The Cage(39)

Lucky shoved his chair back in such a rush that chocolate sauce sloshed on the table. Leon cursed.

“I’m okay,” Cora said. “They kept me behind because I wasn’t sleeping well.” She jerked her chin toward the jukebox, which was playing that song that grated on Leon’s ears. “I found out they can read our minds. That’s how they know about my song. And that’s probably part of why we all have headaches. It’s going to make getting out of here more challenging—”

Leon froze as another figure filled the doorway. It was the caged girl, with stringy hair and long limbs.

“She’s . . . joining us,” Cora said.

Leon grunted in surprise. The girl didn’t bother to introduce herself—maybe she didn’t speak English, or speak anything at all. She sauntered over to a table, pulled Rolf’s military jacket off the back of his chair, sniffed it a few times, then slid into it. It swallowed her small frame, and with the ballerina getup, she looked as mismatched as the cage itself. She plunked into Rolf’s chair and started shoveling his food into her mouth.

Rolf started to object, but stopped. “Well. I wasn’t going to eat it anyway.” He fiddled with the leaves of a potted flower he’d brought in from outside.

“Hey. Girl.” Leon barked in annoyance. “You talk or what?”

Cora shot him a look. “Ease up. She’s probably been through a lot, Leon.”

But to Leon’s surprise, the girl lifted her head. Chocolate sauce covered her mouth. A ratty braid hung in her face, making her look wild. She regarded Leon coldly as she pinched her arms with hands that were deeply scarred.

Then she went back to her chocolate-covered tuna.

“Maybe she’s deaf?” Nok suggested.

“Maybe she’s a spy,” Rolf countered, blinking quickly, his hands buried in the flower. “I told you that every group of experiments has a control.”

“They don’t need a spy.” Lucky hopped off one of the tables and jerked a thumb at the black window, where two shadowy figures lurked. “They already know everything we do, especially if they can read our minds. Besides, she’s one of us. Human.”

Leon grunted. “You sure about that?”

But the truth was, he knew with one look into her eyes that she was just as human as the rest of them; and just as screwed. He couldn’t stop stealing glances at the scars on her hands. He wondered who had hurt her—Kindred or human.

“Seriously, kid, if you got a name, tell us,” he said. “Girl Three doesn’t have much of a ring.”

Cora gave him a surprised look. “Leon, that was almost a nice thing to say.”

“Don’t get used to it.”

Ignoring them, the girl stood and drifted around the room, fingers dancing over the murky black window, leaving ghostly traces of moisture that evaporated as soon as they appeared. Her fingers kept tracing the same shape over and over. Letters, Leon realized. Rough, childlike, clunky.

M-A-L-I.

“Mali?” Cora sounded out the word. “That’s your name?”

The girl gave a stiff nod, but her eyes hesitated, as though there was more to say but she didn’t know how.

“Maybe she means Molly, like with a Y,” Nok suggested.

Leon grunted. “Are you all blind or what? She means just what she wrote. Mali. The country. Look at her hair and skin. She’s telling you where she’s from, dorks.”

Cora’s head swiveled back to the girl. “Is that true?”

The girl’s fingers still danced on the window. “The Kindred know where I am from but not my name, so that is what they call me. I am young when they take me.” She spoke in a strange way that Leon had to struggle to piece together. Each word was so pronounced and distinctive and in the present tense, even if she was talking about the past. It was almost like a speech impediment a little cousin of his had, like her lips didn’t learn to form words right.

“How young?” Cora asked gently.

The girl held up four fingers. Leon’s head ached harder. The Kindred took tiny little kids? Those black-eyed bastards were seriously messed up.

Cora kept her voice soft. “Are there more like you, who were taken as children? Are they in enclosures like this one?”

Leon had to give it to Cora, she had a way with crazy feral humans. Left to him, he’d have shaken the answers out of the girl.

The girl looked at her toes. She wiggled them as though bored. “No.” Nok sighed with relief, until the girl added, “The others are not nearly as fortunate.”