by Michelle Kay
Clover had heard people talk about out-of-body experiences before, and she wondered now if this is what they felt like. She could feel the numb weight of her body standing in the sewage-slicked room; she could feel the stinging in her eyes from the ammonia. Her body felt everything that it should be feeling, but her mind was numb. It was the muffled sobbing she heard from Jeannette that brought the detached state of her brain into focus.
Clover knew that her own cheeks were wet as well, but she wasn’t really crying. She didn't feel anything. Every encounter she'd had with the Bureau's sick operations had left her thinking that she'd seen the worst of them. The beating on the train, the mass labor force they'd formed, the cilice, the interrogation—it was like they strove to outdo themselves every time. But this massive holding chamber, with its turbines lining the walls, waiting to blast the bodies that stood in their own waste to ash, was too much. What emotions were there that could respond to something so hateful?
Traffic in the subway terminal had eased as rush hour came and went. Now, as Clover leaned against the center railing on the landing of a major staircase, people only passed every minute or so, most of them not even bothering to glance at her. Her hands gripped and released the bar behind her over and over, the residual pain in her healing fingers giving her brain something to focus on. Across from where she stood was a small alcove where the public bathrooms were—where Elliot was. She'd forgotten that he'd packed a change of clothes that morning.
She'd also forgotten about their trip to retrieve Reed. The memories of her time in the incinerator holding area was foggy, but the rest of the day had been more-or-less stricken from her brain. Now, even the promise of getting her brother back was overshadowed by the phantasm smell of the holding cells that crawled over her like an invisible swarm of insects.
Clover gripped the railing again, trying to focus on the smooth, cool texture, though all it did was make her wonder if the cell bars felt the same way. She wiped her hands on her skirt—took a deep breath
"You okay?" Elliot was getting better at sneaking up on her. Or she was getting more distracted.
"I guess." She laced her fingers together, not wanting to touch the bar again.
"Something happened at work again?" It was barely a question.
Clover wondered if she should bother telling him—wondered if she knew how to tell him. Just the idea of putting what she'd experienced into words made her stomach squirm. Against her better judgment, she looked Elliot in the face. A sensation like warm liquid rushing down her throat calmed the panic that had been coiling inside her when she caught the green of his eyes. After seeing the time and care he put into her recovery it had become hard to ignore the kindness she saw there.
"We were sent to clean the incinerator holding cells."
The silence between them told Clover that Elliot knew the weight of her punishment. She wondered if he would try to justify how the Bureau treated the men she'd seen huddled together in those cells. An echo of his words from the night of her branding ricocheted around inside her head, leaving suspicion everywhere they hit. He'd defended their interrogation styles and the use of finishing schools, but Clover had never pressed him for his opinion on the treatment of those werewolves found "unfit" for slavery. She didn't want to imagine that he might defend it now.
As if in direct response to the uncertainty she still held onto, Elliot slid his hand to the back of her neck, squeezing gently. Normally, this would be a major breech of her personal space—instead, it eased her. The ups and downs were starting to drive her crazy.
"I'm sorry you had to go there." Elliot's thumb brushed the skin behind her good ear, his voice quiet enough that even the concrete walls of the staircase couldn't catch an echo.
"Have you ever been?"
"No."
"But you still send people there."
"Sometimes."
"Doesn't that bother you?" Her words finally had the bite in them she'd lost inside the incinerator.
Elliot's sigh told Clover that he'd gotten good at reading her moods—too good, really. He let go of her neck, moving to lean against the railing beside her. While he left a defined space between them, he let their shoulders press together. Clover felt anchored by the contact.
"I do feel bad," Elliot said after a moment of silence. "I try not to let it happen, but sometimes there's nothing I can do.”
Clover didn't need to question his sincerity, even while the nasty voice in the back of her head still fought that trust. She could hear the pain he tried to cover with his infuriating calmness.
"Why do we always feel that way? Like there's nothing we can do?"
"Well, sometimes it really is true."
"And sometimes people are just cowards!" Clover thought she’d actually hurt his feeling that time when she saw the frown he was trying to hide. “I’m sorry.”
"Don't be." Elliot looked at his shoes that Clover realized were in an odd category between casual and dressy. "You're not lying. I feel bad every time it happens. But I always do it again eventually. We all do."
"You don't really have much of a choice, though." Clover wasn't sure why she was defending Elliot's work as an Evaluator. It was less than a week ago that she was burning his work files—holding him at knife-point and accusing him of murder. Now she was comforting him?
"I could have chosen a job outside the Bureau."
"Why didn't you?"
"I don't know. Family was a big part of it. My dad puts a lot of pressure on me. I guess I figured that even if I wasn't here, all this stuff would still be happening. At least where I'm at gives me a chance to help a little bit."
"Is that really what you thought at the time?" Clover didn't mean to sound so incredulous, but the Elliot she'd talked to the night of her branding hadn’t seemed interested in saving people.
"Subconsciously, I think."
Clover's heart ached for the position Elliot had been put in. Whether he thought werewolves were dangerous or not, she knew he wasn't a violent person. With his father and brother pressuring him to follow in their footsteps—to become a street agent where he would be hands-on with the capture of werewolves—it wasn't surprising that he chose a less violent option, even if that option left the hardest decisions in his lap.
