Chapter 18
My archery went to shit.
Every time I drew, Sebastian’s stitches pulled, twisted, burned. My pain resistance has always been high, but the bow doesn’t forgive even a tremor. Worse, Xavier Lindqvist was in the class, a smile on his face as he watched me miss.
I took a late drop due to injury and found myself with a free half credit. There was a required legacy course I’d been avoiding, but which I needed for my internship this summer: Non-Dramatic Improv.
“No Drama” was officially part of the Theater Department, but was taught by an uncle in the Wolvaardt family. We stood onstage, pretending to be at a cocktail party or business lunch, trying to blend in with tech investors, medical professionals, lawyers—ordinaries, in other words.
The real work was researching cover stories, coming up with convincing small talk for our assumed identities.
There were always a few theater kids rotated in as controls, who tried to add conflict or comedy, but Uncle Wolfie would slap his walking stick against the edge of the stage until things became mundane again.
Some legacies excelled in No Drama. Divya Seth was great at accents; Regina Lindqvist captured shyness perfectly. Sebastian had gone on to the advanced workshop. But I found it tricky being someone else, someone ordinary.
Shooting arrows, I always knew exactly when I’d hit the target.
With improv, I was never sure.
My other project was pulling at the loose threads of Peter’s life. The preparations for his Hefnd had to be lying around somewhere, waiting to be found. Pyrotechnics, even plans, would bring the police back to campus.
If my family’s name wound up in the papers again, my culling of Peter would be marked as a failure; I’d lose the internship in New York. Worse, my elders might follow the clues to the Lindqvists and their murder club, and discover what I hadn’t told them.
It was strange keeping secrets from my family, something I hadn’t done since my childhood confessions to the dead Jessicas. But I’d promised to protect Sebastian.
I searched the other dead drops in the library and broke into Peter’s room when Ashton wasn’t home. Everywhere it was the same—no plans, no cash, no explosives.
On my runs across campus, I tried the larger key from 001.944 (monsters and related phenomena) in random doors. But there were hundreds of locks at Helshire, maybe thousands.
I started taking Peter’s old knife into the woods at night. Eventually I began to learn Ziggy’s balance point—that same hidden center of the knife that Peter must have found.
But that didn’t teach me his secrets.
In the parking lot behind Dewitt, a small shrine to my cousin had appeared: a poster signed by his Intro Bio study group, a “Most Dangerous Sparring Partner” trophy from his karate team, a candid photo with the other interns at the Helshire Wilderness Preserve.
Clumps of flowers lay rotting on the ground, their cards erased by the rain.
He’d never mentioned these people to me, any more than he had the Lindqvists. Before he’d left the estate, everyone who was a part of his life was part of mine. So many outsiders had known Peter near the end, while I, his closest cousin, had hardly known him at all.
“What’s with the glove, dear?” Faraday asked. Helshire was the sort of place where wearing one glove was artsy—less noticeable than a handful of stitches.
I tugged it off and showed her my palm.
“Ouch,” she said. “Drinking accident?”
“I drink with my right hand.” I lifted my water glass.
We were in the Dining Commons in midafternoon, enjoying the dregs of the Sunday brunch buffet. Faraday was eating green goddess roast chicken left over from last night’s Earth Day dinner, and I was enjoying the Commons’ infamous eggplant parm, affectionately known as “elephant scabs.”
“Wait. Did someone knife you?” Faraday’s eyes widened. “Is that a defensive wound?”
“Self-inflicted. I was out at the Old Campus.”
“Yeah, those ruins are unsafe. Hopper stepped on a nail last year, which was funny because of her name. Love the red stitches, though. Did you ask for them special?”
“Red thread was all Sebastian could find.”
“Um, what?”
“It was late. The infirmary was closed.” Mortons seldom see doctors outside the family. We don’t want ordinaries keeping a catalog of our weaknesses.
“Damn,” Faraday sighed. “That boy can do anything.”
I nodded. When we were eleven, Sebastian cut his leg on some old barbed wire in the poppy field, where we weren’t supposed to play. Rather than confess, I tried to stitch him up. He took over halfway, already better with a needle than me.
“Sewing is a Morton addiction,” I said. “You should come out for Quilting Day next year. Everyone adds one square to our giant quilt. It’s been growing for decades.” Centuries. “Grandma gives us all presents. It’s our most proud family tradition.”
She smiled. “Isn’t pride a sin?”
“A Christian sin, a pagan virtue.” I put the glove back on. “Have you kissed Sebastian yet?”
Faraday stabbed at her chicken, giving me a little shrug.
I put down my fork and knife. “Does this shrug mean his prowess is overrated?”
“No, it means we haven’t yet. Which is Marlow’s fault.”
I waited for more.
“He’s being stingy,” Faraday explained. “Even though he’s the one who tried to give our company away. My spring wardrobe budget is basically zero, and he wants me to charge my roommates rent next year.”
