Chapter 56
The next morning, the stairs of Ogden Hall were somehow steeper than usual.
Gertie had moved her pod to the east tower, the jewel in the crown that Divya Seth had occupied last year. It had splendid sunrise views—and more rooms for the expanding cult of Gertie.
A girl peeked over the banister at the sound of our approach and thrilled for a moment at the sight of Sebastian. Then she spotted me, gave a look of horror, and vanished.
Sebastian grinned over his shoulder. “Cat-flinger.”
“He put a hole in my good linen trousers.” Later incinerated, along with the rest of Jessica Anderson.
The color of the month was russet.
The kitchen was crowded, six pod members doing paper crafts around the giant farmhouse table. A dozen wreaths of pressed autumn leaves festooned the walls.
They stood when we came in, splaying their orangey-brown aprons as they curtseyed.
“Good morning, Sebastian,” said one of the girls. The pod adored him with an intensity that unsettled even Gertie.
“Lovely to see you, Alix!” His eyes slipped across the rest. “Trixie, Isla, Carter, Ghia, Skeeter.”
This feat of memory having rendered them ecstatic, Sebastian turned back to Alix—Gertie’s freshman roommate and first acolyte, I now recalled.
“What are we up to this morning?”
“Starting on Pumpkin Pageant,” Alix said. “A bit early.”
“Never too soon. Make sure I get an invitation.”
She beamed at him, and I could no longer stand it.
“Is Gertie here?”
Alix didn’t deign to look at me, but dispatched a messenger with a wave of her hand. Scampering steps receded down a hallway.
At another signal, more pod members flew into action. A kettle went under the faucet, cupboards were ransacked.
“Tea?” Alix asked, and was again rewarded with Sebastian’s radiant smile.
Gertie lounged in her favorite wing-backed armchair, wearing an umber prairie dress. Smoke-filtered early morning sun came wanly through the windows, falling on Uncle Max in her lap. With a dropper bottle, Gertie dribbled water into his mouth.
“Both of you at once,” she said, not looking up. “To what does one owe this excess of Mortons?”
“A small favor,” I said.
“How intriguing. One hopes the tea is satisfactory.”
“Faraday’s bank needs another letter. From her mother this time.”
“The tea is lovely,” Sebastian added. His was flecked with rose petals; mine was cold and smelled like socks.
Pointedly, my antique teacup was decorated with Icarus falling, his wings in tatters. I’d thought of Peter when they handed it to me, though the reference was clearly to a certain cat.
“One regrets the lack of cookies—we’ve been busy. This small request required both of you?”
Sebastian nodded understandingly. “Lots to do for Pumpkin Pageant.”
“There’s a matter of secrecy,” I said.
“There’s more Pageant every year. Secrecy?”
“Don’t tell the family.”
“Aunt Jessica.” She looked up from Uncle Max at last. “A federal crime, without informing the elders? You’re asking one to break the rules.”
“Since when do you care about rules?”
“Since when are you a purveyor of rebellion?”
“Discretion, not rebellion,” Sebastian said.
Gertie ignored him—her eyes on me. She’d seen me crumble at Mary’s curae. She’d noted my uncertainties, my apologies, the moments of panic in my eyes. Maybe Icarus was not Uncle Max, but me.
“Faraday is incorporated,” Gertie said. “It’s our duty to help her. So why keep it quiet, Auntie?”
“Pity you didn’t ask Peter that question.”
She went back to dribbling water in the cat’s mouth. “One didn’t realize he was in danger. Can’t say the same for present company.”
“Gertie,” Sebastian said soothingly. “We’re all on the same side.”
“Then tell me what’s going on. Don’t you trust me?”
“It’s Faraday we don’t trust,” he said. “She needs to be placated.”
“Stop talking for Aunt Jessica—she’s sitting right here!”
At Gertie’s raised voice, I heard silence fall in the kitchen, a readiness descending on the tower. The pod expected mayhem and defenestration from me now.
“Faraday pulled a wrack on her own brother,” I said softly.
Gertie let out a low whistle. “Then she needs to be disciplined, not rewarded.”
“If the family comes for her, she’ll start babbling,” Sebastian said. “Who knows about what?”
“About Jessica.” Gertie turned to me. “By now, she’s noticed that you’re different. She’s not the only one. The other day, Tom came to ask about you.”
That took me a moment—Tom, braving the pod.
“What did you tell him?”
“That we all become someone different here at Helshire.” She giggled. “After Ghia provided cartwheels, he believed me.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“Don’t thank me. Stop feeding me bullshit. Car accidents don’t turn Mortons into ordinaries.”
“I’m not ordinary,” I said, half rising from my chair. The Icarus teacup slipped from my lap and shattered on the floor.
Gertie looked down at it. “And here I thought I was being obvious.”
“Gertie,” Sebastian said. “You’re probably thinking—”
“This is what I think.” She put the dropper bottle aside. “Shut the door.”
