With Bodie still nestled in her arms, Mouse walked Nate home on the remains of their chalk drawings. Nate’s mother met them on the front steps.
“Where have you been?” Her face wore a blend of relief and anger.
“I went to see Em,” he said.
“I told you I—”
But Nate wasn’t finished. He lifted his chin defiantly. “Because she’s not odd like you said. She’s just a girl. And I like her.”
“I’m sorry, Dr. Nicholas, but—”
“Just Em. Please,” Mouse said. She was trying to smile but the words had sounded sharp and her whole body was shaking. She didn’t want to have a conversation—she wanted to be done and gone. “Listen, I have to leave. My . . . aunt is not doing well, and we’ve decided to take her to see some specialists in the . . . in New England. I’m going to be gone for a while, and I was wondering if you guys would mind—” Mouse’s throat tightened. It had been a long time since she’d had anyone to say good-bye to. “Would you keep Bodie for me?”
The cat turned at the sound of his name, cocking his head at her in question, but Mouse couldn’t look at him.
“Oh, Mom.” Nate was breathless with hope.
Mouse tried to smile again but her face was too tight.
“I know it’s a burden with the new baby and all, but Bodie’s pretty easy—just a bit of food and . . . company every now and then. He likes to come and go, you know.” Mouse felt the tears burning her eyes.
“Sure, Dr. Nicholas. I mean, Em. We can take care of him for you. But Nate, it’s just while she’s away.” Nate’s mother rubbed her hand along the cat’s back. “He looks like the cat I had when I was a girl,” she added, smiling down at Nate.
Swallowing hard against the knots in her throat, Mouse cuddled Bodie up to her face, rubbing her nose against his cheek. “Be good, Bodie.” And then she lowered him into Nate’s arms, leaning close.
“I love you, too,” she whispered.
The house was too quiet when she closed the door behind her. The silence pressed on her like something tangible, but she would not break under it. She walked back to the laundry room and knelt down beside the man she had killed.
He was the end of everything for Mouse. The end of her time in Nashville. The end of her plans to leave the house to Solomon—there was no time to arrange that now. He was the end of her oath to never kill again. The end of seven hundred years of hoping that she could be something besides her father’s daughter.
But Mouse could not let guilt or sorrow pin her down. Not yet. Not until she knew no others would die because of her. She had killed this puppet of her father’s, but he would surely send others if he thought Mouse was still there. She needed to get her father’s attention—not a flicker this time, but a full flare—and then she would run far away from Nashville. But she couldn’t do that as Dr. Emma Nicholas.
Mouse sat on the floor of her bedroom, which was scattered with birth certificates and passports. It was a familiar ritual to her—deciding who to be next. In the past decades, technology had made becoming someone new both easier and more challenging. Picture IDs, global databases, and social networks kept track of people better, but Photoshop and hackers and a criminal subculture fed a thriving black market of artificial lives. For the right money, you could be anyone at any time and nobody asked any questions.
This time was different though. Mouse didn’t really care who she would be next because it didn’t matter. The dead man in her laundry room put an end to any future she might have. She couldn’t pretend anymore. No ritual, no discipline, no oath could keep her from being what she was—a murderer, a monster. Just like her father. It was in her blood, and anything else was a lie or false hope. Mouse was done with hope.
She snatched an identity at random from the pile around her and tossed the paperwork into the canvas bag she’d already filled with the few items she’d need for the journey. Then she headed down the stairs.
The house reeked of paint thinner. The carpet runner on the stairs squelched under her feet as Mouse went down to the kitchen; there would be nothing left of Emma Nicholas after tonight.
She put her canvas bag on the counter beside a tidy row of butcher knife, salt jar, and candle lighter. The last she picked up and took with her, her hands shaking as she lowered the flame to the bottom step and watched it run up the stairs like she’d seen Bodie do so many times.
As the fire spread above her, Mouse closed her eyes and called to the power inside her—gently, like gathering up a baby without fully waking it. She needed enough to get her father’s attention for only a moment, just a single, bright flash. And yet she felt like she was throwing open the doors to an oncoming storm as she pulled down the barriers in her mind and called out to her father.
His answer came in an instant, as if he’d been waiting for her: Finders keepers, you know.
His tone was playful, but Mouse arched backward in pain; the sound of his voice in her head felt like someone shoving an ice pick in her brain. Her hair fell into her eyes as she bowed her head, fighting the fear and anger that would feed the power. She wrapped her hand around the butcher knife and stepped back into the kitchen.
