The Beast

TWENTY-SEVEN

As soon as Mary walked into Safe Place, Rhym came up to her. “Hey, Bitty has been asking for you.”

“Really?” Mary shrugged out of her coat. “She has?”

The other social worker nodded. “Right when she woke up. She didn’t want to come down for First Meal, so I took her a tray and told her that I’d send you to the attic when you got here.”

“Okay. I’ll head up right now, thanks.”

“I’m going to take off, if it’s okay?” The female covered her mouth as she yawned. “She actually slept—or shall I say, after a bath, she got into a nightgown and headed to bed. I checked on her every hour or so and she seemed to be out like a light.”

“Good. And yes, of course—I’ll take over from here. Thank you so much for staying with her all day. It just felt like the right thing to do.”

“I wouldn’t have been anywhere else. Call me if you need me?”

“Always. Thanks, Rhym.”

While the female headed for the back of the house, Mary took the stairs in a rush, stopping only to drop her things off in her office before going up to the third floor. When she got to the top landing, she was surprised to find the door to Bitty’s room open.

“Hello?” the girl called out from inside.

Mary squared her shoulders and walked forward. “It’s me.”

“Hi.”

Bitty’s suitcases were still packed and by her bed, but she was over at the old desk, brushing her doll’s hair.

“Rhym said you wanted to see me?”

To herself, Mary added, Any chance you want to talk about something? The mother you lost? The infant brother who died? Your maniac father? ’Cuz that would be great.

“Yes, please.” The little girl turned. “I was wondering if you could please take me to my old house.”

Mary recoiled before she could catch the reaction. “You mean where you and your mahmen used to live? With your father?”

“Yes.”

Easing the door shut, Mary went over and almost sat on Bitty’s mom’s bed. She stopped before she did, though. “What are you—why would you like to go there? If you don’t mind me asking?”

“I want to get some more of my things. My uncle doesn’t live in Caldwell. If I don’t get them now, I may not be able to pick them up when he comes to get me.”

Mary glanced around. Then walked around, stopping at the window that overlooked the front yard. Dark, so dark out there—seemingly more so than on a July night when it was humid and warm as opposed to cold and blustery.

Pivoting to face the girl, she said, “Bitty, I’ve got to be honest with you. I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“Why?”

“Well, for one thing”—Mary chose her words carefully—“the house has been abandoned the entire time you’ve been here. I’m not certain what condition it’s in—it might have been looted. Or suffered roof damage. In which case I’m not sure what we’d find there?”

“We won’t know if we don’t go.”

Mary hesitated. “It could bring up a lot of memories. Are you sure you’re ready for that?”

“Location doesn’t matter. There is no escape from what I remember. It is with me every waking minute and in my dreams all day long.”

As the girl spoke in such a factual way, she didn’t miss a stroke of that brush. They might as well have been talking about the schedule of laundry or what was being served down in the kitchen.

“You must miss your mahmen a great deal,” Mary prompted.

“So may we please go?”

Mary rubbed her face and felt exhausted. “You can talk about her with me, you know. Sometimes that helps.”

Bitty didn’t even blink. “May we?”

Annnnnnnd that door remained firmly closed, apparently. Great. “Let me talk to Marissa, okay? I’ll go find her right now and see what I can do.”

“I have my coat.” The little girl motioned to the end of her bed. “And my shoes are on. I’m ready to go.”

“I’ll be back in a little bit.” Mary headed for the exit, but paused at the door. “Bitty, in my experience, people either work things in, work them out, or work them through. The latter is the best option, and it usually comes from talking about the stuff we maybe don’t want to discuss.”

On some level, she couldn’t believe she was addressing a nine-year-old like that. But Bitty certainly didn’t express herself like someone under the age of ten.

“What do the other two mean?” the little girl said, still working her brush.

“Sometimes people internalize bad feelings, and punish themselves in their minds for things they regret or think they did wrong or badly. It eats away at you until you either crack and have to let it all out or go crazy. Working out means that you avoid what bothers you by channeling feelings into behaviors that ultimately hurt you or other people.”

“I don’t understand any of that. I’m sorry.”

“I know,” Mary said sadly. “Listen, I’ll go speak to Marissa.”

“Thank you.”

Walking out of the room, Mary paused at the head of the stairs and looked back. Bitty was just doing what she had been, running that brush down the ratty hair and avoiding the bald spots.

In all the time she had been in the house, she had never played with any of the toys available downstairs in the communal box: the children, when they first came in, were always encouraged to find one or two that they liked and claim them as their own, leaving the others as joint property. Bitty had been told repeatedly to help herself. Never had.

She had her doll and her old stuffed tiger. That was it.

“Shit,” Mary whispered.

