Damselfly (24 page)

“Why are we stop—” He clamps a hand over my mouth, and then I see her. Dr. Christiansen walks toward us still dressed in her pajamas, but with a coat thrown on. Apparently we weren’t the only ones to hear the noise. She presses her thumb to the lock reader, opens the door, and goes inside. Lights turn on throughout the building. The silhouette of another person—I can’t tell who—runs toward her. The other person gestures wildly and I can hear faint hints of their conversation, but Dr. Christiansen is her usual icy self. They walk off and disappear from our view.

“Can we get closer?” I ask.

“All right.” He picks me up again and flies to the roof. Here, at least, I can run. I sprint across the ridge to the other side and stop at the edge to listen. Low voices leak through the walls, but I can’t decipher what they’re saying. They drift into silence as they move into the heart of the building.

A cricket chirps into the night. He must be the only one left—all of his brothers and sisters have succumbed to the frosts. He sings his solo into the silent night.

The front door opens and clanks shut with a bang. We run noiselessly and get to the gutter in time to see Jane turning around in confused circles, her trembling hands wrapped around some unmoving thing inside a piece of cloth.

Another bang. Dr. Christiansen walks out into the yard.

“But…but what do I do with it?” Jane asks.

“Incinerate it.”

Chapter 29

Jane stands in the clearing, staring after Dr. Christiansen’s retreating figure. Her coat hangs loosely around her shoulders, several sizes too big, and for the first time, I notice huge dark circles under her eyes.

“But I…I don’t know how to do that,” she says in a small voice to no one in particular. The doctor is already out of earshot.

She lifts one shoulder and wipes her eyes against it as the strangled cry of a wounded animal escapes her lips.

“…can’t…I can’t…” is all I can make out. She opens her hands, but her fingers are in my way. I can’t see what she’s holding. Whatever it is, she’s talking to it in between burbled sobs.

I press my fingers to my lips. I can’t seem to register what I’m seeing. My mind can’t process what could possibly make Jane so upset. Jane who happily experimented on a cat. Jane who tried to catch me as though I were nothing more than an escaped bird.

It has to be a person. All the facts scream that it’s a tiny person, but I can’t seem to feel anything in response. Shouldn’t I be screaming? Or at least crying? I pinch my arm, trying to force some feeling through my stupor. I glance at Row; his face has gone white in the moonlight. He meets my eyes, and that’s when the full tidal wave of emotion hits me.

I sink to my knees and clutch my hand over my mouth as I my throat tightens and convulses. Over and over again, I gag, and it’s all I can do to keep my dinner down.

“Lina,” Row whispers. He points at Jane who is walking off into the forest.

I don’t have to ask him to follow her. He holds out his arms, and I grasp his neck and we’re off, flying through the branches. Jane stops near a large tree trunk and kneels down in the frost-covered leaves. Gently, she places her bundle next to her, taking care to ensure it stays wrapped up. Then she digs with her bare hands.

Every so often, she stops, glances around, and wipes her nose before continuing her grave-digging. When she finishes, she places the bundle inside and buries it.

Jane stands, crosses herself with unsure movements, and bows her head for a few moments before shuffling through the forest toward her dormitory.

I grasp Row’s ice-cold hand. His jaw is locked tight, and his nostrils are flared.

“We should go look,” I whisper when I’m certain Jane can’t hear me.

“No!” he shouts. I jump as he flings away my hand. “Heck no, I am not going to go and dig up that body to see who it is and how exactly they died. We both know
what
it is already. It’s a person. I don’t need to see the gruesome evidence. It’s bad enough imagining it in my head.”

“But Row, what if there are more? What if that’s one of the Thumbelinas?”

“So what if there are? Digging up a dead body isn’t going to help them. We’ll…think of some way to help them.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Look, Lina, you may get your way most of the time, but this isn’t one of those times. You’re not going to manipulate me into doing this.” He folds his arms as indignant fire burns in his eyes.

I raise my eyebrows. “I get my way most of the time? Oh really? That’s definitely news to me.” I’m losing it. Tears run down my face, their heat evaporating into the chilly night air. I can’t stop my lower lip from trembling. He thinks I’m
manipulative
? That is just too much.

