Outside, the lock beeped.
Esme whirled around, dropping the vial so that it shattered across the tile floor. The door opened.
Isabel stepped in.
She didn’t look like herself. Beneath the bulky coat, she was much thinner than Esme remembered, and she wore her hair swept up in a way that revealed the too-sharp lines of her cheekbones. For a moment, she only stood in the doorway, and that sallow light shone straight through her skin.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” she said.
“You’ve been breathing Salamander.”
It was the first thing Esme could think to say. Isabel’s expression didn’t change. She stepped inside, closed the door. This was more than Esme expected, for her to close the door. Isabel scanned the room. Her eyes settled on the folded clothes on the bed, then Esme by the sink, then the glass sparkling across the floor.
“What did you do?” she said.
“I got rid of it. You shouldn’t be doing that stuff.”
Esme braced herself for the addict’s howling she always saw on holos, shrieking and clawing and gnashing of teeth, but Isabel only dropped her bag on the floor and said, “I can get more of it, you know.”
Esme did not know how to respond. Isabel peeled away her coat and scarf. She seemed too frail to move, but she did, albeit with slow, shuffling strides. She walked over to her bed and knocked the folded clothes onto the floor.
“You had no right to come into my apartment,” she said, not looking at Esme.
Esme did have that right. She was CEO of the Coromina Group. But she said nothing.
Isabel looked over at her. “Why are you here?” Her voice had a husky quality that Esme didn’t remember, a roughness like the last thirteen years had rubbed over her like sandpaper. “Need more of my blood?” She pushed up the sleeve of her sweater to reveal her arm. Her veins stood out pale blue against the white of her skin. “Didn’t you assholes learn your lesson the first time?”
“We don’t need your blood anymore.”
Isabel laughed, a sharp, harsh bark. “Yes, well, I do watch the newsfeeds now and then, down at the cafe.” She pressed an indentation on the wall and a clunky old auto-cleaner creaked out, jerking sideways back and forth across the floor, heading toward the broken glass. “Once you had the R-Troops going, you didn’t need me anymore. Is that it?”
Esme’s face flushed hot. “You ran away.”
Isabel glared at her. “What choice did I have?”
Esme felt a stab through her chest. The auto-cleaner buzzed around her feet. “I didn’t know,” she whispered.
“You didn’t know,” Isabel said. “Until you did.” She draped herself across the bed, as if standing required too much effort. Esme braced one hand against the counter to steady herself. When the auto-cleaner finished, that was when she’d tell her. It was a good deadline.
Neither of them spoke. Isabel pressed her hand over her eyes. The auto-cleaner made one last circle around Esme’s feet and then trundled off back to its storage unit. The floor was clean.
“It did a good job,” Esme said.
“Why are you here?”
Esme looked away, over at the window. Snow had piled up a few inches on the outside sill.
“Dad’s dying,” she said.
“Good,” said Isabel.
“You don’t mean that.”
Isabel shrugged. “He caused a lot of harm, didn’t he? To the Divested, to the people living here.” She gave Esme a hard look. “To all the guests at the party that night.”
“You’re right,” Esme said. “I won’t deny that.”
Isabel kicked at the floor. Shrugged.
“He wants to see you,” Esme said. The room was too tight, too small. How could Isabel live like this, in this closet in a frozen wasteland? “He wants to see all of you. I know you know that Adrienne and Daphne left after you did.”
“Well, we always shared a connection,” Isabel said. “We had the same mother.”
Esme’s cheeks burned. She thought back to the other things her sisters had shared that she been cut out of. The secret language of the Divested. The tea parties in the garden. An entire childhood. “We all had the same father, and he’s dying. He wants to see you.”
“Why?”
Esme knew it wasn’t worth lying. “He’s handed the company over to me, and he needs all three of you to cede any claim to the company. You have to do it in person.”
Isabel laughed. “I thought for sure you’d try to tell me he wanted to apologize.” She stretched her legs out on the bed, pressing her back against the far wall. Esme moved toward her, warily, the way she would approach a wild animal. The way she had approached the Divested leader.
