Nevada unlocks a door inside the parlor and ferries Armonk through it, closing it firmly behind her. Thorn weasels his way in beside me and rests his head on my shoulder. I sink into the chair, letting my muscles relax. It’s a slow process. They’ve been locked up so tightly. Being here, with Thorn and feeling safe at least for now, has me pleasantly groggy. A delicious unnamed scent wafts out from the kitchen. My stomach growls; I’m starving.
Thorn taps me on the hand. “Fireseed,” he whispers. My ears prick. He never speaks to others and rarely speaks to me, so this is momentous.
I lift my weighted lids halfway, look over at him. “What about Fireseed?”
“Weak.”
“Fireseed is weak?” He nods.
Worry cramps my empty stomach, which emits another low growl. “What’s wrong with the Fireseed? Tell me, Thorn!”
His brown eyes are guarded. He rests his head back on my shoulder, and links his soft arm around mine.
“Thorn? Please, please tell me?” I press him once more, but he’s done talking.
I should hold him right in front of me, shake him gently and force him to speak. Knowing Thorn, he may not speak another word for weeks. But exhaustion overcomes worry and my eyes close again.
Chapter 5
I startle awake to the sound of a girl’s shrill voice. “Dinner,” is all she says.
Sitting upright, two girls stare down at me. One is tall with ebony skin and wide-set green eyes. She looks about my age and has a perfectly proportioned face. Her combination of green eyes and dark skin is shocking and beautiful. But she’s not smiling, not even close.
The other one looks younger—by about two years. She has blond hair like Nevada but thicker and lustrous, and her slim figure is curvy in all the right places, as if she’s a perfect china doll. She’s not looking too friendly either.
“Hey,” says the blond girl. “Get up.”
“It’s rude to be late for dinner,” the other one adds.
I scramble to my feet and follow them into a dining area off the parlor.
Armonk is already in there, and there’s an empty chair next to him, so I take it. At least he doesn’t look at me like he wants to burn me with a torch. What’s wrong with these people?
Blane serves some steaming round vegetable with crinkly skin that I’ve never seen before, and the slinky, surly Jan comes around the table, doling out a slice of beetle loaf to each plate. I’m familiar with beetle loaf, which I like. And I’m so famished I’ll even try that bulbous thing next to it.
Nevada, sitting at the head of the table passes around a beaker of water. I pour myself some and practically inhale it, but I don’t dare pour more. She asks if I’ve met Bea and Vesper.
“Not exactly.”
Nevada sighs and makes them tell me which one is which. The tall darkly tanned one is Vesper. The shorter blond girl is Bea. They glower at me disapprovingly.
Kids back at home would never get away with rudeness. Up until eighteen years old the elders would flog them for that behavior. I don’t understand, is there not enough food to go around or what? I recall Blane saying that we had to pay, and test in. Is all of this hostility because we’re getting a free pass?
Everyone digs into the food. The crusty oblong thing turns out to be quite tasty. It’s soft and white inside and it sticks to my ribs in a way the beetle loaf doesn’t. My stomach’s so empty I worry it’ll never be full.
After a time of gulping down food, Nevada pipes up. “Bea and Vesper, I want you to all welcome your new classmates, Armonk and Ruby. And Thorn is going to live here too.”
“They’re staying here for good?” Bea exclaims.
“No,” Armonk says, “I’m only here until Varik—”
“Shush, I won’t hear of it. You need a good education,” Nevada insists.
“They need to test in and pay up,” says Blane. “Did they pay up?”
“That’s my business,” Nevada remarks.
Armonk is stony. I don’t blame him; his face is swelled from being bashed in, and the bloody evidence is hardening in uneven splotches on his suit.
“I can cook,” I offer. “I’m good with, um, mixing things.”
Bea is studying me. “Where are you from?” she asks in a voice as cool as midnight stone. I didn’t answer Nevada before but maybe I should answer Bea, because at least it’s a civil question.
“Over in Chihuahua,” I say.
Blane points to my arms. “So, that’s what those flower brands are!” Now that my cloak is off, there’s no hiding the line of flower brands that we girls get every year, starting at the wrist and growing up our shoulders like living vines.
Jan says, “I hear that at the full moon, they dance around a bunch of torches and rape their girls.”
My face flames up. I’m not sure what a rape is but it sounds terrible. Is that what Stiles was going to do to me?
“Enough rumors!” says Nevada. “Yes, they are staying and yes, you will welcome them, and yes, they have paid up in one way or another.”