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She held her hands under her face as we waited for the elevator, and I could see a difference. She looked radiant, a stripped-down pale pink with undertones of healthy blush. She was like a delicate little flower, a proverbial rose with even bigger proverbial thorns.
I nodded and said, “You look gorgeous. Maybe I should have stuck around, too.”
“Next week, don’t be such a fucking freak,” she said as we walked through the doors. They closed behind us, and we went down. “Now remind me, I have to stop swearing so much. It’s apparently not fucking ladylike, and if I want to snag an Upper hottie like yours, I’d better be all lady. On the streets, at least, right?”
She giggled and nudged me. Her meaning was clear. I waited quietly for the short ride to end so I could ignore her with ease as her group buzzed around her.
The door opened, and her demeanor immediately changed. It was like watching an animatronic spring to life. Like this one time, I’d gone to a classmate’s birthday party at one of those busted-down kid’s restaurants. The entire time, there had been these dead-eyed metallic animals holding musical instruments on a stage at the front of the dining area. Once the cake came, they started moving and singing the happy birthday song.
Everybody else had clapped and gotten excited. I had lost my shit and crawled into my daddy’s lap, tears streaming down my face as I sobbed about the demented mouse coming for me that night.
That was the last time I really spent with them.
And then I shook my head as a bright beam of sunlight caught my face and illuminated me, a bolt of knowledge from the heavens themselves.
I’d never gone to a restaurant like that. I didn’t even know if Uppers held their parties in trashy establishments like that kid’s themed eatery. And my parents would never have taken me there on their own, not without my nanny or some personal house servant to help out.
Where had that memory come from?
Another dream?
I didn’t have long to think about it. We crossed the courtyard quickly, and I was surrounded by giggling, gossiping girls. I couldn’t help but get caught up in their energy, and the false memory faded as quickly as the moment with the beam of light. A cloud crossed in front of the sun, and reality fogged the images in my head.
Breakfast was a scrumptious distraction and exactly what I needed. I called Harlow over to sit next to me, much to Victoria’s shock and horror, but I didn’t care.
She shot me the evil eye, but I chose to look past her and maintain
CHAPTER12
“First, we remove our shoes,”Harlow said. She was speaking in a hushed tone, the kind of voice you’d reserve for a funeral or Sunday mass. “Then we need to wash ourselves with the burning.”
I was again completely clueless. But at this point, I was the ultimate deceiver, and I would fake it until I could make it.
The ritual space was located across the campus, behind the art building. It was strange, going past the ultra-modern clinic where I was supposed to have treatments, then down a short path lined with tall, thick hedges that were on the verge of being overgrown, and then to this place.
It was a church, as far as my head held the image of church. I didn’t say it, though, given her reaction to the word previously.
It was a small gothic cathedral, and I wasn’t surprised when I looked up and saw two bat-winged gargoyles grinning down at me among several stone carved skulls. Each of the skulls bore a carved stone crown and had a time-worn inscription etched into it.
I couldn’t make out any legible lettering from where we were, and when I asked, Harlow brushed me off and said she had no idea.
It felt like a lie. It felt like Harlow knew exactly what the crowns had carved into them, but I didn’t press the matter.
When we walked barefoot through the tall arched stone entryway, she paused next to a heavy wooden side cabinet with stacks of hard, dark disks lined up behind three tarnished silver plates.
“Burn yourself clean,” she said and picked up a disk, snapped it in half, and handed me a portion. She took a long wooden match, dragged it along the edge of the cabinet where there was a silver filed surface, and it burst into flame with a scritch.
She held it out, and I looked at her, still uncertain of the next move.
“You Uppers, you always forget the ritual,” she said with a sigh. “The very few of you who even bother with ritual these days, that is.”
She held the match under the edge of my disk and let it spark into a red glow. She repeated the same for hers.
She put the burning end of the match onto the silver plate and lifted the smoking disk above her head.
She closed her eyes and said, “Goddess of time, God of night, cleanse this body and make it right.”
I followed her, saying the words myself, and even as I said them, I understood that they weren’t mine to say. I could feel a tingle on my tongue, like the times I would eat something with cloves in it. I was allergic, and the first reaction was that tingling sensation.
