Page 40 of Odder Still
I tear out the entire contraption, needle and vial together, and pinch my arm upward to cut the bleeding short as I scramble farther away from Lachlan. My back hits Tavish’s legs.
He startles, then steadies as his fingers brush my shoulder. “Rubem?”
“We’re leaving.” I grip Tavish to help pull myself up. I’d rather have my consent stolen by an insufferable body-stealing parasite than by this creep.
“Well, now, don’t be hasty,” Lachlan has the audacity to say.
Sharp, disgusted anger flows through me, resonating between the parasite and me. The half-filled vial of my blood still rolls listlessly toward me, and I slam my heel into it. The glass cracks, slipping rainbow-laden blood across the floor. No good to me. No good to Lachlan, either, and that’s enough to satisfy both the parasite and me at the moment.
Tavish holds my arm. “Are you hurt?
“Other than the drugs your father injected into me and half a vial of blood lost? Not one bit.”
“That’s not exactly—” Lachlan tries to argue.
But Tavish’s expression turns to stone. Or perhaps to diamond. “You’re right. Weareleaving. And we are certainly not coming back.”
He charges with me toward the door, swinging his cane aggressively in front of him as he goes. The tip of it catches on a stack of books. The pile sways.
Lachlan’s eyes widen, his whites swelling. He lifts his hands, but he’s too far away. The books topple, slamming into the stack beside them. The labyrinth goes down one pile at a time in a mismatched mess that leaves single towers standing amidst a sea of splayed pages. The catastrophe quiets into the fluttering of papers, and the final victim falls from the edge of Lachlan’s desk with an excruciating plunk.
Lachlan rounds on us, a vein popping in his left eye. His lips peel back. Before he can release the sky-shattering shriek that seems to be building in his throat, I yank Tavish out the door and slam it closed behind us. We don’t stop, hurrying down the hall so fast that I nearly black out again. It could be the remaining drugs in my system or the fury and terror and indignation that hits me in waves, or it could be that I underestimated my blood loss and Lachlan has a series of vials he hid away before I woke up. But the thought of going back to check only makes me feel fainter.
Tavish catches my arm. Maybe he never let go. “Are you really all right?”
“Yes, I think so,” I answer honestly. “Shaken and a little woozy, but it should pass. Even if he’s my only option, I don’t feel comfortable letting him touch me again until we know more about this lab of his.” I lower my voice. “Ailsa left us a note to meet her. There’s time, right, before your mother shows up?”
“You’re the one who can see the hands on the clock.”
I cringe at not having checked the large one ticking away above Lachlan’s door. In the moment, the one counting down against my neck had seemed more important. I’d forgotten it wasn’t the only thing due to explode soon.
But Tavish sighs, picking at the skin around his pinkie. “It should be around forty till. And it’s on the way to my rooms, which is where Sheona will head once she realizes we’ve gone. I assume the paper she was sent after was a ruse to get her out of the room. I didn’t think my father had it in him.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
His brow pinches. “Still.”
We hurry through the halls, slowing at the stairs just long enough for Tavish to grab my arm, holding firmly despite his perfectly timed strides never once missing a step. The cats mew at us when we enter the Findlay siblings’ floor. Ailsa’s library doors sit a crack open, and we push the rest of the way inside with a quick knock from Tavish.
The vast ceiling windows let scattered grey-ocean light filter in through an army of dust motes. Books still clutter the room in every state of dismemberment, pages torn and piled and sentences cut apart, their meanings turned as enigmatic as the executioner herself. The same ragged handwriting on my note covers all the free paper, tearing itself in lines and swirls, blocks and circles, digging so deep in some places that they split holes and gashes. Little splotches of blood mark a few of them, left to blur through the pages.
Ailsa lies beyond the desk, her strawberry blonde hair gleaming with pinks and golds, the tips made two tones of red by the cherry-red of a fish symbol and the deep scarlet of the fresh blood.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
All in the Execution
Is each day together a gift, or is it a roulette?
The glass is half full: we are blessed to have met.
The glass is half empty: we brace, knowing
the shot saved for tomorrow still comes to collect.
TAVISH SEES NONE OF the horrific red. It’s a blessing and a curse, and it suffocates. First Alasdair, now Ailsa, mere minutes or even moments before our arrival, perched on the line between fate and luck. Her blood still oozes, sinking deeper and deeper into the white carpet beneath her.
“Tavish…” It must be the weakness of my usually rough voice, or the tightness with which I grip his finger, but I see the knowledge hit him squarely.
