Page 61 of Monster Queen Rising

Her breath goes out against my hand.

Down the hall a door opens. Madison, up, on her feet, one hand at the small of her back, moving at the speed she moves now. Only a couple of days left.

Chapter twenty-two

Jen

Harek sits down across from me and the purr starts before either of us says anything.

Three notes, under his breath, so low it's more in the table than in the air. The one he ran through the cell wall, before I knew there was a him.

He doesn't seem to know he's doing it.

The kitchen smells like bread. Crull's been at it since dawn — four loaves cooling on the rack under the window, another under a cloth on the counter, his sling hung over the back of the chair where he left it yesterday and hasn't picked up since. He got shot two days ago and Harek benched him and this is what he does with his hands now, apparently. Nobody's said a word about it. We just eat the bread.

Mara Cole's at the other end of the table with a cup she isn't drinking. Janet's upstairs — she's got the room at the end, and the dog sleeps across her door, and the box of student papers is still by the bed where she set it down three weeks ago.

I've got both hands around a mug and I'm tired.

Not from anything. That's the part I can't get past. I've slept eleven hours a night since the strike and I get up and I'm tired, and there's nothing left to do that would explain it. The work's done. The building's dark. I sat down days ago and I haven't gotten back up.

Harek's looking at me.

"The riverbank," he says. "And the white room. You went all the way up twice and you came back both times." Not a question. "Nobody knows what that takes out of a person. Vance doesn't. I don't."

He drinks.

"You're tired. That's all I've got."

"That's not much."

"No." He sets the mug down. "Sleep. Let us carry the rest."

"How long."

"Until you're not."

I look at him. He's got his hair up and yesterday's shirt on and he's been awake more than any of us this week, and he says it like it's the schedule.

He picks his mug back up and drinks.

Madison comes out to the porch in the afternoon.

She's slower than she was when I left for Allison. The walk's careful now, one hand at the small of her back, and she keeps it there while she lowers herself onto the swing, and lets her breath out all at once when she lands.

Fen's already out here. He's on the step with his back to the swing.

I'm down the other end of the porch with a colander in my lap and the last of the garden beans, snapping the ends off for Crull. Near enough to hear. Far enough not to be in it.

"Sit with me," Madison says.

Fen turns his head. He gets up and crosses to the swing and sits down with three feet between them.

She doesn't say anything for a while.

"You came back."

"I came back."