Jack sighed, sniffed the traces of powder on his palm—they smelled dry and flowery—and went on his way.
Four years ago, he, George, and Rose had lived together in the Edge, a narrow strip between the Broken of no magic and the Weird of too much magic. They lived in an old house. They were poor. Really, really poor. He didn’t understand how poor they were until they came to the Weird. Their mother had died. Jack didn’t remember her that well, except for a faint scent. He had smelled something similar once, in the perfume of a girl at a ball, and that scent had opened a big gaping hole inside him. He’d had to leave right then, so he’d gone over the top-floor balcony into the trees, and when he’d returned in the morning, he had to go into Declan’s office and explain himself.
With their mom dead, their dad had run off. Jack recalled him but only vaguely, just a blurry, man-shaped thing. He remembered the voice, though, a rough, funny voice. Their dad went to look for some treasure and never came back. It was just him, Rose, George, and Grandma. Rose worked all the time. George and he had to go to school in the Broken. George had been slowly dying because he couldn’t let things go. Every time George had found something that had died, a bird, a kitten, Grandpa, he’d bring it back to life—but it took his own life force to keep it going. Right before they moved to the Weird, George had brought back so many things, he was sick all the time.
Jack sighed. People had picked on George, but he’d always fight for him. That was his job, Jack reflected. He protected George and Rose. He was a changeling, a predator. Stronger and faster than other people even in the Broken, without magic.
And then Declan came from the Weird. Big, strong, wearing armor and carrying swords, and blowing houses up with a flash so powerful it was like white lightning. Declan wanted Rose. He fixed George’s problem, defeated the monsters, protected everyone, then Rose fell in love with him, and off they went into the Weird.
Grandma didn’t want to go. She came to visit every summer, so it wasn’t all bad.
In the Weird, changelings didn’t live with normal people. Most of the time, their parents gave them up for adoption by the government, and they were sent off to Hawk’s Military Academy. William had gone through Hawk’s. He said it was like a prison: no toys, no books; nothing except seven changes of clothes, towel, toothbrush, and hairbrush. Changelings at Hawk’s lived in small, sterile rooms. It was a life of studies and constant drills, designed to turn them into perfect soldiers. Jack read an article about it once—it said that changeling children couldn’t understand how regular people interacted. “A controlled low-stimulus environment” was better for them.
There was nothing worse than Hawk’s. Jack felt an odd tightness in his back and shrugged to get rid of it. Rose and Declan had both told him that he would never be sent there. But the older he got, the more he screwed up.
Last night, Declan sat him down and told him that they couldn’t keep going on like this. Changes had to be made. He didn’t say anything about Hawk’s, but Jack could read between the lines. He wasn’t a baby.
William was his only hope. William was Declan’s best friend. If anyone could come to Jack’s defense, it would be him.
He had to make William understand how things were before it was too late.
WILLIAM’S house sat in the middle of a vast grassy lawn, bordered by ancient ashes and oaks. It was a big place, three stories with an attic on top, all brown stone under a roof of green clay shingles. Four round towers, two stories high, sat at the corners of the house. Each tower had a round balcony with a stone rail on the second floor. Their other place was even bigger, a mansion the size of Declan and Rose’s house, but William and Cerise both hated it. They still went there once in a while because it had a bigger pool.
Jack left the tree line, crossed the lawn, and stood in front of the arched entrance, letting William catch his scent. One minute, two . . . Long enough.
He went to the arched front door. It swung open under his fingertips, admitting him into the dark stone entranceway. The door shut behind him, and darkness took him into her black mouth and gulped him down. Jack crouched on instinct, letting his eyes adjust.
William could kill any intruder while he stood there, blinking like an owl. When Jack got his own house, he’d have an entrance just like this one.
Jack’s pupils caught the weak light and the glint of a trip wire strung across the way just at the right height to trip an unsuspecting attacker’s ankle. Jack stepped over it, went through to the next door, and out into the courtyard. The bright light of the day shocked his eyes again. He blinked until he saw a blue pool on the left, surrounded by a stone pathway. Around the path, flowers bloomed in curvy flower beds, yellow and blue blossoms catching the sun with delicate petals. His nostrils caught wood smoke. Cerise was cooking.
