I threw another stone.
Thesnapof its landing quieted him again.
Peter’s mind would be racing as he hung below me, fingers going numb. If he moved before I told him to, I’d report his failure to the older Mortons. Worse, he might be spotted, and met by campus security at the bottom.
Humiliation, weighed against the risk of falling.
Every second hanging there, Peter was making the choice I’d expected. He couldn’t see his own faults—his boastfulness, his need for praise, for spectacle. Always an explosion when a blade would suffice.
He couldn’t see the test he was failing.
A full minute later he spoke again.
“Jess, I have to come back up,” Peter whispered. “Can you give me—”
I heard a fearful catch in his breath, and then the scrape of flesh on stone.
He didn’t cry out on the way down, didn’t make a sound. A proper Morton at the end.
After the crunch came, I peered over the edge.
Peter’s torso was twisted halfway around, his neck at a lethal angle. His legs and arms were splayed.
“What the hell was that?” a voice carried from the path. Someone really was down there in the dark.
I leaned back on the ledge, out of sight, listening to them crash through the underbrush. When they reached Peter’s body, I shoved the window open and rolled inside.
The lounge was still and dusty—cushioned couches, antique reading lamps, ball-and-stick models of molecules. The ticking radiators made the air warm and sticky, like blood.
I took a few deep breaths to slow my heart, then headed for the stairs.
On my way down, I pulled out a burner phone.
“Grandmother,” I said. “It’s done.”
“And how are you, Jessica, now that you’ve done it?”
“In a hurry. Someone heard him land.”
“Peter loved you.”
That almost made me stumble on the worn stone steps.Lovewas not a word Grandmother Elizabeth had said to me before. Was this also some kind of test?
Then I saw what she meant. “That’s why he fell.”
I could hear the cool, ancient smile in her voice.
“Very good, Jessica. Fides sine cura.” The family motto.
Loyalty without care.
2
I took the long way back to my dorm.
I’d chosen a quiet night for Peter’s test, the Monday before midterms. No late movie at the Commons. No big parties out at the Terraces. Just a few couples walking in the cold, student security guards studying in their heated booths. Moving silently in black, I saw them before they saw me.
My muscles ached to run. Since I was little, I’d expected my blooding to be exhilarating, like bursting from underwater to gasp fresh air. But killing Peter had been too easy. A few goading words and two tossed pebbles.Always first with the mind.
