Chapter 2 Miranda
MIRANDA
Logic is a failsafe. When the gears grind and the mechanism threatens to seize, you fall back on the schematics.
I stare at the rusted iron nails driven into the window frame. My first instinct—the foster kid instinct—tells me to run. It screams that this is a cage. But then the mechanic in me takes over, forcing the panic down into a pressurized container in my gut.
"Paranoia is not helping," I mutter, stepping back from the glass.
I force myself to turn around and walk to the bedroom door. If this were a horror movie—one of those Insidious flicks with the red doors and the jump scares—this door would be locked too. I’d be sealed in with the porcelain dolls and the suffocating smell of dried roses.
I grip the brass knob. It’s cold.
I turn it.
The latch clicks smoothly, a well-oiled interaction of metal on metal, and the door swings open into the dimly lit corridor.
See? It’s nothing. If they wanted to keep me prisoner, they wouldn't leave the main egress wide open. The window is probably just storm-proofing. This is hurricane country. People nail things down when the wind threatens to strip the siding off the house. I’m letting the atmosphere of this rotting pile of lumber mess with my calibration.
I step out into the hall. The gas lamps hiss, a low-frequency white noise that grates on my nerves. I need to find someone. I need a verbal confirmation that I’m just being an idiot.
"Hello?" My voice gets swallowed by the heavy velvet wallpaper.
Down the hall, a shadow detaches itself from an alcove. It’s a maid, dressed in a uniform that looks like it was stolen from a 19th-century period drama—stiff black wool, white apron, zero personality. She’s holding a feather duster like a weapon.
"Excuse me," I say, walking toward her. My boots sound too loud on the hardwood. "I had a question about my room."
She turns slowly. Her face is slack, her eyes wide and watery. She looks at me, but I’m not sure she sees me. She’s staring somewhere near my left ear.
"The window," I say, pointing back toward my door. "It’s nailed shut. From the outside."
"To keep the damp out," she says. Her voice is monotone, a flat line on an oscilloscope.
"With iron spikes?" I cross my arms. "seems excessive for humidity."
"To keep the beasts out," she corrects herself, though the tone doesn't change. "The swamp is alive at night. Things crawl up the siding. Things that want to get inside."
I blink. "Wild beasts? What, do you have raccoons with lock-picking kits? Can a gator climb three stories of vertical siding?"
I’m joking—it’s a deflection mechanism—but she doesn't laugh. She doesn't even blink. She just keeps staring at the side of my head with those watery, vacant eyes. The silence stretches, pulling tight like a rubber band about to snap.
"Right," I say, the word sounding hollow. "Beasts. Got it."
She turns back to the wall and starts dusting a frame that doesn't look dusty.
I retreat to my room. The logic holds—technically—but the data is corrupted. The maid acted like she was heavily medicated or terrified. But I can't leave now. I have a dinner invitation, and it’s only polite to attend since I’m already here.
I look at the red silk dress on the bed. It gleams under the chandelier light, looking wet.
"No," I say.
Wearing that feels like conceding ground. It feels like putting on a costume for a play I didn't audition for. If I’m going down to meet the family, I’m doing it as Miranda Fredson, clock mechanic, not as the long-lost Duval heiress doll.
I open my battered suitcase. I pull out the only semi-formal thing I own—a black vintage midi dress with a high neck and long sleeves. It’s severe, structured. It’s armor.
I move to the vanity mirror. The glass is old, silver-spotted with age, distorting my reflection.
I look tired. My skin is pale, a stark contrast to the dark fabric of the dress. I’ve always looked a little sickly, a little too sharp-edged for comfort. My features are angular—high cheekbones that could cut glass and a jawline that suggests I’m grinding my teeth in my sleep. Which I usually am.
I pull the pins out of my hair. The platinum blonde mess falls around my shoulders. It’s chaotic, refusing to sit smooth, static electricity making it cling to my neck. I try to tame it, but it’s a losing battle, so I just pin the front pieces back to keep them out of my face.
Then there are the eyes.
I take off my tinted glasses. The violet irises stare back at me. It’s a mutation, the doctors said. Genetic drift. But looking at them now, in this house, they look unnatural. They look like the color of a bruise. I slide the glasses back on. Better to filter the world. Better to hide the defect.
I touch the starburst birthmark at my throat, right where the pulse beats a frantic rhythm.
"Pull it together, Mir," I whisper. "It’s just dinner. Eat the soup, make small talk, leave in the morning."
The dining room is a cavern of shadows.
The table is a slab of polished mahogany that stretches long enough to seat thirty, but only six places are set. The only light comes from silver candelabras dripping hot wax onto the wood. The air smells of copper and heavy, cloying lilies.
Matilde sits at the very head of the table like a queen on a throne of carved ebony.
She’s flanked by four others—three men and a woman—all sharing that same starving, aristocratic beauty.
They are impossibly still. No fidgeting.
No micro-movements. It’s biologically wrong.
Even when people sit still, they breathe, they shift weight.
These people sit like statues waiting for a command.
"You did not wear the dress," Matilde says. Her voice travels the length of the table without raising in volume.
"It wasn't my style," I say, taking the seat at the far end. "I prefer my own gear."
