Mary reached down and lifted Trotzky’s severed head into the air. She turned it to face her, and began to scream at it.
“Do you still see me? Can you feel this? Does your little rabbit brain still love me?I love you too!”
Acid rushed into my mouth. I tipped forward, falling from the brokenwall onto my hands and knees. A heaving wave went through my body, expelling everything in my stomach onto the cold hard stones. The burn of dinner, of bile, of whiskey.
An instant later, Sebastian was by my side.
“What’s wrong?” Hiromi asked, as Grandmother’s final text came in:
Fides sine cura.
The butterfly knife, ready to cut away that piece of me. She was gone forever.
I heaved again. Tears blurred my vision.
“Jessica!” Thomas cried, halfway across the stones to us.
Sebastian’s hands on my shoulders. Mary shouting at the rabbit head, laughing at the stars. Uncle Max shrieking in his carrier at the scent of fresh blood.
That small room, smelling of rust and panic.
“It’s her medicine,” Sebastian said to the others. “From the crash. She wasn’t supposed to drink.”
I’d taken three sips.
With his arms around me, I let myself fall into gravity’s dark well. I focused on breathing, on drawing the chill night air into my acid mouth.
When I could see again, the other three survivors were crowded around me. Mary stood a few feet away, on tiptoes atop a large stone, peering down. Her hands were soaked, her face streaked with blood. She was dressed, I saw now, as some antique Morton—a child’s idea of Uncle Max.
She was still laughing, until Sebastian pointed a finger at her.
“Enough!” he cried, and she fell silent.
But as the others wiped my face, dribbled water on my lips, lifted me up from my scraped knees, Mary mouthed a word at me.
Bunny.
48
“It was just the booze.” It hurt to talk.
“Your pulse is still thready,” Sebastian said, his fingers light on my wrist.
“No kidding.” I felt awful, dizzy and dehydrated.
At least I was in my own room, my own bed. Gertie was here too, luggage still in tow. Tom had taken Mary back to the Great Hall, where Grandmother was waiting. They’d be surprised it wasn’t me bringing her.
I wondered what excuse Tom would make—or would he simply tell the truth?Jessica couldn’t handle the curae. She collapsed.
And if he didn’t, what would Mary say?
Jessica’s car crash turned her into a bunny.
“A lot was going on,” Gertie said. “One almost fainted oneself.”
“I didn’t faint—I threw up. It was the booze.”
“The booze,” she repeated. She’d watched me learn to handle Martinis at age fifteen.