I frowned. “You were paying for the whole house?”
“Jessica. Splitting the check is so middle class.”
“At a restaurant, yes. With housing, I think it’s the norm.”
“Really? Gross. Anyway, Salinger’s being weird about it—of course.” She hesitated. “I really need to replace him. Do you…”
I readied myself to say no yet again, but Faraday surprised me.
“Do you think Sebastian would live with me?”
“Sebastian?”
“Good-looking, profligate with his charms,” she said. “I think you’ve met.”
“We have, dear. But I must remind you, you have plans to kiss him.”
“Which is the whole point of this digression! Thanks to my brother, I clearly have to wait until after we live together. It’s too brazen to kiss someone and then ask them to move in.”
“It might be awkward in either order.”
“Ugh, you’re right. Can you just fix my brother?”
And there it was, hardly a month after Faraday had signed—the need to assume control. Aunt Veronica had prepared me for this.
“We can,” I said. “But are you sure?”
“Sure of what? That I need new clothes?”
“That you want to play this card so soon. That you’re okay with everything changing between you and your brother.”
Faraday put down her fork and pushed her plate away.
“Changing how? Is he going to flee when he runs into me at dinner parties?”
“That depends—on his level of resistance, his ability to put two and two together, and his ego.”
“Zero, low, and immense,” she said.
“Your mother might also be upset.”
“I just want the clothes.” Faraday gestured at herself. “Have you not noticed? I have a whole new look going on.”
I had noticed. Over a gray button-down, she wore a pinstriped blazer, navy blue and gray, right out of the Morton closets. Aunt Veronica’s aqua fountain pen was in the breast pocket. The lipstick she’d started wearing was very close to Grandmother Elizabeth’s oxblood.
“That’s just money,” I said.
“Marlow still uses checks, because Dad did. You think they’d call him to confirm a check for, say, five grand?”
I shook my head. If they did, we’d deal with it.
Faraday had given us the codes for the alarms at her Boston house. We were on our way to collecting the Wilbert-Lees’ banking passwords, the combinations to their safes, the keys to deposit boxes. A full audit of their finances was already underway.
With all that in hand, we could present ourselves to Marlow and explain the situation, and he would become a signatory as well. Eventually the whole family would be made to understand.
In the meantime, I had his signature from the contracts on Faraday’s phone. If Gertie was bored enough to do favors for Peter, she could do one for me.
“We’ll get you that check. Let’s save the rest for when we really need it.”
“Why wait though? We’re only going to need it once.”
I smiled. Faraday wanted the next stage to happen. She wanted to step into a shiny new world, a place she couldn’t come back from. But it was too soon.
Aunt Veronica had explained that pacing was everything. Like adding sugar to a meringue, slowly, evenly, giving the crystals time to dissolve into their new form—that was how to incorporate a new family into the Morton way.
“Listen, dear,” I began.
My phone lit up. A text from Garrett.
See you this summer.
Something uncoiled in my chest.
“Your face,” Faraday said. “Did you win the lottery?”
“New York is a go.”
She dropped her fork, reached across, and grabbed my injured hand. “A train ride from Boston! Thank god you didn’t wind up somewhere boring. I would have visited anyway, but this is perfect.”
“Yes,” I said. “Ouch.”
She released me. “I’ve never seen you smile like this.”
I brought order to my face. It was my only real weakness—the approval of my family, the rush of winning a prized assignment.
As far as I knew, Sebastian hadn’t even been considered.
Faraday leaned closer. “Such happiness. Is there something you’re not telling me, dear?”
I looked around. We were practically alone. This was an opportunity to bond, and to distract Faraday from wanting her brother brought to heel.
“There might be somebody in New York.”
Her eyes went wide. “Somebody? Since when is anybody a somebody?”
“What do you mean?”
“Jessica Morton has carnal interests. She has random flings. She has girls and boys and two-night stands.” Faraday shook her head. “But she does not. Have. Somebodies.”
“My precise words were might be. I’ve only met her once.”
“And yet smitten? Even more astonishing!”
Smitten. A typical Faraday overstatement. Bringing her into my business—into Garrett’s business—was perhaps unwise.
“Let’s drop this, dear,” I said. “It could be nothing, and we don’t want to jinx it.”
“Jinx it. Hah,” Faraday said. “You will crush this poor girl’s heart.”
She picked up her fork again.
A moment later, we were back on the subject of the Victorian share house, and Salinger, and whether Sebastian would ever deign to live off campus. My crush was forgotten.
But my smile kept coming back. A city to learn, an assignment at the heart of our empire, Hiromi to seduce. All of it simmered at the bottom of my stomach, at the ends of my fingertips, on my skin. It was time to get back to my bone arranging—my art would soon have an audience.
I had a new bow to draw.