Kendrick tilted his head, listening, and then nodded again. With one shove, he pushed the door inward, and a wooden chair cracked and tumbled over.
Genevieve stepped over the chair and into the cold room that smelled of unwashed napkins overflowing the rubbish pail and burnt food. August held the weakly crying child wrapped in a quilt. Genevieve crouched down in front of him and wrapped her arms around them both. “It’s all right,” she whispered. “Tell me what’s happened.”
“Mama left,” August whispered, and her heart seized. But he immediately continued. “She said she’d be home soon. She always comes home soon. But she didn’t. I waited and waited. June got hungry, and I burned the food, and June didn’t want any more sugar water, and the coal ran low—” He hiccupped, valiantly trying to hold back tears. “It’s been two days. Has something happened to Mama?”
“I don’t know,” Genevieve said, even as her stomach sank. Evangeline Hartshorne had not struck her as a woman to abandon her children. “I certainly hope not, August.”
“Then where is she?” the little boy whispered.
Kendrick crouched down next to them. The boy recoiled as he realized there was someone besides Genevieve in the room.
“It’s all right,” she hurriedly said. “This is my husband, Kendrick. Kendrick, this is August and June Hartshorne.”
Kendrick stretched out his hand and touched August’s head. “You are safe. I promise you.” August’s shoulders slumped.
Eyeing them, Genevieve would swear to the fact that Kendrick was not doing anything to influence the boy. But there was just something about Kendrick that you couldn’t help but believe. The sincerity, more than anything, was what persuaded you.
Genevieve held out her hands. “May I hold June? Does she need changing?”
“She’s hungry,” August whispered.
“She still nurses?”
He nodded. “She eats a little food, but I couldn’t make it right. She didn’t like it,” he said, shamefaced. He swiped away the tear tracks on his cheeks with the back of his hand.
“Then the first thing we need to do is get some food for June,” Genevieve said, lifting the baby into her arms. But where would they find a wet nurse? And what would the children do after that? Sally couldn’t take them, not if June still needed milk, and she couldn’t afford to support two more children.
Is this my fault?Genevieve wondered.Should I have done more for Mrs. Hartshorne? Checked in on her more?She hadn’t realized how responsible she had felt for those her life touched until now. First Fletcher, now the children…
“We can’t leave them here,” she breathed, glancing desperately at her husband.
“I know where we can find someone nursing,” Kendrick said suddenly.
Genevieve stared at him in astonishment. “You do?”
“Yes.” He offered August his hand. “Help me gather your things, and we’ll go. And then we will search for your mother.”
Kendrick rang the bell at Dominic’s house with his free hand, the other holding the boy in his arm. They had taken the little family’s important belongings—not enough to fill two carpetbags—and what other clothing and supplies were necessary from their small room and caught a hackney. Kendrick could piece out the separate scent trails of the boy and the baby and identify the scent of the woman on the clothes left behind.
He would get the family settled and then go hunting.
Seeing Genevieve with the children and her friend Sally had made him understand that his wife’s human tribe was just as important to her as the vampires in the Ossuary. She cared for them, felt responsibility for them. And he hadn’t missed the way her face had frozen when Sally had reported no one knew what had happened to Mrs. Hartshorne.
Her father hadn’t known what had happened to Genevieve, either.
So he would hunt the missing human woman, even though it might have been more politically expedient to solidify the Ossuary’s laws and their political position. Because these were Genevieve’s people, too, and she needed to know that they were all right.
Dominic answered the door and stared at their group in astonishment. “Kendrick? What’s toward?”
“There is someone in your house with a babe, is there not?” Kendrick asked. “We seek a wet nurse for the child.” He indicated the baby in Genevieve’s arms, too resigned to hunger to do more than whimper anymore.
“Kate,” Dominic said, understanding passing over his face. “Come in, come in. I’ll fetch her.”
He saw them settled in the parlor before disappearing. Genevieve turned to Kendrick with a narrow stare. “He has humans in this house?”
“Yes. Can’t you smell them?”
Her eyes became distant. “Maybe. But you mean that they’re his—” She shot a look at August.
