Then, finally, Tansy broke the silence.
“Thanks for telling us, Violet,” she said. “I … I’m sorry for everything that happened to you and your mother. What Mother Fleur did to you—”
“She hurt all of us,” Violet said flatly. “I’m the only one who helped her.”
“You’re not that person anymore, though,” Clementine countered.
“Yeah, Violet, we never could have made it this far without you,” Mallow said. “I’m glad you’re here. I mean, not here, in this cell, but, you know…”
Aster and the others nodded in agreement.
“And another thing, Violet,” Aster said. “Maybe now you can tell us your mother’s bedtime story. The one that’s supposed to tell us how to find Lady Ghost.”
“What for?” Violet asked, her voice hollow.
“So we can figure out where she is,” Aster said, stating the obvious.
Aster had no idea how they would ever get the chance to look for Lady Ghost again, but that was beside the point. They needed to keep believing they could.
Violet gave her an almost imperceptible nod, as if she understood what Aster wanted from her. “Well, the story always began the same way,” she said. “Once there was a seraphant who lived in a castle made of theomite, set amongst ten claws. After that it changed every time. A different orphan girl would be in trouble—she’d have fallen down a well, or gotten lost in the woods, or been kidnapped by a bandit, or something. She’d call out the seraphant’s name, and the seraphant would appear, save her, and offer her the chance to come live in the castle with her. And there they were safe as the stars in the sky, that’s what my mother always told me.”
“The seraphant must be Lady Ghost,” Aster began, voicing the thought she’d had when she first read the letter in the barn. “Desperate girls seek her out to save them.”
“That makes sense,” Clementine agreed, fiddling with her bracelet. “But there’re no castles made of theomite in Arketta, of course, so what could that mean?”
“And the ten claws,” Mallow added. “What’re those supposed to represent?”
Violet shrugged. “My mother never explained any of those things, and I was too little to question them. I just loved the idea of living in a glittering castle with a bunch of other lost girls and a kindly ghost. I didn’t know it was Lady Ghost.”
Aster stood up and began to walk around the small cell. Lady Ghost lived somewhere where there was a lot of theomite. That much was clear.
“A mine, maybe?” Mallow said. “Do you think she lives in a mine, like the Scorpions?”
“You could be right!” Clementine said.
“That’s what I’m thinking,” Aster agreed. “But if it is right, how will we know where to find it?” As if we’ll ever have the chance. Aster tried to ignore the nagging voice in her ears.
“That must be where the ten claws come in,” Tansy said. “You don’t know any other details, Violet?”
Violet shook her head. “Of course, I was young. Maybe I just don’t remember.”
“Well, we’ll figure it out,” Clementine said confidently. No one replied, as if they all wanted to let themselves enjoy the fantasy a little longer.
“Where are you all going to go once you get your favors removed?” Tansy asked.
“I’m building a nice cabin in these north Arkettan woods somewhere,” Mallow said immediately. “The Scab can go straight to hell for all I care. You’re staying with me, right, Tanz? We can have a nice quiet life.”
“So long as I can take up medicine in some way,” Tansy said. “I never realized how much I still have to learn until we left the welcome house.”
“It’s the city for me,” Clementine said. “A place like Northrock, with that many people … I could just … disappear.” She shifted uncomfortably. “And I’d bring Zee with me, of course.”
Aster said nothing. The idea of Clementine wanting to bind her life to Zee’s would have upset her beyond words once, but now she saw him as her own brother. She would want him to be there for Clementine.
“What about you, Aster?” Tansy asked.
“I’d go with Clem,” Aster said quietly. A dull sense of loneliness had crept into her chest. Mallow had Tansy, and Clementine had Zee … back at Annagold’s Falls, she had told Violet that she couldn’t imagine herself getting that close to anyone, and that was still true. But she hoped it would not be true forever, if they got out of here. The welcome house had already taken so much from her.
But she would always have family in Clem, at least. And, perhaps …
“I might—I might try to join up with the Scorpions,” Aster said, thinking about what her sister had said—that it wasn’t too late for her to live her own life. “They could do a lot of good for welcome house recruits, and rip them if they think we’re not worth the help. I’ll teach those fools otherwise. Someone needs to look out for girls like us.”
“Like the seraphant in the story?” Violet asked, raising an eyebrow.
Aster laughed self-consciously. “Maybe. I mean, we did help Adeline. Maybe she’ll have a better shot at a happy life now. I certainly hope so, at least.” Aster’s neck burned, and she glanced back at Violet, eager to get the attention off herself. “What about you, Violet? Your favor’s gone—what’s the first thing you’re doing?”
Violet looked at Aster levelly. And to her surprise, Violet smiled.
“As long as you all will have me, I’ll be happy just to stick with you.”
* * *
The raveners returned that night. Aster’s stomach growled at the scent of the food the houseboy had brought this time—baked sweet potatoes swimming in butter.
“Well, ladies, what’ll it be?” the younger ravener taunted. “Have you come to your senses?” The older of the two raveners never said so much as a word, but somehow he frightened Aster even more. His were the eyes of the dead.