"A pity," the woman to my right says. She has hair like spilled ink and lips that are too red. "Red suits the season. It hides the stains."
I don't ask what stains.
A servant—not the maid from upstairs, but a man with the same vacant expression—places a bowl in front of me. It’s a dark, rich broth. No one else has food. Their plates are empty, pristine china gleaming in the candlelight.
"Aren't you eating?" I pick up my spoon. The metal feels heavy, unbalanced.
"We have already supped," a man on the left says. He’s older, with silver at his temples and a face that looks like it was chiseled from marble. "Please. Do not let our abstinence disturb your appetite."
I take a sip. It tastes like venison and rosemary.
It’s good, but my throat is so tight it feels like I’m swallowing gravel.
Every time I lift the spoon, five pairs of eyes track the movement.
They watch my throat work. They watch the pulse in my wrist. It’s predatory.
I feel like a mouse eating cheese in a room full of vipers.
I really want to ask for my cousins’ names but the nervousness is getting at me. Matilde didn’t even bother to introduce them.
The silence is heavy, pressing against my eardrums. I need to break it. I need to normalize the pressure before the tank blows.
"So," I say, setting the spoon down. "I didn't see much of the town coming in. The fog was pretty thick. But I saw some lights across the bayou when I got turned around near the bridge. Looked festive."
The temperature in the room drops. I didn't think it was possible, but the air actually gets colder.
"The bridge," the silver-haired man sneers. His upper lip curls, revealing teeth that look too white, too straight. "You speak of the filth in the swamp."
"I just meant the Christmas lights," I say, defensive. "Someone over there really went all out. It looked nice. A little color in the grey."
"It is a garish display," Matilde says. Her fingers drum on the table—tap, tap, tap—a slow, rhythmic sound that syncs with my racing heart.
"The mongrels lack the capacity for elegance.
They cling to their human holidays like children clinging to a security blanket.
We do not speak of that side of the Parish in this house. "
"Mongrels?" I ask. "You mean the neighbors? The ones with the boats?"
"I mean the animals," the silver-haired man hisses. "The fleas that infest the mud."
Okay. Wow. So we’re dealing with some serious Hatfield and McCoy classism here. Rich plantation owners hating the swamp folks. It tracks. It’s a common enough narrative in the south, but the venom in his voice... it’s visceral. It sounds like he wants to hunt them for sport.
"Right," I say, backing down. "No Christmas lights. Got it. I guess I’m just used to the city. Chicago is lit up like a circuit board this time of year."
"Chicago," Matilde muses. "So far away. And yet, you found your way back to the vein."
She stands up. The movement is fluid, silent. She picks up her crystal flute. It’s filled with a dark, viscous red liquid. Wine, I tell myself. It’s just a heavy vintage.
"A toast," she says.
The others stand in unison. The sound of their chairs sliding back is the only noise in the room. I scramble up on my feet, my knees knocking against the table leg. I grab my own glass. It’s filled with the same dark liquid.
"To the Duval line," Matilde says, raising the glass. Her eyes lock onto mine. "To the purity of the blood. And to the return of the lost sheep to the slaughter."
Purity of the blood? Slaughter?
My brain stutters on the word. Did she just say slaughter?
"To the blood," the others echo, their voices a low, harmonious drone.
My hand is shaking. It’s a tremor I can't control, a vibration starting in my elbow and running down to my fingertips. The mainspring is wound too tight. The torque is too high.
I try to bring the glass to my lips to fake a sip, but my grip spasms.
Crr-ack.
The sound is sharp, like a gunshot in a library. The delicate crystal implodes in my hand.
I gasp, dropping the stem. It hits the table, sending the dark wine spilling across the white tablecloth like an arterial spray. But mixed with the wine is something brighter. Brighter red.
I look at my thumb. A shard of crystal has sliced deep into the pad. A single drop of my blood wells up, perfectly round, defying gravity for a split second before it falls.
Drip.
It hits the table.
The smell hits me instantly. It doesn't smell like iron. It smells electric. It smells like nature and sugar and something ancient.
The reaction is instantaneous.
The polite, statuesque veneers of my "cousins" shatter faster than the glass.
The woman with the ink-black hair inhales sharply, her head snapping toward me. The sound she makes is wet, hungry.
I look at the silver-haired man. His eyes are gone. The whites, the irises—they’ve been swallowed by a black tide. His pupils have dilated to cover the entire surface of the eye. It’s biological horror. It’s a shark rolling its eyes back before a strike.
And then the teeth.
The gum line recedes, the jaw unhinges slightly, and long, needle-sharp fangs descend from the upper row. It’s mechanical. It’s a weapon deployment.
"Matilde?" I whisper, backing away. My legs hit the chair.
Matilde isn't looking at the spilled wine. She’s looking at my bleeding thumb. She smiles, and her mouth is full of razors.
"The glass is broken," she says softly. "The blood is spilled. We can sample the feast and wait for The Truce of the Longest Night to end to savor the full delicacy."
She leans across the table, her spine elongating, her fingers curling into claws that dig into the wood. She looks at me not as a relative, but as livestock.
She lunges.