21

Istruck it lucky. St. Michaels wasn't the only church in the Bohemian Quarter, but it was the first one I cycled passed. On the corner of Ross and Pentler, not far from the street Rose lived on.

The church was a limestone building with stained glass windows and a central bell tower rising up above the gabled entrance. Encapsulating the grassy grounds was a low, stacked-stone wall. My gaze flitted around, searching for Rose, and instead found an ice-white blond perched on the wall beneath the overflowing branches of a weeping willow.

Lisa Bickens.

What on earth was she doing here, randomly sitting on a church wall in the Bohemian Quarter?

Her father was the head guard.

Lisa and I tended to rub each other the wrong way, but Mom was friendly with Mrs. Bickens.

Random coincidence?

Or was she my contact?

The Sisterhood loved to work in weird, mysterious ways that were total overkill for the situation. So if I had to guess, I'd say yeah, Rose was perfectly capable of orchestrating some kind of goose chase instead of just showing up here to meet me herself.

Lisa caught my gaze in her cold blue eyes, and held it until I looked away first, but only so I could jump off my bicycle and push it over.

"What are you doing here?" she demanded in a clipped tone.

I shrugged off her attitude. "Apparently I signed up for the tea service rotation. I think my mother might have volunteered me."

The frost in her eyes melted, only a fraction—nothing to get excited over. "Imagine that, my mother had the same idea. They've obviously been talking."

She rose from the wall, standing a good couple of inches taller than me in long, denim-clad legs and knee-high boots. "Let's walk."

Okay? I glanced toward the church, but Lisa was already setting off down Ross Street.

Pushing my bicycle alongside me awkwardly, I hurried to catch up. I had to admit, even though it was Lisa, I was thrilled to finally make contact with a Sister from my own St. Ives cohort.

I desperately wished Jessie was one of us, but then again, even if she were, it wasn't like we'd be sharing notes over hours and hours of gossipy talk.

That's not how The Sisterhood worked.

When it came to the Sisters of Capra, my mom's lips were sealed tighter than a treasure hunter's crypt. For all I knew, she could be a dormant Sister (according to Rose, that was a thing, Sisters who didn't have the will, ability or the means to be of active use) or she could be the big honcho—or however our leader styled herself.

"Where are we going?" I asked Lisa as we turned a corner in the opposite direction of Rose's house.

"You'll see."

I bit down on a snarky comeback. As haughty and infuriating as Lisa loved to be, this wasn't on her. She was following instructions.

Lisa flicked her hair over one shoulder and looked at me. "My mother mentioned you and Roman are attending this year's Foundation Ball. How on earth did you score that invitation?"

"Councilman Edgar," I said. "I didn't realize it was interesting news."

She rolled her eyes my way. "My mother's livid. She managed to finagle an invite for me and Brian. Now that literally every St. Ives graduate and their dog is attending, it's not quite as special."

I laughed. This was a side of Lisa I'd only recently come to see. She reveled in the snooty, elitist family she'd been born into, but she also had a tendency to speak bluntly, to call a spade a spade.

"Who else is going?" I asked.

"Only you and me, that I'm aware of."

"It'll be nice to see a friendly face there."

She snorted. "Times must be really bad, if I'm your friendly face."

"You're a St. Ives girl." I nudged her with my elbow. "You'll always be a friendly face."

"That's so sweet." She wiped a mock tear from beneath her eye, but she smiled, and it was a smile, not a sneer.

At the end of the block, we turned another corner and she drew to a halt.

"That's you." She pointed up the road of brownstones. "Number 62."

The way she said it, I turned a frown on her. "You're not coming?"

"I'm just the escort."

"Do you know who lives there?"

"I'm just the escort," she repeated and made a shooing gesture. "Go. Have fun."

I went, scanning the numbers on the pale oak doors on the stoops at the top of each set of steps until I found number 62. The window from the garden level peeked out just above the ground from behind a wrought iron rail. The drapes were closed, so I couldn't sneak a look as I crossed the road and made my way up the steps.

I knocked, my stomach crunching at what I was about to walk into. Sisterhood business, definitely. I wasn't an idiot. Of course this had something to do with my visit to Rose this morning.

But I'd told her everything.

What more did they need from me?

I was so low down on the totem pole, I wasn't even on the pole. Rose never missed a chance to remind me.

I'd just raised my knuckles to knock again when the door opened inwards. The woman who greeted me with scowling eyes was old enough to be a grandmother, and so short, she barely reached my shoulders.

She didn't say anything, and I wasn't sure how to start this conversation without giving away something I might regret.

