Mary E. Pearson - The Fox Inheritance

To the many friends who have intersected my life and changed me forever

Contents

PART I

THE ESTATE

Chapter 1

My hands close around the heavy drape, twisting it into a thick cord.

About the same thickness as a neck .

I drop my hands to my sides and wipe them on my trousers like someone might see my thoughts on my palms. Someone like Dr. Gatsbro. I wonder just how much he really knows about me.

I look out the window. From the second floor, Dr. Gatsbro is a speck on the lawn. The girl I'm supposed to know stands a few yards away from him. I watch him talking to her. She ignores him like he is nothing more than vapor. I don't know if it's deliberate, or if her mind is trapped, like mine often is, in another dark lifetime that won't let me go. There's a lot I don't understand about her, at least the way she is now, and though I'm a head taller and at least fifty pounds heavier than she is, I'm afraid of her. What is it? Something in her eyes? But I'm not sure I can trust my own eyes yet. Even my hands frighten me. Does Dr. Gatsbro know this too? He seems to know everything.

I turn away, looking at a wall of ancient bound books, and another wall covered with artifacts that reach back to some primordial age. Dr. Gatsbro is a collector. Are we part of his collection? Like stolen paintings that can't be shown to anyone? Only for private viewing? His estate is miles from anywhere, and we have never been beyond its gates.

He has spent the last year teaching us, helping us, explaining to us, testing us. But some things in this world are unexplainable. Maybe that's where he made his mistake, especially with us. Three months ago, he stopped being teacher and became prey. At least for her. I fear for him. I fear for me.

I return to the window to see if they're coming. It's time for our morning appointment. They're closer to the house now, but Dr. Gatsbro is still yards from her. I try to read his lips, a skill I never had before, but his hand cups his chin and blocks my view.

Her back is to me. Her head tilts in one direction, and then slowly in the other, like she's weighing a thought. She suddenly whirls and looks straight up at the window. At me. She smiles, her eyes as cold as ice. Her lips purse together in a kiss, and I feel their frost on my cheek.

I cannot turn away, though I know that would be the safest thing to do. I cannot turn away because she has an advantage over me. I cannot turn away for a reason she knows too well.

Because I love her.

She is all I have left.

I force my legs to move. To step away from the window. One step. Another. The last thing I see is her head toss back as she laughs. I fall backward into Dr. Gatsbro's chair, running my hands over the arms, listening to the quiet rasp of skin on leather, listening to his antique clock tick, listening to the squeak of the chair as I rock, and finally, listening to their footsteps on the stairs--his, heavy and shuffling; hers, like a cat, following stealthily behind.

"Locke, you're here. Good." Dr. Gatsbro crosses the room, and I relinquish his seat to him. He sits down, and I listen to the whoosh of air that leaves the chair under his weight, like the breath has been snuffed from it. "Sorry if we kept you waiting. We lost track of time out in the garden. Isn't that right, Kara?"

She looks at me, her eyes narrowing to slits, her hair a shiny black curtain barely sweeping her shoulders. Her lips are perfect, red as they have always been, red as I remember, but the smile behind them is not the same.

"That's right, Doc," she answers. "Time got away from us."

"Shall we begin, then?" Dr. Gatsbro asks.

I think she already has.

Chapter 2

They're not coming, son. No one is coming. They're all gone.

It was a year ago that we woke up. The first thing I did was gasp for breath. One breath after another until I was choking, spitting, struggling for another breath and another, the red-hot pain searing my chest, but still I battled for air, like I had finally surfaced from a deep, dark pool. I passed out.

Later when I opened my eyes again, Dr. Gatsbro was there in a room of color and light. I closed my eyes and refused to open them, too afraid that this was yet another torture unleashed on me, maybe a torture I had unleashed on myself, a trick to make me think it was all over.

"Come now, Locke. You're safe. Look. Look at the world. Open your eyes."

That was when I heard Kara scream. A true scream that I heard through my ears, not through my mind. My eyes shot open, and I tried to get up, but something held me back. Yes, another trick. You still can't help her.

"Your friend is fine. Trust me. You can relax, boy. Relax."

"Jenna!" I yelled. "What about Jenna? Where's Jenna?" I didn't hear her. Not even a moan. Time had no beginning or ending for me anymore, but I knew that somewhere in the blackness, I had once heard Jenna too.

A short time later, Dr. Gatsbro explained to me where I was and what had happened. That was when I understood Kara's scream.

Our families weren't coming. No one was coming. They were all dead.

No one we knew was still alive.

We had been gone for 260 years.

By the next day, I was taking a few steps, and by the next, I was allowed to see Kara. I cried. Six feet three and two hundred pounds, falling to my knees, sobbing like a lost child. Kara didn't cry. Her face was blank, but she came to me and held me and whispered in my ear the way she always had.

"I'm here, Locke. I will always be here for you."

But afterward, when we were alone, she slapped me and told me to never, ever allow Dr. Gatsbro to see my weakness again. My face stung for the rest of the afternoon.

The appointments with Dr. Gatsbro began the next day. There was a lot we still needed to know.

Chapter 3

"Do you know what today is?" Dr. Gatsbro asks.

I look at Kara. In a microsecond, rage flashes past her eyes, but then it carefully becomes the smile the doctor expects to see.

"One year since we woke," I say. Time is not a subject that we like to be reminded of, but better I answer than Kara.

"That's right!" Dr. Gatsbro says happily, like he is acknowledging a birthday. "And it--"

"It's about time we venture out into the world, right, Doc?"

"Kara, dear, we talked about this in the garden. In good time. When I feel you're ready."

Which will be never, you pompous asshole.

Kara's thoughts, not mine. I still hear them occasionally, even when I don't want to.

"But I do have something special to mark the occasion. A visitor."

He studies our faces to see our reactions. Kara hesitates for only a moment and then smiles, good girl that she is. Whatever he sees on my face, he doesn't like. Or maybe I have lapsed again, losing track of time and space as I often do, drifting to before, sucked back into my dark thoughts.

"Does a visitor disturb you, Locke?"

I'm quick to recover. "No. It's a surprise, is all. A good one. It will be very nice to meet someone new."

"Tired of my company?"

"No." I sit up straighter and smile, at the same time angry with him for making me afraid. I feel like I've been afraid forever, conscious of every step I take, and for the briefest moment, I imagine my hands as enormous and strong and his skull as small and fragile as an egg.

Kara giggles. Do it.

I shoot her a startled glance. Dr. Gatsbro has been nothing but good to us. He's our savior. I remember that. He's the only friend we have now, besides the hired help at the estate. There is Miesha, who is our attendant by day; Cole, who is there for us at night; Hari, who monitors our health and creates activities for us; and Greta, who prepares our meals. As Dr. Gatsbro puts it, we live a life of privilege.

"Who's coming?" I ask, leaning forward, trying to meet his eagerness halfway. I raise my brows and pull back one corner of my mouth in a grin. I know he responds to that facial expression.