The produce truck died in Midtown.
Not dramatically. No explosion, no thrown rod, no plume of righteous mechanical smoke announcing to the avenue that the universe had finally lost patience with Pietro's driving. It simply stopped being willing to cooperate with physics in the ordinary way. One moment the engine was loud, offended, and carrying them south through traffic with the heroic reluctance of all borrowed machines. The next it coughed once, all the dashboard lights flashed dead-red in the same grouped pulse the city had been carrying since the House opened, and the whole truck rolled to a shuddering halt in the middle of a cross street while three taxi drivers discovered religion through profanity.
Pietro hit the wheel.
"That," he said, "is not my fault."
Wanda looked at the dead dashboard.
"That is somehow worse."
Erikar, in the back among produce crates and one orange now committed to rolling back and forth on the floor like a tiny witness with no morals, felt the mark answer under his sternum the instant the engine died. Not pain. Pressure. Recognition traveling through whatever the House had left in him and finding corresponding strain in the city's electrical systems and, more troublingly, in the woman two seats ahead of him.
Interesting.
Terrible.
Pietro twisted the key again.
The truck did not start. Instead the radio, which had been off, burst into static and then into one thin line of distorted not-speech that made every hair along the back of Wanda's neck rise at once. She reached out on instinct, red flickering around her fingers, and slapped the radio off.
The static kept going.
Not through the speaker now.
Through the dash itself. Through the wire harness hidden behind it. Through the whole cheap electrical skeleton of the truck as if current had stopped bothering with the proper routes and was now content to move like a memory searching for the nearest available bones.
Pietro stared at the dashboard.
Then at Wanda.
Then in the mirror at Erikar.
"No."
That was all.
Not because he lacked a larger argument. Because no larger argument survived the evidence of the truck choosing to become part of the problem.
Horns blared behind them.
One city bus driver leaned out his window and added an entire speech on incompetence, ancestry, and the moral crimes of delivery vehicles that no one inside the truck deserved to hear in full.
Wanda's fingers tightened around the edge of the dash.
The red under her skin was too quick now. Not full flare. Small involuntary answers to each electrical pulse in the truck's dead systems.
There.
That was the new problem.
The House had marked them both. That much was already fact. But the mark was no longer behaving like parallel damage. It was becoming circuit.
When the truck's wiring spat static, her power answered. When her power tightened, something under Erikar's ribs pulled in response as if the mark in him had learned to listen for it specifically. The line was not constant. Worse. Intermittent. Unpredictable enough to catch before control arrived and useful enough to keep repeating.
Crossed wires.
He stepped out of the truck before the horns behind them could become a larger civic emergency and came around to the passenger side. Traffic surged around the stalled vehicle in ugly curves. Steam rose from a vent near the curb. Pedestrians watched the stopped truck with the normal New York triage of curiosity, annoyance, and relief that the problem had chosen another lane.
Wanda opened her door and got out without waiting for him to offer the route.
Good.
Pietro remained behind the wheel only long enough to lean out and shout something offensive and imaginative back at the bus driver. Then he abandoned the truck too and joined them on the curb with all the wounded dignity of a man whose driving had just been upstaged by haunted infrastructure.
"This city," he said, "is becoming personally insulting."
No one answered.
They were all too busy feeling it.
Not the truck now. The block.
Three streetlights in the intersection ahead went dead-red in sequence and then snapped back to yellow-white. Wanda's hand twitched at the same instant. Erikar felt the answering pull under the sternum again, sharper than before, and this time it did not arrive as abstract pressure. It hit low through the body, the exact wrong place where instinct liked to keep its sense of threat and readiness. Not pain enough to weaken. Enough to make the breath stutter.
Wanda looked at him.
He looked back.
There was no point pretending either of them had missed it.
Pietro saw both faces and immediately lost the last of his patience for being the least informed person in any room, street, truck, or apocalypse.
"Tell me."
Wanda said, "No."
Erikar said, at the same time, "Later."
Pietro stared.
Then, with all the moral offense available to a man forced to share a problem with two people more irritating than himself, "Disgusting."
The signal at the next crossing blew out entirely.
Good.
That made the block simpler.
They moved.
