The Children(15)

Candy advanced, head down. In her past life she’d been a junkie art star with a death wish, her whole career a slow-motion flameout. She’d long since cleaned up, gotten sober, gotten religion, even, if you counted Ennis as a god. Guin was pretty sure Candy did. In that moment she looked every bit the razor-mouthed brawler she used to be. Guin’s joints filled with a hard white light as she readied herself for violence.

The way Candy touched her was unexpected. Gentle, more brutal than a punch: she slid her hand over Guin’s. Held it.

She said, “I know.”

A pop of hard static ran through Guin, head to feet.

“No, you don’t.” The reply was automatic. There were things only she and Ennis knew, that no one else ever would.

Candy leaned in.

“He said the Farmhouse looked like a rocket ship,” she whispered. “In all that blue fire.”

The kinetic energy animating Guin’s body snapped off. Suddenly she was spent, swaying on her feet like a boxer. Before she could recover—how could she recover?—Candy was stomping back into the building, over the light spilling in a golden wedge onto the snow.

Guin allowed the golem in the beautiful suit to herd her into a cab. When he gave the driver the name of her hotel, she understood Ennis had been tracking her, anticipating her. She perceived at last that none of it was random.

She had a brother. He was long and angry and brave and kind, made of vaulted skies and jumps into cold black water. Best and only playmate. Their childhood together stuck like sap to her skin. Candy wasn’t the first person to worship at the altar of Ennis Sharpe.

Guin had a brother once. And then she had none.





Nine

Five days until Mother




Of course Guin memorized the address on the invitation Candy tried to give her. It ticker-taped through her head as she made coffee in her kitchen, ordered a lunch she didn’t eat, declined two more calls from Regina. Finally, she typed the address into her phone. Just to see.

A train and a bus. One hour and she’d be there, if she were going.

But Guin had worked quite hard to build a wall between herself and her brother. Made it of fury and betrayal and recrimination, brick by brick. It didn’t go up overnight. And it wouldn’t fall down because Candy came asking.

When Regina called a fourth time, she answered.

“Oh, hi, Regina. Are you having a nice day?”

There, that startled a laugh out of her. Her enormous voice followed. “You’re adorable. I could almost forget you’re full grown.”

They’d been working together since Guin was a shiftless twenty-year-old dumbass, desperately in need of some structure. She found it in an offer Regina made near the end of a double gap year that started as a quest and fizzled into an endless vacation: to be her mother’s stand-in, promoting the Ninth City series around the world. She was, after all, the Guinevere Sharpe.

If she remembered correctly, she’d referred to herself in her first call with Regina as a wanderer. No irony detected. Their present dynamic—hard-boiled boss versus intermittently charming buffoon—was a relic of those early days.

“I’ve been calling you for an hour.” Concern barely covered the publicist’s irritation, thin as the shell on a crème br?lée. “What was that?”

“I’m sorry.” Guin let her forehead touch the cool marble of her kitchen island. “Samantha Brice got me. I got Brice’d.”

“Not a phrase.” Regina sighed. “Honey, I didn’t call to scold you. We know he’s a sore spot, Fern shouldn’t have let you go out there unbriefed. We’re not gonna be stupid about this anymore. Okay?”

“Yeah.” Guin straightened up. “Okay.”

“Good. Your brother’s show. Right now, absolute honesty, what do we need to know? What kind of bombs could he drop?”

A laugh bubbled out of her. “God,” she said. “No bombs.”

“Right.” Regina didn’t sound convinced. “Any . . . hand grenades?”

“The usual stuff. All the stuff you would think.” Behind her eyes, whirring like a carousel: The Farmhouse, the woods. The Farmhouse, the—

“All the stuff I’d think? Guin, I can think of a lot of things. I’m a very imaginative person.”

“Hah.”

“Not really. You know what, I need to ask it.” Her voice was hushed, for Regina. Almost as quiet as another person talking at normal volume. “We’ve known each other a long time, haven’t we? And I would be remiss, as your publicist and friend, if I didn’t ask whether she ever, whether Edith or Llewellyn ever . . .”

She stopped cold. Guin let her dangle.

“If there was anything . . .” She made an exasperated sound. “God, Guin, don’t make me say it. The worst thing.”

What did Regina know about worst things? Guin understood her meaning, though. Crisply, honestly, she said, “Never.”

Regina exhaled hard into the phone. “Well, thank god for that.”

“Speaking as my friend, of course.”

“And as your publicist. Representing your interests. And your brand-new book, which really does present a very rosy picture.”

“Samantha Brice called it sunny. Sunshine and roses, that’s me.”