“Thank you,” I tell her again. There’s more weight to the words this time.
She nods, a smile hovering on her lips. “What is family for?”
“Killing assholes and hiding bodies, apparently.”
Mama chuckles.
“The servants will be here any minute,” I say. “I’m going to try waking Beresford while you pack up the laundry.”
She nods and heads into the pantry to look for a bucket or a basket. I brush strands of blood-damp blue hair back from my husband’s face. Then I slap him hard.
He grimaces, his brows furrowing. I slap him again, and he blinks dazedly, his eyes bleary with sleep. “What the fuck, Sybil?” He sits up on the sheet, rubbing a hand over his face. “Where am I?”
“In the kitchen. You had quite the feast before you went to sleep.”
“Oh… shit.” He stares around in a panic, blinking twice more as he tries to comprehend what he’s seeing. “Where is…”
“The bones are under some bushes out in a field behind the house. We couldn’t take them very far, and we had no time to bury them, but they’re hidden well enough for now.”
“We?” he exclaims, just as my mother returns with a large bucket. She gives him her most motherly, reproachful look as she goes to the sink and begins loading up the bucket with bloody cloths.
“Good morning, son-in-law,” she says.
Beresford casts me a despairing glance and sees the truth on my face. “You told her.”
“Everything.”
A heavy blush colors his cheeks as he pulls the sheet more closely over his lower half and presses one hand against his stomach.
“It’s not nearly as swollen as it was,” I say. “You’re digesting him well.”
He looks away from me and scoffs bitterly. “Fuck, Sybil, I wanted to hide this part of myself from you. I didn’t want you to know any of it, much less witness it. Believe me, I realize howdisgusting it is… how abhorrent I must seem to you, and now to your family…”
“Enough.” Mama sets the bucket sharply on the tiles, marches over to us, and grabs Beresford’s bearded chin with her hand, like she’s getting ready to lecture a very small boy. “My daughter told me how you have labored to understand our world and to set yourself up in this house so you would have something to offer her. She said that you broke your own moral law by doing what you did, by making this body a permanent form, as you call it. Clearly the process was difficult for you, emotionally and physically. Yet you did it for her. Do you know how many times I have wished and prayed for a man to love me like that? I don’t want to hear any more self-loathing or self-pity. Get your ass upstairs and wash yourself before your servants arrive.” She releases his chin, shaking her head as she picks up the bucket. “I’ll leave you two to sort this out. Gods help you both.”
And she walks out of the kitchen.
Beresford stares blankly after her, then says, “I feel worse and better at the same time.”
“That’s the special power of parents.”
“Is it?”
I rise, tugging on his hand and prompting him to rise with me. Despite his hours of near-comatose sleep, he seems stiff and weary. “Don’t you have parents?”
“Every being of my kind is born from the torn shadows of another matagot,” he says. “When one perishes, two or three more take shape from the remnants. We are briefly instructed by our own kind, then sent out on our own. Some of us live in clusters, but never in groups of more than three or four. The risk of discovery is too great.”
“You have to hide in your world, too?” I ask, frowning.
“Yes. We are hunted there. If a matagot’s identity is revealed, it is executed immediately. The hunters try to captureand burn all the fragments at the point of death so no offspring are formed.”
“That’s horrible.” I pull his arm over my shoulder. “We’re going upstairs. Lean on me if you need to. Hold up your sheet, don’t trip on it.”
We proceed to our suite, where I begin running his bath. I leave him standing beside the tub while I go downstairs to fetch his clothes from the kitchen. As I pick up his belt, the key ring attached to it jingles, and I glance down. My eyes are drawn immediately to the little golden key, which once again looks pristine—not a bloodstain in sight. Perhaps he has a way of resetting the spell.
When I return to our bedroom, I lock the door so the servants can’t disturb us. They’ll have to pick up the laundry and refresh the linens later.
Beresford is still standing right where I left him, his immense shoulders bowed.
