God Save the Queen (The Immortal Empire) (14 page)

My sister smiled. “Hullo, Xandy. I was wondering when you’d turn up.”

Killing her would be too kind.

She looked so at home here in this lovely room with its sage-green walls and white woodwork. Gauzy curtains with little green leaves covered the blinds at the windows, and a cream, taupe and sage rug sat in the middle of the hardwood floor. The furniture was white as well, but the focal point of the room was the enormous four-poster bed, on which my sister sat, dressed in white knee-length bloomers and a loose shirt, legs crossed like a yogi, smiling like a fucking idiot.

She must have seen murder in my eyes because her smile quickly faded. “You shouldn’t be here,” she said.

I closed the door and leaned against it, arms folded over my chest so she couldn’t see how my hands shook. “Really? A moment ago you said I’d been expected.”

“You were, unfortunately.” She climbed off the bed and came towards me, looking more like a kid than a twenty-one-year-old
woman. I couldn’t look at that God-awful hair. “I told them you’d show up. That you wouldn’t be fooled. I knew you wouldn’t just let me go.”

She sounded both pleased and disappointed – if that were possible. I couldn’t look at her – I was too angry. But when I turned my head and saw the bear I had given her sitting on that bed, I whirled on her, barely containing the tempest of emotions that raged within me.

Fang me, but I really wanted to tear her apart. I also wanted to sob in relief that she was alive.

“Get your things,” I commanded. “We’re going home, and you’re going to explain to your grieving family why a char-grilled stranger is interred in the family mausoleum. And don’t forget my
fucking
earrings.”

Thin arms crossed tightly over her slight chest, she glared at me with eyes so much like my own. “I’m not leaving. I’m sorry if I’ve hurt you or Avery and Val, but I’m not going back to that life, and if you have any love for me at all, you won’t tell them the truth.”

“Are you completely mental?” I straightened away from the door. “You must be to fake your own death. And a shit-poor job you did too. Fee stealing your ring back was bad enough, but you took things from your apartment, gave notice to your landlady. Did you think we wouldn’t figure it out?”

“I knew Avery and Val wouldn’t notice anything or even think to ask. They both think I’m hatters as it is. I also knew our father wouldn’t bother to investigate, but
you
…” She smiled again and shook her head. “I knew you’d be trouble.”

“You knew I’d find you, but now I have to leave? Without you?” I could practically taste the incredulity in my voice.

Dede nodded, her expression suddenly grim. “I’m glad you know the truth, but now it’s best for everyone if you forget you saw me. Let me go.”

“I can’t do that.”

Inky hair fell over her pale forehead. Her wide gaze met mine with stark sincerity. “You tell people I’m alive and it won’t be long before I’m dead for real.”

This was too much. She sounded paranoid and manic and … mad. Mad as a bloody hatter. And yet I played along. “Who? Why?”

She rubbed a hand over her opposite shoulder, as though she was chilled. I had to fight the urge to find her a sweater. “I know too much. If it weren’t for who I am, I probably would have been tossed to the goblins, hence my hasty admission to New Bethlehem. I suppose they figured this would be the one place you wouldn’t come looking for me.”

I still wasn’t any closer to figuring out what she was doing here. “Start from the beginning.” I didn’t add that it had better be good. Dede could tell a story to rival Shakespeare. What it had better be was
true
, and not some wild conspiracy theory.

She sat down on the trunk at the foot of the bed. I stayed where I was in case anyone tried to interrupt our little family reunion.

Her eyebrows knitted. “Seven months ago I was approached by … someone I knew. This person told me things that supported what I’d already presumed – that the aristocracy is not to be trusted.”

“Albert’s fangs, Dede!” I looked nervously around the room. What did I suspect was about to happen? Did I think Queen V would suddenly burst out of the wardrobe shouting “Treason!?”

“It’s true, Xandy. You’ve never seen it because you don’t want to.”

No bloody way was I going to be the guilty one. “This isn’t about me, Dee. It’s about you.” And what government was totally trustworthy? Really.

“It’s about something bigger than the both of us,” she informed
me smartly. “Half-bloods were an accident, Xandy. And once they found out we were useful, they bred us and put us to whatever use they could find, but they don’t care about us. They experiment on our minds and bodies – our reproductive organs. They’re killing halvies and humans in an attempt to make their own lives better.”

“Who are? Aristos?” Astonished, that was what I was – and somewhat alarmed that my sister might really be mad.

She shook her head. “I knew you wouldn’t believe it. They were the ones who took my son, you know. When they discovered he was fully plagued, they took him and gave him to Ainsley to replace the one he lost. I’ve seen him.”

A lump swelled in my throat. Reality had deserted my beautiful baby sister. “Your child died, luv. You know that. There’s never been a fully plagued birth from a half-blood and an aristo.”

“That you’ve been told about,” she retorted.

“Because there’s nothing to tell.” Although, that was odd, wasn’t it? If two human carriers could produce a fully plagued living child, why couldn’t a halvie and an aristo?

She made a scoffing sound, staring down her pert nose at me as though I were an ignorant lout. “I’ve always envied your ability to blindly believe what you’re told.”

“I didn’t believe you were dead,” I countered with a little bite. “How could you do this to us? To your mother and to our father?”

She watched me for a moment as though I were some sort of odd bug and she was Charles bloody Darwin. “You can’t imagine displeasing him, can you? Of course you can’t, because you still hope that one day he might be a proper father. He’s different with you. Church too. They both adore you. Why is that?”

