11. Pippa
PIPPA
With my eyes closed, I lean my head back against the fluffy pillows and sigh. I know I’m sick. It isn’t a secret, and yet mortification still makes my cheeks flame with hot shame. I hate exhibiting such weakness. I’m used to taking care of myself. I’ve had to.
Angry tears burn the back of my eyelids.
I drape an arm over my face, hoping the tears won’t fall.
That if they do, Ruby won’t see. I can hear her moving in the room, and when I have control over my emotions, I peek at her.
She fluffs pillows on the loveseat near the fireplace, then straightens an afghan.
Noah comes back into the room, expression drawn until his gaze lands on his wife and brightens. She smiles back at him, but the look in her eyes is dark and hungry.
Sadness creeps through me like an alley cat crying mournfully for what I thought I had and lost, what was never really mine. A love like the one Noah and Ruby share is rare. And it’s not for me. I clear my throat, reminding them I’m there.
Ruby gives her head a little shake. Noah presses his lips together, turning toward me. “Miss Willoughby.” He digs into the bag of doctor tools he left on the nightstand. “Would you allow me to take a sample of your blood?”
Hope stirs in my chest like a boat brought in by the tide. “You think you can treat me?” The doctors on the mainland tried everything to treat Vastatio, to no avail. But Noah’s Mavarri, a superior race with knowledge that stretches back beyond anything I can understand. Maybe…
“No.” His tone is sharp.
Ruby elbows him. He blinks, his brow furrowing as if confused, then softens the longer they communicate without speaking.
I hate that I long for something so intimate with someone else.
Noah turns back to me. “I won’t make any promises,” he says more gently, or at least as gently as a man like Noah Roan can. “But I’d like to take a look. Would that be alright?”
I nod, preparing myself for the inevitable pain that always comes with blood draws.
Noah pulls a syringe from his bag. A giant glass cylinder set in an ornate housing of brass with two curly cues for the administrator’s knuckles, it has a sharp needle, large and protruding, attached to one end with a plunger at the other end.
The cylinder is empty. Strange, it was always full of a substance when they took my blood at The Sanatorium.
I asked a nurse about it once, and she said it was a medicine that helped with the pain of the blood draw.
Which seemed odd, since it always hurt so much. Will this hurt even more without it?
The back of my neck prickles, the sensation traveling down to a phantom ache at my elbow. My palms sweat, and I wipe them along my thighs, confused by my body’s reaction.
“What is it, Pippa?” Ruby moves to my side.
I can’t take my eyes off the syringe. The sharp tip glistens when Noah holds it up, his fingers curling through the ornate brass holder.
“Have you had blood taken with a syringe before?” Noah studies me with an acute precision that sets my nerves firing even more.
I nod my head, my mouth too dry to answer. My lungs tighten, breath turning shallow. Lightheaded, a fog obscures my vision.
“We don’t have to do this.” Ruby takes my hand, and her thumb brushes gently over my knuckles. Her voice, her touch, bring me back to the now.
“I’m alright.” I blink, then exhale a weighted breath. “Take the blood.”
Noah hesitates, his eyes jumping to Ruby before returning to me. “Are you certain?”
After I agree again, he wraps a tourniquet around my upper arm, then wipes the inside of my elbow with something that smells like alcohol.
I squeeze my eyes shut, turning my head toward Ruby, who continues to hold my hand. The prick of the needle hurts despite Noah’s gentle efficiency. I hiss. But the pain immediately lessens to a sharp pinch. There’s no burn through my veins like there always was at The Sanatorium.
“Not long now,” Noah says.
“Is it supposed to look like that?” Ruby whispers.
My eyes open, head turning to look. “Like what?”
Noah pulls the needle from my arm and presses a compress to the wound. “Hold this, ta’ari.”
Ruby reaches over and holds the cloth.
“I can do it.” I take over, pressing the cloth against the puncture. “What’s wrong?”
Noah holds the filled vial up to the light flickering in the lantern. “Your blood is very thick. You might be dehydrated, so make sure you drink more water.”
He leans close to Ruby and whispers something in her ear that makes her cheeks turn pink before he leaves the room.
“You really don’t have to stay,” I say to Ruby. “I know it’s the new moon.” A time when hunger rules Mavarri, a time when it’s harder for them to fight their nature, when they’re closest to the predators they are.
