CHAPTER 2
THE NEXT TWO DAYS saw their sector blanketed in snowfall.
Rolling power outages swept across the city in waves.
In between the extra shifts she’d been able to pick up at the factory, Dani huddled with her sisters in front of the fire, reading from her father’s books and watching Evan sketch funny cartoon drawings of Cinder peering imperiously down her nose at them, demanding more chicken broth.
Ava was in good spirits, dancing around the apartment on socked feet and talking about the news of the royal ball that was all over the media feeds. And although everyone held their breath every time they tested her blood, her blood sugar levels remained stable.
But Dani knew they were on borrowed time.
The single vial of insulin they had would last them until the end of the month.
No longer. With the citywide shortages, who knew how long it would be until they managed to find another one?
That was how Ava had gotten so desperately sick before, after being forced to ration her insulin, skipping doses for weeks while Evan and Dani scoured the city in search of more.
The following day, Dani pushed open the door to the legal aid office, signed in on the clipboard at the front desk, and took a seat in the hard plastic chairs out in the waiting area.
The social services building was a drab cinderblock structure, forced to house so many different agencies that she’d lost count.
There was always a long line at the window for food and housing assistance.
This time of year, there typically wasn’t much in the way of extra food to be found, but in the summer and fall, there were sometimes boxes distributed out back at the loading docks if you got there in time before it was all given away, typically excess crops produced in the fae lands.
The first time Evan had brought a box home, they’d been terrified to eat anything from inside, worried consuming the strange faerie fruit would cause one of them to fall into a trance and start dancing in their sleep, or grow roots and turn into one of the fae that were rumored to take on tree forms. But other than a bit of indigestion from eating too much of the sickly-sweet fruit in one sitting (it had been quite good and they so rarely got fresh produce), nothing happened.
A girl about her age or perhaps a few years older slid into the seat beside her, snow still clinging to her coat. She pulled off her hat, revealing dark curly hair. “It’s been a day.”
“You can say that again.” Dani stared out at the window where snow continued to swirl down. “I love watching the snow fall at night with a warm cup of tea, but trudging two miles out to my worksite through a foot of it gets old fast.”
“Where do you work?”
“The shipping distribution center east of town.”
“I’m Giselle. I wash dishes at a restaurant in the Old City.”
“Dani Girard.”
Together, they watched the muted television screen in the corner of the room, where the king and an unsmiling Crown Prince Alexander swept through the opulent ballroom at the imperial palace.
According to the ticker tape scrolling across the bottom of the screen, rumors were swirling that the prince was close to announcing his engagement to Lara Cavalieri, heiress to a billion-dollar pharmaceutical fortune.
Dani sighed. “How many times do you think they’re going to replay that clip of the royal ball announcement?
If I have to see Cruel Prince Alexander glare out at his gilded ballroom one more time while ordering us to eat expensive cheese and buy smoked salmon for our cats, I think I might smack his spoiled royal face. ”
Giselle snorted. “If I had smoked salmon, believe me, I wouldn’t be feeding it to the cat.”
“Ours considers it a fine day when she finds rats.”
The sole bright spot, of course, was that with talk of the prince’s impending royal engagement flooding the news cycles, the picture the surveillance cameras had managed to capture of her was getting completely buried.
Giselle snorted. “I heard the rumored engagement to Lara Cavalieri is a sham. Supposedly, they can’t stand each other, but their fathers are trying to force them to wed in order to cement a political alliance. They say she’s as awful as he is.”
“Sounds like a perfect match,” Dani began just as the replay on the television was interrupted to cut to new programming.
Crown Prince Alexander appeared before the cameras once again. This time he was alone, without the king present. The gathered reporters began shouting questions as soon as he came out, but quieted when the prince held up a hand to silence them.
“I know with the holidays approaching, you all share the same concerns I do about the recent increase in crime we’ve been seeing in certain parts of the city.
My father has been working hard, along with local business leaders, to foster economic development, improve working conditions, and bring more good jobs into this sector.
