“You’ve reached the Borden residence. Leave your name, number, and the purpose of your call.”
Nothing this time. Not even heavy breathing.
Monty went to bed but didn’t sleep. Captain Burke knew a lot of people. Someone in Toland might be able to tell him something. And Vladimir Sanguinati knew some of the vampires who ruled the Toland Courtyard. He’d rather owe Burke a favor than deal with Vlad, but he’d take whatever help he could get to confirm his little girl was all right.
CHAPTER 9
Firesday, Maius 11
The girl dreamed of rain and woke to the sound of something dripping.
Where . . . ?
Not the compound where the white-coated keepers . . . That older girl, Jean, had called them Walking Names. And there was that other girl, the one who didn’t come to lessons anymore. Well, a lot of girls stopped coming to lessons. A lot of girls stopped being allowed to walk outside in the fenced yard. Then one day their places at the table were empty.
But that girl. Her disappearance had been different. And, somehow, she was connected with the fight that destroyed the compound and . . .
They had covered the girls’ heads. They had carried the younger girls, but girls her age were led through the corridors, stumbling over things that squished underfoot. And from the ceiling came the drip-plop of something falling. Something thick and wet.
Even with her head covered, she saw things. Or maybe she remembered some things she’d seen in visions. Bad things. Wet, red things that terrified her. And people who weren’t people, who had teeth and claws and red eyes.
Then she and the other girls were put into vans or cars and taken away from the compound.
This is a village in the Northwest. You’re going to stay here with us now, they had said. They were humans called Intuits.
What’s your name? they had asked her.
Cs821, she’d replied. Her answer made them sad. So sad.
Eight girls had come to this place from the compound. The four unscarred girls were taken to another part of the village. The four girls her age—the ones who had their first set of scars but not too many beyond that—were put together in this single room. A barracks. That was the word for the training image that matched the room.
She wondered who usually lived there and what had happened to them. There were clothes in the lockers and books on the shelves that made up the bottom of the bedside tables.
You’re free now, the new keepers had told her and the other girls. But the girls had no images of “free,” no reference, no understanding of what was required of them in this place made of wood and glass, this place filled with images and sounds that didn’t belong to the compound that, she’d been told her whole life, was the only safe place for girls like her.
She found the toilets out of desperation a few hours after they had arrived. She found that if she stood at the door of the room and asked loudly for food and water, someone would bring food for her and the other girls.
Would you like to eat in the dining room? Would you like to go outside? Would you like . . . ?
The food tasted different, even when it looked like something she remembered eating. The water tasted different. The air smelled different, a wild scent under the smell of unwashed girls.
Too much, too much. All too much. So much too much the other three girls spent most of their time curled up on their beds, and the more their new keepers tried to help, the more things overwhelmed them until they didn’t want to find anything in this terrifying place.
The new keepers had locked up the silver razors, but there were several objects in the barracks that were sharp enough to make a cut.
The Walking Names would not have been so careless.