I couldn’t remember the st time I’d had chocote.

  Sometime in the district, when the Bck Fme had reigned supreme, which meant the shite bars from Holns and Martel, where the cocoa powder was cut with all matters of substances as long as it meant more bars with less money.

  This was the real deal as I nibbled on a bar, letting the taste spread through my mouth with tiny bites. I just needed anything to keep my mind off of that.

  That would e up sooner or ter, I thought, from the awkward silence ory o me and how he was trying not to look at my tail.

  I’d gathered my tail up, most of it bunched up in my p, my free arm resting on top while my other ohe supply of chocote going. It pulled slightly at where it ected to the rest of me, but that didn’t matter. It was safe.

  I spotted the bow on the end and something in my throat caught. Like a rural fair one of those two had said. Did they mean on the animals?

  It shouldn’t matter. A bunch of noble brats are pying the rebel. Stupid questions. They’d gotten lucky because if this had been the district, they’d be trying to ask their stupid questions out of slit throats.

  Gregory apparently decided he should speak up first.

  “Sorry about that,” Gregory said. “Another of Kalriver’s friends accused me of something I couldn’t have physically bee for. He siders himself a rival to me and made a py at trying to get you. Back to the sed floor?”

  Made a py for me. Those words were not f in any aspect.

  I lowered the chocote bar and chuckled, a tinge of nervousness on the edge of it. “I think your father would kill us if we even tried walking to it.”

  “Oh, I don’t care about that,” Gregory said. “I must say, you are once again wreg my impression of you.”

  “A good mask at work.”

  “Sure. Your ag is very good. However, if you tell me all of this evening has been an act, I’ll call you a liar. But I’m just w, where is the Malvia Harrow who fessed about having a fling with a boy she had dick-kicked only years beforehand?”

  Oh, Hells, he was referring to Dahat was on me fing him up during that trial. That pang of irritation inside me was growing rger though.

  “She’s still here,” I said. “Just keeping her head down and keeping in mind that she has a role to py.”

  “You seem a little shy for even keeping your head down,” Gregory said. “Even beyond the act, this seems a bit demure for you. I wouldn’t expect you to get embarrassed over what they were saying.”

  Shy. Shy. I rolled that word around in my head a few times. This, this is what he wao talk about?

  “There’s a differeween doing things in the privacy of one’s room and in public,” I replied. “Especially when most of those people staring already is ready to believe the worse things about you and are already judging you in a way you weren’t. Especially that st group of people!”

  Gregory’s eyes widened slightly, and I go either side. No one had taken notice. Good.

  “They got under your skin a lot more than I expected.”

  "They openly propositioned me just based on the fact that I have horns and a skin color that’s sidered hellish,” I snapped back. “Let’s not even discuss how half of them were dressed up as Infernals, or that damn girl with my tail, or how they would have all gone for my hor if given half a ce. What in the Hells was that?”

  Gregory was silent for a bit.

  "It’s a bit of a trend,” Gregory said. “While not to the point any of them would be daring enough to have an Infernal as their guest. Want to stick it to their parents, the transgressive nature, forbidden fruit, etc. Dressing up as Infernals. They even have a ranking list based on Infernal lineage.”

  “…the status of the devil the bloodline was influenced by?” I ventured.

  “No, the type of devil. I’ve had to sit through some of these discussions, and you would not believe how mue of them want to find an Infernal who desded from a succubus or incubus. The fantasies get very involved.”

  “They should just go to a brothel then,” I hissed. “That kind of thing has no impa anything.”

  They made me prefer those who could barely hide their pt or clumsily cover their assumption. Ohing for certain, I was going to keep my own lineage even more of a very closely guarded secret from this point onwards. Just the part of it I thought the least important out of all of them.

  “Not a fan of the idea, I take it?” Gregory asked.

  “People discuss the lineage of horses for races and how well they will perform,” I replied. “I’m not thrilled over the idea of people asking me my lineage so they figure out how good of a y I’ll be.”

  Gregory winced. “I see why that would be-”

  “Demeaning,” I interrupted. “Yes. So was stroking my tail. If they do it again-”

  “They won’t,” Gregory assured me, which I regarded skeptically. “We’ll stick away from them. They try it, and I’ll ward them off. They get their hands on you, well.”

  I let out a guttural sigh, trying to force as much emotion out as I could. “If you’ll be there. Which you weren’t. They were lucky, you know? So you better make sure you are there ime because if one of them ys a finger on me or asks me if my tail is as good as their boyfriend’s cock. Five minutes. Ay room. They won’t be able to do it again.”

  “What exactly do you mean by that?” Gregory asked me, expression as sober as I’d ever seen it.

  Of course, it was. I’d threatened nobles.

  “You left me there,” I said. “You could have brought me with you, but no, you left me there with them. Did you think that would end well?”

  "I thought,” Gregory paused, looking across the ballroom to where Kalrivers and his ilk had gathered, then looked down. “I guess I didn’t think. I knew what they were like, but it always seemed harmless…it’s a new one each year. No. Nothing excuses it. I’m sorry, Malvia.”