Rose had instilled that much in me at our very first meeting. When someone else has all the advantages, let them do all the work. Force them to incriminate themselves first, and it might save you from a disastrous mistake.

I offered a dubious sounding, "Hello?"

She looked me up and down another moment, then stepped back. Still without a word.

I assumed that was my invitation. I walked inside, into an airy living room with a tall ceiling, parquet flooring and furnished with a pair of sleek, cream couches.

The elderly woman, who still hadn't said a word, let alone introduced herself, closed the door and beckoned me to follow her to a stairway that went both up and down. We went down, two flights down to the basement. My ears were keenly pricked for any sign of life besides us, but all I heard were her two-inch heels clicking on the parquet steps and the dull thud of my running shoes.

I soon saw why. The last flight of stairs ended at a door. From the stairwell, it looked like a perfectly normal oak door, but the inner side was plated with steel that was so thick, it felt like I was walking into a vault.

Female voices filtered through as soon as the door opened. Three to be exact, seated around a table across the room that was decorated with a heavily masculine touch. The wallpaper was a leathery brown—actually, it looked like leather wallpaper, if that was a thing. Floor-to-ceiling shelving crammed with books ran the full length of one wall. Recliners and couches arranged around a low-slung coffee table dominated half of the space, all of it bulky leather and solid wood.

The door closed behind me, with my escort on the outside. She hadn't uttered a single word to me, and she wasn't joining us.

I walked deeper into the room, my gaze seeking out the women. I didn't recognize anyone, until the one sitting with her back to me stood and turned, and I had swallow a gasp of intense surprise.

I'd been a Sister of Capra for a while now, I'd even successfully completed a mission for them, but it had never felt as real as it did right now, right here, with my two wildly divergent roles in this society colliding…into Lisa's mother.

Mrs. Bickens.

"Georga." She held her arms out, as if to welcome me into a hug.

She'd never hugged me in her life.

And there was not an ounce of warmth in her features. She wore her default expression of cool, calm and thoroughly collected.

There was no hug.

Her arms lowered to her sides as I stepped forward. "We hear you've been busy, and we're extremely interested in what you have to say. But forgive me, introductions are in order, I think."

She smiled a smile that didn't reach her eyes and gestured around the table.

Geneva was a formidable looking woman with cropped, ash-silver curls and inquisitive gray eyes that didn't just search mine during the introduction, those eyes went hunting in my gaze.

I didn't have time to wonder what exactly she thought I was hiding, because Mrs. Bickens added on her title with a reverent, "Geneva is our matriarch."

My jaw loosened. I guess that answered how our leader styled herself. But seriously, was this actually happening? The head of the Sisterhood, and I was meeting her? Me?

The second woman leaned toward the younger side of middle-age, possibly early thirties. She wore her rich brown hair in a thick braid that hung over one shoulder and she acknowledged me with a shallow nod. Eliza.

"And you know who I am, of course," Mrs. Bickens concluded. "For the purposes of Sisterhood business, please address me by my name. Calista. We try to refrain from using last names wherever possible."

My fingers felt suddenly clammy.

This was happening.

Something important, monumentally important, was going down, and I was part of it. Sure, I was sweating from the pressure, but my spine stiffened and I stood about two foot taller.

Geneva pressed her fingers to the table and pushed to her feet with the grace of a swan. She was a tall, lean woman, dressed in stylish black pants with a matching jacket over a soft, lilac camisole top.

When she spoke, her voice had a melodic lilt underwritten in silken iron. "Let's speak in private."

The other women didn't appear offended. They didn't remove themselves from the room, either. Geneva and I did. She crossed to the shelving system on the wall and tugged at a book spine, and a section slid back to reveal a secret room.

I was impressed.

And slightly wary when we stepped inside and the wall on this side slid into place again, trapping us between four seamless walls.

There was a long table that could easily seat ten or more, but there were only two chairs. A dossier sat on one end of the table, and that's the chair Geneva settled into as she indicated for me to take the seat all the way across at the opposite end.

She planted her elbows on the dossier and steepled her fingers with the tips beneath her chin, studying me.

The silent scrutiny was unnerving. I clasped my hands on my lap, resisting the impulse to look away.

"We've familiarized ourselves with the report Rose submitted this morning." She paused a beat. "Do you still stand by everything you said?"

There was something in her tone, something patronizing and maybe even condescending, that bristled my spine. I could be wrong, but it felt like she was giving me the chance to confess I'd made up some ludicrous story, an opportunity to change my mind.

What the hell?

