“Don’t—”
She squeezed his hands harder. “Then you don’t, either. Okay?”
“I . . .” His face squinched up, as if he was eleven again. “I thought he made you happy, maybe. I would have challenged him in the open, if . . . but then I thought maybe you liked him, or . . . I just . . . I wanted you safe. And I was jealous too. I’ve always . . . Ruby, I just . . .”
“I know.” She leaned forward with a weary sigh, and her forehead bumped gently against his. His breath was a little sour, but so was hers, and her hair fell down, closing both of them in their own private world. “I thought Gran wanted me to pick him. I wanted to be what she wants, but I’m not.”
“Are you kidding? Every time she talks about you, it’s that you’re amazing. She’s so proud of you, Rube. So proud.” His throat worked as he swallowed. His eyes were closed. “I am too. You just . . . you were there in the garden, all lit up and angry and . . . and beautiful.” She shook her head a little, but he pressed on. “Don’t. You’re everything anyone could ever want, Rube. If the Clanmother doesn’t know it, I’ll tell her so. I’ll make her listen, too.”
No wonder Gran had collapsed. Aconite. Now that they knew, could they treat her?
Would she be okay?
She untangled herself from Thorne, gently. He stared up at her, and the naked hope and longing on his face was almost too much to stand.
Deep down, she’d known all along he was the one. What would happen now?
I don’t know.
“Miss de Varre?” A familiar voice. She’d guessed he would probably show up.
FORTY-THREE
SHE SMOOTHED HER FINGERS OVER THORNE’S FOREHEAD. He leaned into the touch, and when she looked up, she was afraid the lump in her throat would stop her from speaking.
It didn’t, though. “Detective Haelan.”
He was just as gray and rumpled and sad as ever. Still, the sharp intelligence in his eyes asked for—and gave—no quarter. “I think we should talk.”
“I do too.” She pulled, and Thorne rose. He also steadied her as she stood, her legs protesting wearily. “I told you he didn’t do it.”
“I knew he didn’t. Hell of an alibi. It was also too neat, the backpack showing up.” He sighed, and didn’t seem to notice that the assembled kin had gone quiet, staring at him. “But this isn’t about that. I’ve been doing some thinking.”
She almost swayed. I’m so tired. Please let’s not do this. “Me too.”
“I think . . .” He glanced over his shoulder, at the crowd of kin. “I think you deserve to know about your mother.”
“I do.” She turned to Thorne, who didn’t look any happier than she felt. “I . . . Thorne, will you stay? I mean, not here, you should probably go home and get some sleep, but I . . . I’d like you to, you know, hang around.” Lame, Ruby. Real lame. But like Ell said, you had to start somewhere. “With me.”
He nodded. Didn’t say anything. Did he understand what she was saying? Maybe not.
She opened her mouth to try again, but he smiled. It was a sad, tired, lopsided smile, and the way he tilted his head told her he knew without her saying anything. The familiar irritation rasped again, but underneath it was deep comfort. She didn’t know what to do, and that was okay. When she did, that smile said, he’d be waiting.
“Sure thing,” he said, finally. “I’m not leaving here, though. My mother’s on her way. She’s going to rip my ears off for disappearing, but I couldn’t tell her.”
“When she finishes ripping your ears off, I’ll do it too. Don’t you ever do that to me again.”
His smile broadened, if that was possible. “Did you miss me?”
“You’re irritating. Of course I missed you.” Ruby nodded, squared her shoulders, and turned back to Haelan.
“My mother.” She folded her arms, cupping her elbows in her hands. “Katrina. What . . . what did she do?” Was it bad? Did she pass it down to me, do I make people taboo?
“I . . .” He glanced at the kin, and Oncle Efraim was bearing down on them, disapproving as ever.
The tall, gaunt Oncle stopped and drew himself up. “This is clan business,” he said, in his scratchy, authoritative voice. “You’ve been warned, Detective.”
Oh sure. You won’t talk to me, but you’ll talk to him. Because he’s got a dongle. Mithrus Christ, I am so tired of that. “Oncle Efraim.” Ruby didn’t even look at him. “I’ve asked this man a question, and I’d like to hear his answer.”
What was surprising wasn’t the immediate hot drift of anger and chalk-smelling dominance from Oncle Efraim. Anyone who talked to him that way, especially a kingirl, would have the same effect.
No, what was surprising was the way she sounded. Soft, polite, and completely unimpressed by his temper.
Just like Tante Rosa used to talk to him.
No, Ruby decided. She sounded like Gran.
“Your grandmother—” Efraim’s voice rose, and if she didn’t cut him off now, he’d become a nuisance.
“—is just down the hall, Oncle. Please keep your temper.” Now she looked at him, and felt that same stirring inside her, dominance flexing like a muscle. “And in case you’ve forgotten, I’m rootfamily, and if I ask a mere-human a question, I will have an answer without interference.”
The assembled kin, bright-eyed and nervous, took a collective breath.
