Chapter 200: Don’t Touch the Glass

Jack came down the corridor. He stopped beside her and looked where she was looking.

"Hands," he said.

She looked down. They were still shaking.

Daemus got to them first. He took both her hands in his and folded them together, then lifted them and breathed into the gap between his thumbs. His breath was hot. He rubbed her fingers one at a time.

"Still freezing," he muttered.

She let him. He turned her hands over, saw the black on her palms and frowned at it. Then he went back to rubbing, harder, working at it with his thumbs.

After a moment she slid her hands out of his and pushed them into her coat pockets.

Daemus’s sneakers squeaked twice on the tile. Killian walked in his socks. He had taken his shoes off at the top of the stairs and was carrying them by the heels, two fingers hooked through the backs, held well away from his trousers.

Daemus looked at the shoes. He opened his mouth.

"Don’t," Killian said.

Jack was already moving. He went down the row of doors and looked through each small window in turn. At the fourth he stayed longer.

Blair started after him.

Cool fingers closed around her wrist, just above the torch cord.

Killian held on. His thumb lay along the inside of her wrist, and she could feel it through the wet sleeve.

"Between Feron and me," he said, very low.

She looked up. His eyes were on hers for one second. Then they went to the ceiling lamps.

He kept hold of her down the corridor, a half step behind her shoulder.

Daemus came up beside her. He looked at Killian’s hand on her wrist. Then he caught her by the elbow and pulled her wrist out of Killian’s grip.

"Hands off my girlfriend, snake."

Killian stepped around to her other side and took her left wrist.

Daemus stared at him.

"A pet in unfamiliar territory is kept on a lead," Killian said. "I didn’t bring one."

"For the billionth time, she’s not your pet. She’s my girlfriend."

"Girlfriend is not a legal category."

Daemus opened his mouth.

"Another word," Jack said from the fourth door, his back to them, "and I leave you both here."

Daemus shut his mouth. Both of them kept their grip.

Blair walked the rest of the corridor with a wrist in each of their hands.

Jack had his picks out. The lock on the fourth door took him less time than the gate had. He opened the door a hand’s width and listened. Then he opened it all the way.

The room was long and dim after the corridor. Glass booths ran down both sides, and in every booth stood a bed. A small green light blinked above each one.

People lay in the beds. Humans, in white gowns. Their heads were turned on the pillows and their mouths hung a little open. Clear lines ran from bags on hooks into the backs of their hands.

Blair counted eight on the left before she made herself stop.

"Asleep?" Daemus said.

"Sedated." Jack walked in.

The air was warmer here. It smelled of bleach and of something sweet underneath. Blair’s feet carried her to the middle of the room and stopped on a bare patch of white tile between the rows.

Jack walked the left row, then the right, reading every card.

Killian went to the nearest booth and read the card clipped beside the glass. A muscle jumped in his jaw. He let the card fall back against the glass and stepped away from it.

"Bunny."

Daemus stood at the far end of the left row, looking into the last booth.

The girl inside was sitting up.

She had her knees drawn to her chest and the blanket around her shoulders. Her blonde hair hung flat and dull. Her right eye was blue, wide, and fixed on Blair.

Her left eye was gone. Pale skin had grown smooth over the place where it should have been.

Her left hand was wrapped around her shin. The fingers were too long, and each had one joint more than it should.

It was Ivy.

Blair went to the glass. Ivy watched her come.

"Ivy," Blair said. "It’s me. It’s Blair."

"I know who you are."

Her voice came thin through the glass, and too low at the back of her throat.

"Is Nora okay?"

"She’s looking for you," Blair said. "She never stopped."

Ivy’s eye closed for a moment, and opened again.

Jack came up beside them and he looked at the booth’s door. It was a flat sheet of glass, flush with the frame. A small panel of numbered buttons sat beside it at shoulder height, with a red light above.

Daemus set his palm flat against the glass and leaned his weight into it. The glass held. He drew his arm back.

"No," Jack said.

"I can break it."

"I said no."

Daemus looked at him. Jack looked at the red light. Daemus lowered his fist.

Ivy’s eye went from the wolf to the crow, to the snake standing a few steps back, and returned to Blair.

Blair put both hands on the glass. The grease left two black prints on it.

"I’m going to get you out."

"Ms. Willows," Jack said.

"Not tonight. I can’t tonight." She kept her eyes on Ivy’s. "But I’m coming back for you. I promise."

Ivy looked at her for a long time.

Then she laid her cheek on her knees, turned her face to the wall and pulled the blanket up over her hair.

Blair stood there with her hands on the glass.

Her eyes went to the panel. Four of the buttons were worn paler than the rest, the paint rubbed thin at their centers. She looked at them until she was sure of which four.

Jack took her wrists and lifted her hands off the glass, and wiped the two black prints away with his cuff until the glass was clean.

Daemus’s hand found the back of her coat and stayed there. It was shaking a little.

Killian had already gone to the door. He stood with his shoes in one hand and the other raised, and everyone stopped.

Somewhere down the white corridor, a door opened and closed.

Then footsteps, coming their way.