Page 8

CHAPTER 8

Anatomy

T he stove in Naruka’s kitchen was just a vague wisp of applewood by the time I returned.

I thought I’d put Willow’s death behind me when I moved here. After months of crying myself to sleep, waking up to remember she wasn’t there, and listening to recordings of her playing the piano, I had finally accepted it. Accepted what the doctors had tried to explain—that a sudden aneurysm could kill without warning. Accepted that I had no control over it, and nothing could have prevented what happened. Accepted that the only place she was still alive was in this hollow ache below my heart.

And now?

I’d never know if her death was due to an unexplainable aneurysm or if it was because of the Gate. James didn’t really know either—he admitted as much—and Kazie assumed everything was about Ruhaven. But this was Willow’s life, and this was all I had left of her.

Shaking, I gripped the edge of the counter, concrete digging into my fingers, and stared out the window at that jagged cliff where James had explained, so hopefully, how I was a Ruhaven. But I wasn’t, couldn’t be. Not me, the electrician, but Willow, the prodigy. Willow who might have died because she was the Ruhaven the Ledger had wanted.

I circled the kitchen until my left knee ached, then switched directions.

If there was a disease from the Gate, had she been born with it? Were there any signs, symptoms? Your soul isn’t yours, but a woman’s from centuries ago, and here’s something she picked up along the way?

Willow had never mentioned any health problems before she died. There’d been no trips to the doctor, no sudden headaches, no flu or fever. She’d been the pride and joy of L’Ardoise, about to join the national orchestra and get out of the town she’d never loved.

But what about Bryn? Was there some symptom he hadn’t noticed? And what did it matter if Willow died because of a natural aneurysm here, or one caused by the Gate?

I shook my head. It did matter—of course it did—and so far, only Bryn might know the truth.

If he had been infected and survived, wouldn’t he have wanted to know why? Wouldn’t he have spent every waking moment trying to find those answers for himself and James? Instead, James had exiled him, and he’d had no answers to…

I stopped pacing to look up, seeing through the crown molding and stucco ceiling, the glass beads Kazie had strung across the kitchen.

The books .

Rows and rows of textbooks and journals had bowed the shelves in Bryn’s room to near collapse. Was that why James had asked what I thought of the room? Because he’d expected me to recognize the obvious evidence of Bryn’s old research?

Blood racing, I hurried out the kitchen and up the stairs. Portraits of Ruhavens long dead, or maybe those who’d left, glared at me under the rays of candlelight as I barreled down the hallway and shoved open the door to Bryn’s room.

Curtains billowed in purple hues around the bed, then drooped to stillness. When I flicked on the lamp, gold chased away the violet night.

My breath came in hard, desperate pants, filling the silence. Only Naruka could be this quiet. No crickets, no howling coyotes, no noisy bin tossed over by raccoons. Utter, deafening silence—except for the clocks, and those I barely noticed anymore.

I took one breath. Two. Then stepped to the bookcase and read each title— carefully , this time.

James must have wondered how I could stand here, oblivious to someone’s obvious obsession with what had killed my own sister.

I yanked the first book out. Anatomy of the Brain .

Grabbed another. Neurology of Brain Hemorrhages .

Infections of the Spine.

The Central Nervous System.

And on and on it went, until a pile of fifteen books lay scattered at my feet.

Was it possible? Some reason for her death? Not a freak aneurysm, but something inherited because of who she was?

Or had been.

I grabbed for the Polaroids James had stowed in the desk, flipping through until I found Bryn. I didn’t know why I needed to see it, but my fingers trembled on the photo, gripping it like it was my last lifeline to Willow. Some tenuous connection between this man and a disease that might have infected my twin.

Impossible. Stupid. But…

Headlights flashed through the window, briefly illuminating Bryn’s startling cobalt eyes. My hallucination had gotten that much right.

It should have been Willow who’d survived. Willow, who’d never made a mistake in her life, who’d been impossibly gifted at the piano from the moment she was born, who’d deserved a chance to see who she’d have become. It should have been Willow who lived long enough for James to find and bring her here, so she could look at the book with her birth written in it.

I owed her answers.

When I heard the door downstairs creak open, I stuffed the photo back with the rest of them. But I left the books, stepping over their ominous covers like they were proof of something , and hustled downstairs.

“What the bleeding hell happened out there?” James yelled as I entered the kitchen. He wrung his soaked flat cap in the sink before slapping it on the coat hook. “Ye left, fair enough, then next I see yerself and Kaz in a near brawl right in the middle of Capolinn! Yer doing nothing to help Naruka keep a low profile when yer feckin’ screaming yer heads off and—-”

“I want to talk to him,” I interrupted, tugging out the table’s bench.