“We’re not hungry,” Aster said flatly.
“Are you ready to confess to your crimes?” the older one asked, his voice as soft as shifting sand.
“That’ll have to be a no as well.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” the young ravener said, sucking his teeth. He snapped his fingers at the houseboy, who jumped skittishly. “Go on and let Mr. McClennon know there’ll be no confession tonight.” He turned back to the girls. “We’ll be here all night if you change your mind. You can end this whenever you want.”
Aster and the others settled onto the cold, hard floor to try to sleep, but every time Aster found herself nodding off, the raveners would give her a prod in the mind, a quick stab of panic. She jolted awake every time, shaking and nauseated. She refused to give them the satisfaction of seeing her upset, but it grew harder and harder to keep her composure as the night wore on. She held back curses and wordless screams, fought the urge to make a rush for the bars of the cage, determined to remain brave for the others.
Worst of all, without sleep, there was no relief from the hunger that clawed at her belly.
By the time morning came and the houseboy returned, Aster had hardly slept—and neither, from the looks of it, had anyone else.
The houseboy kept his eyes lowered, as always, as the raveners asked the girls if they were ready to give up and trade their services for food. There were no sharp replies this time, only hollow, hateful silence.
“Have it your way,” the young ravener said, shrugging. With that, the girls were left alone, like the previous morning. The minute the cellar door shut, the air loosened.
“By the Veil. I feel sick,” Clementine murmured.
“We should try to sleep while they’re gone,” Tansy said. Her hair had fallen out of her braid, and her eyes were bloodshot.
Aster said nothing. She had been hungry like this before. They all had, probably, except for Violet. She knew from experience she could go another day without food if she had to. But with the raveners denying them sleep, too …
“Anyone who wants to eat should eat,
” she said finally. “We’re giving McClennon what he wants if any of us die.”
“We’re also giving him what he wants if we offer ourselves up to those dead-eyed bastards,” Mallow said. “I didn’t come all this way to give in now.”
Aster and Violet exchanged glances. The others had never been with a brag before. Their resistance was understandable. But Aster … she’d already crossed that line to survive, and if there was a chance she could save them now, she knew she’d do it again. Still, the thought made her ill in a way none of the raveners’ magic had managed to. Mallow was right. They had not come all this way for that.
“Anyway, Tansy’s right,” Aster said. “We ought to sleep now. The dead know we won’t get any tonight.”
But even without the raveners tormenting her, Aster struggled. Memories from the welcome house rose to the surface of her mind, buried horrors that the raveners had churned up—and with those memories came all the sorrow and shame Aster kept hidden in the deepest reaches of her heart. It swelled in her chest, threatening to suffocate her, doubling the fear the raveners had already forced on her.
She drifted in and out of consciousness, her dreams as frightening as reality.
It seemed an eternity before the raveners returned with supper. By then Aster had no appetite, even as the smell of food made her stomach wrench. There was a wild animal inside her gut, slowly devouring her.
“Confess,” the younger ravener ordered, all humor gone now. Perhaps McClennon had put pressure on him to get results.
But the girls remained silent.
They refused the food as well, and the houseboy left it on the ground just outside their reach. The food from the day before had begun to turn, and flies swarmed to it, their whining driving Aster mad. The pitcher of water had been refilled, but quenching their thirst only made Aster’s hunger that much sharper.
That night the raveners toyed with them once again—but this time, they gave them visions. This was the older ravener’s specialty, apparently, a rare gift. He sent brown-black roaches long as a finger crawling up Aster’s legs, gave her festering wounds gleaming with maggots, sliced along the veins in her arms and made her watch the blood run free.
Aster screamed. All of them screamed. She knew none of it was real, but she felt the skittering of the roaches’ legs, smelled the rot of her own flesh, swam with dizziness as if her lifeblood were truly draining free. The young ravener grinned to see they’d finally broken through her guard, but the older ravener never said a word, never moved, sat still as stone as he tortured them.
Morning came.
“Confess,” the younger ravener ordered.
Aster shook her head. She barely had the strength to move at all. Last night’s ravening had been even worse than the torture that she, like all girls, had been subjected to in order to break her spirit when she first arrived at the welcome house.
He jerked his chin towards the houseboy, eyes to the ground as he held a steaming platter of eggs and biscuits. “Eat,” he ordered again.
Aster looked to the others. Tansy sobbed quietly. Mallow had the stunned look of a rabbit in the shadow of a hawk. Clementine’s eyes were closed as she hugged her knees to her chest. Violet’s expression was one of grim concentration. But they all shook their heads as Aster met their eyes.
He curled his lip. He racked them all with sorrow as his parting word, then turned to leave with the others.
“What did he make you see?” Aster asked.
“Snakes,” Clementine said immediately. When she opened her eyes, they glistened with tears. “Rattletails. I could feel the poison in my veins. How did he know? Can he … can they read our minds?”
“No, they just have a good instinct for what frightens us,” Violet murmured.
