Snow by Tracy Lynn Page B

observed as the seconds stretched out. Pretty little silver ones, in the shape of a bird, something large and vaguely foreign,
“‘My’ ‘Daughter.’
How about a brother just like you?”
    Snow’s instinct was to look at the duchess’s face and belly, but she didn’t feel she could let her eyes stray from the other’s for a second.
    “Am I to congratulate you, My Lady?” she whispered.
    The duchess threw her head back and laughed. One of her hands whipped out with praying mantis precision and grabbed a lock of Snow’s hair. With a slower, slightly unsteadier movement, she snipped it off with the shears.
    Snow didn’t move.
    The duchess held the raven lock up to the light and looked at it with a critical eye. Then she turned and walked out.
    “Get Gwen to fix your hair,” she said over her shoulder.

    Spring came again, and still there was no heir for the duke, nor release for Snow.

Chapter Ten
A RAG, A BONE, A HANK OF HAIR
     
    “
I
t should work.
Why doesn’t it work?”
    Alan stood by the mirror, not compelled to hold it this time. Instead he surveyed the scene on the laboratory table from a safe distance, behind the duchess.
    Machinery hummed: strange things powered by strikes of lightning baited and caught by rods the duchess had had him mount outside her window, A series of brass rods and gears wove their way from the machines to the table and through a mirror with a frame similar to the one Alan was often burdened with. This one was smoky and black and didn’t reflect things properly, He tried not to look in it.
    What the mirror was aimed at was more horrible still. Propped up like a doll in the middle of the table was a stuffed body made of pink muslin, A baby’s skull, dug up from a cemetery—a memory Alan wished he could erase—was sewn to the top, and pearl button eyes were hammered into its sockets. Horribly familiar black hair was nailed to the skull. The duchess’s own blood trickled down its body; a bandage was around her wrist, and there was plaster on the area above her breast.
    This is worse than the animals.
    “I have everything.
Everything!”
The duchess knocked aside a pile of books in a rare fit of rage. Ancient grimoires of curses and spells fell down among scientific treatises. None was dusty; the duchess was neat and careful through and through.
    “The lock of a maiden, the blood of a mother, gold and electrum, and a spectral screen of mica …”
    Alan said nothing.
    The duchess’s normally immaculate appearance had come undone. Her golden hair was out in wisps. She threw her head down on the table and began to sob.
    “My Lady …” Alan began quietly.
    Her head popped up. There was a wild look in her eyes Alan did not like, a feral gleam unlike her usual ferocity.
    “Of course,” she said slowly, “How could I be so stupid?
    “A
heart
. It needs a human heart.”

Chapter Eleven
AWAY
     
    T
wo years.
    Two years and fifty-five days Snow had been a prisoner in her own home. Several generations of mice had come and gone; Andy, Colin, and Nigel had formed clans, houses, and lineages of their own, but still found time to play with her. They now ran up and down her arms, looking for treats.
    She missed being outside. She imagined shoving her fingers into the dirt, during the rain maybe, shoving her fingers and hands in as deep as she could.
    “Jess!”
    She looked up, surprised, Alan was the only one who called her that anymore—and there he was, perched outside on her windowsill.
    “Alan,” She carefully put the mice on her shoulder and padded delicately over to the windowpane. “Whatever is wrong?”
    His normally rosy face was beet red and sweating; veins popped out on his head as evidence of an inner struggle. His hand twisted at the fiddle charm he wore around his neck.
    “Listen to me. You have to go. She’s going to—you’re going to be—she will—she hired—amurderer—” His face went white with the effort of whatever he was trying to say, and he almost