can borrow linens.
When she scrunches her forehead, I say, “You’ll get them back in two weeks. Either I’ll be dead or I’ll be gone.”
Shaking her head, she sighs. “Just follow me.”
12
Cadence
“For someone so convinced about making their own luck, you’re awfully pessimistic,” I tell Slate as I lead him through the kitchen.
“Just being realistic.”
“We have fifteen days ahead of us.”
“Two weeks to find four magical leaves that might curse me to death before we even reunite them. Realistically speaking, I’d have better odds jumping off a plane with a faulty parachute and surviving than accomplishing this mission with the three of you.”
“Just because we aren’t deceitful thieves doesn’t mean we’re useless.”
He gives me the side-eye.
“You’re not going to die in fifteen days, Slate.” Hopefully, though, he is going to leave.
His head keeps swiveling from side to side as he takes in my house, probably mapping it out for a future heist. His gaze lingers on the light fixture over the dining room table, a sculptural piece made of bronze maple leaves interspersed with glass ones.
“Maman cast the bronze leaves. She was a sculptor. She also made that little tree on the living room table.”
Slate glides his attention back to me. “She had a lot of talent.”
I nod.
“Did you inherit it?”
“Ha. No. I’m a paint-by-number sort of girl.” As I stare at her work of art, I can’t help but ask the dreaded question, the one I’m sure Papa would never answer. At least, not truthfully. “Did she suffer a lot in the end?”
Slate is quiet for so long I start to suspect the worst. “No. The Bloodstone leaked such a high dose of poison into her veins, she went quickly.”
My heart squeezes. “I can’t even imagine how hard that whole period must’ve been for my father. It must kill him to see the ring out of hiding.”
Slate’s lips contort as though he’s biting back words.
I sigh. “Just say what you’re thinking.”
“He was going to dig it out himself, so it must not be that difficult.”
“Why do you think the worst of him?”
He stares down at me hard, as though he’s seeing my father instead of me. “Why don’t you ask him?”
I splay a hand on my waist, crimping the thick fabric. “I’m asking you.”
“I’d rather you hear it from him.”
Why is Slate suddenly being so tight-lipped?
“So. Towels? Sheets? 6-in-1 soap?”
Sensing I’d have an easier time shucking an oyster with my nails than getting Slate to open up about Papa, I whirl around and start toward the stairs that lead to our basement laundry room. “6-in-1?”
“You know, the manly sort—for hair, body, face, teeth, eyes, ears.”
I snort. “You’re a very strange boy, Slate.”
Again, he’s quiet. I check over my shoulder to make sure he didn’t take it the wrong way. Since when do I care how he takes it, though? He desecrated my mother’s grave. I shouldn’t care at all about how he takes anything. I miss a step and stumble. I fling my hands out to catch myself, but Slate is quicker. He cinches my bicep and steadies me.
My breathing quickens. “Thank you.”
I notice it was the hand with the ring that caught me. His finger is so bloated and purple, I’m surprised he can still bend it.
“Did the ring do that?”
A tiny groove appears between his black eyebrows. “Give me fast reflexes? No. I learned those to stay alive.”
Stay alive? Where did Slate live that he needed to develop survival skills? And how did he end up out of Brume? I decide to file this question for later. Or for Papa. Since he found Slate, he must know where Roland’s heir has been all these years.
“I meant, the bruise on your finger.”
“Oh.” He makes a fist that must hurt, because his smooth forehead crimps beneath the mess of corkscrew curls. “Trying to get it off did that.”
“Must be weird. Not being able to remove it.”
“You have no idea.”
I turn and stare at my feet so I don’t trip again. Next to the laundry room, there’s a medicine cabinet where we store a pharmacy’s worth of ointments, bandages, and pills. Although Papa hasn’t had an infection in some years, we’re ready for one. We’re ready for anything. I slide my finger down the line of pill packets until I find a painkiller that isn’t sold over the counter. I pick it up and hand it to Slate.
“Take one in the morning and one at night. It’ll help with the pain.”
He studies the packet, then my face, as though surprised I’m