She brushes off my concern with a flip of her hand. “Would you like me to help you change into your dressing gown? It’s likely the investigator will visit you later.”
I nod, and Ruby helps me into my night shift and a robe, then helps me back to bed and under the covers.
The fire in the hearth flickers, casting long shadows as the room grows darker. I stare at it, while Ruby’s unfocused gaze goes to the window.
“It’s strange that Vastatio only affects women,” she muses, half to herself.
“Men are stricken with it, they just don’t survive, succumbing rather quickly.”
She hums as if considering things as she sits in an armchair near the bed, and I wonder how the gears in her mind are turning.
“You enjoy research, don’t you?” I ask.
“Yes. I love it.” She tucks her legs up under her. “Especially when it involves helping women. That’s all I ever wanted for my life.”
“And that’s what brought you here?” I understand having a purpose outside oneself. For me, it’s my son. For Ruby, it’s women in our society who’ve been wronged.
“In a roundabout way, yes.” She quietly laughs. “Life is certainly strange. The women in my group would think so.”
“Your group?”
“My friends. We call ourselves The Women’s Conspiracy Society.” She chuckles softly as if remembering something happy.
“You miss them?”
“Immensely.”
“Do they know…” I weakly trail off, uncertain how to speak about her transformation.
She shakes her head. “I’m not sure they’d believe me. But I need to write to them soon, otherwise, Emelia and Lucy will believe I fell into a conspiracy and start investigating.”
“You did fall into a conspiracy.”
She laughs again. “You’re right. I did. And in the best possible way.”
I love Ruby’s laugh, her energy.
“Lucy and I met years ago when I went to New Caldon to take a class at the college there.”
Memories of a time I’ve left behind rush into the immediate moment. My breath catches, but I release the tension on a slow exhale. New Caldon is just a place. “Tell me about your friend.”
Ruby smiles, her features softening. She’s a very pretty woman, and becoming Mavarri has only made her beauty more pronounced.
“We ran into each other at a bookshop, both looking for the same title.” She sniffs with amusement. “You know how difficult it can be to get copies of books in the colonies.”
I didn’t, but I could imagine.
“That book cemented our friendship. Lucy and I would post it back and forth to one another with a letter.”
“That’s… quite a story.”
“It is.” Ruby’s smile reaches her lovely eyes. “We made it a point to meet at least twice a year. We were both busy. Me with my eventual professorship, and Lucy with her investigations.”
“Investigations?”
“Yes. She wanted to be an investigative constable in New Caldon. And of course she was having difficulty, because she’s a woman. She had to work twice as hard as any man.”
It’s an unfortunate reality of our world, and I’m grateful for women like Ruby who try to improve it.
“You mentioned another member of The Women’s Conspiracy Society?”
“Yes. Emelia.”
“Is she an investigator too?”
“No.” Ruby smooths the skirt of her dress as she adjusts in the seat.
“She’s a librarian. Lucy and I met her on a visit for another of those books we needed that we’d traced to the New Ambershire Colony.
We took the railcar and made a trip to visit.
While Lucy and I were there, we helped Emelia who was in a bit of trouble, and the rest is history.
That is how the Women’s Conspiracy Society began. ”
“They sound like amazing friends,” I say, hoping my envy is disguised. I’ve never had good female friends. It makes me wonder how different my life might have turned out if I had.
There’s a knock on the door, and Ruby gets up to answer it without missing a beat in her tale. “Lucy and I—” The door opens. “Lucy!”
“Ruby!” In a whirl of swishing skirts, Ruby lunges at a woman standing in the doorway.
She’s stunning! A tall, curvy woman, with dark hair coiffed perfectly, not a strand out of place.
She’s wearing a charcoal gray dress in a serviceable style that showcases her hourglass shape. Both women speak at once.
“Were you promoted?”
“Your letter said—”
“We were just talking about—”
“Lucy!” A thin-lipped man behind them reprimands. “We’re not here for tea and women’s gossip.”
The woman—who I assume is Lucy—steps out of Ruby’s arms and straightens her smart, gray peplum jacket, the buttons closed all the way to her throat. She blinks as if trying to keep from rolling her eyes, and her nicely shaped lips thin with impatience. “Yes, sir.”
“Do you know the suspect?” the man asks Lucy.
