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Chapter 17

Wren

The letter came on Saturday, a week and a day before the Solstice. It was not one of the black envelopes I had learned to dread, but a gray one stamped with the Council seal. Someone had opened it and resealed it so carefully that I might not have noticed if I had not already been suspicious enough to look.

Miss Hale,

We regret to inform you that Mrs. Marion Pike was admitted to hospital on Thursday evening following a fall. Her condition is stable but serious. In the circumstances, compassionate leave has been granted for you to visit her tomorrow. An escort will collect you from the harbor at dawn. Mr. Daniel Crane, her neighbour, has kindly offered to meet you in town beforehand with further news.

I read it four times while standing on the landing in my socks, and by the fourth reading my hands were shaking badly enough that the paper trembled between my fingers.

A fall.

Marion had a bad hip, though she denied it whenever anyone mentioned the way she favored one side on the stairs. I could see her on the yellow tiles in the kitchen, unable to get up, with no way of knowing how long she had been lying there before somebody found her.

The last letter I had sent her had almost ended with I'm still angry with you. At the last minute, I had crossed it out and written Love, Wren instead because I had assumed there would be time to say the rest later.

Then, once the first rush of panic had settled enough for me to think clearly, I went back to the final line.

Daniel.

Daniel had never been Marion's neighbor, and as far as I knew, he had not spoken to her since the night he asked for his lost T-shirts back. Marion had told him, with me standing close enough to hear every word, that if he ever set foot on her step again she would set the dog on him.

Marion did not own a dog.

I took the letter straight to Oda.

She read it in silence while sitting on the wide windowsill in her room, with the gray morning light from the sea behind her. When she reached the end, she went back to the beginning and read it again before folding it carefully along the existing creases and handing it back to me.

"I cannot refuse leave granted by the Council," she said. "You are not a prisoner here, Wren Hale. Not yet, and they know it."

"It's a trap, isn't it?"

"It may be," she said. "It may also be true. Mrs. Pike is not a young woman." Her large gold eyes stayed on mine for a moment before she continued. "I cannot prevent you from going, and I cannot stop the Council from sending an escort. However, nothing in the Accord says that their escorts have to be the only ones."

She turned toward the doorway.

"Mr. Thorne."

Silas was standing just outside the room. I had not heard him come up the stairs. On the windowsill behind Oda was a second sheet of gray Council paper, already opened, which meant they had sent her notice of my leave separately.

Silas ducked beneath the lintel, gave Oda a short nod, and then looked at me.

"A veteran Enforcer serving probation under my authority is a perfectly acceptable escort for a student in my charge," Oda said. "Mr. Thorne will accompany you, and doing so will not affect the terms of his probation." She looked at him. "Please try not to break anything."

I did not tell Jax. Whatever the Council was planning, I wanted him nowhere near them. I told Tamsin, though, because somebody needed to know where I was going, and she promised she would not say a word to him.

When I came down the cliff steps at dawn the next morning, Silas followed a few paces behind me while two Council escorts in gray suits waited beside their boat at the bottom. Jax was nowhere in sight.

An hour later, after we had crossed to the mainland and the escorts' car pulled out of the harbor parking lot, I happened to look through the rear window.

A battered green van pulled out behind us.

The driver was wearing oilskins and had a roll-up hanging from the corner of his mouth. In the passenger seat, a dark-haired figure was grinning at me through the windshield with his boots propped shamelessly on the dashboard.

Apparently Tamsin's promise had lasted less than a night.

The moment the boat had touched the mainland jetty, my phone had come back to life in my pocket. After three months without a signal, messages began arriving all at once, so many that the phone kept buzzing against my hip while I climbed onto the stones.