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When Lacie Baskerville gave birth, she had been certain that, shortly afterwards, it would be all over. She would not have to fear her death anymore; she would not know or do or feel anything anymore.
When this did not happen, and she found herself thrust from the Abyss like a babe from a womb, bleeding between her legs, her dress torn and tattered, the first thing she did was reactivate her credit cards, and the second thing she did was get changed and clean up, and the third thing she did was call the Baskerville’s emergency number, where she made up a cock-and-bull story about a human Contractor and a Chain that would be out of commission for another five years at least and was passed on after a little bit of effort to Glen Baskerville. Lacie leaned against the side of the payphone, listening to Call Me Maybe play on tinny repeat with bated breath. Levi had set this song up as the hold music. Oswald had hated it. What did it mean, that he hadn’t yet changed it?
“You’ve reached Glen Baskerville,” said Lacie’s brother over the phone, and heady relief coursed through her and curdled into fear in her gut. She didn’t want to die.
“Nii-sama, you’ve fucked up,” Lacie said.
“Lacie,” her brother breathed, sounding grateful and relieved and not at all surprised.
“That’s no way to greet a girl who’s just come back from the dead, Nii-sama,” said Lacie. “Sound a little more surprised for me, would you?”
He paused. “We shouldn’t discuss this over the phone,” he said. “Where are you?”
“A payphone, in a city,” Lacie said. “I haven’t been able to trick out which one yet, but I have a few suspicions.”
“Don’t tell me,” said her brother. “Find…do you remember,” he said suddenly, “when we were children. Before our adoption. There was an abandoned cabin, in the woods.”
“Yes,” said Lacie. “Why?”
“I’ll meet you there, at some point in the future,” her brother said. “Don’t let anyone know who—or what—you are. Keep a low profile.”
“Glen Baskerville,” Lacie said, teasing, “are you suggesting treason?”
“Is it treason if I’m Glen Baskerville?” he asked.
“The Jury—”
“Cannot know about this. They can’t hear our conversation because you are presently a part of it. Do not give them any reason to learn of your continued existence through a third party. I will meet you in that cabin, in the town near it, as soon as I can get there unhindered.”
“The Jury are going to have to find out sooner or later, Nii-sama,” Lacie said. “They may have no power over ill omens like me, but they can and will hurt Glen Baskerville terribly.”
Lacie had suggested to Levi that he not have her killed only once. He had given her a forbidden history of Glen Baskervilles, and had marked out every place the Jury had punished a Glen for going against their will, and then had told her that that was not the full extent of the Jury’s powers and that he had no intentions of finding out, because he had wanted to live a fun life upon retirement and living a fun life was contingent upon living at all. Neither Levi nor Lacie had pointed out that most of the fates in the history were ones worse than death. They hadn’t had to.
“Then let Glen Baskerville worry about that,” said Lacie’s brother, as though he himself were not Glen.
“Glen Baskerville is my darling older brother,” said Lacie. “Of course I’ll worry.”
“Lacie.”
“Nii-sama.”
“I will meet you at the cabin,” said Glen. “Do not let anyone know who you are or that you are alive.”
“As much as I hate to admit it, Nii-sama, this is an unprecedented problem with the execution.” And probably one related to the baby she had just born, the one she’d never even seen and knew nothing about. “We might need Levi.”
“We will not,” her brother said, “and don’t let him know about this. I’ll make sure he’s suitably distracted when I come to see you.”
“Nii-sama,” said Lacie. “My survival was not an unexpected gift from the universe.”
“I know,” Glen assured her, her precious older brother who had suggested that she escape, that she not have to die, who had not backed down until she had revealed the threat of the Jury to him and even then had had horror painted on his face when he had meant to kill her. “We will discuss it at a later date, in person, in private.”
Lacie sighed. That was probably the best move to keep the Jury off of him until they could make a game plan, anyway, though she did think that Levi might, for once in his life, have something helpful to offer them too—or at least he would know what had become of their child. She knew that he would have watched for it to appear in the Abyss or in this world. She knew that Glen would not have thought about the possibility of Lacie dying pregnant, because there were protocols for that; she knew that he’d taken her joke about wanting to get pregnant before she died as provocation to get him to hit Levi or an excuse for her rabbit’s existence and nothing else, and she did not want to tell him that he had attempted to murder his pregnant sister. She knew Glen. It would break his heart.
“I’ll see you then, Nii-sama.”
“Yes,” said Glen. “I love you.”
“I love you too.” Lacie hung up the phone, mind racing. Stupid—stupid! Telling Glen that would just make it harder on both of them when she had to die properly. She hadn’t wanted to hurt him. She should have gotten on the internet, found a dating website, tracked down Levi and made it clear to him how terribly they’d fucked things up. She shouldn’t be hurting her brother more.
But she’d made her choice and now she had to stick with it, so Lacie left the phone booth and pickpocketed her way to a train ticket and a pair of sunglasses, and stole and lied and scammed her way across three international borders until she reached the abandoned cottage in which she and Glen had squatted one terrible winter as children.
It wasn’t abandoned anymore. The cabin didn’t have any people in it, but the yard was tidy and there was a vegetable garden around the side, and there was a key taped to the bottom of the mat along with instructions for getting in. Once Lacie got inside, she noted that it had been renovated, fully stocked with food, and, according to the lists of instructions taped to walls and refrigerators, appeared to be in use as an Airbnb owned by someone named Kevin Sinclair. Perhaps more unsettlingly, Lacie realized as she examined the area, it had been consistently booked since her brother’s ascension ceremony—since the day she was supposed to have died. More than that, it was booked by someone whose ID looked like Lacie’s, except for the eyes.
