Written in Red (42 page)

CHAPTER 21

O
n Moonsday morning, Meg opened the office, prepared her clipboard, and breathed a sigh of relief. After Darrell’s dismissal and Asia’s public banning, all the humans who worked for the Others had been edgy, especially the humans who worked in the Market Square and would have a harder time escaping if the
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turned savage. But with the exception of more patrol cars driving past the Courtyard, Firesday and Watersday were ordinary workdays. Earthday had been an enjoyable balance of chores and a long, fun romp in the snow with Simon and Sam in their Wolf forms. The romp had tired her out so much, she fell asleep while they all watched a movie that evening.

And Simon didn’t say a word about her using him as a furry pillow.

She still wasn’t sure why Darrell wasn’t supposed to visit the Green Complex. He had worked for the consulate, after all. Surely there was more sensitive material in that office than whatever could be observed in the dark about the outside of buildings.

Except Darrell had brought Asia, who really wasn’t allowed to be there.

Meg gave her arms a brisk rub, relieved when the prickling under her skin subsided. Going out at night to look at the Green Complex was odd, but she’d seen plenty of training images of someone sitting in a dark car, watching a building. Obsessed ex-lovers. Stalkers. Police. Asia didn’t fit any of those labels, but Meg thought the other woman was impulsive enough to jump at a chance to see any part of the Courtyard. And since Asia had been so curious about Sam, maybe she’d hoped to get another look at the puppy.

Did Asia know Sam lived with Simon at the Green Complex? Meg shook her head, unable to remember. Well, it didn’t matter anymore. Asia was gone and Darrell was gone, and neither of them had been part of her vision about men dressed in black.

Giving her arms a final rub, she dismissed thoughts of Asia and Darrell and went about her day. She chatted with Harry when he came in with his deliveries, laughing at his jokes even when she didn’t understand them. She spent several minutes trying to convince Nathan that he couldn’t have entire boxes of dog cookies and had to choose which kind of cookie he wanted for a snack. When he insistently pointed a big paw at each box, she ended up giving him two cookies of each flavor, which he took back to his Wolf bed to crunch.

Around midmorning, she got tangled in a bizarre game of tug between Nathan and Jake. She didn’t know which of them had brought in the length of rope as a toy, but the Wolf,
still lying on the bed, had his teeth in one end of it, and the Crow had his feet clenched around the other and was madly flapping his wings. Her mistake was thinking she could break up the game by grabbing the rope right in front of Jake’s feet. Suddenly Nathan was on his feet, wagging his tail while he growled at her, and Jake’s caws sounded suspiciously gleeful. Because the floor was a little snow-slick and her shoes didn’t have enough traction, she was pulled from one end of the room to the other and couldn’t figure out how to let go of the rope without falling on her butt.

She got out of the game only because Dan walked in with a delivery and started laughing so hard, he almost dropped the packages. After signing for the delivery, she retreated to the sorting room and pondered what game the Wolf and Crow really had been playing: tug the rope or trick Meg into playing with them.

It said something about human resilience that a week after Nathan had been assigned as the office’s watch Wolf,
most of the deliverymen were accepting of his presence, if still justifiably wary. A few tossed a “Hi, how’s it going?” in Nathan’s direction before they took care of business with her. Only one company had a new driver coming to the Courtyard, replacing the man who had refused to enter the office the first time he saw Nathan.

Once the mail was sorted and packages going out to
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settlements were properly tagged for the earth-native trucks, Meg peeked into the front room. Jake was on the counter, fluffed up and dozing. Nathan was on his back, paws in the air, also snoozing. At that moment, they didn’t look like much security, but she knew they’d be awake the instant they heard footsteps or tires in the delivery area.

Leaving them to their morning nap, she headed for the back room. The ponies would be here in half an hour, and she wanted to be ready.

When she stepped into the room, a sickening rush of images filled her mind. Old hands, young hands, male hands, female hands, dark hands, pale hands. All reaching for something and . . . Shrieks of pain. Cries of anguish.

Meg stumbled out of the back room, shaking. Was she sick? Was she going insane? Was this what happened to
cassandra sangue
when they didn’t live in the compounds? Was this
why
they had originally been brought to live in such isolation? Maybe this was the reason the girls were allowed so little personal experience, why their lives were so sterile.

