Redlisted (26 page)

This time I dream
I’m visiting Adam’s office at the research hospital where
he works. I need to pack up his things. All the books need to go in
boxes, and the diplomas need to come down off the wall. Put foam
between them so the glass doesn’t break. Take the computer,
too, and whatever he has on his desk—some pictures, it looks
like, that’s all. Take the contents of the desk, too.
Everything in the office needs to go into boxes; the boxes go on the
cart; the cart goes down into the van; the van takes the boxes to the
plane. He’ll need all of this stuff. After all, he’s
moving to Georgia, to Savannah, not far from Basement Level Three.

Later the two of
us go to a coffee shop in Atlanta, where a red-headed teenage girl
meets us. Neither she nor Adam want any coffee, though, so I drink
enough for all three of us. She gives me her business card, but all
it has on it is a telephone number, no name. She tells me to call if
I ever need anything or if I get into any trouble at work.

But what if
they’ve tapped the phones? There are cameras everywhere, after
all. It’s not that much of a stretch to imagine that the café
could be bugged, too.

When I go to get
up from the table, I drop my backpack on the ground. As it hits the
floor, I hear a crunch. It’s the camera, I just know it. I
broke the stupid camera.

How am I supposed
to get my memories back now?

A board creaks. I
inhale sharply and sit up in bed.

It’s Adam.
“Sorry, Kate,” he whispers. “I just wanted to go
back and clean Haruko up. Didn’t mean to startle you.”

I take a deep
breath and nod, still disoriented, trying to fight down feelings of
panic.

“It’s
all right. Go back to sleep.”

I nod again and
lie down. The door shuts behind him.

I sleep, and I
dream.

{Adam}

I sat in the
sitting room, thinking. Haruko was asleep on the four-poster bed,
curled up under the covers. I’d laid next to her for an hour or
so, but sleep wouldn’t come, and I didn’t want to take
any more of the pills in the cabinet—not after what had
happened last time.

I pulled a
three-ring binder off the bookshelf and paged through it. Inside were
pages and pages of handwritten notes I’d done on a case study
about a freak rash of amnesia incidents in 1989. Twenty-five people
in the same neighborhood of Pittsburgh had all experienced memory
loss in the same six-week period. I’d gone into the city to
interview the subjects, their families, their primary care doctors.
In the end I’d written the entire thing off as an outbreak of
unknown etiology. The only other symptom the subjects shared was
anemia. The detail had seemed irrelevant at the time, but now it
looked sinister.

I wanted to call
Elena and tell her about it. It and everything else. She’d want
to know, I thought; if she could just get over her skepticism, she’d
want to know about all of this. But her number wouldn’t work;
I’d tried calling her enough times to know that for sure.

Once again I
considered going to Atlanta and trying to find her. Now there was a
way to do it: I could take the cab Mirabel was sending for me and
bail out once I was in the city. I knew her home address. I could
find my way on foot if that’s what it would take. If she saw me
in person she wouldn’t turn me away. She’d believe me. It
might not be easy for me to be around her, but I could control myself
well enough. I could manage being near two, three, maybe even four
humans at once...

But what about out
on the streets? What would I do in a crowd?

I placed the
binder back on the shelf.

Someone knocked on
the door to the suite. I scrambled to put on clothing, grabbing it
off the floor and pulling it on. I hastily collected the garments
Haruko had left scattered all over the furniture, threw them in the
bedroom, and closed the door.

I opened the door
to the suite.

It was Aya.

“Dr.
Radcliffe,” she said, “you haven’t seen Haruko, by
any chance?”

“She’s
inside,” I said.

“Oh, good.
May I speak with her?”

“She’s,
uh...” I scratched the back of my head. “She’s
asleep.”

Aya blinked twice,
confused. As she put the pieces together, her eyelashes fluttered
faster. “Oh. Oh! I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have
asked!”

“It’s
fine,” I said, somewhere between annoyed and embarrassed.

Aya nodded. “I
suppose... you, well... you haven’t seen Mirabel as well, have
you?”
Oh
God,
she thought.
She
isn’t in there too, is she?

“No,”
I said. “I haven’t seen her since the party. Why?”

“She’s
not in her rooms. Normally I’d be able to use a manifestation
to find her, but...”

“Maybe she’s
gone invisible,” I said, joking.

“Oh dear.
You’re probably right!” She wrung her hands.

“Wait—why
couldn’t you find Haruko yourself, then?”

“Clairsentience
doesn’t work on Wardens,” she said plainly, as if that
explained everything. “I’m sorry. I have to go. I have to
speak with Julian. Please wake Haruko up. We may need her help.”

With that she
left.

The door to the
bedroom opened and Haruko stepped out, zipping up her jeans and
yawning.

“Mirabel’s
missing,” I started to explain.

Haruko nodded. “I
heard what Aya said.”

“She can
make herself invisible?”

“Most
illusionists can,” she said. “But there’s nothing
to worry about. She’s in the seraglio.” She glanced at
her watch. “She’d best hurry up, though. We need to leave
in a half hour.”

