Silverblind (Ironskin) (27 page)

“Field work?” said Dorie.

“The lab’s in an uproar,” said Annika. “There was a contraband egg given out over the weekend—they traced it to a women’s clinic by the wharf, but the trail has gone cold. They think the doctor might have been administering the albumen to a patient—but they encouraged her to return to answer a few questions, and the word is that she’s been most unhelpful.”

All they have to do is pull up her shirt to find the truth, thought Dorie, but she was glad to hear things hadn’t come to that pass. “So what’s the problem?” she said, heart heating up her chest. “The egg could have come from anywhere.”

“Sure,” said Annika. “Except Dr. Pearce checked his sources and they all claim not to know about it. And since they’re only in it for financial gain, they are probably telling the truth when it comes to charity clinics, so that points the trail back here. Anyway, there’s more.”

“More.”

“Well, that was Saturday, you see. A reward was put out. All this happened very quickly. And then a father brought his daughter in last night—turned her over. Said she was a former ironskin. Wouldn’t say anything else—took his money and ran. Not exactly the sort of civic-minded poster child one could hope for, is it? The girl’s really out of it—poor thing. Keeps rambling about these strange dreams she used to have. Shameful treatment. I don’t think she really knows she’s cured. But she says two boys and a girl came to her. The girl was beautiful and half-fey.”

The room wheeled around her. Dorie gripped the back of the chair and said casually, with everything she could muster, “But what does that have to do with the lab?”

“Already marked me,” Annika said ruefully. “I’m the only girl; better check that I’m not half-fey,
ja
?” She held out her hand to Dorie. Inscribed on it was a silver eye. Her palm was red and angry from the process. “And because the three of us have been so busy together gathering eggs—”

Dorie could not process the irony of this. Somehow that fey-touched girl, Alice, knew Dorian was a girl. Thus two boys and a girl. Tam, Colin, and Dorie. Not Tam, Dorian, and Annika. And here she was being suspected of the very thing she had done, simply for the quirk of fate that had put those two trios together.

“Tam’s in there now,” Annika said. “Next you, and then you will be safe from the fey, too.”

Dorie nodded numbly. “Of course,” she said, and her tongue stopped there. She should run. She should hide. But Dr. Pearce walked past and saw her, and seized her shoulder.

“Excellent. Thank you for finding our lost sheep, Annika.” Annika smiled tightly at the director and Dorie could not then have said whether Annika had been trying to drop her a friendly warning, or whether she was simply holding Dorian for Dr. Pearce. Or both. “You’re up, Mr. Eliot. Young Grimsby’s all done and busy healing. No fey in him.”

“Healing?”

Dr. Pearce propelled Dorie down to the main lab room, where a number of young men in white coats whisked around and pretended to be busy so they could stay and watch. A new baby wyvern strutted around in a cage, yodeling its displeasure. I could have taken you back to the forest, thought Dorie. And now … Did the lab even know what had been done out on Black Rock? It couldn’t have been the lab; it must have been someone sent by an angry Malcolm, determined not to be cheated. The desecration …

“Right hand,” someone said, and she held out her bandaged hand and Dr. Pearce demurred. “Left, then.”

Two men spread Dorie’s hand open on the table and held it there. “We’ve tried this on someone who was fey-ridden,” Dr. Pearce said conversationally. “It was quite dramatic. Everywhere we tattooed the silver, the fey began to leak out as if bleeding out through a wound. It smoked away as it hit the air, destroyed for good. Of course, it was too late for the poor human it had taken over.”

“I suppose it would be,” said Dorie. She was not fey-ridden, she was half-fey. She had carried the egg in her belly and caused no harm. She had touched the albumen with a human finger and had no problem. If she focused hard and kept her hand human, she could make it through this.

She thought.

Besides, there were ten of them, and all her chandelier-crashing tricks would only get her so far.

Could she go half-fey and squirm her hand free? But that would blow her cover and they would haul her off for sure. They likely had their suspicions about Dorie Rochart, after that incident last night. But no one yet knew about Dorian Eliot. If she wanted to stay free, wanted to finish curing the ironskin …

The metal tattoo gun lowered itself to her palm.

Desperate, the bottled-up words leaked out. “I saw traces of a basilisk.”

