Page 17 of The Sisters of Crimson House

“That. And I’m wondering why the daughter left in charge of the grand Crimson House estate reads cards in hotel lobbies. Didn’t your family entertain royalty?”

“It’s 2008, friend,” she said carefully. “Everyone is hustling for their next dime.”

“But isn’t this your peak season?” he continued, those eyes darkening as they remained focused on hers. “You should have the masses beating down your door. Instead you cosplay in Romani costumes in order to eat.”

“Turns out your name is the most interesting thing about you after all,” said Charley coldly, sliding the money back to him. “You can keep the twenty.”

Pissed, she moved to get up from her chair when he grabbed her hand, hard. The friendly smile was gone.

“You’re leaving because you know I’m right. You’re a fraud. Your whole family were frauds, and when I am finished, everyone will see you for what you really are.” His eyes, cold and sharklike, bored into hers.

“Let go of me.” Charley’s eyes widened, and she gasped in sudden pain, but not from his hand squeezing hers. “Let go—”

The sounds of the lobby faded, replaced by something new. A buzzing sound, like electricity. She tasted copper in her mouth, felt the hair on her arms prickle as if she were standing in the wake of a lightning storm. Her vision went dark at the edges, like she was staring through a tunnel. Through that tunnel, shapes began to take form. She was looking out a window as the sunlight filtered through it, growing brighter and brighter until the light was too painful to bear. She threw her hands up in alarm, shielding herself from the relentless sun until suddenly she found herself outside, no longer looking through the window but staring up at a mighty oak tree. It was stooped slightly with age and laden with heavy branches, its trunk stripped of bark and covered with mossy vines. The vines were moving because they were alive. Snakes, their scales slick and black and iridescent, hissed and coiled themselves around the branches like one large organism. She was uncomfortably close, the hissing a strange but irresistible call to come closer. Her arm was reaching out as a snake reared up to strike when—

“Charley!”

She was dragged back to the bar of the Peabody, cold and dizzy like she’d been stuck on a spinning merry-go-round with no end. Sy was still grabbing her hand, and she wrenched free of his grasp just as Travis’s fist connected with Sy’s face. Sy staggered back, cradling his jaw.

“Charley, are you okay?”

She was aware Travis was talking to her. But all she could focus on was the pain. Hot, searing pain like she’d never experienced. She turned over her right hand, shocked to see blood smeared across her palm.

“Get away from her, man,” Travis warned.

But Sy was standing in front of her again, staring at her hand with feverish intensity. “You’re bleeding,” he said, sounding so confused, so accusatory, that she looked to her hand as if for an apology.

Travis was staring at her hand, too. So many people staring. The room went from cold to instantly hot and stifling. Fear jolted her body into action. Before she knew what she was doing, Charley was running through the lobby, covering her shaking, bleeding hand like it was a wounded bird. Stumbling her way past tourists and porters, she ran to the lobby doors and burst onto the sidewalk.

She was immediately hit by the wind. A storm had just blown in over the river, sending a light drizzle over downtown, but the rush of cold rain did little to cut through the sensory overload. She scanned the carriages lined up for fares on Union Avenue, tourists giving the wobbly, crazy-looking lady a wide berth as she listed about. She grabbed her head, afraid she was about to pass out.

Home. Home was where this would make sense. She willed her feet forward as they pointed her way down the sidewalk on Third, the broken beer bottles and balled-up newspapers serving as the compass that pointed the way. She still saw that tree when she closed her eyes, its branches black against her eyelids. A car honked at her as it passed, the adrenaline spike causing her hand to throb anew.

Zavier and Astrid had dropped her off at the hotel on their way to work, unaware their friend would later be sprinkling blood on the sidewalk like some profane sacrament. She pressed her bleeding hand against her ribs, feeling her heartbeat in her palm. The pain was not as intense, but it was keeping her awake, her steps in time with the throbbing.

“Charlotte!” It was the name her grandmother used for her, not one she heard often, and certainly not from the man who had pulled his car into the right lane of Third Street, calling to her from the rolled-down window.

“My name is Charley,” she said, refusing to look at Sy as the Camry inched alongside her.

“Okay, Charley then,” said Sy. “Whatever name you answer to, you don’t look well.”

“I look fine,” she said through gritted teeth.

“It’s raining. And you’re bleeding,” he fired back. “Can I please just drive you somewhere so you don’t wind up murdered in the street?”

“So you can murder me?” She did not know this man, and what she did know of him gave her zero reason to trust him. “I don’t live far.”

“Please be reasonable.”

“This is me being reasonable.” Jesus, he was infuriating. And that fury felt good. It was keeping her conscious. “If you’re that concerned for my well-being, then you can keep watch until I make it home.”

No reply as she bent forward against the wind, the Camry’s tires crunching over broken glass and discarded takeout. She was hopeful his tires would blow out and the world’s slowest chase would be forced to an end.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, his voice thin over the rental car engine.

“Probably about as great as your jaw,” she said with a smile, remembering Travis’s right hook. “Why do you care?” she asked as she crossed from Third Street onto Jefferson, the Camry gliding alongside like her shadow.

“Because I’m not a monster,” he said.