He exhales loudly and covers his face with his hands.

I brush past him and begin making my way down the tree trunk by stuffing my hands and feet into cracks in the bark.

“Hold on a minute. What are you doing?”

“What does it look like?”

“You could fall. Come on, let me take you home.” He extends his wings and flies behind me. I can feel his hands at my sides, and the urge to kick backward into his stomach overwhelms me.

“Don’t touch me, Row. Go home. You don’t want to be here, remember? I can do this myself.” And I can. I’m good at climbing as long as there are enough footholds, and this tree has plenty.

“All right, I won’t touch you. But I’m not leaving until you’re safely down.”

Much to my annoyance and relief, he flies behind me the whole way down and then scoots out of my way when I stomp toward the grave. I claw at the frozen dirt, and it’s a lot harder than I thought.

“That will take forever,” Row says.

“Then why don’t you stop ogling and help me?”

“Lina, it’s almost three o’clock in the morning. I haven’t slept since…I don’t even know when. We were on a plane all night. Don’t you think it would be a better idea to come back here in two nights after your date with Shrike? You can get your wings fixed and bring digging tools and go to town.”

I keep digging, but I’m not listening to him anymore. There might be another way to get the information that I want straight from Dr. Christiansen herself, but it means compromising Jack’s safety.

My fingers touch something soft, and I scream and scramble away.

“What?! What did you find?!” Row is at my side, holding my shaking shoulders.

I catch my breath and wait for my heart to slow its panicked beating, then I crawl to inspect what my fingers just found. A corner of the death shroud pokes through the dirt. It was cloth that I touched.

“Grief, Lina. You almost killed me,” Row says, his hand over his heart. I stare at him, his words striking my heart. He reminds me so much of Jack right now with the shadows masking the color of his hair. His frame is so similar.

“If I don’t do something,” I say, measuring each word, “you actually might die. We
all
could die from her experiments.”

He nods, but barely.

I swallow down the rising panic and begin digging again around the exposed cloth. After a few minutes, Row joins me.

“I…I feel something,” he says before leaping to his feet and running to vomit under a nearby leaf. I can smell my own bile rising in my throat as I tug the cloth away.

“You might want to stay over there,” I choke out. A moon-white arm the size of my own, broken in several places, disappears into the rest of the still-buried cloth. Whoever it was painted her fingernails a brilliant shade of purple before she died.

Breathe in, breathe out. A tsunami of tears breaks through my flimsy courage dam. How could anyone do this to another human being? Who was this girl, and why did she believe them? How could they utterly destroy her and then cover it up?

“You’re right,” I manage to say in between sobs. “I wish I hadn’t seen this.” I carefully wrap the arm back up and begin the process of reburying her.

Row helps me, but at a slower pace, as though he’s struggling with his thoughts.

“Did you see what she looked like?” he asks.

“No. Just her arm. That was enough.”

“What do we do now?”

“I have to stop Dr. Christiansen somehow.”

I shove the dirt into place, and Row helps me cover the grave with leaves. Then he carries me home with a promise to come and get me in a few hours for lunch.

I know what I have to do now. I just have to figure out how.

Chapter 30

Spears of sunlight stab at my eyes long before I plan to wake up. I forgot to shut my curtains again. I could get up and close them, but my body thinks otherwise. So instead I bury my face against the pillow and try to fall asleep again, but now that the events of last night are replaying inside my mind, sleep is impossible.

It was only a few hours ago, but I’m so jetlagged my sense of time is all jacked up. What day is my date with Shrike again? Today or tomorrow?

I stumble out of bed, still wearing the same clothes from yesterday, and remember my torn wing. Crap. And I don’t have any food in the kitchen either. Still, I bang through all the cupboards anyway. All I find is a single half of a walnut. That’s not really my idea of a balanced breakfast, but now’s not the time to be picky. So I chop it up, dump it in a bowl, and sit on the couch to eat and think.

