Tillie flexes her fingers and I catch the knuckle busters on her hands. “Am I the only one without a lethal skill?” I whisper as we make our way through to the main room and finally through another opened door.
“Your lethal skill is your husband, honey. Trust me on that.” I pause when we come to stairs that lead up to what looks like a trapdoor.
“What is this place?”
Tillie sighs. “It’s our other home, and fortunately for us, we get to raise some hell.”
“But how did you get in?” I ask, when Madison is pushing open the lock.
“Well…” Tillie shrugs. “Let’s just say they like me better here, and Sam, who is right now distracting Veronica.”
I don’t want to think about what he’s doing to distract her, but I follow them up. I squeeze dirt and earth as I pull my body up to stand, brushing my palms down my legs. Trees reach for the sky, with flowers and gardens planted all around them.
“Wow.” It is beautiful. I have never seen a forest like this. It looks like something out of a fantasy movie.
“Perdita is unique,” Tillie says as we begin making our way through the slender saplings. They obviously know where they’re going, so I follow their lead. “Wait until you meet the people. Nocturnals.”
“They don’t like me,” I say, my hand resting on my belly. I almost forgot all about everything that was revealed to me earlier, and subconsciously, I still don’t believe it. Not until I take a test.
“Why do you say that?” Madison asks. I step around the flowerbeds that are sprawled out everywhere until we come to a clearing of dirt. Solar lights line the edge of every path. “Because I met one. He came down when I first got there and didn’t care.”
“He didn’t know who you were, Saint. No one here knows that our crazy mother had another daughter.” Madison’s phone rings in her pocket and she swipes it unlocked, bringing it to her ear.
Her eyes fly between Tillie and me. “Okay. See you guys soon.”
“They’re coming?” I ask, just as we reach the end of the road. I haven’t missed the little streets that veer off the main road, or the tiny signage that points down with unusual Latin road names. It almost feels like Hobbiton.
“Oh, they’re coming, all right.”
We make our way onto the main street. Shops line either side, perfectly symmetrically, but all of their doors are closed. I remember Tillie saying something about the people who live here being nocturnal. I bring my hand up to shade my eyes from the sun that’s setting over the mountains that are tucked behind the shops. It is possibly the quickest kidnapping event ever.
“Is it safe for me to be walking down here so casually?”
“Yeah, we’re heading into the big mansion right there. It used to be our mother’s, but now Valentina resides inside.” Tillie’s distaste for this girl is obvious with the way she spits her name.
“And I take it we don’t like Valentina?” I ask, just as a store across the road catches my eye. Perdita Convenience Store. I pause. I don’t realize I have stopped walking until Madison and Tillie are in front of me, glancing back between the bright, very open lights of that one shop and me.
“What’s wrong?” Madison asks, her hand on my arm. My lips curl beneath my teeth as I fight with myself. They’re my closest friends. I should be able to tell them the news Veronica tried to hide. If I do, it will make this easier. We can get the test and take it all before Brantley is even here, and I can tell him for sure if I’m pregnant based on a test instead of some spiteful words out of a hateful woman’s mouth.
I blink slowly. “I think I might be pregnant.”
There’s a small gasp. Tillie squeezes my other arm. “You think?”
“Well, Veronica said I was. She wanted to keep me there until I had the baby. The woman is seriously unstable.”
Madison is already storming across the road. We both jog after her as she pushes her way through the front doors. “We’re not doing the guessing game.”
After searching the aisles, we find the right one and I grab the bright pink box that spells the words I need. After Tillie pays with her actual presence, our stroll down the main street suddenly turns into more of a sprint. Tillie pushes open the gates as we pass the guards sitting at the front. “Valentina isn’t here right now, so let’s just get this over with.” The house is extravagant. It drips an opulence that no amount of money in a mundane life could ever afford. The walls on the outside are marble, the trimmings gold. She pushes open the door and it spills out onto a lobby with an imperial staircase that leads up to the second level.