“ Who ?” James asked, aghast. “For everyone in bleedin’ Capolinn has surely heard ye tarnish the reputation of what was previously this hotel .”

As annoyed as I’d ever seen him, he stomped to the woodstove, tossed four logs into it before he seemed to remember he’d run out of matches this morning.

At the table, I reached for a glass and poured the whiskey, needing it for my next admission. “Bryn,” I said, “I need to talk to Bryn.”

James rose, dusting soot off his knees. “Bryn? What the hell do ye—” He goggled at me. Wait, no—not me , the bottle on the table. “Is that me thirty-year-aged whiskey?”

I smacked my lips together. “You tell me.”

James spluttered, shuddered, then slumped into the stool across from me. “Well, go on so, give me some. I need it, for I’ll be years explaining away the likes of Ruhaven and all the rest of our baggage ye’ve left in the middle of the road.”

I winced, but filled a glass and pushed it at him. “Kazie said Bryn survived this disease?”

Calmer now, James adjusted his spectacles. “Survived, yes.”

I leaned forward, the sheepskin rug shifting under me. “Then why didn’t he continue researching it? I found the books you must have wanted me to notice, but why did he leave them?”

The rim of James’s glass dug into his bottom lip as he seemed to decide how to answer. “He didn’t want the reminder.”

“Of the disease?”

“Of Ruhaven.” James set the whiskey down without drinking. “Do ye not understand what it’d do to someone to live in that world every day, to have friends, lovers, then to be denied it?” He shook his head. “It’s me own fault he wants no contact anymore. I’m sorry.”

I shook my head automatically. Whatever James’s reasons for exiling Bryn, I knew they were warranted, but I still needed answers.

“I just—I need to know, James. Need to know for certain that what happened to Willow was because of the Gate.” I shuffled the whiskey from hand to hand. “Maybe I’ll call him and see if there were any signs.”

“Ye think I haven’t tried that? He’ll not speak to any of us.”

“And nothing in his notes told you if there were any symptoms?”

“They didn’t, no. He focused only on the memories of those killed. But yer right, ye do need answers, even if he’s not wanting to give them. So I was planning to visit him meself in Norway.”

This was new. “When?”

“After I showed ye Ruhaven, got ye settled.” He opened his hands, folded them again. “But now yer leaving. So I’ve less work than I thought.”

I wouldn’t feel guilty. But goddamn it, I did feel guilty—on so many levels. Still, I couldn’t admit the truth to him, couldn’t tell James how much time he’d wasted. But maybe—maybe I could make it mean something .

I sat back with the whiskey, letting the burn of it smooth all the rough edges of the night. And all the while, the clocks tick-tick-tick ed, louder in the silence.

“Let me come with you,” I said at last.

James frowned. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”

“What? Why not?”

“Do ye even know where Oslo is?”

“No, but I’m guessing I don’t have to fly the plane.” Why was James resisting? Didn’t he and Kazie want me to help them find answers? “What’s this really about?”

“Ye were wantin’ to leave, swearin’ off Ruhaven, and now ye want to see Bryn?”

I crossed my arms. I could play hardball. Had until I was ten. “You shouldn’t have told me if you didn’t want me to get answers. Why did you?” I leaned forward, drilling my finger into the table. “Why did you?” I repeated when I sensed the guilt, the hesitancy, both convincing me I needed to see Bryn, to find out what James was hiding. “When was Bryn infected?”

James stared out the window, the moonlight reflecting off his glasses and the whiskey stain on his lips. Was he staring up at Ruhaven? Imagining he was there?

“December last year.”

Yet he’d been exiled from Naruka two years ago. Why would he have been researching the disease so extensively before he was infected? A passing interest? But the research had been stored in his bookcase, not the library, as if it’d been the first thing he wanted to see when he woke.

“Was Bryn close to someone who was infected?”

A shadow passed behind James’s eyes. “He didn’t know anyone.”

Was that an answer, or a subtle evasion? “Then why was he researching—”

“Roe,” James cut me off, turning away from the window. “Bryn’s a private person, and I don’t have all the answers ye need because of it. But I don’t know that you seeing him is the right way to get them. Let me go for ye.”

If Bryn could tell me the truth behind Willow’s death, then nothing would stop me from going to Oslo. “You owe me, James.”

His eyes lit. “Owe you , do I?”

“You kidnapped me.”

He lifted the whiskey again. “ Wee bit of a stretch.”

“Sending Tye?”

“Duty?” His lips twitched.

“I really don’t like you,” I said, wishing it was the truth.

James let out a long, weary sigh. “Aye, but ye’ll like Oslo.”