Out of the house, didn’t bother to lock the door—after all, there was no electricity to power the alarm, and besides, he didn’t really care about anything under the roof.
Hell, it’d be a relief if somebody broke in and lit the place on fire. Not that that was likely. He lived in the sticks; his nearest neighbor was a quarter of a mile away and probably took a donkey in to work.
Axe knew before he even dematerialized to the interview location that the house—or mansion or castle or whatever—was going to be huge. Even poor kids raised outside of the human world knew where the big estates were, and the zip code the place was in?
Yeah … okay, he thought as he re-formed.
Wow.
Axe shook his head at the stone structure in front of him. The thing had to be at least three stories high, and the front face of the slate roof alone seemed big as a football field. With about seven hundred black shutters and a front door that was more like the entrance to a parliament or a maybe a municipal library, he couldn’t actually believe a family lived there.
Then again, it wasn’t just a momma bear, a papa bear, and a baby bear. There were probably dozens of doggen.
It was exactly the kind of place his father would have been called on to work in.
Precisely like the sort of fancy home where the male had been killed during the raids.
Before he blew the job interview before it even started, Axe swallowed his bitterness and hiked it up the snow-covered lawn until he stepped over a low hedge that skirted a circular ring-around and proceeded to a series of steps to the front door.
There was a huge brass door knocker that was big as his arm, and also a discreet intercom off to one side.
He was reaching for the button when the heavy weight was opened by—oh, snap—a uniformed butler who looked alarmingly like Sir John Gielgud.
In his Arthur years.
“Are you Axwelle, son of Theirsh?” the male said with perfect diction.
For some completely unhelpful reason, Axe’s brain coughed out Dudley Moore doing his best drunk impression: You’re a hooker? Jesus … I forgot! I just thought I was doing great with you!
“Sire?” the butler prompted. “Are you Axwelle?”
Shaking himself, he almost answered with a Yeah. “Yes, I am.”
“Please, do come in.” The butler backed up and indicated with his hand. “I shall let my master know that you have arrived in a timely fashion.”
“Thanks. Thank you.”
Something about the guy made him want to be less of a schmo. Fuck that, everything about this whole damn thing made him—
Axe stopped where he was. Flaring his nostrils, he breathed in as the butler in the penguin suit said a few things and then turned away to walk over to a closed door.
Wait a minute, Axe thought.
Pivoting slowly in a circle, he continued to test the scents in the air. The big open reception hall, foyer, whatever the hell it was called, could easily fit three of the houses he lived in and still have room for a bowling alley, a swimming pool, and maybe an ice-skating rink. And the stuff that was placed around the open, cathedral-like space looked really old and really expensive: The floor was white and gray marble and there was, like, crystal shit hanging everywhere and oil paintings mounted on the walls. Oh, and there was a fireplace, but not like the one that kept him warm during the day. Theirs had, like, black marble and gold carvings around it, and the hearth was so big they didn’t have logs so much as tree trunks in there.
But he couldn’t have cared less about all that.
What he had caught on the air, after filtering out the woodsy pitch of the crackling fire and the soap of the doggen and a distant aftermath of some kind of meat having been served somewhere on the first floor … was the scent of that female from last night.
Peyton’s cousin either had visited here very recently … or she lived under this roof.
“My master will see you now,” the butler said from behind him.
Yes, Axe thought as he wheeled around. You’re damn right he will.
Sometimes nightmares happened in front of you and hurt people you loved, and even though you prayed to wake up … you knew that there was no alarm clock about to ring, no eyelids to lift, no rollover and reposition about to save you.
Mary was in one of those loops of suffering now.
Bitty was lying on an exam table, a white sheet and blanket folded off to the side, her thin, pale limbs reflecting the light from the massive fixture above her. She was so pale, her face was the color of a Kleenex, and she was trembling, a twitchy, wrung-out shell of the vibrant, happy little girl she usually was.
As Mary stood next to her, the details of the clinical environment, the beeping equipment and the white tile, the stainless-steel everything, the people in blue scrubs and masks, were at once crystal clear and utterly diffused—and as in a dreamscape, the two extremes on the awareness scale alternated, the scene going in and out of focus randomly.
She’d known it was going to be hard to get through the night. But she’d assumed that would be because of Bitty’s memories of abuse getting triggered. Or the fact that the girl was having to go back to the very clinic at which she had watched her mother die. Or even due to the claustrophobia of the MRI, the discomfort of the examination, the tedium of waiting for the test results to come in.
Not. Even. Fucking. Close.
Each one of Bitty’s major bones was being broken and reset. Even on the leg that had a shin made from a titanium rod. Without anesthesia because she was allergic to it.
It was indescribable, the horror, the pain, the terror. And it was hard not to rail against God in this moment, cursing whoever was up there for this perfect storm of bad news: growth plates compromised by badly healed breaks; possible amputations after the transition; her being a non-viable candidate for general anesthesia due to her previous reaction to it.
What little pain relief that could be given didn’t go nearly far enough.
“One more,” she heard herself say. “You can do this.”
Bitty didn’t seem to comprehend the words. She was lost to the haze of agony, and Mary just wanted to break down in tears herself.
But she couldn’t afford the trip to insanity.
Mary leaned down even closer. “Last one, okay? This is our last one.”
Bitty’s eyes opened wide, tears making them luminous, the great purple smudges that had appeared underneath making her seem like she was on the verge of death. “I can’t do it. Please … make them stop.…”
“One more. I promise you, just one more.” She brushed back the bangs and kissed Bitty’s forehead. “Hold my hand. Come on. Squeeze as hard as you have to.”
“I can’t do it … please, Mommy … help me.…”
Sobs racked the little girl’s body, making the hospital gown seem as if it were caught in a breeze, and Mary began to cry, too, the tears rolling down her cheeks and dropping onto the thin mattress of the table.
Sniffling, praying for strength, utterly lost, Mary made a mental note that the next time someone looked at her and told her that she had all the answers, she was going to kick them in the ass.