When she got close to Elisabetta Street, Kal cut through backyards. She knew the dogs and they didn’t bark. Five more blocks and she was home, a single-story cinderblock box with a basement bunker in case of Sinn attacks.
The neighborhood, which everyone called the East Side, had been built as worker housing by the Carvajal mining company. A witch family, of course. Witches owned everything in Pota Pras. The Carvajals had twelve daughters and named the streets after them. All the houses looked alike except for the little touches added by the people who lived there.
Kal’s house had green shutters framing the windows and a birdhouse she’d made herself and mounted on a pole that doubled as one side of the laundry line. There were usually clothes flapping from it in the steady, dry sirocco winds, but today it was bare. Not a good sign.
She watched from cover for a while, trying to figure out if it was safe to go inside. She didn’t want to wait too long because the rich man and his pet cypher would be figuring out she’d bamboozled them right about now and heading back this way. Plus, the last riverboat left at dusk, and she couldn’t risk being stuck here overnight. It was much easier to hide among the surging throngs of the city.
At last, she slunk to the back door, opened it a quarter of the way, just before the hinge creaked, and slipped inside. The moment she closed and latched the door, a floorboard groaned just outside the kitchen. She grabbed a cast-iron pan from the stovetop.
Kal held her breath, edging toward the doorway. A shadow moved across the wall. She raised the pan, pulse thundering, and stepped around the corner?—
“Whoa!” A familiar figure stumbled back, hands raised. “Take it easy, sis!”
Kal lowered the pan. “Bastian? You scared the shit out of me!”
Her elder brother stood before her, dark braided locks spilling down his back, horn-rimmed glasses slightly askew. He should have been in Kirith poring over astronomy charts, not facing her with fear and relief battling in his eyes.
“What are you—” she began, then felt her breath whoosh out as he pulled her into a crushing hug.
“You’re alive,” he whispered. “After what happened to Durian, I thought . . . I was so worried!”
Kal inhaled the familiar scent of floral soap they all teased Bastian about, her throat closing with grief. “So he really is . . . I’d hoped . . .”
The tears she’d held back for two days burst, and she wept on her brother’s shoulder. He held her just as he had when they were kids and she was upset about something, stroking her back and planting kisses on the side of her head.
“Why aren’t you at Faraday?” she sniffled when the worst of it had blown over. “Term’s not done yet.”
Bastian was the smartest of the Machena brood. He’d won a full scholarship to study abroad in Arioch.
“Festival of Caelum the Wanderer,” he explained. “It’s a big deal. All the schools close except for Merry Sharpe. We get a month off.” He pulled back, expression darkening. “But that doesn’t matter. What happened, Kal? The cyphers brought Durian’s body back yesterday.”
Her shoulders tensed. “Where is everyone? Mom and Dad? Jett and Jinx?” Those were her twin brothers, both younger by three years.
“On a two-week surveying gig. They left before . . . before everything happened. I haven’t been able to reach them.” Bastian pushed his glasses to his forehead. “Witches came looking for you, Kal. They asked questions all over the East Side.”
“Witches?” Her pulse ticked up a notch. “When?”
“A few days ago.”
“How many days exactly? It’s important, Baz.”
He frowned, calculating. “Six. I’d just gotten home.”
Kal’s mind raced. That was before Durian’s body was pulled from the river.
“What did they look like?”
“Well, they weren’t regular witches. In Arioch, people call them Jennies. White Foxes. One had these, like, metal teeth. Freaked me out.”
Kal swore. “The jeweler,” she said. “D’Amato. They must have tracked us through him.” She slumped. “Everyone knows the witches have eyes in the gem district. We were so stupid, Baz. We thought we’d found something valuable.”
“What was it?” Bastian asked, leaning forward.
Kal reached into her pocket and showed him one of the stones, its facets gliding from blue to violet to deep red as it caught the light from the window. He gave a low whistle.
“Serpent’s eye?” he asked.
“That’s what I thought, too, but there are subtle differences. We named it kaldurite. But when we took the stones to Kota, all the brokers said they were empty of ley. Worthless except as pretty baubles.”
