She led us deeper into the foliage, where trees clustered around a small hill, only a few feet high. Isabel climbed it, practically running, and disappeared beyond it.
I climbed after her, Sinead following me, breathing hard. She was getting tired, carrying the cat around, with the enormous pack on her back. I was about to call Isabel—tell her to stop for a bit, because Sinead needed a rest—when I saw it.
A small stone structure, its walls covered with moss and ivy, with thin, twisting cracks decorating its surface. There was one doorway, as uninviting as any doorway I’d ever seen—a metal grid, brown with rust, a huge lock in its frame. Isabel stood next to it, her hand on the wall, looking at it as if she had finally come home.
It was her family’s mausoleum.
I was already reaching for my pocket, where I kept a few bits of twisted metal I used as lockpicks, when she raised an iron key. She slid the key into the lock and pulled open the gate.
She walked inside, but Sinead and I paused at the threshold. Sinead’s ghost story was still fresh in my mind, and I found myself terrified of the dark space beyond the gate—a space meant for the dead.
“Come on,” Isabel said, and a small flame appeared. She held her lighter in one hand and a single candle in the other. “It’s dry here.”
Dryness sounded wonderful. We entered the crypt and closed the creaking, rusted gate behind us.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
The mausoleum was there, still looking the same as always. I had no key, but it was an old lock, which had never been designed to keep professional burglars away. I took out my lockpicking kit and unrolled it, selecting a thick, curvy metal rod and a large tension wrench. With this lock, the problem would be mostly the rust, and not the actual lock. I knelt in front of it and inserted the tension wrench, twisting it, then started feeling for the pins with the rod.
“We used to come here whenever it rained and we couldn’t go to a shelter,” I said, nudging the first pin. “After the first night, we always tried to come with some sticks and newspapers.”
“Why?” Kane crouched next to me, watching my fingers as I picked the lock.
“For a fire. It was good at keeping the rain out, but it could get hella cold in there. I guess there’s no real insulation in the floor. The dead don’t mind the cold.”
“Didn’t you find it… creepy?”
“It might sound weird, but Isabel said her ancestors didn’t mind. And it’s not like she meant that they didn’t mind because they were dead. She literally meant she knew they didn’t mind. I had some weird dreams in there once or twice. Voices whispering in my ear, or the sensation of something touching my cheek. But maybe it was just my imagination. I was only fourteen.”
“Why do you think she hid the crystal here?”
“Even after we grew up, Isabel kept coming here. She would talk to her ancestors, ask for advice, tell them about her life… that sort of thing.”
“I can’t imagine it was much of a dialog.”
“Who knows, with Isabel. But I don’t think that was the point. She felt like she belonged here. We all tried fighting our loneliness in our own way, I guess. Sinead and I tried to find relationships that would fill the hole. And Isabel had her ancestors.”
“Did any of you find a relationship that satisfied your loneliness?”
I hesitated. “No. Mostly random flings. Sinead had a good thing for a while, with a really smart guy. And I…” I thought of a young man with a rakish smile, one of his front teeth slightly broken. And his nose and chin identical to Tammi’s. “Well, I had one very intense relationship. And it ended with me having a daughter.”
He said nothing.
I felt the first pin catch, and began playing with the second. It tended to stick because of the rust, and I had to keep poking it to set it loose. It was exhausting work.
“I didn’t know. That I was pregnant, I mean. I was working for Breadknife at the time, and he began pushing me harder and harder. I was breaking into homes almost every night. It was a never-ending cycle—scout the place in the morning, break into it at night. I was constantly on edge, afraid I was about to be caught. And some of the homes Breadknife chose… it seemed almost cruel. A man who’d recently lost his wife. A single mother with several kids. An old woman living alone. But I couldn’t refuse the jobs. You don’t say no to Breadknife.”
The tension pin nearly slipped in my grip, and I muttered a curse, forcing myself to work more carefully, ignoring the pain in my tired muscles.
“And then I got caught. I broke into a couple’s house while they were out on a date, but they came back home early. Saw movement in their house through the window and called the police. The lookout hadn’t noticed them; I guess he wasn’t paying attention. And when we suddenly heard the police sirens… he drove off. Leaving me behind.”
The memory floated back unbidden. The shocking moment of disappointment and betrayal. I’d thought he was so perfect. Quick to laugh, passionate, clever. I’d fallen in love with him when we were working together on a job, the excitement and adrenaline fueling our lust. That’s why you should never listen to your heart when pulling a job. Never.
“I was arrested, and got one year in prison. It probably would have been more, but it was a first offense—or so the judge thought. And I was an orphan, failed by the foster system. Inside, I found out I was nine weeks pregnant.”
The second pin caught, and I leaned back, keeping the tension on the lock while flexing my shoulders. Then I leaned back in, started working the third pin.
“What did you do?”
“I decided to keep the baby. Part of it was because I wanted a child. I had these fantasies about being a mother. And part of it…” I paused. “It’s really shitty. Part of it was that I thought it was a way out. For some reason, I assumed Breadknife wouldn’t keep me around if I was a mother. I tried to use my daughter as a one-way ticket out of my life. I even hoped they’d release me early. But they didn’t. And once she was born, I realized how selfish I’d been—using this child for leverage. Risking her exposure to people like Breadknife and his goons. I didn’t want my baby to grow up in a prison. And her father… I didn’t want him to know about her. So I gave her up for adoption. It was stupid. She wouldn’t have remembered the short time in the prison’s nursery ward anyway. I could have kept her. I just had a few months left. We would have been together now.”
“It’s not stupid,” Kane said quietly.
“Anyway, once I was out, I asked Isabel to find her for me. I still had the cloth they’d wrapped her in when she was born. Isabel said it was immersed with her essence, or whatever. She found her in less than an hour. I rented a place nearby, started working on my alchemy.”
“How did you get into alchemy?”