Marissa’s office was on the second floor, and when Mary went down and knocked on the jamb, Butch’s shellan motioned for her to come in even as she talked into her phone.

“—completely confidential. No, no. Yes, you may bring your young. No, free of charge. What was that? Absolutely free of charge. For however long you’re here.” Marissa indicated for Mary to take a seat, and then held up her forefinger in the universal sign for Hold on, just one second. “No, it’s okay—take your time. I know . . . you don’t have to apologize for the tears. Ever.”

After Mary lowered herself into the wooden chair across from her boss, she reached out and picked up a crystal paperweight that was in the shape of a diamond. The thing was nearly the size of her palm, heavy as her arm, and she smoothed its facets with her thumbs, watching the light refract out of its depths.

Was this ever going to get any easier with that girl, she wondered.

“Mary?”

“What?” She glanced up. “Sorry, I’m all in my head.”

Marissa leaned on her elbows. “I totally understand. What’s up?”

Xcor was removed from the training center at around eight o’clock—and Layla saw it all happen.

As soon as her alarm had gone off after sunset, she had gotten out of bed and propped the door to her room open with one of her slippers—such that as she lay back, she could see a slice of the corridor through the crack. And sure enough, the Brothers had soon moved him, just as she had guessed they would: hearing the sound of many heavy footsteps, she had gotten up and stood to the side so that she could see without being noticed.

Eventually, they had paraded by, and Xcor had been with them, lying prone on a rolling table, a sheet covering him from top of head to tip of foot. As they had passed, she had had to press her hands to her mouth. So many machines with him, clearly keeping him alive. And then there were the Brothers, all of them and each fully weaponized, their massive bodies strewn with deadly daggers and guns.

Closing her eyes and holding onto the door jamb, she’d been consumed by the need to rush out and stop them, to beg for Xcor’s life, to pray unto the Scribe Virgin for his recovery and his release. She had even marshalled words in his defense, things such as, “He has not attacked us even though he knows our location!” and, “He has never hurt me, never once in all the nights I met him!” and the ever popular, “He’s changed from the traitor he once was!”

All of it had served only to confirm her own guilt—and so she had stayed where she was, listening to them proceed all the way down the hall to the parking area.

As the final door had clanked shut and been locked, she had reiterated to herself that she needed to let it go.

She told herself, forcefully, that Xcor was the enemy. Nothing more. And nothing less.

Lurching forward, she returned to her bed, climbing up upon it and tucking her feet under her. With her heart pounding and her brow and upper lip sweating, she tried to control her emotions. Surely this kind of stress was not good for the young—

The knock on her door brought her head around. “Yes?” she yelped.

Had she been found out?

“’Tis I, Luchas.” Qhuinn’s brother sounded worried. “May I enter?”

“Please.” She hefted herself back onto the floor and re-shuffled herself to the door, opening it wide. “Do come in.”

As she stood to one side, the male cranked his arms around the wheels of his chair, his forward progress slow, but independent. There had been talk of getting him a mechanized one, but this self-directed momentum was part of his rehabilitation, and indeed, it seemed to be working. Sitting with his knees together and his thin body only a little hunched over, he had all of Qhuinn’s handsomeness and intelligence, none of his brother’s weight and vitality.

It was very sad. But at least he was getting around now—something that had long been an impossibility for him.

Then again, getting tortured by lessers had cost him more than just a finger or two.

When he had cleared the jambs, Layla allowed the panel to shut on its own and once more returned to the bed. Getting up on it, she straightened her nightgown, and smoothed her hair. As a Chosen, it would have been far more appropriate for her to receive a visitor in one of the traditional white robes of her station, but she no longer fit in any of them, for one thing. For another, Qhuinn’s brother and she had long past dispensed with any formality.

“I find it rather impressive that I made it down this far anew,” he said in a voice that was a monotone.

“I’m glad for the company.” Although she would not be telling him why. “I feel . . . rather caged in here.”

“How fare you this eve?”

As the question was posed, he did not meet her eyes—but he never did. His gray stare remained pinned four feet off the floor, its direction changing only when he turned his frail body this way or that in his chair.

She had never before been so grateful for another’s dysfunction, for his reticence provided her some privacy as she attempted to control her emotions—although she supposed that didn’t reflect well on her character.

What did, though, lately.

“I am well. And you?”

“Well, indeed. I must needs attend to my physical therapy in fifteen minutes.”

“I know you shall do well.”

“How fare my brother’s young?”

“Very well, thank you. They are bigger every night.”

“You have been much blessed, as has he. For that, I am most grateful.”

It was the same conversation every evening. Then again, what else did the two of them have that was worthy of any kind of polite discourse?

Too many secrets on her side.

Too much suffering on his.

In a way, they were one of a kind.