Spectacle (Menagerie #2)(38)
“She won’t shower,” the doctor said. “That’s evidently what caused this mess.”
Rommily tugged on the loose thread hanging from the hem of her torn shirt. She didn’t like these clothes. These drab pants that were all one color. If gray could be called a color.
“Is she dangerous?” the woman asked.
“No.” The doctor swiveled on his stool to face Rommily. “But there’s something wrong with her. If she were human, I’d call her a head case.”
“And since she’s not human, what would you call her?”
The doctor shrugged. “Useless.”
“Fury reaps its own reward.” Rommily’s words ran together like watercolors as she closed her eyes. An image formed, and she gasped. Her eyes flew open again, but the image was still there. Still every bit as real as the cold tile room and the pink-clad woman staring down at her.
“What did she say?” the woman demanded, as the doctor walked his stool closer. “And what the hell is wrong with her eyes?”
“She’s having a vision,” Mirela said. “Just leave her alone, and it’ll be over in a minute.”
The woman in pink knelt in front of Rommily in her clown heels, clutching her tablet to her chest. “Well, she’s certainly useless as long as she smells like that. Let’s get her up and hose her down, if we have to.” The lady in pink stood. “Help me with her?”
The stool groaned as the doctor stood and rolled it back. “I’ll take her right arm. You take her left.”
“I wouldn’t do that...” Mirela said from the padded table, but they weren’t listening.
The woman in pink grabbed Rommily’s left hand while the doctor took her right arm. Rommily sucked in a sharp breath as they pulled her to her feet. “Scalpel born. Belly full of blood.”
“What the hell did she say?” The lady in pink tried to let go of Rommily, but the oracle had her hand in a grip of steel.
She laughed, as if her white-blind eyes saw straight into the woman’s soul. “Fate’s bastard is coming for you.”
Delilah
The coordinator waved us out of the kitchen. Only the habit of putting one foot in front of the other kept me from freezing in shock when I saw the room. Though really, calling it a room was like calling a cave a crack in the wall.
The space could easily have held several times the fifty guests invited to Michael Hayes’s bachelor party.
The windowless walls were lined with panels of gathered black drapery, which gave the room a formal look and dampened the echo most spaces that size would have suffered. The floor was white marble with black veins, shining in the light from several elaborate chandeliers hanging from the ornately coffered ceiling.
The huge room swallowed my footsteps and amplified my fear, making me feel insignificant in a way that being locked in a small cage never could have.
The guests were college-age men in business-casual dress, most of whom had already found the alcoholic beverage of their choice. Their chatter died as we entered the room, and I could feel every gaze on me. The attention felt simultaneously familiar and completely foreign, because though I’d been on display at Metzger’s, a menagerie patron’s motivation to plop down his credit card was almost always simple curiosity, tempered by fear. He or she wanted to see dangerous creatures—perhaps even those responsible for the reaping—removed from true threat by miracle of steel cages and iron bars.
But the patrons at the Savage Spectacle didn’t just look curious, they looked hungry. Greedy. These men—most of them near my age—didn’t believe we represented any threat, and it had never occurred to them, probably in their entire lives, that they might not have the right to do whatever they wanted in any given moment.
I could practically smell their anticipation in the air.
The coordinator whispered for us to spread out and carry our trays around the room, and the ladies in front of me did just that. Crowds formed around them instantly. Hands reached for flutes of champagne and handfuls of hair in equal numbers. Someone pulled Belinda’s lip down to inspect her sharp fangs, while a man in a red button-down shirt ran his hand down the length of Zyanya’s arm, then lifted her free hand so he could examine her claws.
Lenore’s flat-soled sandals whispered on the floor behind me as she headed for the stage, where red velvet curtains had been drawn back to reveal an orchestral quartet formally dressed in blue-and-silver tuxes, except for the female violinist, who wore a blue sequined gown. The siren climbed the steps on one side of the stage and conferred softly with the violinist. After several whispered questions and a couple of nods, Lenore took up her position behind the microphone, and when the music began, she sang.
I realized immediately that despite her instructions, her melody and its push were intended not for the paying audience, but for those of us forced to endure wandering hands and intrusive gazes. Her voice felt like a gentle wave of calm floating over me, blunting the sharp edge of my temper and relaxing the fist clenched at my side.
I was disgusted by what I was being forced to endure, but it would not kill me. And I wouldn’t have to kill anyone either.
If any of the employees were able to think beyond their own suddenly eased tensions and realize she was projecting the wrong atmosphere, she might get into trouble. But I was beyond grateful for her efforts.