Jack headed down the path to the back of the house, through a side door, and into the large kitchen. The huge solid table took up most of the room. William lounged at the other side of it in a big chair, close enough to touch Cerise, who stood at a stone counter. Like Declan, William was tall, but where Rose’s husband was blond and buff, William was black-haired, lean, and hard. Their stares met. William’s eyes shone with yellow once. Just a friendly warning. Jack looked to the floor for a second to let him know he didn’t have a problem with his authority.
When he looked up, Cerise was grinning at him from the counter. She was short and tan, with long dark hair, and she wore a blue apron. “A hare! Is that for us?”
Jack nodded and offered her the hare. Cerise took it. “That’s perfect, Jack. Just in time. And so nicely cleaned, too.”
Jack grinned. She liked it.
“Come, sit.” William pushed a glass of Adrianglian tea in his direction. Jack swiped the cup and landed in the nearest chair. Cerise set a pan on the fire, threw some chopped bacon into it, and started peeling an onion.
“How’s it going?” William asked.
“Fine.” Jack kept his voice flat. He’d have to go about this conversation very carefully.
“How’s school?” Cerise asked, chopping the onion to pieces.
“Fine.”
William and Cerise looked at each other.
“How’s the school really?” William asked.
Jack looked at the table. He was one week into his first year of the Royal College. The College was a big deal. It cost a lot of money and had the best teachers, and he had to pass a load of exams to be admitted. George was two years ahead of him, and he loved it. If someone else had asked him, Jack would’ve said the school was fine because Rose and Declan were paying for it, and he didn’t want to be ungrateful. But this was William’s house, which meant he didn’t have to lie.
“It’s strange.”
“Strange good or strange bad?” Cerise added onion and garlic to the pan. The aroma tugged on Jack. He licked his lips. Cerise cut the rabbit into bite-sized chunks and swept the meat into the pan, too.
Mmmm, smells good.
“Strange strange,” he said. “People don’t talk to me, that’s fine. I don’t need to talk to them, either. But they talk behind my back all the time. The girls are the worst. They huddle and whisper things, and when I try to be nice and talk to them, they get all weird. They’re calling me Brother of the Cursed Prince.”
William sat up straight. “What?”
“They call George the Cursed Prince because he does necromancy. And I’m his brother.”
Cerise sighed and stirred the meat. “Girls at your age are odd. I know, I was one. Adults expect them to have little romances, and they kind of think they ought to have them because that’s what grown-up women do, but really they’re little girls, and they have no idea how to go about it. Boys are a mystery. Ask Lark. She will tell you.”
Lark was Cerise’s younger sister. Jack looked down at the table again. “Lark and I aren’t friends anymore.”
Cerise stopped stirring the rabbit in the pan. “Since when?”
“Since two weeks ago.”
“What happened?” William asked. “Did you do something?”
Jack shook his head. “She said that she and I were too much of the same. She said I was wild and she was wild, and when we got together, we were crazy. She says she isn’t mad at me, but she won’t go to the woods to hunt with me anymore. She spends time with George now. She says he’s civilized.”
He wasn’t even sure what the hell that meant. One day, Lark was there; the next, she wasn’t. It pissed him off and made him sad, until he was too confused to do anything about it.
William fixed him with his wolf eyes. “Lark is broken in the head.”
“Damaged,” Cerise said with steel in her voice.
“Damaged,” William repeated. “Sorry. You know about the slavers?”
Jack nodded. Years ago, slavers had come to their house in the Edge and tried to kidnap Rose. His sister had the strongest magic in the Edge. Her flash was pure white, and she still practiced with it at least an hour every day. The magic made her valuable.
“Slavers stole Lark,” William told him. “They put her in a hole in a ground and didn’t feed her. One of them got into the hole with her to molest her.”
Jack bared his teeth. “What?”
