She stalks around the room and takes a seat on the sofa. I don’t correct her, even though everything in me is screaming for her to get up. I make a vow to take that sofa out and burn it in the woods. Myrtle would understand.
I lower myself into the armchair across from her. “They let youactin your venery? Have a career in the public eye?”
She draws a breath. “I told you, we are less paranoid. Besides, do you think I was going to keep this face hidden for long? My venery has made my career work for them. It has served us well.”
I open my mouth to ask another question, but she cuts me off.
“No. Now you will answer a question for me. Where is your aunt?”
I see a glint in her eye that tells me lying will be futile. “She’s gone,” I whisper, the emotions rushing up my throat so that the words come out shaky and faint.
Her brows lower like thunderclouds hovering over her eyes. “Gone?”
I dash at the tears as they fall. “My mark. He came for me, but I wasn’t here. He killed her instead.”
“He came foryou?” Even riddled with confusion and concern, she is stunning.
I nod briskly. “I hunt killers,” I tell her. “Serial killers. It’s my class.”
Her lips tighten around a muttered string of words in Spanish that I don’t recognize but sound an awful lot like curses. “We will drink to your aunt in the Barri Gòtic, beneath the spires of the Holy Cross. I promise you that. Please give my condolences to yourhermanas oscuras,yourdark sisters.”
I should tell her that they don’t know yet, but I’m afraid of what she will do. Her face is as fresh as a peony in spring, but her spirit is older than the city she calls home, gnarled by what it’s seen. And her alliance is with them, not with me. Should they stand against me, it’s not my side she would choose.
“I must go,” she says. She rises and I do, too.
“Wait.” I duck into the kitchen, pilfering through cabinets and canisters until I find the browning remains of a couple of yellow warts and a third mushroom I don’t recognize. Walking back into the living room, I hand them to her. “An exchange,” I say. “You came all this way. I’d hate for you to go home empty-handed.”
She cups them in the buttery lambskin of her designer gloves, eyes glinting with interest. “Gracias.” Without hesitation, she pops one into her mouth and quickly swallows it. Noting my surprise, she says, “I told you. I amalwaysfeeding.”
“Your class must keep you very busy,” I remark, thinking it must be something far less specialized than mine. Date rapists maybe. Child abusers. The cavalier way these terms now flit through my mind should sicken me with cognitive dissonance, but it leaves only a residue of disturbance.
She laughs as if I have said something spectacularly clever. “My dear girl, they areallmy class.”
“All?”
Her eyes narrow in an instant, like slivers of glass. “If history has taught us anything, it is this—powerful men never tire of abusing their positions. There is much work to do still.” She relaxes, smiles languidly, her shoulders sloping gently down her back. “And you know what they say—a very little poison can do a world of good,” she adds with a wink.
Myrtle’s voice that day in our garden comes slamming into me at her words, Myrtle’s long twist of hair, her towering presence, her knowing gaze. It hurts so much I have to fight the urge to cry out. But beneath the pain, a current of family and advocacy and magic. Beneath the pain, Myrtle is there. In the words. In the room. She is guiding me still, I realize. She is on my side.
Her hand tightens around mine holding the bag. When she speaks again, her top lip curls. “Black bryony,” she says. “From Majorca. Enough to take down ten strong men and sicken a couple of arrogant bastards in need of a lesson. A little Spanish flavor for yourconejo.”
I make a face, unfamiliar with the word.
“It means ‘rabbit,’” she tells me, grinning. “When you find him, give him a kiss from me.”
ISIT ONthe sofa where Myrtle died and stare into the paper bag long after Emilia is gone. I want to press the berries into my mouth and chew, tasting the high Spanish sun and the breezes of the coast in their tart skin. But I don’t need them. Not with so many amatoxins already coursing through my system. I just didn’t want to tell Emilia her travel was in vain.
When Bart yowls at the door, I roll the bag tightly up and set it on the table, to let him in.
We should return to the bunker, huddle there in the darkness and wait. But I can’t bring myself to leave the cabin yet.One night,I think. I will stay one night. For Myrtle. For me. For the dog. I will take a shower and rest my bones on the soft padding of a real bed. I’ll cook on a stove, eat a legitimate dinner, hydrate without rationing. By now, I’m sure the regulars have seen theCLOSED FOR TRAVELsign in the door of the café. A couple of brave ones maybe even skulked back here, hollered her name for good measure before straggling back to town, contented for the time being. They’ll let it rest for now. But in another week or so, when they circle back around and nothing has changed, that’s when they’ll call someone. The sheriff’s department will descend on this place like a swarm of locusts. Maybe they’ll find Myrtle’s body in the forest. Maybe they won’t. I won’t be able to say because I won’t be here by then. If Emil Reyes is to be believed, I may not be alive at all. Between the Saranac Strangler, Henry, and the venery, I have too many enemies willing to finish the job Henry started.
So, one night,thisnight, shouldn’t matter.
At least, that’s what I tell myself.
THEWATER ISso hot I feel like my muscles are melting beneath it when I hear the bang. I quickly turn the faucet off and stand there, dripping, the shower head still steaming above me as I listen. It was difficult to hear over the rush of the water, not loud like a gunshot but softer, like a door closing or a drawer being slammed. I strain to hear if Bart is making any noise—his presence in the house withme my only comfort. But silence echoes back, the hush of the gloaming.
My fingers curl stiffly around the edge of the shower curtain, tugging it back as I cringe at the sound of the rings scraping against the rod. I step out and pull Myrtle’s Southwestern robe on, not bothering to tie it. My hair drips a fountain of water down the back, causing the fabric to stick to my skin.
