The Gender Plan (The Gender Game #6)(31)

Violet took a step forward, clearly concerned by his distress. “Jeff? What was that thing? Why was it so small?”

Jeff met my gaze, and then hers, and his flush deepened. “Ahh, I suppose you would never have seen a dumbwaiter before,” he said, with nothing condescending in his tone, only a bit of embarrassment. “It’s meant to carry food from one part of the house to another. Not people. At one point in the house’s life, that room used to be a kitchen.”

“Oh,” she said, her face screwing up as she digested the information. Most of the time, it didn’t show that Violet had grown up in an orphanage—and a series of terrible work camps—but at moments like these, I could see the people around her remembering.

“Then why did it lead to your room?” she asked Jeff, and I could almost see the gears in her head turning. When she’d told me that story, I’d had similar questions.

Jeff stroked his moustache, perhaps nervously. “Well, you see… Mr. Ashabee didn’t want the other servants to know about his secret armory. I was the only one he would trust with his secret, and the only reason he did that was because…” His moustache turned down. “I was responsible for maintaining his collection, you see. And also, of course, for checking on him to make sure he didn’t dwell down there too long when his more creative manias struck him. With the dumbwaiter left over, he told me I had to move into the room it was in so that I could go help him in secret. Oh, I begged him to modify it and make it bigger, but he refused on the grounds that constructing another would be too obvious to the other servants. I quite disliked that thing. It was… humiliating. But… if it saved your life, then I am grateful for it, and to him, for having any kind of elevator there at all.”

Violet’s face softened, and she pulled the butler in for a hug. “Ashabee was not a good man,” she said as she hugged him tight. “And you are. Here.”

She pulled something from her pocket and handed it to Jeff. He grabbed it, and I realized it was a picture. Inside it was an image of Jeff and an older woman, probably his mother. “You took this for me?” he said, his voice slightly strangled.

“I hope you don’t mind. I just saw it in your room and thought… Well, I’m glad I did now. Especially with what happened.”

Jeff smiled, his eyes glistening. “I left all my pictures behind,” he said wistfully. “I didn’t want to carry too much, anything that would slow me down.”

Violet nodded, her hand on Jeff’s arm. “I understand. I know what it’s like to lose pictures. I’m sorry I didn’t grab the rest.”

“This was the best one you could’ve grabbed, under the circumstances. Oh, thank you, Ms. Bates.”

The emotional butler wrapped his arms around Violet, embracing her in another heartfelt hug. I watched it all, realizing with a strange jolt that somehow, Violet had managed to find one more beautiful thing in the whole ordeal with Owen.

I just hoped I would be able to as well.





11





Viggo





Three days seemed like an eternity when the whole world felt perched on the edge of a knife. It was exhausting not knowing anything, and the waiting was downright stifling. Yet the camp continued about its business, ignoring the feeling of a long-held breath, waiting to learn whether it should exhale slowly, or scream.

Everyone had their own ways of ignoring the looming questions, little mindless jobs to help achieve a feeling of accomplishment in the face of the unknown. I, for one, thought it was a good sign. For good or for ill, there was a sense of accomplishment within the group. A camaraderie that was beginning to form between us from all the trials and tribulations we had endured. In leading the way, Ms. Dale, Amber, and I had demonstrated that we could fight back.

Yet, without any word from Tiffany save the brief updates assuring us she was still alive, there was still this question mark involving the city. It cast a shadow, a taint, over the day-to-day routine of the camp.

All of us were trying to figure out what to do with the seven-day deadline Desmond had given us. According to her, the boys would be executed when she didn’t return to whoever she had with them. Wherever they were keeping them. If there was such a plan, there would have to be safeguards, or else Desmond would never have been able to go anywhere without checking in with her cronies. We had our spies scrambling for information on where they might be, but it was hopeless.

Desmond hadn’t been allowed to see any of our base or the route to it. We’d gotten Dr. Arlan to treat her broken leg and drug her heavily as soon as we got to camp—making sure her blindfold stayed on the whole time—and, while the group of us who acted as leaders had held a furious conference, we couldn’t justify killing her after what she had said… at least, not yet. Not until we had more information. She was in the den right now; we’d converted the room into a makeshift but fairly secure prison cell, to hold her until we could make a more permanent decision.

At the moment, our best plan was, if we still knew nothing in a week, to take her to the middle of the city via heloship, drop her blindfolded with her hands tied where a Matrian patrol would come see her, come back before we were seen, and move camp… again.

It was a pathetic plan, a joke, and I dearly hoped we could figure something out soon. If we’d known where the boys were being kept, who knew about them, how to find the Matrian command… then at least we would have had a start at figuring out how to rescue them before time was up. But we had no leads. And who knew, even if we did release her, that Desmond wouldn’t kill some of them anyway, just out of spite? She’d done it before. She wouldn’t waste all of her precious weaponized humans, I knew that, but she was not above sacrificing some of them just to make us suffer. The thought had us all running scared.