House of Sand and Secrets by Cat Hellisen

insidious way MallenIve breathes her disease into every living thing here. It’s so potent I can smell it – like scriv and rot – citrus combined with the reek of the filthy refuse heaps growing at her borders. I brush off his distress, and bury my own. “You’re being overly dramatic. Besides, we can’t go back.”
    He sighs. “No. I suppose not.”
    We have sins to atone for.
    “Harun isn’t going to help us,” I say, thinking of the names on my paper, useless now.
    “Whatever made you think that he would?” Jannik closes his eyes and slumps back against the one solid wall of the staircase. “Forget about this, Felicita, please. It’s not something for you and I to get involved in.”
    “Give me a reason why not.”
    He cracks open one eye, and waits for me to work it out myself.
    “I don’t care any more if we draw attention to our House, if these MallenIve idiots don’t invite us – me – to their stupid parties–”
    “It’s not about that.”
    “What then – are you scared of them?” As soon as the words have bolted out my mouth, so casual and yet so damning, I feel myself flush.
    “Yes,” Jannik says. “Now, we really should leave.”
    For a moment, I don’t follow him. The vampire they found was mutilated, tortured. I picture Jannik’s arms ending in stumps at the wrist and his skin flayed, leaving only the meat and white skull. His fear flickers against my face like the wing of a startled bird.

STUDIES IN OIL AND INK

    A new art exhibition has been announced in the late Courant. The black-and-white flash on the Amusements page does the pictures little justice. The headline calls the work that of a savage and naturally, I am intrigued.
    I try to ignore the little article on the opposite page about the body they pulled from the Casabi. Another nameless bat. It chills me to read the words, knowing Jannik wants me do nothing. I force myself to pay attention to the vicious review instead. It has a certain incensed bluster that means it can only have been written by some House toady who feels his heroes have been mocked. The artist’s name is Iynast. Just that. I have no idea if it’s his true name, or the surname of some long-forgotten minor House.
    Jannik has left for the offices already. Despite Carien’s promise – or threat – I have yet to try to secure a commitment of any kind from House Eline, or be invited to meet with her husband. Jannik’s unwillingness for me to pursue the matter of the body – now bodies - stops me from extending my own small invitation. Just when I think I am finally ready to go ahead and do it anyway, I find another reason not to: I need to employ a better chef, I need to have the house redecorated, the timing isn’t quite right.
    It’s not just Jannik’s fear that makes me cling to all these excuses. Carien fascinates me. I want to see more of her, to feel that strange thrill that comes from watching the way she walks, her coiled intensity, the flash of wildness in her amber eyes. But she is dangerous to me and mine, and I’m not quite ready to have a Reader invade my home.
    How much of my past would she be able to winkle out of me, just by being in my rooms? Would she pull all the secrets out of my coiled heart and lay them like little twisted miscarriages on a platter before me?
    My brother’s death was no unlucky accident and only two people alive know the circumstances. Dash, who was the only other one who knew what happened, is buried now. I don’t even know where. I think Jannik may, but even I am not so heartless as to ask. Owen himself is interred in the family mausoleum, next to my father. From my mother’s last letter it may not be long before Owen’s sickly daughter is placed there too. The disappointment in that letter announcing Allegria’s birth was palpable. With Owen dead, there is no male heir to my House. There is only me. The heiress presumptive. How that must gall my brother’s shade.
    But Jannik has my name and were I to