I shot her a smile. “I’m sure you are. I just don’t want to drag you down.”
“Drag me down?” She gave a harsh laugh. “Good luck. First of all, spirit’s already doing a great job at that, so you’ve got tough competition. Ever since I restored Olive, that … I don’t know … do you get that? That kind of dark, dreary haze?”
“Yup,” I said. “Sure do.”
“Well, that seems to be a daily visitor now, which makes life delightful, as I’m sure you can imagine. Meanwhile, after going through all that for Olive, she’s run off on some vision quest because she decided she needed some ‘alone time’ to think about everything that’s happened! She somehow manages to keep ending our dreams before I get a chance to talk to her. I’d go try to look for her, but Sonya keeps insisting I stick around here to help with her spirit research. They put me up here in swanky accommodations, but I don’t have any other means to live off of, so I had to take a part-time secretarial job at the palace. Let me tell you, doing ‘customer service’ for a bunch of self-absorbed royals? Well, it’s like a new circle of hell.” She paused, remembering whom she was talking to. “No offense.”
I laughed, maybe the first time I’d genuinely done so in a while. “None taken, because I know exactly the types you’re talking about. If you do talk to your sister, by the way, you should let her know she’s breaking poor Neil’s heart.”
“Noted,” said Nina. “I think he’s one of the things she’s reflecting on.”
“Is that good or bad?” I asked.
“I have no idea,” she laughed.
I started laughing too, and suddenly, I decided to take her up on her offer. “Okay. Let’s get something to eat … though honestly, after the last twenty-four hours … I’d rather have a drink. I don’t suppose you’d be into that?” It was probably a terrible idea, but that hadn’t stopped me before.
Nina grabbed my hand and began leading me toward a building across the lawn. “Thank God,” she said. “I thought you’d never ask.”
CHAPTER 5
Sydney
FOR A MOMENT, WHEN I SAW Sheridan’s syringe, I thought she was opting for some extreme form of tattoo refreshing. Like, instead of injecting my skin with small amounts of charmed ink, she was going to shoot me up with a monster dose to make me toe the line.
It won’t matter, I tried to tell myself. Magic use protects me, no matter how strong the amount they use. The words sounded reasonable, but I just wasn’t sure if they were true.
As it turned out, however, Sheridan had something entirely different in mind.
“Things seemed so promising for you after we last spoke,” she told me after plunging the needle into my arm. “I can’t believe you didn’t last an hour on your own.”
I nearly said, “Old habits die hard,” but remembered I needed to act contrite if I wanted any sort of advancement. “I’m sorry,” I said. “It just slipped out. I’ll apologize to Harrison if that’ll—”
A strange feeling began to well up in my stomach, starting at first as just slight discomfort and then building and building until it was full-blown nausea, the kind that took over your whole body. My stomach felt like it had a tidal wave in it, and my head began to throb. I could sense my temperature rising as well and sweat breaking out everywhere.
“I’m going to be sick,” I said. I wanted to put my head down, but the chair kept me locked in place.
“No,” said Sheridan. “You won’t be. Not yet. Enjoy the show.”
Along with arm restraints, the chair’s headrest also made sure I couldn’t turn my head, thus forcing me to look straight ahead at the screen. It turned on, and I braced myself for horrific images. What I saw instead were … Moroi. Happy Moroi. Friendly Moroi. Moroi children. Moroi doing ordinary things, like sports and eating at restaurants.
I was too miserable to puzzle out these baffling pictures, though. All I could think about was how I wished I could throw up. It was that kind of sickness—the kind where you knew you’d feel better if you could just expel that poison. But somehow, Sheridan was right. I couldn’t get my body to throw up, no matter how much I might’ve longed to, and I instead had to sit there as that terrible, corrupting nausea twisted my insides. Waves of agony swept me. It didn’t seem possible that I could contain this much misery inside me. I groaned and closed my eyes, mostly to make my head feel better, but Sheridan read another motive into it.
“Don’t,” she said. “This is a pro tip: It’ll go a lot easier on you if you watch of your own free will. We have ways of keeping your eyes open. You won’t like them.”
I blinked back tears and focused back on the screen. Through my suffering, my brain tried to figure out why she’d care if I was watching pictures of happy Moroi or not. What did that matter when my body felt like it was being turned inside out?
“You’re trying to …” I gagged, and for a moment, I thought I might get that relief after all. I didn’t. “… create some sort of Pavlovian response.”
It was a classic conditioning technique. Show me the image and make me feel terrible while I look at it, with the goal being that I’d eventually come to associate the Moroi—harmless, happy Moroi—with extreme discomfort and suffering. There was just one problem.
