Episode Two: The Sisterhood #2 Read online

“Y-yes, Sheriff. Not...” Malcolm sobs. “Not a spy, Sheriff.”

  “You will do anything for me, Malcolm—yes or no?”

  Malcolm looks into Summer’s eyes, and they both see his life flash before them.

  “Yes, Sheriff.”

  It’s the most sincere and reverent he’s sounded yet in her presence. Summer knows that she’s got him exactly where she needs him. Exactly where she knew she could him—and in record time, no doubt.

  “Deputies,” she says, gesturing Zosia and Blake forward. “The prisoner has admitted to stealing. What is the crime for stealing in the House of the Owl?”

  “Death,” the two say in unison.

  Zosia takes a utility knife from her back pocket and swiftly cuts through the zip tie that was keeping his hands secured to the back of the chair. She does nothing about the other two zip ties, one on each of his ankles. Blake grabs his right arm, Zosia his left, and they look to Summer for whatever direction comes next.

  “Death indeed,” Summer says. And at these words, Zosia presses the extended utility knife to Malcolm’s throat. He cries out, a pathetic but warranted sound ripped from his throat of its own volition. “But—” Summer says, raising one of her hands to stay Zosia’s. The utility knife gets lowered, and Summer raises her hand, curling her fingers. Blake extends Malcolm’s arm out, over the top of the chair where Summer had just been sitting moments ago. “Today is not the day you die, Malcolm.” He whimpers. “Today is the day you become my eyes and ears,” she says, “in the House of the Wolf.”

  And without even a pause, she pulls a hatchet from its holder on her hip, pivots to the side, and brings it down with a mighty swing, severing Malcolm’s right hand from his body at the wrist joint.

  The wail he releases is eerie and intense, and for a moment—just a moment—Summer dares to regret this life. Everything about it. Who she was Before and what she has Now become. She wonders about summers spent in the Smoky Mountains, trips to Maine with her father on business, shopping excursions to New York City with her mother. She remembers the boarding school where she met friends, enemies, lovers—where she made every right decision, and every wrong one, too. Summer remembers life after graduation, the joke that was college after the education she had received at Whitmore, and the way her career had progressed. She remembers what had taken her far from home, and what had driven her back, in time. She remembers... everything.

  And then she shuts it out.

  Malcolm is convulsing in her deputies’ arms, and Summer lets him bleed more—lets him hurt. Because she can’t be seen as weak. There’s little else that could be worse, in a world like this one.

  Once the shock sets in and just before he passes out, Summer picks up Malcolm’s severed hand. She holds it as if it’s still attached, as if she’s shaking it in greeting with her own right hand. Then with her left, she grabs ahold of Malcolm’s wrist. Blake and Zosia hold him steady, hold him still. And Summer presses the clean cut back together.

  “Whole once more,” she whispers, her eyes slipping shut. “Whole and ours.” When she repeats the words, the voices of her deputies join in. “Whole once more, whole and ours.”

  This will work, Summer is sure of it. And if it doesn’t, if the magic is spread too thin anymore to hold, then she’ll find another way to go about it. But she needs someone on the inside, someone that Yuuko will not expect. If a man claiming to have stolen from the Sheriff and gotten away with it shows up inside the territory of Wolf House, Yuuko will want to meet him straight away. And then Malcolm will be in—and he won’t forget Summer, won’t forget that the Sheriff had his life in her hands and gave it willingly back to him. That she healed him, in a way no one else in this godforsaken city could have done.

  Summer needs to know what Yuuko is up to, needs to know exactly how big the alliance is that is being formed against her. Because she knows alliances are being forged, and no longer with their leaders even being smart enough to do so in the dead of night—brazenly has Yuuko been conducting meetings in the daylight. She would love nothing more than to see Summer fall and fall hard. But Summer has a family to protect, and she doesn’t just mean the two friends chanting now alongside her.

  The people in the House of the Owl, in Summer’s family, are mostly not related by blood. But Summer has bound them all together, regardless. They are bound by something that isn’t quite love, but that also very much is. What Summer does for them is love because it keeps them alive. It isn’t love, because she can turn cruel and unforgiving in an instant. But that has kept most of them not just alive, but somehow thriving amongst the Waste of the world for the last several years.

  Her love, her mercilessness. Her kindness, her cruelty.

  She hasn’t always been like this, Summer.

  Sure, she was born and bred into a competitiveness that some would call sadistic. When she was in school, she had to be top of every class, first in every competition. After graduation, she went after the biggest and best assignments, the most prestigious work.

  Summer used to do things right. Now, she does whatever it takes. Even if that means using some magic of the Sisterhood to sow in Malcolm an unwavering loyalty.

  “... Whole once more, whole and ours. Whole once more...”

  They continue. Summer can feel the eyes of Blake and Zosia on her, but she does not break her concentration. Their words effuse the air, and it’s some minutes before Summer feels it: a pulsating heat thrumming through her fingertips and into Malcolm’s flesh. Her voice crescendos, and the other voices follow, blending into one voice, one chant, one thread of power in the air.

  Suddenly, the tension snaps—the sound tangible and crackling, like a lightning strike contained within the four walls of the room. All three of them get pushed backward from the chair holding their prisoner. Blake loses her footing momentarily, going down on one knee. Once Zosia has their wits back about them, they move to help their lover back up.

  Summer is standing still, looking down at what they’ve just done—what they’ve just successfully done.