The tattoo gun was lowered for a second. “Go on,” said Dr. Pearce.

Ugh. She hadn’t meant to tell him. It was
Tam’s
basilisk to study. At least Pearce had lowered the tattoo gun. “Large wings, mirrored eyes—it couldn’t be anything else. High up the mountains. Nearly impassable.” Eggs due to hatch tomorrow—but no, perhaps she wouldn’t say that quite yet. She didn’t want him to send a team of twenty up the mountain. “You won’t be able to find it without me. I’ll need my team.”

He drummed his fingers on the desk. They were still pretending that this process was routine. He wasn’t
sure
there was anything feyish about her, after all—he would hardly like to falsely accuse his brilliant new naturalist. And now she had something he dearly wanted, presuming she wasn’t lying. Of course, if she were fey-ridden, she’d be likely to lie, wouldn’t she? She saw all that pass through his head, and her gambit fail.

“Fantastic,” he said smoothly. “You and Annika and Tam can go first thing tomorrow morning. Just as soon as we make you safe.”

And then the silver tool pressed down.

It hurt like a needle, like a shot, like being jabbed with a tiny hot knife.

But it was a tattoo. And she presumed that was how it hurt everybody. She focused on her palm, focused on keeping it solid. The pain ebbed and flowed as the needles thrummed more easily over fatty flesh, then bit into tendons, outlining the eye. She was human, she was human, she was human.

Nevertheless, she stared at her hand as if expecting to see her other half leak out the silver eye.

They were halfway through the tattoo before it became clear that nothing untoward was going to happen. No fey was going to burst out of her hand, thin and blue. Dr. Pearce clapped her on the back. Their eyes met and there was disappointment there behind the smile. He really didn’t like her, did he. Perhaps he didn’t like anybody, only what they could do for him. “Excellent,” he said blandly to Dorian’s smirk, as if there had never been any doubt about her humanity. “Henderson will supply you with ointment for it. Looking forward to hearing the news about the basilisk, what?” He moved off, and so did the surreptitious watchers.

Dorie held on until the tattoo finished, then struggled down from the stool. Woglet balanced on her shoulder as she made her unsteady way out of the lab room, out of the lab. She held out her red and silver hand as she went, and those who had silently watched her come in now silently watched her leave, “proof” that she was human writ clear on her palm. She met Annika’s eyes, but Annika made no move to talk to her.

Tam was waiting for her outside. He seized her arm and walked her down the street, away from the building. Cheerfully waved at a fellow lab guy: “We’re off to lunch.” Boys did not really grip each other’s arms like that; they gripped shoulders, and suddenly she thought that perhaps he might believe her.

“Look,” Tam said in a low voice as they got out of sight. “I couldn’t stop Pearce from grabbing you. You must believe me.”

Dorie nodded.

“I mean. If you
are
my cousin—” He sighed. “Dorie and I have had our problems, but I wouldn’t want anything to happen to her. When she left me in that forest…” His hat was off and he ran his fingers through his wild blond hair till it stood straight up.

“I didn’t mean to,” she said hoarsely. “I mean I did, I but I repented. Oh, how I repented.”

He looked down at her, his eyes full of an old misery.

“I hated being human. I wanted to be one of them. They said I could if I brought you, and you wanted to go.”

“For a day! A week! Not for three months. And time passes so strangely there, it felt like a year, and as far as I knew I was there forever, with nothing to think over but how much you must despise me to have done it.”

“I know! I know,” she said in a rush. “I was stupid. I was wrong. It didn’t even get me what I wanted, which was to be all blue and vanish into the forest
with you,
and never come back.” He looked startled at that thought. “The fey haven’t had a real leader since we were little, but the strongest ones, the ones who made me the offer for you, basically said, congratulations, your cold betrayal makes you more like us.” She slumped, her fingers curling against the memory. “They
were
going to take you for a year, a real year. I played along like I
was
cold and careless until I learned how to split all the fey out of me. Then I told them your parents were going to murder me and I’d better trade to get you back. They said in exchange, they would take your love for me.…”

Tam rounded on her. “How could you know all that?” He seized her arms. “How could you know all that, and still not know that they couldn’t possibly take—” He broke off. “You have to be Dorie. You
have
to.”

