Page 27

The first thing Vivienne saw when the bag was lifted from her head was a mirror. Wide and seamless, it spanned from wall to wall, from floor to ceiling, so that the room all around her was reflected in infinity.

It took Vivienne several blinks to understand where she was. It was a ballroom, gaudy and overlarge, the bifurcated corners trimmed in ornate panels of gold. Here and there, rising from the floor in garish pillars, were stacks of dimpled cherubs. They leered up at her through flat patina stares, their mouths peeled back in permanent smiles.

In the mirrors stood a thousand variations of the same man, tall and thin in a neat black suit.

But there was only one of her.

Small. Pale. Reflectionless. She stared every which way and saw nothing at all.

Hello , she called out internally, searching for the squatter in her bones. Where did you go?

There was no answer.

Quieter, she thought, What if I need you?

“Does it frighten you?” asked the man. He studied her with fascination, his hands clasped behind his back. “The lack of a reflection, that is. It must make you wonder if you’re even there at all.”

She didn’t tell him that she normally had a perfectly lovely reflection, or that it was vicious enough to strike him dead where he stood. She couldn’t tell him. She was on her knees, her wrists bound in the small of her back, her muzzle tugging so forcefully at the corners of her mouth that her eyes watered.

She stared up at the man in a suit. He stared back. She recognized him, though only just. It took her several seconds of rooting through her memory to recall where she’d seen him—outside the church, locked in an argument with Philip. The dark brown of his eyes were unsettlingly familiar.

It was an uncanny sort of awareness. She didn’t like it one bit.

“How inconsiderate of me,” said the man, shrugging out of his jacket so that he was in only a fitted vest and a pristine white dress shirt. Draping the garment over the contorted face of a cherub, he set to cuffing his shirtsleeves. “You can’t speak in this condition. Adrian!”

A door opened, hingeless in the mirror glass. For a moment, Vivienne was granted a glimpse of the outer hall, all dark, tilting hardwood—exacting as a nightmare. The door shut as quickly as it opened, and Vivienne became steadily aware of Adrian Faber standing there, looking sullen and twitchy. The pledge didn’t look at her as he approached, though she tried desperately to catch his gaze.

“Unbind her, if you please,” instructed the man.

Adrian did as he was told. The ropes loosened, and Vivienne’s arms fell slack. She tugged her hands to her chest, nearly crying out at the rush of blood to her wrists. With the job done, Adrian began to leave.

“Stay,” ordered the man, and Adrian froze. “I may need you to translate.”

“But—” Adrian’s eyes cut toward Vivienne. “I don’t sign.”

“Well,” said the man, “then she’ll just have to whisper in your ear, won’t she?”

The blood drained out of Adrian’s face. “Yes, Mr. Price,” he whispered.

Price. So that was his name.

“I want to tell you a story,” said Price, casting his gaze in her direction. “It might sound like mine at the start, but it isn’t. It’s yours. And it begins right here in the Hamptons, with my family. We used to drive through here each summer on our way through New York. My mother liked to look at the mansions and my father liked to indulge her. Some years, we’d park the car and get out. Waste an entire afternoon walking along the beach in neighborhoods we’d never live in, looking at houses we could never afford.”

With his jacket gone, Vivienne could see the leather holster at his waist, a handgun tucked neatly inside. Her stomach turned to ice.

“That was when I first I stumbled upon the House,” he said. He sounded wistful. “It was an eyesore, hidden behind the hedgerows. Left to rot. But I heard it speaking. It beckoned to me. It offered me an opportunity like no other—a way out of the ordinary life I’d been born into. All I had to do was feed it.”

Vivienne balked, startled by his choice of words.

“Does that alarm you?” he asked, examining her. “It should. The House has a voracious appetite. I was happy to give it what it wanted, and the House showed its thanks in myriad ways. It paid my debts. It opened doors that had been previously closed. It allowed me to drink deep from the well of success. For a time, that was fine.

“But what man could resist the promise of more? The longer I fed the House, the bigger its offers became. It dangled rewards in front of me like a carrot. Knowledge. Understanding. Wisdom spanning the known universe. Eventually, a few drops of blood weren’t enough. I wished to ascend. For that, the House required a much larger sacrifice.”

Vivienne stared, not understanding. Off to the side, Adrian looked slightly green.

“I was only a young man,” Price went on, as though he were imploring her to see things from his point of view. “Unmarried and childless. I didn’t know the weight of the promises I’d made. Like a fool, I offered up my firstborn son. It wasn’t until he arrived and I held him in my arms that I realized I’d made a terrible mistake. I sought to undo it. I begged. I pleaded. But the House doesn’t take kindly to broken promises. When the time came to collect, instead of taking one child, it took them all.”