“He tried to claim that, actually. But he didn’t mean it.”
Another laugh. It almost felt easy, being here with Isabel. Easier than it had with the twins, at least.
“Are you worried about me stealing your inheritance?” Isabel asked.
Esme stopped. “No.”
“Good. You didn’t need to be.” Isabel toyed with the end of her hair. “Why do you think I should go see him? Really? Since you’re not worried about the inheritance.”
Esme stopped. She considered all the answers to the question. Only one was true.
“To watch him die,” she said.
Isabel stared at her for a long moment. Then she laughed, tossing her head back, her thin hair fanning out above the bed.
“That’s why Adrienne’s going,” Esme said.
Isabel pulled her knees up to her chest. She studied Esme for a long time. Esme shifted her weight, ran her hands over the counter.
“I knew you were coming,” Isabel said suddenly.
“What?” This statement was like a slap. “How?” But as soon as she asked the question, Esme knew.
“The Divested,” Isabel said. “They told me. I can speak to them if I go outside the city limits. I can cross over to their world. I don’t do it much anymore.” She shrugged.
“Why not?” Esme leaned against the counter. She could barely stand.
“They don’t have anything for me either.” Isabel picked at her bedspread.
Esme felt hollow. “Come home,” she blurted. “Please. Not for Dad. Not for me, either. Just—”
But Isabel acted as if she hadn’t heard. She rubbed her fist over the bedspread, as if she were trying to smooth it down. “They told me you made an arrangement with them. With Aiden.” Isabel peered up at her. “They told me about Aiden, about the R-Troops, the ones who got stuck in their dimension. They wanted me to come back and live with them. But I didn’t want to.”
“Why not?” Esme asked, her voice barely a whisper.
“It wasn’t my home.” Isabel shrugged. “After the surgery, I thought it would be better, living with them. That they would understand, you know? But they didn’t. I’m too human. It wasn’t until I tried to live there I finally realized it.” She looked up. “So, keep that in mind, if you want to make this work. To find a way for us all to live together.”
“I know it’ll be difficult,” Esme said. “But I have to try. We’ll have to designate certain areas for the Divested. Star’s End will be the first. They can change the landscape, make it safe for them to live—I’ll get Psych involved. Maybe Aiden and the other R-Troops, too. Show the worlds that it’s possible to be both.”
Isabel nodded. “And you’ll be able to do it all, too. Since Dad’s dying. You’re going to be CEO.”
“I am CEO.”
Isabel’s head jerked up. She stared at Esme for a long time. Esme didn’t dare speak. She knew she’d probably already said the wrong thing. “But he hasn’t died yet.”
“He gave me the position a few weeks ago. We’re still working on the public announcement.”
Isabel’s expression was blank. Esme moved toward her again, her footsteps echoing off the tile floors. When she reached the bed, she put out one hand, tentative, and pressed it against the mattress. Isabel didn’t p
rotest, didn’t move away. Esme slid onto the bed and tucked her legs up underneath her. She and Isabel looked at each other.
“I’ve already shut down weapons manufacture,” Esme finally said. “I’m granting all engineered soldiers full citizenship, including the R-Troops. They can do anything they want.”
Isabel’s eyes shimmered, and Esme felt her own sorrow welling up inside of her.
“I promise,” she said, in a husky voice, “things are going to be different. I promise.”
A tear slid down Isabel’s cheek.
“I promise,” Esme said. “I promise. I promise.” She wrapped her arms around Isabel and pulled her in close, and when Isabel let her, then Esme’s tears came too. She wept into Isabel’s hair. “I promise,” she whispered. “I promise. I promise.” It became a chant. It became a prayer. Nearly twenty years before, she had made that first promise to Isabel, and she had broken it.
She would not break this one.
• • •
When Esme left the Lacheta, stepping out of the shabby lobby and into the freezing, choking street, Isabel was at her side.