“Y-you need repeat sessions for this to take effect,” I realized aloud. One time wasn’t going to make me instantaneously feel revulsion to images of Moroi.
The look Sheridan gave me spoke legions about what I could expect in the future.
My heart sank. Or maybe it was my stomach. Honestly, with the way my insides felt just then, I couldn’t distinguish one part from another. I don’t know how long they kept me in that state. Maybe an hour. I couldn’t really focus on counting time when my goal was just surviving each rollicking wave of sickness. After what seemed like an eternity, Sheridan gave me another injection, and the screen went dark. Her henchmen undid the restraints, and someone handed me a bucket.
For a few seconds, I didn’t understand. Then, whatever had been holding my body back from finding release no longer held. Everything from that meager lunch came back up, and even afterward, my stomach still kept trying. I was reduced to dry heaves and finally just gagging before I stopped altogether. It was a long, painful process, and I was beyond the point of caring that I’d just thrown up—excessively—in front of others. And yet, as awful as it had been, I still felt better, now that I’d finally managed to purge whatever had caused that nausea to churn and churn within me. One of the lackeys discreetly took the bucket from me, and Sheridan gave me the courtesy of a cup of water, as well as the chance to brush my teeth at a small sink on the room’s side. It was next to a cabinet full of medical supplies, as well as a mirror that let me see how miserable I looked.
“Well, then,” Sheridan said cheerily. “Looks like you’re ready for art class.”
Art class? I was ready to curl into a ball and fall asleep. My whole body was weak and shaky, and my stomach felt as though it had been turned inside out. No one seemed to notice or care about my debilitated state, however, and the henchmen escorted me out of the room. Sheridan waved goodbye and said she’d see me soon.
My escort took me upstairs to the classroom level, to what served as the detainee art studio. Addison, the stern and androgynous matron from the lunchroom, was just getting class started, issuing instructions on today’s assignment, which appeared to be the continuation of painting a bowl of fruit. It figured an Alchemist art class would have the most boring project ever. Despite her speaking, all eyes swiveled toward me as I entered. Most of the expressions that met me were cold. Some were a little smug. Everyone knew what had happened to me.
One nice thing I’d picked up on in this class and the previous one was that in re-education, the prized seats were closest to the teachers, unlike at Amberwood. This allowed me to slink to an empty easel in the back of the room. Most of the eyes couldn’t follow me there unless they blatantly turned and ignored Addison. No one was willing to do that. Most of my effort was focused on remaining standing, and I only listened to her speak with half an ear.
“Some of you made good progress yesterday. Emma, yours in particular is coming along nicely. Lacey, Stuart, you’ll need to start over.”
I peered around, trying to match the people to their easels, which I had a full view of from the back. I thought maybe my recent purging had addled my brain, because Addison’s comments made no sense. But no, I was certain I had the people right. That was Emma, my alleged roommate, a girl who looked to be of Asian American heritage who wore her black hair in a bun so tight, I swore it stretched her skin. Her painting seemed like nothing special to me and was barely discernible as fruit. Stuart was one of the people who’d pushed their desks away from me in Harrison’s class. He actually appeared to have some artistic talent, and I thought his painting was one of the best. It took me a moment to learn who Lacey was, and I figured it out when she swapped out her canvas for a blank one. Her painting wasn’t as good as Stuart’s, but it was leagues better than Emma’s.
It’s not about skill, I finally realized. It’s about accuracy. Stuart’s pears were perfect, but he’d added a couple more than were there in real life. He’d also altered the fruit’s position and painted a blue bowl—which looked much better than the actual brown one being used. Emma, while having created a much more rudimentary work, had the correct number of fruit, had placed them perfectly, and had matched every color exactly. The Alchemists didn’t want creativity or embellishment. This was about copying what you were told to do, no questions and no deviation.
No one made any effort to help or advise me, so I stood there stupidly for a little while and tried to pick up on what the others were doing. I knew the basics of painting with acrylics from being around Adrian but had no practical experience myself. There was a communal supply of brushes and paint tubes near the fruit, so I made my way there with some of the other students and tried to pick my initial colors. Everyone gave me a wide berth, and when I selected and rejected one paint color for not being a close enough match, the next person who picked it up made sure to wipe the tube clean before taking it to her station. I finally returned to mine with several tubes, and while I couldn’t speak for my ability to mimic the fruit, I felt fairly confident my colors were spot-on. I could at least play that part of the Alchemist game.