Aubrey peered into the shadows. They gathered, coalesced, crawled into corners. Beams appeared. Candelabras. An ornate wooden railing emerged at her waist. Next came the heads and backs of men below her. They leaned towards each other, heads bent. At her side a voice whimpered, “Tell me. I want to know. I have more questions.”
That voice woke her.
She lay on her bed, sleep-heavy eyes half-focused on the bed’s canopy. She tried to hold onto the dream images—who? what?—but gave up as even the memory of the dream broke apart.
Within seconds, only the heavy stretched feeling in her gut remained. She struggled to breathe and sat up, seeing her room through a blue tinge.
Her breathing normalized. The room returned to its usual colors.
Everything is normal. Unless—
Panicked, she checked her fangs and claws. They sprang into physical reality, and she relaxed, tapping one hand against the bedspread.
I must want to keep them.
Maybe I just want to know where they are.
* * *
She had her claws and fangs hidden when she sauntered out to meet Georgiana Smith and Olivia in Belemont Park, but the elastic sphere in her gut lingered. Waiting. Like she waited for Mr. Stowe. He would have an easier time contacting her away from the house.
“Did you really visit the police?” Georgiana said in awed—or was it appalled?—glee.
“Why not?” Olivia said. “Lady Promfret reported a lost shawl to the police.”
Georgiana protested: “The police visited her.”
“Didn’t she just misplace it?” Aubrey said.
“I still prefer soldiers.” Georgiana patted her coiffure.
Olivia said demurely, “One of Aubrey’s police is exceedingly well-formed.”
Aubrey felt a qualm and barely stopped herself from glowering.
“Big and brawny,” Olivia said, eyes fluttering.
Mr. Stowe was not big and brawny. Aubrey relaxed.
They strolled along the promenade in the middle of Belemont Park. It circled a lake with swans and toy boats for children to tow. Aubrey had taken the same walk many times with Olivia and Georgiana, sometimes Clarissa Bennet, in past seasons. She remembered those walks, remembered similar conversations—she had lost eight months, not her entire life—yet the promenade seemed new, different, wrong. She’d seen it last from lower down, closer to the grass: a blue-tinted memory suffused with the vivid smell of verdant green.
Her nose twitched.
“Are you going to Stoliot House?” Olivia asked. Stoliot House was the venue for the opening ball of the season, and Georgiana began to describe her dress, its bodice and skirt, its train and trimmings.
Aubrey remembered these conversations as well, innocuous oil greasing the machinery of social interactions. She knew what to say next, what friendly words to echo. Yet she felt growing irritation at the polite nothings—
Suppose I flicked my claws?
Georgiana would faint. Olivia—well, Olivia would widen her eyes before passing on the news to the nearest bystander. The news would grow into gossip, the kind of gossip, Mr. Stowe believed, that could endanger Aubrey.
