“What’s your secret?” Simon asks, leaning over his desk to look down at her.
Dez flinches.
Her card. Simon only wants to know about the card. He flashes his in her direction—an ornately calligraphedABCis stenciled in the center. He’s a Scribe.
She shows him the eye on her own card.
She’s a Visionary.
Which means even in the darkest hours, somehow she’s going to have to figure out how to see.
“I’M FAMISHED,”SIMON SAYS WHENZarlengo releases them from orientation.
Dez walks with him as the first-years flow through the wide wood doors of the Enoch Dining Hall. She’s had nothing to eat since she got to Acheron, and in fact can’t remember the last meal that didn’t come out of a hospital vending machine. But she’s uneasy about being in Enoch after she missed her work-study shift this morning. And she’s taken aback by how impressive the building is inside.
Two tall oak trees twist in the center of the room, rising toward a towering, raftered ceiling. Draped in twinkle lights, the unusual canopy casts a romantic glow over white tablecloths set with gleaming silver, delicate china, flickering candlesticks, crystal goblets. Large, framed cubist paintings hang on all the walls. Dez thinks she sees a Picasso.
Between the oak trees, a single long table is already packed with many of the cool, beautiful faces Dez saw last night at the bar. At its head, Rafe twirls a pair of jade chopsticks and whispers something hilarious to Esmeralda.
He doesn’t notice Dez.
She needs to talk to him. About her lack of phone reception and when she can plan a trip home to visit Mo. About why Rafe never mentioned her work study and what the hell was in that drink. But seated at that table surrounded by swishy, unapproachable last-years, it’s like Rafe is in another realm.
“Close-up on Dez,” Simon says, jotting notes in a moleskin. “We see the dining hall through her eyes: Glorious. Intimidating. Can she hack it here? Is that a real Picasso?”
“Cut to the part where she’s eating,” Dez says, turning her back to Rafe.
“What do you think of the décor?” Simon says. “I heard the last-years change it before every meal.”
“The paintings?”
“Everything. The trees. The chandelier. It’s all made of lights,” Simon says passing his hand through one of the oak tree’s trunks. His skin takes on the color and texture of bark.
“How?” Dez asks, looking around for a projector.
“Part of their Special Effects seminar,” Simon says. “I’m at table sixteen. You?”
“Me too,” Dez says, consulting her orientation folder. There are two seats left, Dez notices, at Rafe’s table, but when Simon calls her name again, she sees him waving from a lonely two-top on the far side of the room. She didn’t want to sit with Rafe anyway. All she wants to do is eat.
She grabs the seat across from Simon, lifts a handwritten menu off her plate. She’d eat just about anything right now, but she finds herself scanning for a single word she knows.Okonomiyaki.Burijiru.Omakase. She doesn’t understand.
“I might just order everything,” Simon says. “Since it’s free, and I didn’t have time for breakfast when I was working the kitchen shift.”
“You were eating a croissant the size of my head when I met you,” Dez reminds him.
“That was grab and go,” he says, “not an actual meal, so my body didn’t register that I was eating the …” He trails off and Dez follows his gaze to a woman standing before their table. “Most beautiful croissant,” Simon whispers. “Esther. Esther Townsend? Hi. We met last night. At the bar? We talked about J-horror? You said your favorite movie wasOnibaba.”
Esther looks at Simon, quirks an eyebrow. She has shoulder-length blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, hazel eyes, a bare, pretty face, and a black apron tied around her waist.
“You’re … Sydney?” she says.
“Yes,” Simon whispers.
Simon is so smitten he’s forgotten his name, and Esther is clearly just here to take their order for lunch. Dez plasters on a smile and points at the menu. “What do you recommend?”
“Are you Desdemona Rae?” Esther says.
“How’d you know—”
