Page 57 of A Steeping of Blood
The Ram clucked her tongue. It was the same sound she would make when Flick had done something wrong and she was left to clean it up.Look at what you’ve made me do, it said.
She turned, and before Flick could fully comprehend what was happening, two loud pops ricocheted in the room. The men fell. They did not move. They did not breathe.
Gunshots. Her mother—her mother had killed the men.
For a moment, the Ram stood still. Flick was frozen. A croak escaped her lips. As if her mind wanted to scream, but her heart knew better than to be shocked.
The Ram tilted her head, clearly wishing she could somehow make Flick forget who she was. Or, she was contemplating her death. Flick wouldn’t put it past her. Flick stared at the dead men until they began to quiver in her vision, until her entire body began to shake.
“Don’t do that again,” the Ram said as simply as though Flick had left food on her plate, and the Ram had been forced to go through the trouble of cleaning it up.
Flick refused to let her see how much the men’s deaths had affected her. She willed her rushing thoughts to settle, her limbs to ease, her clenched teeth to relax.
My mother just killed two men.
“I recognized you the moment you walked into the room that night,” Flick said. “And I want to say I didn’t recognize the woman who murdered those people, but I—I can’t.” She sniffed, looking at the men. “Have you no heart?”
The Ram took off her mask, and a pang shot through Flick’s chest.
She was back home again, vying for her mother’s attention, eager for every meal they shared, every walk they had through the gardens, every outing for jewels or ribbons or purses.
You have a new home now, she reminded herself. It might not always share the same walls, but it did have the same faces: Jin, Arthie, Matteo, and the entirety of the crew.
She straightened her spine.
“I will ask you again, where is the ledger?” the Ram asked, making no effort to answer Flick’s question. Making no effort to mask her apathy toward the men lying dead on either side of her. She held up Flick’s notes. “I know you have it because you’ve barely bothered to hide the fact that you’ve gone through it. Tell me, Felicity, were you trying to find this place?”
This place?
Itwasa place, but how had Flick gotten the coordinates incorrect? She’d matched up the map precisely, stood at the crossroads her mother had drawn in her ledger, but she’d seen nothing. Had the Ram changed locations? Was Jin right, and the ledger was rubbish now?
Goodness, they’d sailed across thesea.
“You know you could have just asked me,” the Ram said, dropping Flick’s notes. She knocked on the door twice. Hard. It opened right away, two men entering without preamble to drag the dead bodies away, leaving a trail of blood behind them.
They didn’t flinch; they didn’t pause. They knew they were expendable. And Flick couldn’t decide if her being brought here was a good thing.
Say something. Don’t let her get you afraid.“It’s nice to see you too.”
“Oh, do not act as though the distance between us isn’t due to your own reckless actions,” her mother replied. How easily she spoke after having just killed two men. She had even tucked her pistol away as if it was a pencil she’d pulled free to jot down a quick note.
Was she referring to when Flick broke into a vampire’s mansion? When she helped infiltrate the Athereum? When Spindrift had gone up in flames? Or when she’d stood in the midst of a massacre of her mother’s own making?
“It’s peculiar for you to sound disappointed in my actions when you’re diddling the entire empire, Mother,” Flick said, relishing thedregs of satisfaction when her mother winced at her choice in language. “I always assumed the EJC straddled moral lines, but I didn’t know how far that went. I didn’t know that when I learned you were abusing vampires, I could be horrified by anything more, and then you walked in wearing that mask. And now you’re kidnapping humans too.”
Flick stopped there, despite the lengthy list she wanted to run through, calling out what her mother had done. Whatever she did say, the Ram did not refute, not even the kidnapping of humans off the street. Flick didn’t know why she was surprised: The Ram had just killed two men in front of her, simply because of something Flick said.
“Come back home,” her mother said, almost tiredly.
That wasn’t the response Flick was expecting, not in the slightest. She regarded her mother with suspicion, even as the instinctual responses bubbled up in her throat.
Yes.
I’m sorry, Mother.
I’ll return to you.
“Please, Felicity,” her mother added.