She rubbed at her arms, at her legs, at her belly, at her scalp, wanting to dig and scratch and claw until the painful prickling went away. It had
never
been this bad, and she had never seen actual images
before
a cut.

But there had been that moment on the road the other day when she had slipped into a vision without cutting.

Bracing her arms on the sorting table, Meg fought to think.

Sensitive skin. She had overheard the Walking Names once when they were reviewing the value of the girls. They said prophecies from her were the most expensive because her skin was so sensitive, it became attuned to the visions even before she was cut. She just had to be around something connected to the prophecy.

And Simon had speculated that this prickling was a sign her instincts were waking up because she was living and doing and experiencing for herself instead of seeing the world as labeled images.

Was the prickling under her skin not only a warning but also a measuring stick? A little tingle that was annoying but faded quickly indicated a small choice that wouldn’t have major significance, while the harsher, painful buzz . . .

Meg returned to the back room, staggering as the images flooded her mind again. But she couldn’t figure out what was causing the reaction.

“Something there,” she whispered, fleeing to the sorting room. “Have to do it. Have to cut out this vision hiding in my skin.”

But she needed a listener this time, because whatever was struggling to break through was too big for her to endure alone. And she was scared that she wouldn’t be able to sort out the images of the prophecy, wouldn’t be able to recognize the warning or put the pieces together.

Who to call? Not Simon. He’d be angry that she didn’t call him, but he’d be angry about the cut too, and she felt certain that they didn’t have time to argue.

She tiptoed to the Private
door. Jake and Nathan were still napping. She closed that door as quietly as possible and turned the lock. Then she called A Little Bite, hoping that whatever guardian spirit looked after prophets would guide Tess’s hand to answer the phone.

“A Little Bite,” Tess said. She sounded cheerfully annoyed, which meant the coffee shop was busy.

“Tess? It’s Meg.”

Silence. “Is something wrong?” Tess’s voice was no longer cheerful or annoyed. Now there was something in it that made Meg shiver.

“Yes,” Meg said. “I need your help. It’s urgent. Can you come now? Just you.”

Tess hung up. Meg hoped that was a positive response. Going into the bathroom, she thought about what she would need and what Tess would need. She almost reconsidered, almost called Henry. But she didn’t call him for the same reason she didn’t call Simon: it just wasn’t smart to be in a room with a carnivore when she slit her skin and spilled her own blood.

“I have to go,” Tess told Merri Lee. “Call Julia. Tell her to come in as soon as she can. Tell Simon you need Heather to help you until Julia arrives.”

“He’ll want to know why,” Merri Lee said. “What do I tell him?”

“When I know why, I’ll tell him,” Tess replied. She pulled on her coat and left by the back door, striding toward the Liaison’s Office.

Why didn’t you call Simon, Meg? Why call me? Do the prophets have any idea what I am? Did you call me out of knowledge or ignorance?

“Thanks for coming,” Meg said, locking the back door as soon as Tess slipped inside the office.

“Why didn’t you call Simon?” Tess asked.

“I thought this would be too dangerous with a predator in the same room.”

Ignorance, then,
Tess thought. If Meg was trying to avoid predators, she wouldn’t have knowingly called one most of the
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feared.

“I need to cut,” Meg said, her words tripping over one another. “Something terrible is going to happen, and there is something in this room that is a part of it.”

“But you don’t know what it is?”

Meg shook her head.

“What do you need from me?”

“I need someone to listen to the prophecy, to write down what I say.”

“All right. Where?”

“In the bathroom. It’s private there.”

“What will I need?”

Meg pointed at the items on the small table. Her hand shook, telling Tess how much effort it was taking for Meg to hold on and not slash herself indiscriminately. “The tablet of paper and the pen. When a cut is made, the images come as they come. Write them down. Then someone will have to figure out how they fit together in order to understand what they mean.”

Tess tipped her head toward the front of the office. “What did you tell Nathan?”

“He and Jake are sleeping.”

