Page 142 of The Mirror of Beasts

“Do not leave your rooms until asked to do so,” Kasumi said. When I tried to follow, more sorceresses appeared, blocking the way. “Food will be brought to you in due time.”

One of the women grabbed Emrys, and a man with tufts of white hair took his other arm. The latter’s eyes glinted aquamarine as he hauled Emrys away from my grasping hand.

Pooka, I thought. It was the same for the man and woman who took Nash. “All right, all right, I’m not fighting it—easy!” He twisted back to look at me. “Do what they say, Tamsy. It’ll be all right.”

The sorceress who had grabbed my arm, with her straw-colored hair and flushed face, eyed me with suspicion. Kasumi rounded the corner ahead of us, and the thought of Neve disappearing with her made my pulse run riot in my veins.

“Hey!” I shouted after her. Ahead, Emrys was strong-armed into a room, and Nash into another. “You said we wouldn’t be your prisoners!”

Kasumi stopped, but didn’t turn to meet my burning gaze. Somehow her glacial words reached me all the same.

“I promised nothing of the sort.”

GREENWICH, CONNECTICUT

Every time he closed his eyes, the screaming began again. It bled through the walls, through the door, down the hall. Not even the vast grounds of Summerland House were large enough to escape it.

“Let me out! Please!”

Olwen had managed to get the gag out of her mouth at some point during the night and shouted herself hoarse in a matter of hours. The girl didn’t understand how lucky she was that his master had the foresight to keep her alive, to use her against the others. But if she kept going on like this, that good fortune would run out, and he wouldn’t be there to save her.

The hunters were primed to seek out prey, and she was reminding them of her presence with every foolish word.

An icy touch brushed against his skin. He didn’t need to turn to know who it was.

“Go back downstairs, Primm,” he barked at the figure loitering at the top of the stairs.

Behind his repulsive form were three others. They might once have been men, but with each kill, each bit of death magic they drank down into their withered souls, they were starting to resemble the Children.

“If you can’t keep the bitch silent like a good dog, I’ll do it myself,” Primm said, sliding the blade out of his boot. It seethed with the death magic that burned the air of the unlit hall.

The hunters moved so seamlessly between corporeal and incorporeal forms, it startled the seneschal. The former allowed them to kill, the latter to avoid being killed.

“Well?” Primm said. “Do you only bark on command?”

The seneschal didn’t take the bait. He stayed where he was, his back to the wall beside the windowless closet they’d locked her in, watching them slither closer with a heavy-lidded gaze.

“Do it, and you’ll answer to our lord,” he said. The other hunters reeled back, but Primm advanced.

“He said nothing about killing you, though, did he?” The hunter was all but foaming at the mouth, trembling with need.

“Go kill one of the Children if you’re that desperate to tear something apart,” the seneschal told him.

He didn’t reach for his own blade. Primm had been a vile old man in life, and death had only deepened his repugnance and greed. His master had told him death magic was the strongest power in all the many worlds, and he found himself questioning again why Lord Death had seen fit to entrust it to someone like Primm.

The hunter stepped closer, bringing his blade to the base of the seneschal’s throat.

“And what, exactly, is your role in all of this? He didn’t make you a hunter, but you seem to think that because you don’t sleep out in the stables with the other hounds, you’re somehow different. Better. But what will become of you when our task here is done?”

“I am his seneschal,” he said.

Primm burst out laughing. “Are we giving ourselves titles now? Shall I be his chamberlain? His falconer?”

The younger man’s heart blistered. His lord must not have told the others about his role. Blood welled on his skin where Primm’s blade kissed it, the smell filling his senses.

“Heh,” Primm said. “You’ve never had your sister’s clever tongue, that little bitch—”

Primm had been forced to shift into corporeal form to cut him, and now the seneschal ripped the blade out of his hand, claiming it for himself. The hunter took a step back before he seemed to remember himself—that he was supposed to be the monster here.

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