Chapter Twenty Eight

1-27. I have reached 50k now but there'll be a couple more chapters to round it off...

Bracken was confused.

One minute she was having yet another cryptic conversation with Esmeralda, the next she was onstage in front of a crowd of strangers baying for her blood. It was almost as if time had skipped a beat somehow. Maybe she’d fallen asleep for a couple of minutes and been moved here? Or more likely, Esmeralda had employed some kind of sneaky trick.

She looked about, blinking a lot and trying to smooth out her appearance a little. Al was there, she noticed, and the guy who sometimes gave Adric a ride home from the library on his motorbike. There was also a dog, and a suited gent who looked the spitting image of a daytime television presenter whose name she couldn’t place.

“Ricky something,” she wondered aloud, stretching her head. As she did so she became aware that she had the mother of all headaches. “No, that’s not right.”

“Welcome to the show, Bracken,” the man was saying. “How are you today?”

“Confused,” she replied truthfully. “I’ve had a lot going on lately.”

“Oh yeah,” he said, apparently sympathetically, “what sort of thing? Work, studies and so on?”

“Well up to a point,” she agreed hesitantly, “but also my flat burned down and my Uncle and baby went missing so that’s been quite stressful.”

“Your child went missing,” he responded slowly and thoughtfully, “so you stopped looking for him to come on here and build up a career as a Z-List celebrity?”

“Well no, that’s not – “

“Wanted to get a book deal, did you? Sell the story to all the papers and ladies magazines?”

“What?”

“I know your type. You sicken me. I might literally be sick just from looking at you and your sickening face.”

“Hey,” Al butted in, “that’s pretty unfair. You don’t even know her.”

“Oh but I do,” the Kylienator responded with a shark like grin, “I know her better than she knows herself.”

“Sake,” Bracken muttered, “you’re worse than Esmeralda.”

“My name isn’t Esmeralda,” announced the woman who up until a couple of moments ago we had thought was Esmeralda. “It’s Magenta.”

“Magenta?” Al spluttered incredulously, “as in Esmeralda’s long lost sister Magenta? The evil one who tried to kill her?”

“I think she may have succeeded on that front,” Bracken informed him.

“Sorry, what’s going on?” Jeremy asked, having lost the thread somewhat. “I’ve been employing you for over a year now, Esmeralda, and now you turn round and say you’re actually Magenta?”

“Yes. It’s not that much of a struggle, we’re identical twins. The only adjustment you need to make is to the first name you call me by.”

“Identical twins, huh,” Tim mused. “That’s the sort of thing that always happens in crappy romance fiction, or daytime telly like Diagnosis Murder. It never happens in real life. And I should know, I spend half of my real life dealing with the mythical and/or inexplicable.”

“So did the memory switch take place or not?” Bracken asked.

“Partially. I took on much of Esmeralda’s academic knowledge, but none of her… emotional baggage,” she enunciated with the smallest of nods in Al’s direction.

“What memory switch? What are you two talking about?” chorused Al and Tim. The audience were long gone, and most were engaged in a competition to see who could count how many hairs were on Brian to the nearest hair. How they would check and verify a final result was yet to be determined.

“Why don’t you tell them that, Jeremy,” suggested Magenta/Esmeralda with a toothy grin. “You did commission a lot of this work, after all.”

Jeremy Kyle’s lip wobbled. He looked like a rabbit caught in headlights. And not in a good way.

“I don’t know what you’re referring to,” he ventured, in a foolhardy way. Of course she was going to call his bluff, she had nothing much to lose, except the albatross of a dead twin around her neck.

“The work I’ve been doing to condition the perfect guests for your show,” she replied cheerfully. “You know, implanting false memories in groups of people who look right for the parts you create for them. So Bracken, here, was chosen to be a single mum. Nicky was to be her eccentric uncle. The baby used was created in a lab, and one of my guards was used as a surrogate.”

“That’s preposterous,” Kyle blustered, “why would I bother?”

“Because you’re afraid,” the artist who was previously known as Esmeralda explained, enjoying herself immensely. “You’re worried that your show will be a failure, because your guests are always the same. You have the same people back for two or three follow up show a year and they’re always still stuck in the same pathetic rut they were in when you met them for the first time.”

“Bibble,” Jeremy Kyle offered in his defense. It didn’t wash.

