“You?” The truth begins to dawn in sickening shades of red. “You mean, they’ll want to kill you? Because I told Regis?”
She studies me. “See there? You are learning. Just not fast enough.”
“But you didn’t do anything!”
“I sheltered you. You are my responsibility. There will be a heavy price to pay for this violation. We will all have to pony up—him, you, me.” She picks up her boots and begins to drag them onto her feet, grabbing the keys from the table where I dropped them.
“What are you doing?” I ask her.
“Trying to fix it.” She glares at me. A sickener mushroom lies on the table between us, something she must have gathered on a recent walk. Before I can move, she scoops it up and shoves it whole into her mouth. When it slides down her throat, she says, “He will suffer. This is your fault.”
“No,” I insist. “Myrtle don’t. It doesn’t have to be like this.”
“Our rules exist for a reason. They are all that has stood between us and the anger of men for hundreds of years. They’re not arbitrary. All you had to do was follow them.”
“I will,” I assure her. “I won’t make another mistake. He won’t tell a soul. No one has to know, I swear it!”
She looks at me and sighs. “Sweet girl, you have already made one mistake too many. Now, I must clean up your mess. If we are very lucky, very clever, it will be enough. I can concoct a story that they’ll buy, and he’ll pay the price for us both. But I must act fast.”
I hurl myself between her and the door. “No! I won’t let you. Don’t do this, Myrtle, please. It’s my fault. I can’t take another person dying because of me. Tell them it was me. Let them deliver the last kiss. Just spare him, please.”
She grips my shoulders with talon-like strength. “Stand aside, Piers. Sacrificing yourself won’t change anything, so I don’t recommend it. As long as he knows, we are not safe. Be glad I am not making you do it. It’s more than your mother got.”
She shoves me aside with a bullish strength I didn’t know she possessed, and starts out the door, but I throw myself at her, catching her by an ankle as she descends the stairs, causing us both tofall to the ground in a heap of limbs. I recover first and pull myself up her body, reaching for the keys, clawing them from her fingers.
She pushes me aside and leaps up, starting forward at a determined speed. After a moment I realize that she intends to walk. It would take her hours to reach him on foot, but still, I can’t allow that. I cast about looking for a way to stop her when I remember the oars crossed over the doorway inside the kitchen. I run in and wrench one free, darting back out. Myrtle is booking it toward the café, but I scramble behind her, swinging the oar and clipping her across the shoulders. She goes down hard, the wind knocked out of her, and I leap on top before she can get up.
Prying her arms back, I slip Regis’s handcuffs from my pocket and lock in one wrist, then the other, before dragging her back to the cabin and depositing her onto the sofa. She glares at me as if she can kill me with looks alone.
“These weren’t supposed to be for you,” I spit at her. “We had a plan! Now, if you’ll sit tight and let me handle it, everything will work out like it’s supposed to. You’ll see.”
I rip the shoelaces from her boots near the door and tie the cuffs to the sofa’s heavy frame beneath the cushions. Then I dig through her pockets and take her phone and spare key.
“Who’swe? You and Sheriff Brooks?” She eyes me venomously.
I stand back, crossing my arms with a huff. “Yes. Regis and me. We’re working together. It was your idea, after all.”
“Not like this,” she hisses.
I sigh and drop to a crouch before her. “I love you, Myrtle. But you’re wrong about him. You told me that our roles are changing as society changes, that we had to evolve. What if that’s what this is? What if therearemen we can trust with our secret? Men who can help.”
She scoffs. “Please. You sound pathetic.”
“Fine,” I say, rising. “Have it your way. But I’m going to go out there and get my mark,withRegis’s help.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” she says sourly.
“Good. Because you will see it. And once we’re done, we’regonna come back here and talk—calmly and rationally—about how we can make this work. Maybe it was stupid for me to take the risk, but I’m willing to give him a chance. You said yourself he is a good man. An honest man. He’ll keep his end of the bargain. And once you see that, you’ll believe me, and we can keep it between the three of us. No one else has to die.”
My heart is hammering with fear even as I speak, terrified that I’ve crossed a line I can’t come back from. Not with the venery. I’ve attacked one of my own to protect a man I have no business loving. In their eyes, I have become my mother, plain and simple. Worse, because in the end even she had the decency to do what was required of her. But if I can just get Myrtle to see the truth, then maybe we can fix this without them ever knowing.
She stares up at me, petulant as a child.
“I’m not your enemy, Myrtle.”
“You’ve handcuffed me in my own house,” she points out.
“Only for a little while,” I explain. “So you can see we mean it. Please, give me a chance here.”
