Tangled Webs

bringing him right next to her chair. He leaned over. One hand cupped her face while his lips lightly brushed her cheek.
    The Sadist whispered in her ear, “He was grateful when I let him die.”
    She shivered—and knew he felt the shiver.
    Daemon stepped back. “I’ll tell Jaenelle you’ll be there for opening night. Rainier is planning to attend too.”
    He walked out of the room.
    She set the box and invitation aside, then got up, wincing as her left side twinged in protest. Her main objection to this required training with Lucivar was that she didn’t want her male relatives to know how weak she still was. Well, she had a few weeks before Winsol. If she could keep her relatives at bay until then, she’d be able to convince them that they had been fussing over nothing.
    Although, come to think of it, they were probably getting daily reports from the Healer Sadi had hired to look in on her every day, and knew her condition better than she did. And Jaenelle would have understood every nuance of what the poison had done to her and how long it would take her to heal. While Daemon had been tucking her into the town house and giving Helton instructions about meals and visitors, Jaenelle had probably given the Healer explicit instructions of what to watch for to assure that the healing was progressing as it should.
    So maybe it had been foolish stubbornness that had made her argue against having the finest Healer in Kaeleer keeping an eye on her, but Jaenelle was family. Right now Surreal would have felt smothered if she’d been fussed over too much by family. She considered it sufficient punishment that Helton was fussing over her. At least he was restrained by his position as the town house’s butler and had to back off if she snarled at him.
    Unfortunately, her relatives thought being snarled at meant her health was improving and that only encouraged them to be bigger pains in the ass.
    They had her well and truly chained. Oh, they were giving her breathing room and the illusion of independence, but until she was fully healed, Lucivar and Daemon would continue circling, would continue to keep watch—and anything that was perceived as a threat would disappear before it got close enough for her to be aware of its presence.
    So she would go to Ebon Rih, and she would find a way to break the chains family had woven around her. She had a better chance of doing that with Lucivar, of getting him to agree to back off. If Daemon, on the other hand, felt a need to tighten those chains…
    The look in his eyes. The sound of his voice when the tone was both seduction and threat.
    Chilled to the bone, she stretched out on the sofa, put a warming spell on the blanket Helton had brought in earlier, and tucked it around her.
    Was Jenkell still alive when the fire took the house?
    Sadi hadn’t answered her question.
    Maybe that was for the best.

TWENTY-NINE
     
     
    “D on’t write in the dust, darling. That’s rude.”
    “‘Hello, pree.’ What does ‘pree’ mean?”
    “It’s ‘prey.’ ‘Hello, prey.’” Pause. “Oh, dear.”
    “Mama, that’s a mouse made of bones.”
    “Mouse? Where? ”
    “Bwaa ha ha!”

    Surreal bit her lip as the ghost boy reached for the door he’d been told not to open. She wanted to scream at him, rage at him. But there was no one to scream at, nothing to rage at, so she turned and stared at sooty layers of cobwebs that were clotting one corner of the dining room ceiling.
    She felt Rainier come up beside her, positioning himself so that he blocked even her peripheral view of what was happening.
    “I know it’s just entertainment,” she said. “I know it isn’t real, and I know Jaenelle and Marian created it before we walked into that trap, but…”
    “I can’t watch it either,” Rainier said. He tipped his chin toward the cobwebs. “What do you think those are supposed to do?”
    As if in answer, two spots began to glow and became eyes within a cobweb face shaped by a breath of air. Pieces of cobweb extended out, becoming an arm—and a hand with its fingers curled. The arm turned. The hand opened. And…
    Surreal blinked.
    “Bats?” Rainier asked. “Are those tiny bats?”
    “Sparkly, Jewel-colored bats,” she said. “Must be one of Tersa’s spells.”
    By the time the last sparkly bat winked out and the cobwebs once again looked like sooty, clotted cobwebs, Surreal was ready to follow the rest of the guests who were leaving the dining room.
    She found her