Aren’t you going to say hello? His voice trilled with victory.
She could feel him needling his way further into her mind, searching for some sign to tell him exactly where she was, but she had learned at Podlažice that filling her mind with something irrelevant like old texts worked like a thick fog and kept her father from seeing clearly. It could buy her some time.
“Adam and Eve had two sons,” she whispered, quoting the Antiquities. “Cain, which means a possession, and Abel, which signifies sorrow.” Josephus’s words felt like cotton in her mouth. She grabbed a handful of salt and let it drop grain by grain, pinging on the kitchen floor. “They also had daughters.”
Answer me now!
Her knees nearly buckled with the force of his command. It was the same power she had used on Jack Gray, though her father’s was far more intense. But he had tried to force his will on her before. He had failed.
When Mouse spoke now, it was all her own. “Too scared to come get me by yourself?” she taunted.
Too clever, I’d say. I just wanted to see what cards you’d play before I put myself in the game.
“Well, your man is dead.”
“I’ve killed before.”
Yes, but not murder.
“This was self-defense.”
The laughter in her mind was like someone slamming her head against a wall. He had orders not to hurt you.
“He killed those other girls.”
They were not you. And they served a purpose. He paused. You should be proud that I remembered what we talked about at Podlažice—see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. I’ve missed those times. I’ve missed you.
The smoke was growing thicker as it crawled down the stairs. Someone would see it soon. Mouse slid the butcher’s blade across her palm, watching the flap of skin bulge and ooze red before she balled her hand into a fist and forced the blood to pulse and then pool.
“I wanted to let you know that I’m leaving. There’s nothing here now. Not for you. Not for me.”
Tell me where you are and I will come get you. I don’t want to hurt you. I just want you with me.
“You’ll see me soon enough.” Mouse looked down at the glistening salt circle she’d made around her. She let drops splatter on the floor as she quartered the circle with a cross made of her blood.
What do you mean?
She could feel him growing more frantic in her mind, searching for an answer. He knew he was running out of time, and so was she. If she waited any longer, he’d be able to pinpoint exactly where she was. She began to mouth the words of the protection spell Father Lucas had taught her when she was a girl and the nightmares had come—living and real.
Something’s different about you. It sounded more like a question.
Mouse’s lips closed around the last word of the spell. She waited. There was nothing but Josephus echoing in her head. Her father was gone again.
The plaster ceiling bubbled and buckled with heat. Mouse thought about standing there and letting it all come down around her, but she knew it was pointless. She’d tried too many times.
But an idea had come to her as she knelt beside the dead man in her laundry room. Obviously her father didn’t want to kill her; he’d had plenty of opportunity at Podlažice. But she was of no real value to him—how could she be? So if she made him mad enough or scared enough, she knew he’d get rid of her—like throwing away a toy when it wasn’t fun anymore.
But not here. Not yet. It had to be somewhere safe and on her own terms.
Embers fell on the couch. Mouse saw the broken angel on the mantel. She meant to leave it to burn with everything else, but as the sirens sounded in the distance, Mouse wove through the falling fire to the mantel, grabbed the little figure, and shoved it in her bag. Then she ran out the back of the house.
By the time the fire trucks pulled up to the drive, Mouse had already disappeared into the darkness of the yard behind her own. As flames licked at the roof of her former house, she folded herself into the cab that she’d had waiting for her at the end of the street.
The driver was looking at the fire, too. “Hope no one was in there. Doesn’t look like there’ll be much to save.”
“No. Nothing,” Mouse answered, but in truth, she knew there were too many clues left, too many secrets to uncover in the ashes. They’d find the bones in the laundry, maybe even be able to identify the man if he’d had any kind of record. They would know he had been killed before the fire. They’d know the fire had been set on purpose. They would know Dr. Emma Nicholas wasn’t in there when it burned. They would want to know where she went. Mouse would not be coming back to Nashville anytime soon.
“Where to?” the driver asked.
“Airport.”
As the taxi eased out into the traffic flow, Mouse searched for something else to fill her mind, to rebuild the walls she had dismantled to let her father in. She selected her cornerstone carefully. It came from The Book of Enoch, where she had learned about the angels who came to earth and bore children with the daughters of men. She remembered well how God dealt with them as he gave his commands to the archangels: “Destroy the children of the Watchers from amongst men: send them one against the other that they may destroy each other in battle: for length of days shall they not have.”
It was Mouse’s last hope.