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“You don’t know?”
“Not really,” she admitted. “Some I know of, some I don’t.”
“But one brother’s threatening the rest of you?” His skeptical tone had obviously reached her.
“My family’s not normal.”
“I’ll buy that.”
She threw him a look. “But you don’t believe that my brother is evil?”
“I don’t know enough to make that call.”
Ravinia said flatly, “I’m telling you the truth. I can’t make you believe it.”
He lifted his hands in surrender. “Go on. Explain about your family.”
She drew a breath. “My mother must have been pregnant most of her adult life, but I just have vague memories of her. I’ve heard stories, though. She had a lot of lovers and a lot of children from those lovers. I have a couple sisters who were adopted out as soon as they were born. Two, I think. No, three . . .” She shook her head and then started ticking off her fingers. “I just learned I had a couple brothers who were also adopted out as babies. We just got information on their adoptive parents and Ophelia’s helping Aunt Catherine find out more about them. Ophelia’s one of my sisters still at the lodge—Siren Song. That’s where most of us live. Anyway, after Natasha ran away Aunt Catherine really put us in lockdown.”
“Natasha is your sister.”
“Yeah.” Ravinia looked out the passenger window. “I thought Aunt Catherine was crazy and, you know, kind of a warden. It seemed unfair and I just couldn’t handle being locked up like that.”
“This Siren Song was a prison?”
“No, no. More like a fortress if you have to label it. But it didn’t matter to me. I had to escape, so I kept sneaking out, climbing over the wall and leaving.”
“But you said she sent you to find your cousin.”
“She did . . . after she realized the danger and knew that I had the best chance of finding Elizabeth as I’d been out enough to understand what I had to do. Some of my sisters . . . well, they’re kind of naive, I guess you’d say. They wouldn’t know what to do and Aunt Catherine had to stay and take care of them.”
“So you were elected.”
Ravinia shook her head. “I wanted to find Elizabeth. So that’s why I’m here. I don’t agree with Aunt Catherine on everything, but I get where she’s coming from now. She’s not half as crazy as some of the rest of my family. It’s just that she was always so secretive. She thought she was protecting us, but she would never tell us anything, so I gave her a hard time and just wanted out. Now . . . it’s just all kind of murky. The past. She tells it in bits and pieces, kind of on a need to know basis.”
Ravinia turned her attention away from the window and leaned against it so she could look straight at him. “Anyway, I also know one of my brothers, Nathaniel, died as a baby. He was kind of mentally slow, I think. His grave’s at Siren Song, like my mother’s. I don’t know exactly what happened to him. There’s some mystery about his death, and Aunt Catherine isn’t talking.”
Fun group, Rex thought, but held his tongue. Her countenance had become pensive, so he asked, “Something else?”
Her gaze lifted, finding his. “One of my cousins was a homicidal maniac.” She said it in that Oh, I almost forgot kind of voice.
“Another cousin?” Rex questioned and thought she was really off the rails. Her story got more fantastical by the second.
“Like a second cousin.” Ravinia seemed to think it over as if she wasn’t sure she wanted to go into it, then said, “His name was Justice. He breached the wall, climbing over to get at us, once.”
“And?”
“I stabbed him.” She held his gaze, nearly daring him to ask.
“You stabbed him?” He found it hard to believe she was violent.
“Yeah.”
Rex couldn’t help but ask, “What happened?”
“He survived. But not for long. He’s dead now, too.”
“Because of the wounds you inflicted?”
