It’s plain as day in his eyes. He wants me to run. For a second, I think about it. If I do, he’ll rush her. If he rushes her, I don’t know who will survive.
“Pay attention, Maris. This is my favorite part.” She snaps her fingers and I look away from Julian to her. “The guardians sacrificed themselves for our family, for me. Slit their own throats when the foundation was still being poured. I buried them right where they fell,” she says, pointing down at the floor where her blood shadows move. “They’ve watched over our family ever since. I can always count on them to tell me anyinteresting tidbits that are going on in our home. For you, it was this vampire,” she makes a face at Julian, “for your mother, it was her plan to leave with you. Foolish woman.”
I feel like the air is being punched out of my lungs. Even if I knew what to say, I wouldn’t be able to. I’ve forgotten how to speak. Words are beyond my grasp right now.
She killed my mother.
“Yes, that’s right, look horrified. I was just as aghast as you are. She thought she could leave our ancestral home and take you. Your mother…she was spirited. Curious. Too curious and she found out the real meaning of being a woman in this family. Do you know what that is, Maris?”
I shake my head. My eyes fill with tears and Isla comes close to wipe the tear that slips down my cheek. The second she touches me, I’m that small scared girl who hid in her granny’s closet because the world was too loud.
“She learned that to be a Martinez woman meant to be food for my soul. All of you only exist to keep me topside, here in this world long after my kingdom fell.” She stops stroking my cheek and grabs my chin, her nails sharpen into claws and they slice into my skin. “I’m not a god though. The only way my magic holds is if a Martinez woman, my blood, lives here in Vesper Hall to feed the guardians. They, of course, need someone to guard but that task could never be me. I’m much too busy enjoying life to come back here and sustain ghouls. Now that role has been filled by you, your mother, your grandmother, all of you my daughters. So long as one of you resides in these walls my magic holds. Your meddling mother tried to break that chain.”
“You killed her.” When I talk, Isla’s claws dig deeper into my face. I don’t care. “You killed my mother, you fucking monster.”
“Technically, she killed herself and your poor father. I merely influenced her. It was such a dangerous night to take a drive. He knew that, being raised by sailors here in this town. Everyoneknew it, but he would go anywhere for her. Follow her anywhere. A perk of our bloodline. I only nudged her to go faster, and maybe I made her lose her grip when she took that final curve.”
“Don’t touch me.” I slap her hand away from me. “You killed my mother.”
“I did. She tried to take you away. She tried to break the chain and that’s not how blood magic goes, Maris. It has to have a locus and our home, our line is that. There’s no escaping it. Every day of your life has been forfeit from the day you opened your eyes. All of it borrowed time.”
“Borrowed time? No, you trap us here to keep you alive? You selfish fucking bitch. You keep us here so you can see the world and we get nothing but a prison?”
“I hardly call being the Lady of Vesper Point a prison. You have all the money and status you could ever need. This town bows to you. The world would never do such a thing. You’re safe here, Maris.”
My mother wanted to travel. She wanted to see Paris. She kept a scrapbook and would show me. She told me she started to make it when my father left for college. She’d always had a crush on him but when he left she finally thought of leaving too.
If he did it, why couldn’t she?
My mother didn’t deserve to die. She never got to see Paris. She stayed here. She died beneath the dark waves. She never saw anything again.
“The world won’t bow for me, for my mother, for any of us,” I let out a bitter laugh, “but it does for you, right? Because you’re so much more worthy than us? We deserve to live and die in the same patch of fucking land over and over again for you, a spoiled princess, who forced her family into servitude to keep her what? Young? Pretty? Are you really that fucking scared to die? You coward.”
Isla’s eyes go black. “I fear nothing.”
I shoot three times. Twice in Isla’s chest and another meant for her head. That shot catches her in the neck when she moves from my gunfire. The gunfire doesn’t do much but piss Isla off. She’s at my side and on me before I can try to aim again. She rips the gun from my hand and pistol whips me in the mouth with it.
“Remember, I only said I needed you alive. I never said in what condition.” She throws me to the ground and turns to catch Julian by the throat when he attacks. “Do not move,” she tells him. “You’re mine now.”
I spit blood out and get to my knees. “Get away from him!”
“No.” She turns to face me. At her back Julian stands motionless just like she commanded him. He can’t speak. He can’t move. The only thing that’s his are his eyes.
Run.
Still they beg me to run.
Fifty-Three
JULIAN
Maris’ grandmother four times removed is a fucking siren. She’s also a cunt.
I’ve heard those two things go together but I’ve never met a siren before to know it until now.
“You’re mine now.”
Her hold is tight, like a command Rosanna would give me when I was young enough to not be able to fight her. I feel that way now. Wet behind the ears and weak, held in place by fucking magic and a crazy woman.
