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“The difference is that games have prizes.” Her interest kindles. “Oh? What would I win?” “Besides the knowledge that it can be done?” He hums softly, as if considering. “If you can last till Lent, I’ll show you how to lay claim to any place, and make it yours.” Her mouth twitches. At least it is a worthy prize. “And if I lose?” “Then you learn nothing,” he says coolly. “But you do not strike me as the losing type.”
He is right, of course. “Well then,” says Sabine, surveying the crowd. “Let the games begin.”
Matteo’s rules are cumbersome, but she does see the merit in them, the freedom they afford, and the thrill of hunting in plain sight.
And when Sabine’s attention is not hanging on the guests, it is on Matteo. How easily he moves among them. How well he’s known, and liked. How casually he lifts a glass, as if to sip, and makes the food vanish from his plate. How seamlessly he blends into this world, as if it’s his.
Each time, Sabine expects to find her limit, and each time, she is surprised, and glad to learn it isn’t there. That she is stronger than she thinks. Each victim is a kind of courtship. A prelude to pleasure.
“Does it never make you hesitate?” Matteo asked the night before. “Getting to know your mark so well? Spending so long in their company? Do you ever think to let them live?” But Sabine smiles now, as she did then. Because the truth is, the knowing never holds her back. If anything, it makes the killing sweeter.
Never walk alone at night, they tell you, if you’re a girl. And it isn’t fair. Because the night is when the world is quiet.
The night is wild and welcoming and Alice lets her head fall back, until all she sees is the sky, not black, as it should be, given the time, but a twisting tapestry of blue. A color that will always make her think— Of summer days— And wedding bells— The day Eloise Martin marries Dad, everything is blue.
And Matteo is still in love. A ruinous thing.
The humor drops out of her voice. “You are a fool,” she seethes. He smiles, and closes his eyes. “I know.”
“You chose to love a mortal man,” she snaps. “You refused to change him. You knew what would happen. You knew, and you brought it on yourself. What right have you, then, to be surprised by grief? To be so undone by it? If you cannot rouse yourself, you might as well go lie down beside him and let the grave dirt take you.” Sabine knows that she is being cruel. She does not care.
do not see the point of them.” “The point,” says Matteo, “is to survive.” “How boring!” declares Gio, sucking in a breath he doesn’t need, just to blow it out again. “But Sabine is here now. And surely she will be more fun.”
Matteo smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “It is our nature, isn’t it? To persist. Continue on when others can’t.”
“He is young,” he says that night. “It will get easier,” he says the next. “He will learn.” But of course, he never does.
Sabine has walked the earth long enough to know that not all flowers grow well in the garden. Some thrive, and others wither.
The bite marks fade, but the other signs of Gio’s butchery do not. What he was like in life, Sabine will never know, but she can guess. After all, what grows in the midnight soil is not a different flower, only a bolder bloom. He is by nature passionate, and reckless.
“This city. If I stay here any longer, I may as well lie down by Alessandro and let the grave dirt take me, as you once said.”
“We are made for many things,” muses Sabine. “But surrender isn’t one of them.”
It is Alessandro—or at least the absence of him, and the knowledge that he will follow Matteo wherever he goes, from now until the end, like a shadow, a ghost. And Sabine has no desire to be haunted.
Sabine suspects that it is starting: that some small piece of her has died, as Matteo said it would. She thought she would feel frightened, or at least disconcerted by the loss, but there is only a visceral relief, like shedding layers on a too-hot day, the absence like a breeze against bare skin. She exhales, feeling lighter than she has in years.
The years die, and she does not.
Someone to make her feel anything more than hunger. Or at least, a different kind.
She wants a greater challenge. After all, the Season is full to bursting with young women and their suitors. They are all hunting for something, someone. Why shouldn’t she?
Perhaps she craves the risk as well as the reward. After all, the danger is what makes the prize so sweet.
The woman takes her leave, but Sabine stays where she is, attention hooked on this new girl, the one with the white-blond hair and pale blue eyes already slipping from her thoughts. It is her game after all. She is allowed to change the rules.
Sabine has no way of knowing that this one night will tip the balance of her life. That this one girl will be both the beginning and the end of everything.
“Follow the music,” said the bouncer, like the world’s most unhelpful white rabbit, and now here’s Alice, stuck in Wonderland.
She has no idea what he meant, or why everyone in America has to speak in fucking riddles instead of just telling her what she needs to know.
Fuck this, she thinks, and then because that doesn’t help, she says the words aloud. “FUCK ALL OF THIS!” she shouts. Across the street an older woman frowns in disapproval as she totters by, and for once, Alice doesn’t fucking care.
“Older than I look and younger than I feel,” he says, “especially for being so long in the midnight soil.” Alice frowns. “What’s that?” “The midnight soil? Oh, just a turn of phrase.” He shoves his hands in his pockets and spins so that he’s walking backward, facing Alice as he recites the words from memory. “Bury my bones in the midnight soil, plant them shallow but water them deep,
“You know,” he muses, watching the concierge drift out of the lobby and into the bar, and order a drink. “One thing you learn when you live as long as we do, is that nothing’s permanent. Who you were isn’t who you have to be.”
