UnWholly (Unwind Dystology #2)(15)

“Okay,” says the voice of a boy in front of them. “You can take off their blindfolds.”

Her blindfold is pulled off, and although the light around her is not bright, it’s still painful to keep her eyes open. She squints, slowly letting her eyes adjust and focus.

They’re in some sort of grand, high-ceilinged ballroom. Crystal chandeliers, artwork on the walls—it looks like the kind of place where French royalty would have entertained high society before getting themselves beheaded. Except that this place is falling apart. There are holes in the ceiling through which pigeons freely fly in and out of the daylight. The paintings are peeling with weather damage, and the rank smell of mildew fills the air. There’s no telling how far they’ve been taken from their destination.

“I’m really sorry we had to do it this way,” the boy sitting in front of them says. He’s not dressed like any sort of royalty. Even moldy royalty. He wears simple jeans and a light blue T-shirt. His hair is pale brown, almost blond, and too long—like he hasn’t had a haircut in recent memory. He seems to be her age, but the tired look around his eyes makes him appear older, like he’s seen many more things than anyone ought to see at their age. He also seems a little bit frail in some indefinable way.

“We couldn’t risk you getting hurt, or figuring out where we were taking you. It was the only way to safely rescue you.”

“Rescue us?” says Miracolina, speaking up for the first time. “Is that what you call this?”

“Well, it might not feel that way at the moment, but yes, that’s exactly what we’ve done.”

And all at once, Miracolina knows who this is. A wave of rage and nausea courses through her. Of all the unfair things to happen to her, why did she have to face this? Why did she have to be captured by him? She feels the kind of anger, the kind of hatred she knows is not good for her soul, especially this close to her tithing—but try as she might, she can’t purge herself of the bitterness.

Then Timothy gasps, and his watery eyes go wide.

“You’re him!” he says with the kind of enthusiasm boys like Timothy usually save for encounters with sports stars. “You’re that tithe who became a clapper! You’re Levi Calder!”

The boy across from them nods and smiles. “Yes, but my friends call me Lev.”





3 ? Cam

Wrists. Ankles. Neck. Strapped down. Itching. Itching all over. Can’t move.

He flexes his hands and feet in the bonds. Side to side, up and down. It scratches the itch, but makes it burn.

“You’re awake,” says a voice that’s familiar, and yet not. “Good. Very good.”

He turns his neck. No one. Just white walls around him.

The scrape of a chair. Closer. Closer. The person who spoke comes into blurry view, moving her chair into his line of sight. Sitting. Legs crossed. Smiling, but not smiling. Not really.

“I was wondering when you’d wake up.”

She wears dark pants and a blouse. Pattern of the blouse too blurry to make out. And the color. The color. He can’t put a finger on the color.

“ROY-G-BIV,” he says, searching. “Yellow. Blue. No.” He grunts. His throat hurts when he speaks, and the words come out raspy. “Grass. Trees. Devil puke.”

“Green,” the woman says. “That’s the word you’re looking for, isn’t it? My blouse is green.”

Can the woman read minds? Maybe not. Maybe she’s just clever. Her voice is gentle and refined. There’s an accent to it. Slightly British, perhaps. It automatically makes him want to trust her.

“Do you recognize me?” she asks.

“No. Yes,” he says, feeling his thoughts cinched in bonds tighter than the ones that secure him to the bed.

“Fair enough,” says the woman. “This is all very new to you—you must be frightened.”

Until that moment, it hasn’t occurred to him that he should be frightened at all. But now that the crossed-legged, green-shirted woman says he must be, then he must be. He tugs against his bonds in fear. The burning itch begins to hurt even more, and it brings forth a jagged shattering of memories that he must speak aloud.

“Hand on stove. Belt buckle—no, Mom, no! Falling from bike. Broken arm. Knife. He stabbed me with a knife!”

“Pain,” says the cross-legged woman calmly. “ ‘Pain’ is the word you’re looking for.”

It is a magic word, for it calms him down. “Pain,” he repeats, hearing the word as it spills from strange vocal cords, and over unfamiliar lips. He stops struggling. The pain fades to burning, and the burning fades to an itch once more. But the thoughts that came along with the pain are still there. The burned hand; the angry mother; the broken arm; and a knife fight that he never fought, and yet somehow did. Somehow, all these things happened to him.

He looks again to the woman, who studies him coolly. Now that his focus is better, he can see the pattern of the blouse.

“Paste . . . palsy . . . hailey.”

“Keep trying,” says the woman. “It’s in there somewhere.”

His brain twitches. He struggles. Thinking feels like a race. A long, grueling Olympic race. What is that race called? It starts with an M.

“Paisley!” he says triumphantly. “Marathon! Paisley!”