Organized crime rings hurt that economic mission.
If your family is struggling, reach out to our aid centers.
From our family to yours, we wish you a continued safe holidays as we prepare for a joyous celebration at the end of the month. ”
“That’s the only thing that makes me like him more than the rest of them,” Giselle said under her breath.
“Sorry?” Dani was pretty sure she was going to be sick.
“With most vampires, I don’t trust a word out of their mouths.
Everything from their appearance to the way they try to convince us that this year, this time, things will get better if we’ll just trust them…
it’s always lies. With Alexander, what you see is what you get.
Have you ever seen him smile, even once? ”
“No,” Dani said darkly. “He looks absolutely miserable. Which certainly didn’t stop him from drafting the king’s policies last year restricting the working class to only one registered work permit per household.”
The ruling had been applauded by the aristocracy. It was popular among young vampires in particular, who were frustrated by a stagnant economy that had failed to make any meaningful steps towards recovery and rebuilding thirty years after the worldwide population had been decimated.
In reality, the only ones who benefitted were the merchants who no longer had to pay a decent wage.
The change had essentially forced all other members of the household to work for slave wages instead of taking legitimate jobs.
Anyone hired without a permit was paid half what a permitted worker earned, often less, and had to perform the most dangerous and undesirable jobs.
“Good luck,” Giselle said as she was called back for her appointment.
Prince Alexander stepped back from the podium, allowing one of the sector police captains to take his place.
“In order to ensure the security of all citizens in our sector, new procedures will be put into place for all persons moving in and out of the city, effective immediately.”
The captain droned on about increased inspections, new checkpoints, and consequences for anyone caught harboring known criminals.
“We believe this person to be a suspected terrorist who attacked multiple victims two nights ago in the Old City. Due to the nature of the assault, she is believed to be infected with the aberrant virus and should not be approached.”
Dani forced herself to glance up with bored disinterest as her image flashed up on the screen.
The picture was the same grainy one that had gone out across the media feeds the first night.
While it was alarming knowing it was an image of her, it was difficult to discern much detail at all besides a thin woman with dark blonde hair in a long black coat struggling between two men.
Her phone buzzed, and she nearly jumped a foot. A woman in the next row of seats glanced over, frowning.
Stupid.
She had to be more careful, especially now that everyone in the sector was looking for her.
She pulled out her phone, heart sinking when she read the text from Ava.
Ava: I heard you the other night, when you thought I was asleep. I know where you and Evan want to send me.
Dani thought she would be sick. She’d been frustrated. Panicking. They’d both been sure Ava was out cold. And that was no excuse. Evan would feed all her scraps of sketch paper into the fire when she realized what they’d done.
Dani: First of all, that is not even up for discussion. I will cage fight any werewolf who dares to darken our doorstep, and you know how scary I can be during period week when Evan accidentally hides the hot water bottle.
Ava: True.
Dani: And I’m so sorry you heard that. It was total sister fail on our part. Can we talk about this more when I get home?
Nothing about their government-issued phones was secure.
Every citizen in their sector over the age of ten was required to carry one.
They were a way of maintaining official documents, but mostly of tracking and monitoring movements throughout the city.
If Evan’s contacts weren’t so handy at altering data and removing tracking software, they all would have been picked up long before now.
Ava: I’m not a little kid. You two shouldn’t be talking about me like I’m not there. This is my life. I should get to decide.
Except, how was she supposed to tell her sister who one minute would be dancing around the house in her sock feet with Evan to Christmas songs on the radio and the next, crying because her toes were so numb she could barely feel them, how bleak their options truly were?
Dani: You’re right. From now on, we talk things through together. Along with The Supreme Overlord.
She sent a picture of Cinder that she’d taken by the window that morning, just before she’d let her out to prowl the back alley for rats. Smoked salmon, indeed. If His Royal Highness had a cat, she was sure it was spoiled rotten.
“Dani?” She looked up to see a young vampire standing in the doorway, dressed in a gray waffle shirt and worn jeans.