The Sisters of Loving Grace Home for Orphans had raised an entire generation’s worth of boys and girls who had somehow found their way past the gas and into the Outskirts without any supervision. Now the very youngest of the original occupants were getting old enough that they’d soon be compelled to find homes of their own or accept work within the church.
Among the older boys there was one Rector “Wreck’em” Sherman, a lad who was seventeen if he was a day, and who was well known as a distributor of the illegal but much-desired lemon sap. It was a cheap drug—a yellowish, gritty, pastelike substance distilled from the Blight gas—and its effects were pleasant, but devastating. The “sap” was cooked and inhaled for a blissful and apathetic high, until chronic use began to kill… but not quickly.
Sap didn’t just damage the mind; it turned the body necrotic. Gangrene would catch and sprawl, creeping out from the corners of mouths and eating away cheeks and noses. Fingers and toes would fall away, and in time, the body might fully transform into a parody of the undead “rotters” who no doubt still shambled hopelessly through the walled-up quarters.
Despite the obvious drawbacks, the drug was in high demand. And since the demand was good, Rector was ready with a full assortment of pipes, suggestions, and tiny paper-wrapped packets of lemon sap.
Briar had tried to keep Zeke away from Rector, but there was only so much she could do to restrain him—and, at the very least, Rector did not seem interested in letting Zeke sell or abuse the sap. Anyway, Zeke was mostly interested in the community, the camaraderie, and the chance to fit in with a batch of boys who wouldn’t throw blue dye on him or hold him down and write terrible things across his face.
So she understood, but that didn’t mean she liked it, and that didn’t mean she liked the red-haired beanpole of a boy who answered her loud and impatient summons.
She pushed her way past a nun in a heavy gray habit and cornered Rector, whose eyes were too big and too earnest to be innocent of anything.
“You,” she began with a finger aimed high, up under his chin. “You know where my son is, and you’re going to tell me, or I’m going tear your ears off and feed them to you, you dirty little poison-pushing wharf kitten. ” All of it came out without rising into the territory of yelling, but every word was as heavy as a hammer.
“Sister Claire?” he whimpered. He’d retreated as far as he could and there was nowhere left for him to go.
Briar shot Sister Claire a look that would’ve rusted metal, and returned her attention to Rector. “If I have to ask twice, you will regret it for the rest of your life—however long that may be. ”
“But I don’t know. I don’t. I don’t know,” he stammered.
“But you can guess, I bet, and it would probably be a very good guess, and so help me if I don’t hear some guesses coming out of your mouth I will do you great and terrible bodily harm, and there isn’t a nun or a priest or anyone else in a God-given uniform who will recognize you when I’m finished. The angels will weep when they see what’s left of you. Now, talk. ”
His frantic stare went wildly back and forth between Briar, the openmouthed Sister Claire, and a priest who had just entered the room.
Briar caught on just in time to keep from punching the boy in the gut.
“I see, all right. ” He didn’t want to talk about business in front of his landlords.
She seized his arm and pulled him forward, saying over her shoulder, “Pardon me, Sister and Father, but this young man and I are going to have a little talk. We won’t be but a moment, and I promise, you’ll have him back before bedtime. ” And then, under her breath as she led the kid out into the stairwell, “Kindly keep in mind, Mr. Wreck’em, that I made no promises about your condition when I return you. ”
“I heard, I heard,” he said. He bounced off a corner and tripped over a stair as Briar pulled him down.
She didn’t know where she was leading him, but it was dark and quiet, and only a pair of tiny wall lamps and Briar’s lantern kept the stairs from being impossible to navigate.
Down by the basement there was a narrow spot behind the steps.
She jerked Rector to a halt and forced him to face her. “Here we are,” she told him in a growl made to terrorize a bear. “No one else to hear. You talk, and you talk fast. I want to know where Zeke went, and I want to know now. ”
Rector shuddered and slapped at her hand, trying to peel her fingers off of his slender bicep. But she didn’t let go. Instead, she squeezed harder, until he made a sharp whine and rallied enough nerve to twist himself out of her grasp.
“All he wants is to prove that Leviticus wasn’t crazy or a crook!”
“What makes him think he can do that? And how could he even begin such a task?”
The boy said, with far more caution than innocence would merit, “He might’ve heard a rumor from someplace. ”
“What rumor? From whereplace?”
“There were stories about a ledger, weren’t there? Didn’t Blue say that the Russians paid him to do something funny with the test?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Levi said that. But there was never any proof. And if there was proof, you couldn’t prove it by me—because he never showed it to anyone. ”
“Not even you?”
“Especially not me,” she said. “He never told me a thing about what he was doing in that laboratory, with those machines. He sure as hell never shared any of the money details. ”
“But you were his wife!”