2

Pearly midmorning light breaks through the slatted blinds of the lab by the time I find Margot. Her long auburn hair is squashed in a ponytail, then squashed again by the elastic of the safety goggles she wears. Her arms are lost in the long white lab coat Doc Raines forces us to wear when running experiments.

She doesn’t hear me approach, nor when I call her name. There’s been a lot of that lately. Since we returned from Russia, Margot has become all but unreachable. For the hundredth time I find myself wondering what it was like—being held like a science experiment in Resnikov’s factory.

While she was away I spent a lot of time worrying over this. The bond I have relied upon my whole life to tell me what Margot is thinking and feeling had stretched, thin and silent, until it was all but obliterated. It was the loneliest feeling in the world.

…

When we were born, my sister and I, we shared one skin—but that is only the beginning of our puzzle. Although we came into the world connected, stitched together at our big toes, we are not as similar as identical twins should be. Like the marks we bear on our toes, where they tore us apart—Margot’s in the shape of a long, thin skeleton key and my own the perfect pear shape of a lock—we are mysteries of flesh and bone.

In Russia I’d met an old scientist who claimed he had helped bring us into the world. Test-tubers, he’d called us: babies born of laboratory cocktails and Molotov gene Splicing. But whatever they Spliced into us, Margot and I bear the traces of its magic. Whatever Margot experiences, I feel.

I’ve been left with other, even more dubious gifts: Like with Nash, I can tell who next will be gobbled by the diamond-toothed Plague. And sometimes my dreams walk into waking life.

Margot’s talents have always been more useful. She’ll charm birds out of the sky and men out of their mansions. She has but to walk into a room and it’s lit with some indefinable incandescence. Our parents loved this about her. They’ve put her talents to use in the slippery wet world of Dominion politics. But then its tide carried her away.

Margot gives me broad strokes but won’t really tell me what happened. All I know is that she is not the same. Sure as anything, she was betrayed: first by attendants of the Splicer Clinic, who stole the eggs from her body like foxes in the henhouse. Then by our parents, who sold her to the mysterious Russian count Leo Resnikov—sold us both. Margot was betrayed again by Resnikov, who transformed those stolen eggs into pale, lifeless bodies floating in long glass tubes, whose jobs were to pump the next generation of Margot’s DNA into oily pills that could be fed to dupes by the millions.

He was making a cure of sorts. A cure for the ravages of the Plague. Bred from the blood and marrow of my sister’s DNA. It was what we were born for—or so we are being led to believe. Though according to Resnikov himself, this cure would only last a little while.

“Margot,” I say again, tugging on her loose ponytail. The elastic slips, and she turns to frown at me.

“Cut it out,” she says crossly.

“Well, I reckon your attention was elsewhere now, wasn’t it?”

Margot’s frown lengthens. “What’s wrong?”

“Why does anything have to be wrong for me to want to see you?”

Margot snorts. “Don’t be daft. Have you forgotten who I am, little sister?”

Ouch. Born just seconds past Margot, I cross my arms at the “little sister” remark. It hurts. “One and a half minutes does not make you elderly,” I retort. We’ve not had this childish fight for ages.

“No,” Margot replies, lightning-quick. “Life has.”

I reel back, struck again by the change in my sister, who I used to know better than myself. The smiling, carefree Margot, the Margot who used to be boy crazy, who’d skip school with her friends and laugh in the face of danger, is gone. Maybe for good. I miss that Margot: the girl who loved going to parties and being the center of attention, the Margot who lit a room when she walked in. A woman who will barely go outside has replaced that girl. This one is a silent stranger who has lived through more than I will ever know or understand.

But for that matter, I reckon I have, as well. Because I am the sister who followed her to hell and back.

My patience at an end, I frown down at my feet. “What is that about?”

“Don’t try to change the subject.”

“Mar, come on.”

“Are you going to tell me?” she grumbles and takes hold of my arms. She’s stronger than she looks. And I suppose she can’t handle surprises that well any longer.

“Senator Nash,” I blurt out, followed by a distinct, “Ow!” I rub at my flesh as she lets go.

“Okay, I’ll bite.” Margot stands defensively, fists on her hips. “What about Senator Nash?”

