Cyrus was driving me to the estate. Back in Manhattan, Garrett wouldbe firing up the basement incinerator, reducing everything of Jessica Anderson’s to dust. Her clothes, her credit cards, her collection of bones.
And something of mine too—a crow’s skull. Or maybe that necklace had belonged to some third person, the cover story of a cover story. Someone irrelevant.
I was all Morton again.
Orrin clapped me on the shoulder, his smile stiff with scars. “Aunt Jessica.”
“Orrin,” I replied, conscious of the missing honorific.
He headed to the little ragtop, laughing at the sound of his unadorned name. With him inside, it looked like a toy. We watched as he drove away, the top still down, his hair flailing in the wind.
Arabella kissed me on the forehead. “Till next time, Aunt Jessica.”
That left me and Cyrus, and the Cadillac in which Veronica had driven us to Albany seven years ago. Gertie between me and Sebastian in the back, the three of us arguing over who’d worn the best surveillance outfit. Tom and Peter in the front, playing with the radio.
Cyrus reached into his duffel bag and handed me a sports drink. When I opened it, the artificial fruit smell made me flinch. Cheap candy.
“Drink, Jessica. You need electrolytes.”
“There was food at the party,” I said, handing the bottle back.
He reached into the bag again. “Okay, but take some aspirin to make those bruises fade.”
“Right,” I said. There could be no blemishes on this night.
Driving north, Cyrus asked me one question.
“Was it easier, this time?”
“Harder.” Peter had been trusting, ready to fall. Tonight had been a thousand pieces of clockwork scattered on the floor. But my hands hadmoved of their own volition, cutting, stabbing, quelling sound, arranging evidence. Twenty years of training, of excelling, and here I was, a true Morton.
Cyrus only nodded, staring straight ahead into the dark.
As his silence drew out, the long night—injuries, adrenaline, elation—began to catch up with me. The Cadillac drifting from lane to lane felt like the oscillations of a giant pendulum.
It came over me again, the sense of completion I’d felt after Peter’s fall, but vaster, more perfect. A sudden freedom, like letting an arrow loose into the open sky. No more hiding my red. No more smug advice from Arabella.
Killing Peter had been a guilty secret. Everyone who’d found out about it—Sebastian, Bianca, Gertie—had made it their own.
But this was mine. This was me.
“That seat goes back,” Cyrus said.
“I’m fine.”
“Sleep. After improvised kills, they debrief you for hours.”
He was right. “Thank you, Uncle Cyrus.”
“You don’t have to call me that anymore.”
But you’re my father’s brother, supplied my exhausted brain. My months in New York had me thinking like an ordinary.
My hand found the lever beside my leg, and the seat reclined at a stately pace. I gave myself over to the rhythm of the tires, my joy fading into contentment, then sleep.
What happened ninety minutes later—the bright light, the cries of rubber, the tangle of metal and oil—was eventually explained to me.
As I’d stripped my clothes off, Cyrus had tossed the unused flash grenade into a duffel bag, where it jostled with masks and coveralls, weapons and climbing gear, bottles of bleach and solvent, one of which had sprung a slow leak. Enough acid to dissolve the barrier between oxidizer and fuel in the grenade, resulting in an imperfect, but fully unexpected, explosion.
