“Why do you have that?” I asked. “You didn’t kill him for the family.”
“Blooded is blooded.”
I shook my head. Blooding was Morton and Lindqvist, Wolvaardt and Seth. It was our families and their sickness, their need to empty us of care.
It was the ecstasy of my first murder, perched on that window ledge.
Sebastian was smiling at me. “Are you annoyed that I’ve finally caught up with you?”
“Don’t wear it. It’s dangerous.”
“No kidding,” he said. “But before I take it off, say the words.”
“What words?”
“The ones I’ve always wanted to hear.”
A memory came over me, biting him badly during a vicious game of Bunny Hunt. The smell of hay and rotting wood. Sebastian smiling through the pain, afraid to show any weakness. His otherness.
All he’d ever wanted was to be a Morton. We were cruel, broken, and destructive, and yet I was still proud to be one too.
I picked up the crow’s skull and pricked my finger with its needle beak. A plump red drop welled in the darkness.
“With this blood,” I touched his left cheek, “I mark you a true Morton, the last Sebastian.”
I smeared another faint streak of red under his right eye.
“Forever one of us.”
“My last tears.” His face was blissful. “These tears of blood.”
“Fides cum cura,” I ended, hoping my change to the Latin was correct. Sebastian smiled, leaned forward to kiss me, and took the crow’s skull.
He crushed it in his hand.
59
Finding her was simple.
Crystal was a native New Yorker—no car, no license—and only three hotels were within walking distance of Helshire. The fanciest, Alum, didn’t admit guests without a college affiliation.
This left the Holiday Express, traditional starting point for Gallows Night, and the Motorway Inn near the old highway, the home of an Adderall-dealing townie named Shuriken.
I started at the Motorway. The weathered, bearded man at the desk was receptive to one of the $100 bills from my bug-out bag, providing Crystal’s room number, her hair color, and a description of what she’d worn the day before.
The next morning, I skipped my Behavioral Econ seminar to watch her room from across the road. Dark clouds to the east shimmered with lightning. The promised smoke-clearing storm was near at last.
I wouldn’t confront Crystal here though. The trick was to let her run into me.
She emerged eleven minutes before noon.
I trailed her from a distance, anonymous in my smoke mask, rain hat, and black jacket. She bought a sandwich at the diner next to the motel, then headed for the northwest gate.
She was wearing a Hellions sweatshirt from the campus store, a stab at blending in, but her haircut was too chic, and she was breathing the smoke unfiltered, which we Hellions hadn’t done for weeks.
At the campus gate she turned toward Dewitt, heading to the parking lot in back. Nothing remained of Peter’s memorial except a squiggle of graffiti—a black heart, like Bianca’s and Arabella’s Hefnd tattoos.
Crystal had always suspected I was related to Garrett. Hiromi had told her about Peter’s funeral, which had led her to Helshire. Convincing her we’d never met would be impossible.