“Did Father or Resnikov ever talk about him that you remember?”

Margot bites her lip and retreats behind a shuttered expression. “Not that I can remember.”

“It’s important, Margot. Please try.”

Margot stomps her foot. “I said I don’t remember.”

“Fine. Okay,” I say as a silent moat opens between us. “Thanks anyway.”

I turn to go, but Margot grabs at the sleeve of my tunic again. “Wait—you didn’t tell me.”

“Frankly, you haven’t seemed that interested.” I sniff.

“Lu. Don’t. Please. Tell me about Nash. I’m sorry I lost my temper.”

I relent in the face of Margot’s solemn eyes. We have always been two sides of the same coin, my sister and I. In more ways than one. Blowing the hair from my eyes, I tell her, “He’s better.”

Margot shakes her head. “What do you mean? Better at what?”

“He’s healed, Margot.”

“Healed.” My sister’s face drains of color.

“As in, he was dying last week. This week he seems to be remarkably okay.”

Margot spins and busies herself with gear on the lab bench. “Maybe he’s just in that rebound phase.” She shrugs. “They sometimes get spry just before the end, you know.”

I did know. But that wasn’t it. I pull at my sister’s arm so she’ll face me. “Not this time, Mar.”

She stares at me. Her beautiful long eyelashes flutter over her blue-gray eyes. She tries to hide her reaction, but I can feel it, ricocheting through her body like a bullet. Margot turns her back abruptly. She sobs a deep breath, her entire body heaving with it while I sit inside her skin and battle wave after wave of nausea coming from her.

For a long while we just stand there. Then, as Margot grasps the counter like it will hold her up, I stroke her hair, as I’ve done her whole life long, and croon something wordless meant to soothe.

But no tune will soothe what this news implies.

Because what this means is that not all those babies hanging suspended in jars were destroyed in the fire at Resnikov’s factory. Maybe something of that Plague Cure, fashioned from my sister’s blood and bone, is still around, being bartered by the Upper Circle. Which further means that Margot and I are not safe.

Someone, eventually, will come looking for us.

…

A long moment later, Margot steps away and clears her throat. Back straight as an iron fence, she doesn’t even look at me. “I need to return to work now.”

“What are you working on?”

Margot shrugs. “Doc Raines said something about making DNA zippers. So I’m trying different recombinant sequencing.”

My heart hammers in my chest. I stammer, “Y-You’re splicing our DNA together?”

I don’t know why I’m so horrified. It’s the kind of thing I would do if I weren’t so busy playing spy with Storm. Still, there is something terrible about Margot, my fun-loving, playful Margot, experimenting with our DNA.

“Why?” I ask as the silence between us lengthens.

A crease parts Margot’s forehead. She turns her head, looking around, before telling me in one of our tiny mouse voices, “Because. There must be a reason. What if there’s a cure? A real one?”

“You think Resnikov got it wrong.”

“No.” Margot shakes her head, a faraway look stealing into her eyes. “You don’t understand.”

“What don’t I understand?”

“He wasn’t looking for a cure, now, was he?”

This sinks in slowly, one sickening layer at a time.

…

They say the skies over Dominion were blue once. Once upon a time. Blue all the time, they say, fading to pink at dusk. Blue like a miracle. Now the sky is always white, a burial shroud thrown over the city to cover the mounds of dead. But I’ve seen it once. That miracle, a slice of blue sky. I turn away from the window stretching across one entire wall of Nolan Storm’s office.

“Did you ever see a blue sky, Storm?”

The leader of the True Borns stands against his desk in one of his signature poses: black-trousered legs crossed, sweatered arms crossed. Over his head, humming, crackling lines of power intersect and merge and branch again.

“Yes,” he says, but doesn’t elaborate.

“What did it feel like?”

Storm snorts a short laugh. “It didn’t hurt, if that’s what you mean. It has no weight or substance,” he tells me.

I shake my head. “I mean—did it make you feel…I don’t know. Like there was hope in the world?”

Storm joins me at the window. I don’t have to look. I feel him beside me like a live wire: electric, pulsing with power. “You know,” he tells me now, surveying the world far below his tower-keep window, “it’s only been a few months.”