Reaching into her satchel, she pulls out a small notebook and pen. “She’s not a suspect, Inspector Ricin.”
The inspector, a short, stout man dressed in an ill-fitting brown suit with a bowler hat, gives Lucy a once-over, fat mustache flicking, his condescension clear on his wide features. He clicks his tongue behind his teeth disapprovingly. “What have I told you?”
“Everyone’s a suspect until proven otherwise,” Lucy answers.
The moment he turns his back to her, adjusting his spectacles as he tilts his head to look up at Ruby, Lucy’s eyes roll, and I have to stifle a laugh behind my hand.
“Now, Madame,” Ricin says, glancing nervously at me. He pulls a handkerchief from his pocket and holds it over his nose. “Is she contagious? We were told to speak with the two of you first, but if—”
“I have Vastatio. It’s not contagious.” I sit up a little more in bed, the effort making my head spin. “Come in.”
Inspector Ricin enters the room, looks at the two chairs by the bed, and sits gingerly on the edge of the furthest one. Ruby perches on the side of my bed opposite the inspector.
“Lucy, take notes,” Inspector Ricin barks without looking at Lucy. “State your names for the record.”
Lucy sits in the other chair, her notebook flipped open and her pen to the page.
“Pippa Willoughby,” I say.
He turns his attention to Ruby. “And you?”
Ruby lifts her chin with a proud look in her eyes. “Ruby Roan.”
Lucy’s mouth drops open. “Roan?” she silently mouths.
Ruby smiles coyly at her friend. Clearly, these two have a lot to catch up on.
It’s easy to guess why Ruby’s been remiss on her correspondence.
From what I understand, newly mated Mavarri experience a period of…
insatiable hunger. She and Noah have only surfaced for occasional meals, and even then they’re always touching each other.
I once caught her feeding from him in the hall outside the library.
They were so engrossed they didn’t even notice I was there, despite the fact that I was singing as I came down the hall before spotting them.
I quickly backed away and went in the opposite direction, undetected.
“I believe you know why we’re here,” Ricin says, somehow able to look down his nose despite his diminutive size. “Tell me about the death of Hammish Roan.”
“He died,” Ruby states simply.
Inspector Ricin sighs. “The circumstances, Mrs. Roan. Where were you?”
“It was a few weeks after Solstice. We were at breakfast.”
“And Hammish Roan? Where was he?”
“He came to breakfast late.”
“He was very pale,” I add. “I remember that.”
Ruby nods. “He was. I thought maybe he was coming down with a cold.”
“So you were all in the…”
“Breakfast room,” Ruby supplies.
“Are you getting this?” Ricin asks Lucy, the derision clear in his tone.
“Yes, inspector.”
“What happened next?” he asks.
“I was standing near the breakfast buffet. I’d just added some honey to my warm oats when Noah shouted.”
“What did he shout?”
Ruby pauses for a moment, her eyes unfocused as if seeing back into the past. “He called his father’s name.” Her voice is quiet with emotion. She clears her throat. “I remember spinning around and rushing to Noah’s side. His father was on the floor.”
“Your back was to him?”
“Yes. I saw him enter, then returned to the buffet.”
“And you?” The inspector trains his small, beady eyes on me.
“I was sitting at the table.” I shake my head with feigned sadness. “Hammish walked into the room, and he stopped at his chair. He was standing one moment, made a gasping noise as he grabbed his chest, then collapsed.”
The inspector nods, glancing at Lucy. “Let me see those.” He snatches the notes out of her hands and reads over them. “You need to work on your shorthand Ms. Thaddox.” He flicks the notebook out without looking at her, the book dangling from his hand with disinterest.
Lucy presses her teeth together, her jaw tightening as she grabs it from him.
“Alright, that will be enough for now.” Inspector Ricin stands abruptly as if his seat is on fire. “Thank you for your cooperation.” He nods once at me, then looks at Ruby. “Where can we find the rest of the household, Mrs. Roan?”
Her smile is innocuous, belying nothing about the new moon party. “I believe you know the answer to that question, Inspector.”
His features pinch together, and he clears his throat. “Yes, well, where exactly is the party tonight?”
Ruby looks at me as if checking to see if I’m okay. When I nod and yawn, she takes Lucy’s hand in hers. “Allow me to show you the way.”
They’ve barely left before my heavy eyes close, and I fall into a haunted sleep.