Page 31 of The City of Stardust

“Why am I here?” Penelope looks straight at her, and Violet has the sudden, dizzying sensation of staring into an abyss. “He told me everything.”

Horror envelopes her. “No. He—he wouldn’t.”

“Oh, but he did.”

Violet has spent the past few months wondering why Aleksander kept coming back to the café, why he’d been so willing to share his easy, open-hearted smile and Fidelis’ magic. She thought it was friendship.

She should have known better.

Penelope’s eyes narrow. “I am only going to ask this question once. Where is your mother?”

A feeling like icy water runs down Violet’s spine.

“I don’t know,” she says.

“Odd, isn’t it? You don’t know where she is. Your uncles don’t know where she is. And yet you Everlys are like bees, always working to the same purpose. Always trying to escape justice.”

Panicked, Violet tries to catch Matt’s eye, but when she sees him, she reels back in shock. The entire café is suspended in motion: Matt, midway through bringing coffee to a table; her manager with his mouth wide open, berating someone on his phone; a woman with two toddlers, their arms frozen in a wide arc. Penelope’s shadow elongates behind her, bleeding across the linoleum. Violet’s skin feels tight, itchy with panic.

“Your family is cursed, Violet Everly.” Penelope’s mouth curls. “Cursed to walk into the dark, a devil beside them. Or I suppose that’s the story your uncles told you. But tilted on its side, a curse is a fitting punishment for a terrible crime, is it not?”

Violet has to get out of here. She slides back in her chair—or tries to. Penelope snatches her hands, pinning them to the table.

“The curse isn’t real,” Violet says. “And you’re crazy if you believe that.”

A flash of annoyance crosses Penelope’s face. But then she smiles softly. “Do you really believe the curse isn’t real? That the divine never touches you? That the wheeling cosmos is but an abstract of chemicals? Do you not hear the stars sing, little dreamer?”

Violet tries to pull away, but Penelope’s grip on her hands is too tight. Her mouth is dry with sudden fear. Her bones crack under the weight of Penelope’s hands.

“Your family owe a debt. Blood. It should have been Marianne, of course, but now… there isyou.” She smiles at her, teeth bared like fangs. “Would you like to know what happens?”

Penelope presses down harder, and searing pain races across Violet’s knuckles. Something gives way and she cries out involuntarily.

“You will be taken to Fidelis, like you so desperately wish. You will be escorted to a tower, where no one will hear you scream, or weep, or beg for mercy, as so many of your pathetic kin have done. And you will be drained of your blood, week by week, until only a corpse remains.”

“No,” Violet whispers.

But she has always known, deep down inside. Since before her uncles told her the truth, before she ever even caught a glimpse of the extraordinary world alongside her own. The Everlys go into the dark with death beside them—and they do not return.

Shewill not return.

“No?” Penelope says softly.

Abruptly, she releases Violet, leaving long red fingerprints streaked across her skin. She stands up and makes her way through the frozen customers. For one hopeful moment, Violet thinks she might be leaving. But instead, she stops at Matt, his eyes fixed ahead, unseeing.

“His name is Matt, isn’t it?” Penelope strokes the side of his face, brushes sandy hair out of his eyes. “Your closest friend here. Maybe your only friend. Aleksander told me all about him.”

Violet’s breath catches in her throat. “He has nothing to do with this.”

“Oh, I know,” Penelope says. “But as they say, seeing is believing. Observe.”

She slashes her hand across Matt’s throat. There is an awful, wet, meaty sound, before she pulls back, her arm slick and red. Blood sprays in a violent arc across the floor. Violet tries to scream, but she can’t seem to get enough air in her lungs.

“Your uncles can squirrel you away in that mansion of yours,” Penelope says. “They can dress you up and parade you around as normal. For the rest of your life, you can even pretend to be one of them. But you cannot ignore the call of the stars. And as you hear their song, so too must you answer to them.”

She snaps her fingers, and the motionless café rouses in a burst of sound. There is a split second of normality—a second in which Violet thinks the damage will reverse, that the world will continue on uninterrupted—before Matt collapses, coffee cups shattering around him. Chaos erupts: someone calls for an ambulance; someone else faints; one of the customers is noisily sick, as another leaps out of their chair to assist him. But Violet can barely hear anything above the sound of her own pulse, hammering with terror.

From the doorway, Penelope surveys the scene calmly, her arm gloved in bloody red. No one else looks at her.

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