“Nii-sama,” Lacie whispered, looking all around her. “What have you done ?”
But no answer came.
Glen arrived before the food ran out, which was good: if Lacie went into town for a refill, there was a part of her that would have gotten on the first train to Levi, spilled everything, made him force Glen to kill her properly. Levi would not have forgiven her for taking so long to reveal herself. Glen would not have forgiven her for going back on her word. Glen arrived with a new Child of Ill Omen, just barely out of his teenage years, his hair lavender and his eyes hard, one hand on a sword at his waist, because Glen had never hung out with a normal person in his life and probably would not be starting now.
Lacie stood in the kitchen with a butcher knife in hand, and waited as Glen walked up the path, and knocked at the door. When it became clear that her dumbass brother was waiting for her to let him in, Lacie left the kitchen and opened the door, noting the way his eyes dropped to the knife in her hand and the utter lack of surprise with which he regarded it. He had to know that this knife was not the most dangerous weapon in the house—that was Lacie, and after her Glen—and it wasn’t even the most dangerous one when the house was empty—she had found an actual bazooka in the basement when she went poking around earlier—but he still said nothing, following her like a terrified puppy into the cottage, into the kitchen. Lacie pulled out a chair on one side of the table and then carefully, deliberately, turned her back on it and went to the freezer, where she took out a tub of rocky road ice cream and opened the lid with the knife. She used a spoon to scoop out two heaping bowls, and drizzled chocolate sauce over each of them, and stuck a spoon in one and the knife in the other.
Glen was sitting obediently in his chair when she placed the bowl with the spoon in front of him; Lacie ate her own off her knife, licking the blade clean between each bite, and waited until her brother’s bowl was empty before she stood again, and cleaned the bowls and the spoon and the knife, and then, facing the wall so that she would not need to worry about her expression, said, “Nii-sama, what did you do?”
“I altered the ritual,” he said. “You told me that you were going in pregnant, which meant that there would be more than one soul bound by the black-winged chains—so I merely altered it so that the minute there was only one soul bound, yours, you would be removed from the Abyss.”
Lacie did not inform her sweet, stupid brother that giving birth was hard on the human body, and maybe it would have been better to give her some recovery time first. She did not thank him for saving her. She clenched her fist on the handle of her knife, and dropped it into the sink with a clatter.
“That was stupid of you,” she said.
“It worked.”
“That’s how I know it was stupid.” Lacie was properly angry now; she didn’t need to worry about anything inconvenient appearing on her face. She turned on her heel and walked back over to the table. “Nii-sama, what do you think the Jury will do to you when they find out what you’ve done?”
“I have been taking precautions—”
“What, that ill omen outside you’ve clearly hired as a bodyguard? How are you explaining that one?”
“I have not hired him as a bodyguard,” said Glen. “I’ve hired him as a mercenary, to kill the Jury.”
“Oh, my God.”
“His name is Kevin Legnard, and he has killed a hundred and sixteen humans to date.”
“What?!”
“He is very useful for my purposes. And the only people alive to miss him would sell him to the Baskervilles in an instant for his crimes.” Glen paused. “They did, actually. It’s how I initially got in touch with him.”
“Nii-sama, you idiot. ”
“Who would check to see whether or not I actually disposed of him?”
“Nii-sama—”
“Would you have rather I used your rabbit?”
A low blow, but Lacie didn’t let it show on her face. Lacie’s rabbit was perhaps the most powerful Chain ever made by Lacie or anyone else on top of being an ill omen, and Baskerville execution wouldn’t work on it, which would have made it the perfect weapon for Oswald to use against the Jury—but her rabbit was also originally a stuffed animal, and even now retained the residue of its origin. Stuffed animals were objects made for exactly one purpose and one purpose only—to love and to be loved—and Lacie’s rabbit was a creature uncomplicated by the idea that anyone would ever want to cause another person harm. Lacie loved it for this; she did not ever want it to ever change.
“Of course not, Nii-sama. My rabbit is off limits to everyone except for the Core of the Abyss and the child I bore…and even then, it gets to choose whether and how much it interacts with them. I gave it complete free will when I left it in the Abyss, and I would hope you would respect that—though seeing as you went behind my back to disrespect my personal wishes and put yourself in danger, I highly doubt that you will.”
Never mind the fact that Lacie didn’t want to die. Never mind the fact that she was so, so grateful to still be alive.
“You would have died for nothing. I would have killed you for nothing.”
“I would have died so that you would be safe! By the Core—I should have lied to you. I should never have let you know why they really wanted me dead. Nii-sama, do you have any idea of the danger you have put yourself in?”
“I have an idea, yes,” said Glen. “And I don’t care. It is the duty of Glen Baskerville to protect this world; killing the Children of Ill Omen does not protect this world. It seems to me that the Children of Ill Omen are in fact our protection from the Jury. And more than that, it is the duty of your older brother to keep you safe. There is no consequence I would not happily incur in order to make sure you lived—”
Lacie slapped him across the face. “If you will not right your wrong,” she hissed, “and dispose of me properly, then I never want to see you again.”
Pure heartbreak etched itself across Glen’s face, but he stood, blood dripping from his nose, and said, “Then so be it. Goodbye, Lacie.”
“Reach out to me if you ever reconsider, Nii-sama,” Lacie told him.
Glen shook his head, and left without another word.
That was the last time Lacie would speak with her brother for over a decade.