Episode Two: The Sisterhood #2 Read online

  The Sisterhood: Episode Two

  The Sisterhood, Volume 2

  Tali Inlow

  Published by Tali Inlow, 2020.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  THE SISTERHOOD: EPISODE TWO

  First edition. November 16, 2020.

  Copyright © 2020 Tali Inlow.

  ISBN: 978-1393149590

  Written by Tali Inlow.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  EPISODE TWO The Sheriff

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  Also By Tali Inlow

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  EPISODE TWO

  The Sheriff

  SUMMER DESTINY NORWOOD stares at the wall in front of her as if she can see through it, if only she tries hard enough. She has made a name for herself out of just that—trying, as hard as she can; of being both the immovable object and the unstoppable force. Lessons she had learned in childhood have sustained her through these long, tiring years after the End of all things as they had known them before. Lessons from Whitmore, where she had gotten more than a standard boarding school education by far. And lessons from her father, who had drilled into her brain that mercy was useless, and that nothing in this world is guaranteed unless you make it so.

  Mercy. A concept worth little here, now. Summer appreciates that lesson, but she has also learned how to adapt—that mercy has its place, even if her bastard of a father had never believed in such emotional trivialities.

  From the other side of the wall, Summer can hear the groans of their recent capture. She can hear the thuds of fists, the low growl of her deputies as they interrogate the man. The report from one of the merchants proclaims the man’s guilt at having stolen. And while Summer can’t say for certain whether the man is guilty, innocent, or some blended gray in between the two, she knows that he will suffer before her deputies—and the Sheriff herself—are done with him.

  The sticky heat of the day is creeping into the building, and Summer can feel her hair clinging to the back of her neck. She collects all of her blonde locks into her hands, carding her hair carefully into place, before tying it up in a ponytail atop her head. Her gloves are resting on the windowsill, and she puts them on delicately, the white leather pristine and unblemished despite her typical work. Once they’re on and tightened at her wrists, Summer pulls the cuffs of her button-down sleeves over their openings. Her shirt is meticulously tucked into her jeans, and her belt and shining gold buckle complete the look that a younger Summer could never have imagined.

  Long ago, Summer had embraced the aesthetic of this place and her role. Even the name people know her by, the origins of which Summer has forgotten herself. But it had been Blake who convinced her of the boots, and she oddly didn’t regret it—however southern they had brought her up, however young she had been when she’d first started riding, Summer had never worn cowboy boots.

  But the End of the world had brought about a myriad of firsts for many people.

  There is a fantastic smacking sound followed by a heavy thud. Summer rolls her eyes, imagining that Zosia has let the interrogation get away from them at this point. She leaves the adjacent room she’s been waiting in and heads to the room where her deputies have been talking with the apprehended, only to see him and the chair he is tied to sideways on the floor.

  Typical of Zosia, this overuse of force. They’ve never been subtle, not even in their boarding school days. But when Summer enters, she raises a questioning eyebrow to Zosia’s counterpart, Blake—Blake, who usually does a much better job of keeping Zosia in line. Blake smiles back at Summer, blissfully unconcerned with the direction the “questioning” has taken.

  “Enough,” Summer says, just as Zosia is poised above their prey, ready to deliver a blow that would leave the man incapable of answering even the most basic of inquiries for some time. And time, while it seems infinite in this day and age, is still a commodity that Summer considers highly valuable.

  At the interruption, Zosia snaps out of it, throwing a disgruntled look to Summer—their lifelong friend, boss, and current nuisance—before rolling their eyes in spectacular fashion and picking the man up by the shoulders and sitting him upright once more. The action puts Zosia’s strength on impressive display; their frame is slim, their figure, lithe and their movements agile. But there is a wiry strength in their body that anyone would be remiss to ignore.

  Zosia crosses the room to Blake—their lover, confidante, and other half. The two embrace, their eyes never leaving Summer and the apprehended man at the center of the room.

  Summer circles him like a wildcat—majestic, measured, and sure of herself. His head remains down, his chin tucked to his chest. There is a fair bit of blood dripping from his nose and mouth. One of his eyes is already so swollen as to make his vision questionable. But Summer prefers more subtle tactics of interrogation than the two deputies who make up her right and left hands of justice; Zosia wouldn’t know subtlety if it ran naked in front of them, and Blake prefers other methods of intelligence-gathering altogether.

  The room is small, perhaps ten feet by ten feet total, and it is empty aside from the four people within its walls, and two rickety wooden chairs that have seen their fair share of questionings such as this one. The man is occupying one chair. The other, Summer grabs from the corner, placing it approximately a foot in front of him. She sits backwards on it, her long legs straddling it, her powerful arms crossed over its back.

  “Hello,” she says, and the word leaving her lips is more a purr than anything else.

  A wildcat indeed.

  “Look at me,” she continues. And her tone brooks no disagreement. The man’s head lifts the barest bit, and his one remaining good eye opens, taking her in. His breathing quickens. Summer smiles. “Good, good. Now,” she extends her hands in a gesture of goodwill. No weapons here, her open and empty hands say, nothing here with which to hurt you.

