Redlisted (12 page)

“It’s
quite all right. I’ll explain what we’re doing step by
step. First of all, would you mind hopping onto the scale for me?”
She gestures to an old-fashioned metal contraption near the door.

I slide down from
the table, holding down the hem of my gown with both hands. I walk
barefoot along the cold tile and step on the scale.

“You’re
lucky. You’re just the right height. That must be why she
selected you,” the woman remarks as she slides the indicators
into position.

“The right
height for what?”

“Hmm,”
she says, looking at my weight. She takes a little pad of paper from
the pocket of her lab coat and jots down a thought. “All right,
you can step off now.”

I step back onto
the floor.

She produces a
measuring tape from her pocket. “Could you reach your arms out
to the side, please?”

She wraps the
tape around my right wrist, then my bicep, my neck, my breasts,
waist, and hips. I recoil a little as she reaches between my legs to
gauge the circumference of my inner thigh.

“Sorry, I
should have warned you,” she says with a casual smile, then
moves on to my calf, then my ankle.

“What do you
need all these measurements for?”

“Oh. For
your alterations.”

“You mean,
like, tailoring?”

She smiles without
showing her teeth.

“Next we’ll
need to look at your face.” She puts the tape back in her
pocket. “You can get back on the table now.”

I shake my head.
“I think I’m gonna go.”

Her smile fades.
She grabs for my wrist, but before she can catch me I bolt for the
door. I throw the door open—

I am sitting on a
bare examination table, wearing only a hospital gown. A woman in a
white lab coat is standing before me. She is uncannily beautiful,
seemingly flawless. I immediately find her appearance unsettling.

“Feeling
better?” she asks.

“What?”
I ask, disoriented. “I, uh... sure.”

“Let’s
take a look at your face,” she says.

She pulls a metal
cart on casters over to her side, opens a manila folder and takes out
an eight-by-ten photo of an attractive woman with auburn hair and
hazel eyes. She posts the photo on the wall to the left side of my
head, then pulls a felt- tip pen out of a tray of implements and
takes off the cap.

“Don’t
worry, this will all wash off,” she assures me.

She begins drawing
lines on my face. Every so often she pauses, takes a step back to
compare my face with that of the woman in the picture, then draws
another line or two.

“What are
you doing this for?” I ask.

She smiles without
showing her teeth. “It’s best if you don’t worry
about that.”

“I’m
serious. What the hell is going on?”

“Keep your
face still, please.”

I go silent, but
out of the corner of my eye I’m looking towards the door. I
wait for an opening. As she turns away for a moment, I wheel my feet
around, throwing them up and over the metal cart. I jump off the
examination table and kick the cart over, spraying surgical
implements at her, then run for the door and throw it open—

I am lying on a
cold, bare table, staring up at bare tubes of fluorescent light,
naked except for a hospital gown. As I try to sit up, I realize to my
alarm that my hands are cuffed to either side of the table. I lie
back down. Where am I? I can’t remember.

A door opens;
footsteps approach my side. A blonde woman in a white lab coat looms
over me. She is uncannily beautiful, seemingly flawless. Her smile
reveals immaculate teeth.

“Perhaps
it’s best if we don’t talk much this time,” she
says.

“What do you
mean, ‘this time’?”

She produces a
length of duct tape and brings it towards my face.

“Wait! What
are you—“

She slaps the tape
over my mouth and presses it flat with her slender fingers.

She reaches into a
manila folder and pulls out a document. She assesses it silently,
then pins it on the wall. She takes a felt-tip pen from the pocket of
her lab coat and removes the cap, placing it between her teeth.

She reaches
towards me and pulls my gown open with a single swift motion. I pull
my legs up, clench them together, curl into the fetal position and
try to turn my back to her, yelling wordlessly through the duct tape.

She holds the pen
between her fingers like a cigarette. “Please lie flat on your
back.”

I shoot my best
death glare at her and try to squeeze my hands out of the metal
cuffs.

She reaches for a
tray of implements. A moment later, she comes at me with a syringe
and plunges it into my right bicep. I feel a brief pinch; my muscles
immediately slacken. With the gentlest push, she rolls me onto my
back. My legs flop away from my stomach of their own accord.

The room goes
blurry; darkness falls. Right before I pass out, I can see, very
faintly, the woman drawing lines on my naked body with her felt-tip
pen.

///

And then I’m
back in the car.

Adam is staring at
me, his jaw slack. I wipe drool from my mouth with the back of my
hand and try to ignore him.

“Are you all
right?” he asks.

What
do you think?
I bring my knees up to my chest, cross my arms and hide my face
inside.

“Do you want
us to pull over?”

I shake my head.
Tears well up in my eyes, but I choke them down; I’m not going
to do that now, not in front of him.

“I’m
so sorry you had to go through that. I had no idea it was that bad.”

His expression
makes me cringe. I really wish he’d stop looking at me like I’m
some sort of beat-up puppy or something—it’s only making
me feel worse.

He looks at his
feet, chagrined.

