and sang, “Liar-liar-liar.”
“Then what happened?”
“Then I said that pointing was bad, because it lets your enemy know where you’re looking.”
The lessons of Karhari had stuck. No matter how long Helen spent away from it, the wasteland had soaked into her soul and there wasn’t anything Maud could do about it.
“And he said I wasn’t good enough to be his enemy. And I said, ‘I’ll punch you so hard, you’ll swallow your teeth, worm.’”
Maud hid a groan. “Where did you hear that?”
“Lord Arland.”
Oh goodie. “Then what happened?”
“Then the scary old knight came and told me that if I challenged the boy, there would be ripper cushions.”
“Repercussions.”
“Yes. So I asked if the boy would get repercushions if he fought me, and the knight said yes, and I said I was okay with it.”
Maud rubbed the bridge of her nose.
“And then the knight asked the boy if he wanted help and the boy said he didn’t, and the knight said ‘proceed’, and then the boy punched me, and I got his arm. With my legs.” Helen rolled on the floor and locked her legs together. “I said, say surrender, and he didn’t say anything, he just yelled, so I broke it. If he didn’t want me to break it, he should’ve said surrender.”
Maud rubbed her face some more.
Helen looked at her from the floor, her big green eyes huge on her face. “He started it.”
And she finished it.
“You weren’t wrong,” Maud said. “But you weren’t wise.”
Helen looked at the floor.
“You knew you weren’t a liar.”
“Yes.”
“So why did it matter what the vampire boy said?”
“I don’t know,” Helen mumbled.
Maud crouched by her. “You don’t always meet enemies in battle. Sometimes you meet them during peace. They might even pretend to be your friends. Some of them will try to provoke you so they can see what you can do. You have to learn to wait and watch them until you figure out their weakness. The boy thought you were weak. If you let him keep thinking you were weak, you could’ve used it later. Remember what I told you about surprise?”
“It wins battles,” Helen said.
“Now the boy knows you’re strong,” Maud said. “It wasn’t wrong to show your strength. But in the future, you have to think carefully and decide if you want people to know your true strength or not.”
“Okay,” Helen said quietly.
“Come on.” Maud offered her daughter her hand. Helen grasped her fingers and got up. They resumed their walk down the hallway.
“Mama?”
“Yes?”
“Are vampires our enemies?”
That was to be determined. “That’s what we are trying to figure out.”
“When are we going to go live with Aunt Dina again?”
An excellent question. What am I doing here anyway?
She’d had it up to her throat with all of the vampire backstabbing the first time. She’d promised herself she was done the moment they landed on Karhari and she’d repeated this promise over and over when she lay on the hilltop, breathing in Karhari dust, watching the blood sword flash and seeing Melizard’s head fall to the ground; when she tracked his killers; when she bargained for shelter and water, knowing that if she failed, Helen would die. It became her mantra. Never again. Yet here she was.
Arland had abandoned her the first chance he got.
What did you expect? Did you expect he would come and take you by the hand and lead you to a seat at the host table?
Yes. The answer was yes. Maud didn’t expect it, but she wanted it.
Stupid.
It was stupid to hope for something that wouldn’t happen. It was stupid to come here.
“Mama?” Helen asked.
They could just go home right now. Go back to Dina. Helen would never be able to join a human school or play with human children, because there was no way to hide the fangs, but all three of them, Klaus, Maud, and Dina, had been homeschooled in the inn, and none of them turned out badly.
They could just go home, where nobody would belittle them or punch them in the face. Home to the familiar weird of her childhood, before Melizard. Before Karhari.
But they had come all this way. She had dragged Helen here, because Arland had offered hope for something deeper than Maud had ever hoped for. A part of her rebelled at giving up without a fight. But was this even a fight worth fighting?
I’ll do one more day. One more day. If it’s all shit at the end of tomorrow, then I’m done.
“We have some things to do here first.”
“I liked it at