I hazard a glance at our self-titled guardian. If you can ignore the crown of thorns over his head, he looks the part of any Upper Circle businessman in his well-heeled suit. But there’s wildness, sure as death, just under that veneer of civility and manners. I know better than to think that Nolan Storm is anything other than he is—a True Born god. A man destined to rule, and who’ll do so with bloody hands or not.

“What did you make of Senator Nash’s place?” he says now with an abrupt change of topic.

“I think it was… strange,” I say carefully.

“That’s an answer that a diplomat’s daughter would give. Now give me your real impressions.”

I picture again the black and white tile of the lofty mansion. The impersonal feel to its furnishings, as though someone had hastily moved in and claimed it as his own. The spoils of a political war.

“How long has that been the senator’s home?”

Storm gives me a curious look. “Why do you ask?”

I shrug. “It seemed the home of a nouveau arriver, if you know what I mean.”

Storm shakes his head. “Explain.”

I sit on Storm’s leather cream couch and relay the impressions I’d picked up with Jared. “How can any Splicer from the Upper Circle, even one from outside Dominion, live in such a stately home without even a hint of where all that wealth came from?” I outlay my impressions as carefully as I can. Even the richest senator’s house in Dominion has some personal touches: portraits of their patriarchs, loving paintings of families, spouses, children and dogs. Nash’s home, though, was free of all of these. There were no other family members in his receiving line, either. Not even a distant uncle or cousin. There’s no such thing as a wealthy Splicer without connections.

Storm paces back to his desk, rubbing his jaw in a way that tells me he’s thinking this through. He presses a button. Alma’s voice crackles to life on the intercom. “Yes?”

“Alma, can you send in Jared, please?”

“Certainly, Storm.”

Wintry eyes meet mine. “And what of young master Gordon?”

I stick out my tongue. “First-order letch.”

Storm barks a laugh just as Jared gives a perfunctory knock and enters. He looks every bit the casual fly-by-night type in his brown-corded pants with the bottom hem unraveling. A faded lemon T-shirt with the outlines of OldenTimes bicycles strains across his muscular chest. But it’s the flop of blond hair that falls across his forehead, the insouciant glint to his eye, that makes him seem so maddeningly casual.

Storm nods at his right-hand man. “I need further intelligence on Senator Nash. Particularly how he arrived at his country seat. When it was bought, who sold it to him. Everything you can find out.”

Jared nods. “Already done. It was a Plague sale. Back channels, no real paper trail. Harrington was the original owner up until about a year or so ago. They perished within a month of each other. Last surviving member of the family tree was given very little choice in the sale, or so I understand,” he finishes with a bland look.

Storm’s face turns speculative. “Any family portraits hit the black market lately?”

Jared twists his wrist like it hurts and grins unpleasantly. I wince at his next words. “Black market won’t take ’em anymore. They’re like penny candy that only Upper Circlers would want.”

The old bruise rubs between us. For Jared, the Upper Circle might as well be hell itself. And that is what I am, what Margot is: The epitome of Dominion’s elite, we are its pampered, sheltered daughters. At least we were.

Feeling bleak, I turn toward the window and watch their spectral forms in the sparkling glass as Storm and Jared continue talking. “Good work. Still, I want you to keep an eye out in case any portraits turn up. And keep an ear to the ground with Nash. If any rumors of his involvement with our friends in Russia surface, I want to know about it immediately.”

“Of course,” Jared replies. I feel his eyes raking my back as he stands there a minute too long.

“Was there something else?” Storm asks.

“Nope. I’m good.” A moment later I hear the door click behind him. And the weight in my chest grows heavier.

“Looks like you were right, Lucy. Nash isn’t what he appears to be. Which makes me think that we need to be more careful about what and who he actually is.”

Nolan Storm has sat himself on the corner of his desk, arms folded in his lap. He could be a suitor to swoon over, though I’d as soon say he’s never given the matter much thought. Nolan Storm is concerned with one thing and one thing only: the welfare of the True Borns. Then again, I think as he launches into his next words, perhaps I’ve been mistaken. “I’d like your opinion on how Margot is faring.”

