Spectacle (Menagerie #2)(35)
I would have avoided me too.
Mirela and Rommily weren’t in the dorm. Nalah sat against one wall, shooting rage-filled looks my way. Zyanya and Mahsa were busy comforting Lala, and I decided to give them some distance.
Lunch came shortly after I arrived, and as soon as I sat with my tray of raw spinach, bread and a chicken thigh, Simra settled onto the floor next to me.
“Zyanya said you’re a furiae. What does that mean, exactly?” she asked, pushing strands of fine, silvery hair back from her pale face.
“Basically, I’m possessed by the spirit of vengeance.”
“Possessed?”
“That’s what it feels like.” I bit a chunk from my chicken thigh, then began stripping the meat from the bone.
“But you really are human?”
“I really, really am. Not that it matters.” Not that it should matter. Deciding who should be free and who should be locked up based on chromosomal features made no more sense than basing that decision on eye color.
Simra plucked a leaf of spinach from her tray and stared at the tiny green veins on the back side. “What did you do to that guard?”
I arranged my chicken and spinach on my slice of bread and folded it over to form half a sandwich. “I just made Sutton want to do to himself what he’d done to Mirela and Rommily. I like to think of it as poetic justice.” Though I had little control over what form that justice took.
Simra seemed to think about that while I took a bite of my makeshift sandwich. But I had little appetite.
As I pushed my tray away, the dormitory door opened, and one of the handlers shoved Magnolia inside. She stumbled and fell to her knees, and her face was shielded by a curtain of her fallen-leaf-colored hair, threaded through with thin woody vines. The handler aimed his remote at her, and both the sensor over the door and the one in her collar blinked red.
Magnolia didn’t even look up.
I frowned, studying the dryad. She looked different from when they’d taken her the afternoon before, but I couldn’t...
Her hair. She’d had several beautiful whitish blooms blossoming in her hair.
Now those blossoms were gone.
One of the other ladies knelt next to her and laid a hand on Magnolia’s shoulder, but the nymph turned on her, teeth gnashing. Mossy-green eyes flashed beneath the tiny woody tendrils growing in place of her eyelashes.
“Oh...” Simra breathed, and I turned to her with a questioning look. “They got rid of it.”
“It?”
“The baby.”
“She was pregnant?” I whispered, horrified. “Vandekamp ended it?”
“His wife. She won’t let the ‘monsters’ breed.”
The only thing I could imagine worse than being forced to end the pregnancy was how Magnolia might have gotten pregnant in the first place.
*
The handlers called my name a couple of hours after lunch, and along with two of the long-term captives, they also called Zyanya and Lenore. That choice was not random. Vandekamp had selected women he knew I would want to protect.
The shifter and the siren were living threats, intended to keep me in line.
The five of us were marched down a series of hallways into a bright, cold room equipped with six salon-style chairs, several racks of skimpy clothing, an entire arsenal of makeup and three women in khaki pants, collared shirts and pink aprons bearing the Savage Spectacle’s silver logo.
The ambient scents were a confusion of perfume, hair spray, lotion and various cosmetic pastes, glosses and powders. And glue.
We were each seated in one of the chairs, but were neither handcuffed nor shackled. Instead, our collars were programmed to paralyze us for the duration of the makeup session. Which took hours.
The “artists” moved us into whatever position their work required, posing us like dolls as they drew on our faces. As they curled, pinned and sprayed our hair. There were no mirrors in the room, because it didn’t matter what we thought of their efforts, so while I could see some of what was being done to my fellow captives, I couldn’t really tell what was being done to me. Except for the heavy false eyelashes. Those were impossible to miss.
The artists chatted as they worked, asking for opinions and offering suggestions as they discussed their families and social lives. It took most of my concentration to keep tears at bay as I listened to them discuss the very things I’d lost, while I sat there locked out of my own body, one step away from being rented out by the hour.
When my makeup was finished, the artist fitted me with a black lace masquerade mask, which fastened beneath the mass of dark curls she’d created. The mask was small enough to display the ridiculous lashes and whatever else she’d done to my face. I felt as if I were wearing several pounds of primer, foundation, glitter and whatever art had been drawn onto my temples and cheeks.
The other two artists finished with their living palettes early and moved on to the two remaining captives while my extensive makeover was completed. When they were finished, the makeup artists headed out for a coffee break, leaving us immobilized in our chairs, staring at a blank wall.
For a long time, we sat there like corpses, imprisoned in our own minds, and I wouldn’t have known the handlers were still stationed against the wall behind us if I hadn’t heard them breathing.
I couldn’t ask the other captives if the wait was normal. I couldn’t even turn to look at them. I could do nothing more than swallow the saliva gathering at the back of my throat, and try not to let the itch inside my left ear drive me out of my mind.