Cal turned and ran down the hallway.
“You’re going to run, boy?” Nathaniel shouted after them. Nadine could hear his footsteps pounding down the stairs; he was giving chase. “Are you a raven—or a coward?”
The lights were off in the hall but he seemed to know the path well, even in the dark. Through the open doors, moonlight washed over them in narrow, milky bars, gleaming on the reflective frames of the various photographs and portraits in ghostly flashes of light.
“I won’t let him have you.”
She was cowed by the intensity in his voice. Being so close to him, like this, when he smelled of cedar and blood, didn’t help, either. Not when he looked so otherworldly.
Inhuman,her brain supplied, and she shivered a little.
Yes. Inhuman.
Taking her lack of response for doubt, he said, “I’ve wanted you ever since I learned the feel of you in my arms and got that first, lingering taste of your sweetness. I’ve waited a year to have you come to me, my sparrow—and I amnotletting him take you.”
His father’s footsteps pounded down the hall. He was fast for his age—faster still because he didn’t have anyone to carry.
Nadine yanked an oval-framed portrait off the wall, wincing with the effort, and hurled it over Cal’s shoulder, watching Nathaniel duck as it bounced off the wainscotting and broke, sending up shards of glass.
The hall seemed to go on forever, swallowing them in darkness. Several smaller doors branched off to other rooms, like arteries. Servant corridors, perhaps—Cal had mentioned those on the tour. Nadine recognized some of the rooms, though—kitchen, parlor, downstairs bath. She didn’t ask Cal where he was headed but she thought she might know anyway.
The place where all of this had started when Noelle had first started digging.
The garden.
“You, with your romantic notions,” Nathaniel spat. “Do you think this heroic display is going to make the girl fall in love with you? With this life? No. Just look at your mother, Cal. She hates it here. Despises it. The only thing that keeps her with me now is fear.”
Nadine felt Cal flinch.
Don’t listen to him, she thought desperately.Run.
Obviously, he knew the truth behind his father’s words. Or suspected he had. He had said as much to Ben before shooting him. But hearing could be different than knowing or suspecting.
Nadine had suspected Noelle might be dead for weeks, but seeing the truth of it herself had been what had nearly destroyed her.
“That’s the truth of it,” his father shouted. “Your mother thinks we’re all monsters. Where do you think she is right now? Hiding in her room, like the craven little bird that she is. Waiting for all this to be over, to be fucked and then put back on her shelf. Until the next year, when it happens all over again. I see blood on you, boy. Tell me, who did you kill? Did the girl see you do it?”
His laugh was harsh and unpleasant.
“That’s what it means to be a raven: to make the little sparrows cower beneath your circling shadow. To make them wonder if their flesh will satisfy what blood will not.”
Cal’s face tightened. That blow landed, she could tell. Because what boy—even a cold and ruthless one—didn’t quietly seek praise from the woman who had given him life?
This fucked up family.
She ripped one of the larger portraits off the wall—a family one that looked expensive and irreplaceable and that she hopedwas—and threw that one, too. There was a satisfying crack as it struck Nathaniel in his face, and the glass smashed along with his nose.
He battered it aside with a snarl and it fell to the runner with a crash. Blood dribbled from his nose and down his fleshy lips, before staining his teeth and mouth.
“Sparrow,” he spat. “When I rip you apart, I’ll be starting with your wings.”
Cal threw open the door to the solarium so roughly that the glass that had been set so carefully in the wood crumbled out in pieces as it slammed against the wall. The wicker furniture looked dark and misshapen. Creatures made of twisted limbs and twisted shadows, capable of leaping to life if looked at wrong.
He kicked a few dying plants out of his path before fumbling with the lock of the back door and then they were out in the garden, slipping into the freezing chill of the night. It was fragrant with flowers even now and when Cal set her down she felt the soil yield beneath her feet.
Nathaniel stumbled out behind them, swiping the hellebore from out of his path.
“That quivering creature at your side might be coerced into breeding your children,” he said, still holding the pistol. “But apart from that, there is no difference. A deer is a sparrow is a deer.”
