“Come,” she said, “Take my hand.”
“What the hell is that?” I asked. A whiff of it hit my nostrils. “Oh, God, it’s awful… and sweet. How is it sweet?”
“This is how I can cling to walls. I don’t know what it’s called… I don’t remember, and mother doesn’t like feeding me information before I’m ready to learn it, but I’m sure it has a name.”
“And that comes out of your hands… and your feet?”
“When I want it to. If you like, you can sleep on the ceiling with me. It’s how I’ve been sleeping, and it beats being so close to the dirty floor.”
I stared at her. “How long have you been in here?”
She shrugged. “I’m not sure. Maybe a day, a week, maybe more. It’s hard to tell, but I don’t mind.”
“You don’t mind?”
“No. I like it in here. It’s dark, and quiet… I can be alone with my thoughts, with mother. Sometimes the guards forget I’m in here and throw other people into the room with me. Like tonight, I guess.”
“And you… watch them?”
“Maybe, unless they’re interesting enough to talk to, like you. Other times I just sleep.”
“What about food? Water?”
She shrugged. “I can go for weeks without either. These collars take our magic away, they force the glamor around us and make us look human, but they can’t shut down all of our natural gifts. I’m sure your senses are still sharp, and you’re probably a lot stronger than you look. Mother says, anyway.”
“Shouldn’t you be scared of me, then?”
“I’m not scared of anything.”
“So, why are you really down here?”
Azlu frowned. “I don’t expect you to understand, but mother thinks I’m safer in here than I would be out there, so I listen to her.”
Some of the goop from her hand dripped and splattered against the floor, releasing more of that strange, sweet smell into the air.
“I think I’ll be alright on the ground,” I said, “I think I’ve slept in worse.”
I didn’t know how I knew that, just like I didn’t know why the feeling of chains around my wrists was so familiar, but I also didn’t question it. Sleeping on the ground beat sleeping on the ceiling any day of the week.
Azlu withdrew her hand and skittered to the other side of the room, settling against one corner and tucking herself into a ball as if she could defy gravity. “Suit yourself,” she said. “When they come for you, don’t let them know I’m in here. I’d like another week of peace, if I can have it. The cellblocks are too noisy.”
I didn’t answer. Instead, I let my head settle on my hands again and shut my eyes. After a while, the natural aroma filling the air didn’t bother me as much, and I was able to drift into sleep, but it was dreamless, and restless. I couldn’t tell the passage of time in here. I didn’t know—not really—whether I’d slept for a minute, an hour, or ten hours.
But I was in prison, now.
The passage of time was a concept of a past I couldn’t remember, and I was going to have to get used to that, too.
CHAPTER FIVE
I burrowed out of sleep like an animal clawing its way out of a hole. My breaths were short and raspy, my eyes stung, and the stink of the room hit me with a vengeance, but it was the sound of the door unlocking and opening that had woken me up with a start.
The light spilling in from outside was blindingly bright. It took my eyes longer to adjust than it took the guards to storm in, grab me, and drag me out into the corridor. Blinking, disoriented, I tried to find my footing, I resisted being hauled away from the relative safety of the dark place I’d slept in, but my muscles felt heavy and sluggish.
I had about as much fight in me as a plush toy.
“Where are you taking me?” I managed, breathless.
“Shut up.” It was Brickmore. I recognized his voice. He and his buddy Howes had been the ones to cuff me and collect me from the hole I’d been locked in, and now they were carting me… somewhere else.
Doors and corridors passed me by in a blur, leading me to wonder whether I’d been stunned before they’d grabbed me and I just hadn’t realized it. I supposed it made sense. I was a dangerous creature, and after the ass kicking I’d given them both last night they probably weren’t going to be taking any chances with me.
It wasn’t until we reached a gated checkpoint that I started feeling a little more like myself, but I decided not to try my luck at escaping just then. Instead, I learned everything I could, committing to memory everything from the route we’d taken to the way the checkpoints worked.
Did they use keys, or keycards? How many guards were stationed at the gates? How long did it take to get from the hole to the first checkpoint? How often did Howes pick his nose and wipe his finger on the walls when he thought no one was looking?
Too many.
We crossed paths with another inmate being led around the prison by a guard. They stared at me like I was garbage, like the very sight of me either frightened or repulsed them—or both. I went to lash out at them, unable to control the rush of anger, of revulsion, that surged into my chest at the sight of them, but Brickmore clamped his grip hard around my arm and held me in place.
“Don’t try it,” he warned.
The guard and the prisoner passed us, eyes glaring but giving us a wide berth all the same. I hadn’t felt that pull in the pit of my stomach, that fight or flight instinct, with Azlu. It was only some people that triggered it.
We stopped at a door marked “Interview One.” Howes rapped on the door with his knuckles, and someone called out from the other side for us to enter. Brickmore opened the door and pushed me inside. It was an office, not a cell, but it was probably just as dull. A man sat behind the desk, diligently working through a stack of papers with a pen in his hand.
There were no windows in the room. No glimpses into the outside world. I guessed the people who ran the prison didn’t want their prisoners to so much as sense there was a world outside of the walls around them. All the better to break their spirits, and their minds.
“Inmate 26741, sir,” Brickmore said.
The man behind the desk turned his eyes up. He had a shaggy mop of dark brown hair, stubbly cheeks, and light brown eyes that peered out from a pair of spectacles. I waited for the urge to leap across the desk and wrap his own intestines around his neck to bubble up, but strangely it didn’t. My heart was still, at least for now.
“Thank you, officers,” the man said, “You can leave us.”
“Are you sure?” Howes asked, “It’s a fiend. Let me stun it again for you, just to be sure it won’t try anything.”
“That won’t be necessary. I’ll take it from here.”
The guards did as the man behind the desk asked and left the room, shutting the door behind them as they went and leaving us alone. I could smell the coffee dispersing into the air from the cup on the desk, saw the feather of steam rising from the rim, heard the man’s heartbeat—quickened, but not frantic.
He looked at me, his eyes narrowing. “How was your first night at Harrowgate?” he asked, reaching for his coffee cup and taking a sip, his little pinkie rising as he tipped the cup against his lips.