Not because the truck mattered. It did not anymore. Someone would tow it, curse it, strip it, or sell it by the evening and none of those futures deserved attention. They moved because staying still now felt worse than motion and because the pulse in the city's electrical skin had begun narrowing again after the church block, less broad disturbance now and more directed pressure searching along lines both literal and not.
Wanda led them west through side streets and avoided the larger avenues where traffic lights and billboard clusters answered too strongly to the mark. Pietro trailed half a step behind, not from caution, but because he was now openly watching both of them for reactions and storing every twitch of eye, breath, and posture like a future accusation waiting for proper shape.
Erikar let him.
It was fair.
Two blocks later, Wanda stopped dead outside a laundromat.
No warning.
Pietro nearly walked into her.
"What."
She did not answer.
The laundromat's front windows reflected the afternoon street in pale blue and detergent-clean lies. Rows of machines inside. Three people folding clothes. One child asleep across two plastic chairs. Ordinary. Entirely ordinary.
Except every dryer drum on the back wall was rotating in the same grouped rhythm.
Three short. One long. Pause. Again.
The mark under Erikar's ribs answered so violently this time that he had to put one hand briefly against the brick wall beside the storefront before the body decided breath remained legal.
Wanda felt that too.
Not the same way. Her own hand had gone to her temple, fingers spread lightly over the place where red pressure and thought and too much contact now met behind the skin.
Pietro looked from the dryers to Wanda to Erikar and finally said, with the quiet concentrated concern he only ever let through when joking had failed completely, "This is both of you."
There.
The sentence hung in the air like a blade correctly balanced.
Wanda straightened slowly.
Her eyes remained on the laundromat machines, but she spoke to Erikar.
"How long."
Interesting that she asked that first.
"Since the truck."
She nodded once. "Me too."
Pietro said, "Wonderful. So the haunted inheritance room beneath New York has decided you should both now malfunction in sync."
Wanda turned just enough to give him a look.
He held up both hands. "I am saying the obvious because neither of you seems inclined to."
Fair.
Very fair.
The dryers inside the laundromat stopped at the same instant and all their lights flashed dead-red.
The child in the plastic chairs woke and started crying.
A woman near the folding table looked up at the machines and then around the room with the exhausted expression of someone deciding whether city maintenance, electricity, or God currently deserved the blame for her day.
Wanda stepped away before her power could answer the room more visibly than it already wanted to.
They took the alley beside the laundromat and the city dimmed by degree around them. Less signage. Fewer visible wire bundles. More old brick. Still enough current in the walls and service lines to feel the pulse, but not enough to turn every shopfront into a mouth trying badly to speak.
At the alley midpoint, Wanda stopped again and leaned one shoulder against the wall.
Not weakness.
Assessment.
Her eyes were closed for one second too long to count as only annoyance.
Pietro reached her first.
Of course.
"What."
Wanda opened her eyes. "Nothing."
He looked offended. "Then tell your face."
Erikar stayed three paces back and did not pretend not to be watching.
The mark had changed in the last fifteen minutes. Not only in him. In her too. He could feel that now in the field between them whenever she drew breath a fraction too sharply or reined her power in too fast. It was not a telepathic bridge. Not any ordinary bond the stories of lesser houses or lesser magic liked to call by sentimental names. It was more mechanical than that and more intimate. Two systems made to answer the same room now beginning to interfere with one another whenever the city's aftershock pressed too close.
Wanda saw him understanding it.
She hated that.
Good.
He disliked that he found the hatred preferable to pretense.
Pietro said, "Wanda."
She looked at him and finally answered honestly enough for the room.
"It is worse when he is close."
The alley went still.
Not because the sentence was dramatic. Because it was exact.
Pietro looked slowly from her to Erikar and back.
Then he made a face as though the universe had personally served him a meal composed entirely of theories he had not requested.
"I hate this in at least six directions."
No one corrected him.
Erikar said, "The city pressure amplifies it."
Wanda looked at him immediately. "You know that how."
Interesting question.
Because he felt it in the sternum? Because the mark under his skin now sharpened in proportion to her proximity and the density of active current around them? Because the laundromat machines and the truck dash and the church block lamps had all turned the same grouped rhythm into a line running through both their bodies whether either liked it or not?
He chose the smallest useful truth.
"Pattern."