I did.
“Peter couldn’t admit he was in pain,” she said, “so he burned down chapels and built bombs, and didn’t last till sophomore year.
His death made Sebastian sad and quiet, except for spilling our deepest secret to the Lindqvists.
Then our little prodigy got a bump on the head and fell apart.
It’s coming for all of us—Uncle Max’s axe is still swinging!
It will keep swinging until we make it stop! ”
At the anguished cry of those last three words, a thunder of feet came down the hallway. The door flung open, and the horde stared at us, appalled by the sight of the broken teacup.
“Coventry?” I suggested.
Gertie flung out an arm. “You heard!”
The pod scuttled away, subdividing into its various rooms, mice scattering at the yowl of a cat.
Gertie waited for the last door to slam, then spoke in a steely voice I’d never heard before. “Tell me everything.”
“Okay.” I stood and closed the door again, returned to my seat, took a deep breath.
“Loud noises make me jump. Being alone makes me sad. Playing poker with my dorm sisters makes me happy. Music does all those things. I became friends with a sick kid in the hospital, and she writes to me now, real letters on paper. I’m worried about her. I care about her.”
“But why? And don’t say the accident.”
I took a slow breath.
“Because I was in love with Hiromi.” In the corner of my vision, Sebastian froze a little.
Gertie caught it, and slowly looked from me to him. “Are you two…banging?”
“Yes,” he said, like it was a relief.
“Finally! Something one didn’t already know.”
“You think that’s the important part of all this?” I asked.
“Yes, because you’re keeping it a secret. If the elders knew, Jessica, you’d be untouchable, regardless of blabberings from Faraday Wilbert-Lee. You two together has been Grandma’s wet dream since we were kids!”
I opened my mouth to argue, but Sebastian took my hand. Gertie watched his fingers interlace with mine, mesmerized.
“We don’t want them to know,” he said.
“Don’t you?” She dragged her gaze from our hands back to me. “Remember the first big family meeting after Sebastian arrived? We were out in the Barrow Marsh, with Katie, when the bell rang. A few weeks after you killed Rabbit.”
“Sebastian wanted to go with me,” I said.
“So did we! But we knew the rule: no curae, no meetings. But our new cousin already wanted to do everything you did.”
“Please stop,” Sebastian said.
“He wanted to be you, Jessica. He pleaded for you to take him along. You treated him like an ordinary: You’re not a Morton yet. When he started weeping, you just stared harder because you never cried. Do you remember how cruel you were?”
“I remember. This is important why?”
“Because of what we did later, the three of us. We acted like nothing had happened. Like Sebastian hadn’t cried. Like we didn’t care that Prodigy Jessica got to play with the grown-ups while we collected fucking mushrooms. You looked so confused. Katie could barely keep from giggling.”
“You took his side,” I said. “Sebastian has always been good at making people take his side.”
Gertie smiled. “No, Jessica. It was my idea.”
I looked at Sebastian for confirmation.
He shrugged. “She asked if I wanted revenge. I thought you’d been horrible. I didn’t understand yet that you were just being…Jessica.”
“No,” I sighed. “I was being cruel. I wanted to be better than you.”
“But it turned out I was the best,” Gertie said, giving Uncle Max a long stroke of triumph.
White fluff flew. “Better at tricking than you, Jessica, because you don’t understand how people work.
Not even your own family! I’ve always known what will and won’t fly.
You not telling the elders about Faraday going off the rails? That won’t fly.”
“She won’t do it again.”
A long laugh peeled out of her. “You’re so very simple, Jessica. Faraday Wilbert-Lee was born and bred to go off the rails!”
I shook my head. “She’s my responsibility, Gertie. Not yours.”
“My point, exactly. You fuck up so rarely that you haven’t learned the rules—you can fail, but you can’t hide your failures. Secrets got Peter killed, not his bones or his bombs. They don’t want to cull any of us. Look at what I get away with! Because I give them what they need.”
“Forging property deeds and signatures,” I said. “Not my forte.”
I had many skills, but the thing that had always come easiest—being a Morton—was gone.
“Then give them something they need even more,” she said. “You and Sebastian, making little Mortons. There’s a shortage lately, or haven’t you noticed?”
“We don’t want the family’s attention.”
“Which is your real reason for protecting Faraday—you don’t want elders skulking around Helshire. Why not?”
I glanced at Sebastian. His eyes were wide with warning, but I pulled my hand from his. This had to happen now, not in a year.
We needed everyone.
“Gertie,” I said. “I’m going to ask you a question.”
She heard the change in my voice, and sat up straighter, giving Uncle Max a gentle shove from her lap. He flopped onto the floor and puddled there, content in his pool of sunlight.
“Fire away, Aunt Jessica.”
“When did you first realize,” I asked her, “that our family was wrong?”