Page 47
“They are not treating them like a terrorist group,” I countered, although that hadn’t stopped Elliot from saying it the last five times I’d corrected him, either. “They’re treating them like a hate group,” I clarified for Helen.
“Well,” she said, after thinking about that for a few moments. “I can’t say I’d disagree, given the circumstances.”
I’d thought it was a bit of a stretch, personally, when Hart had told me.
Hate groups were things like the Klan or the Antiquus Ordo Arcanum, the Virginia cult who had hunted down and killed Nids just for being Nids and had nearly killed Ward and Mason a few years back.
Personally, I also thought that the Magic-Free Movement should have been in that category but—Hart had explained to me with considerable bitterness—because they didn’t actually publicly advocate for harming Arc-humans and Arcanids, they technically didn’t meet the federal definition.
I’d asked him how the Community was any different, and he’d asked me if I was, and I quote, seriously fucking taking their side . I’d responded by asking him who it was the Community was advocating to harm.
And he’d just stared at me.
“I don’t count,” I’d told him.
“I’m not counting you,” he’d retorted. “I’m fucking counting all the people who turned into something that wasn’t a wolf and wasn’t an Arc.”
I hadn’t asked any other questions after that, mostly because I didn’t want to know the answers. But those questions were still there.
What did happen to the people who transformed into something that wasn’t a wolf shifter or an Arc-human? Was Rachael one of those people?
Because I was a little afraid of the answer.
What did it say about me that I couldn’t answer those questions?
Was it because they’d deliberately kept that sort of thing from us, or was it because Noah and I had deliberately hidden our heads in the proverbial sand because life was already shitty enough without knowing the worst?
I hoped that the Community had just exiled those people. That there were only a few, and that they went to live in Staunton or Charlottesville or some other city far away from the Community and Scroope.
But the more I thought about it, the more I wondered.
And dreaded.
“Helen?” I asked.
“Yeah, darlin’?”
“Do you know anyone in the Community who became an elf or a faun or an orc or something?”
She looked at me. “No, darlin’, I don’t.” Her voice was quiet. “But they never did share much about their business with me.”
But at the same time, I knew that Ray had kept away from them.
That people in the Community looked at him with both disgust and fear.
What would they have done if one of their own had become a ghoul?
Ghouls were pretty rare, even among Arcanids, but what were the odds that it had never happened in the Community?
I honestly didn’t know. Genetics played a big role in what people transformed into, as well as whether or not they would transform.
And many of the families in the Community were closely interconnected.
Not direct cousins, exactly, but second or third cousins.
Maybe that was close enough genetics that it made sense for most of the Nids in the Community to be shifters, and there were only so many European predators for us to shift into.
But it was also entirely possible that something more sinister was at play.
Who was I kidding? Of course there was.
Elliot had dragged one of the kitchen chairs out to the barn so that I could sit out there while he and Noah went through everything in the filthy structure, much to the amusement of the goats, who kept trying to reach out to chew on anything that came even remotely near their stall.
It was a sunny day, and while the chickens were happily out scratching in the dirt under the sun, the goats thought we were much more interesting.
Or they were hopeful that we were going to feed them.
Lulu had begged Elliot to go fetch them a chair, as well, and had sat next to me, ostensibly to keep me company, although I knew Lulu really hated getting dirty, so I had the feeling that had a lot more to do with it.
They were pretty funny, though, so I was enjoying the running disparaging commentary.
Elliot had clambered up into the loft and had just poked an arm over the edge, holding out some sort of rusty implement.
“I don’t even know what this is,” he called down.
“It looks like a medieval torture device,” Lulu remarked.
“It looks,” Noah said, looking up at Elliot. “Like a tetanus shot in the making.”
Elliot looked at me. “I don’t want it,” I told him.
“We should start a scrap metal pile,” Lulu said. “You can get decent money for scrap.”
Everybody turned to look at them. They shrugged. “What? You can.”
“Why do you know that?” I asked. Lulu had money. A lot of it. It wasn’t like they needed to know ways of making more of it.
Lulu’s cheeks colored, and they crossed their knees primly under the ruffled skirt of their sundress. “I wasn’t always an accountant,” they mumbled.
“Incoming!” Elliot called, then threw the rusty metal thing into a mostly-empty stall with a loud clatter.
“What were you?” I asked Lulu.
The flush deepened. “I grew up on a pig farm,” they answered softly. “In Iowa.”
I blinked. “Do you want a goat or two?” I asked. “Or some chickens?” I should have thought to ask earlier, even though I was almost certain that neither Noah nor Lulu had any interest whatsoever in animal husbandry.
“Oh, God , no!” Lulu sounded genuinely horrified. “I never want to farm anything that doesn’t flower and smell nice ever again.”
“Don’t give away my goats!” Elliot called from the loft as he rummaged around in the hay again.
“I’m not!” I called back.
I woke up the next morning stiff and sore, my back aching, my knee throbbing, and the steady pound of Elliot’s heart under my ear. I’d spent too many hours sitting awkwardly on a wooden kitchen chair in the barn, knowing I was going to have to do it again today, just in the house.
To quote both Hart and Elliot: Fuck .
Under the creaky floorboard in Rachael’s room, we’d found her diary.
She’d talked about everything Father had done to her—nothing quite so bad as what he’d inflicted on me or Noah, thank God, since Rachael seemed inclined to want to be a wife and mother one day—and all of her hopes for her future.
She’d wanted out.
Desperately.
She knew both our names—mine and Noah’s deadname—and how old we would be.
She dreamed of leaving the Community and going to the big city—Charlottesville or even Richmond—to find out what life was like outside the little enclave where she’d been controlled and diminished.
She wanted to find out what she was capable of.
She’d never gotten the chance.
When I read it, sitting on the edge of the bed that had been Noah’s, I was dimly aware of the tears slipping down my cheeks.
Noah had taken it from me, read it, and then cuddled up next to me, his arms tight around my waist. I couldn’t count the number of times we’d sat like that in this very room, me holding him and trying to shield him against the world.
This time, I wasn’t sure who was shielding whom. Not that it particularly mattered, but I was at least grateful that we’d at least had each other.
Without Noah, I don’t know that I’d have made it through childhood. Or that Noah would have made it without me.
I’d hoped that Rachael had not suffered as much as we had. In the ways that we had. And while it arguably hadn’t been as bad for her, it was pretty clear that she’d hated this house and this family as much as Noah and I ever had.
As we sat there, holding each other, Elliot and Lulu downstairs packing up the dregs of our childhood, I couldn’t help but wish Rachael had been born sooner—that we’d been able to save her the way we’d saved ourselves.
I hoped that wherever she was now, she’d get some peace.
But I know better than most that the dead don’t always lie easy.
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