“You’re
leaving?” I asked without thinking. The wounded tone of my
voice surprised me.

“Yeah. I
have to go back to Atlanta. Work.” She slipped into the office.

“Haruko...
could I go with you?”

For a few moments
she didn’t say anything.

Then she asked,
“To Atlanta?”

“Yeah.”

“Adam, I...
about last night...” She stepped back into the sitting room
again, her portfolio under her armpit. “Shit, I mean, I don’t
know if I’m—if you’re ready for that.” She
wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“Right,”
I said. “Sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“No, it’s
all right. Here,” she said, reaching into her back pocket and
pulling out a thin wallet, and from the wallet a card. The only thing
printed on the card was a ten-digit number. “Call me if you
ever need anything, okay?” She handed it to me.

‘
If you ever
need anything’? Like what? Business advice?

I put the card in
my pocket. “Okay.”

“I should
get going,” she said with an apologetic smile.

“I’ll
show you to the garage, then,” I said.

“That’d
be great.”

I’d never
been to the garage before, but with the deck in my pocket I found it
easily. It was enormous, brightly lit, with white walls and a
polished concrete floor. I counted twelve cars parked inside before I
stopped counting. What the hell did Julian need that many for? I
didn’t even know he could drive.

A group of
servants were gathered around one town car, packing an odd mix of
modern suitcases and antique-looking valises into the trunk. A few
more people were scattered throughout the rest of the garage,
adjusting tires, polishing windows. Eight or nine in total—too
many. I stopped in the doorway, uncomfortable going any further.

“Well,”
said Haruko, “I guess this is it, then.”

“I guess
so.”

“Adam, I,
uh...” She bit her lower lip. “Anyway, I hope I see you
again.”

I nodded and
forced a smile. “Have a safe trip.”

“Thanks.”

And that was all.

I stepped back
into the corridors and started back towards the suite. I stared at my
shoes as I walked, feeling both angry and foolish. While I knew it
was unreasonable to expect Haruko to take me back to Atlanta with
her, I was desperate to get away from the estate—not to mention
desperate to be with someone whom I could relate to, someone who
seemed to care about what I was going through. Although I’d
probably just ruined that by being too forward.

I rounded a corner
to find myself face-to-face with Mirabel.

“I—uh—hello,”
I stammered.

She smiled. I
could tell she intended to look sweet, even harmless, but instead the
effect was chilling.

“I wanted to
apologize for my... comments earlier,” she said without
preface. “I should never have belittled you in that way.”

It took me a
moment to remember what she’s talking about.
An
android without a personality chip.

“Oh.”
I laughed nervously. “It’s fine.”

Her eyes wandered
down to my shirt. As I looked down I realized I’d buttoned it
wrong, yet instead of embarrassment, intense nostalgia welled up
inside me, as if from nowhere.

Mirabel reached
out and placed two fingertips against my arm.

“Please be
careful,” she said. “Of him.”

Of Julian.

“I’m
concerned about you,” she continued.

I found myself
nodding. Of course she was concerned about me.

“Remember
what I told you,” she said in a low tone, leaning in. “I
can help you. I want to help you.”

She placed her
hand lightly against my cheek.

“You really
do look like him,” she whispered.

Like Lucien.

I felt another
surge of loss and regret, and behind it a creeping sliver of lust. I
couldn’t sort out which of the feelings were hers and which
were mine. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to.

“Adam?”
Julian’s voice, behind me. “Mirabel, what are you—“

“Nothing.”
She pulled her hand away.

“I should
hope,” he said, coming to stand next to us. “Adam, if you
will be so kind as to wait for me in my office, I will be along
presently.”

I nodded. It was a
reasonable request; I had no reason to argue.

I left without a
word.

It wasn’t
until I reached the double doors to the library that I realized what
had happened. He had
compelled
me
to leave—forced me to do it with a manifestation of the blood.
I should have felt angry, but instead I felt scared; his actions
seemed like an implicit confirmation of Mirabel’s warnings.

He’s
killed every one of his sons and daughters before you. He’ll
kill you too, once he gets what he needs from you.

I wasn’t
going to wait for him.

I picked a
direction at random and headed off down the corridors, my anxiety
building as I walked. I began to feel nervous that he or Aya were
behind me, following me. Every third step I took, I looked behind
myself, afraid he’d somehow materialized behind me in the
interim. I was too scared to stop, too scared to even look where I
was going. I couldn’t afford to look, to think, to do anything
but run, so I ran.

Minutes and
minutes passed. The vastness of the corridors was staggering. How
long had I been walking in the same direction, never hitting the
boundary? I stopped, crouched down, and put my ear against the
ground. It was still and silent. I relaxed a little, confident that I
was alone.

I took out the
cards. The garage card was still sitting on the top of the deck.
Could I try to steal a car and escape? It wasn’t the most
elegant plan, but I had no idea what else to do. I’d have to
wait, though; I wasn’t certain Haruko and Mirabel were gone
yet. Where could I hide in the interim? I flipped through the deck.
Not the office, not my suite, not the seraglio... The grounds? I
could hide in the woods, perhaps.