“You’re not going to kill your kin, are you, Letitia?” Her eyebrows went up, daring me. “You do that, and you’re the bad guy. I’m helpless. It’s not even a fair fight. I don’t think you have it in you.”
I stepped close, one hand over my belly. “You don’t fight fair, so I guess this is fair enough.” I’d finally gotten over the lisp of newly grown fangs, and I leaned close, then closer, until my dark-blue eyes were inches from hers. “I’ll never rest safe knowing you exist in the world, not when I have something to protect.”
At the tea cart, my fingers roved over the knives and scalpels Merissa had left behind. Crim crossed his arms and smirked, curious to see what I would do.
“You’ll be a murderer,” Hepzibah hissed. “You’ll have to live with yourself.”
“I already am a murderer. And it’s better than living with you.”
Quick as a blink, I grabbed her clockwork lemur’s long tail and swung the heavy creature with all my strength, bashing her in the face with the bulk of its body. After Merissa, I had to look to be sure. All that was left was pulp and bone shards, and even the beast inside me wanted none of it.
I couldn’t help remembering the day long ago when I told her she should look out for flying monkeys. And yeah, a lemur was not a monkey. But it was close enough.
“Ding dong, the witch is dead,” I said.
24
As Hepzibah had predicted, my grandmother was not pleased.
“You can’t just go around killing your annoying relatives,” she said, peeking under the blanket we’d thrown over the tangled flesh and metal. “And you took out the clockwork, too, which means who has to clean up this mess? We do.”
I spun on her, teeth bared. “You don’t get to tell me what to do anymore. This is your fault. If you’d stayed in the damn caravan, none of this would’ve happened. Crim wouldn’t have been poisoned, no one would’ve been stabbed or cut. He’s going to have a goddamn scar for the rest of his life.”
Criminy traced a finger down the slice mark from his eyebrow to his cheek. “I rather like it,” he said, with his usual smirk. “It’s quite rakish.” At least the tip of his nose and ear had grown back.
“Well, I don’t like my scar. And I’m not too pleased that, in addition to being a lying, life-sucking witch, she set us up with a necromancer who wanted to carve my husband up into tidbits.”
“That was a bit much, I’ll admit.”
I stepped closer, and to her credit, my young and beautiful grandmother didn’t step backward.
“And we’re only here because of you,” I said. “You led us right to her. Based on a glance! You didn’t even ask me first, didn’t even discuss it. You didn’t trust me to do the right thing. I brought you here because I love you and wanted you to have a better life, and you basically betrayed me by almost letting her kill my husband and my unborn child.”
My last word echoed in the silence, and Torno hummed his disapproval from Ruby’s side.
But she was anything but cowed by my outburst. Drawing herself up, she squared her shoulders defiantly. “And you’re fine, Tish. I knew it would end up fine. I wouldn’t have set it into motion if I hadn’t been sure that you’d be better off in the end than you were in the beginning. Look at you! Beautiful and fierce and pregnant, beside a man who loves you. Isn’t this what you’ve always wanted?” She caressed my cheek, and I whipped away from her. “Do you know how hard it was, watching you with Jeff, knowing that he was chipping away at who you were, making you less, just like your daddy did to your mama and just like your grandfather did to me? All I could ever do was be there to catch you when you fell. So yes, when I saw what your future could be, I went for it, sugar. Without asking permission. And I’d do it again. Because you needed this. As much as I don’t feel like your grandmother anymore, this makes us even. I helped you get what you needed. And now I need to be here, where I belong. Taking Hepzibah’s place.”
“Taking what, now?” My jaw dropped as she moved around the space, touching books and flicking dust off a crystal ball.
“She didn’t tell you about the potion, did she? The one she gave to you, the one you gave to me to bring me here. It had her blud in it, among other things. It was meant to draw her successor, just like Criminy’s ruby necklace drew you. Hepzibah needed someone to tend to her magics, to keep her scores, to learn what she knows. Surprise, surprise—it didn’t do what she said it would. She thought it would be you or Criminy, but it turns out it was me.” She grinned and held her hands up, murmuring a word in Sanguine. The chandelier above us lit in one furious burst, throwing the room into sparkling gold light like a disco ball. “This was all meant for me.”