“You got wind of the work I was doing in South America, under my sainted sister’s name because my own is cursed in the world of science. And you hired me, no questions asked, to create contestants for your shows that would turn out to have hidden depths. I got the money to support my research, you got the perfect blend of daytime television.”

“Not true,” Kyle said, aware that he was fighting a losing battle but encouraged by the fact that his studio audience didn’t seem to have noticed.

“I can’t believe you’re Magenta,” said Al, rather slow to react. “What did you do to Esmeralda, exactly?”

“Oh, you don’t want all the gory details,” she smiled sanguinely. “But she’s been dead a long long time.”

“That was you, when I thought it was her, returning from her travels.”

“Yes.”

“Explains a lot,” he admitted.

“Yes, it does. The fact I didn’t know where anything was unless it related directly to science. The lack of emotional memory or attachment. The point that I suddenly loved sun dried tomatoes, whereas previously I loathed them to the point that even just seeing a jar made me want to hurl.”

“Es didn’t hate sun dried tomatoes that much,” Al said vaguely, although if he was honest he couldn’t really remember.

After all, she must have been dead for a number of years now.

“Why did you do it?” he asked.

“For science,” came the reply.

“I don’t mean the brain stuff,” he frowned, “I mean killing your twin.”

“So do I,” she countered. “I killed her for science. And partly out of jealously, I suppose.”

“Don’t even think about trying to escape,” Al turned to Jezza, “or you’ll be sorry.”

The man himself blushed and stopped his embarrassing attempt to scale the studio wall. It would have crumpled his fine Italian suit, anyway, he told himself.

“So hold up and rewind a bit,” Bracken said, “you conditioned me and Nicky to think that we were related, but we’re not?” She looked around her. “Speaking of which, where is Nicky?”

“Here,” came a weak voice from the front row. Nicky was curled up in a cluster of middle aged women, to whom he was deeply allergic.

“I’m not even going to ask how you got there,” Bracken decided, it’s just been that sort of a day.

“It’s true,” Magenta admitted, “you two are not actually related. But Nicky is at least related to the wean.”

“Sorry?”

“Oh, that’s the results of the DNA test,” she said. “Although I knew already because I oversaw the procedure. Nicky provided the egg that created the wean.”

“The egg?” Bracken exclaimed, “surely you mean the sp-the other stuff?”

“No,” Magenta said definitely, “I know what I mean and I mean the egg.”

“But that’d mean Nicky was a… I don’t even know. A hermaphrodite?”

“More than that even,” Magenta explained. “Nicky is actually a woman.”

Chapter Twenty Five

Today, following on from my announcement that I've kept on top of the word count fairly well, I was asked whether I was pleased with what I have been writing. An interesting question, and one that has seeded an article now growing in my brain. In a nutshell, though, I can't hardly wait till I can start editing the thing, which I suspect will include scrapping at least two thirds...

Esmeralda replaced the phone in its cradle.

She hadn't said a word in the entire twenty-minute conversation, and her perfectly heart shaped face had remained smooth and expressionless.

During such a long period of time, Nicky had got distracted and started counting things; but Bracken was more alert and was consequentially considerably freaked out by the behaviour of their host. The woman was like a life-sized version of one of those collectable porcelain dolls - cold, unfeeling, and owner of a lot of wavy hair. She might have been pretty, but there was nothing else going on there. Maybe it was all the years of science.

"It's not the years of science," Esmeralda told her, which was disconcerting.

"What? I didn’t-"

"Save it. I know what you were thinking.” Esmeralda advanced on her intimidatingly. “I'm an expert on brains, Bracken,” she whispered, putting her nose right up against Bracken’s cheek. “Human brains. Like the one you have."

"I can't argue with that," Bracken agreed, a hint of a smile playing around her soft lips as though remembering memories past, "I do have a human brain."

"Exactly. You were looking at me when I was on the phone, impassive like that, even though I was receiving bad news-"

"-such as?"

"That's not important right now."

"Oh right. Sorry, please continue."

She nodded graciously.

"Thanks, I will.

You were watching me, standing there in my work environment, not reacting to what I was hearing down the phone in any way for twenty minutes."

"I thought maybe you'd gone to sleep standing up," Nicky volunteered.

"You would think that," Esmeralda pointed out coolly, "but Bracken didn't, did you?"

"No," she admitted, "I can honestly say that never crossed my mind."

