Figured. William snuck around like a fox. She’d seen very little of him. First, Murid took him off, then Richard and Cerise rode out and climbed a pine, to get a better look at Sene. At dinner William ended up in a corner, with Gaston next to him. She barely recognized the boy with his hair shorn off. What the hell was Urow thinking? Gaston was family. What was done was done, but it still felt rotten.
Cerise stopped. Aunt Murid stopped, too. Cerise read hesitation in the older woman’s posture and tensed. What now?
“Your uncle Hugh is a good man,” Aunt Murid said softly.
Well, that came out of nowhere. Murid didn’t speak of her younger brother, especially since he’d left for the Broken about twelve years back. He’d visit at the house every few years for a week or two and then leave again. When Cerise had gone to get the documents from him, he looked pretty much the same as she remembered him: fit, tall, muscular. His hair was an odd salt-and-pepper shade, but aside from that, he was pretty much a male version of Aunt Murid. But where Murid was harsh, Uncle Hugh was mild and soft-spoken.
“I only saw him for about an hour,” Cerise admitted. “Just to get the papers for Grandpa’s house. He looked well.”
“I’m sure he did. Come, I’ll walk with you.”
They strolled along the balcony.
“Hugh was difficult as a child,” Murid said. “Some things he just didn’t understand. Our parents and me, we tried our best to take care of him, but his mind just didn’t work the same way. You had to spell things out for him. Obvious things. Hugh always liked dogs and other animals better than people. Said they were simpler.”
Cerise nodded. Where was this going?
“He wasn’t mean,” Murid said. “He was kind. Just odd in his way and very violent.”
“Violent? Uncle Hugh?” Cerise tried to imagine the quiet man flying off the handle and couldn’t.
Aunt Murid nodded. “Sometimes he’d take offense to things, and you wouldn’t even know why. And once he started fighting, he wouldn’t stop. He would kill you, unless someone pulled him off.” She stopped and leaned against the rail. “Hugh wasn’t like other people. He was born different and there was no help for it. It runs in our branch of the family, on my father’s side. I don’t have it and my dad didn’t have it, but our grandfather did.”
So Uncle Hugh was a crazy person and it was hereditary. Cerise leaned on the rail next to Murid. He never seemed crazy, but then she barely knew him. All she had to go on were childhood memories.
Murid swallowed. “I want you to understand: If you were Hugh’s friend, he would take a bullet for you. And when he loved, he loved absolutely, with all his heart.”
The older woman looked at the night-soaked cypresses. “When Hugh was nineteen, he met a girl. Georgina Wallace. She was very pretty, and Hugh was very handsome. So she took him for a ride. They saw stars together for a few weeks. Then Georgina decided that she was all funned out and broke the news: she was engaged to Tom Rook over in Sicktree. Hugh was her last fling before the wedding.”
“Ugh.”
“Hugh didn’t understand. He loved her so much, and he couldn’t imagine that she didn’t love him. I tried to calm him down and to explain that sometimes things didn’t turn out. I tried to explain that Georgina lied, but he couldn’t let it go. To him, she was everything. She accepted him, she made love to him. In his mind, that meant they belonged to each other forever. Hugh thought she was his mate. His soul mate.”
Cold washed over Cerise. “What happened?”
“Hugh took off. The next morning they found Tom Rook and Georgina, and Tom’s brother, Cline. Tom and Georgina were torn to pieces. Cline survived. He’s crippled for life, but he survived. He said a huge gray dog broke into the house and ripped into them.”
“Hugh set one of our mastiffs onto them?”
“No.” Murid closed her eyes. “Not a mastiff. Cline never left the Mire. All he knew were dogs. But I saw the tracks the animal left. It was a wolf. A big gray wolf.”
“There are no wolves in the Mire,” Cerise said.
“There was one that night.”
Cerise frowned. “What do you mean?”
Murid looked at the swamp. “That night Hugh left for the Broken. There are a lot of Louisianans from the Weird here, and in the Weird’s Louisiana they kill people like Hugh. Do you understand, Ceri? They kill his kind. They strangle them at birth or drown them, like rabid mutts.”
The realization hit Cerise like a rock between her eyes. Uncle Hugh was a changeling.
It couldn’t be. Changelings were demonic things from scary slumber party stories. They were mad, murderous, evil things. There was a reason why the Dukedom of Louisiana killed them—they were too dangerous. They turned into wild animals, and they slaughtered and ate people. Everything she’d heard about them made them out to be monsters.
No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t picture Uncle Hugh as a monster. Uncle Hugh was family. He built the wooden tree house where she used to play. He trained the dogs. He churned ice cream. He was calm and strong, and his eyes were kind and she’d never seen him angry.
“Has he killed anyone else since?”
Murid shook her head. “Not unless the family asked him to.”
“Does Father know?”
Murid nodded.
There had to be a reason for this story. Maybe her father made him leave. Maybe Murid saw this as a chance to bring her brother back.
“Changeling or not, he is my uncle. He’s welcome in the house anytime.”
“He knows that. He’s in the Broken by his choice.”
Okay. “Then why did you tell me this?”
“Hugh is a very strong man.” Murid looked into the distance. “Very good with a crossbow and a rifle. His reflexes are better honed, and he barely needs any time to aim at the target. Death doesn’t bother him at all. He accepts it as a fact and moves on.”
William.
Her heart hammered against her ribs. No. Please, no. “Uncle Hugh is very fast, isn’t he?”
Aunt Murid nodded.
“And his eyes glow in the dark?”