“Marry for love.” She passed me a vanilla wafer cookie like the ones I’d loved when I was a kid. “Half the Society’s problems are brought on by unhappy people looking to make everyone else miserable too.” She turned her head toward a photo of a couple locked in a torrid embrace, their faces hidden by the woman’s curtain of wavy hair. “Choose a life partner. Make a smart decision. Take your time to be certain of the match. Marriages are forever. That’s another reason why the Society dames live for gossip about who’s doing who. They’ve forgotten what sex ought to be, a joyous celebration of mutual attraction if not affection. Not a punishment, not a crime.”
Instead of sucker, I must have single stamped on my forehead. “Maud never married.”
In the same way that well-meaning people asked young couples when they would have their first (or second or third…) child, they often assumed a woman without a man must be shopping for one. As if your life couldn’t be full without a ring on your finger or a warm body in your bed.
“Maud loved herself more than she could ever love anyone else.” A swift denial sprang to my lips that she was quick to shush. “She was a good woman. She was kind. She was caring. She gave of herself. But she enjoyed the company of her old house, the peace of her books, the solitude of her laboratory. Another person would have disrupted that, another person would have demanded some of that time be spent with them, and Maud was not a fan of obligations unless she chose them.”
“Maud told me when she was younger, she let potential suitors down by confessing she was married to her career and reminding them the Society frowned upon affairs.”
Orestes laughed softly. “That sounds about right.”
While she sipped her tea, pausing to add three heaping spoonfuls of sugar, I examined Linus’s selection.
The picture showed a bird that might have been any number of things, but it was bright yellow with red dots for eyes.
Keet.
“You softened her,” Orestes confided after the drink was to her liking. “None of us expected her to adopt you when Evie passed. Until the funeral, I would have sworn on the goddess’s light she didn’t possess a maternal bone in her body. But she held you on her lap that day during the service while you cried against her neck, your fingers curled in her hair, and I witnessed the shift in her perspective.”
This was a story I hadn’t heard. “What kind of shift?”
“She hired off-duty Elite to screen the mourners so no Marchands could attend, for one. None tried to my knowledge, but the Elite are paid to make sure events flow smoothly. Only Maud would have known, and I can tell you right now she would have fought your family tooth and nail for you. Evie was her best friend, and she refused to lose you too.”
Any hope my blood relatives might have come for me, might have wanted me, was short-lived. They had turned their backs on Mom, and on me. Kin or not, I knew what they would do if they got their hands on me.
Bleed me dry.
The same as all the rest.
“Have you made a selection?” Orestes interrupted my rambling thoughts as they spun toward Linus, whose presence I almost felt through the brick wall separating us. “You would be the first to show interest in that fellow.”
“Can I purchase the rights to this design?” The parakeet spoke to me, but this ball was meant to be a statement, and I couldn’t bear to adopt the symbol of Maud’s disappointment as my own. “Not for the invitations, but for later.”
“Sure.” A chipper note spiked her tone at having made a sale. “What about the ball?”
“I want to use this.” I borrowed a piece of paper and pen from her then started drawing, careful to avoid any of my usual flourishes. Sweat beaded across my forehead as I battled against my natural perception to keep the details as precise as the original. “Will that work?”
“I don’t see why not.” She held the scrap to the light and tipped her head to one side the way a normal person might, but her gaze ran deeper. “You’ll make a statement with this, all right. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Feeling better about my choice, I paid my bill and left the shop to join a solemn Linus on the sidewalk.
To earn a moment while I felt out his mood, I read the text from Marit.
I’m here if you need me.
I wavered on sending an emoticon in response, but I wasn’t sure what happened to our friendship next. Until I did, I was better off leaving well enough alone, even if it made my heart ache to put her on the backburner. Then I turned my attention back to Linus and our visit to Orestes.
What I expected to be a waste of my time had given me a shot of the purpose I was lacking.
Orestes reminded me of something important. The Society loved gossip. Reveled in it. There was no expiration date on shame. They recalled past scandals just to savor them, and I was about to give them a reason to remember the one attributed to me. Several of the dames and matrons in attendance would be walking down memory lane, sniping at me behind my back as they shoved their sons in my face.
