Chapter 10: None of Your Business

The drive home felt like moving through thick air.

Liam sat pressed against the back passenger door, eyes half-closed, long lashes drooping like a sick cat lying in the sun by a window. The wrist Shayne had knocked the needle from was already tucked back into his sleeve, the cuff adjusted with annoying carelessness, showing a strip of skin so pale it was almost blue.

Shelley sat between them.

Vera adjusted the rearview mirror for the third time, making sure she could see all three of them in it. She pressed harder on the gas than usual.

"Mama." Liam's voice came out soft, almost lazy. "Can I touch her hair?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"You still have this morning's chemicals on your fingers."

Liam laughed—a low sound with no real humor in it—and slid his hand back into his cardigan pocket.

Shelley looked down at the heavy pen on her lap, thumb tracing the three notches at the end. Press, release, press. To her left, Shayne's arm had gone stiff as a loaded spring. On her right, Liam breathed slow and steady, each breath carrying the faint chemical-sweet smell of his greenhouse.

Three more minutes, she thought. Two. One light, and we're home.

She turned her head. Looked up at Liam. And smiled.

"Third Brother."

His lashes flickered.

"Your sweater's pretty," she said, in the small sweet voice she'd gotten good at using for times like this. "Same color as my bunny pajamas."

The car went quiet for three full seconds.

Liam turned his head. Looked at her for two solid beats, his eyes moving from her eyes to her mouth to the messy yellow ponytail Vera had tied that morning. And the half-smile on his lips—the one that had been there since Blackwood Estate—softened into something real. Something almost human.

Then his eyes drifted shut.

"...Thank you."

Dinner that evening had one extra place setting.

Liam's plate had a single steamed cod fillet, deboned, completely unsalted, with tiny cubes of green apple. He worked through it with a silver fork, stabbing twice between each bite, eating with the careful, studied delicacy of someone in an old nineteenth-century painting.

Shayne had the same saltless cod.

Shelley's was pan-seared to golden perfection, dusted with black pepper and lemon zest, the kitchen smelling of browned butter and capers.

"Mama," Shelley whispered, "why doesn't the brothers' fish have salt?"

"Your brother Liam's heart acts up with too much sodium," Vera said, sliding a spoonful of cream soup toward her. "Your brother Shayne thinks salt is tacky."

"Oh."

Liam looked up at her and smiled. "Little sister. Share a bite with me?"

"Liam."

"Joking." He lowered his eyes. "Mama, why so tense tonight? I wouldn't do anything in front of you."

"In front of me, no." Vera's smile could have melted butter from fifty feet away. "So starting tonight, you'll sleep in the guest room at the far end of the hall. The one that's been collecting dust."

"How far?"

"Seven meters. Three doors between you. Shayne sleeps in the outermost one."

Liam made a lazy sound of acknowledgment and went back to his cod.

Eleven forty-seven p.m.

Shelley's room was at the eastern end of the second floor, a former study that Vera had converted overnight. The walls were pale apricot. Above the bed hung the little swan nightlight she'd picked that afternoon, casting warm yellow circles on the ceiling.

She slept lightly.

The Eastside orphanage had taught her that skill, and being reborn had only added new alertness on top of old habits.

From somewhere down the hallway came the faintest click.

Metal against metal. A probe finding the inside of a lock.

Shelley's eyes opened. She didn't move. Her right hand slipped from under the covers, found the pen under her pillow, and wrapped around it. Her thumb found the trigger, pressed three times, released without engaging.

The doorknob turned, barely, a fraction of an inch.

Locked.

The person outside didn't force it. Instead, they stopped. As if interrupted.

Then: a second set of footsteps, lighter, more controlled.

"Liam." Shayne's voice, flat and clinical.

Shelley slid out of bed, bare feet finding the floorboards, and crept to the door. She pressed her ear to the wood.

"...Little brother. You're awake pretty late. Lurking outside my little sister's door at this hour—should I be worried?"

"You're the one picking the lock to my sister's room," Shayne shot back, word for word. "Should I be worried?"

