Generation V (24 page)

Young like Jessica had looked last night, lying on the ground of the alley. So that’s what was bothering me, and I started to relax. I hadn’t been thinking of her for a while, and my conscience was probably kicking me for letting Suzume’s constant banter and my aching ribs distract me from her death.

But my eyes pulled back to that photo, and I frowned. No, that wasn’t it. There was something else. Something
about puberty. I remembered Chivalry saying something. Except he’d phrased it differently…mature women, that’s what he’d said. I kept picking at it, trying to figure out how my brain was trying to link these things together, and then I remembered
when
he’d been saying it and suddenly everything seemed to come together in a flash.

“Suzume!”

She looked up from her efforts at creative disorganization and glanced sharply around the room for whatever had gotten me so excited. “What?”

“Suze, girls hit puberty around twelve or thirteen, right? Like, periods and stuff?”

She stared at me, completely flummoxed. “Aroundish,” she agreed slowly, clearly trying to track my conversational non sequitur. “Some a little earlier, a few a little later, but most have it by thirteen. I could lend you my old Judy Blume books if you’re curious.”

“Can you tell?” I asked urgently.

“Huh?”

It was all so obvious suddenly. Why she’d been stolen, then killed. “Luca said that Maria lost usefulness for him when she hit puberty. That he wasn’t sexually interested in her anymore. And Jessica looked really young, but the newspaper listed her age as thirteen. So would she have hit puberty?”

“Oh.” Suzume paused and seemed to think, then nodded decisively. “Yes.”

“You’re sure.”

“She was menstruating. I could smell the blood on her last night, under the rest of it. The blood is different, so the smell is distinct.” She gave a little
so what?
shrug.

“But don’t you realize what this means? Luca didn’t kill Jessica because he’d planned to all along. He killed her because he thought she was younger and she turned out not to be! But Amy’s nine—she actually
is
really little!” Suzume’s eyes widened, and I nodded, feeling stunned. “You said you smelled another little girl on Phillip—was that other girl dead?”

Suzume shook her head slowly. “No,” I said. “We just assumed because Jessica was dead. We didn’t realize why. And that means…that means Amy might still be alive. We can still save her.”

“You can find Amy,
right?”

Suzume hadn’t said much since I’d realized that Amy could still be alive. She’d called the witch back in, and the two of them had scrubbed the orange paste off me. Well, most of it. Apparently there was the unfortunate side effect of staining the skin, but the witch assured me that it would wear off. In about four weeks. In the meantime, my body looked like I’d gone paintballing naked, and lost. But since I now felt better than I had at any point since my mugging, I wasn’t complaining. The witch said that I still had a little surface bruising, though how he could see any around the bright orange blotches was beyond me.

We’d had to make one slight stop on our way out to dump our bag of bloody and possibly incriminating clothes. Apparently the good doctor maintained an incinerator in her building for just such occasions. Convenient, and moderately suspicious. But now we were finally back in the Fiesta and ready to hit the road to save Amy. Or at least that should’ve been the plan. Suzume was sitting in the driver’s seat, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel and frowning.

There was a distinct lack of her usual balls-to-the-wall decisiveness and eagerness for conflict. I gave her a nudge.

“So we should head back to where we killed Phillip. You can go fox and sniff his trail back to wherever it leads—that will probably be wherever Jessica was when she died. And if Luca was originally planning to keep both girls, then there would’ve been no reason to keep them separate. If we’re lucky, then Luca hasn’t moved and Amy is still there.” I was almost shaking. An hour ago I’d been convinced that Amy had died, and now she was probably only about twenty minutes away from me. Sure, it wasn’t perfect—if Luca moved to a new spot, it might be hard for Suzume to track, especially if he’d made that move by car, but I felt like my odds were good that he’d still be in the same place. If he didn’t know that Phillip was dead yet, maybe he was even out looking for him. Leaving Amy behind for us to grab.

“Fort, do you have a plan on this one?” Suzume asked finally, still drumming her fingers.

“I just told you,” I said, impatient. “Find the trail, follow it to wherever Amy is, get Amy.”

Suzume sighed. “You’re missing something, Fort. And much as it grieves me to be the voice of caution in this area, I must ask—do you remember the part about how the little girl is being held captive by a vampire?”

