“Then sell her. Get your money back.”
“You know exactly why we can’t sell—”
And as Woodrow closed the door behind me, I realized I too knew why the Vandekamps couldn’t sell me. Or likely any of the other captives they’d ever taken.
The Savage Spectacle’s business model wasn’t entirely legal. If he sold me, I’d be free of the limits of my collar and might tell my next owner exactly what was going on in the well-kept open secret that was the Spectacle. Old man Metzger had obviously been willing to keep private dealings private, in exchange for the rental fee he charged for his off-season acts, but most others would not be. Vandekamp’s world could come crumbling down around him.
The obvious conclusion settled over me with a fresh jolt of fear.
None of us were ever going to leave the Savage Spectacle.
Delilah
Woodrow adjusted my collar to lock me in the dormitory, then pushed the door closed in my face.
The long-term residents of the Spectacle stared at me as I crossed the room to sit on the floor by one of the windows. I couldn’t make out much of what they were whispering, but the distance they kept from me was telling. However fascinated they might have been by my ability and the vengeful form it had taken, I had caused them all a lot of pain.
I would have avoided me too.
Mirela and Rommily weren’t in the dorm. Nalah sat against one wall, shooting rage-filled looks my way. Zyanya and Mahsa were busy comforting Lala, and I decided to give them some distance.
Lunch came shortly after I arrived, and as soon as I sat with my tray of raw spinach, bread and a chicken thigh, Simra settled onto the floor next to me.
“Zyanya said you’re afuriae. What does that mean, exactly?” she asked, pushing strands of fine, silvery hair back from her pale face.
“Basically, I’m possessed by the spirit of vengeance.”
“Possessed?”
“That’s what it feels like.” I bit a chunk from my chicken thigh, then began stripping the meat from the bone.
“But you really are human?”
“I really, really am. Not that it matters.” Not that itshouldmatter. Deciding who should be free and who should be locked up based on chromosomal features made no more sense than basing that decision on eye color.
Simra plucked a leaf of spinach from her tray and stared at the tiny green veins on the back side. “What did you do to that guard?”
I arranged my chicken and spinach on my slice of bread and folded it over to form half a sandwich. “I just made Sutton want to do to himself what he’d done to Mirela and Rommily. I like to think of it as poetic justice.” Though I had little control over what form that justice took.
Simra seemed to think about that while I took a bite of my makeshift sandwich. But I had little appetite.
As I pushed my tray away, the dormitory door opened, and one of the handlers shoved Magnolia inside. She stumbled and fell to her knees, and her face was shielded by a curtain of her fallen-leaf-colored hair, threaded through with thin woody vines. The handler aimed his remote at her, and both the sensor over the door and the one in her collar blinked red.
Magnolia didn’t even look up.
I frowned, studying the dryad. She looked different from when they’d taken her the afternoon before, but I couldn’t...
Her hair. She’d had several beautiful whitish blooms blossoming in her hair.
Now those blossoms were gone.
One of the other ladies knelt next to her and laid a hand on Magnolia’s shoulder, but the nymph turned on her, teeth gnashing. Mossy-green eyes flashed beneath the tiny woody tendrils growing in place of her eyelashes.
“Oh...” Simra breathed, and I turned to her with a questioning look. “They got rid of it.”
“It?”
“The baby.”