"Swot," Nicky grinned, sticking his tongue out at them both.

"ANYWAY," continued Esmeralda, not angrily but just a bit louder to get their attention, "you were watching me and thinking about my brain chat and the fact I was able to ditch the love of my life for no reason better than money. And you thought maybe science was to blame, because like so many you were no good at it in school and now you hate and fear it as a consequence."

"I got a 3 for standard grade," Bracken said, "that's alright."

"It doesn't denote a particular aptitude for the subject like what I have though."

"Spose not, no."

"You had some notion that the constant consideration of variables, attempts to prove and disprove things, and a world view at odds with the spiritual or emotional led to my detachment," Esmeralda surmised. "I was so interested in the process of literally dissecting people's minds and memories that I forgot to consider what goes on in their hearts. That's right isn't it?"

"I guess that was a theme," Bracken concurred uncertainly, running a hand through her hair. It needed a wash.

"Well you're WRONG," Esmeralda said triumphantly, "that's not my motivation at all."

"Oh right."

"Years of science has been my saviour," she steamrollered on, little caring about Bracken's honest disinterest. All she wanted to hear about was her relationship to the wean, or lack thereof.

"Abandoned by my parents and sister, I was left to fend for myself in London when I was just four years old."

"That's terrible," Bracken said, pricking her ears up sincerely, "I'm so sorry."

"Well, they left me with a foster family," Esmeralda corrected herself, "but they smelled weird. And they kept my sister! So I ran away to find her."

"That's so weird," Bracken exclaimed, "why keep one and not the other?"

"The doctor didn't tell them they were going to have twins. They didn't want two babies."

"Did they not have enough money to bring up two?"

"Oh no, that wasn’t it," she said derisively. "They were rolling in it. Don't you remember what a long posh name I have?"

"Well, that could just be an affectation," Bracken pointed out.

"I suppose so. But it isn't. My family is way posh. Posher than God.”

“Is God posh?”

“I don’t know,” she waved away the question impatiently, “it’s just an expression.”

“I don’t think it is,” Nicky said helpfully.

“Fine, it’s not,” Esmeralda was heading towards something approaching irritation for the first time in ages, “but you know what I was trying to convey so will you please stop nit picking and let me explain.”

Nicky made the sign where you pretend to zip your mouth closed, then sat on his hands to make extra sure that he couldn’t renege on his unzipping and interrupt again.

“My parents were very wealthy, but also very lazy. They only kept my sister because having a kid was the in thing to do at the time. She was looked after by nannies, in the main, and rarely saw them.”

“How do you know?” Bracken asked.

“How do I know what?”

“How do you know she was looked after by nannies if you were given away to foster parents when you were only four? Did you find her after you ran away?”

“No,” Esmeralda reported darkly, “I found only heartache and sadness. It was as though I was living in a Bonnie Tyler album, only less fun.”

Bracken didn’t think this was a particularly great analogy, and would have left it out, herself, but she let it pass.

“I met my sister again, years later, and we exchanged notes on a few things.”

“So where is she now?”

Esmeralda looked pained.

“Gone,” she said.

“Gone?” Bracken’s suspicions were roused by the tone of face, and the look on her voice. “Gone as in travelling? Or gone as in dead?”

“The latter,” she replied.

“What happened?”

“Well,” Esmeralda said, “I accidentally killed her.”

Had Bracken been eating or drinking anything, this was the revelation that would probably have made her choke. But she wasn’t, so it was fine.

“Come again,” she managed.

“Well I was very angry,” Esmeralda said vaguely, as if that made it alright, “and she’d been so annoying, refusing to swap memories with me and so on as per usual.”

“You wanted to swap memories?”

“Only for a little while. Just to see if it could be done. I would have put them back again.”

“What if you couldn’t remember how?”

“That’s what she said. Amongst other, less pragmatic things. She said I was mental, and that I had to stop poking around inside other people’s heads like that. She called it invasive, and weird.”

“Well, she may have had a point there.”

“Pfft.”

“Let’s agree to disagree on that score, shall we. So where even was this? Did she come out to Peru to find you?”

“No, she was there by pure coincidence, as it goes. She was doing some research for her postgraduate thesis – she was a scientist too. We were really very alike, as identical twins sometimes are.”

“So what, you just bumped into each other at random?”

