The Madness Project (The Madness Method) (36 page)

“Run buildings?” Shade asked, eyes sparking.  “That like how
he climbed up to a balcony earlier?”

“Why aye,” I said.  “He was ganna teach me the tricks.”

He studied me a moment, the faintest line between his
brows.  “But Hayli,” he said, with a tiny smile, “you can
fly
.”

I glanced away, blood and confusion warming my cheeks.  I
never imagined anyone would admire my gift, if I ever told anyone about it. 
But the way Shade said,
you can fly
, with that wistful note in it…it
turned my world topsy.

“You ever wanted to fly?” I asked, kicking at the ground.

He laughed, a strange and strained kind of laugh, and turned
away with his hands behind his head.  “Ah,” he said.  “Interesting question. 
Yes, and…no.  Not anymore.”  He glanced at me and said softly, “Doesn’t mean I
don’t envy your gift though.”

I took off my hat and ran a hand over my head, suddenly
embarrassed.  And the way Shade smiled when I stood there with the cold wind
tearing my hair in a million directions, like he knew something I didn’t… I
shivered and shoved my cap back on, and turned on my heel.

“C’mon,” I said.  “I’m supposed to get you a bed.”

But he didn’t move right off.  He held his hands open at his
sides and tossed his head back again, like a wild thing breathing moonlight and
drinking the dark. 

“I haven’t seen the moon…” he whispered, and laughed
softly.  “God, it’s been so long since I’ve seen the moon.”

I glanced up at the bright disk sneaking behind tufts of
fog, scattering little streams of light down when the clouds weren’t looking. 
Somehow I understood his rapture.  The night was cold, so cold, but the silver
moon and the silver wind caught my breath away.

“The moon is singing,” he whispered, eyes widening.

And suddenly he jerked his head forward, clasping it in both
hands like a vice, his face all torn with pain.

“Shade?  Everything jake?”

“My head.  It just…” His voice died off, and he straightened
and fixed me with a quiet look.  “It’s nothing.”

I waited and watched him, but he just waited and watched
me
,
until finally I shrugged and turned away.  “If you say so,” I said.  “Come on. 
I’m frozen.”

Down in the barracks I helped him hunt for an open cot.  I
sent him to find one pretty well clear of Jig’s, because even with their truce,
I imagined they still weren’t apt to be too friendly right off.

“Who gets the bunks with the curtains?” Shade asked, staring
right at my cot.

“We do,” I said.  “The girls.  Boys dan’ need that.  They’re
to keep
you
lot from pestering us.”

“Oh.”  The faintest little blush crept over his cheeks. 
“Right.”

Seeing him so red about it tickled me a bit, because I
couldn’t imagine any of the other lads blushing up like that.  They’d be idiots
about it and make smart comments, and in general prove why we had the curtains
in the first place.  Shade was something else.  I didn’t know what yet, but he
had me curious.

“Here.  This one is good,” I said, and pointed Shade back
toward one of the empty beds.

It stood close to one of the radiators, next to Coins’s spot
and fairly near Anuk’s.  Those three seemed to get on all right.  Shade didn’t
comment, just nodded and sat down on the edge of the mattress, hands clasped
between his knees and head bent.  I left him sitting there to scrounge up a
blanket for him in the storeroom, and by the time I got back with the warmest
one I could find, he’d only moved enough to lean against the wall with his
knees drawn up.

I tossed him the blanket.  “Should be a box under your bed,”
I said.  “For your clothes and things.  If you have…y’know, extras.”

He leaned over and peered under the mattress.  “Yeah, I see
it.  Thanks.”

“Sure,” I said.  “Well, good night, Shade.”

He nodded, fingering the edge of the blanket, looking a mite
lost.

“Oh right.  There’s a trough up in the enclosure where you
can have a wash-up if you like.  I forgot to get you a towel.  Everybody gets
their own.”

I ran back to the storeroom and hunted down a towel, and
nearly walked into Coins on my way back out.

“Hayli,” he said, grinning and pulling me into an
enthusiastic side hug.  “You wouldn’t
believe
what that kid did.”

“How’d he get the supplier’s name?” I asked as we walked. 
“Thought Derrin gave him that job because it was pretty much impossible.”

“It should have been, right?  But he walked straight up to
Vanek Meed’s door and waltzed in and waltzed out again with Alby Durb’s name.”

“What’d he do?”