“What do you mean?” In my confusion, the words tumble out like gravel. I clear my throat. “Is there something I should know?”

Storm tilts his head. His liquid metal eyes look through me, piercing my defenses. “I’m simply concerned. We both know that Margot hasn’t quite readjusted to life in Dominion.”

I hang my head. “I don’t know what to do about it,” I answer truthfully.

“Has she given you any indication as to her mental state?”

I shake my head. It’s hard for me to admit that my other half, my twin, won’t let me in. But at certain moments, I can feel it. The bleakness clawing at her. The overwhelming feeling of being alone. It’s so awful I want to yell, I’m right here, Margot.

Storm is quiet for a moment, regarding me with his quicksilver eyes. “I’m worried about her. It might be time to start thinking about interventions.” His words stab through my heart. Still, after a moment’s agony, I realize he’s right. I don’t know how to reach her on my own.

“Like what?”

Storm’s perfect shoulders give a quick shrug. “I’m not sure yet.” He stands, towering over me like the True Born god he is. And some small part of me still trembles before him. He lifts my chin in his hand, cupping my flesh as gently as if I were made of fine china. “Perhaps you’d also benefit from a vacation from all this. You’ve the look of a scared rabbit in a foxhole.”

But there’s no safe place for the scared rabbits to go to ground—not in Dominion. Nothing is safe anymore. Certainly not for the Fox sisters. Even when they’re in their guardian’s hidey-hole. Silence hangs between us like a heavy fog. It’s broken by a metallic thunk as the large, round clock over Storm’s desk with its swordlike hands chops through another hour.

My smile is tight. “I’m fine.” I say the words slowly and carefully.

“Sure you are,” Storm drawls softly. He gathers himself from the desk and claps his hands on my shoulders. “You and I are going to have to come to an understanding, Lucy.”

And once again, I’m met with the strange illusion, as though my eyes can’t stick to Storm’s form. “What do you mean?”

“I’ll be blunt. As I think you are already abundantly aware, to obtain my objectives I need the help of the Fox sisters. Margot has said she will not help, even if she was in any sort of shape to.”

For a moment I blank out the rest of his words. She won’t help? Meaning: She and Storm have had a private discussion about this. And she’s said nothing to me.

“So it falls to you,” he continues. “You have been very helpful. It doesn’t seem fair that so much would be asked of you. Still, I can’t afford to coddle you both.”

The conversation has dipped somehow below arctic waves of meaning. This is the kind of negotiation I understand all too well, having watched my father perform this dance for years. A pit of horror opens in my stomach.

I stare back at my so-called guardian with a carefully blank face.

“I see,” I say. “Yes, of course, we must be able to contribute somehow. And since you already have a cleaning woman…” Storm frowns. I had meant it to come out more humorously. “Is there something more you’d have me do, then? More than helping you collect information, that is?” That last bit I toss in with a shake of my hair. I want him to know I count my services as valuable to him. I don’t have to go asking questions of the likes of Gordon Preston the Third. And I don’t have to share what I learn. I do it because I want to help.

And up until now, I thought we were a team.

Storm’s hands feel like heavy weights upon my shoulders. His huge palms radiate heat. A moment later he tilts my head back with a finger and regards me carefully. A small smile tugs one corner of his lips, transforming the planes of his face into a sculpted work of art. “I’ll let you know, Miss Fox,” he says. Two of his fingers brush across my cheek, so softly I wonder if I have imagined it. In a blink he’s at the door and calls out over his shoulder. “Get Kira to take you shopping again. We have some important outings coming up.”

I sink down onto Storm’s white leather couch. I reckon I’ve landed from one glass bowl to another.

…

Margot leans over the billiards table, her face a study in concentration. I can feel the hitch of her heart as she lines up her shot. Cracks the cue. Balls scatter expertly across the table. She smiles in triumph and the room lights with her beauty.

I’m not the only one who notices. Beside her, as Margot tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, Derek, the boy who calls himself Torch, catches his breath and stares at her in frank admiration.

“Shark,” I say as I breeze into the room.

“Canary,” she replies, not even looking at me.

