“A little.”
He bent and scooped them up.
“Thanks.” I fitted one over my bound hand. It compressed the bandage reassuringly.
The Lindqvists were coming down the stairs behind us, laughing at the wreckage of the midnight feast.
“Oh, yum. Cucumber and cream cheese,” I heard Bianca say. “With just that little bit of salt.”
17
Sebastian’s needle stung.
The cut looked clean, in the light of his desk lamp. My knives are sharp as scalpels.
Sebastian had only red thread left in his sewing kit. It was stark against my pale skin.
“Hell of a way to get Bianca’s trust,” he said.
“I’d rather spill blood than family secrets.”
Sebastian twirled his needle’s tip in the flame of the candle he’d lit. “They’ve asked me about the cousins too. More than once. I said it was the chapel fire, and kept Uncle Max’s name out of it.”
“Good. But you never toldmeabout Peter hanging out with the Lindqvists.”
He looked up from my wound. “You would’ve told the family.”
“That our old enemies have a murder club here at Helshire? Yes, I might have mentioned that.”
“And then what would’ve happened?”
I thought about this while he looped the next stitch. In this light, the scar beneath his bottom lip was visible. He’d fallen over a tripwire in his first game of Bunny Hunt—rookie mistake.
“The elders would’ve told me to keep Peter from…” I went silent. Sebastian’s needle slid through my flesh.
“No,” he said. “They would have used it to test him.”
And Peter would have failed.
“He never recovered from Uncle Max. Our family never helped himwith that, but Xavier and Bianca did. Can you imagine what the family would do if they found out he was planning a murder? A spectacle?”
I didn’t have to imagine. “Why didn’t he come to me?”
“Because he wanted your approval. He couldneverlet you see how much help he needed.”
“But you also kept it from me, cousin. To protect Peter?”
“To protect you.” He dipped the needle into the flame again. “It would’ve been your job to cull him. I didn’t want that.”
I watched Sebastian make the next stitch. He was right about so many things, but wrong about me. I didn’t need his protection. I was honored to have been blooded early, on someone so close. I was happy to have solved the problem of Peter.
But now there was the problem of Sebastian.
He’d kept Lindqvist secrets and dabbled in their traditions. He’d known Peter was planning a murder, and said nothing. The golden rule of loyalty: Never hide things from the family.
Which meant that I had to report him, or I would be just as guilty.
“Sebastian. You would’ve let Peter commit a spectacular crime, here in our backyard?”