“Oh,
stars!
  What didn’t he do!  That’s more the
question.  Cloaking, fine.  Masking…fine.  A mite creepy, but fine.  But y’know
what got me?  He just moved everyone around up there like he owned them.  ‘No,
no, you can’t come in!’” he said, mimicking a pretentious butler, then, tossing
his head like Shade, “‘But I’m already inside, so go fetch Vanek Meed.’”

He went on a bit, acting out the whole scene, till I was
astounded and laughing and feeling a bit peculiar about it all.  By the time we
reached the barracks, Shade had disappeared, but Anuk was flopped on his cot,
arguing with Link about something entirely idiotic as usual.

“Where’s Shade?” I asked them.

They stopped bickering to stare at me, like I’d asked them
what the moon was made of.

“Think he went up,” Anuk said.  “For a wash.”

“He div’n even have—” I started, flapping the towel, then
sighed and turned around, muttering, “Could’ve waited for me to bring him the
grobbing towel.”

So I marched all the way back through the Hole and out into
the frigid night.  The gas lamps were completely out tonight, so the only light
came from the fickle moon.  It was enough for me to see Shade, though, bending
over the trough, his lean torso bare to the cold wind and water.  I hesitated. 
The boys used the trough all the time, and we all went swimming together in the
river in the summers, so it wasn’t that I’d never seen a boy without his shirt
on before.  But there was something so vulnerable about the way Shade looked,
leaning against the edge of the trough, head bowed and shoulders tense, his
knuckles white under the moonlight.  Somehow I thought I shouldn’t be there,
like I was seeing something I shouldn’t.  Like I was seeing a secret.

A minute and he straightened up, and his hands fell at his
sides.  From where I stood, I could see the mottled color of the skin on his
arms and sides, dark purple and grey-green bruises, some new, some old.  The
water glittered on his head like a crown, caught in the stubble of his shaved
hair.  When he shivered suddenly I took a step forward, holding the towel like
a shield.

“Shade,” I said, a bit too loud.  “Brought you this.”

He didn’t startle, just turned like he knew I’d be there. 
Heat rushed to my cheeks and my gaze jumped away from him, staring at the
trough, at the wall, at the ground, aught but him as he came to claim the
towel.  It was a bare scrap of rag,  but he took it like it meant something,
then just stood there holding it and staring at the ground.

“Did you ever think you knew what you wanted,” he said,
voice low, “but then when you finally got it, you realized what a lie it all
was?”

I frowned, wondering if I should know what he was talking
about.  He still didn’t look at me, just pressed the cloth against his face and
shook his head once, fiercely.

“Suppose so,” I said, thinking about the Clan.  “Hasn’t
everybody?”

“I don’t know what I want,” he said, then he spun suddenly
and slammed his boot against the tin trough, and paced a few steps away with
his thumbs hooked in his back belt loops.

I flinched a bit when he kicked the trough, and watched him
anxiously as he stalked back and forth.  Finally he stopped moving and grabbed
his white undershirt from the pile by the trough, tugging it violently over his
head and still-wet shoulders.  He didn’t fix his suspenders up but left them
hanging loose, which gave him a wild kind of look that I thought even Jig
couldn’t match.

“I’m going into the factory,” he said, balling the towel up
with his shirt.  “Wanna come?”

“Stars, you’re insane!” I gasped.

He paused as he walked past me, grinning a bit and
whispering, “Truth.”

God, he really is insane…

I stared after him, watching as he deposited his ball of
clothes by the Hole door and continued on to the half-boarded factory
entrance.  It wasn’t blocked much, just a pair of boards crisscrossed over the
middle of the doorway and nailed down.  Shade shot me one last mad glance and
ducked under the boards, and disappeared into the factory without even a torch
to light his way.

For about five seconds I didn’t move, then I threw my hands
in the air and ran after him.  I don’t know if it was that I wanted to prove to
myself I wasn’t scared, or prove it to Shade, or if I wanted to see him get
spooked, or if I just wanted to share his mad idea of an adventure.  But I did
what I’d sworn I’d never do again.  I ducked under the boards and crept into
the dusty darkness beyond, the grave of machines and memories.

Shade hadn’t got too far from the doorway yet, like he was
waiting for me to join him.  I couldn’t see how he wasn’t frozen, standing
there in his shirtsleeves, especially when he’d looked so cold ever since I’d
met him.  Somehow I didn’t think he’d adjusted that quick to our winter.

