My own, and then Coulton’s when he appeared to make his harvest, coming up suddenly behind me while I slept, wrenching my bruised arms to gather blood. His breath was sour, and his mass increased the temperature of the normally cool room. He had a greedy energy that sucked in those around him, a current of charisma that was difficult to fight. The first time he came I was too shocked to speak, too hazy from the drugs and the blood loss to process what he was doing. I thought I must have been imagining things. Why would he want my blood? He’d taken too much to merely be testing it. But the second time he came, I saw I had not been mistaken.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked outright, trying to sound reasonable, as if I were just a casual acquaintance asking about the weather or what we were having for dinner. “If you tell me, maybe I can help you.”
“What, now you’re cooperating? You don’t fool me, you little savage.” Coulton smacked the cuff of a rubber glove against his wrist and stuck his needle in me with no other warning. I gasped. “That’s what you get.”
“Please, you don’t have to do this,” I whispered. “Whatever you want to know, I’ll tell you.”
“Have to?” Coulton leaned toward me, stroking my cheek with a gloved finger. When that finger reached my lips, he pressed down, hard. “Have to,” he said to himself, smiling.
AT HIS NEXT appearance I spat at him, hoping he’d be frightened by me. I had no clearer idea of what he was doing, but from the precautions he took when he approached me I assumed that the dangers of my body were clear. When he chuckled in response, I tried to trip him as he moved toward me with his needle, tried to yank my arm away when he relaxed his grip. Failing that, I turned away from him, scowling.
“Where’s Rafe?” I said, staring at the wall, my voice weaker than I wanted it to be. “I need to talk to him.”
“Oh, you need to, do you?” Coulton grinned, yanking me up from the cot. He walked me several feet, uncomfortably shackled. “Well, in that case, Your Highness, we’ll just summon him.” He twisted the top onto the jar of blood he’d collected and pulled the needle from my arm at an angle, so that it stretched my already sore skin. I opened my mouth to protest, but was silenced by a quick smack to my backside, a spanking somewhere between what Coulton might provide a lover, or a child. My lip quivered, but I was determined not to let him see me cry.
He left for a moment and then reemerged with a chipped blue plate holding a bit of bread, a small paper cup with several medium-sized pills, and a cup of cloudy water.
“Take the vitamins before you eat,” he said before slamming and relocking the door. “The food will help them stay down.”
I sniffed at the bread and pushed it aside. I dumped the pills in the broken toilet in the corner of my cell. The water my body would not let me refuse, so I drank it, despising every swallow.
TIME PASSED. AS I faded in and out of sleep, I noted the traveling shadows cast through my two windows, the revolving trays of pills I would not take and food I would not eat: at first a cold bowl of soup, then a limp salad, then some sort of soggy noodle.
They did not trust me with a fork, and seemed to know that I could not use my fingers, leaving me a small plastic spoon with which to avoid letting the food touch my lips. Its sides were sharp enough to slice the noodles into smaller bites, but not enough to use as a weapon.
Coulton came at various intervals to take my blood and scold me for my lethargy. At some point I realized he was drugging me. It was a struggle to keep myself alert. My next full conscious recollection was of his large bulk leaning over me, insisting that I eat.
“Rafe was right about you, wasn’t he?” Coulton’s face was covered, all but his eyes, which seemed to relish my confusion. “A feisty thing at first, but not to worry, we’ll soon break you.”
I snarled at him, refusing the hot broth he offered, refusing the small part of myself that was grateful for his company after all the hours alone.
“Up to you. Just remember that force-feeding is a nasty business. Better to take your lunch in through your mouth than a tube down your throat.”
I looked down at my arms, pocked with pinpricks and bruises, and imagined the rest of my body subjected to similar force. I’d read my histories, and I knew about the suffragettes who’d suffered in the city prisons, their hunger strikes stymied, their mouths clamped with steel, the phallic rubber wrangled down their throats to send the gush of liquid they’d resisted roiling down into their bellies. I shuddered.
Hating myself for my cowardice, I took the mug and drank the briny soup.
“There’s a girl,” said Coulton. He knelt and proceeded to prick me in the crook of my arm. One smooth strip of forehead shone between his goggles and the cap covering his hair—my one chance at escape, I thought, if only I could touch it. He whistled, ugly and off-key, and I imagined the squeal he would make when he discovered I’d outwitted him, would kill him. It would happen, I insisted to myself, it had to.
The soup was too rich for my empty stomach, and I’d downed it too quickly. I coughed, and it returned in an oil-sheened, salty bile, diluting the glass jar of my blood. Coulton raised his eyebrows, saying nothing. He poured his ruined harvest into the toilet, where it splashed up on the seat.
“We’ll try again in an hour,” he said before he left.
I STARED AT that toilet for hours, waiting for the moans that meant the moving of its pipes. I watched the crack under the door for shadows that could give me some clue to the space just beyond. I counted the same stains on the wall, praying that each effort would yield different results, that something about the room would somehow, magically, be different. It never was.
Each time I heard a body on the stairs I braced myself for Rafe’s appearance, but if he came it was only ever while I slept. The thought enraged me—Rafe standing over my prone body, Rafe’s gloved hands prodding me, exploring without permission. Rafe laughing at his fortune, my stupidity. Rafe’s shadow looming, sharp and twisted against the gray basement wall.
I thought relentlessly about the events that had led to my capture: what Rafe must have known, must have been thinking. I could not revisit our journey together without burning with shame. To think I’d imagined that Rafe cared for me romantically. To think I’d followed him. To think I’d abandoned my father to whatever unknown fate. For I was certain, with each day that passed, our quest had all been artifice—there was no ancient ritual, no task to heal the land. Rafe had baited that idiot story, knowing I’d not question it, knowing I’d bite, knowing eventually he’d have me on my own.
I imagined him at a local bar, laughing with Coulton, bragging about how easy it would be to seduce me. I’ll tell her there’s a prophecy. The calls he had made nightly throughout our travels were likely updating Coulton on his progress. There was no worried family to check in on. There were no spirals. He must have overheard Matthew asking about the map at the Holzmeiers’ store, and known precisely how to fool us. Were the letters from Peter even real? I told her I was also trying to find her father, and she bought the whole thing. What a simpleton. How easy. I replayed the scene in my head, looping over and over: Rafe guffawing, the foam of his drink frothing as they toasted my na?veté, the rest of the pub’s patrons judging me, vastly entertained. Rafe had been mocking me from the moment that we’d met, once he had realized I was careless. And I, silly girl, conceited as I was, thought he had wanted me. That, maybe, he could love me.
But all Rafe wanted was my blood, though I could not guess what he did with it. Clearly from their precautions, Rafe and Coulton were aware of my curse. “How?” I yelled at the shut door. “How did you know? What are you doing?” I kicked at the toilet in the corner until my toes bruised green and purple. I overturned my mattress, wailing until my throat was raw. Nobody came; no one was listening.