It’s one of our oldest games, one of the thousand games that stretch between us like the skin we once shared. I stare at my beautiful sister. She holds herself like a regal stranger, the cue in her hands like a monarch’s staff. She’s growing up, it suddenly occurs to me.

I hadn’t expected it to feel so lonely, as though I were being left behind.

A pair of eyes rakes at me from the far side of the room. It’s just the True Born I was hoping to avoid. He holds a book in front of him but seems to be ignoring it in favor of glaring at me. I stick out my tongue at him. But as I turn away, I imagine I see the faintest ghost of a smile hover on his too-perfect lips.

I’ve just settled on a stool to watch the game when the door opens and Storm’s woman, Alma, bustles in. Sometimes, like now, Alma is masked as a den mother in her severe bun and makeup-free face, her clothes functional and dull. Sometimes, though, like when she lets her hair down and it falls around her face like a curtain of rain, I see her as something more: a woman who was once a powerful beauty. A woman who hides out with the True Borns.

I have never yet seen evidence of her being one of them, though it’s true you can’t always tell. Once Margot and I were in a store and saw a woman with an elegant light-blue scarf wound around her neck. It wasn’t until the woman adjusted the folds, looking uncomfortable, that we understood: Beneath the fabric of her scarf a set of gills ran up her neck like a line of tattoos. Maybe they even could have been mistaken for those—if the gills hadn’t started to shuffle in and out.

It’s me Alma comes toward. She holds out an envelope, slightly creased in the middle. “Letter for you, Lucinda,” she says, looking troubled.

“For me?” I echo hollowly. Beside me, Margot has stopped playing.

“Who’s it from?” She frowns. “Our parents?”

I shake my head as I catch sight of the scrawling script. The rounded letters with the large, trailing ends are certainly not the work of someone who had finished Grayguard Academy, our very posh private school.

Alma stares at me awkwardly and nods at the letter in my hand. “That will be trouble, no doubt about it,” she tells me before backing out of the room.

Margot nudges my arm. “Well, aren’t you going to open it?” I stare at the letter as though it’s an unwelcome houseguest. It hadn’t occurred to me to open it right there. I was going to squirrel away to my room first.

And the reason for that gets up off the couch to tower over me, wearing a venomous expression. “Well, Lu? Aren’t you going to answer your sister?”

“No.” I turn heel and rush out the door. But I should know better by now. True Borns smell blood.

Jared’s footsteps ring behind me, and a moment later he’s before me, arm outraised to halt me. His voice is silk, but I can hear the iron underneath. “Who’s it from, Lu? Open the letter.”

“None of your business,” I throw back.

“I’m your security. So it is my business. What if it’s booby-trapped? In fact, that’s a good reason for me to open it,” he says, pulling the letter neatly from my grasp.

I gasp in outrage. “Don’t you dare, Jared. That letter is addressed to me, and it’s personal.”

I don’t really know this, in fact. But it stands to reason. I can count on one hand the number of letters I’ve received in my life. But I know that scrawl. From the look on Jared’s face—eyes narrowing at the script even as his nose quivers, scenting the sender from the paper—so does he.

“So,” he drawls. “Made yourself a pen pal for life, did you?”

“Yes, I did. And so did you,” I argue, grabbing at Jared’s arm. He holds the letter up high, away from me, like a schoolboy’s prank. I lunge at him. I get no closer to the letter, but I end up just inches from his oh-so-handsome face. Close enough to be reminded that under all that beauty lies a feral animal. The bones in his cheeks carve out. He’s not just angry. If Ali were to walk through the door right now, blood would be shed.

“You have no right,” I seethe, though whether I’m talking about his anger or his actions, I’m not certain.

Jared’s nostrils flare. I can tell he’s atomizing my scent. He once told me it makes him feel calm. It’s a reaction I can trace now, as rational thought creeps back into his eyes and he continues to stare at me with a haunted expression.

“I told you there would be problems, Lu.” His words are oddly shaky as he hands me the letter. It hangs there, suspended between our fingers as a wound opens that maybe we can’t solve right now. Because Jared and I both know what is likely to be inside the pages of this letter. As my mother always said, young men don’t write letters to ladies they don’t admire.