“She killed him with her magic,” Cerise said. Her face looked strained, as if she was trying to keep herself calm. “They stopped feeding her. It was just her and his body for over a week. She didn’t know how long she would stay in the hole or when we’d find her.”
They both looked at him. This was an adult thing or a human thing, and he wasn’t getting it, so he just waited.
“She might have eaten the slaver,” William said.
Jack nodded. It was a fair kill. It was gross, but if he were stuck in a hole in the ground for a week, surrounded by enemies, he might have eaten human flesh, too.
“It’s different for not-changeling people,” William said. “It damages them.”
“Why? Is there poison in the meat?”
“It’s not that kind of damage,” Cerise said. “Lark thinks that she is a horrible monster because of what she did. She hates herself a little, and she is trying to forget about it. Have you noticed how she is always wearing pretty dresses now, and her hair is always brushed really well?”
He’d noticed. He also noticed that she wouldn’t go to the woods with him anymore. They used to have fun. They’d hunt and hang out. Now she wanted to sit on the chair on the balcony and have tea with Rose.
“She wants to be normal right now,” Cerise told him. “She wants to forget the ugliness, so she is making everything around her pretty.”
“And I am ugly,” Jack said.
Cerise put her hand over her face. “Oy.”
“You’re not ugly,” William said. “You’re violent. You like to hunt and kill, and she can’t handle the blood right now. Let her work it out on her own. When she’s ready, she’ll find you.”
“Girls just don’t like me,” Jack said. “They prefer George.”
“The girls at school like George because he is safe,” Cerise said. “George has perfect manners, he is calm, and they know that if they are alone with him, nothing will happen. Don’t try to be George. The kind of girls that like him are the wrong girls for you. You’re looking for the girls that are attracted to a boy with a dark, dangerous side.”
“I don’t have a dark side,” Jack said.
“Of course you do. At this age, it’s all about the roles you play. When William and I do work for the Mirror, we often have to be somebody else. We have to put on different costumes and look the part.”
“But I don’t want to be somebody else.”
“That’s not what I am saying.” Cerise sighed. “Let’s take George. He puts on his costume, goes to school, and plays the role of the Tragic Prince.”
“Cursed,” Jack corrected.
“Cursed. But at home he’s normal, right?”
Jack considered it. True, George was a bit weird at school. He rarely laughed, and sometimes he would stand by the windows and stare into the distance, looking sad, while a gaggle of girls whispered about him nearby.
“Yes,” Jack said. “I get it.”
“You just need to find your role. George is a Cursed Prince, and you might do better as the Mysterious Dark Loner.”
William stared at his wife. “You thought way too much about this.”
Cerise waved her hand at him. “You hush. Jack, look, it’s very simple. You just have to keep to yourself and look nonchalant.”
Jack blinked. “What?”
“William does a really good nonchalant look.” Cerise turned to William. “Do the nonchalant for him.”
William sighed and looked at Jack. It wasn’t any sort of special look. It was just flat.
“So I have to look bored?”
“You have to look like you don’t care. Like you would rather be somewhere else.”
“I would! I would rather be anywhere else.”
“Then it shouldn’t be too hard. Don’t tell people about yourself. Try not to get excited about anything where people can see you. If someone challenges you to a fight, shrug and keep going. If they persist, kick their ass. And once in a while, be yourself and do something randomly kind, the way you usually do, like help a smaller kid. If someone asks you why you do something, look nonchalant and tell them they just wouldn’t understand and that there are things about you they’re better off not knowing. Girls will eat it up.”
Jack glanced at William for confirmation. William shrugged and looked nonchalant.
“Give it a shot,” Cerise said. “Jack, you have to go to school. Trust me, you can’t do anything in the Weird without at least a third-degree graduation scroll in your hand.”
Jack inspected the table for a bit. “Nonchalant won’t work on Rose and Declan,” he said.
“What happened?” William leaned toward him and fixed Jack with his wolf stare. It was a hard, merciless stare that pinned Jack in place like a knife. If he met a wolf who looked at him like that in the forest, Jack would’ve puffed his fur out and snarled. And if that didn’t work, he’d take off as fast as he could.