“He’s no longer in the military and he has no one.”
“How do you know?”
“He told me.”
“He could’ve lied,” Richard said gently.
“He’s a changeling, Richard. He has a hard time with lying.”
Richard drew back. He opened his mouth, obviously struggling. “A changeling,” he finally managed.
She nodded.
“What …”
“A wolf.”
Richard cleared his throat. “Well.”
She waited for him.
“It could be worse,” he said finally. “Efrenia married an arsonist. Jake’s wife is a kleptomaniac. I suppose, a psychopathic spree killer isn’t that odd of a choice, considering. We’ll just have to work around it. Gods know, we’ve had practice. He’s certainly good in a fight.”
She smiled. “Thank you.”
“Of course,” Richard said. “We’re family. If you love him and he loves you, we’ll do whatever we can to let you be happy.”
Cerise turned to the corner, where a small bookcase used to contain the planting journals. The book case lay overturned. She picked it up and wrestled it upright. Nothing, except a puddle of soggy pulp that may have been a book at some point, but now served as a shelter for a family of muck bugs. The journals were gone.
They left the library and headed to the kitchen. Both windows stood wide open, the freshly installed metal grates catching the light of the morning sun. Dead leaves rustled on the floor. Shards of broken pottery crunched under Cerise’s foot. A shattered plate. And a knife. She picked it up. A thin paring knife that was missing its tip. A dark brown stain marked the blade. She scratched at it and the dark brown crumbled, tiny flecks floating to the floor.
“Blood,” Richard said. “The entire blade is stained. This knife went into someone.”
“Grandma could’ve been cooking something.”
He shook his head. “Anything she cooked would’ve been drained of blood. This knife went into a living body.”
Cerise looked at the knife. Three inches, maybe four. “It’s too small to hurt anyone. I could kill someone with it, but Grandma? She would faint first. Besides, they died of plague.”
“Supposedly.” Richard strode to the sink.
“What do you mean, supposedly?”
“We never saw the bodies. Look, dishes.”
The sink held a small stack of dirty dishes. To the right two dusty glasses sat in a tray upside down. Grandfather set the glasses right side up to dry. He thought they ventilated better. Her grandparents used to bicker about it.
Cerise came to stand by the sink. “So Grandmother was washing the dishes, when something attacked her. She grabbed the first knife she could find, turned …” Cerise turned with the paring knife. “The knife broke.”
“She must’ve grabbed a plate, probably several, and threw them at her attacker.”
Cerise put the knife on the counter. “And then?”
Richard touched her elbow, steering her from the sink, and pointed to the cabinet. Stains marked the doors, dark patches on dark wood. A thick crust had formed on the cabinet doorknob. Several long silver hairs were stuck to it.
“Whatever it was knocked her down.” Richard spread the leaves off the floor, revealing a long dark smudge. “And dragged her off.”
They chased the trail of blood through the kitchen, down the hallway, and to the bedroom. Blood spattered the walls. Dried to nearly black, it spanned the boards to the right and left of the headboard as if someone had bathed in blood and then danced around.
“The bed,” Richard murmured.
He grasped one side of the torn mattress, she grasped the other. Cerise heaved. The mattress gave, rising off the floor. A large fuzzy blotch of mold marred the underside. It didn’t look good. Cerise leaned closer and rubbed at the mold with her sleeve. Dark brown. Blood. Nobody could bleed that much and survive.
There was no plague, no fever, no sickness. Her grandparents were murdered.
She looked at Richard. His face was controlled fury.
“The family lied to us,” she said.
“Yes, they did.”
THE kitchen buzzed with angry voices. Forty-six adults, stressed to the limit, trying to outscream each other. The insult to the family was monumental. Gustave kidnapped, Genevieve fused, the house of cherished grandparents robbed.
Cerise let them rage. They had to vent enough to be reasoned with. She wished she had William with her, but he had to stay outside the room. This was a Mar affair.
“They came onto our land,” Mikita’s voice boomed. “Our land! They took our people. We’re Mars. Nobody does that to us and lives. We fuck them up and we fuck them up good.”
“We hit them with everything we have,” Kaldar yelled out.
“Y’all are out of your minds.” One of the older women, Joanna, pushed from the wall. She was Aunt Pete’s cousin. “We have kids to think about. That’s the Hand we’re talking about here.”
Kaldar turned to her. “You have three daughters. How the hell am I going to marry them off? We don’t have money and we don’t have prospects. Right now, the only reason people want to marry into our family is because they know if something happens, we’ll back them up. What do you want me to do when your eldest comes to me crying, because she’s in love, but the man won’t have her and we can’t even pay for her wedding? Love fades, fear stays.”
“If he really loves her, the name won’t matter,” Joanna yelled. “Love’s what does it.”
“Really? Speaking from experience, are you? Where the hell is your Bobby, and why isn’t he taking care of his kids?”
“You leave my kids out of it!”
“We must fight,” Murid’s voice cut through the noise with raspy precision. “We have no choice.”
“Aunt Murid.” Cerise made an effort to say it just right, sweet but with an edge to it. “You’ve lied to us.”
Instantly the room was silent.
“You, and Aunt Pete, and my parents. You’ve lied to all of us. We went down to Sene this morning. My grandparents didn’t die of the plague.”
Aunt Pete glanced at Murid.
“We found the blood,” Richard said. “Too much blood. And claw marks on the walls.”
Murid raised her head. “There was no fever. Your grandfather lost his mind and murdered your grandmother in the bedroom.”
A wave of cold rolled over Cerise. It couldn’t be. “Why?”
“We don’t know,” Aunt Pete said. “He had become withdrawn over that spring and summer. He rarely visited the main house. Your mother thought he was depressed. When your father and she came down to visit your grandparents, they found your grandmother’s body. He’d ripped her apart like a straw doll. All of you loved him very much. We spared you the pain of knowing what he did.”
“There were two coffins at the burial.” Cerise leveled her gaze at Aunt Murid.
“Your father must’ve killed Vernard,” Murid said. “That’s the most logical explanation. I never saw the bodies, and Gustave would not talk about what happened in Sene, except to say that we could never have an open-casket burial. I don’t know if it was self-defense or revenge. I only know that he came back with two coffins, with their lids nailed shut.”
The memory of the wall with the claw marks rose before her. She just couldn’t shake it off. The claws. The monster in the woods. Her grandparents. Somehow it all had to fit.
Cerise searched the room for Erian. “Erian?”