The Wolf wouldn’t be sleeping much longer. Their breed of earth native had keen senses, and the lack of sounds in the sorting room would alert Nathan just as much as an unfamiliar one. Once the Wolf realized Meg was locked out of reach, he’d call the enforcer and call his leader, and there was no telling who else would respond.

“Let’s get this done,” Tess said. She shrugged out of her coat, hung it on a peg, removed her boots, and followed Meg into the bathroom.

Meg’s hands hovered over the button and zipper on her jeans. “I think this needs a bigger cut. I think the skin on my legs will work best. I need to remove my jeans.”

“
Arrroooo?”
A query. Not loud, since Nathan was in the front room and they were in the back, and there were several closed doors between them. But it meant the Wolf was awake and aware.

Tess flushed the toilet. “That will buy us a little time. But the next time Nathan doesn’t get an answer, he’s going to call Simon and Blair.” No need to mention that Henry and Vlad would also be looking for answers if the watch Wolf started making a fuss.

Meg stripped off the jeans and dropped them in a corner of the bathroom floor. On the toilet seat, neatly laid out, were the razor, ointment, butterfly bandages, a package of gauze, and medical tape. On the floor was a hand towel. Color stained her cheeks when she sat on the floor and examined the scars on her legs.

“How do you choose the place to cut?” Tess asked, sitting back on her heels so she was facing Meg and could watch the girl’s body and the expressions on her face as well as listen to the words.

“The Controller chose, based on how much the client was willing to pay for the prophecy.” Meg stared at her own skin. “Until I ran away, I didn’t make my own cuts. I don’t really know how to choose.”

“Yes, you do,” Tess said quietly. “It’s part of who you are.” She picked up the razor, opened it, and handed it to Meg. “You know where to find this prophecy.”

Meg took the razor and closed her eyes. Her free hand moved over her left leg, upper and lower, front and back. Her hand moved to her right leg. Her fingers stuttered just below the knee. Opening her eyes, she laid the razor on the right side of the shin bone, turned her hand, and cut.

Tess watched Meg’s hand shake with the effort to set the razor down with the blade turned away. She watched the girl pale, saw pain in those gray eyes that she found arousing, but there was also trust in those eyes instead of fear. She couldn’t,
wouldn’t
, kill trust.

“Speak,” Tess said, her voice rough with the effort to deny her own nature. “Speak, prophet, and I will listen.”

Box of sugar lumps. A hand withdrawing. A man’s hand wearing a thin leather glove. A woman’s hand, the nails polished a pretty rose color. A dark winter coat that had nothing distinctive. The sleeve of a woman’s sweater, the color a bright, unfamiliar blue. The ponies rolling on the ground near the barn, screaming and screaming as black snakes burst out of their bellies. Skull and crossbones. Sugar full of black snakes. The ponies screaming. A skeleton in a hooded robe, passing out sweets to children. A skull laughing while children screamed and screamed as the black snakes ripped their way out of those young bellies.

“Hands,” Meg whispered, her strength visibly fading. “Skull and crossbones. Black snakes in the sugar.”

“Your words have been heard, prophet,” Tess whispered. “Rest, now. Rest.”

With a moan that was wantonly sexual, Meg laid back on the floor. Her eyes glazed and her body suddenly had the scent of a different, and enticing, kind of arousal.

“Arrrrooooo!”

Out of time,
Tess thought, springing to her feet. She looked at Meg, at the hand towel soaking up blood that continued to flow from the cut. She wasn’t sure how much blood was too much, but she knew what she had to deal with first.

As she pulled open the bathroom door, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror over the sink. Hair the color of blood turning black as the grave. She strode into the back room at the same moment Simon unlocked the outside door, leaping in ahead of Henry and Blair. Nathan squeezed between Henry and Simon, everything in him focused on the blood scent.

“Get out,” Tess snarled. “All of you, get out of this room.
Now!
”

“Don’t you dare give orders
to me
!” Simon snarled in reply. His head began changing to Wolf to accommodate the jaws and fangs that would serve him better as weapons.

“Stay out!” Tess said again. Something in her voice must have gotten through to Henry, because he grabbed Nathan by the scruff just as the Wolf launched himself toward the bathroom.