  An empty gesture, a lie.

  “Tell me your name, would you?”

  The man’s eyes are frantic, darting this way and that. He sees the two deputies across the room, but they’re hardly even paying attention now, having become more enthralled with each other. And the woman before him, he knows her, he thinks—at least knows of her, and that makes this all worse. So much worse.

  “My name,” he says, valiantly attempting not to stutter, to stumble over his words. The woman nods encouragingly to him, and he almost feels happy to comply. It’s odd, sitting here bleeding and swollen and bruised, that the dictator of his torture could make him feel safe—could almost make him feel... loved? “I’m Malcolm.”

  “Malcolm.” His name sounds like something wholly different, sweet and terrible, as it rolls off her tongue. Her voice is poison, and he would greedily drink it down if he could. “And do you know my name?”

  Malcolm struggles, because he doesn’t know her name. But he can guess who she is—he’d be a goddamned idiot if he couldn’t at least do that.

  “You’re...” He breathes deeply, his chest and ribcage aching painfully with the motion. “You’re the Sheriff.”

  At this, Summer throws her head back and laughs. Malcolm does not understand what could be funny, not about any of this. Almost as if Summer realizes that it really isn’t funny, not at all, the laughter dies in her throat and her face looks so stony and passive that Malcolm wonders if he had imagined the entire thing. Perhaps his life before entering this room had been Purgatory. And now this, this is Hell.

  He isn’t sure if that makes any
of this better or worse.

  “Malcolm, I am the Sheriff. Very good. And what is my job?”

  Malcolm swallows thickly. “Peace,” he says, “and order.”

  Summer doesn’t blink as she answers. “That’s just what it says on the badge, Malcolm. Dig deeper, will you?”

  He shakes his head futilely, looking again towards where the other two people in the room, Zosia and Blake, are entirely engrossed in one another in the corner, their arms entangled and their bodies pressed flush to the wall of the second floor interrogation room.

  Summer snaps her fingers right in his face, and Malcolm refocuses his attention, reminding himself as he does so that he only has one goal, if this is not, in fact, Hell: survival. As this thought crosses his mind, Summer can practically read his intentions. She knows that whatever she gets from Malcolm from this point forward may be tainted by his will to get out of here alive; anything he says could be a deception, or it could be the unmitigated truth, poised to bury her and her will either way.

  Summer has to change that. Has to work her will on this man, so that anything he says, anything he does, he says and does for her.

  She tilts her head back, and she waits.

  Malcolm thinks before he opens his mouth this time. A full minute passes, and Summer—the Sheriff—lets it.

  Finally, he speaks.

  “To win,” he says, and the words barely escape his mouth, gravelly and weak. He coughs and spits blood on the floor to the side of them both.

  Summer smiles, the corners of her lips curling into a malevolent grin. Does this man truly even understand how close he’s come to the truth?

  Does he understand how right he is, and how wrong?

  Summer and her Sisters had been in northeastern Arizona when the End had fallen down on all of them at once, like so much bullshit. They had been on a mission for the network of Whitmore Girls, an assignment that Arke had delivered to them directly after a rendezvous with her twin, Iris. It had been a simple mission—or at least, a mission simple enough for three Whitmore Girls. If anyone else had attempted it, three soldiers alone would have equated a mission doomed to failure. But Summer, Zosia, and Blake were a well-oiled machine. They’d completed their mission and been about to head out when the world had changed.

  They sheltered in place for a few weeks, which was probably the only reason they even lived through the Before and made it to the Now. Weeks after entering the old hospital’s basement turned fallout shelter, they exited and began heading immediately to Phoenix. They’d had little more to their names at that point then the equipment they’d gone in with, and the horses they’d stolen—the only three horses still left alive after the blast. If there was remorse to be had about those actions in the immediate aftermath, it had yet to catch up with them all these years later.

  Phoenix was a disaster zone. Millions dead. Infrastructure entirely collapsed. And in just those few short weeks spent underground, a pathetic series of gangs had risen up and taken control. Every street, every neighborhood, was run by someone more ridiculous and ill-equipped than the last.

  Summer and her crew plotted and planned, and then they took over a segment of the city. Street by street. Neighborhood by neighborhood. Until every gang leader and nuisance maker was dead, and the rumors were spreading like free advertising, propaganda to build her reputation up as high as it could go: there was a new Sheriff in town, and she wasn’t fucking playing around.

  That had been years ago. Others with similar ambition, drive, and strength had plowed into Phoenix, turning the tide of gang warfare to something that more resembled a series of small dictatorships than anything else. But it worked—Summer and the others kept order. And they made names for themselves, developed mutual and begrudging respect for one another over time. Each group was a House, and Summer’s House is very dear to her. Summer’s House is her family. And if you are a member of Summer’s family, you have certain rights in the city. But betraying Summer’s House, betraying her family? That comes with a price, and the price is steep.

  Malcolm is right—Summer loves to win. Which means she hates to lose.

