“I know that this is not what you’d imagined when we set out on our quest.”
I said nothing. He stood, looking down at me, hands hidden in his pockets. His mouth twisted. He sighed. “I could have gone about it differently, I suppose. But Maisie, all that has happened—I hope you recognize it’s necessary, all of it. We’d undone the locks, we needed the last sacrifice. It was so clear you’d been conditioned, your father taught you not to touch anything, not to talk about what you can do. You would never have believed, wouldn’t have let me take the blood—I couldn’t risk it.”
“Oh, come off it,” I said. “Like there was ever any reason to run me all around to special places, to pretend you cared about my father or his work. Who are you selling my blood to? What are they paying you?”
“Maisie,” Rafe said, “I do care. Trust me—”
“Tell me you’re joking.”
Rafe pulled his hands slowly from his pockets. I couldn’t help but flinch.
“We have the same purpose,” he said slowly. “To know the forest, to enter it and understand the wood. My whole life, well, since I began this line of research, I’ve been waiting for you. At first I didn’t know it was you, precisely, but when I realized that your father was not only Peter Cothay, when I realized that he had you . . . I’m sure you understand the stakes, why I had no other options. I couldn’t risk your disagreeing, couldn’t risk your saying no. Your blood is the only way in. I’m sure of it.” He paused, as if waiting for me to absolve him. I wondered what he’d say if he learned I had already entered that wood without shedding a single drop of blood.
“Why are you here?” I asked, scowling. “Have you come back to see your handiwork? To gloat?”
Rafe seemed surprised. “Maisie, the plan didn’t work,” he said. “I thought you’d already know. The door hasn’t opened. I sat by that forest for weeks waiting, and I know we had the right amount of blood—we had more than enough, more than a body’s worth—so I can only imagine that you have to be there with me. That there’s something about you, about your presence. That there’s something else we’ve missed.”
“My presence?” I laughed harshly.
“I figured you’d have had a sense . . . a vision . . . ,” Rafe continued. “Don’t you have any intuition? Anything at all?” He stepped closer, so that I could smell his cologne. Again, he smiled.
I turned away from him to stare at the burrow I’d made in the wall, my eyes trained on the flaking plaster. “You must think I’m even stupider than I seem.”
“I understand,” Rafe said to my back. “You’re still angry. But Maisie, you’re a miracle of science. You shouldn’t be ashamed, you should be proud. When your father talked about the forest, about its history, was there ever any—”
“You’re wasting your breath.”
“Because you don’t know, or because you won’t tell me?”
I said nothing.
Rafe sighed. “Eventually I’m going to figure out what it is that went wrong. I’ll be back in a day or so. While I’m gone, I hope you’ll think about all you could gain if you help me. Think about all I can give you.” He set a gloved hand on my shoulder. I jerked away. “By the time I get back,” said Rafe slowly, “I’m sure that you’ll have reconsidered your involvement.” He left the room, bolting the door behind him.
I sat very still, processing Rafe’s sudden arrival, his equally sudden departure.
When my captivity had begun, I’d taken comfort in the thought that I knew Rafe, that I could not have sat so close for hours in the car and not seen some glimmer of truth. I had replayed our conversations, reading layers of meaning where there likely were none, turning phrases like rocks to search the soil underneath them. And I’d realized this exercise was futile. My analysis of Rafe’s character could be built only on our most recent encounters, any previous behavior necessarily regarded as a part of his well-embodied act. I hadn’t known his motives then, but now I saw them clearly: he cared only for his work, and he was willing to excuse whatever torture, whatever cruelty, to achieve its completion. Those stories he’d told me about entering the forest, of sacrifice . . . did he truly believe them? Did he truly believe what he had said to me? That he meant well? That his choices were moral?
It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. Well-meaning or not, Rafe had sentenced me to prison; he had been my judge and my jury and my crime. I would not succumb to his body, or his stories. I would not let him take more blood. I’d remain cold and watchful, and I’d kill him if he came again, would lunge toward that unprotected face, that warm, bare skin.
THE NEXT DAY I left the basement for the first time since my capture. Coulton ushered me up some stairs into a different, darker room, windowless and bleak, and placed me in a chair that leaned forward and back. He strapped me in with metal ties that scraped against my skin, then left me to wait, the anticipation its own torture.
I tried to predict what was coming. I thought it sure to be some sort of forced revival, that he’d bring me something dead and have me stroke it back to life. Might he film me? Bring an audience? Or was this what Rafe had meant when he’d insisted that I’d soon reconsider his offer?
Finally, Coulton reentered. He stood before me, eyes gleaming.
“Don’t worry”—he smiled—“this will only hurt a moment. We have to keep you fit, don’t we? Our dear little sister. Our unending chest of gold.”
As he spoke, he prepared his instruments: large, shiny hooks, an oversized magnifying glass, a straight razor that gleamed with brackish light. He slid his hands into a pair of form-fitting rubber gloves, smacking their cuffs against his wrists, and loaded the barrel of a needle with a plum-colored fluid. Involuntarily, I shuddered.
“This will only hurt a moment,” he said again. I clenched my teeth against my lip. Coulton tied a band around my poor, abused right arm and plunged the purple liquid into my vein.
Slowly, the plunger’s contents took effect. My ankle, which had developed a constant twinge since an encounter two days prior with a feral-looking ferret, no longer pained me. The thumbnail I had bitten to the quick before he’d tied me to the chair stopped the brutal, rhythmic throbbing that kept time to Coulton’s words. My body felt light and effervescent, a shell I had found temporary solace in, rather than fully part of me.
With detachment I observed as Coulton took his lancet and carved an inch-long gash into my left forearm. The movement tickled, but didn’t hurt. Funny, I thought then, just how delicate my body. How utterly, embarrassingly human.
Look how the blood trickles and pools as Coulton peels away the skin. Look at the swollen pinkness underneath it. How clean it is. How strong.
Once he’d lifted up a sizable square of the skin at the top of my forearm, Coulton used a pair of scissors to cut the peeled part free. He placed his relic on a silver tray beside him, then carried it carefully out.
My arm, bleeding freely, was now twitching. It felt very far away. And then a fire lit my body in a sudden, painful burst. Its onslaught sent me jerking forward, so that the metal ties constraining me cut into my chest. I screamed. As consciousness faded, I noticed that the blood had stained my dress, forming teardrops of red against the dirty white.
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