What time is it? She didn’t even have a watch.
Ellie would have had a watch. She was always so prepared.
Ruby took stock. Grabbing her schoolbag hadn’t been a bad idea, even if her French textbook weighed a ton. For one thing, her wallet was in there, so she had her student ID and leftover shopping money as well as charmed tinfoil, some breath mints—her stomach growled—and a pack of choco beechgum, which would calm her tummy down while she figured out what to do.
How long had she slept? There was the same dim glow in here as when she’d collapsed, from a bare bulb burning down the long passage, lighting the way to the boiler. It was also much warmer, almost stuffy, and she rubbed at her face again, wishing she’d been able to manage a warm shower. She should have taken off her shoes and socks to let them dry, too. Her feet felt swollen.
What would Ellie do?
Well, Ellie would have a simple elegant solution for finding out the time. Probably a charm, since she was just slopping over with Potential. Cami would probably just know what time it was, the way she seemed to just know how to do everything else.
At least they weren’t involved in this huge mess. She’d kept them safely out of it. If they’d come in to meet Conrad yesterday . . .
. . . well, best not to even think about that. There were all sorts of things not to think about, and if she was going to decide what to do, she needed to, well, not dwell on them. Right?
But what if . . . he knew she had friends. Now she cursed herself for talking about them all the time; he could probably recognize them in a crowd if he had to. Not to mention they might be worried about her, if they weren’t too busy with Nico and Avery and their lives going so smoothly. Maybe, just maybe, they would drop by the cottage, and if Conrad was there . . . he could be charming. He could be really charming. They might not see the danger until too late.
You’re my way out.
Would she be able to make him stop, if she was collared? If she was collared, Gran wouldn’t have to worry, and maybe by being quiet and pliable she wouldn’t set Conrad off.
She eased herself back up on the pile of habits and took a deep breath. It was something to consider. If she could just stop being an irritant to everyone, a—
—a selfish bitch, go on, admit it—
—okay, fine, a selfish bitch, maybe it would fix things.
Except.
There was Hunter’s body, wrapped in linen and lowered, fetching up against cold earth with that stomach-unseating little bump. And the girls—redheads. Mere-human.
All four, dead.
Even if she stopped Conrad doing . . . whatever it was he thought he was doing, that wouldn’t be enough. Not if Thorne was blamed for everything, not even if Conrad stopped . . .
Stopped killing.
You could hunt, you could find, but kin didn’t kill. Not unless you desperately needed food, but still, you took animals, and brought them home for cooking to prove you hadn’t done something you shouldn’t. You didn’t kill mere-humans. Or other kin. It just . . . you just didn’t do it.
It was taboo.
And . . . and Thorne would get blamed, and nobody would believe him, maybe because he was an only, maybe because he’d always been difficult. Thorny, so to speak.
It wasn’t fair.
The same old stubborn resistance rose up in her. Like when Cami had been teased so relentlessly about her stutter in primary school, and Ruby had waded into the fray. Or Ellie, in middle school, new in town and mercilessly hassled. It wasn’t fair, and that just lit every fuse in Ruby’s head.
But what should she do? Ellie was the one with all the plans, Ruby just sort of waited to be given a task, or waited until someone like Binksy Malone opened her stupid mouth so Rube could jump on her.
Well, first she should probably find out what time it was. If she snuck up to the hall, she could probably peer out without getting caught. If she was careful.
She wasn’t in her uniform, either. It was going to be tricky if she wanted to leave before school got out.
The rest, she decided, could wait until she’d found something to eat.
THIRTY-FIVE
SHE DIDN’T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT BEING CAUGHT. The hall was dark and quiet, and for a few seconds she was confused, thinking she hadn’t slept at all, before she realized she’d slept almost a whole day. No wonder she was hungry.
The clock above the lockers right next to Sister Margaret’s classroom pointed at 7:48, and the entire bulk of St. Juno’s held its breath. Not a sound in the whole place, even the soughing of the boiler—thank Mithrus whoever came down to check it hadn’t found her—held behind a curtain of stillness. The urge to scream just because she could rose up, and for a minute the thought of running amok and doing every single prank she’d ever dreamed up in an entirely empty school held a certain attraction.
