They Let Me Bleed Out for My Sister's Show novel · Chapter 23 of 32

Chapter 23: The Crash

The Alpha's deputies took my mother out of the kitchen at four o'clock that afternoon.

They did not put her in cuffs.

The council had ordered her to remain in the territory, under watch at the house on Pine Road, until a full hearing could be held on Moonrise Eve.

She went with her handbag over her arm and her chin up, and she did not look back at any of us.

My father went with her, because someone had to.

I drove Cora north myself, in Rafe's truck, with Rafe in the back seat to keep out of the way.

She said nothing for the first hour.

By the second, she had started to shake.

Dr. Lowry had cleared her spare room, with a cot and a bucket and a night nurse in the corridor.

By nine, the shaking had turned into a fever.

By ten, Cora was curled on the cot in a wet T-shirt, with her teeth chattering and her skin burning when I touched it.

I sat on the floor beside her and pressed a cold cloth to her neck.

"It hurts," she said. "Ivy, everything hurts, and I can't feel her. I've always felt her, a little, like a pulse in my teeth, and now there's nothing."

"That's the tonic leaving."

"That's not her. She was never there."

"I know."

"I keep reaching for her."

She cried without sound, with her eyes squeezed shut, and I wrung the cloth out and laid it back on her forehead.

The night nurse looked in once and went away.

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