Chapter 16
Xavier took the floor in typical Lindqvist fashion, striding into the circle of candles, unfastening the brass buttons of his tweed riding jacket.
“In centuries past,” he declaimed, “the mors curae was a nightlong frenzy. People branded their own arms, set trees on fire, came home the next morning with a stranger’s head—and always, always wound up covered in blood.
But these days, certain families frown upon the conspicuous killing of a rabbit. ”
“Like with a stick of dynamite?” I asked.
Bianca’s eyes lit up. “So Peter wasn’t kidding.”
“It was only a quarter stick.”
She leaned back, her laughter filling the darkness. “I met Mister Fluffernutter at Aunt Ingrid’s wedding. I’m glad he went out like a fluffy little hero.”
I didn’t laugh. It had been the first of Peter’s many demerits.
“The world is different now,” Xavier picked up his thread. “More police, more surveillance, better forensics. Our families demand restraint. But restraint brings its own dangers.”
“Such as?” I asked, hoping this wasn’t going to take all night.
“A cold heart,” Xavier said. “We cut away care without putting anything in its place.”
“Loyalty,” I said.
“But the spirit is gone.”
My hand, wrapped in Sebastian’s handkerchief, was starting to throb. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“We’ve become ordinary,” Xavier said. “We think we incorporate them, but they’ve incorporated us.”
“You Mortons are the worst,” Bianca said. “You used to cut out Roman hearts inside a ring of stones. Now you cut and paste in spreadsheets.”
“Again,” Sebastian said. “My grades beg to differ.”
“For fuck’s sake,” I said. “What does any of this have to do with Peter?”
“He arrived at Helshire already knowing what you can’t seem to grasp,” Bianca said. “That we are chaos.”
I remembered Peter at his first Primal Scream, happiest unleashed, with no rules to follow.
Xavier put an arm around his older sister, taking back the floor. “Here in Halcyon, we remind ourselves who we are. We kill with a personal motive.”
I stared at them both. “Like an ordinary? Like an animal?”
Xavier beamed. “While still at Helshire. Anger, revenge, heat, before the math sets in.”
“The math is how we’ve survived for thousands of years. We kill for our families, not ourselves.”
“No matter who the target is?” Bianca asked, dead still, sizing me up. The wind picked up outside, stirring the leaves on the floor, a sound like wings.
If she found out it was me…
“Wait,” I said. “Did one of you kill Peter?”
“Never,” she said. “We thought you killed him. Culled for not being a proper little Morton.”
“He fell.”
At last, the tension in her shoulders softened. She believed me.
I looked around the room again—the circle of candles, the layers of graffiti. Peter, gaudy and savage, must have loved it here.
“Did he kill someone?” I asked.
“He was still in the planning stages of his Hefnd,” Bianca said. “The word means vengeance.”
“Have any of you actually done this?”
Xavier looked away. Sebastian raised his empty hands—a man incapable of making enemies.
“When I was a freshman,” Bianca said.
I stared at her.
“Jessica,” she said. “Has anyone ever cut in line, right in front you? Like you didn’t exist? Like you didn’t matter?”
“Possibly.”
“And did you stand there, imagining all the ways you could hurt them? Thinking about how easy it would be to break their knees, snap their necks—so they’d never cut in line again?”
“I rarely fantasize,” I said. “And I avoid lines.”
Bianca came closer. “All that power, Jessica, coiled in your muscles. But we only unleash it when the family picks a target. There’s a cost in not snapping those necks. Sometimes I want to explode.”
I thought of Uncle Max, coming home and reaching for an axe. “I like being in control.”
“I like being alive.” Her eyes were as bright as when I’d been bleeding.
“Bianca,” I said. “Did you kill someone for cutting in line?”
“Laney Maxwell.”
“Stabbed by a townie.”
“Ronald Talman Jr., who tried to grab me on the field house path. He did that to a lot of women. It was a quick trial. Don’t murder people with your own kitchen knife.”
“Okay, him, sure. But you killed someone for cutting in line?”
Finally her right hand came out of its pocket—a razor unfolded, flashing in the dark. “Cut in line. Get cut.”
I looked at Xavier.
“We don’t judge motives here in Halcyon,” he said.
The wind picked up again, and the leaves shifted on the floor. The pain in my hand drummed along with my heartbeat.
Even when our families were in conflict, I’d always thought of the other legacies as colleagues. We took the same classes, exchanged notes on how to seduce and incorporate ordinaries. But these Lindqvists had slipped free of the world I knew.
And they’d taken Peter with them. If he’d focused on being a good Morton, on incorporating his roommate, my orders from Grandmother never would have come.
He’d been so close to saving himself.
Bianca pulled up her left sleeve. There, on her wrist, was a tiny tattoo of a black heart. “The Hefnd mark. It’s easier to wear a mask, when you remember who you are underneath.”
“I know who I am.”
“For now, aunties’ pet.” She started to turn away, but I held her arm.
“Who was Peter going to kill?”
“He didn’t say. Except that it was going to be spectacular.” Bianca slipped the razor back into her pocket. Our conversation was done.
Peter had needed Ashton’s money to fund a spectacle.
Sebastian put an arm around me. He handed me the flask and ushered me toward the stairs.
“Poor Xavier,” he said softly. “I’ve heard that speech three times, and no one’s dead yet.”
I took a drink. With Sebastian at my side, the booby-trapped stairs were easy—his body knew the way.
“Did Peter tell you what he was planning?”
“No.” He took the flask again, and I wondered if he was telling the truth. “I’ll sew up that cut. Grandma Elizabeth says my stitches are perfection.”
“We’ll have to run the gauntlet of your housemates. I’m not up to climbing through windows.”
“They only tease the ones they love.”
We reached the bottom of the stairs, and saw the wreckage of the midnight feast, a scattered trail that led from the dark center of the room, to the door, and out.
“Someone’s lost their mittens,” Sebastian said. “Are your hands cold?”
“A little.”
He bent and scooped them up.
“Thanks.” I fitted one over my bound hand. It compressed the bandage reassuringly.
The Lindqvists were coming down the stairs behind us, laughing at the wreckage of the midnight feast.
“Oh, yum. Cucumber and cream cheese,” I heard Bianca say. “With just that little bit of salt.”