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The male could make almost anything out of wood.
When no sounds drifted up and he didn’t return, Nyx looked at Posie. Refocused on the open door.
“What’s he doing down there,” she muttered as she put her water bottle on the table.
She approached the cellar stairs and listened. Then she put a foot on the top step.
From down below, her grandfather said softly, “Tell your sister to wait up there.”
Nyx tightened her hand on the door knob. “Posie, you go sit with Peter. We’ll be back up in a sec.”
“Okay. You’ll come say goodbye before you leave?”
“Yeah.”
Nyx waited until that yellow dress flowed out of sight. Then she stepped down and shut the door behind herself. At the bottom of the stairs, she frowned as she looked around at the washer and dryer. The closed entrance to the underground rooms and the escape tunnel. The orderly shelves of paint cans, hardware, and supplies.
“Where are you—”
“Over here.”
Nyx followed the sound of the voice around the base of the stairs and found her grandfather standing in front of a narrow passage in the concrete walling that she’d never seen before. And as she approached, he ducked down and shuffled out of sight. Bending low, she proceeded along a cramped tunnel in the pitch darkness. Some distance in, there was the sound of a heavy lock being released, and then light flared from a single source.
“What is this . . .”
Nyx lost her voice as she entered a metal-walled space that was ten feet square with an eight-foot ceiling. Mounted on brackets from floor to ceiling was an arsenal of weapons, ammunition, and tactical gear.
As she grappled with shock, her grandfather went over and picked up an empty duffel bag. Putting it on a low table, he began picking off guns and clips of bullets from the display. A length of chain. A knife. A spike that looked like something out of a Dracula movie.
“What are you doing?”
“I cannot change your nature, either,” he said with quiet resignation. “So I send you off prepared. I know you’ve trained yourself how to shoot. I know you’ve trained yourself how to fight. You will take this and go. I will see to Posie.”
With that, he zipped up the bag, turned to her, and held the collection of weapons out.
“How have I lived here my whole life and not known about this?” When her grandfather did not reply, she shook her head. “I don’t know who you are.”
“You know enough from my having kept your sister and you safe all these years.”
“Against what threats?”
“No part of this world—or any other—is safe. You and I know this. We are similar in this regard, though I have tried over the years to ignore the parity. I would rather you enjoy the life Posie lives.”
“That will never be me.”
“And yet you go after Janelle because your heart refuses to let it rest.” Her grandfather jogged the duffel. “You will need what is in here if you have any hope of returning. I will watch over Posie.”
Abruptly, Nyx stumbled forward toward a dagger with a vicious . . . black blade. “Is this what I think it is?” She sent a glare over her shoulder. “Where did you get that.”
Her grandfather stared back at her, the bag of weapons he had chosen for her hanging in the air between them.
There was a long period of silence. And then Nyx took a step forward and accepted the arsenal.
“You have forty-eight hours,” he said.
“And then what? You’re coming in after me?” When there was no reply, she wanted to curse. Except . . . “Wait a minute. You know where the prison entrance is, don’t you.” When he said nothing, she raised her voice. “You know where Janelle is. Don’t you.”
“You have forty-eight hours.”
“How you can let her suffer? For fifty years.” She looked at the weapons. “Goddamn you, you know where Janelle is, and you’ve done nothing to help her get out even though she’s innocent—”
“You believe what you must.”
“What I must? She didn’t kill that male!”
“Yes, she did. And I was the one who turned her in.”
Nyx stopped breathing. Leaned forward. Put her head to the side like her hearing wasn’t working. “What did you just say.”
“I turned your sister in for the murder.”
Nyx started to shake her head, but it made her dizzy. “Why would you do that? How could you do that? How could you send her into that terrible place? I’ve heard the rumors—I know you have, too. She’s a female!”
Her grandfather’s eyes stared back at her with that calm of his, and in response, a fury she had never known raced through her veins.
Jabbing a forefinger at the old male, she spoke in a low, grim voice. “When I get back with her, I’m taking Posie, and we’re all getting away from you and this house. Blood does not make people family, and I disavow you from this moment forward.”
