Lucky spit in his face. “You do, and I’ll skin that tattoo off your—”
“Stop it!” Cora slammed into Leon. The force of her weight jerked him back long enough for Lucky to scramble to his feet. He breathed hard. Blood dripped from his nose. Leon was on his feet in a second.
Danger crackled in the air.
“This isn’t a game!” Cora yelled. “Trying to rip ears off? Skinning each other? Have you both gone insane?” Her heart beat unsteadily, as out of control as the fight.
This is so, so wrong.
She turned away sharply and rested one hand on the ruined wall.
“Cora—” Lucky started, but she spun around.
“No. Don’t bother explaining. They’ve put us here like we’re animals, and you’re only proving them right. Who do you think messed with the food? Them. The Kindred. I don’t know why—probably to poke and prod us into fighting so they can study how we interact. You’re giving them one hell of a research thesis.” She left them alone in the desert.
“Wait!” Lucky called.
She didn’t look back. Her head throbbed.
Rip that ear off your head . . .
Skin that tattoo off your face . . .
There’d been tension between them from the start. They were all so on edge, so strung out by headaches and from distances that didn’t match up. This place was twisting them, and it was twisting her. For a second, she’d almost been rooting for Lucky to hurt Leon. . . .
She ran back to the house, jogging up the stairs. For weeks the five of them had collected tokens in a pillowcase in her room. They had one hundred seventy-six, last time she counted. Not enough for the croquet set, but there was a kite for one hundred fifty that she could disassemble into a stake. She’d be ready, if the Warden came, or if another fight broke out between the captives. It was time for some law. If the others couldn’t stay civil, she’d be the law herself.
She jogged up the stairs. The bedroom door was closed, so she twisted the knob and charged inside, looking for the pillowcase.
The room wasn’t empty.
Cora froze. “Not you too.”
26
Mali
OUT OF ALL THE habitats, Mali liked the beach one best.
She sat in the shade of a red-and-white umbrella, toying with a deck of cards. Lucky’s shiny aviator sunglasses were perched on her face. She scrunched her nose, trying to get used to the feeling of the sunglasses. She’d only ever heard about them from other captives she’d been with before, either her series of private owners, or the two menageries she’d been in, or the other enclosure. Now, as she wrinkled her face and flipped another card, she found them itchy.
A tingle began on her arm. She slid up the sunglasses to watch the hair rise. In another second, footsteps sounded on the boardwalk. Cassian sank into the deck chair opposite her, which groaned under his weight. He wore his dark uniform with knots down the side to show his rank. Five, now. When he’d rescued her three years ago, it had been twice that number. He had never told her what happened that led to such a demotion, but she could guess: he’d always let his fondness for humans get in the way of his duties.
She slid the sunglasses back over her eyes. “I am like you now.” She tapped the dark lenses. “Black eyes.”
He leaned forward, picking up a few cards that had fallen off her lounge chair. He handed her the cards, and she swirled the pile on the table. She folded her lips in a smile.
“Go fish,” she said.
Though, like all cloaked Kindred, his face betrayed almost no emotion, Mali had learned to read subtle shifts in his features; that flinch meant he was almost smiling. Out of all of them, Cassian had the hardest time suppressing his emotions, but she liked him all the more for it. Go Fish was a human game, but the Kindred had a soft spot for anything human, and she had convinced Cassian to play before. Their world—the public one—was so harsh. Sharp angles, sterile rooms, everything a drab shade of cerulean. It was only in their private lives that they revealed their true personalities. It was there, in the pleasure gardens and menageries, that the Kindred uncloaked their emotions. Their society had evolved to be so sterile that they had lost the ability to create music and entertainment for themselves, so they borrowed culture from humans instead. The quirks of humanity were all the rage in the menageries; the Kindred dressed like humans, listened to their music, played card games like this one.
Cassian patiently drew a card. “I will play, if you tell me how you are adjusting to the dynamic of this cohort.”
Mali scowled beneath her sunglasses. Sometimes she wanted cards to just be cards. Sometimes she wanted Cassian to just be Cassian, and not her Caretaker, and not ask so many questions. “There is no dynamic. There is no cohesion. Leon does not even sleep in the house. Nok and Rolf do not leave town. They fear the habitats.”
“It is a difficult adjustment.” Cassian studied his cards methodically. “It is never easy for any of the human wards. In time, they will learn that we are not to be feared.”
“I want to know why this enclosure is different. Why you dress them in human clothes and give them strange food to eat.”
“It is the Warden, trying something new.” He added a card to the pile. “We will not harm them, of course.”
A darkness wormed its way into the pit of Mali’s stomach. Like most of the Kindred, Cassian often talked about his kind in the plural form. She did trust him; he had saved her life, even at risk to his own. But she didn’t trust them. Not the Kindred. Not as a whole. Certainly not any of her previous owners, and not the Warden, either. Mali had heard rumors about the Warden, but had never known his name—Fian—or met him until Cassian had taken her from the menagerie where she lived and told her she had the chance of a lifetime, to join the grand new enclosure. Fian had insisted on inspecting her first; examining her teeth and ears and hands, then asking Cassian if he was confident that any human males would find such a damaged ward appealing.