“Yes. It was at a gas station, I remember. I was leaving and she was coming in through the door, and it was like looking into a mirror. Then right away I realized that it must be my sister. She didn’t really remember me, though. Our parents told her I had died.”

“Your parents sound like really great people,” Bracken said sarcastically.

“Tell me about it. So anyhoo, I told her I wasn’t dead, and she came to stay with me for a while. We told each other all about our lives and our work, and it turned out we had kind of been living in parallel. She was doing some stuff about whether cats remember coyotes… something like that. She used to carry around this big scrapbook with identikit pictures of coyotes in for cats to recognize. I think what I’ve been doing is a little more high brow, to be honest.”

“Well, your stuff might have benefits I guess, for like coma patients or something,” Bracken stretched her imagination. “Hers sounds kind of… made up.”

“I think it was,” Esmeralda nodded. “She struck me as the type who would flirt her way through academia, rather than putting in the work.”

“Unlike your good seld.”

“Very unlike me. I dedicate most of my waking life to my work.”

“Which reminds me-”

“We’ll get to your story in a second,” she soothed, “I thought you wanted to hear about how I killed my sister?”

‘Only if it’ll help me assess how likely you are to kill me as well,’ Bracken thought.

“I wanted to do the memory swap, and initially she agreed – although to be fair we’d consumed a lot of tequila that night. But when it came to it, I don’t know… I’d prepared the solution that we needed to take – hers would knock her out whereas mine was a different dosage so that I could operate on us both prior to the hypnosis – ”

By this point Nicky was really struggling to keep a lid on his hands. He really wanted to metaphorically unzip his mouth and let a deluge of questions flood forth.

“You didn’t do the hypnosis first?” Bracken asked, trying to piece the whole bizarre mess together in her mind.

“No, I needed to be alert for the surgery.”

“And what’s involved in the surgery?”

“Just a small incision, and then I put a little flake of metal in a particular spot on the brain so that the nerve endings are disrupted and a kind of blockage is created.”

“Then what?”

“Then I close up – a paper stitch is needed in some cases – and embark upon a session of hypnotherapy where I implant memories in the other person.”

“But you said you wanted to swap. Who would implant her memories into your brain?”

“Well she would, once she was me.”

“Once she was you?”

“Once she had my memories, I mean.”

“Surely there’s no way you could impart all the required medical and scientific knowledge through one session?”

“Well I don’t know, because she bailed on me. But I thought I had it all worked out. We’d been preparing for a while – she listened to CDs of my memories when she was going to sleep at night, for example, and she’d sat in on some of my sessions with other people.”

“This all seems wildly implausible,” Bracken couldn’t help saying.

“She said that as well,” Esmeralda remembered through gritted teeth and angry, downward pointing eyebrows.

“Sounds like she and I would have gotten on alright.”

“Oh,” Esmeralda exclaimed, “you don’t know the half of it.”

Chapter Seventeen

Links to parts 1-16 available here.

"Bert," Nicky whispered fiercely, "wait a sec!"

But the old guy was long gone. Probably away to find that guard with the kind voice.

Nicky through the sheet off him and sat up in the darkness. It was so black in there he felt as though someone has carpeted his retinas. Which in this bloody place, he thought, was not completely outside the realms of possibility.

"fucksake," he said out loud.

"Nicky?" came a voice from surprisingly close by.

"Bracken?" he recognised it, whirling round to try and locate her. "what are you doing here?"

"Hell if I know. Esmeralda had some heavies kidnap me from outside the library and now here I am, strapped to some kind of victorian hospital trolley in a room where it's perpetually night time."

"I was kidnapped too," Nicky said, "on my way home from poker. So have you been here all that time an Aw?"

"no," she told him guiltily, "I've not. Just got here really. I think. I don't have much concept of time in here. Nicky, is the wean with you?"

"No," he replied, "is he not with Nige's mum?"

She drew in a shaky breath. He thought she might be crying, or trying not to.

"Nut," she started, "he went missing the same time as you. I've been so worried about you both, and I keep phoning the police but they just take the piss it feels like. And I've asked around and tried to think of the places you guys might go together but you've never been there.. It never even crossed my mind that you might not be together!"

She burst into tears - not pretty girly ones but the trembling, wracking sobs of someone who thinks themselves completely and utterly defeated.

Nicky moved towards the sound, arm stretched out in front of him, intending to give her a hug.

He banged his hip on something hard, which turned out to be a handle of the trolley she was on.