“Look at that,” he murmured, and shot me a smile.  “Never
seen anything like it.”

I shuddered and peered into the shadows.  The moonlight
snagged on some broken bits of machine presses and a huge blackened steel
monster looming in the middle of the floor, which looked maybe like a furnace
crossed with a mangle.  Pulleys with shattered chains dangled from the beams
high above, and charred benches and grimy work tables cluttered the floor in
varying stages of collapse.  The wind whistled through the machines, stirring
the chains, making my skin prickle.

“This place gives me the heebies,” I said, rubbing my arms. 
“And what’s that stink?”

“God knows,” he muttered.

“Seen enough?”

“Do you hear that?” he asked suddenly.

I froze, turning cold all over.  “Hear what?  The blood?  Do
you hear the blood?”

I strained to listen, but I couldn’t hear it, not the way
I’d heard it dripping when I was seven.  Shade tipped his head to the side and
held a finger to his lips, then without any warning at all, he stole off into
the shadows.

“Shade!” I hissed, clenching my hands.  “Come back here!”

Dead silence.  Then, his voice, sharp with alarm—

“What’s that?  Who are you?”

A strangled cry cut the night. 

Ice tore through me and my feet stumbled into motion, but
instead of carrying me to safety, they rushed me into the shadows, toward the
cry, toward Shade…

…And almost tripped over him where he lounged against a
broken bench, arms crossed.  Smirking.  I caught myself and jumped backwards.

“Shade, you dundering idiot!” I hollered, my hands balled
up, the hairs on my arms standing straight on end.

“Oh
stars
, Hayli, you made it too easy,” he said,
tossing his head back and laughing.

I never got to call him all the names I had running through
my mind, because something about Shade laughing was infectious, and suddenly I
was laughing too.  Shivering, wide-eyed, hair-on-end, laughing.

“That was just mean!” I gasped, kicking dust at him.  “You
and Derrin, you’re both horrid.”

He moved to get up, but all at once his face blanched white
in the moonlight, and his eyes grew terribly wide.

“Hayli,” he whispered.

“Oy, no, you’re not getting me again,” I said.

“Hayli.  I’m not slagging you this time.” 

He looked a bit green as he held out his hand, and I saw it
all slick and shining and covered with…blood?

No.  Not blood.  No.

I stared, my heart chattering like crazy, fear spidering
down my spine.  Every bit of my body screamed at me to turn and run, but I
couldn’t.  Couldn’t move.

“Hayli, Hayli, don’t be scared!” Shade said, sounding more
anxious about me than the blood.  He scrambled to his feet, still holding out
his hand.  “Everything’s jake!”

“That’s…that’s blood!”

“Go on.  Turn around,” he said, quiet now and steady as
could be.  “See the door?  Let’s go.”

“But that’s scarzy
blood
on your hand!”

“I can’t see for certain.  Could be machine oil.”

“But I heard blood dripping when Derrin sent me in here…I
knew it!  I knew there was blood!”

“Hayli.  When was that?”

I gulped and stared up at him, and my face flushed with
shame.  Stars, he was so calm, and here I was, almost hysterical, like some
dumb biddy who’d never been alone in the dark.  I took a deep breath and forced
myself to relax.  Creaky chains and muttering wind wouldn’t scare me.  I wasn’t
afraid of blood, either, or the night.  I wasn’t afraid of anything.

“When I was seven,” I said, and tried to laugh.  “Pretty
ridiculous, right?”

His eyes glinted at me in the uncertain light, and I
couldn’t tell what he was thinking at all.  After a moment he lifted his hand
to his nose and gave it a sniff.

“Machine oil,” he laughed.  “Sorry, Hayli, I really didn’t
mean to scare you that time.”

“Aye, right!” I retorted.  “Not you!”

I picked my way back to the door, listening to the slow
tread of his boots behind me.  Once we’d reached the safety of the enclosure, I
let myself breathe a tiny little sigh of relief.  The gas lights had come back
on, sort of, and in the dim light Shade contemplated his hand.  Then he turned
and smiled at me.

“I’ll just wash this off.  Don’t wait for me.  You look like
an icicle.”

I laughed, and shivered.  He didn’t need to tell me twice. 
I still wasn’t afraid, but I took his words for an excuse and bolted straight
for the Hole.