Page 7 of The Lies We Conjure
The Blood Line. The Celestial Line. The Death Line.
And us—the Elemental Line.
Here, now, together again, and with a full two generations of each High Family of the Four Lines—for the first time since Marcos Blackgate was alive.
My cousins are wrong. I don’t know what Ursula has planned.
Ursula does everything by her own rules. No compromises. No mercy.
I don’t know why the Blackgate heirs were ordered to make an appearance after a decade away. I don’t know why they complied.
But I do know both my cousins are wasting their time.
It doesn’t matter what Ursula has planned and it doesn’t matter why the girls have finally appeared. We’ll have answers soon enough. Ursula Hegemony will make sure of that.
CHAPTER4
RUBY
The partygoers descend like vultures. Swooping in, all speed and precision, talons extended toward the fresh meat.
Wren and I—Kaysa and Lavinia.
The Cerises take the left flank. The Starwoods the right.
Ostensibly, Marsyas is clutching us for support, but in that first moment I feel that if I weren’t holding on to the soft swell of the woman’s forearm, I might float away altogether.
Because, as they close in, I am sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that these people will know we’re total fakes. And then we’ll really be in trouble.
I brace myself as Hector Cerise greets us first. Like his wife and seventeen-year-old twins, he has the air of old Hollywood, as if they were made to be in black and white. To wit, Hector is all slicked-back hair and cigar smoke clinging to his navy suit coat and pants as he crashes into our three-person line with a showman’s gravitas. It’s impossible to miss a large ruby ring on his right index finger as his hands press together in front of his chest.
“Marsyas, you’ve enticed your girls into coming!” he exclaims—bowing to Marsyas like she’s royalty and not an old lady dressed in dead animals. “After all these years? Bravo!”
“And what fine young ladies they’ve become,” crows Luna Starwood from the elbow of her grandchild, Infinity. They’re both wearing gauzy white, paired with brilliant grins on their dark brown faces. They look about a thousand times more comfortable than I feel. Luna’s midnight gaze meets mine. “You must be Lavinia?” I nod automatically, wondering how she got it right on the first guess. Really, for all our differences, Wren and I look alike. Similar height,bone structure, coloring. “And Kaysa, how lovely are those hazel eyes?”
And now I know. Something subtle. The smallest of tests passed.
“They’re just the spitting image of Marcos’s gaze, Marsyas,” agrees Sanguine Cerise, Hector’s wife. Every one of her attributes is best described with a “very”—very tiny waist, very big boobs, very sharp cheekbones, very blond hair, very red nails, all wrapped in a very tight long-sleeved dress. And apparently, she’sverypointed in her commentary too.
Sanguine doesn’t mean to be unkind—I think—but under my grasp, Marsyas tenses at the mention of her late son’s name. Wren catches it too, immediately giving “Nona” a loving pat while cooing, “Such a compliment, Mrs. Cerise. Why, thank you so much.”
“Call me Sanguine, darling. And Hector is fine for my love.” Sanguine gropes Hector’s bicep as if we’d have some sort of confusion over whom her heart adores. They seem like the type of couple that mistakes codependence for affection. “Kaysa and Lavinia, please meet the twins, Ada and Hex.”
Wrapped in a dress with longer sleeves than a hem, Ada is her mother without all the extremes, soft and natural, like a museum painting of a girl frocking among wildflowers. Or maybe poppies. Something poisonous. Hex—short for Hector Junior according to Marsyas’s document—is tall and dapper like his father in a matching navy suit. He has the bearing of an athlete—the kind named team captain not out of talent but out of fear. Given that he’s a varsity linebacker, he probably shoves kids into lockers as a pre-practice warmup at the fancy Pinault Day School the twins attend.
“We know each other, Mama,” Hex scoffs, his coal-dark eyes pinned on me. My heart gives a little kick.
“Prancing around in your nappies a dozen years ago doesn’t imply knowing them as they currently are,” Sanguine insists with a dismissive wave that has me noticing that it’s not just Hector—all four of them are wearing matching rings on their pointer fingers. I don’t know the first thing about gems but these aren’t costume jewelry. Rubies, garnets, or whatever they are, they have the weight ofa family heirloom. I wouldn’t know. The pearl earrings I’m wearing are the closest thing I have to my own and they’re not even real.
Ada frowns at Wren. “I thought you preferred ‘Kay’?”
Shit,I think, but Wren handles this little snag like a pro with a shrug. “I grew out of it. Kaysa fits me better these days.”
Ada’s lips twitch as she accepts my sister’s outstretched hand, but she doesn’t comment further. Phew. Keeping to my current plan of smiling and saying as little as possible, I accept Ada’s hand next with the barest of pleasantries.
Meanwhile, when I move to Hex, there’s a sharp edge to his features, and his long fingers are far too cold for the summer night. His unfortunate nickname does his general air of presentation no favors.
As I’m doing everything I can not to rub my clammy, and now chilly, hand against the lovely silk of myvery expensivedress, a musical voice calls to us from somewhere in the vicinity of the manor.