"Did you say there were straps?" he asked, gingerly feeling for them.

"yeah," she sniffled, "go and get the head one first? It's too tight and it's hurting me."

He fumbled around to find it, accidentally poking her in the eye and pulling her hair before his fingers hit upon the cold metal of the buckle. He undid it, and then moved on to the ones binding her wrists.

Bracken shook her head from side to side in relief. She'd never take the right to stretch her neck for granted again, she vowed.

"Are you not wearing any shoes?" Nicky asked as he got to the straps around her ankles.

"That cow took em off me when I was unconscious. Seemingly she thought I might have a knife in there."

"Aw, like a wee skein dhu," he chuckled.

"Well she's not from round here," Bracken said.

"I was wanting to ask you about that," he said, suddenly serious. "who is this woman? How do you ken her? Why does she hate us?!"

"Well," she said, "it's sort of a long story..."

"Oh, dinnae bother then."

"Har Har. You need to know the enemy."

"I have heard that's preferable, in some states."

“Her name is Esmeralda Francesca MacGregor Di Saatchi Von Rollo,” Bracken started. “She used to go out with the new guy that works at the library, Aloysius Hunkington-Smythe.

“Those might actually be the stupidest names I have ever heard,” Nicky interrupted.

“Shut it, bawjaws” she snapped, “I’m trying tae fill you in.”

“You’re right,” he said, contrite, “I apologise. You aren’t the one who named them, after all.”

“No,” she nodded, not that he could see her as they were still in the pitch dark, “I didn’t. Why would you even say that? Weirdo.”

“Anyway, that’s basically all I know. She turned up the night Al’s mother died, and tried to convince me that the two of them were still together – which I don’t think they are-“

“Ooooh, Al now is it,” Nicky trilled, “darling Al, with his ridiculous name and his job in the library.”

“Yeah, you need to work on your insults a bit more Nick.”

He lowered his eyes in agreement. Not that she could see that as they were still in that room that was really really dark. But had she been able to see, she might not necessarily have recognized the eye-lowering thing as an admission of wrongness. It’s not the conventional sign in this day and age.

“She drives everywhere,” Bracken said, “she thought I’d keep weapons about me because she’s a racist…. And that’s about it. Oh, well she’s nuts of course. Seems perfectly nice till she drugs and kidnaps you.”

“That’s it?” Nicky asked, sounding askanced. “That’s your long story?”

“It sounded longer in my head,” she admitted, embarrassed. “Oh, wait, there was something else.”

“What was it? Another bit of her name that you missed out of the list?”

“No, don’t be facetious.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“She gave me a lift to work, even though she probably knew it was an in service day,” Bracken started, “but there was more… Before we got out of the car, she’d started to tell me something. She’d been asking me loads of annoying questions based on her blinkered social views of what it means to be a single parent, and then she admitted that there was a reason why she’d been doing it…”

“Then what happened?”

“The weather.”

“What?”

“There was a big clap of thunder that drowned her out and I couldn’t hear what she was saying, and we ran inside to avoid the rain taking out one of our eyes.”

“Rain can’t take people’s eyes out,” he snorted derisively.

“Yes it can,” Bracken said defensively, “from a certain angle. It was on a repeat of 999 Life Savers.”

“So why didn’t you ask her about it when you got into the library? Was she sucking face with Al?”

“No,” Bracken fumed, “she was not. As it goes Nige was trying it on with him at that point. But I forgot all about Esmeralda’s cryptic nonsense because Adric told us that the library is being closed and probably knocked down so that they can search for Mayan gold underneath.”

“You what?”

“One of the kids was digging outside and found some Mayan gold. They had it checked out by experts, it was definitely real.”

“Shut up,” Nicky squeaked incredulously, “what would it be doing here?”

“I don’t know,” Bracken told him, “that’s exactly what I said as well. Adric seemed to think pirates brought it-“

“But that’s absurd. Pirates never actually buried treasure, that was a myth put about by Robert Louis Stevenson.”

“I know,” she said wearily, “I said that as well.”

“OK, sorry.”

They were quiet for a moment. The blackness seemed to swirl around them, a bit like treacle, only less likely to drown a man. Or woman. Or otter. Can otters drown? Yes. But it’s pretty rare, because they’re generally quite good with water.

“Right,” Nicky said briskly, “enough of this otter chat. Let’s escape.”

