But it was a stranger at the door, one who sized me up with a quick up-down sweep. He consulted with Orange Shirt for a minute, a low mutter, and then the third man was entering the house. The proportion of these men to the two of us, Isabelle and me, had shifted again. I had to act. I had to act. But I didn’t know what to do—there were so many of them—and I still didn’t understand the limits of my power.
“We didn’t think anybody would come looking for them,” Black Shoes said. “Nobody ever had before. This was between us and the Strouds, that’s all. I’m sorry that you young ladies had to come here. I’m sorry you’ve become part of this now.”
“There are more of them,” Orange Shirt said. “One more, hiding somewhere. That’s what he said.”
Tom. Tom had told them about Cate. The betrayal was sharp enough to cut through the panic, a stinging ache.
I watched the stranger vanish down the hallway, adrenaline surging through me. Cate’s hands on Isabelle’s arm, the way the wound had vanished, absorbed back into Isabelle’s body. What would the people of Kithira do to Cate if they found out that she had the same weirdness inside her as Delilah?
“You still have time to let us walk away,” I said, all desperate bravado. “People will come looking for us. Just the way we looked for the Strouds. I’m all over the news right now. There’s no way people won’t notice—someone will come looking—” But whether I was famous, or infamous, I knew that nobody in my life was close enough to come searching.
Black Shoes stood and approached me. “Don’t feel sorry for yourself. This is on you.”
“How so?” I asked, a whisper.
“After Dr. Bellanger died, the world went back to normal. Every day, hundreds of thousands of babies are born, each one with a mommy and a daddy. In the face of that, what’s nine girls? But suddenly you’re all over the TV screen. Josephine Morrow. Girl One, in the papers, claiming that you’re going to finish what Bellanger started. I know it’s a publicity stunt: a pretty girl, trying her hand at being Dr. Frankenstein instead of the monster.” Anger overcame me, hot and acidic. “But it’s got people thinking again. Soon enough, it’ll have them wondering whether women even need men. Whether men have a place in the society that we built ourselves.” His eyes on me had turned flat and heavy. There were fine whitish marks around his eyes, crevices the sun hadn’t reached. “Nature rewards the brave. If you’re going to make men irrelevant, we’ll take back our place in the gene pool by whatever means is necessary.”
Whatever means is necessary. Something about the way he looked at me, up and down—something about the story, Delilah’s pregnancy—
“He raped her,” I said, my rage compressing the words, turning them clear and precise. “Your nephew raped Delilah. To prove that you matter. But it wasn’t enough, was it? She was still so powerful that you had to kill her—”
A scuffle of movement. Orange Shirt came back, Cate with him. Her arms twisted behind her back so that she had to walk in an awkward crouch, fighting against him. Blood ran from her nose to her mouth, thick stripes. My own mouth filled with the taste of rust.
“You’re going to kill us the same way you killed the Strouds,” I said.
“No,” Black Shoes said gently. “It will be quicker than that. I can do that much for you.”
“You’re cowards,” Cate spat.
They barely reacted. “Deal with these two,” Black Shoes said, like we were something to tick off a checklist. The people of Kithira had worked a miracle of their own, banishing the Strouds. They would dispatch us just as effortlessly. The third man grabbed me. His arm, slung across my chest, pinched hard against my breasts. In the scramble and confusion, I’d lost my chance. Black Shoes was turning away from me. I couldn’t reach his eyes.
Black Shoes went to Isabelle, holding out his hand. I tried to telegraph some of my own urgency to her: Wake up, dammit. But, unmoved by Cate’s bleeding, she accepted Black Shoes’s hand. He lifted her off the couch and led her out of the living room, toward the back of the house. He was gentle with her, almost mannerly. I thought of Delilah, alone, pregnant against her will, furious and scared. That bloodstained dress, a pale banner in the trees.
My rage arrived as purely and completely as a breath drawn after I’d been held underwater. Every nerve ending flickered, alive with heat. The world slowed down to accommodate me. I was what had been hiding inside all along.