I didn’t like her tone. “I dunno. Maybe because I don’t go running around attacking peers at parties?”

That took some of the fight out of her, but not all of it. The finger she pointed at me barely shook. “They took my son, and
when I dared speak up about it – when I became a ‘problem’ – they sent me here, where they send all their unwanted halvies.”

I made a show of examining my surroundings. “Doesn’t seem such a bum deal.”

She mocked me with a smile. “I can show you the locked ward.”

The thought of that brought an acrid taste to my mouth. “I thought you wanted me to leave.”

All traces of smile vanished. “I do. Promise you won’t tell anyone you saw me, Xandy. Please, if you have any love for me, you won’t tell anyone – not even Avery or Val, and especially not Churchill – that I’m alive.”

I had already told Church my suspicions, but I trusted him with my life. “You can’t ask that of me, Dede. It’s not right.”

“What they’re doing to us isn’t right!” she cried, then lowered her voice. “For the first time I feel as though I’m part of something good, something meaningful. I’m doing the right thing and I belong here.”

It was as though the proverbial light switched on in my head – and I didn’t like what it showed me. “Albert’s fangs. You’ve joined the Insurrectionists, haven’t you?” I had no idea how it had happened, or what they had to do with Bedlam, but the pieces suddenly fell into place with cruel clarity – Dede had turned traitor.

She lifted her chin as she toyed with the bottles on the dressing table. “You say it like it’s something to be ashamed of.”

“It is!” I threw my hands in the air, then pressed them against my head. “God, Dede. You’ll be executed.”

She smiled again. “Can’t kill a dead woman.”

And there was my answer as to why anyone would try to fake Dede’s death. “Who is that poor soul in our family crypt?”

“A halvie who died at a horror show,” came her hoarse reply. “She’d been tossed down a hole for the goblins to get.”

My stomach rolled, partly from disgust and partly from the fact that I hadn’t eaten in a little while. As though reading my thoughts, my sister opened one of the drawers, took out a Cadbury and tossed it to me.

“Horror shows are illegal,” I said, taking a bite of the chocolatey goodness without thanking her. The term referred to spectacles where aristos drank from humans – and occasionally halvies – to the death. They had been terribly popular in Paris and Venice years ago. Often times the victims were people who sold their mortality to the show in return for money to support their families.

“Don’t be naïve.” Dede’s tone and expression were harsh. “Go into the Freak Show sometime and ask them about their employees who have vanished over the last three months. Apparently a horror show involving freaks brings in three times the crowd. There was one in London just a fortnight ago.”

“I never heard about it.”

“No. Well you’re not exactly listening to the
right
people, Xandy. You try so hard to be part of that world, you have no time for anything not aristo-related.”

“That’s not true.”

This time her smile was sad – pitying really. “You never noticed what I’ve been up to these last six months. It was all about getting here. I won’t let you ruin that.”

“De—”

She held up her hand to cut me off. “Don’t. Do not tell me you just want to protect me, or that you think I’m misguided. What if I could prove to you that the aristocracy is not as wonderful as you think? That people you trust are not to be trusted?”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “I’d say show me.”

She stepped forward, stomping her little foot like she had as a child whenever she was frustrated. “I’m going to introduce you to the people in charge.”

The people in charge? I licked a spot of chocolate from my finger. How could I turn down such an opportunity? I’d have names, faces. Good Lord, Victoria would probably declare me a hero if I delivered a cabal of Insurrectionists to her.

Wouldn’t Father be proud? Church too. The praise and pride I imagined in both their eyes might just be worth Dede hating me for a while. She’d get over it once her sanity returned. Of course I’d tell them that she had helped bring the traitors in; I wouldn’t let them know she’d been one of them.

“Lead on,” I said, trying to keep the excitement from my voice. If she thought for a minute that I was going to essentially betray her, she’d change her mind. She wasn’t stupid. And I wasn’t normally this cold, but the Insurrectionists had killed Wellington. They’d killed Prince Albert too.

Dede tossed on a lightweight embroidered kimono. She regarded me as though I was a recalcitrant child and she was about to teach me a very important lesson.

As we left the room I took a good look at her. She did seem better than she had in a long time. She appeared rested – alive. Peaceful. All because of what she’d found in this godforsaken place.

It made me angry. “I hate your hair. It makes you look human.”

She glanced at me over her shoulder. “It’s supposed to.”

“I still hate it.”

She snorted and looked away. “This coming from a woman dressed like a Chinese undertaker.”

“Sorry, I’ve just come from my sister’s funeral and didn’t have time to change.”

She stopped dead so quickly I almost stepped on her. Her face turned, gaze darting to mine. “Was Ainsley there?”

Not family, not friends, but fucking Ainsley.

“Yes. He sat at the back.” I should have lied to her and said he wasn’t there, but I couldn’t do it.

There were tears in her eyes as she turned away and resumed walking. She didn’t say another word – not even to apologise for putting us through the pain of a funeral – until we’d descended that concealed staircase and stood in front of a large double door halfway down the corridor. “Here.”

“Aren’t you going to make me swear to secrecy?” I whispered – mockingly, I might add – as she knocked upon the polished wood.

She shot me a cool glance. “Don’t have to.”

“That sure of your new friends, eh?”

The corner of her mouth lifted. “I’m that sure of
you
.”