Her mouth tightened.
Not because she disliked the answer. Because she had reached the same one and resented hearing it aloud before offering it herself.
Good.
Pietro leaned back against the opposite wall and folded his arms.
"So. New rules. Do not stand near each other in electrified parts of Manhattan?"
Wanda said, "That is not a plan."
"It is a survival instinct."
She turned on him. "We don't know that distance helps."
Pietro pointed at her. Then at Erikar. "You just said it is worse when he is close."
"That does not mean far is safe."
Fair again.
Erikar said, "He is right about one thing."
Wanda looked at him.
Pietro looked vindicated and prepared to become insufferable.
Erikar continued before the brother could earn it.
"We need to know whether this is proximity, current density, or direct line-of-effect."
Pietro's vindication dimmed into offense at being turned into method instead of glory.
Wanda said, "You want to test it."
"Yes."
"Here."
"No."
Good answer from her.
The alley was too live with city bleed and too visible from the cross street if anything louder than breath happened. Testing here would be stupidity decorated as curiosity.
Pietro pushed off the wall. "Wonderful. A science project. I am delighted to learn that after all the illegal experimentation in our lives, we have become volunteers."
Wanda ignored him with the deep lifelong skill of siblings who loved one another too much to waste energy reacting to every correct complaint.
She looked at Erikar and asked the harder question instead.
"How bad."
He considered lying.
Useless.
"Manageable."
Her eyes narrowed. "That is not a number."
"No."
"That means bad."
Pietro said, "I enjoy that she translates you into human."
Erikar looked at him.
Pietro held up one hand. "I know. Later."
They left the alley and took a side route south toward the river where older power lines gave way to broader industrial feeds and the pulse in the city's skin shifted from dense chatter to heavier slower current.
The aftershock followed.
Not gone. Changed.
Wanda stayed half a lane farther from him now by instinct more than decision. He noticed. Of course he noticed. The field between them had become too instrumented by the House mark not to. Each time they crossed near the same transformer box or stepped under the same overhead cable line, the pressure sharpened. Each time one of them drifted too near the other while the city around them remained electrically loud, the answer in both bodies arrived faster.
By the fourth block, none of them could pretend it was coincidence.
At the river walk overlook, they finally stopped.
The substation line there sat quieter than the city interior, its larger feeds running below ground in insulated channels rather than overhead clutter. Wind off the water carried some of the electrical tension away before it built. Good enough.
Pietro leaned against the railing and looked openly miserable.
"I miss normal enemies."
Wanda stood ten paces away by the lamp post and folded her arms.
Erikar remained halfway between them, which in itself was probably information and not useful information at that.
The river moved black-grey beyond the retaining wall. Barges farther off. Bridges above. The city behind them still pulsing in grouped dead-red failures every few minutes as if trying to rehearse a name it could not yet safely hold.
Wanda said, "Fine."
Not agreement. A challenge word.
"Fine," she repeated. "Test it."
Pietro groaned.
Erikar said, "Here."
"Yes."
No point asking what she meant. The word already carried the whole ugly structure of her answer: enough distance from the densest grid to survive a mistake, enough city current still present to produce response, enough open ground that if her power or his mark did something worse than expected, fewer civilians would inherit the result.
He took one step toward her.
Nothing.
Second step.
The lamp post nearest her flickered once.
Third.
The mark under his sternum tightened exactly as it had in the truck and the laundromat, but cleaner now, without the noise of too many other systems speaking over it. Wanda's hand twitched at her side. Red rose and then flattened again under will.
Interesting.
He stopped three paces away.
Pietro looked from one to the other as though evaluating a duel between concepts he disliked equally.
Wanda said, "Closer."
He took one more step.
Pain flashed bright under his ribs.
At the same instant Wanda's eyes went wide by a fraction and the red around one hand snapped into visibility without her consent. Not an attack. A reflexive answer pulled out of her by the same line hitting him.
There.
Direct correlation.
No one spoke.
The lamp post behind her went dead-red.
The river lights across the water echoed it a beat later in miniature.
Pietro pushed off the railing at once. "That seems like enough data."
Neither moved.
The pressure held.
