“Just . . . ?” Oscar slicked his hand over the curls on top of his head, then held up one finger, asking me to stay quiet.
He waved his hand at the far wall behind the desk, and once again part of the wall disappeared, revealing a bank of floating screens. Images flickered there: the room where Neds sat, the inside of the elevator, a street that might be another entrance to this place, and about thirty other locations I did not recognize. Some of the screens were images of empty rooms, but most of them had people in them.
People who were working, talking, eating, sleeping.
The screen that showed the interior of this room was paused.
Oscar flipped through images by waving his fingertips in the air, and all the screens froze.
“Now,” he said in a hurry as if time was counting down. “There will be no record of this. No one but you and I will know that this conversation has happened. I have even turned off the receivers and recorders within the Gray histories.”
“Histories?”
“All the . . .” He pointed at the nearest portrait that stared blankly, and, thankfully, no longer at me. It too was frozen.
“Are you allowed to do that?” I asked. “I thought this was important for legal reasons.”
He chuckled. “IamHouse Gray. Of course I can do that. We need the histories; they contain backup copies of backup copies of information, conversations, DNA, and everything from the last two hundred years or so. A House is only as strong as its history. But every House needs its privacy. And, trust me, every House takes it.”
He sat on the edge of the desk and pressed his hands together, palm to palm, in a prayer position, his fingers tipped to his chin. “Goose bumps. Here. Just now. Has that ever happened to you before?”
“Being spooked?”
“No. Well, yes. Have you experienced goose bumps, tingles, cold—that sort of thing?”
“Are you’re asking me if I can feel?”
“Yes.”
Right. Abraham and the other galvanized, Robert, had been surprised about that too.
“Yes,” I said. “I can feel . . . everything.”
Oscar shook his head, his fingers still steepled by his lips. “I didn’t know.”
“How could you?” I said quietly.
“Do you understand how unusual that is, Matilda Case? How unusual you are? You are the first, the breakthrough. Your brother has discovered immortality without the loss of sensation, heart, or mind.”
“I might not be immortal,” I said. “We don’t really know that, do we?”
“There are ways to find out. Do you remember your reawakening?”
“Yes, I think I do.”
“Do you remember when that happened?”
“Are you asking how old I am?”
“Yes.”
“I am twenty-six.”
“Amazing,” he said. “Simply amazing. Your brother is brilliant.”
“Speaking of Quinten, I want to know where he is, which House he is working for, and I want his debt resolved so that he is free to return home. I know you think you can claim me, but you should know that I won’t be much use to you if I’m treated like property.”
“I agree,” he said.