"Do you think that people outside the Bureau knows how it gets rid of the rejected werewolves?"
"I doubt it."
"Do you think they would care more if they did?"
"Maybe. At least they wouldn't be able to ignore it."
She tried to imagine a screen as tall as the Bureau airing footage of the holding cell, of the interrogations she'd been forced to watch, and a chill straightened her spine. Elliot must have felt the shiver where their arms were touching, because his hand moved to Clover's back.
"God, Elliot." She folded an arm over her stomach. "They were crammed in there like animals. They were stuck just standing in their own waste. They don't get toilets, they don't get meals, they don't even get water. The guard said they drink their own urine sometimes!"
"They don't want to spend the money on feeding and watering them if they're going to be terminated."
"Water's free!"
They both went still as a woman in a blazer and pencil skirt passed them, staring and moving to walk against the far wall. Clover chastised herself, but instead of scolding her, Elliot squeezed her shoulder. His hand was gentle, but it wasn't coddling the way it had been after her interrogation—it was bracing. It gripped her as though to remind her of what strength felt like so she could find it again. With the tether of his touch grounding her in the subway staircase, she let her mind wander back into the sweltering cell. She'd seen the fallen bodies at the back of the cages—glimpsed briefly through the continuous shifting of the crowd—but she'd seen them clearly enough to know their shape was wrong.
"Do you think that maybe we really are just animals?"
"No." The immediacy of his answer made Clover's heart race. "I think that your condition is dange
rous, and unfortunate, but now I'm certain that you aren't animals."
"The guard said that the men sometimes..." Clover had to swallow. "They sometimes eat parts of the dead bodies. I think he might have been right, I mean, they looked like they were missing parts, and—"
"Clover." He said her name the way someone might say "stop." It silenced her immediately. "This is exactly what my brother wants. He sent you down there to mess with your head. You can't let him get to you like this."
"How can I not let it get to me? And who are you to even say that? You send people there and you haven't even been."
"Hey," instead of engaging her, he lowered his voice, his hand moving to the back of her neck again. "Relax, okay?" It was frustrating to know that he could call her bluff so easily—that he could tell when she was lashing out to cover her own vulnerability. But his words acted as an analgesic, sucking the anger and hurt out through the contact he kept with her skin. "What I'm saying is that Dominic wants you to lose hope—feel helpless. And if you start questioning whether you and your people are animals or not—how much more helpless can you get after that?"
Clover stared at the drinking fountain stationed between the men's and women's bathrooms. She knew he was right; Rainer's game had always been about breaking her, and what better way was there than by forcing her to question her own humanity?
"But, eating each other?" Clover whispered so quietly that she thought her body was trying to keep the secret even from her.
Elliot's thumb pressed behind her ear again. "When people are treated like animals for long enough, they're given no choice but to act like animals. People do crazy things when they have to survive."
Clover worried her lip with her teeth. Elliot was right. She'd never seen such gruesome behavior from her pack members, even during the worst of times.
"You sound different than you did when I first met you." It was hard to imagine the label of “monster” leaving Elliot’s mouth now.
Elliot's hand softened on her neck. "Well, I am different now."
Heat shot to Clover's face and the swatch of skin under his fingers suddenly felt burnt. Why was she letting him touch her like this? Why was she letting him touch her at all? Panic rushed her senses and she pushed herself off the railing, forcefully breaking the contact they had.
"We have to get Reed." She refused to look at him as she started toward the main platform, terrified by the sudden speed of her heartbeat.
- 27 -
The sunlight of late afternoon felt alien. It wasn't that she hadn't seen daylight in a long time—she'd seen it just that morning, and again on her walk with Elliot to the station after they'd left the Bureau—but it seemed softer now. It saturated the train car, which Clover was used to seeing washed in the cold pallet of florescent bulbs, with life. When the tracks had led their train out of the subway system and onto the outdoor line the transition had blinded her for a few moments.
Elliot had said the finishing school was outside the city's limits, but Clover was surprised by the length of the trip. She'd been to every corner of the city on foot, so had thought that it would take a very short period of time to escape its boarders by train. Apparently what she thought of as “the city" was only the inner most circle of a much larger beast. Maybe people like Elliot, who had more freedom to travel, had different standards for what constituted a "long" or "short" trip. Chances were, though, that it was just the destination that made the ride seem so painfully long.
The car had emptied quickly once they'd passed outside the inner city, and Clover was relieved when she was finally able to move to a seat across the small aisle. She was relieved to be sitting away from Elliot, where she couldn't feel his body heat radiating against her side. Her face had cooled, but her neck was still warm where he'd touched her. After making sure he was still studying the map on his phone, Clover raised a hand to the nape of her neck, trying to recreate the sensation. If she could recreate it then maybe she could understand it; all she felt was her own cold fingers, though. She clasped her hands together in her lap, urging them to stay still as she checked Elliot's attention again.
