Cosima wrote.
Then Caswell looked at me.
“Verita.”
The room got quieter in the way rooms did when people wanted the right to say later that they had only been watching.
“I wasn’t read yesterday,” I said.
“Yes, and?”
“I was too unclean for the small lens. Clean enough for this?”
Cosima’s eyes shot up for a split second then returned to her page.
Caswell said, “You were present at the reading. That is sufficient for today.”
I wanted to push back, but everyone in the room was staring at me.
So I stepped to the basin.
“Marked hand,” Caswell said.
I set my left hand on the rim.
The stone was cold enough to make my fingers ache.
For a breath, nothing happened.
Then the basin brightened under my palm.
My Mark appeared in the water exactly as it lay on my wrist: four pale lines, steady and still.
A few students shifted behind me.
No gasp.
No whisper.
No one had been given anything interesting enough to be afraid of.
Caswell’s eyes shifted to Cosima, who came around the basin and stopped beside me.
“Find the center line,” she said quietly. “Hold it. Don’t let the others pull.”
It sounded like help.
That should have warned me.
I found the center line.
Or what I thought was the center.
I held it.
The water tightened around my hand.
The four pale lines bowed inward.
