“Unnecessary. Like Garrett said when you signed, there’s plenty of money for everyone. Loyalty is all we require.”
“But loyalty forwhat? What does your family want from me?”
I shrugged. Garrett had told me about one New York socialite he’d incorporated twenty years ago, of whom we’d never asked anything but a free hand in rearranging the seating at her dinner parties. We Mortons build our power slowly, like the pressures of sliding continental plates.
“Small things,” I said.
“I want to give you big things! Because I keep needing big things from you. Like, when Marlow is troublesome about money. He’s the eldest, and Mommy listens to him, and he’s always in my way.”
“He didn’t sign,” I said. “You did. You have a problem, we fix it.”
She smiled—my answer had met her requirements. And I realized that the houses, horses, and Paris had always been more important to Faraday than her family. She wouldn’t have an issue with the clockwork, no matter whose mainspring needed to be snapped.
“I guess Marlow won’t be a problem then,” she said.
14
Sebastian’s room was very unMorton.
So many affiliations: the gavel he’d won at Moot Court, his Black Students’ Alliance pin, balls of yarn for Helshire’s knitting-and-gossip club: Snitches Get Stitches. So many clothes—the usual inherited apparel, but also store-bought suits for playing young business leader or student council candidate. And, least Morton of all, those pictures of him and his friends, thumbtacked to the wall, stuck into the edges of his mirror.
We are a camera-shy family, but Sebastian had a mind to go into politics one day. He was a Poli Sci major, and last summer he’d interned for the City Council of Upper Falls.
He was a natural—his memory for names and faces, his oddly contagious love of himself—and politicians were useful. But every rung on that ladder meant more exposure and less connection to who we truly were.
At its heart, our power wasn’t about elected office or vast wealth. It was about the quilt of families who owed us their allegiance. The sort of people whom misfortune rarely touched—except for the grave misfortune of offending us.
That was why Sebastian would never be a politician. Politicians didn’t really make the rules. They were guided by donors, advisers, the fellow members of alumni clubs, yacht clubs, country clubs—and these we had already incorporated. Through them, we made certain the rules never disrupted our holdings, our homesteads, our way of life.
It was tempting to fly for the sun, but simpler to own the sky.
By the time Sebastian got home, forty minutes after midnight, I’d thoroughly searched his room. No random keys. No unexpected cash. Maybe Gertie was fucking with me.
When he opened the door and saw me, Sebastian frowned—wondering why his housemates hadn’t made any jokes about kissing cousins on his way up. They were the sort of boys who built beer towers and called him Baz. But then he saw my camo jacket, my split-soled shoes.
“You should lock your windows,” I said.
“Then how wouldIsneak in?”
I got up from the bed and crossed to him, touched Uncle Harold’s old houndstooth coat. The metal buttons were still cold.
I sniffed him—candle smoke.
“Good party?”
“Diverting. The Terraces are full of scandal this term.”
I leaned in closer. “No. You’d smell like beer.”
“Jessica.” His eyes scanned the room. My search had left a few things gently out of place. “What’s this about?”
I touched his neck with two fingers, found the heartbeat there—too fast for a single flight of stairs. “Is there something you aren’t telling me, cousin? About Peter?”
“What the hell, Jess?” Sebastian closed the door behind him, lowering his voice. “Does the family think it wasn’t an accident?”
“Just some loose ends.” I pulled out the keys.
He stared at them without recognition. “Something he stole?”
