“Your mother—”

“Please don’t call her that.”

Rivkah nodded, understanding my horror of the woman. “Emily and this Josef fellow kidnapped your Aunt Ellen and forced you to come to this gathering of theirs. Then they trapped you so that they could attempt to use your power and your connection to the line to complete the Babel spell. You opened yourself up, unwittingly exposing the line, in your attempt to escape. This had been Emily’s goal all along. Your Peter stumbled in and forced you and Emmet apart, breaking the hold Emily had on you two.” She paused. “How did Peter know to come when he did? Oliver and Iris obviously would sense the disturbance of the line, but him?”

“His mother.” I came up with the lie on the spot. I could not let Rivkah know of the connection he shared with the baby. I could not let her learn that Peter was Fae. “Claire has the sight. She told him she sensed I was in trouble. That he should come.”

Rivkah nodded. “Good. You think well on your feet. That’s the story we’ll go with.” So Emmet had shared the entire truth with her, including Peter’s true identity. It felt odd that rather than lying to her as I’d intended, I was colluding with her.

“Why are you doing this? Covering for us? For me?”

“Well, my dear, there has been a lot of talk, foolish and reactionary talk, floating around the families since the line selected you. Some of those speaking most loudly and most foolishly are your own cousins. A few of the Ryans have been campaigning against you. Against your whole immediate family even. They want the Savannah Taylors laid low. I, on the other hand, have always felt a strong affection for your family. At least you keep things interesting.”

“Are they all against us?”

“Oh, no, darling. You have many vocal proponents. Especially that charming Taylor woman, oh, what is her name? Abby.”

“She always calls herself a white-trash Taylor,” I said and smiled in spite of my growing sense of apprehension.

Rivkah laughed. “Well, the ‘white-trash’ Taylors are all strongly in your corner. However, the fact that Emily Taylor faked her own death and aligned herself with the three rebel families may give even your staunchest supporters pause when the story gets around.”

“What can I do?”

“There now,” she said and smiled at me approvingly. “That’s a good girl, because it really all does come down to you now. Your next few steps are critical, if you want to protect your family and yourself. The first thing you will need to do is make a public abjuration of your mother. Express your horror about her actions and the choices she has made.”

“Easy enough.”

“Yes, easy perhaps, but still painful. You can handle it. The next step is going to come harder to you. You need to knuckle down. Submit yourself to the will of the other anchors. Be humble. Do as they tell you. Focus on what they feel you have to learn. They have been carrying your weight for long enough. You must thank them and apologize for having been so headstrong.” She raised her hand to prevent any protest. “And ‘headstrong’ is a generous way of putting it. You did put the line at risk last night.”

I nodded to acknowledge this truth. “For my family,” and by that I also meant the man I would soon marry and the child to whom I would give birth in some months, “I can do this.”

“Good. They will also want you to go away for a while, to a place where you can’t interfere with the line. They’ll want you to train directly under Gudrun.”

“No. That I cannot do.” I couldn’t spend time anywhere near Gudrun, the woman who had worked alongside Maria, the conduit, if not the source, of the darkness that had claimed my mother and taken my sister.

“I am afraid you won’t have a choice. If you resist, they will consider a binding. Nobody wants that, especially the other anchors. Show them that you can be reasonable. Besides, the more willingly you submit to the inevitable, the better the impression you will make. I do think we can put this off until after your wedding, though, as long as you lie low and don’t make any more waves.”

“What about the baby? I won’t do anything that will harm him.”

“Nor would I ask you to. He’ll continue to develop normally while you are with Gudrun. I will personally insist that you are allowed to return home before he’s born. At least temporarily.” She smiled and wagged a finger at me. “This will constitute the first time in the history of the line that an anchor gets maternity leave. You might have to spend a little time separated from each other, but from his perspective, he’ll only be without his mama for a few days.” She lifted her glass and polished it off. “Now, I need to know. Are you on board with this?”

I nodded my head just as Peter knocked on his own door, then opened it. “Perfect timing, Mr. Tierney. Now, where are we going for dinner? If I don’t eat soon, I’m going to challish.”

THIRTY-SIX

Dinner with Rivkah ran late, and Peter reluctantly brought me home rather than to his place after we dropped her off at her hotel. I needed sleep. The baby needed sleep. But before slipping between the sheets, I went to my jewelry box and pulled out the ring Peter had given me. I placed it once and forever on my finger, then went directly to bed, drifting off within moments.

I felt more annoyed than worried when the sound of pecking against my window woke me. I stayed still, thinking that it must have been a bug or an insomniac bird, but another strike against the glass sounded, and then a third. I sat upright in bed. A blissful second or two passed during which I thought I must be asleep and dreaming. Joe stood directly in front of me, and instead of opening out to our side yard, my window framed another room, an enormous stone room ripped from the pages of a fairy tale. Joe held his index finger up before his slyly curled lips, warning me to keep silent, and then tugged savagely on a rope he held in his left hand. I barely had time to register that the rope glowed a sickly green and couldn’t possibly have been composed of ordinary fiber before Adam Cook’s battered face banged on the other side of the glass. The rope Joe held was connected to a noose around the detective’s neck. Adam’s eyes were bruised and largely swollen shut. His lower lip had been busted. His nose was broken and twisted crooked on his face.

Joe pressed the long, thin fingers of his free hand against the window casing and started to slide the window up and open. Even though I still couldn’t help hoping this was a dream, I wanted to yell, to call out to my family, but I couldn’t produce a sound. Joe tugged again on his unwholesome lasso, and then both he and Adam disappeared from sight. A sleek and well-fed rat with a human face, just like the vermin I’d set alight at the bar, crawled up over the window ledge and insinuated its body and pink tail through the opening Joe had made. I shuddered, still unable to produce a sound, as it scurried across the floor and up onto my bed. It crept up closer to me, its beady red eyes glinting up from its miniature human face. “Your mother seeks armistice,” it said. I grabbed a pillow and swatted at the creature. It dove from my bed and returned to the windowsill, where it stopped and turned to face me. “I am to tell you that you will follow me,” it said, “or my brethren and I will eat your ape friend’s flesh.”

I found my voice. “He is not an ape. He’s a man.”