Tangled Webs

meant Jaenelle was also her sister now.
    And there was another connection between them. If Jaenelle hadn’t saved her and brought her to Kaeleer, she wouldn’t have survived the attack by five Eyrien Warlords, and if she hadn’t survived, she wouldn’t have fallen in love with a strong, wonderful man, and she wouldn’t have a son.
    So she owed Jaenelle. But debt or not, family or not, there was only so much ick a hearth witch could handle.
    “Yes,” she said. “Those cobwebs definitely will have to be cleaned out.”
    “No. Well, yes, those will have to be cleaned out, but we’ll put new cobwebs in the corners. Black, sooty strands. Clots and layers. Maybe add an illusion spell in a couple of them so it looks like there’s something moving.”
    Marian shuddered. Her membranous wings, shades darker than her brown skin, were pulled in tight to her body, an instinctive response to make herself look smaller. “They think our homes have cobwebs?” She wasn’t sure if she was insulted or appalled.
    “And rats,” Jaenelle said cheerfully as she called in a list and handed it to Marian. “I took notes when I was talking to the boys.”
    Those weren’t boys, Marian thought darkly as she studied the list. Those were maggot-brained little beasts. “We can’t have rats.”
    “Not real rats,” Jaenelle conceded. “But we can create a skittering noise so it sounds like there are rats in the walls.” She looked around, considering, then frowned as they both heard a skitter skitter .
    Marian closed her eyes for a moment. They’d bring some of the kindred wolves with them the next time to deal with the rats already in residence.
    “So these”— maggot-brained beasts— “boys think the Blood live in moldy rooms with creaking doors and squeaking floors and furniture that hasn’t been dusted in a decade, and we eat in rooms that have cobwebs in the corners and rats in the walls.”
    Jaenelle smiled brightly. “Yes. Exactly.”
    Marian walked around the table that clogged the center of the room. What would it take to clean that thing? Maybe a chisel. Or a sledgehammer. She stopped at the serving board and stared at the silver serving tray set just off center enough to make her grit her teeth.
    At least, she thought it was silver under all that tarnish.
    Seeing it made something in her brain fizzle. She turned and marched to the closest door, baring her teeth in a silent snarl as she turned the grimy doorknob. It took some muscle to open the stuck door, but when she finally succeeded, she discovered it wasn’t a way out of the room. It was a storage cupboard with shelves that had more blackened silver and bug-infested linen. And she couldn’t take any more.
    “Why not a rotting corpse?” Marian said in a voice so snippy she didn’t recognize it as her own. “Wouldn’t we lock our enemies in a cupboard and let them starve to death while they watch us dine?”
    “Well…,” Jaenelle began.
    “You said you were thinking of ghostly narrators. So just tell the” —maggot-brained beasts— “boys not to open that door. If they’re anything like Daemonar, they’ll open the door as soon as they can just to find out why they’re not supposed to.”
    “But these aren’t little children Daemonar’s age,” Jaenelle protested. “These children will be old enough to have gone through the Birthright Ceremony—or would be if they were Blood. A child that age is not going to open a door after he’s been told not to.”
    “Then have an illusion of a boy the right age. Have him be the one who opens the door. In fact, don’t even have a knob on the door until the ghost boy appears. Then a ghostly knob will appear that only he can turn.”
    “He’d been told not to open the door, but he did—and the knob came off in his hand, breaking the locking spell on the door,” Jaenelle said. “The ghost boy will back away, and visitors will hear a malevolent laugh as the door slowly opens.”
    “And that’s when they’ll see the skeleton of the boy who had been told not to open that door and had disobeyed.”
    And, apparently, would still be disobedient even as a ghost.
    “The skeleton,” Jaenelle said softly. “Yes. A boy’s skeleton. With just enough scalp left to hold a little hair, but otherwise ragged clothing over clean bones.”
    “Isn’t that what we all have in the closet that holds the tablecloths and napkins?”
    Silence filled the room. Then…
    “Marian,” Jaenelle breathed,