"I've been outside the walls," I said defensively. "I've seen across the bridge to the Outerlands, and it isn't dead. It isn't empty. I've been to The Smoke."

She raised a single finger to stop me. "I'm not doubting you. The purpose of this meeting…well, I was curious to meet you. But I'm also looking for clarity, to make sure nothing has been misunderstood or…misinterpreted." She dropped that finger to tap the dossier. "Do you know what this is?" Tap. Tap. Tap. "This is a smoking gun. It's incumbent upon us to cross-check the facts and make sure we have it right before we pull the trigger."

She was just being careful, of course she was.

"Shall we proceed?" She opened the dossier and dropped her gaze, skimming over what I assumed was Rose's report. "Let's start with Sector Five. You say you hitched a ride on your husband's truck without his knowledge."

"He did discover me in the parking garage at Sector Five, but he has no idea I left the garage at any point," I reiterated, just to make it absolutely clear. "So far as he's aware, I don't even know that I was ever outside of Capra. He turned me over to the Guard at the wall, and I've been under reprimand for the past two weeks."

She studied me. "I'm surprised the Guard was lenient with you."

"Roman is a warden."

"I'm well aware that your husband is a warden," she said.

And if she'd let me finish, I'd get to the point. "Wardens prefer to keep Capra and the council out of warden affairs, and as Roman's wife, I'm considered warden business."

"That's fortunate."

"Very fortunate," I agreed.

Her gaze lowered to read from the dossier, and we moved on. She wanted to hear everything from me again, in my own words, not Rose's.

Occasionally she interrupted with questions. Such as, "You never crossed the bridge. Everything you say about the Outerlands and these barons is hearsay?"

"Not just hearsay from The Smoke," I said. "This came from a warden at Sector Five. He approached me when he thought I was going to cross the bridge."

I'd forgotten about the incident when I'd spoken to Rose this morning, but I added it now, hoping it leant weight to my so-called sketchy facts. Roman had actually been out there, in the wilds. That wasn't hearsay.

"People from The Smoke are free to leave the Eastern Coalition," I told her. "The wardens take it upon themselves to warn anyone about the conditions in the Outerlands before they cross."

"But it's still just word of mouth," Geneva insisted. "Speculation."

"I suppose." I shrugged. If that's what she wanted to believe, so be it. I was not bringing Roman into this for validation.

I remembered the two men who'd circled me as I'd approached the bridge. "I did have an encounter with Outerlanders. Not barons, I don't think, but the men were terrifying. There was something savage about them. They circled in on me. It felt like they were predators, and I was the prey. After that, it wasn't hard to believe everything I'd heard about the wild."

After that, I explained in as much detail as I could about the sperm sorting. "The Eastern Coalition has a medical process that allows them to override natural gender selection. They've found a way to improve the odds of a baby being born female. They use it in The Smoke. That's why there are so many women there. As many women as there are men, if not more. There are so, so many people there. Women are allowed to have children. They're encouraged to have as many as they want."

I also went into more detail about conditions in The Smoke than I'd given Rose. "They don't have electricity at night. No lights. No heating. There are severe shortages, apparently. The Protectorate is established in Gardens. That's fairly safe and pleasant. The rest of The Smoke is controlled by crime families and the Blood Throats."

Geneva's brow hiked. "Blood Throats?"

"They're a street gang. A bloody, brutal gang. I watched them beat a man up in broad daylight."

When I got to the grand finale, the pièce de résistance, my voice became shaky. "The eggs we use for our IVF treatments don't come from some frozen supply from before. That's a lie. It's all lies. Our eggs don't start off rotten."

I had to take a breath, swallow down a lump of grit before continuing. "We are healthy for the first couple of years, until we reach the age of fourteen, maybe a few more months more. That's where Capra gets its supply of eggs from, harvested from young girls in The Smoke. It could be harvested from us. It should be harvested from us. There's no reason we couldn't have children of our flesh and blood. That's what Capra has taken from us."

"Not Capra," Geneva said. "The council."

I nodded fervently. "That's what the council has denied us."

We shared a look, a dark, vengeful look, and in that moment I knew, I knew Geneva and the Sisterhood would make this right. Not for me. Not for us. It was too late for that. We were fighting for the next generation of daughters.

Geneva closed the dossier and folded her hands on top of it. The moment stretched into seconds, into minutes, then she said, "Every rebellion needs a spark. And you, Georga, are our spark."

I assumed she meant the information in that dossier, but I claimed it for myself anyway.

I would be the spark.

We wouldn't burn this world to the ground. That wasn't our way. But I would happily light this damn world on fire.