Chapter 17
Sebastian’s needle stung.
The cut looked clean, in the light of his desk lamp. My knives are sharp as scalpels.
Sebastian had only red thread left in his sewing kit. It was stark against my pale skin.
“Hell of a way to get Bianca’s trust,” he said.
“I’d rather spill blood than family secrets.”
Sebastian twirled his needle’s tip in the flame of the candle he’d lit. “They’ve asked me about the cousins too. More than once. I said it was the chapel fire, and kept Uncle Max’s name out of it.”
“Good. But you never told me about Peter hanging out with the Lindqvists.”
He looked up from my wound. “You would’ve told the family.”
“That our old enemies have a murder club here at Helshire? Yes, I might have mentioned that.”
“And then what would’ve happened?”
I thought about this while he looped the next stitch. In this light, the scar beneath his bottom lip was visible. He’d fallen over a tripwire in his first game of Bunny Hunt—rookie mistake.
“The elders would’ve told me to keep Peter from…” I went silent. Sebastian’s needle slid through my flesh.
“No,” he said. “They would have used it to test him.”
And Peter would have failed.
“He never recovered from Uncle Max. Our family never helped him with that, but Xavier and Bianca did. Can you imagine what the family would do if they found out he was planning a murder? A spectacle?”
I didn’t have to imagine. “Why didn’t he come to me?”
“Because he wanted your approval. He could never let you see how much help he needed.”
“But you also kept it from me, cousin. To protect Peter?”
“To protect you.” He dipped the needle into the flame again. “It would’ve been your job to cull him. I didn’t want that.”
I watched Sebastian make the next stitch. He was right about so many things, but wrong about me. I didn’t need his protection. I was honored to have been blooded early, on someone so close. I was happy to have solved the problem of Peter.
But now there was the problem of Sebastian.
He’d kept Lindqvist secrets and dabbled in their traditions. He’d known Peter was planning a murder, and said nothing. The golden rule of loyalty: Never hide things from the family.
Which meant that I had to report him, or I would be just as guilty.
“Sebastian. You would’ve let Peter commit a spectacular crime, here in our backyard?”
“I would’ve talked him out of it.”
A laugh bubbled out of me. “He never listened to you.”
“He trusted me, because I never told anyone about the chapel.”
My wounded hand flinched a little.
We’d all wondered. The chapel was old, and that summer had been blazing hot. Aunt Iris had never found any evidence of accelerants. But it had burned so swiftly, and Peter had played with matches before he could read.
“You’re sure?”
“I confronted him,” Sebastian said, “while it was still burning. Grabbed him and smelled his hands, expecting kerosene. But he smelled like potato chips.”
“Potato chips?”
“It took me a while to figure it out—those fat calories burn hot and clean, till there’s nothing left. All you need is a big enough pile. Remember how he used to walk into Upper Falls on Fridays, to buy snacks?”
“Bitter lemon drops,” I said softly. He’d brought me a box every week—until he stopped, that same summer.
Sebastian shuddered. “Those things. Your tastebuds have always been mutant.”
“Why did you keep this a secret?”
“As long as Peter was around, I felt safe.”
I wanted to pull away, but Sebastian’s needle was still in my flesh. “Safe from what?”
He drew the last stitch closed, and finally looked up at me. “You don’t know what it’s like, missing the target ten times in a row, failing a startle test, picking the wrong mushroom. Always wondering if this demerit is one too many. With Peter around, at least I knew he’d go first.”
I stared at Sebastian. “Cousin. You were a prodigy.”
“I started way too late. You were almost done with your curae when I showed up.”
“Exactly. You’d never held a bow before, but it all came so easy.”
“Nothing feels easy, Jess, when your adopted family turn out to have a special graveyard for problem kids.”
“You were one of us right away. You loved being a Morton.”
He stared at me a moment, like I was the one talking nonsense. “It was fun at first, climbing, learning how to fight. Playing with adult toys—cars, knives, poisons. Even pain resistance was clarifying.”
“Uncle Cyrus never made you cry.”
“Butterfly clips were nothing after my birth dad. But the Little Graveyard was always there, reminding me what happened to those other Sebastians.”
I shook my head. “We don’t do that anymore.”
“Tell that to the adopted kid.”
“Grandmother Elizabeth was adopted. So was—”
“They arrived as babies. I was eight.”
“Sebastian.” We Mortons were more than genetics, more than a name. We were a tradition, an idea.
We were certainty.
I reached across to take his hand. “You’re a true Morton.”
“I was just starting to believe that…when Uncle Max showed up. I thought he was there on official business. Because we’d all skipped archery practice the day before.”
“Oh. Shit.”
“Finding out he’d lost his mind only made it worse. It meant any adult could pick up an axe, anytime.” Sebastian went silent, and for the first time I saw how deep his fear ran.
“That’s not true,” I said.
“What if Xavier’s right, and we’re too controlled? Maybe it keeps building up, until we lose it—one way or another. Are you going to report me?”
“No,” I said without thinking.
He looked into my eyes. “I can always tell when people are lying, Jess. Except you.”
The strange thing was, I wasn’t lying. The fact that Sebastian was afraid of our elders—afraid of us, the Mortons—was unthinkable.
He was not like Peter. He was like me. Neither of us would ever be culled.
“I won’t tell the family anything,” I said. “Do you want me to swear?”
“I’m out of thread. But blood is the mother of history.”
Our oldest certainty, said with a grin.
He twirled the needle in the flame once more, and some small remainder of me on its point sizzled. He delicately pricked his finger, and touched its tip to the center of my stitched palm. “I promise: No more lies.”
I made a decision. “Ask me anything.”
“If Grandmother had told you to kill Peter, would you have?”
“Yes,” I said.
Sebastian sighed a little. He’d missed the target though.
“Better me than someone else,” I said. “Peter and I loved each other. What about you?”
“I’d kill him. It’s not like there’s a choice.”
I took a breath, relieved that he understood. I almost told him, but the old rivalry was still there—I knew something that Sebastian didn’t.
“Sometimes my memories of that day are shaky,” he said. “Did you throw the padlocks or did I?”
“It was your idea, but I threw them.”
“And then we ran,” he said.
“Gertie ran ahead to get help. I got Tom and Peter out. You covered our retreat.”
“I stabbed Uncle Max in the legs.”
“That’s why he didn’t catch us.”
Sebastian looked relieved to be saying this out loud. “And then we killed him.”
“No. Arabella killed him with an arrow.”
He shook his head. “She missed his heart. He was still breathing. We went back and kicked and kicked and kicked him.”
“I’d forgotten that.”
“We weren’t blooded for it, because we were little. They made Arabella an aunt. But we ended him, Jess—you and me.”
I squeezed Sebastian’s hand again. “Yes. Just me and you.”
But now that I was thinking back to that day, I remembered that Peter had been there too, in on the kill.