All I had to do was keep my eyes and ears open. If anyone knew where Maud had gone, who she had gone with, and what she had been doing prior to her death, it would be the women in that ballroom.
Linus had been right in his thinking.
A ball was the perfect solution.
“You could have left Cletus with me.” I set off in the direction of Mallow on autopilot. “You didn’t have to stay.”
The wraith descended as Linus fell in step beside me. “Do you want me to leave?”
“You’re the one with his boxers in a twist. All I did was point out the fact you’re going back to Atlanta. Your whole life is there.”
“Not my whole life.”
“Okay, fine, so your mother lives in Savannah.”
“You do too.”
The sidewalk dipped, and I stumbled over my feet. “Will we really keep in touch when you leave?”
He steadied me with a hand on my elbow until I regained my balance. “What do you want me to say?”
“You’re all I’ve got left.” I withdrew from him, unable to think while he was touching me. “You feel like a friend, that’s how I think of you, but I can’t forget why you’re here.”
“I’m here to give you the education to survive your gift.”
A pang rocked me back on my feet. “Can you honestly say you’re not spying on me for your mother?”
“I report on your progress.” He stopped walking, and that’s when I realized I had stopped too. “I answer any questions she asks in her official capacity, and in mine. That’s it. That’s all.” He lowered his voice, his hurt evident. “Where is this coming from?”
“I don’t want to lose you too.” A filmy haze covered my eyes. “But I don’t know how much of this is real.”
“I’m not Boaz.” His cool fingers traced the path of the tears leaking down my cheeks. “I won’t lie to you, and I won’t betray you.”
“You stole my parakeet.” I sounded like a broken record, and I knew it, but facts were facts. “Why?”
“Mother led me to believe your faculties were…diminished.” He dropped his hand, and it clenched at his side. “She expressed concerns for Woolly, for Maud’s private things, and she convinced me that luring you to the Lyceum for an intervention was prudent if I wanted to preserve Maud’s legacy.”
Disgust soured my stomach over how she had played us both. “That manipulative—”
“I had no idea what to expect after what they did to you in Atramentous. I could understand Mother’s worries, and I shared them.” He raked his hands through his hair. “She preyed on my bond with Maud, and when that wasn’t enough, she let your condition slip.”
“The last time we had this conversation, you left out the part where you thought I was a raving lunatic.”
“I know Mother well, better than anyone. All it took was one look at her face after I arrived to know I had been played.” He started walking again, and I let him lead me. “My suspicions were confirmed when I saw you. You were…not the Grier I remembered, but you were whole.”
“I get that a lot.”
“The Grier I knew as a child was open, kind and beautiful.”
I swallowed once and then again when it didn’t work the first time. “And now?”
“You’re harder, stronger and more beautiful than ever.”
“I’m a bag of bones with gaps in her memory and a price on her head.”
“You’re a survivor. You underestimate your appeal.”
“You told me that night in the Lyceum you wanted to be my guest as much as I wanted to host you. You promised the harder I worked, the sooner you could return to your home and your life, and the sooner I could transition into the next phase of my mine.”
Quoting him hurt. Until I purged his words, I had all but forgotten them. Or so I thought. They must have stuck in my craw worse than I realized if I could pull them to the forefront of my mind so easily.
“I was pissed,” he growled softly, an inhuman sound that raised chills. “I had been lied to and manipulated. Again. Maneuvered into a corner from which there was no escape.”
“You must be used to that by now,” I said before I could censor myself.
Bitter laughter hitched in his chest. “I shouldn’t have said those things to you, but I meant them. At the time.” The rumble never left his voice. “Boaz stood at your shoulder like he had every right to be there, and his entitlement pissed me off. He fled Savannah after you were incarcerated. He used you as an excuse to distance himself from his family and the army as a reason not to return. But the second you were released—there he was. Ready to act as your anchor when the truth is you’ve always been his.”
The version of this story Boaz had told me was more romantic, more flattering. When I envisioned him leaving Savannah burdened by heartache and misery, I had all but swooned. Viewing his actions through the lens of Linus’s perspective, as Boaz seizing an opportunity to escape his own future while mine crumbled, picked at the scabs over my heart.