It was the first thing that had felt right to her in years, that she and her sister could walk together to the Coromina car Esme had called earlier, a backpack full of clothes hanging from Isabel’s right shoulder, or that they would ride in the back seat to the shuttle that would take them back to Ekkeko. Isabel was quiet, and she stared out the window at the inky black of the stars.
“Are you all right?” Esme asked her, when they were surrounded by the pitch of space.
“I’m not sure.” Isabel turned away from the window. Her eyes were huge in the drawn lines of her face, but she smiled, thin and wan. “Thank you, though.”
“For what?”
“For coming to look for me.”
And with that, Esme felt a pang in her chest. All the things she wanted to say were trapped inside her. She had tried to find Isabel in those days after Star’s End’s destruction. Those months. Those years. But Isabel was unfindable. She had wiped herself clean. For a long time, Isabel had thought she had wanted it that way. Maybe she hadn’t after all.
When they arrived at their father’s house, Daphne and Adrienne were already there, alerted by the holos Esme had sent on the last drive through Watchet. They waited outside, in the bright tropical sun. Daphne in her windfarmer’s clothes, Adrienne in a dress the same colors as the hibiscus growing around the porch. When Esme stepped out of the car, they said nothing. But when Isabel stepped out, looking even frailer in the sunlight, Adrienne stood up, her hands hanging at her side.
“It’s been too long,” she said.
“Two years.” Isabel floated over the lawn.
“You stopped answering my holos.”
“Yeah,” said Daphne. “Mine, too.”
Isabel stopped. She looked up at the house. Esme kept her distance, afraid that if she crowded them, they would scatter, that she would lose all three of them again.
Isabel shrugged. “I had to hightail it out of Isera City. I’m fine now.”
Isera City. Another town on Quilla, frozen into the landscape.
“I told you if you had trouble, you could stay with me.” Adrienne swooped down on Isabel and pulled her into an embrace, an easy one, as if they hadn’t been separated for years.
“And you were always welcome on the farm,” Daphne added.
You were always welcome here, Esme thought, but she said nothing. She knew it wasn’t completely true. Although it was now.
“You didn’t need to worry about me.” Isabel stepped back. She glanced over at Esme. “I guess we should get this taken care of, shouldn’t we?”
For the first time, the twins acknowledged Esme’s existence. Adrienne’s gaze flicked over as quick as lightning. Daphne studied her like a painting. And Esme’s stomach twisted into knots. She wanted to tell them that things were going to be different. She wanted to tell them that because they came back, she knew she was no longer in any danger of becoming her father.
But she only smiled. “Yeah. We should.”
They went inside the house, one at a time, Esme leading the way. Their father was no longer in his bedroom but in a clean chamber that had been installed in the house’s parlor. A doctor waited for them outside and handed them clean suits.
“Any contagion could kill him at this point,” the doctor explained.
The twins looked at each other. Isabel ran a shaking hand through her hair. None of them said the obvious, that he was dying, who cared if he was contaminated?
But then Esme grabbed the suit and pulled it on, and the others followed.
When Esme and the others stepped inside the clean chamber, the walls hummed with light and then faded. They were contagions, but acceptable ones.
Their father was curled up on his bed. The vitals monitor blinked at this temple, and he was far gone enough to require breathing aids, and so wires bled out of his mouth, spilling around his chest. This was the first time Esme had seen him since he moved into the clean chamber. She had avoided him so assiduously after shutting down weapons manufacture, and she had been preoccupied, too—with the breaches, with her new role of CEO, with finding her sisters. Now that she was here, she was struck by how small he seemed, how insignificant. This was the man who had lived for three hundred years; this was the man who had tried to mold her into another version of himself.
But he had failed. Her sisters were here, and he had failed.
“You found them all,” he said, his voice raspy. He tilted his head, turning it toward Daphne, toward Adrienne. Toward Isabel. Esme’s body tensed. But Isabel looked away from him first, her hair falling into her eyes. He said nothing.