Not unbearable. Not sustainable for long either. The mark in him now felt like a second heartbeat trying to phase-lock with something not his own. Wanda's power did not flare outward. It condensed, becoming unnaturally precise around the fingers as if the House line between them had forced her magic into narrower channels the way the city current itself was being narrowed into grouped pulses and false speech.
She looked at his chest.
Then at her hand.
Then up into his face with a kind of fury he was beginning to understand meant she had reached the edge of a thing and hated everyone involved for being right about it before she had chosen whether to accept it.
"It is both."
Yes.
He heard the conclusion too.
"Proximity and current."
"Yes."
Pietro said, "Wonderful. So the haunted inheritance mark likes you close and electrically active. This is somehow the least romantic and most disgusting problem possible."
Wanda almost laughed.
Almost.
Then the city's pulse hit again.
Harder.
This time not at a distance. Through the lamp post beside her, down the railing near Pietro's hand, across the overhead cable line above the walkway in one grouped dead-red flash that made every source in the immediate block answer at once.
And because they were too close, and because the mark had already aligned enough to stop pretending otherwise, the pulse crossed them.
Erikar felt Wanda's power hit him full and clean for the first time.
Not mind. Not body alone. Structure.
A red line through whatever hidden architecture the House had woken in him, painful and bright and impossibly intimate in a way that had nothing to do with softness and everything to do with systems being forced into the same circuit.
Wanda made a sound and doubled over one step as his own impossible sealed absence answered through the line in return, not entering her, not opening, but rebounding hard enough through the contact that her red burst sideways into the railing and turned ten feet of steel white-hot for one horrifying second.
Pietro moved before either of them.
Of course.
He grabbed Wanda by the shoulder and yanked her back just as the lamp post above them blew out in a shower of sparks. Erikar hit the pavement on one knee with his hand braced against wet concrete, breath stolen cleanly enough that for one raw instant all of New York seemed to narrow down to the afterimage of red and white cutting across dark.
Then it stopped.
The city resumed itself.
Car horn in the distance. River wind. bridge lights. one shouted insult from a cyclist two blocks over who had seen the shower of sparks and decided somebody else should own the paperwork.
Pietro was crouched beside Wanda.
Erikar pushed himself upright more slowly than he liked.
Wanda looked at him through strands of hair blown loose across her face. No blood. No obvious injury. Just the same stunned angry clarity he knew was probably reflected in his own expression if anyone had cared to point out the insult.
Pietro said, with enormous restraint that only made it funnier if one disliked him and more concerning if one did not, "I am going to say this calmly."
No one answered.
He did anyway.
"You are not standing that close again until one of you invents a better explanation than cursed inheritance electrocution."
Wanda swallowed once and straightened.
Erikar got the rest of the way to his feet.
The mark under his sternum still ached.
Her red still lived too close to the surface.
The lamp post behind her remained dead. Across the river, three bridge lights had gone out in the same grouped interval and not yet returned.
Interesting.
Terrible.
Useful.
Wanda said, very quietly, "The House did not mark us separately."
No.
Pietro looked between them.
His face had gone almost blank now, which was always worse than his jokes. Blank meant he had stopped treating the room as survivable through charm and begun doing math instead.
"What does that mean."
Wanda looked at Erikar.
He answered because the sentence had already chosen itself.
"It linked the circuits."
Silence.
Then Pietro, because he was Pietro and the universe had given him exactly one style of dignity with which to survive things like this, put both hands over his face for one long second and said into them, "I truly, deeply hate your lives."
That almost did it.
Almost.
The corner of Wanda's mouth moved first this time.
Not enough for a smile. Enough to prove the room had not taken every human thing from it yet.
Erikar saw it.
She saw him see it.
And for one brief infuriating instant the crossed-wire line between them answered not through pain or the city pulse or the House mark, but through something simpler and more dangerous in the long run: the mutual recognition that no one else in New York, Asgard, or whatever red-star city had buried the House beneath worlds would understand this problem as quickly as the person standing opposite now did.
That realization was much worse than the pain.
The city's pulse flared again in the distance.
All three of them turned toward it at once.
Because the mark had linked them, yes.
But the city was still speaking too.
And the House, whatever it now wanted from its correspondents, clearly had no intention of waiting for them to finish resenting one another before the next disturbance arrived.
End of Chapter 40