Chapter 201: Your Hair Looks Awful

Jack crossed the ward in four long strides and eased the door shut. The latch clicked.

He pointed at the far end of the room.

Daemus took Blair by the waist and walked her backward between the rows, past the sleeping faces, to the narrow gap between Ivy’s booth and the end wall. He pulled her down into it with him. His back hit the wall. Hers hit his chest.

Killian came in after them. The gap was barely wide enough for two. He crouched in front of her anyway, his shoes in one hand, his knee pushed between hers to fit.

Jack stood flat against the wall beside the door, out of sight of the window.

The footsteps came on. Soft soles, and a small wheel that squeaked once every turn.

Daemus’s hand slid under her coat and spread over her stomach. He drew her back against him until his whole front was pressed to her back. His breath was hot on her ear. She could feel his heart going hard through her wet shirt. His thumb moved once across the cotton above her navel, and she pressed her lips together.

Killian’s face was a hand’s width from hers. His eyes were on hers.

She looked back. Heat climbed her throat.

He turned his head and looked at the glass instead.

The wheel stopped.

Under the door lay a strip of white light. Two shadows stood in it.

Blair held her breath.

On the other side of the glass, Ivy sat up.

She uncurled slowly and turned her head. Her one blue eye found Blair in the corner, the wolf wrapped around her, the snake crouched in front of her. Then it went to the door.

Blair’s fingers closed on Killian’s sleeve.

Ivy looked at the door for a long moment. Then she lay down again, facing the wall, and drew the blanket up over her hair.

The shadows moved. The wheel squeaked on, one turn, two, up the corridor toward the corner. A door opened up there and banged shut.

Then it was quiet.

Daemus let his breath out into her hair. His hand stayed on her stomach.

Killian was looking at her fingers on his sleeve. She let go. He stood and stepped out of the gap.

Jack opened the door a crack, then all the way, and stepped into the corridor. He stood there looking down.

Blair came up behind him and looked too.

Their prints ran down the white tile from the corner. Jack’s boots. Daemus’s sneakers. A long smear of wet socks. Her own small shoes. All of it was drying at the edges, and the whole trail turned in at the ward door.

Two thin wheel lines ran straight through the wet and kept going.

Jack looked at them for a long time.

"Professor?"

"Walk," he said.

**

They went the other way, deeper in.

Jack took the door windows one by one. A storeroom stacked with white boxes. A door with no window at all, and a small brass plate that said RECORDS. A room with a steel table and a drain in the floor. Blair looked at that one and her stomach turned, and she walked faster.

The last door on the right had a curtain drawn across its window from the inside. Beside the handle sat a keypad with a red light above it.

Jack bent and looked at the buttons. They were all the same clean white, the paint even on every one.

He straightened. "We leave it."

"Someone’s in there," Blair said.

Jack looked at the red light.

Killian watched the corridor behind them, his shoes hanging at his side. "We have been here too long already."

Daemus stepped past all three of them, took hold of the knob and turned it.

The door swung open.

He looked down at the knob in his hand, then at Jack.

"It was open."

The light above the keypad was still red.

The room behind it was warm and lamplit, with a soft pink rug over the white tile. A real bed with a pink quilt. A chair with a cardigan over the back. A mirror on the wall, angled toward the pillow. On the bedside table sat a glass of water, a little pot of strawberry lip balm and a hairbrush.

It looked like a girl’s bedroom, a stark contrast to the others.

A girl lay asleep under the quilt with her back to the door. Her blonde hair was spread over the pillow, brushed until it shone.

Blair’s chest went tight. Another one.

She went around the bed.

The girl’s hand lay on the pillow by her face. Her nails were painted pink, and the polish had grown out halfway, a strip of bare nail at every root.

Blair saw her face.

It was Heather.

Her cheeks were round and flushed with sleep. A clear line ran from a bag on a hook into the back of her other hand. She looked exactly like herself.

"Heather." Blair’s voice cracked. She dropped to her knees beside the bed and shook her shoulder. "Heather. Wake up."

Heather frowned in her sleep. Her lashes fluttered, and her eyes opened.

The right one was her own, blurry and annoyed.

The left one was white. All of it, iris and pupil gone, smooth and pale.

Behind Blair, Daemus swore under his breath, "Holy shit."

Heather blinked at her. Both eyes moved together.

"Blair?"

"It’s me."

Heather looked her over: the dripping hair, the black palms, the two coats. Her nose wrinkled.

"Your hair looks awful," she said.

Blair laughed. It came out wet and broken, half a sob, and she pressed her forehead into the quilt.

"Is it morning?" Heather mumbled. Her eyes were already sliding shut. "I want eggs."

She was asleep again.

Jack came around the other side of the bed. He looked at Heather’s face for a long time. Then he drew the line out of the back of her hand and pressed his thumb over the spot.

Killian unclipped the card from the foot of the bed. He read it. He read it again.

"She was transferred under my name."

He folded the card in half and slid it into his breast pocket.

"Anything with my name on it is mine. She comes with me."

Daemus stared at him. "She’s a person, not a form."

"She was moved on a form. With my number on it."

"Over my dead—"

"The wolf carries her," Jack said.

Daemus shut his mouth. He bent, gathered Heather up quilt and all, and lifted her against his chest. Her head rolled onto his shoulder. She sighed and burrowed her face into his neck.

Daemus looked at the ceiling.

"She’s drooling on me."

Blair took the hairbrush from the bedside table and put it in her coat pocket.

They came back out into the corridor in a line, Jack first.

Halfway along, Killian stopped.

He was standing in front of the door with no window, looking at the brass plate.

He held out his shoes to Blair.

"Hold these."