“They’re here to cede their claims to the company,” Esme said. “That’s all.”
Her father laughed, then coughed, then choked. Blood sprayed across his pillow. He nodded. “I figured as much.”
One scrawny hand crawled across his bed, toward a lightbox affixed to the frame. He swatted at it, the movement almost too much for him. The lightscreen illuminated beside the bed, revealing Daphne’s files. Already, they had been changed to reflect that she no longer had any legal claim to the company.
“Walk through,” Esme said. “It needs your DNA to confirm.”
Daphne did. The words in the file rearranged themselves. Daphne no longer had her claim.
Isabel went next, stepping through, her head ducked down. She smiled shyly at Esme when she finished. “Good luck,” she said.
And then, finally, Adrienne, who studied her file for a long time. She studied it long enough that Esme was almost afraid she would refuse, that they would have to fight each other, that there would never be a connection between them again. But then Adrienne sighed and looked over her shoulder at Esme.
“Don’t fuck it up,” she said, and stepped through.
Afterward, they stood in an awkward clump. Their father looked at the holos and nodded once. “It’s all yours,” he said, not looking at Esme, although she knew he was speaking to her. “Let’s hope that bullshit decision of yours pays off.”
“I’ve been working on it for the past five years,” Esme said. “I know what I’m doing.”
He laughed, coughed, shook his head. “Won’t have me around if you screw up.”
“Stop it,” Isabel said. “She’s done more good in the last few weeks than you ever did in the last three hundred years.”
Esme expected him to lash out at her, one last cruelty before he went. But instead, he fell silent, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. Esme edged over closer to her sisters.
“Well,” he said, after a time. “She brought you here. So, I suppose you’re right.” He tilted his head toward them. He was a ghost of the man Esme remembered. “One last time for me to see all of you.” A fractured, trembling smile. “Isabel.”
Her face hardened, and her body went very still. Esme braced herself, ready to whisk Isabel out of the room if she needed to.
But all her father
said was “You always looked the most like your mother.”
Silence, except for Daphne, who made a scoffing noise under her breath.
“I suppose I just wanted to keep a part of her,” he sighed.
“Really?” Adrienne said. “That’s your excuse? Everything you did”—she gestured at Isabel, at Esme, at all of them—“and you’re going to try to blame it on our dead mother?”
He didn’t answer, only closed his eyes.
“It’s not worth it,” Esme said softly. “Let’s go.”
And so, they left their father after that. They all knew that was the closest he’d come to an apology. They went back outside, the sun bright after the dimness of the clean chamber. Esme blinked her eyes against the light.
“So, there it is,” Adrienne said, turning to her. “You brought us home. You secured your claim.”
“I got to see you again,” Esme said.
Adrienne frowned at this, pretended to look down the street. She brushed one hand over her hair. Daphne kicked at the grass. All four of them stood in silence, the hot sun beating down on them. And then Isabel spoke.
“I’m not going to stay on Quilla anymore.”
Esme closed her eyes. Her chest constricted. They had talked about it, of course, but Isabel had still been undecided. Still been unsure.
“Good,” said Daphne.
“I’m coming back to Ekkeko.”
Esme forced herself to open her eyes, to look at Isabel. She seemed transparent in the sunlight.
“Why?” asked Adrienne.
“I’m going to help Esme.” Isabel crossed her arms, shifted her weight. “We’re going to find a way to help the Divested. Together.”
Esme smiled. Her heart was beating too fast. She looked at her sisters, at Daphne and Adrienne, and Isabel. As adults, they felt like strangers. But they were still her strength.
“Thank you,” she said.
Isabel shrugged.
Daphne was the first to react. She nodded, shoved a lock of hair out of her face. “Just be careful.”
“I’m not Dad,” Esme said. “Not anymore.”
Daphne looked up at her, and maybe there was something like a smile in her expression. And Adrienne, squinting into the sun, almost seemed to approve too.