  There is blood everywhere, but no more is making its way from Malcolm’s wrist. He somehow still has not lost consciousness, but his head lolls uselessly on his shoulder. He is also looking down the length of his arm, down to the fingers of his right hand. One by one, he twitches them. Then he clenches them into a fist. His hysterical bark of laughter breaks the silence.

  Summer’s eyes are alight with something, be it power or bloodlust or whatever the magic awakens inside a person. And she steps closer to Malcolm, unrestrained even as both of his arms are.

  “Summer—” Zosia starts, but Summer holds up a hand, silencing her friend, before she makes it to Malcolm’s feet.

  And there, Summer kneels. She kneels in his blood. And she looks up at him from where she sits at his feet. He looks down the crooked length of his nose at her, and Summer knows that she has gotten exactly what she always wanted out of this exchange: loyalty. Because when her eyes connect with Malcolm’s, Summer no longer sees the faces of his wife, his children.

  All Summer sees in Malcolm’s eyes, in his mind, is herself.

  “In the dead of night this very evening, you will go, under the cover of darkness and my silent and unseen protection, to the borderlands between the territories of Owl House and Wolf House. You will pass from my lands to Yuuko’s. Your story will spread—of how you escaped me, unscathed despite committing one of our lands’ cardinal sins. Let them know I seek to destroy you, let them think I will stop at nothing to keep my name from being dragged through the mud. Yuuko will bring you to her, but she will not know that you are mine. Do you understand, Malcolm? Do you see the plan unfolding even now in your mind’s eye?”

  As Summer has been speaking, so has the plan been embedding itself into the synapses of Malcolm’s brain. This being just one of Summer’s abilities, honed over the years on instructors and diplomats alike, on politicians and lobbyists, on enemies, even on her family, when the time came to leave, when her father wouldn’t have allowed it otherwise... And Malcolm’s mind accepts her instruction gladly, because he is now as loyal as any of Summer’s compatriots. And Summer knows the truth of it: that he would rather sever his own right hand than betray her.

  She really wouldn’t have it any other way.

  They exchange no more words. With a mere look at her deputies, they untie Malcolm and take him to get cleaned up, fed and watered, and back to his family by nightfall. Just as Summer has said, he and his family will remain unmolested in their journey as they leave the House of the Owl, as they move towards Wolf territory. And this piece of the puzzle falls into place.

  Summer leaves the room and goes to her own quarters. The knees of her pants are stained red, and she isn’t sure it’s a stain she’ll ever be able to remove. But she’s all right with that, she decides. A small sacrifice.

  She strips out of the dirty clothes, right down to her underwear. The old building, even with the windows thrown wide, is stifling and hot. Luckily the sun is on its descent into the west, and the room she chose all those years ago faces east—so she can rise with the sun, and avoid its hot face in the evening.

  One of the few real mattresses left in the place is on the floor in her quarters, and Summer drops down on it, exhausted. The magic has cost her something, she knows that—knows that there is only so much of it she can use before she has to replenish. And to replenish—to return to the Whitmore School—is not an option, not in this world as it is. Travel is dangerous, and to leave would be to give up control of Owl House entirely. Zosia and Blake are strong, but they aren’t Summer. They can maintain order for a handful of days, but not for the duration it would take Summer to return to Appalachia—to return to the place where the Whitmore School for Girls remains to this day, nestled th
ere in the mountains, hidden by a power that Summer still doesn’t quite understand, even when given the chance to harness a bit of it for herself.

  And she does believe that the Whitmore School still stands. Arke would have told her if something had happened to it, Arke would have felt it, Summer knows.

  And the Summons... the Summons wouldn’t have worked if the Source had been destroyed.

  And it worked, Summer can feel that in her very bones, like a desperate, pleasing ache in her cervical spine—a pinch every time a Whitmore Girl goes the wrong way, away from her; a slippery thrill every time they inch closer.

  Summer does not know how many of their Sisters are out there. She does not know how many have taken heed of her call. But perhaps Arke will know better, will know more, once she returns from the meeting with her sister, Iris.

  Those two sisters, Summer thinks, so different from the Sisterhood of Whitmore, but no less powerful.

  But Sisters, they always show up for each other. No matter what histories they may all share. No matter what memories, transgressions, and tragedies they remember, and no matter the role they each may have played in them.

  Whitmore Girls know how to atone for their sins. Summer has been doing it for years, hasn’t she? New sins committed; old sins forgiven. A cycle, vicious and daunting and habitual.

  But Whitmore Girls always make it right in the end. Summer needs this to be true, needs her Sisters to believe it just as she does.

  Summer is counting on it, after all.

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  Also by Tali Inlow

  The Sisterhood

  The Sisterhood: Episode One (Coming Soon)

  The Sisterhood: Episode Two (Coming Soon)

  The Sisterhood: Episode Three (Coming Soon)

  The Sisterhood: Episode Four (Coming Soon)

  The Sisterhood: Episode Five (Coming Soon)

  The Sisterhood: Episode Six (Coming Soon)

  The Sisterhood (Seasons)

  The Sisterhood: Season One (Coming Soon)

  The Sisterhood: Season Two (Coming Soon)

  Watch for more at Tali Inlow’s site.

  About the Author

  Tali Inlow is an up-and-coming author of queer speculative fiction.

  Read more at Tali Inlow’s site.

 

 

  Tali Inlow, Episode Two: The Sisterhood, #2

 

 

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