At home she’d be helping Gran wash up after dinner. Then more homework and Babchat before bed—but she hadn’t been on Bab in a while, had she.
She blinked. The clock now pointed to 8:00. She’d just stood there staring at it for twelve whole minutes.
In that vacant inward time, she’d arrived at a conclusion.
She’d go to the hospital. If Gran was awake she could tell her everything. If not, she could find a Tante or Oncle and make them listen. If they wouldn’t listen, she’d find another. Someone would be willing to believe Thorne wouldn’t do these awful things.
Maybe even Detective Haelan. Now that she wasn’t terrified and sleep deprived, she could think that maybe he’d be smart enough to see past Conrad’s smile. And she could ask him more about her . . . mother. What she’d done that was so terrible kin wouldn’t speak her name.
The first step was getting out of here. Then, finding transportation to Trueheart Memorial.
Ruby scraped her hair back, wincing as her fingers encountered tangles, and got moving.
• • •
The bus lurched around a corner, like a fat rolling silver sow, and Ruby braced herself against the swaying. There was a group of jacks in the back, sniggering about something or another, and the rest of the crowd was tired mere-humans, most of them probably coming home from work.
It was the jacks she kept an eye on while the bus lumbered, downshifting, up Trueheart Hill. They had bright bandannas tied at ankle, wrist, or knee—gang colors. One of them, a dark-haired boy with bone spurs on his weeping-slick cheeks, stared over the heads of everyone in the seats, and every time Ruby stole a glance in her peripheral vision he was looking right at her. He looked vaguely familiar as well, but she couldn’t place him.
She had to stand, shifting from foot to foot and hanging on to a pole. Being on her feet seemed like a great idea, but it also meant the group at the back could see her.
Across the aisle, a stout graying man with a three-piece suit and a monocle glanced up from his newspaper, incuriously. The headline screamed at her in heavy dark print.
REDHEAD RIPPER STRIKES AGAIN.
The subtitle was chilling. Four Slain, Killer at Large. The type underneath wriggled and blurred: she couldn’t read it at this distance. Four? Were they counting Hunter, or not?
There was a grainy picture, the top of a head with curly hair, but she couldn’t see the rest of it under the fold. Why was he doing it? If he wanted to kill a redhead, why not Ruby?
What would happen if he had managed to get the collar on her?
She turned to peer out the window and realized the bus was three blocks from the hospital. The stop line almost burned her hands, but she yanked it and saw the sign at the front light up. Stop Requested.
The jacks in the back made a little more noise. She hoped this wasn’t their stop too and began pushing for the front door as the bus braked.
It was raining again, a thin penetrating drizzle, and the towered pile of the hospital crouched restlessly under the lash
ing wind. A Mithraic tau knot over the front doors was lit by a random reflection of headlights, and it actually cheered her up a little. It was like seeing the tau and the Magdalen’s sad gaze all over St. Juno’s, a secret little letter from the past.
Inside, the fluorescents and the reek of disinfectant and illness was just the same. Did time ever move in a hospital, or did it just slosh around aimlessly? Did it boil down thicker and thicker, the way Gran made candy sometimes?
Stop it. Pay attention.
She took the stairs instead of the elevator, even though her legs ached. Her trainers still squooshed a little. Her nose tingled, though, working just fine, leading her unerringly through the corridors and stairwells until she reached the private rooms. Spendy, but Woodsdowne could afford it, and the Clanmother would get the best of care.
If Gran was in the private rooms, she was out of critical care, and that was good, right?
Ruby ghosted past the nurse’s station—there was nobody there, though voices echoed from a doorway leading into another space, where she could see the edge of locked glass-fronted cabinets and a long counter. Probably where they hid the dangerous drugs; two nurses murmuring like birds in the treetops. A sharp high note of laughter, and Ruby’s nose twitched a little.
