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“You what?” I said.
“I want to see,” Emma said, an edge creeping into her voice. “Show me.”
“Serious inquiries only,” said Lorraine.
“Oh, I’m very serious.”
I didn’t know what Emma was up to, but I trusted her enough to go with it.
“What about them?” Lorraine said, casting an uncertain gaze at Addison and me. “They always so rude?”
“Yes. But they’re all right.”
Lorraine squinted at us as if imagining what it might take to forcibly eject us from her place, should the need arise.
“What can you do?” she said to me. “Anything?”
Emma cleared her throat, then bugged her eyes at me. I knew right away what she was telegraphing: Lie!
“I used to be able to levitate pencils and things,” I said, “but now I can’t even get one to stand on end. I think I’m … out of order, or something.”
“Happens to the best of ’em.” She looked to Addison. “And you?”
Addison rolled his eyes. “I’m a talking dog?”
“And that’s all you do, talk?”
“Sometimes it seems that way,” I couldn’t resist saying.
“I don’t know whom to feel more insulted by,” said Addison.
Lorraine took a final puff of her cigarette and flicked it away. “All right, sugars. Follow me.”
She started to walk away. We hung behind a moment and conferred in a whisper.
“What about Sharon?” I said. “He told us to wait here.”
“This will only take a minute,” Emma said. “And I have a hunch she knows a lot more about where the wights are hiding than Sharon does.”
“And you think she’s just going to volunteer such information?” said Addison.
“We’ll see,” Emma said, and she turned to follow Lorraine.
* * *
Lorraine’s place had no window and no sign, just a blank door with a silver bell on a pull chain. Lorraine rang the bell. We waited while a series of deadbolts were slid from the inside, and then the door opened a crack. An eye glinted at us from the shadows.
“Fresh meat?” said a man’s voice.
“Customers,” Lorraine replied. “Let us in.”
The eye disappeared and the door opened the rest of the way. We came into a formal entrance hall, where the doorman waited to look us over. He wore a massive overcoat with a high collar and a wide-brimmed fedora, the hat tilted so low that all we could see of his face were two pinprick eyes and the tip of his nose. He stood blocking our way, staring us down.
“Well?” said Lorraine.
The man seemed to decide we weren’t a threat. “Okay,” he said, stepping aside. He closed and locked the door behind us, then trailed after as Lorraine showed us down a long hallway.
We came into a dim parlor flickering with oil lamps. It was a sleazy place with delusions of grandeur: the walls were trimmed with gold scrollwork and velvet drapes, the domed ceiling was painted with tanned and tunicked Greek gods, and marble columns framed the entrance to the hall.
Lorraine nodded to the doorman. “Thank you, Carlos.”
Carlos glided away to the back of the room. Lorraine walked to a curtained wall and pulled a cord, and the fabric slid aside to reveal a wide panel of sturdy glass. We stepped forward to look, and through it saw another room. It was very much like the one we were standing in, but smaller, and people were lazing about on chairs and sofas, some reading while others napped.
I counted eight of them. A few were older, graying at the temples. Two, a boy and a girl, were under the age of ten. They were all, I realized, prisoners.
Addison started to ask a question, but Lorraine gestured impatiently. “Questions after, please.” She strode to the glass, picked up a tube connected umbilically to the wall below it, and spoke into one end. “Number thirteen!”
On the other side of the glass, the youngest boy stood and shuffled forward. His hands and legs were chained, and he was the only peculiar wearing anything resembling prisoner’s garb: a striped suit and cap with the number 13 stitched boldly onto them. Though he couldn’t have been older than ten, he had a man’s facial hair: a bushy, triangular goatee and eyebrows like jungle caterpillars, the eyes below them cold and appraising.
“Why is he chained like that?” I said. “Is he dangerous?”
“You’ll see,” Lorraine said.
The boy closed his eyes. He seemed to be concentrating. A moment later, hair began to emerge from the brim of his cap, creeping down his forehead. His goatee grew, too, twisting into a clump, then rising and swaying like a charmed snake.
“Heavenly herons,” said Addison. “How marvelously strange.”
“Watch closely now,” said Lorraine, grinning.
