Doomsday Rebirth novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Both Ways

Ezra's grandmother sat on an upturned bucket in the kitchen's dry store, wrapped in a shop blanket, with her hands folded.

She looked smaller than she had in the cellar and a great deal clearer.

I knelt in front of her.

Tuck had gone to stand guard outside the door, and I could hear him not listening.

"Baba," Ezra said. "It's Ezra."

"I know who you are." She slapped his hand away from her blanket.

"You think I'm gone? I'm old. I'm not a fool."

"Yes, Baba."

"Where is your mother's ring?"

"In the shop."

"Good." She turned her sharp, cloudy eyes on me. "You're the girl who carries soup."

"Yes."

"He told you what he did. Through the bars."

"Yes," I said. "Ezra told me."

"Did he tell you how to undo it?"

The dry store was very quiet.

Ezra's face did something I had never seen it do.

It opened.

"No," he said. "I didn't know there was a way."

"Because your mother said never tell, and she never told the rest," Baba said.

"She did it once, for your father. She forgot what his laugh sounded like."

"She was too proud to ask him to put it back."

"Put it back how?" I said.

"A loan goes out with a hand," Baba said. "It comes home with a hand."

"The one who got the gift gives it back, by her own wish. She knows the cost, and she says the name."

I looked at Ezra.

"Her blood," he said slowly. "To me."

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