Even here, amid the disinfectant and boiled food and industrial laundry smells, she could trace Gran’s familiar musk with its sharp undertone, the Levarin cologne she dabbed behind her ears and on her wrists with its layer of crushed green grass, and the faint odor of baking bread, warm fur, and safety. Ruby glanced in either direction, pressed down the door handle, and stepped inside a pale-pink seashell of a room that tried to be restrained and elegant under the clutter of medical paraphernalia. An IV pole, and a soft beeping from a monitor showing a heartbeat, nice and strong.
The window looked into a dark courtyard, three old thick-trunked oak trees beginning to drop their leaves in clumps to the stone walks below. Their branches scraped and rustled, almost audible through the rain-spattered glass.
Gran lay on the bed, its upper half tilted upward probably so she could breathe more easily. Thin tubes ran to her nose, and the pale fluid inside the IV sack, dangling overhead, dripped once, twice.
Ruby took a step forward.
It looked like she was sleeping. Her color was good, a high rosy blush on her planed-down cheeks, but her platinum hair was a little askew, its braid done by someone who lacked the requisite quick, firm fingers.
Sometimes Ruby braided Gran’s hair. Gran said she was the best at it.
A small sound escaped Ruby’s lips. Sleeping was good, right? She looked good. She looked, as a matter of fact, like she was just napping and would rise, irritated and brisk, setting everything to rights about her with quick efficiency.
There was a chair on the other side of the bed. Ruby pulled it close, and was just about to sink down when Gran’s eyes snapped open.
Icy gray, her pupils pinpricks, the old woman stared straight ahead. Her thin lips moved, just a little, and the croak that came out froze Ruby clear through.
“Katrina?” Slurred, as if Gran had been at the whiskey too much and was pleasantly buzzed. “Katy, is that you?”
Ruby’s breath rode a shuddering sleigh out of her mouth. “It’s me, Gran.” She reached for the old woman’s hand, so fragile and bruised, and picked it up carefully. “I’m here.”
“I did not mean to,” Gran’s voice sharpened, losing its slur, but she didn’t blink. The fixed stare was a little . . . well, it was a little worrying, and Ruby’s relief turned to ice trailing lightly down her back, little trickles of electricity. “I would not have . . . I burned the collar. I burned it. Why did you leave?”
Burned? It made no sense. “It’s okay, Gran. It’s okay.”
“Forgive me . . . Katy, I would not have . . . I spoke in anger.”
What? She patted Gran’s hand, gently, trying not to touch the heplock. It looked like a nasty growth on the back of Gran’s familiar hand. “It’s all right. It’s okay.”
“Forgive me . . . Katy, forgive me. . . .”
Ruby swallowed, hard. “I forgive you.”
Gran’s eyes slowly closed. She muttered and mumbled, falling back against the pillows, and her fingers were slack and cool.
There was no way Ruby could tell her anything. She was on her own.
Katy. Katrina. And a collar.
I burned it. Why did you leave?
Was this Katy alive somewhere else? Was that why she wasn’t spoken of? Was she taboo? Had she just left?
You have other problems. Ruby exhaled, sharply. Gran was still sick. She was alive, and talking, but she wasn’t . . . well, she wasn’t herself.
Which meant Ruby was the only rootfamily who could give orders at the moment. She didn’t have Gran’s iron will, though. The Oncles would probably just laugh at her.
Then you wipe that laugh right off their faces, Ruby. You’ve got to.
But how?
Her shoulders slumped, her schoolbag sagging against her. She hesitated, halfway between sinking into the chair and standing up, her thighs aching and every inch of her crawling with fear-residue and air-dried rain.
Imagine you’re Gran. Imagine you’re Ellie. Imagine you’re anyone, just get it done.
She laid Gran’s hand back down, ever so gently. “Okay. You . . . you rest and get better, Gran. I’m going to fix things.”
How, I have no idea. But I’m gonna.
A few moments later, the room was empty, except for the old woman’s steady breathing.