  But this... this is about more than that. The leader of one of Summer’s rival and most hated Houses, the House of the Wolf, has been making moves against Summer. And that, Summer cannot abide.

  “What do you know of Wolf House, Malcolm?”

  Malcolm furrows his brow. “I... I haven’t been here long enough to know of many Houses other than yours, Sheriff.”

  “How long?”

  “Weeks,” he gasps, wheezing out a pathetic cough again. “Perhaps two months at most.”

  “And how many mouths are you responsible for feeding?”

  With a shuddering breath, he stares Summer right in the eyes for only a second or two before looking away, ashamed. “Four,” he says. “My wife, our two children, and myself.”

  “Children at the End of the world,” Summer tsks, as if Malcolm has broken some unwritten rule about procreating in the time of ultimate plague, strife, and human misery. “You know why you’re here, don’t you, Malcolm?”

  Malcolm suspects. But should he say, either confirming the Sheriff’s suspicions or else giving her reason to have him strung up in the streets?

  When he meets her eye again, he knows that he cannot lie.

  “A loaf of bread.”

  Summer’s face remains unmoved by Malcolm’s words. She glances at Zosia and Blake across the room, where Blake has Zosia pressed against the wall. Zosia surfaces just long enough to look at Summer and nod, confirming his story to be true. Then they turn back to their assault on Blake’s neck with their mouth.

  “We do not condone stealing in the House of the Owl.”

  “Do you condone starvation?” Malcolm asks.

  And his bitter tone causes even Blake to stop and turn in his direction. Often the calm to Zosia’s crass, Blake looks ready to tear into Malcolm herself for daring to question Summer this way. But Summer holds up her hand, causing Blake to back down. Summer has this effect without even turning away from Malcolm. This effect, Summer has always had on the people who follow her. Whether in Owl House Now, or Whitmore Before.

  “I have an understanding with everyone in my family, Malcolm, with everyone who is a part of Owl House. When you steal from one, you steal from all. When you harm one, you harm all. And if I were to allow one to get away with such indiscretion, I would be condoning every single member of my family to do the same. Have you ever run a business, Malcolm?” Malcolm shakes his head in the negative. In the Before, he had been an accountant for another firm, had never had his own business. And accounting wasn’t exactly a revered and requisite profession nowadays. “I care about the bottom line. And the bottom line is that you have committed a crime. And you must pay for that.”

  A sob leaves Malcolm’s throat. It has bubbled up so suddenly that he’s not entirely sure where it came from, why it has chosen this moment to make itself known. But then he realizes it, realizes it with a certainty that yields another sob, followed by an unforgiving series of them escaping his chest: his mortality is all too real, all too fragile. And he will probably not leave this room alive.

  “But—” Summer begins, and Malcolm blinks through his tears and up at the Sheriff, this steward of the west, this leader of Owl House, whose reputation more than precedes her. “But... I will allow you to pay for your crime with something other than your life. How does that sound?”

  Malcolm thinks of his wife and children, their hungry faces flashing through his mind’s eye; he can see them now, barely getting by—and he can see them in a few short days or weeks, starving and beaten, dying or dead.

  And as Malcolm’s mind shifts to his family, Summer can see them too—she can see into his mind, clear as day. This, a trick not even the Whitmore School could have taught her, a skill that her mother called magic one day, a curse the next. A bit of the supernatural that Summer had appreciated and despised in equal measure over the years. A secret talent that Summ
er’s mother kept hidden from her father until her dying breath and beyond.

  Summer had learned secret-keeping from the best, years and years before heading off to the Whitmore School at age twelve. Summer knew the value of such a skill, and she knew it well.

  Her eyelids flutter as Malcolm’s mind moves out of himself and closer to her. There is a woman in the eye of Summer’s mind, and there are also two little girls. Both blonde-headed, like the man before her. The children are still freckled, perhaps overly so—the parents have tried to protect them from the sun and the Winds, but they’ve only been able to do so much. Not enough. But Summer knows that this, inherently, is the value of places like the Phoenix of Now, the Houses in the area, the leaders like herself.

  And Summer tells herself that the vision does not sway her. Summer tells herself that the mental image of those two girls, those two innocents, does not stay her hand.

  Summer tells herself a lot of things. Because the truth has never been easy for Summer to face. And a truth like this is too close to weakness for Summer to willingly acknowledge.

  “Anything,” Malcolm says, squeezing his eyes tightly shut, willing his chest to stop heaving. “Anything for you, Sheriff. Anything to pay you back.”

  Summer smiles, a grim, wide smile that shows her teeth. Malcolm catches sight of it and shudders.

  She stands from her sitting position, her motions fluid, and gestures to Zosia and Blake to come closer. They immediately cease their kissing and inappropriate touching, and they approach Malcolm.

  “I’m so glad to hear you say that,” Summer says again, her voice sweet and light, cheery and hopeful. “You stole bread to feed your family, yes or no?”

  “Yes, Sheriff.”

  “You are sorry for your actions, yes or no?”

  “Yes, Sheriff.”

  “You are not a spy for Yuuko of Wolf House... Yes? Or no...?”