Liam laughed, that soft, genuine chuckle from the car. "I just wanted to chat. So many people around today, we never got a real chance to talk. A brother checking in on his new little sister, is that so terrible?"

"Have you removed the needle from your sleeve?"

"Yes."

"The other one?"

Liam paused.

"...You're overstepping, little brother."

"You're overstepping." Shayne's voice dropped, carrying the weight of something rehearsed, remembered. "Dad's instructions before he left. Three meters minimum. You're standing half a meter from her door."

"I haven't touched her."

"You want to."

Silence.

"Liam." Shayne took half a step forward. "Mom dragged you back from the estate. Dad pulled Shelley aside before he left and told her to keep her distance from you. You feel like they're treating you like a rabid dog on a leash. So you thought you'd scare her tonight. Make her cry to Mom. Make Mom think this house isn't safe for her, that she'd be better off somewhere else."

The hallway went quiet for a long time.

"...You little shit," Liam said, and for the first time something unguarded crept into his voice—not menace, not performance, but raw surprise. "When did you learn to read minds?"

"I don't need to read minds. I'd think the same thing if I were you. But I wouldn't do it."

"Why not?"

"It wouldn't work." Shayne's voice didn't rise, didn't fall. "She's not here to take your place. If she were, she would've cried at the estate gate this afternoon. She didn't cry. She said your sweater was pretty."

Liam said nothing.

In the darkness of the hallway, Shelley pressed her palm flat against the door and held her breath. She couldn't see his face, but she imagined the calculation running behind those amber eyes, the reassessment, the reluctant recalibration of an enemy who'd expected weakness and found something else entirely.

"Go to bed. Tomorrow I'll go with you to collect your things."

"...What things."

"The tin box behind the third loose brick in the west wing fireplace. The spare spray nozzles for the greenhouse aerosolizer. The three needles sewn into your cardigan lining."

"When the hell did you—"

"While you were washing your hands before dinner."

"..."

"Go to bed."

Footsteps retreated, slow, reluctant, fading toward the far end of the hall.

Shelley stood at her door for a long time before padding back to bed and sliding the pen beneath her pillow. She lay awake, staring at the warm yellow glow on the ceiling, listening to the house settle around her.

Three twelve a.m.

The door at the hallway's end opened without a sound.

Liam emerged in his gray cardigan, barefoot, his dark chestnut hair loose around his shoulders, amber eyes catching the motion-sensor light and burning like an animal's in the dark. He didn't head toward Shelley's room.

He walked straight to Shayne's door and knocked, three sharp raps.

The door opened almost immediately.

Shayne stood in the same black turtleneck from dinner. He hadn't been sleeping either.

"My things." Liam held out his hand, palm up. "Give them back."

"No."

"Little brother."

"Liam." Shayne stepped aside, pulling the door fully open.

On the desk sat a frosted tin box. Four spare spray nozzles. Three hair-thin silver needles. And a small vial of clear liquid with a skull label on the front, arranged with mathematical precision.

"Come in and take them." Shayne's voice held no inflection. "Before you do, answer one question."

"...Ask."

"When you went to her door tonight, was scaring her really all you wanted?"

Liam didn't answer.

He stepped inside, bare feet sinking into the carpet, and stopped at the desk. His amber eyes swept across the row of confiscated items, then lifted to meet his brother's gaze.

"You want the truth, or you want something that sounds nice?"

"Truth."

Liam smiled, not the practiced, poisonous one, but something smaller. Something uncertain.

"The truth is, I don't know."

Shayne watched him without blinking. The desk lamp caught the platinum in his hair and turned it to pale fire, making him look even less human than usual, a statue made of porcelain and ice, waiting for an answer that satisfied whatever standard he measured truth against.

"When I went downstairs, I was going to scare her." Liam's voice had dropped to something almost thoughtful, stripped of its usual venom. "Halfway down the hall, I thought about pressing the hollow of her collarbone, hard enough to keep her in bed tomorrow. When I reached her door..." He stopped.

"What?"

"None of your business."

Liam picked up the tin box, weighed it in his palm, and set it back down.

"Forget it. Keep them." He turned toward the door. "You taking them won't stop me from making more."