THIRTY-SIX
HEAD HELD HIGH, SHE SWEPT DOWN THE CORRIDOR and braced herself. If Gran was down here, there was probably a waiting room somewhere, and her nose told her there were kin about, musk and the aroma of dark, comforting Woodsdowne earth.
Further down the hall, opposite the nurse’s station, was a collection of chairs welded together with tables too small to do anything but rest a tabloid on, a fishtank full of brightly colored ambulatory sushi, bright glaring light, and a half-dozen kin. Ruby stopped dead, nostrils flaring, her greeting dying in her throat. The choco beechgum turned to ash, and she almost swallowed it.
Oncle Efraim, his mouth a thin line as usual, had his head in his hands. All the kin present were male—a couple of the older cousins, Brent and Jackson Beaudry, and the tall, laconic Oncle Vidalis, his silver-sprinkled hair slicked down with rainwater. Old Oncle Dean, and Oncle Tach, and a few more, the heads of the major branchfamilies.
Sitting right next to Efraim, with his hand solicitously on the older kin’s shoulder, leaning in to murmur what could have been condolences, was Conrad Tiercey. He looked just the same, in a white T-shirt and jeans, his boots worn in by now and freshly brushed, and the clan cuff on his wrist had continued to rub. The rash had spread halfway up his forearm, and it looked painful.
Ruby ducked aside, hoping the angle of the wall would hide her. Conrad was right there, and it was a group of Oncles. Brent would be disposed to listen to her, maybe, and Oncle Tach always heard anyone out. But Efraim, who had once muttered that Wild girlkin should be collared to keep them from wandering as a matter of course? And Jackson, who had chased her like Thorne and Hunter for a while, until she’d embarrassed him in front of the whole clan at a barbeque? If it was a group of Tantes, it would be better, but it wasn’t.
She didn’t need a weathervane to see the way the wind would blow, with Conrad standing right there. Why was Oncle Efraim shaking his head? Where was Tante Sasha? She was head of her own branch, and so was Tante Jeanette.
Footsteps. A shadow in the door behind the nurse’s counter, another low laugh. Someone would step out and see her standing right here, and probably sing out a Hello there, can I help you? All the kin would look. Already Brent’s head was up, and he took a cautious sniff, as if he could smell her, rain-dipped and dirty as she was.
At least I know
where Conrad is. He’s not at the cottage. He probably drove my car here.
Which meant she could go home, maybe pack some clothes, and take a look at that duffel bag of his. If there was any proof, she could bring it to the kin, especially the Tantes, and have it not be her word against a guest’s.
It was a plan worthy of Ellie, but she didn’t have time to congratulate herself. She took off down the hall, away from the nurse’s station, toward the stairwell door.
A few seconds later, when the nurse on duty stepped out with a fresh cup of coffee and settled behind the counter with a stack of paperwork, glancing over the men in the waiting area with a practiced, compassionate eye, the stairwell door was already closed.
THIRTY-SEVEN
IT WAS NO GREAT TRICK TO FIND HER BABY IN THE underground parking lot. The extra key, in its charmsealed magnetic box under the back bumper, was gone, but her own keys were in her schoolbag where they belonged. A few minutes later, she pulled out onto Stiltskin Street, the Semprena running a little rougher than she liked but okay enough. There was a crumpled dent in the bonnet that filled her with weary anger. As fast as she drove, she’d never so much as nicked the car.
It is an heirloom, Gran’s voice whispered in her memory, and now Ruby wondered just who had driven it before her.
The backseat was full of drive-through wrappers and damp clothing, and it reeked. She had to roll both windows down and breathe through her mouth, that rusted-red smoke and rot scent overlaying everything along with the fume of his rage making her eyes water. His anger had soaked into the seats, for God’s sake, and there was a long rip down the passenger’s seat, stuffing and springs poking out. He’d slashed it with something, she could just see it, his face that snarling mask as the blade cut. . . .
Had he been imagining someone sitting there? She squirmed uncomfortably at the thought. How had he trashed the car in so short a time? It was phenomenal.