“My brother was dead,” Mallow said. Her voice was listless. “He looked like he’d been beaten to death. His face—” She turned to Violet. “It wasn’t real, was it? Do they know something I don’t? About Koda—”
“No, none of it’s real,” Aster said quickly. “Like Violet said, they just know how to mess with us.”
“Hell if I’m going to be able to sleep after that,” Mallow said.
But they tried. When evening fell and the raveners returned, Aster reminded the others that they would need their strength for the night ahead, nearly begging them to let her at least offer herself up in return for a meal. But they were resolute.
“I promise we’ll make it out of this,” Aster said to them as the houseboy left. “I promise. Stay strong.”
“You don’t even believe your own words,” the young ravener sneered.
She glared at him, steeling herself.
But in her heart, she knew he was right.
* * *
Three more nights and days passed without food or proper sleep. The ravenings grew more gruesome every night. Aster was treated to visions of Clementine rotting away, to the deepest loneliness and the keenest fear, to the sensations of drowning and of burning alive and of being crushed to death. By their sixth day in McClennon’s custody, she was barely conscious. Her hunger had grown so fierce she’d retched. Her tongue felt thick and heavy in her throat. Exhaustion made specters dance in the corners of her vision. She couldn’t tell where the raveners’ work ended and her own suffering began.
They were all in bad shape, but Clementine seemed to be the worst. Aster hated McClennon for doing this to her, and she hated even more that she was so completely helpless. She wiped the vomit away from Clementine’s chin with her own shirtsleeve, wishing there were anything more she could do.
“Aster,” Clem said as the houseboy left with their breakfast, her voice thin with exhaustion, “Aster, it’s no good. I have to tell them.”
“No,” Aster said, though, in truth, she’d been considering turning herself in, too. They couldn’t last much longer. “McClennon won’t let us die. He can’t. Then he never gets the satisfaction of having broken us. And he never gets his answer. He’ll have to stop this eventually.”
“Or he’ll think of something worse,” Violet murmured.
Aster couldn’t even bring herself to be angry. She knew Violet was right. But she could hardly say so.
“We’ll get out of this—” she began.
“I swear to the dead, Aster, if you say that one more time,” Mallow growled, cutting her off. Her lips were cracked, her eyes bloodshot.
But Aster refused to give in. “We will. Clementine, look at me,” she said, because her sister had begun to cry. “Remember what I told you on your Lucky Night? Before all of this? I gave you that rattletail bracelet and told you that you could survive anything. You’ll survive this, too, Clem, I promise. I’ll get you out of here.”
Clementine looked at the bracelet, running her finger along the intricate diamondback pattern. She still seemed to be holding back tears, but then, suddenly, something in her expression flickered. She slowly unhooked the hairpin that held the bracelet together.
A smile spread across her face like wings spreading to take flight.
“All right,” she said, struggling to keep her voice steady. “Which one of you Luckers knows how to pick a lock?”
* * *
Aster carefully tore the hairpin free from the bracelet. It was made of flexible metal, and with a bit of effort, she was able to break it in two—one piece to provide leverage like the turning of a key, and the other to coax the tumblers into place. A brag had once told her how he’d picked the lock to his former lover’s house. Aster remembered details.
But she’d never done it before herself.
“Can you even see what you’re doing?” Clementine asked.
“Well enough,” Aster muttered. She knelt next to the heavy padlock and stuck the makeshift lockpicks in. It was awkward positioning, her head craned so she could see the keyhole. Everyone grew suddenly silent as she worked, listening to the scratch of metal on metal.
Nothing.
Aster took a steadying breath. “Let me try again,” she sa
id, keeping her voice light. “We don’t know which way the key turns. It might need to go the other way.”
She started over, the picks slipping in her sweaty fingers.
“How long until the raveners come back?” Violet asked tensely.
It was impossible to tell what time it was. They might walk in any minute. And even if they didn’t, Aster still had no idea how they would escape the estate without being caught.
One thing at a time.
“I think it’s starting to give,” Aster said suddenly, excitement rushing through her blood.
The lock clicked, fell free.
“Hell yes. Hell yes,” Mallow said.
Aster turned and grinned at the others. “By the Veil, we did it—”
The cellar doors swung open, letting in a cascade of fading sunlight.
Heart in her throat, Aster hurried to put the lock back, her hands shaking. She finished. Looked up.
And realized it was too late.
The houseboy.
He held a pitcher of water and was staring at her with his wide brown eyes. Aster tensed, meeting his stare. If he turned to run back to McClennon and rat on them, there was no way they’d be able to pick the lock again in time to stop him.
She wet her lips, holding her hands up.
“You have to hurry,” the boy said. His voice was clear and firm. “McClennon’s men just left the property. They think they found the rangeman south of here. They don’t know when they’ll be back.”
Clementine made a desperate sound. Aster struggled to understand.
“You’re saying the raveners are gone?” she asked, still tense.
“I’ll leave the cellar doors unlocked,” he answered. He slid the pitcher of water through the bars and left before they had time to question him further. The doors slammed shut.
Aster looked at the others and saw her own shock written across their faces.
The Good Luck Girls Page 29