Number thirteen raised his shackled hands. The pointed end of his charmed goatee aimed itself at the lock, sniffed around the keyhole, and wriggled inside. The boy opened his eyes and stared ahead, expressionless. After ten or so seconds, the twisted goatee stiffened and began to vibrate, making a high musical note we could hear through the glass.
The padlock opened and the chains fell away from his wrists.
He bowed slightly. I stifled an urge to applaud.
“He can open any lock in the world,” Lorraine said with a hint of pride.
The boy returned to his chair and magazine.
Lorraine covered the tube with her hand. “He’s one of a kind, and so are the rest. One’s a thought reader, very adept. Another can reach through walls up to her shoulder. That’s more useful than it sounds, believe me. The little girl here flies if she’s had enough grape soda.”
“Is that right,” Addison said thickly.
“She’d be happy to demonstrate,” said Lorraine, and speaking into the tube, she summoned the girl to the window.
“It’s not necessary,” Emma said through clenched teeth.
“It’s their job,” said Lorraine. “Five, come forward!”
The little girl went to a table stocked with bottles, selected one filled with purple liquid, and took a long drink. When she’d drained it, she set down the bottle, let out a dainty hiccup, and went to stand by a cane-backed chair. A moment later she hiccupped again and her feet began to lift off the ground, pivoting upward while her head remained level. By the third hiccup, her feet had risen ninety degrees and she lay flat on her back in the air, her only support the top of the chair beneath her neck.
I think Lorraine expected more of a reaction from us, but—though impressed—we were a study in silence. “Tough crowd,” she said and dismissed the girl.
“Now,” Lorraine said, hanging up the tube and turning to face us. “If none of that was your cup of tea, I have lending agreements with other stables. By no means are your choices limited to what you see here.”
“Stables,” Emma said. Her voice was flat, but I could tell she was boiling just below the surface. “So you admit you treat them like animals?”
Lorraine studied Emma for a moment. Her eyes flitted to the man in the overcoat standing guard in the back. “Course not,” she said. “These are high-performance assets. They’re well fed, well rested, trained to perform under pressure, and pure as the driven snow. Most have never touched so much as a drop of ambro—and I’ve got the papers to prove it in my office. Or you could just ask them. Numbers thirteen and six!” she shouted into the speaking tube. “Come tell these people how you like it here.”
The little boy and girl got up and shuffled to the window. The boy picked up the speaking tube. “We like it here very much,” he said robotically. “Mam treats us real nice.”
He handed the tube to the girl. “We like to do our work. We …” She paused, trying to recall something learned and forgotten. “We like our work,” she mumbled.
Lorraine dismissed them irritably. “And there you have it. Now, I can let you test drive one or two more, but beyond that I’ll need some kind of down payment.”
“I’d like to see those papers,?
?? Emma said, glancing back at the overcoat man. “The ones in your office.” Her hands, clenched at her sides, were starting to go red. I could see we needed to leave before things turned ugly. Whatever information this woman might’ve had wasn’t worth the fight, and rescuing all these kids … well, as callous as it sounded, we had our own kids to rescue first.
“Actually, that won’t be necessary,” I said, then leaned in to Emma and whispered, “we’ll come back to help them. We have to prioritize.”
“The papers,” she said, ignoring me.
“No problem,” Lorraine replied. “Step into my office and let’s talk turkey.”
And then Emma was going and there was no unsuspicious way to stop her.
Lorraine’s office was a desk and chair crammed into a walkin closet. She had only just closed the door behind us when Emma sprang at her, pushing her hard against it. Lorraine swore and shouted for Carlos but went quiet when Emma held a hand to her face that glowed hot as an oven coil. On Lorraine’s blouse, two blackened handprints smoked where Emma had pushed her.
There was a thump on the door and a grunt from the other side.
“Tell him you’re fine,” Emma said, her voice low and flinty.
“I’m fine!” Lorraine said stiffly.
The door rattled against her back.
“Tell him again.”
Lorraine, more convincing now: “Get lost! I’m doing business!”
Another grunt, then receding footsteps.
“You’re being very stupid,” Lorraine said. “No one’s ever stolen from me and lived.”
“We don’t want money,” Emma said. “You’re going to answer some questions.”
“About what?”
“Those people out there. You think you own them?”