“Now,” Ruby continued, softly, inflexibly, “I think you have a family to take care of and some cleanup to organize. Those murdered girls have families too, and those families will also need their funeral costs attended to and our sincerest condolences proffered. You and Tante Sasha will attend to that personally, and Tante Sasha will have the final say in whatever decisions are made. You’d best get started.”
The old man stared at her, his hands trembling. How thin was the line between him and the thing the kin had killed in Gran’s garden? Control, and cruelty. Thinking you owned everything, and could do what you wanted.
Or maybe thinking you owned nothing, not even yourself, and fighting so hard to control anything that it made you taboo. Like a Twist, only instead of charm and badness wringing you into a corkscrew or a minotaur, you became . . . something else. Not mere-human, and not kin, either.
Oncle Efraim’s trembling died down, and he nodded, slowly. The heat in his eyes faded, and his shoulders slumped. It could have been submission or relief, or both. Maybe the family gossip was wrong about what had happened in his house.
Maybe it wasn’t. But for right now, he dropped his gaze. “The Moon speaks,” he murmured, the traditional reply for when a Clanmother had given her decree.
“Thorne.” Ruby didn’t take her gaze off Efraim. “Can you organize a cleaning party to get over to the cottage? When Gran recovers, she won’t want to come home to a shambles.”
“Yes ma’am.” With that slight sarcastic edge—he was still Thorne, after all—he headed for the kin in the other half of the waiting room. Which meant Oncle Efraim had to go too.
She finally looked up at the detective. He was pale, beads of sweat standing out on his forehead. “You sound just like her,” he said, very softly.
“Like Gran?” Did you hear that too?
“Like Katy. She sometimes . . . well. She was amazing.”
“What happened?” Please tell me.
“She . . . Your Gran wanted her to marry, to settle down. She wanted . . . other things.”
“Like . . . ?”
“She was involved with someone else. Look, that part of the story isn’t . . . maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you should just ask Edalie.”
“I’m asking you.” Where did that polite, weary but unyielding tone come from? It was just there.
He looked away, down the hall. When he spoke, it was just a reedy murmur. “We would talk. She’d steal away to visit me, and I knew she belonged somewhere else,
but . . .” He swallowed, hard, as if the words pained him. “She came to see me. . . . It was midnight, you were sleeping. We were . . . I shouldn’t be telling a little girl this.”
Too late. “I have a right to know. She was my mother.”
Did he flinch? Just a little? He ran a hand over his rust-graying hair. “Well, anyway. She was crying, shaking. Said Edalie was right. That they’d had a fight, and Edalie had threatened to do something awful. Something so bad Katy couldn’t tell me.”
Ruby’s skin chilled.
I spoke in anger. . . . I burned it. Forgive me.
Yet Gran had, furious at Ruby’s intransigence, done the same thing. You should be collared, to save you from yourself.
Had Gran immediately regretted it? She’d gone white, shaking, and Ruby had screamed I hate you! and stamped away. Afterward, Gran wanted to talk, but Ruby turned away, redirected, wouldn’t listen.
I fear you may do yourself harm.
“Then . . . Ruby. You were a year old.” His shoulders slumped. “She . . . Katy . . . your mother loved you. You have to know that. The last thing she said to me was that you were the only thing she never regretted. She . . . she hung herself on Courline Bridge.”
That’s in the core. And suicide. Another taboo, one of the biggest. No wonder the kin didn’t speak her name. The Moon took those who killed themselves, kept them resting on the dark side instead of the silver face, sleeping until bit by bit, every fullmoon, a little of the madness that drove a kin to take their own life drained away. You didn’t speak of them because it might disturb that quiet dreaming, and it would take longer for them to come back and try again.
Do you really believe that? Con—Adam would sneer.
You had to believe something. At least her mother—Katy, Katrina—hadn’t done something . . . else. Something like . . . Conrad.
Adam.
Ruby swayed, straightened. “So that’s what she did.” I sound really calm. “My . . . my father. Who . . . what did he do?”
“He couldn’t live without her.” The detective looked very old now, and very pale. The reek of despair and alcohol on him intensified. “He was . . . weak.”
“Oh.” Is he with the Moon too? She nodded. The vast empty space inside her, a cavern of wondering, just turned out to be a tiny room.
Forgive me, Gran had pleaded, in the grip of aconite hallucinations. How often had she been up at night, running the spinning wheel, thinking about her daughter? Maybe the grief choked her, the way it did Detective Haelan. He coughed, and rubbed at the welling in his eyes.
She reached out, tentatively, and touched his hand. Fragile mere-human flesh. She slipped her fingers through his. Held on for a moment, gently. “Thank you. I never knew.” The Tantes and Oncles wouldn’t say anything, because it was Gran’s place to speak to Ruby about it privately.
Maybe, just maybe, Gran wasn’t as disappointed in her as Ruby thought.
Haelan nodded as if she’d said something profound. “I’m not sure I . . .” A deep shuddering breath. “Your father loved you too, Ruby. But he was a coward.”
