“Help me hang it back up,” I say.
Ale’s face is uneasy.
“Do you really want everyone in Iris to know about the other cities?” he says.
I want Verene’s perfect life to be demolished. If her city doesn’t trust her, everything will fall apart.
“Fine,” I say. “I’ll hang it myself.”
He doesn’t try to stop me. I make sure to bring the journal with me as I work, because he keeps eyeing it. I tie the banner to the railing and unfurl it into the night air. The square below is empty, but in a nearby street, I can see the lanterns of Verene’s mob. They start to move in our direction.
The city is small. Once somebody sees what I’ve drawn, word will spread fast.
“All right.” I turn back to lead Ale out of the dining room. “Now we can go to the study—”
We’re almost at the doorway when a woman steps in front of us. She’s small and bony, but she has deep, intense eyes. She’s looking at me like she knows everything that I’ve ever done wrong in my entire life.
I was wondering where the housekeeper had gone.
“Hello,” I say.
I move forward like I fully expect her to get out of my way.
She pulls out a knife. I pause.
“I don’t want to fight an old woman,” I say, very reasonably.
“Well,” she says, “you’re going to.”
“Oh,” I say.
“I’m not just a servant, you know,” she says. “Their papa has been gone for years, and the way their maman treated them—there’s no one else. There’s only me.”
I assess her. “So you know about their magic?”
“I know that they go into the underground well every day and come out bleeding,” she says. “And I fix them up. I don’t ask questions, because they saved this city, and that’s all I need to know. And you’re not going to ruin that.”
So she doesn’t know enough to be useful to me. I suppose I am going to fight an old woman, after all.
That’s fine. I don’t know her. I don’t care about her.
I stuff the journal down my front for safekeeping and inch closer. Closer. The housekeeper doesn’t take her eyes off me.
“Emanuela,” Ale says.
I try to snatch the knife from her hands, and she jabs at me, so I kick her in the knee. She buckles, and I run past her into the parlor. I look around wildly for something I can use to restrain her.
But she’s already running at me with the knife. I jump onto the love seat, then leap on top of her. We hit the floor so hard that something in her body crunches.
I’ve heard that sound before. I scramble off her, certain that it’s already over.
She’s already back on her feet, limping and grimacing, but still coming at me.
I grab a silver platter off the coffee table and hit her in the head. The clang is resounding. I drop the platter, startled by my own force, and she staggers.
Surely she’ll give up now.
She’s not giving up.
She slashes at me wildly, and I skitter back. I find a wine bottle on the coffee table and hold it up like a club. She hesitates.
“All right, old woman.” I’m breathing hard. “Just stand aside and let us do what we need to do. We’ll be out of—”
She slashes at me again. I throw my arm in front my face instinctively. There’s a sharp pain, and then, there’s blood. There’s more blood than I expected, and for a moment, I’m stunned by the sight of it.
I can’t take a light touch with this woman. She’s not taking a light touch with me.
I whack her in the face with the wine bottle, and she collapses to the floor. I drop the wine bottle and snatch up her knife instead, then back up to the far side of the room, ready for whatever she’s going to try next.
“Emanuela!” Ale is halfway to the front door now. “What are you doing? Let’s just go—”
“Not yet,” I say.
On the floor, the housekeeper is stirring, and if I don’t stop her, she’s going to stop me. I have to protect myself. I have to protect Ale.
“We shouldn’t stay in here any longer,” Ale says. “They’re going to come back—”
From the dining room, I hear a door crack open. The door to the underground well.
But the housekeeper is back on her feet. She grabs my abandoned wine bottle and chucks it at me.
It misses. It hits the enormous, beautiful stained-glass window behind me—the one that depicts the white-gloved hands making the water. The bottle goes right through. For a moment, we both stare at the jagged hole.
Then she charges.
It happens so fast. She dives at me like she’s going to strangle me, so I push the knife into her as hard as I can. It slips right between two of her ribs, and it feels strangely neat and perfect. Like it’s supposed to be there. She makes a faint gurgling noise. Already, her blood is seeping out of her. It’s staining my fingers and her white apron, and for a moment, I just stare at it.
She must have known this would happen if she kept fighting. If she underestimated me, that’s not my fault.
Someone is screaming. It’s not me. I don’t think it’s me, at least. I look around, and I catch a glimpse of Verene emerging from the dining room, but then the housekeeper coughs right in my face. Her hot blood splatters my cheek, and for one horrible moment, I meet her eyes.
She doesn’t look afraid. She looks completely certain of herself.
I don’t understand. I’m the one who’s besting her. I’m the one who’s supposed to feel confident, because I’m doing exactly what I wanted to do. The housekeeper failed to stop me. She failed to protect her charges. She shouldn’t be at peace with that.
I yank the knife out, and it makes a loud, wet noise. The housekeeper groans and doubles over. Blood dribbles out of the wound and stains the black-and-white tile near my
