23. Liath
LIATH
The corridor of Alistair’s wing was quiet. Too quiet. My breath rasped in my ears, far too loud, and my heartbeat battered hard enough to make me feel exposed.
The portraits of dead Lasairs stared at me as I snuck past, their cold dead eyes accusing. Watching for me to slip. Waiting for me to get caught.
I neared Alistair’s bedroom door, my hand trembling as I reached for the handle.
The last time I’d broken in, Lorcan had caught me. The back of my neck prickled with the memory of it, a heat going through me at the memory of his cruel game, the way he slashed his knife through my clothes baring me to his eyes and his judgment.
My pulse kicked once but I kept moving.
I checked both directions, listening for footsteps. Then I slipped inside.
The curtains were drawn so it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dim, the bitterness of wormwood and green anise pressing into the back of my throat, the pipe organ note low in my skull like a warning tone.
I crossed to the bookcase.
I’d watched his hand from behind the drapes, the way he’d run his fingers along the carved edging on the side panel. I worked along the same strip now, pressing each raised thorn and serpent’s head until one of them gave, clicking inward under my thumb.
Yes!
The whole case shifted, revealing his secret study.
A desk lamp burned low on the other side, as if he’d only just left, as if he’d be right back at any moment.
I had to hurry.
I moved to the first drawer and started rifling through the papers.
It was a report written from the desk of the Ravenwood research laboratories. There were compound names and dosage schedules tabulated in columns, trial notations, dates. Someone had written breakthrough! in the margin of one page and circled it twice.
My stomach turned slowly.
My mind flashed back to those little paper cups they queued up for us each night. Were they performing drug trials on the girls?
I pressed my tongue to the roof of my mouth and slid the drawer.
Something clacked at the back of it.
I pulled it open again.
A small glass vial had rolled forward from wherever it had been wedged, clear liquid inside. I turned the label toward the lamp.
On it was a single handwritten word.
M15.
The drug from the report?
I weighed it in my palm for a second, then pocketed it. Deargán might know.
The next drawer was filled with legal documents, filed by case number. Not by name. I pulled out the first one and the legal language swam in front of me.
Transfer of medical guardianship.
These were guardianship transfers, formal signatures on heavy cream paper, notarized and filed in neat manila folders.
Attached were more legal documents.
Release of a portion of their associated inheritance trusts in full satisfaction of outstanding fees.
All the files. All those case numbers.
I fingered through the files just to make sure.
Oh my God. All those girls had been signed away, part of their inheritances stripped out and logged as fees. Christ, so many girls.
My blood froze in my veins at a familiar name on one of the documents.
I pulled it out, my trembling fingers cold and numb.
Dervla’s full name was printed across the top of the document.
Dervla, who was still in that ward right now. Who’d pressed her palm to mine and made it a promise.
Her uncle’s signature sat at the bottom of the transfer form. Her uncle had signed her name onto a document and a percentage of her inheritance had been listed alongside it as outstanding medical fees.
Could they do this? My throat closed around the question. Could they sign her away and take her money like this?
I kept scanning the document. Two solicitors had acted as witnesses, and the document was printed on the letterhead of a prominent Irish firm, O’Callaghan & Partners, established 1974, head offices on Merrion Square.
Legal, under law, witnessed and stamped and fully, horrifyingly legitimate.
Another familiar name in another file made my throat tighten even further.
Maeve.
Maeve who hid behind a large mug and had risked herself to slip me sugar for my tea.
There was a letter on top of her file, separate from her release. Maeve was named specifically, then referred to as the intern.
I’m a true Son and I invoke the Mis Protocol as is my right.
…she has become a liability.
The letter shook in my hand. Oh, Maeve. She’d seen something she wasn’t supposed to. That’s how she ended up in Magdalene.
I scanned down to the signature at the bottom.
Charles Bewley.
Dean Bewley.
We weren’t advised of your return. His voice rose in my memory, flat as a closed door, his back already turning while I was still standing there. He’d decided that Maeve was a liability and he had her sent away.
This ran through Ravenwood the same way it ran through Magdalene. One structure, stitched through every institution I’d been put inside. Somewhere at the center of it was a machine I couldn’t yet see the shape of. But I knew, this was bigger than just Alistair.
The file slipped from my numb fingers, the heavy cream paper scattering across Alistair’s pristine rug.
A high, thin ringing started in my ears, drowning out the crackle of the fire in the adjoining bedroom.
The room tilted violently as the true, suffocating weight of it crushed the air from my lungs.
Dervla. Maeve. Sold.
Bile rose, burning the back of my throat. I pressed a trembling fist to my mouth to stifle the sob clawing its way up, fighting the sudden, dizzying urge to dry heave right there on his floor.
Not here. Not now. So far I had nothing that could truly implicate Alistair or the asylum, nothing I could put in someone else’s hands and make them see. I had to keep looking.
Cry later. Break down later. Dervla and Maeve are counting on you.
I forced air into my lungs. Forced myself to keep moving, sinking to the floor to gather the file together with hands that would not stop shaking.
I’d only just stood up, using the edge of the desk to pull myself up because my knees were like jelly, when footsteps sounded in the corridor.
I froze.
Oh my God. Someone was coming!
I shoved the file back into the drawer and ran out of the study, catching the panel and pulling it shut, the click swallowed by the sound of my own breathing.
But the door handle was already moving.
Panic hit so hard my vision narrowed on the opening door.
No, no, no. I was so fucked.