“Nowhere,” I tell her, trying to pass to the door.
She follows me in. “Does nowhere wear a gun and a badge on duty?”
I roll my eyes at her. “I know you mean well, but I’m a grown woman, Myrtle. I come and go as I please.”
She folds her arms and watches me as I get a glass to fill with water. “You are grown, that’s true. But you do not belong to just yourself anymore. You are part of a whole. And there are no—”
“Secrets in the venery,” I recite. “Yeah, I got that.”
She sighs. “I only want to keep you safe.”
“Then talk to them, not me,” I shoot back. It’s unfair and I know it. She’s been nothing but kind to me. But I feel childish and sulky, my heart stampeded by the look in Regis’s eyes, the impossible truth of who I am, the reality that this simple existence—a life in a fairy-tale cottage in the mountains with a big-hearted man—can never be mine.
Her eyes narrow dangerously. “You aren’t yourself,” she observes. “What have you done?”
I glance at her and turn away. “Nothing.”
“I have defended and protected you, but there are things I cannot save you from, including yourself. Do not make your mother’s mistakes, Piers. And do not underestimate me or the venery. I love you—I do. But my allegiances are with my clanfirst,with the whole.”
I turn to face her, a boldness I don’t recognize coursing through me, wrapping my spine in steel, my heart in quills. “What are you trying to say? Do you want me to leave?”
“I want you to be smart,” she hisses. “I want you to think of yourself and your kind. I want you to be better than your mother ever was. I want you to win, dammit.”
“I will,” I spit out, “if everyone will just keep off my back.”
“Everyone?” She nears me, eyes thin as cracked windows.
“Look, I don’t know why you’re upset. It was your idea after all, that I use my allure, that I convince him of my innocence, paint him a picture. And that’s exactly what I did.”
She startles, wheels turning. “You were supposed to wait until he came to you. How can you be innocent if you go to him, throw yourself at his mercy? What have you told him, Piers? What does he know?”
“Nothing,” I lie, voice laden with irritation. “He knows nothing.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You don’t have to,” I tell her. “He won’t do anything.”
She falls into the nearest chair, her head dropping into her hand. “Oh, Piers, what have you done?”
I lean against the corner of the counter. “I haven’t done anything.”
She looks up at me and her eyes are spidery with veins. “He’s a good man. You know that? You’ve doomed a good man.”
“I haven’t doomed him,” I argue. “He’s not going to tell anyone. He’s not going to do anything about it.” I haven’t even had a chance to tell her about our plan to catch the Saranac Strangler together, but considering her reaction, it might be wise to keep that bit to myself.
She chuckles dryly. “You think you know him? You think it matters? He’s a risk we can’t afford to take. Don’t you understand? Every day he breathes he is a threat to us. To me, to Tina, to Ivy and Verna. To Azalea and little Scarlet.” She rises from her chair. “They will not forgive this. Not this.”
Panic begins to claw at me from the inside. “You don’t have to tell them,” I insist. “It can just be between us.”
She looks defeated. “I thought you understood. I thought you were learning. Maybe they were right. Maybe the seed of your line is too toxic to overcome.”
“What are you saying?” My heart races inside me, barreling toward an end I can’t see. “Are you threatening me?”
She reaches over and takes my chin in her fingers. “Precious girl, I don’t have to. They’ll overrun me. All I can do now is damage control.”
“Damage control?”
She looks full of immeasurable grief. “If I act fast, if I’m lucky, then perhaps they won’t take it out on me as well.”