“I guess that’s where I get it from, then.” She let go, and he stared at her. “Being afraid . . . it’s an awful thing. A really awful thing.”
That about finished things up. He kept staring, like she was a talking fish out of the feytales.
Finally, she just turned away and started walking.
He said nothing.
Halfway down the hall to Gran’s room, a thought occurred to her. She spun around, but the waiting room was abuzz with kin making plans, organizing, given a direction now. Maybe they were more comfortable with letting someone else do all the ordering around, just like she was with Ellie. God, how did Gran decide what to do?
Maybe Gran just has to decide, even when she doesn’t know. She does it anyway because someone has to.
And it beggared belief, but sometimes . . . sometimes even Gran might be wrong.
Forgive me.
Your father was weak. He was a coward.
I guess that’s where I get it from, then.
All she’d ever been told about her father was that he was outside the clan. Maybe . . .
He couldn’t live without her.
The detective was up and walking around. Still, if you thought about it, way back behind his eyes was an emptiness. Not scary like Co—Adam’s. No, the detective just looked sad.
Lonely.
I wonder. . . .
She shook her head. She could find him later and ask, even though she wanted to run through Trueheart Memorial’s halls, catch up with him, maybe in the parking lot, maybe in a hall, and make him tell her something else.
Anything else.
There was something else she had to do.
FORTY-FOUR
THE WINDOW WAS THE SAME, BUT THE TREES IN THE courtyard were edged with gray light. There was a different IV pole, and the nurse in the room—her hair was dyed red, a short cap of curls like colored straw, and it made Ruby shiver—glanced up at her. “Visiting hours aren’t until—”
“This is my grandmother,” Ruby told her, curtly. “Is she going to be okay?”
For a moment the older woman looked ready to tell her to get out, but then she softened, looking down at Gran’s slack, sleeping face. “Dr. Roumpelstett thinks so. Once we had the toxin pinpointed, a targeted system flush administered, she started to improve very quickly. She’s strong, your grandmother. Very determined.”
Don’t I know it. “Is she . . .” Ruby floundered, searching for a question. “Will she wake up?”
“We think so. You’d be more comfortable in the waiting room, or in the cafeteria.”
Ruby was abruptly aware of how messy and wild she must look. “I belong here,” she said, and that voice of calm authority maybe tipped the balance, because the nurse nodded and made a few notations on a clipboard she carried, checking the machine tracking Gran’s heartbeat. It sounded strong and steady, and Gran’s color was better. Her parchment hair was still sloppily braided, and maybe later Ruby would ask for a comb and fix it.
The nurse left, pulling the door almost closed. Ruby looked at the window, dawn rapidly coming up, the rain intensifying.
She peeled off her trainers, setting them neatly on the chair next to the bed. Then, carefully, so carefully, she lifted up the sheet and blankets. Slid in, degree by careful degree, working her arm under Gran’s thin frame.
The old woman sighed, the way she always did when Ruby climbed into bed with her. Ruby squeezed her eyes shut, tears trickling between her lids.
One of her first real memories was Gran’s breath beside her, sleeping in the big rosewood bed. Gran’s stroking of her hair. Shhh now, little kinling. All is well.
Gran teaching her to ride a bicycle, her hand steady on the back of the seat. Gran up early to make pancakes, snapping charms to flip them on the griddle. Gran chastising her for her carelessness, Gran white-lipped when Ruby came home with scabbed knees and sap in her hair. I expected you an hour ago. I worry, Ruby!
How terrifying, to wonder and to worry, to see your daughter in your granddaughter’s face, to be afraid of losing, to have to make all the decisions. Yet she’d always been there, holding Ruby’s hand, reassuring her, protecting her, raising her.
Because Katrina was gone. Had left.
What if Gran, deep down . . . it was a ridiculous idea, but what if Gran was just as scared as Ruby was? What if she’d learned to cover it up, but it was still there?
Under the hospital smell, Edalie de Varre smelled faintly of her perfume, and the goodness of baking bread. Ruby snuggled in, but carefully, making sure she wasn’t lying on any tubes or wires, propping Gran so that she’d be comfortable.
Finally, holding the old woman close, she sighed. Dawn strengthened in the window, and Ruby swallowed, hard.
Being scared and alone
was worse than anything else, even a beast with empty eyes and scythe-claws. It was worse than the pinching, the bruising, it was worse than the certain knowledge of being a disappointment to everyone you loved.
Being scared together, though . . . that was different. It wasn’t incredibly better, but it wasn’t quite so awful. At least someone was in the boat with you, and you could make things better by comforting them.
“Gran?” she whispered, into Edalie’s hair. “I love you. Everything’s okay. Please be all right.” Her throat was full, and so was her nose, but she heard Gran’s heartbeat, nice and strong, under the noise from the machine. The song of her breathing, familiar as her own. “I love you so much.”
Ruby de Varre shut her eyes, and finally fell asleep waiting for Gran to wake up.
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