  I breathed in, breathed out. He’d apologized, which wasn’t nothing. More than some. More than most, thinking on it some more.

  “Apology accepted. But please stop using my real name here. You said a new one every year? Do they ge this stupidity up?”

  “It’s a passing trend based on what’s caught their imagination and what they think is the most taboo-breaking they might be willing to stand. Two years ago it was the Keltish. Last year, it was the fey. I thought that would teach their successors not to mess around in things like that, but apparently, I was wrong.”

  A guest was nearing us now, so the mask was being smmed ba.

  “A story of the fey Lord Montague?” I said with cheer. “You must tell me! We hear stories about them, but I’m pretty sure the only one I ever thought I’d seen was just a very colorful i.”

  “Oh, it’s made its rounds quite a bit and is so dull to repeat. And I could hardly tell it in front of the brother of one of those directly involved. Charles! Feels like it’s been ages since we st saw each other! Miss Waters, this is Charles Daven, o t Daven and fourth in lio a minor lordship out in Chalkford.”

  “It was two weeks ago, not ages,” the new arrival said, a mutton-chopped noble who couldn’t have been more than a few years older than Gregory and me. “Baron Malton’s ball. We traded a few words while you were on your way out, being chased by the Baron and his two sons.”

  “Oh my,” I gasped. “Whatever reason could a baron have for chasing after a gentleman like Lord Montague?”

  Charles Daven gnced my way and, in a sed, dismissed me as anything worth paying attention to. It was infuriating, but ultimately, what I was going for. At least it was over personality and not the horns, but either didn’t endear me to him.

  Then again, I didn’t o be endeared. I hem to be fooled.

  “Many a reason, I’m sure. Where did you dig this one up, Gregory?”

  “Sister Waters is here from the tryside,” Gregory answered. “The temple has entrusted me with teag her about the city and edug her regarding life here.”

  “I’m learning an awful lot about the kinds of people here,” I said brightly, taking far too much glee in Gregory wing at the statement. “So your sister was involved in this story, Lord Daven? Tell me, what did she do?”

  Fey trickery could be malicious, and right now I was in the mood for malicious stories about foolish nobles.

  “We shouldn’t really discuss it,” Gregory said. “It’s his sister, it’s a touchy subject.”

  Oh, so this o the lightest touvolved then?

  “No, tell the story,” Daven deadpanned. “Teressa was an idiot who ultimately paid the price of her own utter stupidity. If she doesn’t enjoy being married to William Carter, maybe she shouldn’t have enjoyed sleeping with a physical copy of him.”

  Oh, it was going to be one of those stories, wasn’t it.

  “Fey trickery?” I asked. “I thought they crafted illusions, not shapeging.”

  Some could. That had actually been a hypothesis tossed arouween I and Voltar. In the end it had been discarded. Fey were too individualistid g in discipline, and would have preferred a far lighter touch to our shapeging suspects. The possibility was always there but the appliance of cold iron to Hawkins hadn’t caused his shapeging to colpse.

  “This articurly powerful fey,” Gregory said. “A Fox-tailed creature who seems remarkably uned about the cold iron of the city.”

  Wait. A kitsune had been here?

  “Iing,” I said. “I’ve never heard of this kind of fey. So, acc to your story, this art of a fad involving nobility. What was the fad?”

  “Utter stupidity,” Daveed. “At first, it was just, to quote my sister, ‘You ’t believe what it’s like, the fur and the tail and the ears.’ It sounded like the ravings of a lunatic. Then the fey revealed she could shapeshift and was willing to take requests.”

  “Requests?”

  “People for her to shapeshift into before having sex. It started with just other members of the group they had crushes on. Then it started expanding to well…a all kind of went to the Hells, no offense, when Duke Yalmen’s you grandson got caught fooling around with peared to be Her Majesty at first gnce.”

  My jaw almost dislocated itself. “Oh…oh my. I never heard of this.”

  “Which points to the efficacy of the -up,” Lord Daven muttered. “If you weren’t directly involved with the noble families involved? You heard nothing. The neers know, but they also know if they print anything they’ll find themselves without any offices soon enough. In the end, the only remotely productive thing to e out of it were the marriages, mostly based on which pairings had the most evideill floating about that could possibly resurface.”

  “Evidence?”

  “The fox fey was either a voyeur or a bckmailer. Or both. There are pictures, and no one be sure if all of them were found. Holy, most of those involved got off lucky. Marriages, not disiances.”

  “Is the fox fey still around?” I asked.

  The ce of a kitsune being behind this…I wasn’t sure. My knowledge was stories as a child, some of which had been light-hearted, others had been not. Unfortunately, the only ones who’d told me those stories were either in a a or in this ballroom, but I could hardly ask them.

  “No idea,” Daven said. “My sister and her little group have of course, stopped seeing it.”

  “Ask Vregory said. “If anyone knows, it’s him.”