“How can we,” Bracken said, “its pitch black and I’d imagine that if we ever find the door it’ll be locked.”

“Why would they bother? It’s not like you were getting out of those straps any time soon. And the last person in here was Bert, who was rescuing me.”

“Who the hell is Bert and why was he rescuing you?”

“The two of those questions seem quite closely linked, as it goes,” he mused. “Bert is an old geezer who claims that he is my real dad, and that he wanted to make up for lot time. He sort of hinted at some kind of dark past, but didn’t really go into it in any detail. I think he was trying to keep a sense of mystery for later on in the text.’

“What?”

“I think he might genuinely be my dad but. Steve and I were never very alike.”

“Whereas you and this Bert character are like two peas in a pod,” she posited sarcastically. “You know literally nothing about him.”

“True,” Nicky agreed, “but what I do know is that he got me out of that weird smelling little cell, and he would have got me out of the building if your pal Esmeralda hadn’t turned up and given him the willies.”

“Given him the willies? Where are you, an Enid Blyton book?”

“Point is, I reckon he’ll come back.”

“Assuming Esmeralda doesn’t strap him to a trolley and lock him in a dark room somewhere for mucking about with her fiendish plan. Whatever that may be.”

“Nah, he works for her,” Nicky said, “she trusts him. That was how he was able to get me out.”

“He works for her?” Bracken was incredulous, “then what exactly is it about him that you think we can trust? You utter muppet! This is probably all part of her grand design!”

“Jeez Bracken, she’s not Kevin McCloud.”

“I’ve told you before about making jokes about programming on channel four.”

“Sorry.”

Bracken crossed her arms dejectedly. What she wouldn’t give for a wee cuddle from the wean right now, with his sticky face and perpetually paint covered fingers.

“Oh my Christ,” Nicky said, as though reading her mind, “the wean!”

“What about him?”

“He must be here too!”

“What? Why?”

“You said yourself he’s nowhere to be found on the outside… And I’ve just remembered, the guard that Bert ran into said there were three McCrackens here!”

Nicky slapped his forehead, as people do on telly but less often in real life.

“I can’t believe I didn’t work it out then – I guess I was thinking about trying not to make any noise that would give us away. Three McCrackens though – you, me, and the wean!”

Bracken got to her feet.

“We are getting out of here,” she decided, stepping off the trolley and lurching forwards into the darkness.

“Ow,” she added, falling over. She had severe pins and needles and couldn’t feel either of her feet. Those straps had been tighter than she’d realized.

“Bracken, are you OK?”

He moved towards where he thought the sound of her crash to the floor had come.

Finding her hands, he pulled her to her feet.

“Ow ow ow,” she squeaked, hopping from foot to foot as the blood began to return.

“Lean on me,” he said, putting an arm around her waist, “and lets do this thing together.”

She let him support her weight, and together they inched slowly forwards, arms outstretched, in search of a door.

Amazingly, unbelievably luckily, the first thing that Nicky’s fingers alighted on was a door handle. Holding his breath, he gently pressed it down, and the door swung open.

“I can’t believe it wasn’t locked,” Bracken whispered mildly, blinking as the dazzling white light of the lavish marble corridor hit her corneas.

“There was no need,” Esmeralda said coldly, appearing out of the shadows and making them both jump, “you were supposed to be secured.”

Bracken sighed.

“Better do the introductions then hey. Nicky McCracken, this is Esmeralda Francesca MacGregor Di Saatchi Von Rollo. Esmeralda, this is my cousin, Nicky McCracken.”

“Oh, I know Nicky already,” Esmeralda said, the ghost of a smile playing around her lips and getting a bit confused into thinking that maybe it was a sneer.

“What,” Nicky said, genuinely confused, “I’ve never seen you before in my life.”

“Oh but you have,” Esmeralda said enigmatically, making a mental note to stop beginning so many of her sentences with ‘oh’.

“Sorry hen, not ringing a bell. You must have one of those forgettable faces.”

Esmeralda’s nostrils flared in irritation.

“It’s about time both of you heard a few home truths,” she said. “I think you should come with me.”

“Where’s my son?” Bracken demanded, on the verge of tears. “What have you done with my wee boy?”

Esmeralda regarded her with arctic cool.

“That little boy,” she said deliberately, enunciating every syllable like a crisp footprint in snow, “is not your son.”