My silence seemed to placate Mother. She finally looked up from her book and smiled. “Aunt Jessica.”
Pleasure rolled through me: I was blooded, though no one else would call me that yet.
“Cyrus told me there was a vote,” I said. “How does that work?”
“Grandmother chooses her counselors. Four of us.”
That was all I was getting: a logic game. Mother, Cyrus—I’d have to figure out the other two.
“Why cull him in secret?”
She looked out the window. “This is a delicate time. You’re aware of the Belmonts’ recent troubles?”
I nodded—a warehouse fire, a car accident, missing money. My classmate Caroline Belmont had taken emergency leave from Helshire.
“When bad luck comes in threes…” my mother began.
“Look for a deeper reason,” I said. “Still, stochastic flukes happen.”
She scoffed. The Belmonts were an old shipping family we’dincorporated four generations ago. If they were being attacked, my family was the ultimate target.
“The Lindqvists?” I asked.
“Our old enemies.”
I didn’t argue. Mother’s views on the Lindqvists were antiquated. The last open feud between our families had ended more than a hundred years ago. “What does that have to do with Peter?”
“Take a guess.”
A silence stretched out. Lying in bed for twelve years had taught my mother infinite patience.
Her sickness doesn’t have a name. Other Mortons had fallen ill the same way—a great-granduncle in the 1990s, three sisters during the Great Depression. One day, we’re spinning power from blood, the next morning we can’t get up.
Mother’s illness struck when I was eight, two weeks after my mors curae, as if she’d been waiting until I was on the right path. There were so few Mortons in my generation, which was why Peter had been given so many chances.
“He played with matches,” I said.
“Go on.”
“If you’re worried about a conflict with the Lindqvists, Peter was a source of instability.”
“Ever since Uncle Max,” she said, almost too soft to hear. My mother hadn’t mentioned Cyrus’s brother in years. None of us ever said his name. “We need to steady the ship.”
“But why in secret? Culling weakness shows strength. Especially because it was me—Peter was my little shadow.”
“And you are loyal without care.” My mother’s smile spread to her eyes. “My little girl who never screamed at night. Who had to learn how to cry. Who is proud of being blooded on her own cousin.”
Most first assignments are strangers, not close family. Even homegrownkillers know to begin with insects, wild animals, pets. Start small, then escalate.
I had not started small.
“A prodigy,” my mother said. “But a hidden one, for now. If we face another conflict with the Lindqvists, it’s important that the other families come together, keeping to the old traditions.”
That’s when I saw it. “You needed a funeral.”
She nodded. Culling was normally a quiet affair, but after this tragic accident, a contingent of Seths had flown here from London, Wolvaardts all the way from South Africa. Three of the four families in a show of solidarity.
This was why, after Peter’s many years of failure, they’d chosen to cull him now.