“I thought you said that vampires weren’t so tough.”

Suzume’s face reddened, and I knew that she was having to force out the words. “That was when I’d just been hanging out with you. After a vampire flunky nearly wiped the floor with us, I reconsidered my position. If that’s what a hybrid mongrel can do, I’m not going
anywhere near his daddy until we have some serious backup.”

I hated that she was right. I really didn’t want her to be right. But, “Fine. Call your grandma.”

“You weren’t paying very close attention, were you? You’ve got exactly one fox in your corner right now, and that’s only because your mother is cutting me checks to keep you alive. My grandmother is not risking an alliance that keeps her people safe.”

“I can’t go to Chivalry,” I said. “He won’t disobey orders. Madeline’s the one who made the damn orders, so that takes her right out as well.”

“True.” Suzume’s eyes glittered. “Now, who does that leave?”

I hesitated, and thought. When I began to glance back to the doctor’s office, Suzume made an exasperated clicking sound with her tongue. “Are you high, Fort?”

“Okay, maybe not specifically her,” I said defensively, “but I can’t be the sole supernatural creature in this state who feels that child-molesting vampires are a bad idea!”

“No, there do exist a few more bleeding hearts who will go out of their way to take out a creature whose habits, while repugnant, have not yet endangered their own kind. But there’s still an itsy-bitsy problem there.”

“And I’m sure you’re going to tell me about it.”

Suzume ignored my sarcasm. “Yes. Tell me, Fort, who do you think is the controlling power in not only this state, but for anywhere in the next few hundred miles?”

“The vampires.” I was reluctant, but it was the truth.

“Exactly. So even if we tracked down a few more people who, like you, aspire to follow the example of Dudley
Do-Right, they wouldn’t tangle with a vampire who has your mother’s protection. Because even if we could somehow hoodwink them into believing that your mother isn’t that fond of this guy, and wouldn’t care if we tangled with him, do you really think that she’s going to be very happy about someone in her territory setting the precedent of fucking with vampires and getting away with it? Every supernatural creature in four states sits in the shadow of Madeline Scott, and we didn’t exactly vote her there.”

“You’re saying that we shouldn’t go after Amy?” I didn’t bother to try to stifle the outrage in my voice. At this moment, I didn’t think I could handle having yet one more person treat Amy Grann’s life as dispensable. It was all too easy to imagine what was waiting for Amy if I stepped back, stopped caring, or accepted this as not my business. That smiling little girl from the photos would look like Maria had—hopeless, empty, dead while she still breathed. I remembered seeing all those ragged scars on Maria’s neck and arms, and that sick feeling of knowing that those hadn’t even been the worst abuses that she’d been made to live through. There was no clean death waiting for Amy if I turned away—just degradation and pain until the day that she was no longer amusing for Luca, and that was the day that she’d be literally thrown away in the trash. I slammed my fist hard against the Fiesta’s dashboard, which was old, dried out, and worn, and it split under my hand. Looking at it, I knew that I should be feeling guilt about taking my frustration out on the Fiesta, who had certainly already suffered over the last few days, but I couldn’t.

“No.” Suzume was all business. “That’s not what I’m saying. I’m
saying we need backup who can kick a vampire’s ass. Who is the one person who we haven’t eliminated?”

I thought. I thought again. I was already shaking my head before I’d even fully grasped the answer.

“No,” I said. “Not her. Never her.”

“Put-up or shut-up time,” Suzume said, so merciless. “Do you want to save this girl’s life or not?”

I did. But it still took me a long, hard minute to accept what I had to do.

Suzume and I switched seats. I turned the ignition key and hesitated again. Then I got a hold of myself. This couldn’t be about me anymore. Amy was alive right now, and could be saved. That had to mean more than events in my past that I couldn’t change. The way that I felt, all that old pain, it had to take a backseat to keeping her alive. That’s what my foster father would’ve told me, I knew. I could feel down to my bones that this was what Brian would’ve expected me to do. Even if it meant going to see the person I hated most in the world and asking for a favor, how could I possibly consider that more important than Amy Grann’s life? If saving her life meant doing this, how could I live with myself if I didn’t? Brian would’ve told me to do everything I could to save her, even if it meant asking his own murderer for help.