I feel an
unexpected pang of guilt. None of this is really his fault. I can’t
blame him for what happened to me, even though I’m so angry I
kind of want to.

“Of course
you want someone to blame,” he says. “I understand that
quite well.”

It’s
not your fault, okay?
I clench my teeth.
It’s
Mirabel’s fault.

“Yes, it
is.”

I want to kill
her.

He gives me a
slight, sad smile.

What?

“So do I,”
he says. “But it’s not as simple as that.”

///

A few hours pass.
Aya and Haruko make idle conversation. Adam doesn’t say much of
anything. I pass the time brushing out my tangled hair and staring
out the window. I'm exhausted, but I don’t want to sleep; I
don't want to dream. At least the pain is dying down. The sensation
in the area around my scar has downgraded from an intense searing to
a dull ache and has also started to itch, which I suppose means it’s
healing.

Soon we’ve
passed through Tennessee to Kentucky and are closing in on our new
destination. Adam has taken over the role of navigator, a job at
which he doesn’t seem too adept. He says he’s been to
this woman’s estate once in the past, and he says he knows
where he’s going, but apparently he can’t read a road
map, nor can he read the street signs in the dark. We have to keep
making U-turns, doubling back, sometimes tripling back. He says we’re
making slow progress towards the estate, but it’s not easy to
believe him.

“Wait,”
Haruko exclaims as we turn onto a steep, shoulderless road. “Three?!”

“Three
what?” Aya asks.

“There are
three of them. Not one.” She glares at Adam through the
rear-view mirror. “No one said anything about multiple
revenants...”

“She’s
been living out here alone for two centuries,” Adam says. “How
could I have known she’s gotten housemates all of a sudden?”

Haruko grips the
steering wheel as if trying to break it in two. “What the hell
are we supposed to do now? We don’t have time to find another
place to sleep. We’re pushing five-thirty.”

Adam is silent.

“We just
have to go to Tara’s house,” Aya says. “We don’t
have a choice.”

Within minutes we
crest the hill. Adam directs us to turn left onto a dirt driveway,
and we arrive at the estate, if you can call it that. It’s not
much to look at—just a single-story structure with decaying
whitewashed walls. The house is surrounded by an overgrown garden
that threatens to consume it whole; snaking vines and tendrils
obscure one whole wall. No lights are visible from inside.

Two figures have
already started approaching before Haruko can park: a young-looking
black man with solemn features and an even younger-looking white kid
with red hair and a scowl.

“Stay in the
car,” Adam tells me. “Try not to let them see your face.”

He, Haruko and Aya
climb out. I take my hair out of its ponytail and let it hang down
along the sides of my face. I listen keenly to what’s going on
outside.

“Who are you
and what are you doing here?” says one of the men. His voice is
high; he sounds almost like a teenager.

“We are so
sorry for disturbing you,” Aya says. “We would like to
speak with Tara, as we hold her work in great esteem—“

“She’s
not well.”

“Gabriel,”
the other man says, “calm down.”

“I’m
terribly sorry to hear that,” Aya says. “We had no idea.
We don’t want to cause you any trouble, so we’ll be on
our way—“

“No, there’s
no reason for that,” the man with the deeper voice says. “My
mother isn’t awake right now, but if she were she’d offer
you shelter during daylight hours.”

“Who are
you?” Gabriel demands.

“My name is
Aya,” Aya says. “I’m an apostate of Thalia.”

“You have a
last name?”

“No,”
she says.

“My name’s
Haruko Schuster,” Haruko says. “I’m a Warden.”

“You aren’t
Jennifer Schuster’s daughter, by any chance, are you?”
asks the man with the lower voice.

“I am, in
fact.”

“I’m
Adam Radcliffe, of the House of Mnemosyne,” Adam says in little
more than a grumble.

Someone walks
over, crunching leaves under their feet, and stands right next to me.

“Who’s
that in the car?” Gabriel asks.

“No one,”
Adam says. “A human.”

Everyone is
silent. Then Gabriel crouches, puts his face by the glass and knocks
on the window hard. I jump and look away, shrinking into myself.

“Leave her
alone,” the other man says. “Is she redlisted, Mr.
Radcliffe?”

“Of course.”

“Very well,”
he says. “I should introduce myself. My name is Vincent. Like
Tara, I’m an apostate of Coventina. Let me show you inside.”

“I don’t
like this,” Gabriel says, “and I don’t like them.”

“I don’t
care,” Vincent replies.

There are several
seconds of silence.

“You all go
ahead,” Adam says. “I’ll start unloading the car.”

I wait to look up
until Adam opens the car door by my side.

“I had no
idea the two of them would be here,” he says, his tone quiet
and contrite. “This is bad. The kid, Gabriel... I don’t
like him.”

Did you read
his mind?

“Sort of. I
can’t get any more than loose impressions with four people
around. But I didn’t like what I got.”

Four? There are
five of us.

“Haruko
doesn’t count.” He glances back toward the front door.
“Stay here. I want to see if I can get you inside without him
seeing you.”