Read Online Nameless: A Tale of Beauty and Madness by Lili St. Crow - Free Book Online Page A

S-s-seventh.”
There’s plenty of youngbloods, even if they’re not Lineage.
    “I won’t let that happen. Every boy’s Wild before he steps into the Seven, Cami. I’m just doing what they want, still.” He sighed. “I can’t get away from it.”
    She squirmed until she could put her arms around him, and the sound of rain filled the silence with its deep silvery mutter.
    “You’ve been having more bad dreams, too.” He was taller than her, but he still managed to curl up and rest his head on her shoulder. It was uncomfortable, but neither of them wanted to admit they were too big for the chair. “You always do before your birthday.”
    She was hard-put to stifle a groan.
We don’t know my birthday.
But Papa had suggested Octovus, because it was Dead Harvest season, and because that way she would have presents twice in a year, not just near Mithrusmas. It was nice . . . but still, sometimes, she wondered when her birthday
really
was.
    And if she would ever really know.
    “Sweet sixteen, and a big party all planned,” Nico teased. “Wait until you see what I got you.” And he wouldn’t tell, no matter how Cami poked him. For the rest of the evening she forgot the world-tilting feeling, and everything was all right again.

EIGHT
    T HE SHOPS IN H AVEN S OUTH—THE OLD CITY—WERE mostly run by jacks. You could, if the wind was right, hear the sirens from the blighted urban core, and sometimes on the news there was footage of a stray minotaur stamping through smoke and dusk up the center of zigzagging Southking Street. It would shrug through canvas awnings, jacks and humans scattering, gaining what safety they could as the shifting bullheaded thing made of mutating Potential and pain ran itself into nothingness, away from the core-chaos that gave it birth.
    Sometimes minotaurs happened in the suburbs too, but not often. It took a huge irruption of hate- or rage-fueled Potential before they were even viable, let alone heavy enough to coalesce onto a person and spin them past jack, past Twist even, into the shadow-realm of cannibal monster with hulking shoulders and wide-horned, bone-shielded head.
    Following Ruby down Southking Street deserved its own athletic badge. Usually Ellie was there to steer Cami through the crowd and track Ruby down after she got excited and zoomed away to look at
oh my God this cute little thing!
But Ell was still in what Rube called Strep Durance Vile, and Cami glanced away from Ruby’s copperbright hair for just a moment, when a jack with warty gray skin held up a fistful of thin silver bangles and shook them, cawing her sellsong.
    “
Pret-
ty things for a
pret-
ty girl, come buy some sweetsilver miss?” The jack’s mouth split open, showing broad yellow teeth, and the edge of Potential between her and Cami flashed into visibility for a moment. It crackled with hexagram flashes, a shiver spilling down Cami’s spine as she backed away, almost tripping, and looked wildly around for Ruby.
    No luck.
    The lunchtime crowd was thick and she should have been in French class, bored out of her mind and droning along with Sister Mary Brefoil as verbs were conjugated and sleepy slants of thin autumn sunshine pierced Juno’s high narrow windows. But Ruby had cajoled, Ruby had wheedled, Ruby had said,
You’re only young once and I need to shop
 . . . and Cami had given in.
    Stay calm. You’ll find her.
She might even go back to Ruby’s car—they had parked on Highclere, and Cami could go back and wait. If all else failed she could find a public shell and call the house. If Marya picked up, Nico would come get her. But it was Thursday—Market Day for most of New Haven—and Marya might be a-marketing in the Arbor to the north, where the servants for the upper crust and the powerful and Sigiled charmers did their shopping for organics and Twist-free produce from certified kolkhozes, and other essentials. So the phone might ring, Chauncey or Stevens might pick up, and she’d have to