Spectacle (Menagerie #2)(79)

That, I believed. The fact that he was more concerned about insubordination than about the baby told me that it truly wasn’t his. And since Vandekamp obviously wasn’t being paid by a client to keep me pregnant, surely finding out who had ordered my new living conditions would tell me who the father was.

“Who else knows about this?” he demanded.

“Just Pagano, as far as I know. And he only found out minutes ago. Do any of the guards have the authority to arrange this without needing you to sign off on it?”

“Woodrow. But he wouldn’t do that.”

“Unless he’s the father.”

Vandekamp shook his head. “He had a vasectomy a decade ago.”

“Is he the one who removed me from the dorm?”

“No, that was Tabitha. She said you were a threat to—” He bit off the end of his thought and exhaled slowly. Then his eyes closed.

Tabitha. But that made no sense. She was the one who wouldn’t let “monsters” breed.

Vandekamp twisted on the edge of his desk to pick up his phone. “Tell my wife I need to see her. Now,” he barked into the mouthpiece. Then he slammed the phone back into its cradle.

“Whose—” I cleared my throat and started over, trying to inject strength into my words, though I was no longer sure I actually wanted the answer. “Whose baby am I carrying?”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“The hell it doesn’t. Did you rent me out?”

Instead of answering, he circled his desk to sit in his chair again and began typing on his keyboard.

“You can’t just—”

Hinges squealed behind me. “Willem?” The door swung shut with a thud and a click, and I desperately wished I could turn and see Tabitha Vandekamp’s face.

Her husband stood and gestured toward a guest chair against the wall, but she only stepped into my field of vision and crossed her arms over her tailored gray suit jacket. “I’d rather stand. What’s going on?” Her gaze skipped from her husband to me, where it lingered with a weight I didn’t understand. As if she were silently asking me for something.

“Tabitha, why did you change Delilah’s diet?”

“Because she’s human.” She glanced at her husband again, then her gaze slid back to me, and I felt like I was missing some vital piece of information. Again. “We discussed this.” She turned back to him, and I could no longer tell which of us she was truly talking to. “You’re the one who convinced me she’s not a surrogate. If she’s human, we don’t have the authority to hold her here, but she’s obviously too dangerous to simply let go. So I did what I could for her. A private room. Good food. Fresh air. Exercise.”

Vandekamp crossed his arms over his chest, mirroring her defensive posture. But on him, the pose looked like skepticism. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Tabitha shrugged. “You’ve had your hands full drafting the bill, so I just took care of it.”

The bill?

“So, there’s no other—”

“Why am I still pregnant?” I demanded, tired of watching while he doled out enough rope for her hang herself with.

Tabitha swiveled to face me, her eyes wide with shock and...betrayal? “We had an agreement,” she spat.

“We what?”

Vandekamp sank onto the edge of his desk and crossed his arms over his chest. “Tabitha, what did you do?”

“I turned a thorn in the Spectacle’s paw into an opportunity. Just like you did.” Tabitha turned back to me, expectantly, as Vandekamp stood. “You told him about the pregnancy, but not our agreement?”

“I don’t remember making any agreement. Last week, I woke up missing two months’ worth of memories.”

“You’re missing...?” She turned a fiery gaze on her husband, hands on her narrow hips. “I told you there would be long-term damage. She’s not a cryptid, Willem. You can’t just go plucking things from her brain and expect her mind to remain intact!”

“There’s no way the girls accidentally took two entire months from her memory.” Vandekamp sank onto the edge of his desk again. “That’s not how it works. Someone did this intentionally.”

“Well, I had nothing to do with it,” his wife insisted. “Her memory loss doesn’t benefit me if she doesn’t remember our agreement.”

The truth was that I couldn’t see how my memory loss benefited me either. Had I meant to erase the recollection of whatever deal I’d made with her, or was that another unintended casualty of my mass memory wipe?

“What did you agree to?” I demanded.

“To let the pregnancy continue, of course.” Tabitha frowned at her husband. “Is she paralyzed?” She dug a remote from her pocket and pressed a button over his objections. Feeling returned to my chest and stomach, then spread with a tingling sensation to my limbs, and I exhaled in relief. “You can’t do that. We don’t know what kind of effect that has on the baby.”

“Why do you care?” In my mind, I saw the young nymph Magnolia fall to her knees in the dorm, weak from both her unwanted medical procedure and her brutal loss. “Why protect my baby, when you have all the others terminated?”

“Because the others weren’t babies. They were foals or colts or puppies. Animals that may as well have been born in a barn. You’re different, Delilah.” She pulled the extra guest chair closer and sat in it, putting herself at eye level with me, as if we were going to have a deep, reaffirming girl chat. “You’re human. We’ve had that verified with test after test. We’ve had you examined.”