There was a moment of silence, broken by the squeak of windshield wipers.
“Can brain trauma cause mood swings?” I clarified, butmoodalso sounded unMorton.
“Are you feeling okay?” Sebastian asked.
“Yes.” It didn’t sound convincing, so I added, “Just some funny dreams.”
“Probably your pills. Did the doctors say anything about side effects?
I shrugged. The doctors hadn’t said much to me at all. They’d talked in the hall with Veronica, then she’d come in to tell me the news.
Maybe my visions meant nothing—a side effect of injury or medication. What mattered was that Sebastian was here, beside me in this car. His presence meant I’d been forgiven.
“Thanks for coming to get me,” I said.
The car went quiet again.
And I remembered—I was Aunt Jessica now. It was unnecessary to thank the unblooded.
I would wear red at funerals, for all to see. On my hands. On my face. On my knife. On the walls. That small room, soaked with the smell of rust.
The rain grew stronger, erasing the world outside the car between sweeps of windshield blades. Sebastian leaned forward, both hands on the wheel, peering ahead.
“My curae’s almost done,” Mary said out of nowhere. “Now that you’re an aunt, you can mentor me on Trotsky’s big day.”
A hint of carsickness. “Don’t you want someone older?”
“No, I want you. And Sebastian has to be there too!”
He smiled into the rearview. “I’d be honored, Mary.”
“You hear that, Trotsky?” She held the rabbit tight. “Everyone’s coming!”
I looked past her—in the rear windshield, nothing was visible except a blur of rain, stirred by the tendrils of the wind. If something was following us, I couldn’t see it.
45
My archery was still shit.
It wasn’t the scar on my hand. That had finally healed, once I’d stopped tearing open Sebastian’s stitches in Disruptive Anatomy. It was the tightness in my tendons, in my nerves. In my chest.
I stood there, the bow fully drawn, the fletching, from a wild turkey Thomas had shot early that summer, brushing my cheek. Beyond the shining metal point, the bull’s-eye waited, coaxing me.
Everything was perfect, here at home. The smell of juniper trees and ripe Duchess apples. The baying of the dogs running down squirrels in the Barrow Marsh. Target flags fluttering. My childhood mentor, Veronica, a steady presence at my side, the way she’d always been.
But I couldn’t let go.
The thought of the arrow carving through the air—piercing paper and rags, crunching into hay—was too pitiless, the eight-ring of the target too red.
Once I loosed the arrow, I couldn’t bring it back.
“Ribs still giving you trouble?” Veronica asked.
I let the bow undraw. “Everything’s tight. Too many days in bed.”
“Maybe this isn’t the best place to start.” Veronica stood behind me, taking hold of my biceps. “Too asymmetrical.”
“I’m just out of practice. Had to drop Archery after midterms, when I hurt my hand.”