He looked lost in a memory, his smile thin. Her unease deepened.

“I was granted nearly a decade with my sons before the House claimed them,” said Price, examining his own reflection in the glass. “It was March when they drowned. I’m told it was slow. Agonizing. Was it that way for you, too?”

Vivienne’s skin had gone clammy. March, when she’d gone chasing after a cottontail and tumbled headlong into the gorge. March, when she’d lain there in the dark, whistling the way Miss Marley taught her, and heard something horrid whistle cheerfully back.

“It would have been late morning,” Price went on. He’d gone back to watching her like a hawk, as though he could discern the answers in her expression alone. “Nearly quarter to noon. You couldn’t have been more than four years old. I’ll admit, I’m fascinated. Impressed, rather. How did you manage to survive at such a young age?”

A sickly sort of clarity swam into her stomach. She dropped back on her haunches, her thoughts spinning out like a top. She thought of the starry dark of the ravine, those cold eyes leering out at her as she wept and wept until her throat was raw, her voice all but gone.

Poor little lamb , it had crooned, winding thrice around her like a long black snake. Someone’s left you like an offering on the mouth of hell. I think I’ll snatch you up for myself. We’ll play for a bit, you and me. Would you like that? No more tears; we’ll make things nice and cheery.

“I have no living sons,” said Price, oblivious to the way Vivienne was frantically cycling through her memory bank. “Not in any way that matters. The House swallowed my firstborn whole. It took a pound of flesh from the second, leaving him cold and intractable, marred beyond all recognition. For a time, I thought the scales would be weighted. I thought that was enough. And yet each time I came here to plead with the House to grant me ascension, it said not yet . It was waiting, it told me. There was still more it was owed.”

He drew nearer, peering down the bridge of his nose as though she were vermin.

“Vivienne,” he said, drawing out her name. He made it sound like a curse. A malaise. “I had no idea you existed. Not until Philip called to let me know you were in trouble. That man has always been a wretched opportunist. I’m sure he salivated at the chance to use you to his own ends, once he understood the extent of your capabilities.”

It was all snapping into place. This man in front of her—this Mr. Price with his too-familiar stare—was ambitious and cunning and cold, willing to cut down whoever he needed in order to achieve his goals. Just like her.

She didn’t need a reflection; she was already looking into a mirror.

“You are all that is left,” said her father. “When you’re gone, I will finally ascend. All the wisdom in the known universe will be within my grasp. Do you know what a man can do with infinite knowledge? If he wants to, he can rule the world.”

Behind Price, she caught a flicker of movement in the rusted mirror. At first, it was only a shadow—a tiny, shapeless form small enough to appear as though it was yards and yards away. As it arced steadily closer, it began to take on a wretched shape. It rose up on battered toes, moving in tiny ballerina steps—arms elongated, fingers long and double-jointed, bare feet flickering in neat little bourrées.

Vivienne’s heart gave a horrible lurch. She glanced in the other mirrors and found herself reflectionless in every direction but that one—directly behind her father, where he couldn’t see.

The other Vivienne gave a great, bounding leap, surging through the air in a grand jeté. Next to Vivienne, Adrian Faber had gone all the way green. He’d seen it, too. She was sure of it. In the mirror, the other Vivienne’s smile stretched nearly to her ears. She bent forward and pressed a long, sharp goblin finger to her lips. Quiet.

“Mr. Price,” Adrian eked out. “There’s—”

“Not now, Arnold,” chastised her father, still peering down at Vivienne. “I want you to listen closely. There is a creature who sleeps at the heart of the House. We call it Charybdis, but no one truly knows its name. It has always lived here, rooting in the earth. The foundation went up around it, and it has dwelled here all this time.”

In the cellar , thought Vivienne, and again she saw that dark, open door from her nightmares. Heard that voice like a wagon wheel, beckoning her home.

“You will descend to the lower level,” said her father, “and you will offer yourself to him. I have already done the work of mourning my sons. As long as you live, their sacrifices will be for nothing.”

In the glass, the other Vivienne reached out and tapped the shoulder of her father’s reflection. He brushed at himself as though clearing away a horsefly.

“It’s for a magnificent cause, Vivienne, I assure—”

“Mr. Price,” said Adrian, desperately this time.

“What?” snapped her father. “What could possibly be the trouble?”

“It’s— She’s— You—”

The other Vivienne winked and tapped her father’s reflection again, more insistently than before. This time, he felt it. He turned, his gaze closing in on the fiendish girl in the glass.

“Boo,” she said, elated.