Bitch! Whore! How dare you laugh at me?
—recalled the poem in her datafile— Sacred Monsters —and her face as she screamed at me. Justice stared at the screen, finally nodded. Then he pressed a sedative to my neck, as I knew he would, and left me with an extra handful to be taken as needed. I nodded goodbye as he left the Home Room, and waited for the others to arrive.
“Hello, Wednesday,” croaked a voice. A triangular face hung upside down in the window, dusky black and pinched as a bat’s.
“Hullo, Gligor,” I said, and moved over on the bed to make room for him.
His hands scrabbled at the sill and I thought he might fall; but he caught his balance, sighting me or the lingering warmth of the monitors that showed up as bright blue pulses in his mind. He swung clumsily into the room, one hand grasping the edge of the sill while he paused to catch his breath. He twisted until he found me, waited a moment for his shield to set me on the grid. Then, suddenly graceful, he sidled onto the bed beside me.
“What did they give you?”
I handed him a sedative. He pressed it to his temple, waited a few moments before making a face and discarding it.
“Nothing else?” he whined. “Merle said she saw Dr. Harrow here yesterday with the NET .”
I started to nod, then stopped. Suddenly I didn’t want to share Emma’s memories with Gligor or Anna or anyone else. Reaching beneath the bed, I withdrew a hand-rolled cigarette and lit it. I went to sit on the windowsill and stared moodily down at the lawns where servers were clipping the grass.
“So?” Gligor prodded. He sniffed hungrily.
“Leave me alone.” I blew smoke out the window, refusing to look at him or offer him a cigarette.
From the other end of the room echoed a faint creak, a muted giggle. Gritting my teeth, I glanced back. The door swung open. Andrew slipped into the room.
“Hah! Merle was following me but I took the back stairs, the secret way, and now she thinks I’m in the north turret. What’s the matter, Gligor?”
He flopped onto the bed next to him, breathing on the smooth surface of Gligor’s eyeshield and then drawing a squiggle in the condensation.
Gligor took his hand and nipped at his bare shoulder. “Mmmm,” he murmured. He leaned back, drawing up the shield so that I could see the empty white balls of his eyes, and licked his lips. I knew he was trying to annoy me. I snorted and stared at Andrew.
“What’s the matter?” he repeated. He leaned over the little refrigerator at my bedside and rifled its contents.
Gligor snapped the shield back down. “Wednesday won’t share,” he said petulantly. “Harrow did something with her yesterday and now she won’t share—”
I took a last long drag on my cigarette and flicked it out the window. “Nothing happened,” I said, glaring at the back of Andrew’s head.
Abruptly he turned around to stare at me. His eyes widened. He blinked once, very deliberately, and lowered his head. The face that lifted itself to me a moment later was dark with cunning, and Anna’s huskier voice rang out.
“I know,” she said triumphantly. “Something about the poet, something about the suicides!”
Gligor hissed admiringly. I stiffened, tightening my grip on the windowsill where I sat. Anna grinned. Then, before I could dart away, she lunged at me and pulled me to the floor.
“Come on, Gligor!” she barked, pinning down my arms and kneeing me viciously when I tried to push her back. “She shared with me the other day and it was wonderful—
“No!” I protested, kicking at Gligor as he slid behind Anna and slapped ineffectually at my feet. “It wasn’t the poet, I swear—”
“That’s it, get her feet,” she ordered Gligor. She straddled my chest and looked at me, grinning, her face flushed with delight just as mine had so many times before in the same circumstances. “Now, Wendy, hold still—”
Anna’s strong hands gripped my head and held me steady. She lowered her face to mine and kissed me, her tongue probing my mouth before she nipped my lower lip gently and then bit it, hard enough to draw blood. She shut her eyes and threw back her head, letting out her breath in a long sigh. I waited several seconds to be sure her rush had begun. Then I shoved her from me and kicked at Gligor, taking him by surprise so that he sprawled onto the floor with a groan. I turned back to Anna, furious.
There was nothing I could do. It was too late to revoke whatever response the neurotransmitters in my blood now carried to her brain. I could only hope that there had not been enough blood, or enough of the resonant chemicals within it, to satisfy her hunger for sensation.
I glared, waiting to see how she reacted. Beside me, Gligor rubbed his leg and watched too. Occasionally he darted furtive glances at me, so that I saw my sullen face reflected in the matte surface of his shield.
“Look, Wednesday,” he whispered.
Anna had sunk back on her heels, eyes closed. A rapturous expression crept over her, making her face seem remote and otherworldly. I watched, fascinated, wondering if she saw the same unearthly figure I had, or if she was still tapping in to Morgan Yates’s death. Gligor moved his head back and forth, back and forth, his eyeshield tracing some invisible pattern in the heat emitted by Anna.
Suddenly her eyes opened. She stared at a point some distance above her head and smiled in delight, as though she greeted some beloved friend in the empty air. I caught myself leaning forward to grasp her hands as she reached for whatever it was she saw. But before I could touch her, her expression changed. She snarled and wrenched back her hands as though someone had tried to grab them, then turned to me blindly.
“Oh, Wendy,” she breathed, awe tingeing her disbelief. “What have you done?”
Then she began to scream.
I tried to muffle her cries and yelled for Gligor to help. But he had immediately jumped onto the bed and now sat there whimpering while I restrained her. She swung at me wildly, clipping the side of my head so that I reeled back but did not let go.
“Him!” she shrieked over and over, her jaws snapping each time so that she bit her tongue and blood covered my hands. “Him!”
I shouted at Gligor to get one of the sedatives from my bedside, but still he refused to move. And then I heard voices and running feet in the hall. Several Aides and Dr. Silverthorn rushed into the room.
They restrained her, though not without a fight. The Aide Justice swore fiercely when Anna bit him. Dr. Silverthorn pushed him away before administering a sedative to her. It wasn’t until after they carried her out that he noticed Gligor cowering on the bed. “Gligor!” Dr. Silverthorn shook him gently until the boy stopped whimpering. “What happened?”
“Something was there—” He gasped, clutching at his head. Dr. Silverthorn put his arm about him and drew him close. To me he turned eyes so cold that for a moment I forgot my own anger and disappointment.
“What the hell were you doing, Wendy?”
I shrugged. “Anna tapped me. I warned her—”
“Don’t you know what this means?” he shouted. Gligor winced and tried to pull away from him. “They’ll take him away, they’ll take all of you—”
“But it’s true,” said Gligor. “It wasn’t Wendy’s fault—but I’m so tired, Dr. Silverthorn. Can I go to my room?”
Dr. Silverthorn nodded and helped Gligor to the door, all the time regarding me with icy revulsion.
“I’m going to recommend that you all be forbidden to see each other. But I’ll let Dr. Harrow handle you, Wendy,” was all he said as they left.
“Didn’t you hear anything I told you the other day, Wendy?”
Dr. Harrow paused in front of my window, eyeing with disapproval the cigarette ashes blown into the corner in a small gray heap. She fixed me with a probing stare. “Don’t you understand what’s going on, why we need to be careful while they’re here?” She motioned toward the outdoors, where Dr. Leslie led a group of Governors and their accompanying janissaries on a tour of the grounds.