“Yeah. The guy in the cage said he and most of the other prisoners escaped.”
“What kind of facility was this? Why would they have Vandekamp’s collars?”
“I’m guessing it was part of his effort to get them approved for commercial use. Which would help get his bill through congress—making it legal for private citizens to own cryptids as forced labor. If he gives the collars to a government-run facility and they work, he’s got a mark in favor of his technique and technology before the legislation even goes up for a vote.”
Gallagher wrung the rag out and laid it across the edge of the tub to dry. “No wonder the bill crashed and burned.”
“No kidding. I haven’t read anything about escapes from a government facility, so someone powerful has clearly kept it out of the news. But members of congress who do know would never have let the bill go through. Or the collars be put into large-scale use.”
“But those other men weren’t wearing collars, were they? The one in the woods, and the one at Malloy’s house?”
“No. They seemed to be walking around perfectly free, passing for human without any trouble. Which means that the collar could have been what got the man in the cage caught. Maybe the tracking device in it was still operational even after the system went down? Or maybe someone simply spotted a man wearing a collar and called the police.”
“So he breaks free from a government facility, then comes here because of some mysterious pull toward you, and he winds up captured and caged in the same lab as Miri and Lala?”
I shrugged. “We’re here because Rommily knew her sisters would wind up here at some point. The naked man followed us here. It’s weird, but it kind of makes sense.” And at the moment, it felt no stranger than being nearly eleven months pregnant. “Your shower’s hot,” I said when I noticed steam rolling out of the bathroom. “Better get in while it lasts.”
Gallagher retreated into the bathroom and closed the door.
I was asleep before he came out.
I woke up again when the sun rose high enough to shine in my eyes, and after a quick shower, I headed into the main room.
Everyone was awake and sipping coffee, but no one was talking. No one was cooking. Rommily was curled up in the window seat, leaning on Lala’s shoulder. Her eyes were open and blinking, but bloodshot and unseeing. Her face was red and swollen from crying.
Genni—also red-faced—sat on the couch cuddled up to Zyanya.
I headed into the kitchen, where Lenore pulled out a chair at the table and set down a bowl of granola and some fresh berries she and Genni had picked the day before. “Thank you,” I whispered as she dropped a spoon into the bowl.
She responded with a sad look and a pat on my shoulder.
Through the window, I could see Gallagher and Claudio getting poor Eryx ready for his burial. They had covered his body, and somehow, seeing him on the ground, shrouded in a blanket, drove his death home. Hard. As if I hadn’t watched him die hours before.
Eryx was gone.
He and Claudio had been my first friends at Metzger’s, before I’d known that Gallagher was actually one of us. Eryx had helped us take over the menagerie. He’d killed the man who’d stolen Rommily’s voice and her lucidity. He’d been both the brawn and the huge, soft heart behind our efforts to free ourselves and track down others we might be able to help, during the short time we’d run the menagerie. And since then, he’d been a tireless rock. He’d been to the rest of the group what Gallagher was to me—a protector and a friend.
I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around his absence. The mental disconnect between knowing that he’d died and understanding that I would never see him again felt like a chasm my heart just couldn’t bridge.
My sniffles echoed around the room, and by the time Gallagher came in to tell us they were ready, we were all crying.
We filed out of the cabin in a tearful line to find that he and Claudio had already laid Eryx to rest in the grave Gallagher had dug during the night, less than a foot from where the minotaur had died. Under the tree. Though I hoped we’d get to stay in the cabin for a while longer, there was no guarantee of that, especially once the media and the authorities got wind of what had happened at the lab, and who’d been responsible.
It broke my heart to know that when we had to leave, Eryx couldn’t go with us. We would probably never see his grave again.
Rommily was rarely truly able to express herself, and grief did not help. So Mirela took over. She and Lala had been speaking for their sister since long before I’d met them, and though we’d all felt their absence like a hole in the heart, it had been especially hard on Rommily, who’d lost both her family and her voice.
If not for Eryx, I’m not sure she would have made it this long without them.
“Eryx was truly one of a kind,” Miri began, Rommily’s right hand clutched in hers. “He was born in captivity and sold as a small child. He couldn’t go to school, yet he learned to read. He couldn’t speak, yet he always made himself understood. And everything he said or did was said or done from the heart. We will always love you. We will always miss you. We will never forget you.”
Sobbing, Rommily threw in the first handful of dirt.
I know I’m dreaming, but that doesn’t make this feel any less real.
Twigs and leaves slap at my face as I run through the woods. Fallen branches break open the soles of my feet. Moonlight filters through the limbs overhead, casting shadows that shift with every cloud that rolls by, turning the trees into many-armed monsters, forever reaching for me from every direction.
I run faster, but not because of the trees. I’m running not because I can—though here, I’m not pregnant—but because I’m being pulled by some force inside me. Like a chain attached to my spine and run through my navel, with something very strong tugging on the other end.
