CHAPTER 18
The following morning, Douglas Burke studied the notes Monty had made of the additional information from Meg Corbyn. Then he sat back and sighed. “Meat grinder. Gods above and below. And your impression was Ms. Corbyn was seeing another cassandra sangue being ground up alive?”
“Yes, sir,” Monty replied. “That was Dr. Lorenzo’s impression as well.”
“It’s a wonder these girls stay sane as long as they do.”
Burke’s observation wasn’t unique. Monty had stared at the television last evening, taking in nothing. Seeing Meg in the full throes of a prophecy made him wonder if blood prophets really did need to be in some kind of supervised home. Oh, not as damaging as the place she’d run away from, but surely there had to be places in between a kind of prison and leaving these girls to flounder on their own.
“Lorenzo is dropping by the Courtyard this morning,” Monty said. “He promised to call with a status report.”
“You’re not going to stop in?”
“Until Howling Good Reads and A Little Bite reopen to the public, dropping by is a bit more difficult. I don’t want to wear out my welcome.”
Burke nodded. “What about Kowalski? Or Debany or MacDonald? They have personal reasons to stop by.”
“Officer Debany called a few minutes ago. The stores have Residents Only signs on the doors, but the Liaison’s Office is opening for business and so is the consulate.”
“I doubt opening the Liaison’s Office today was Simon Wolfgard’s decision.”
Monty smiled at the dry observation. “No, I don’t think it was.” The smile faded. “Debany also said Wolfgard and Henry Beargard left yesterday evening, taking one of the Courtyard’s small vans. They returned just before Debany called me.”
Burke thought about that for a moment. “Well, we’ll either find out where they went and why or we won’t.”
“No word from Talulah Falls?”
“No. Between the fog on the river and the barricades and destroyed roads, there’s no way of knowing what’s going on there. But I keep hoping there are human survivors.” Burke pushed away from his desk. “Well. I have a meeting with the chief. Mustn’t keep him waiting.”
Monty walked out of Burke’s office, then went to his own desk to check for messages.
“Where to, Lieutenant?” Kowalski asked.
Where had Simon Wolfgard gone yesterday, and was there any way to find out? “Nowhere yet.”
Simon parked the BOW in the garage behind the Liaison’s Office, then followed Meg inside.
“You sure you feel all right to do this today?” He opened her carry bag, took out a couple of containers of food, and put them in the under-the-counter fridge.
“I’ll be fine,” Meg replied, sounding testy.
If she would let him sniff her properly, he’d know if she was all right without having to keep asking.
She turned on the lights and picked up the key to the front door as she went through the sorting room. When she returned, he stood on one side of the sorting table while she stood on the other.
Simon took the silver folding razor out of his pocket and set it on the table. But he kept his hand over it. “This is yours.” She didn’t insist that he give the razor back before he left with Henry last night. Maybe she’d been as frightened by what had happened yesterday as the rest of them. Maybe that was why he felt he had to return it. “Meg …” What was he supposed to say?
“Until I was punished, I never understood how much the euphoria shielded blood prophets,” Meg said, touching her left arm at the crosshatch of scars. “Maybe the cutting started as a defense against what we saw—a kind of pressure release—and over generations it became something else, something more.”
He listened, saying nothing—an attentive silence.
“I can’t stop cutting, Simon. I’m not sure any of us can.” Meg pointed at herself to indicate she meant the cassandra sangue.
“I know. But … not all of you die young, Meg. Even if a thousand cuts is really the limit …” Simon shifted his feet and whined softly. “The first time I saw one of your kind, I was fifteen. I could hold the human form well enough to pass for human most of the time, so I was with a group of young terra indigene having an outing in the human world. It was actually a human settlement on the edge of one of ours, so it hardly counted, but it was a first attempt at buying food from an open stall or some small bit of merchandise from a shop.
“There was this old woman with her arms brown and bare to the sun, the scars showing white. She wore a straw hat and sat at this little table, offering to read her cards and tell our fortunes.
“There was a group of humans at the settlement about the same age as my group. Don’t know what they were doing there. Maybe a field trip similar to ours. They walked past her table and laughed at her, called her names because of the scars. So did some of the Others as a way of imitating the humans. But when she looked at me, I stopped. She took out a razor, the silver dazzling in the sun, and cut her cheek. And she told me what I could be.”
Simon blinked. He lifted his hand off the razor and took a step back.
They said nothing, just stared at each other.
“Do you know how she managed it?” Meg finally asked. “Do you think anyone would remember her who could tell you how she managed to survive the cutting long enough to grow old?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even know if there is still a settlement there, but I can try to find out if you want.”
“Yes. I’d like to know.” Meg pressed her hands on the table. She didn’t reach for the razor. “Buying a cut on my skin was expensive. That’s why I have so few scars compared to the other girls in the compound.”
“You’re only twenty-four,” he said. “You have plenty of scars for someone your age.” Too many scars. Most of the girls didn’t live to see thirty-five years. “We’ll find an answer. We’ll find a way for you to live long enough to grow old.”
Her eyes filled with tears. She blinked them away. “Until then, Mr. Wolfgard, I have work to do and so do you.”
He heard teasing in her voice—and also a reminder of territory. This building was hers.
“Don’t forget your appointment with Dr. Lorenzo,” he said over his shoulder as he walked toward the back room.
“I won’t forget.”