tugging out the cork. The glugging of amber liquid in the glass sounded eerily like theoyistaI’d been sending her each month. “What do you have for us?”
A pounding began behind my left eye. “Three hundredoyista.”
The glass slammed onto the countertop, liquid sloshing out of the top. Louis didn’t flinch but, after two years, I did.
“This is the gratitude you show me after everything I’ve done for you? Have you no clients? No patrons?”
A muscle jumped in my jaw, adding to the pain spreading across my face. “I have a client, Maman. He is generous but I?—”
“Obviously not if three hundredoyistais all you can give.”
My teeth clicked as I closed my mouth. Louis took a step forward, but I caught his eye and shook my head while our mother reached for her glass, taking a few tries to curl her fingers around it.
“In my time I brought in three hundred in thirty minutes. Two suckers, one on each side of my neck.” She made her free hand into a claw and jabbed at either side of her throat. “Leeches falling at my feet and offering me anything in the world just for a taste.”
And look where that got you, Maman,I wanted to say.
My knuckles bleached whiter around the handle of my valise as she took a step closer, the scent of stale wine heavy on her breath. She leered at me—noting each item of clothing I wore, the pin peeking out from my hair, the case in my hands—and then stumbled past. The door didn’t close behind her, but she was gone in another breath, ambling out of the house and down toward the center of town.
Louis exhaled loudly, running both hands over his face. “I should have scooped you up and run.”
“She’ll be unconscious before nightfall.”
His laugh was bitter. “It’s morning I’m afraid of, Ria.”
My heart twisted at the nickname he used, having been too young to pronounce my whole name as I’d cared for him—practically raised him despite our mere four-year age difference.
He gestured toward the small hallway. “Come on.”