“It wasn’t me,” she says again, tears now sliding crimson down her cheeks. “It’s not my fault.” “Then whose is it?” demands Alice, and Lottie whispers something, a single word, too soft for even her to hear. “What did you say?” Lottie clears her throat and says the word again. “Sabine.”
Charlotte feels her cheeks go hot. She’s never been good at hiding her emotions, the way other girls do, not when they seem intent on hovering just beneath the surface of her skin.
Husband. What an ugly word. A rock tossed in a clear pool, muddying the water.
Jocelyn had never trusted Charlotte, not since she gave her Frankenstein. Her friend had come storming in the next day, looking absolutely haggard and claiming she hadn’t slept a wink, because it was so frightening. From that moment on, she insisted, she would read only romance. As if love and horror could not go hand in hand.
With that, she pulls back, drops into a brief but elegant curtsy. “My name,” she says, “is Sabine Olivares.” Sabine. That name. Charlotte does not know, then, how many times over the years it will spill out of her, as a longing, or a plea, or a curse. In that moment, all she knows is that she finds it strange and beautiful and fitting.
“Never be sorry,” she said, “for who you are.”
“Some people keep their heart tucked so deep, they hardly know it’s there. But you,” she went on, turning back toward Charlotte, “you have always worn it like a second skin.” She ran a hand down her daughter’s arm. “Open to the world. You feel it all. The love and pain. The joy and hope and sorrow.” She pulled Charlotte close, carrying the scent of the garden. Of home.
“It will make your life harder,” she said into her daughter’s hair. “But it will also make it beautiful.”
“You will be happy there as well,” she said. “Do you know why?” She took something from her pocket, a small bundle of dried flowers, the ones that grew wild at the edges of the yard. “Because you are the kind of bloom that thrives in any soil. And who knows, perhaps you will meet a worthy gardener.”
“And barring that,” she went on, “think of all the stories you’ll have to tell when you get back. After all, there is no art without life to inspire it.” She tapped her finger on the very tip of Charlotte’s nose. “So go, and be inspired.”
Charlotte nodded, spirits lifting a little as she climbed up into the carriage. It was only a season, she told herself, thinking it was true. She had no way of knowing then. It would be fifty-two years before she returned to Clement Hall.
Charlotte frowns at the image, but it’s soon replaced by another. Sabine, beside her on the stairs. The odd light in her eyes when Charlotte said that she was sorry for her loss, and Sabine leaned in and whispered back, I’m not.
“A name is like food,” she says. “It has a flavor. Some are bland, and some are bold, some bitter and some sweet.” She nods at a passing woman, and then, as soon as she is gone, tips her head toward Charlotte’s and says, “Take that one. Mary. Plain as milk.” “What about Margaret?” she asks, summoning her aunt’s first ward. Sabine purses her lips, as if tasting the letters. “Like tea without sugar.” She bites her lip to keep from smiling. “And Edith?” Sabine scrunches up her nose. “Burnt toast.”
“Did you miss me?” And Charlotte doesn’t want to lie, so she makes her voice teasingly bright. “Far too much. You mustn’t abandon me again.” “Don’t worry,” says Sabine, and in that softer tone, the one that seems reserved for her, “I far prefer your company.”
“Your house?” she gasps, looking around. Surely Aunt Amelia would have mentioned that night’s ball being hosted by her friend? Then again, perhaps she did. The carriage ride was brief, and her aunt kept up a steady stream of words. Charlotte simply wasn’t listening.
“The night we met,” she says, resting the cards on top of her still-full glass of sherry, “do you know what drew me to you on the stairs? What has drawn me to you, every night thereafter?” Charlotte shakes her head. In truth, she does not know. Has never known. “My quaint pastoral charm?” she quips, even as a tear escapes. Sabine’s mouth twitches. “It’s the way you cannot hide your feelings. If they do not spill out of your mouth, they shimmer on your skin. They fill the air around you, so loud they almost shout.”
did not dance each night hoping he was watching. I did not lie awake and hunger for his company. I—oh, do not look at me like that.” Sabine inclines her head. “Like what?” “Like I’m some foolish child. A silly girl who’s spent the entire Season clinging to your skirts.” For the first time, she is brave enough to find Sabine’s burning gaze, and hold it. “You told me to come find you, when I knew what I wanted. Well, I do.”
“I want you.” Sabine’s cool hand settles on her cheek, and she holds her breath, waiting to see which direction she will fall. “Do you?” she asks, and there is a faint barb to the question, a challenge in her voice that fills Charlotte with fury. “Yes!” she snaps, her voice ringing through the empty house. “I have wanted you since the night we met, and every moment since. I want the life you speak of, that belongs to no one else.
We draw up our roots, and find new ground in which to grow.” “How many times have you done this?” asks Charlotte. “How many lives have you lived?” “Enough, and not enough,” she answers as the driver snaps his reins.