Her heart took a sudden irrational leap. “I
am,
” she said. Her hands were shaking from the tension.

Tam wheeled her off into the trees in the park. His dear brown eyes looked down into hers. “Prove it then,” he said hoarsely. “Show me.”

“All right.” She held out her left hand and willed it to change back to Dorie’s dainty one.

Nothing happened.

He kept watching. She consciously relaxed, took a breath, tried again. “It’s not working—” And then sudden realization struck her. She turned her hand over to show the silver eye on her reddened palm. “I … I can’t,” she said. “I think … I think the wyvern goo stops me.”

The softening vanished; he was hardened to her again. None of what she’d said meant anything. She was some boy, playing a joke on him, making him look like a fool. “Convenient.”

“Oh no oh no oh no,” she said. Did it block everything? She whirled, reached out mentally to flip a park bench and nothing happened. Ruffle the elm leaves. No. Her hand again, the other, bandaged hand. A foot. No.

Another breath. She could deal with the loss of lifting trolley tickets and scooting things along—she had done without most of her fey self for seven years.

But if she couldn’t change back? If she was stuck as Dorian forever? “I don’t want to be a boy,” she burst out, and watched him take a step back. She shook her head. “I know you don’t believe me. Why should you. But I am Dorie. It’s all true. I know everything. I know you saw me in Dorie form at Aunt Helen’s the other night. I know how Dorie showed up in a nice dress and
these old boots,
and caused a riot while trying to hide the fact that she had Woglet. I know you ignored me.”

“You’re well coached,” he said.

“I know how we grew up together,” she said, the words flying out. “Summer after summer. I know the stories we told about the fey. I know how after I betrayed you, I hated myself for years and years. I locked my fey half away the day you were freed. I locked it away so I could never hurt anybody again.” Her hands curled on the memory of all those years without half of her self. Tam just looked at her, and she said softly, “I know that my parents were taken by the silvermen last night. They should have left town with yours.”

He started then, for no one knew that Helen and Rook were on anything but a vacation at the shore. But then he shook his head. “Dorie told you that, too? She must think more highly of you than you deserve.”

“It’s true! I’m Dorie, I am.”

“And I’m a three-legged albatross, and I almost believed you,” Tam said coldly. “Guess you’re a better liar than I am.”

He turned to go and she stopped him and said, “But wait. Aren’t we still a team?” She lowered her voice. “Five of those eggs are going to hatch tonight.”

He stood a moment, thinking, his eyes hidden behind his glasses. Then, “I think we’d better divide and conquer.”

Except you can’t test to make sure the fey is all gone, she thought, but she stopped herself. Who knew if
she
could do that anymore. Anyway, “We can’t,” she said. “Need one person to do the albumen, other to be on wyvern duty.” Sure, she had done Colin all by herself, but now—? “We can’t risk anything going wrong.”

Tam nodded reluctantly. “Do you have the next address?”

“Colin’s gathering them,” she said. “One hour after midnight.”

“Don’t think it means I want anything else to do with you,” Tam said. “I just want to see the ironskin taken care of. Before everyone’s thrown in jail. Then we can comfortably avoid each other for the rest of our lives.”

He stalked off and she sank to the park bench, Woglet crawling around her shoulders. Her hands hurt and she didn’t feel as though she had the energy to move one centimeter.

That’s when she saw them.

Herself. And Tam.

She saw the two of them walking along the meandering path in front of her, hand in hand. She rubbed her eyes, staring. What were these visions? She must be going mad. That Dorie had not made any changes to her face, but her hair was straight and dark brown, like Jane’s. That Tam had his explorer hat tipped back, and they were laughing.

They stayed on the path, but they walked right through a couple strolling by. Dodged some invisible couple she could not see. That Dorie turned toward Tam, letting go of his hand for a minute, and Tam winked out. Then she touched him again and there he was, pulling That Dorie close into his arms.

Could she hear them if she went closer? What would happen if they overlapped? Could That Dorie see her?

This Dorie crept off her bench. She reached them, reached to touch That Dorie’s arm, but her fingers passed right through. That Dorie did not even notice her. The couple kissed, and That Tam touched That Dorie’s cheek, gently. Holding hands, they turned down the path until they rounded the corner and disappeared from sight.