I turned the key, then waited while the engine floundered and turned it again. This time the engine caught.

Then I drove us to my sister Prudence’s house.

South Portsmouth, where Prudence lives, is one town over from Newport. I guess that for Prudence that was just far enough to declare some independence from Madeline, but not so far that it would be real independence,
which would suggest that she was leaving the nest and trying to claim territory for herself. And while Chivalry lives at home and is Madeline’s right hand, handling almost all of the day-to-day duties and tasks that occur, Prudence is Madeline’s left hand. She doesn’t get sent out when diplomacy is in order, or even when threats are. Madeline sends in Prudence when there’s a high likelihood of violence ensuing.

Of course, it had occurred to me in the past that there could be an inverse correlation there. That when Prudence went in to handle something, there was a far greater chance that there would be deaths than if Chivalry had gone. I’ll probably never stop wondering if Jill and Brian would still be alive today if Chivalry had been sent over to the house instead of Prudence. And it’s because of that nagging question, that doubt, that I’d never sought Prudence out for anything in my life. Our paths had to cross from time to time at the mansion, but I’d never wanted any kind of closer relationship with her, and Prudence obviously felt the same. There were a lot of questions I’d had about myself, about what it meant to transition to full adulthood, but when Chivalry or Madeline hadn’t answered them I hadn’t bothered to go to Prudence.

Now the Fiesta sat on the shiny asphalt driveway that led up to her very modern town house. Prudence likes new construction, and she usually moves every decade or so. The town house was light gray with white trim, three stories tall, harbor views, and was surrounded by about fifty buildings that were completely identical except for the numbers above their garages. It was just after noon, but there were no kids playing, no mothers
pushing baby strollers around. The only sign of life was a guy in a lawn-service T-shirt who was mowing the already rigidly uniform grass.

This wasn’t the kind of place where young families moved. This was where single professionals lived. There was something incredibly antiseptic about all of those uniform buildings, and I could see why Prudence had moved here. It was her kind of place.

I stared at the door, not making any moves to get out of the car.

“Do you think she’s home?” Suzume asked quietly. We hadn’t talked very much during the drive. I hadn’t liked what Suzume had told me, even though I knew that all it had been was the hard truth, and my temper was still simmering just under the surface. It wasn’t helped in any way by having to come see Prudence and ask her for a favor. For once, Suzume had been almost respectful of my mood, not trying to cheer me up or antagonize me into a reaction. Now her tone was almost polite.

“Yes,” I said, not looking away from the door. I didn’t elaborate. I could feel Prudence waiting inside, and I knew that she could feel me sitting out here. All of the windows had those expensive bamboo-slat blinds, all closed against the sun that Prudence was old enough to have to avoid. I watched, but there weren’t any movements—she wasn’t peeking out the window. She was just waiting to see what I’d do next.

“Do you want me to come in?” Suzume was still quiet, and there wasn’t anything pushy in her question. I was surprised enough to finally pull my eyes away from the gray front door and look over at her. She looked back at me, waiting.

“That’s a real question, isn’t it?” I asked, almost wonderingly. “You don’t already know what you want, and are just pushing me in that direction. You’ll stay if I ask, or go with me if that’s what I want.” I paused, and turned it over in my mind. “Why?”

Suzume tapped her index finger against the tip of her nose. “This is different, Fort. Coming here is…hurting you.”

“You can smell that?”

She nodded, and then waited.

I looked back at the door. I hadn’t been alone with Prudence since the day that she’d killed my foster parents. No one had ever mentioned it, but looking back I realized that there’d always been someone else around on every other occasion we’d come into contact. Chivalry or Madeline, always one of them in the background of every encounter, every unpleasant run-in or holiday duty. I hadn’t felt Prudence’s undiluted presence in almost two decades, or spoken to her alone.

I wanted Suzume with me. I wanted it very badly. I could imagine her strolling into the house beside me, snapping off sassy comments at Prudence and making her boil, negotiating the situation with that mix of savoir faire, provocation, and lethal understanding that had made her so effective at Dr. Lulu’s. It was very easy to picture her taking over the situation so that all I had to do was sit in a corner and nod at what she said, to use her as a shield against the memories my older sister always incited. It was very, very tempting.