  Maybe he was the Kitsune.

  The same servant from before roag us again, and I did my best not to glower. What had happened was not eveely their fault.

  “Lregory, someone is requesting you at the front door,” the servant said. “You might want to meet them before your father gets word.”

  ***

  Out the front door, past the assorted carriages whose drivers would be inside, probably pying cards till it was time to take their charges home.

  Malstein stood near a Watch carriage at the end, looking around for anyone. No one was directly by the estate, although some te-night pedestrians were looking at us, curiosity piqued.

  Satisfied there was no one close enough to overhear, Malstein turo me.

  “Someone wearing your face assaulted three members of the Watch just a few ho,” Malstein said.

  Well, there went my reputation again.

  “Well, I suppose we should have seen that ing,” I said. “I’m already the oh the record, so it would be the easiest to frame me. I’m just shocked they didn’t do more before this. I already have a new fa-”

  Malstein shook his head. “You misuood. Someoh your current face assaulted three members of the Watch two ho.”

  Oh. That meant a ger was among the staff. “And you know about this because?”

  “Some lieutenant and a squad of Watch are currently trying to force their ast the cordon here. Someone gave a tip that you could be found here.”

  “ you stall them?” Gregory asked.

  “I . But that was just the first group to arrive. There’s a sed g to have a warrant from el His for me on charges of corruption.”

  Oh, joy. “Watch politics or the gers?”

  “gers. I know His, and while we don’t see eye to eye on many things, trumped-up charges aren’t his preferred tactic. I ’t dey dealing with this any longer.”

  “Appreciated, Captain.”

  Malstein hen turned around, heading off to the cordon.

  I drummed my fingers nervously. They had the Watch distracted now, but why? Sure, they might eventually remove Malstein and his unit from keeping a loose s around the manor, but that had never been to keep a. It had been for catg arying to flee when things did kick off. But they’d sent a hint that they were going to start things early off.

  It took too much time, and Malstein could likely find the real el Hism, who presumably hadn’t sighat warrant. Or had on evidence given by someone else being impersonated. Depending ohe fake me had assaulted those Watch members

  “We o get inside and anize a search for as much of the estate as possible,” I said. “This is the time. They’ll strike soon.”

  “Surely it would be easier for them to remove some of us from the estate entirely before moving?”

  “Maybe, but that’s a risk. The lo stretches on, the more ce that someohey’ve impersonated clears up the mess. And impersonating a el of the Watch means a lot more attention.”

  Even a corrupt officer would want anyone who impersohem taken care of just for drawing attention to them. People would be looking into anything you’d done just to try and figure out how long the impersonation had been ongoing. Then their best hope would be bming the shapeger for whatever did surface.

  We both headed baside to the party.

  ***

  Going ihe party had migrated to the tables entirely. Servers were bringing the food out, which sent the Imp jabbering inside my head.

  I ig as I spotted one of the servers heading bato the kit. Reizing her in a server’s uniform instead of a guard took a sed. But unless Cab had a twin sister, she’d just headed into the kit, serving tray in hand.

  “Didn’t you say Cab was going to guard the room where Edward used to be?” I asked Gregory.

  “Her and a couple of others. But if we have a leak in the manor staff, they’ll know that Edward is on the-“

  “Not the point,” I interrupted. “How oftehey being checked on? Because I swear I just saw her leaving through a door down there.”

  His eyes widened.

  She’d already disappeared behind the door, and we were quick to follow.

  ***

  “Has Cab been down here retly?” Gregory asked one of the servers.

  The group shook their heads.

  “Could be the ger already ged,” I said.

  “Could be you didn’t spot her,” Gregory replied.

  “A I did.”

  Gregory looked around, face paler than normal. “If the staff are being overworked, Father could have ceivably had some of the guards drafted to make up for the deficit. Most of them do the job well enough to suffice.”

  “While your brother is being threatened?”

  Gregory hesitated. It was uandable. The alternative was not something pleasant to think about.

  “Let’s check the room where she was stationed,” I said.

  She could still be alive. ceivably.

  ***

  The room had ged since I’d visited. More furniture had been moved in. The bed was moved out. Now, a tea table domi. ets were pressed up against the walls. It was empty.

  I smelled blood. From the et, which was maybe two foot by three. Hells. Shapegers were strong, and if they didn’t want ao notice the dead…ideally, you’d have transport for the bodies, but if they were running this quid dirty, the very temporary would do.

  I opehe doors of the et. Behind me came a choked gasp.

  Cab had been shoved inside, bones snapped, and skin ripped to fit inside. Her eyes stared lifelessly at my own while blood pooled at the bottom, spilling out onto the floor beyond. The skin had scraped where pushed against the edges of the et, shoved in with no thought or care. Just shoved inside in the hopes it would keep her hidden. A forearm snapped off at the elbow and fell out onto the carpeting.

  I didn’t try any of the other ones. Gregory or someone else would know the faces.

  I just hoped the gers were still wearing those faces.