CHAPTER 23
After a quick meal at Meat-n-Greens, Simon, Vlad, Henry, and the Courtyard’s guests reconvened in the Market Square Library. Tess walked in a minute later, her hair coiling and completely red. Not good.
What also wasn’t good was the way the rest of the terra indigene tensed as soon as she walked into the room. Simon hadn’t known Tess’s true nature until recently, but it seemed at least some of his guests had recognized the predator who sat among them.
“We need to find a human called the Controller,” Simon said, resisting the urge to shift in his seat when Tess sat in the chair beside his. “We need to find the place where the humans are making the drugs from cassandra sangue blood.”
“And we need to give human government more incentive to keep better watch over the places where the blood prophets live,” Vlad added. “We need to impress on them that we know what’s in the drugs and that we’re going to hold them responsible for anything that happens from now on because of those drugs.”
“They’ll whine and wring their hands and say there is nothing they can do,” Cheryl Hawkgard said. “They won’t want us to find those places.”
“They will,” Simon said quietly. “But first we need to narrow the search as much as we can. And for that, we need Meg.”
“No,” Tess hissed as half the coiling hair turned black.
He wished he could move out of reach of the coils of hair that made him think of angry snakes.
“A thousand cuts,” Tess said. “Do you know how many she already has? How much of her life are you going to take for this hunt?”
Charlie Crowgard leaned forward. He looked at Tess, then at Simon. “What does she mean?”
“Each time a cassandra sangue’s skin is cut, she’s that much closer to the cut that will either kill her or drive her insane,” Vlad replied, staring hard at Simon. “But that’s not what you meant. You’re not going to ask Meg to cut her skin.”
“Yes, I am,” Simon said. He’d thought about this while they’d been having their meal break. “One cut. Before she sets that razor on her skin, we’re all going to work to give her as much information as possible. She knows more about how she got here than she realizes. She sees things in images. So she saw at least some of her journey to Lakeside. We need to help her find images that match what she saw.”
“She knew about the kind of poison Phineas Jones was going to use because she’d seen a picture of those frogs in a magazine,” Tess said, the coils relaxing into loose curls.
Henry nodded. “This will be like a puzzle where we eliminate pieces in order to see the picture.”
Now Alan Wolfgard and Charlie were both leaning forward, interested and struggling to understand. The Midwest leaders looked surly, and Simon could sympathize. He’d be less interested in circling around to find the prey if a straight path could be taken. But to them, Meg was just a human, and they didn’t fully realize how the Elementals would react if she came to any harm.
“Are you all just crapping in the den?” Bobbie Beargard demanded. “If not, then say what you mean.”
“How do you get from one human city to another?” Simon said. “Train, bus, car. Humans wouldn’t walk to the next village, so they wouldn’t walk from one region to the next. Trains have stations at specific cities. Buses travel specific routes, whether they stay inside the city or are the ones that provide transportation between human places.”
“And some buses make a stop at the train station,” Alan said, nodding.
“When she reached the Courtyard, Meg wasn’t wearing clothing appropriate for the Northeast,” Tess said.
“She could have lost a winter coat or left it somewhere,” Vlad said. “Or maybe it became soiled in a way that would have called attention to her. She had to stop somewhere for a little while when she dyed her hair red.”
All the guests cocked their heads. Finally Charlie said, “Her hair is red?”
Vlad waved a hand dismissively. “It was supposed to be.”
“Photographers have been allowed to go into the wild country and take pictures of the land and the animals,” Simon said. “And photographers take pictures of the human places. We have books in the library here and at Howling Good Reads that have pictures of the wild country and of cities in every region in Thaisia. Tomorrow we’re all going to work on putting them together in a way that will help Meg narrow down where the enemy is hiding.”
“If we show her the right pictures, maybe Meg will not need to cut,” Henry said. He rose and stretched. “Enough. It’s time to rest.” He walked out of the library.
Since he should have decided when the meeting ended, Simon said, “It’s time to rest.”
After an awkward shuffle, the guests left the library. Which left him alone with Vlad and Tess.
“One cut,” he said. “I’ll ask Meg for one.”
“And if we need more information in order to narrow down the hunt?” Vlad asked.
Simon gave Vlad a sharp smile. “Once Meg tells us what she knows, we’ll ask our friends in the police to help.”
Meg sat in her living room, turning the razor over and over. Pretty flowers on one side of the handle, cs759 inscribed on the other side. A designation, not a name.
Were there young blood prophets in Lakeside? Girls who were just starting to show the disturbing tendency to cut? They had names, families, lives. Choices. Or were cassandra sangue born with this addiction, this need?
She opened the razor and stared at the blade. One-quarter inch wide—the perfect distance between cuts. Prophecies remained separated without wasting usable skin. Right now it would be so easy to justify cutting fresh skin because it would help someone else. Wouldn’t it?
A slow suicide, one cut at a time, Meg thought. Except very few of the scars on her body had been created by cuts that were her choice.
Phineas Jones was dead, and that was a relief. After returning to her apartment, she’d spent an hour recalling images of death that she had absorbed during her lessons at the compound. Why did he bite the sack of poison on his arm? Did he expect that kind of death to be quick, painless? She didn’t imagine being mauled by a Grizzly or torn apart by a pack of angry Wolves was painless, but …
He knew things he didn’t want the Others to know. If he was here to take girls who lived outside, then he knew how to find the Controller or men like him. He swallowed poison so he wouldn’t tell. But I want to tell. I just don’t know how.
The howling right outside her door startled her enough that she almost cut her finger with the razor. Closing it, she slipped it into her pocket before going to the door.
Simon stood there in Wolf form, holding one of those lengths of soft braided rope the Wolves used as a toy. He looked at her and wagged his tail once.
“Oh, no,” she said. “I know this game. It’s all ‘we’ll just take a walk,’ and then it’s ‘hold my rope for a minute,’ and then you’re chasing me all over the place because the person holding the rope gets chased.”
He cocked his head as if to say, Of course. Why are you standing there? Get your coat!
“Wait there.” She left the door open while she put on her coat and made sure she had her keys. Simon wasn’t going to like her decision, so joining him in playtime might make him less snappish when she told him she was going to make a cut in an effort to find the Controller.
That much decided, Meg closed the door and walked down the stairs with Simon right beside her.