Page 22 of The City of Stardust

“You mean his criminal enterprise,” she says.

It’s an old joke between them, one that Violet’s recently grown tired of. As a child, it was the only answer she could come up with forGabriel’s extended travels, given her uncles’ reluctance to tell her the truth. And Ambrose probably thought it was better for Violet to believe her uncle some mafioso wannabe. That Gabriel’s long absences are to do with smuggling or drug-trafficking, forged identities and chests filled with stolen money. That they are illegal activities, but perfectly mundane.

Better to believe that, than an extraordinary truth.

“Gabe will tell you more, but before he gets hold of you, I wanted to talk.” Ambrose lowers his voice. “These guests tonight… They’re an odd bunch. Be careful, okay?”

Violet tilts her head to the side, puzzled. It could be Ambrose’s usual fussy overprotectiveness, but she’s rarely heard him sound so nervous, or so serious.

“Why, are you planning to ransom me off?” she says lightly. “Tell them I won’t take less than two million. I’m worth that much, at least.”

To her relief, Ambrose only sighs and rolls his eyes, morphing back into his familiar self. “Gabriel’s in the kitchen.”

Sure enough, Violet finds him at the kitchen table, already in a three-piece suit and looking every inch the mobster as he flicks through a hefty-looking folder, sunglasses propped on the bridge of his nose. He flips the folder shut as soon as he sees her.

“Ambrose tells me you’re planning to ransom me to your criminal friends,” Violet says conversationally, as she puts on the kettle.

Gabriel looks at her over his sunglasses. “No way, kiddo. Couldn’t give you away even if I wanted to.”

“What a relief,” she says.

“He’s right, though,” Gabriel continues. “These people, they’re not like you and me. Well,” he amends, “maybe they’re a bit like me. But they’re wolves. And if I gave them even an inch, they would eat me up and carry you off.”

“Then why invite me at all?” she says, frowning.

“One of my criminal friends would like to meet you. And Adelia Verne does not take no for an answer.” He shrugs. “Sometimes when the wolves are at the door, you have to invite them in for canapés.”

Violet tries to picture the “wolves” that Gabriel is so eager to entertain, but they remain a stubborn blank in her mind. If Ambrose had his way, they would be a sea of mobsters, with gold teeth and violin cases, eager to haggle over whatever illicit contraband Gabriel’s smuggled back to the house. In a fanciful moment, she even imagines the guests as real wolves, unnaturally upright on their hind legs, licking blood from their dense fur.Oh, what big teeth you have.

Violet eyes his suit. “How fancy is this party?”

“Check your wardrobe,” he says.

For a second after she leaves the kitchen, she stands in the corridor, waiting for her unease to fade. She hasn’t forgotten the evening, all those years ago, when Gabriel was here, wearing the very same suit, his shirt spattered in blood. Her uncles have spent her entire life treating her like something to be kept away from the world. Why invite her to a party now?

Upstairs in her room, a dress in deep burgundy velvet with gold clasps at the shoulders and a thin satin sash across the waist is waiting for her. It’s beautiful and regal, pulled straight from a fairy tale. Violet looks at it apprehensively. Is this what her uncles want to do—dress her up as a doll and parade her around a group of strangers?

She almost doesn’t put it on. But then her hands trail over the soft fabric, admiring the gorgeous stitching, tiny gold threads shivering in the light. She bites her lip, wavering. She’s never had a reason to wear something so luxurious, and she’ll never have a chance to do so again. For all her wanting of elsewhere, Violet will forever be tethered to this house. Forever tethered to the sliver of possibility that her mother will still walk through the door one day—and the terror of missing it.

Maybe, just this once, she’ll take the fairy tale.

When she tries it on and looks in the mirror, her hair falling around her shoulders in soft brown curls, her mother looks back at her. There are fragments of Violet’s features that are decidedly non-Everly—dimpled cheeks, faint freckles across pale skin, a tint of gold in her hair—but for the most part, she’s Everly through and through.WeEverlys have to stick together, Ambrose is forever saying. But not, apparently, tell each other the truth.

Whether her uncles like it or not, maybe there are answers tonight for her, too.

By the time they reach the ostentatious estate house, Ambrose and Gabriel bickering the whole way there, the eponymoustheyhave already preceded them, one flashy car after another walling in the driveway. The guests move in a swathe of rich fabrics: silky white shirts, luxurious sequin-dusted coats, frothy dresses the colour of sea foam. As Violet steps over the threshold, she feels a stab of apprehension, a sense of just how many miles there are between her and these elegant, otherworldly creatures. They smile at each other with bright, shining teeth.

Wolves.

When she enters the house, straight into a cloud of perfume and cologne, she’s not quite sure where to look first. Lilting music fills the ground floor, as an unassuming man in a tuxedo plays the grand piano. Drinks are poured and crystal glasses manoeuvred around the guests by a team of eerily efficient staff bearing silver platters. People crowd the ground floor, marble tile clicking underneath their stilettos and wingtip shoes. They all seem to know each other, circulating with smiles and nudges, like beautiful sharks. But with Gabriel and Ambrose flanking her like bodyguards, no one even attempts to make introductions.

Wisps of incomprehensible gossip float past her:

… expect to see a new intake of scholars any day now…

… and I told Adelia, no one simply vanishes from a convent in Moscow and reappears in Seoul two days later…

… I heard she’s coming tonight with that assistant of hers, but I’m not holding my breath for…

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