The old watch on the wall tells me it’s seven in the morning. If this was a date day, Susanna would already be here, so that means I’m not expected to show my face until 9:00 for the production meeting. And since I’m not going to walk half a mile to the main buildings, I won’t be showing. So I can expect a visit from Dr. Christiansen at approximately 9:20. I have two hours to figure out what I’m going to say.

I wait on my porch. The morning frost still clings to the remnants of my garden and the leaves scattered along the ground. I pull my blanket coat tighter around my shoulders to shut out the chill. An unexpected peace has settled into my soul, even though my heart is pounding hard. For the first time since this whole show started, I am no longer crushed by helplessness.

Snapping twigs and the crunch of boots against frozen earth tell me Dr. Christiansen is coming long before she walks around the hedge. I take a deep breath and stand up.

Her usual confidence melts off her face when she realizes I’m expecting and prepared for her arrival.

“You are late, Lina.”

“I’m not coming.”

Her mouth twitches. “You realize—”

“I heard the screaming last night, so I went to see what was going on, and I saw you and Jane come out with something…something dead. And it wasn’t an animal. I’m not going on any more dates until you tell me what is going on.”

She says nothing, and that’s a little unnerving, so I continue. “And I know about the Thumbelinas. Is that who you killed last night? One of them? Have you been hiding them somewhere else like you did with the Toms?”

A smirk cracks her icy expression. “It would behoove you to keep your nose out of matters you clearly know nothing about. Especially considering the consequences could be severe.”

“I think you’re bluffing. And I’m not going to be your pawn any longer.” I hold my chin up and try to look more confident than I’m feeling.

She straightens her posture and smoothes her coat. “Very well then. We will simply take the show in a new direction.”

“What does that mean?”

Her smile horrifies me. “You will find out soon enough.”

***

Hours later, she reappears with Jane. I’m wading into my blackberry plants to try and find one that’s still good to eat when they close in on me. I can’t fly, but it wouldn’t make a difference anyway since they’ve brought the drones with them. Jane scoops me up and tosses me into my carrier. It seems she used up all her gentleness last night because I hit the plastic back pretty hard.

When they let me loose inside my old prison cell, the hair and makeup team is already waiting. This time, Dr. Christiansen stays and watches the whole process.

“It doesn’t matter how you dress me or what you put on my face! I’m not going on your show!”

She only stares at me with condescending eyes as Tina tugs at my hair.

“Doctor, there’s a rip in her wing,” Susanna says.

“She will not be needing it.”

Panic sets fire to my veins when I hear those words. What will she do with me now?

Chapter 31

As soon as the doors of my carrier are opened, bright lights shine directly into my eyes. Someone’s hand reaches through the white and plucks me out while I’m still blinking.

When my eyes adjust to the light, I find myself standing on a table in one of the conference rooms with a green screen behind me. A monitor is rolled out and positioned in front of me.

“Let’s test the sound,” says an engineer behind a laptop.

“Sure,” I say. “How about I say something like, ‘I’m not doing this?’”

Dr. Christiansen steps in front, arms folded and blonde hair glowing in the light. “Tell us exactly what you think, Lina.”

“Wow, I think this is the first time you’ve ever asked me what
I
think, how I feel. Well, here it is. I think you’re a control freak, and you disgust me. Do you even have a soul in there? You’ve destroyed my life, and who knows how many other people you’ve ruined as well? I don’t want to have anything to do with you anymore. Ever.” I take a deep breath, still shaking with fury.

Dr. Christiansen shows no change in emotion. It’s as if nothing I said affected her at all. I want to kick in those pearly white teeth of hers to see her suffer as her victims have suffered. Still, she smirks at me, and inside I’m a frustrated five-year-old again, screaming at the top of lungs to get her attention.

“Are you quite finished?” she asks, but she doesn’t wait for an answer. “Good. Put him on the screen.”

The monitor flickers to life, and the image of Jack sitting in a studio fills the screen. My heart plummets into my shoes and I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. He looks perfectly fine, although they must not be broadcasting my image back to him yet because he’s looking around the room he’s in with a hopeful expression on his face The contours of his face are sharper than I remember. Funny how a simple change of lighting can make someone look so different.