He'd changed during her stay in the Bureau—then again, so had she. It had softened both of them somehow. Clover opened her mouth, stretching her jaw against the ache of a smile. She shouldn't be happy about this, but it was hard, at that moment, not to be. She looked him over again, like she could decipher her feelings if she just looked hard enough. Maybe it was the change in his clothes that made it harder to be angry with him. She'd seen him in his house clothes, but when they were outside the house he'd always worn his Bureau uniform. She supposed it would be difficult for anyone in her position to like someone wearing the black uniform her people were taught to fear and avoid their whole lives.
While she was used to the starched precision of his uniform, or the messiness of his sweatpants and tee-shirt, his street clothes somehow married the two seamlessly. A button up that Clover might see under a business suite, paired with a narrow tie in a red so bright no business man would ever wear it; a coat that was some chimeric offspring of a tuxedo jacket and zip up hoodie, with a high collar folded down in dramatic lapels; dark jeans and pristine sneakers.
"What's so funny?"
Clover hadn't realized she was grinning to herself until Elliot spoke. She hadn't even noticed him looking at her.
"I wouldn't say anything was 'funny.' It's just the first time I've seen you in street clothes."
Elliot shifted in his seat and Clover thought he wanted to straighten his coat. "So? What's so strange about that? I don't live in my uniform, you know."
The transparency of Elliot's feelings made Clover smile more, unable to stop herself. He was feeling insecure. Clover finally laughed when he reached up to make sure his tie was straight.
"Are you wearing a vest under there?" She asked, squinting and loving the way he squirmed under her stare.
"It’s a waistcoat." He sounded insulted, and Clover thought he was getting his just desserts for the uncomfortable feelings he'd given her in the subway.
She laughed out loud this time, and Elliot looked officially put out.
"Is the way I dress really that bad?" He looked at his phone, like he was checking out of the conversation for good.
"Aw, don't be a baby about it." Clover felt her whole body relaxing as the laughter piped the remaining uneasiness out of her. "You look fine, just different than what I'd imagined."
"And what had you imagined?"
"I dunno. Something less fashionable, I guess. Sweater vests, maybe."
Elliot looked up from his phone again, narrowing his eyes at her. It wasn't an angry look though—it as more wilting than that, and a not-so-subtly insulted.
"I'm sorry," Clover said, despite her smile. "You look good, really." She looked past him, at the greenery outside the window. She didn't want to see his reaction to the sincerity that had seeped into her voice, but from the corner of her eye she could see him watching her.
Even the skyline of the city was lost when Clover finally alighted the train, sticking close to Elliot's heels. The outdoor station was small, and the smattering of people waiting to board behind them barely constituted a crowd.
"I thought you said this finishing school was local." Clover kept her voice particularly quiet once she noticed she was the only indentured werewolf on the platform.
"I said it was close, not local." Elliot was checking the map on his phone again as he spoke, his voice set in the businesslike manner that wouldn't draw attention. "This way."
As they moved from the back of the station, where the tracks lay, to the front, Clover realized the terminal was set in a line of stores that made up the sort of small-town Main Street she saw on postcards. Rows of non-uniform buildings with different colored faces and awnings. Flower boxes and street lamps draped in tiny banners, Bureau flags on tilted rods mounted beside doorways. It looked too cheery--like they were trying too hard to make the area seem livelier than drug stores and antique shop
s ever were.
"Are you kidding me?" She was mumbling more to herself than to Elliot, but the tiny snort she heard from him told her he felt the same way.
"Cute, right?"
"Yeah. I mean, if you want a slave with small-town charm, I guess."
Despite the grim honesty of the statement, Clover saw Elliot struggle with his urge to smile, and Clover realized she felt the same way. She'd cried so much over the past week that now, with the prospect of her brother on the horizon, all she had left was laughter.
More noticeable than the layout of stores, though, was the lack of other werewolves on the streets. The sidewalks weren't crowded like they were back at home, but there were enough shoppers that the pronounced lack of brown uniforms made Clover feel awkward. Maybe it was the red and orange leaking into the air around them from the setting sun, but the picturesque scene had a hellish sort of vibe.
"Of course there aren't any taxis," Elliot complained under his breath. "It'll be about twenty minutes on foot." He looked back at her and smiled, a light in the unfriendly atmosphere. "Not long, now."
A flipping sensation left Clover out of breath for a moment. He was right. She'd let herself get distracted, but Elliot was right. Twenty minutes of walking and then she would have her brother back—it was hard to process after so much time feeling helpless.
Clover tried to remember the unhappiness she'd felt when her parents first told her she'd be an older sister, but it was hard to picture now. She'd been an only child for almost thirteen years, so when her parent's had suddenly gotten pregnant again, she'd been slow to warm up to the idea. Now, all she could remember was the sound of his laugh, or the way he would tell her the same joke over and over because he was convinced the only reason she'd not laughed was because she hadn't heard him. She remembered the way he looked up to her as though she were her father's equal—capable of anything. Even when it was just some candy that she'd pocketed from a convenience store, Reed looked at her with such awe that she really did feel like she could do anything. She made a list in her head of all his favorite candies, and promised herself that she would feed him until he was fat with them.