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  “If you try to cage a feral cat, you only end up annoying the animal and dying of rabies,” he concluded.

  I frowned. “Surely you do not compare a life like Lilibet's to that of a rabid animal?”

  “She would be, if I tried to contain and control her. Instead, I make sure that they have what they need, and I let them take care of themselves as far as they can. They build more confidence over time, and one day, most of them will not require any help from me at all. Help is one thing. Dependence is quite another.”

  “Yet you took me in, and kept me here. You and Schuyler agreed…” My voice faded. I was not supposed to have any knowledge that their decision to take care of me was any more than the most fleeting, temporary arrangement, though I knew that the doctor never mentioned once the possibility of sending me out into the world again, leaving me to my own devices to fashion a form of survival out of the nothing I'd come from.

  Quinn stared at me and blinked quickly, a look of sullen embarrassment upon his face for an instant before the man devolved back into stone.

  The monument breathes, I thought, for only a second. Still, and always, he exists as a statue.

  “You…” he stammered, before finally turning away a moment to regain his composure. “You are different.”

  My breath grew short, and I thought of nothing more now than that he was so close. I could almost feel the rise and fall of his chest before me. Then came a familiar voice from the hall just behind me.

  “Quinn, a word,” Schuyler interrupted, and at last I retreated.

  Quinn moved back into the red room and Schuyler slammed the door behind them.

  Though I knew I shouldn't, I could not stop myself from standing there, ear pressed to the door, listening.

  “So. You took her out on the balcony,” Schuyler growled. “I thought that she was to remain a prisoner, indoors?”

  “It was dark and the way was deserted. I decided it was worth the risk this once,” Quinn replied.

  “This is wrong, Quinn, you know it is. It is inhumane and it cannot be kept up forever. Why persist in this caging of her like an animal?”

  “Because she is by far the greatest risk to all we have here, and you know that!” Quinn yelled.

  I sighed as I realized once again, I was the ‘she’ that they were arguing over.

  “She must sleep during the day while the power source is charged, Schuyler. What am I to do, then? Turn her loose upon this world at night? You know her safety would be in jeopardy from much greater dangers than a lack of fresh air.”

  “But to not even let her sit in the garden, just to take in the last of the day as the sun sets…” Schuyler's voice dropped, and for a moment I could only make out some of his words; they included ‘are you telling me’, ‘duplicate’, and ‘awake’.

  Then their volume rose to the point where I could once again hear it all.

  “And let all those coming and going from the shop risk seeing her? Bad enough I've heard talk in town now that the shop may be haunted, because several ladies were standing in the Emporium last week discussing how they had seen a ghostly vision in the shop display window of Ruby Road Art and Antiquities.” Quinn's voice sounded the tonal equivalent of a glare. “Careless, Schuyler. Completely careless.”

  “Bloody vultures, gossiping about any and everything that happens in this town.”

  “It sounds as if it's been good for business,” Quinn remarked.

  “Are you accusing me of something?”

  “Only of taking advantage of her talent and time, and putting us all at risk by doing so.”

  “She so enjoys helping with the windows! She never set foot inside of one, she merely drew the sketches she imagined of how they might look, including this item and that from the shop, and then Penn and I would arrange it later after she'd gone. She never even saw him while she was there, I was that careful. What is the harm?”

  “The HARM!” Quinn shouted now, completely enraged. “Is that someone SAW HER. The harm is that her LIFE is at stake, dependent upon my continued ability to care for her. As is Jib's. And what would become of Marielle and Lilibet if we could not continue our work with them? Answer that, genius!”

  Schuyler sighed. “I'm sorry, Quinn, I hadn't thought it could hurt. She is so very good with it all, and it seemed to bring her some sort of comfort, the idea that she was doing something here to earn her keep.”

  “She does not NEED to earn her keep. I have made that much plain before. Apparently I did not sufficiently stress the point.”

  “Just because someone is told something — especially that they have inherent value when they have been treated as refuse in the past — doesn't cause them to immediately believe it, Quinn. These things must be reinforced, over time. Belief in a person's worth must actually be accepted to be valid.”

  “She doubts her worth?” Quinn scoffed. “After all the time and work I have invested in her, still she doubts her inherent worth?”

  “Entirely.”

  I listened, now, with my back against the door and tears rolling down my face.

  Schuyler and I had never had a deep discussion about my consideration of my value in this world, but apparently no such exchange was needed in order for him to make an accurate assessment of the condition of my self-image.

  Quinn sighed. “She was so happy, for a moment, out there on the balcony, taking in the scent of the flowers below.”

  “There has got to be a way that we can start allowing her a little fresh air now and then, even if a project must be undertaken in order to achieve sufficient shelter from prying eyes.”

  “That is a project that I shall leave to you, then,” Quinn said, and I heard him move away, his voice retreating to the point I had to strain to hear it at all. “I have bigger problems on my hands.”

  “Jib?”

  I heard the sound of the stopper being pulled from the liqueur decanter and the clink of its neck against the rim of a glass. “Yes.”

  I jumped back as I heard Schuyler turn the handle of the door, and I took several steps down the hall, ducking around the corner. He emerged from the red room and asked Quinn one more question before departing.

  “Will there ever be a chance for the girl to really see the sunlight again? To live as something other than the nocturnal creature you have turned her into?”

  “The nocturnal creature she has become of necessity,” Quinn replied with another sigh. “And the answer is yes, if you leave me alone long enough, I may be able to come up with a way for her to find her way back to the light.”

  Schuyler rounded the corner and found me there, standing still and staring at the floor. “Is something the matter?”

  “I heard the sound of arguing,” I answered truthfully, while still keeping to myself exactly how much I'd heard. “Have I done something wrong?”

  “No, heavens no, girl, do not look so forlorn.” Schuyler placed his hand beneath my chin and lifted my eyes to meet his. “It is I who have been careless. I am afraid we shall have to be much more careful about having you in the store. It seems that there are rumors circulating among the old cats in this town that a beautiful young ghost is haunting the place.”

  I wanted so much to embrace him then, knowing that at no point had anyone said anything about the suspected ghost being ‘beautiful’. Still, he felt the need to add in that kindest, sweetest of details.

  “We must be cautious.”

  “Perhaps it is best if I simply keep to the house, to my attic room, the red room, the laboratory…” I felt tears stinging my eyes again and my chest constricted. How I would miss spending time in the shop with Schuyler, should that escape be taken away from me. I lived for hours in the laboratory with Quinn most of all, but he was given to such severity of mood that there was no knowing on any given day whether or not he'd want to have me present there while he worked.

  On the days when he would brood, or mutter to himself as he puzzled over some problem that sorely plagued his mind, I was grateful f
or the chance to divert my thoughts, even if just for a little while, by the lighter tone of voice and content of conversation that was part and parcel of time spent with Schuyler.

  CHAPTER 18

  AS ALTERNATELY FASCINATED and delighted as I was by the company of Quinn's misfit band of patients, I found myself growing attached to them on a level that I had not planned and could not fathom.

  I was sorely troubled in my heart for the pain that each of them carried, and I had so many questions that had, thus far, gone unanswered. I decided to approach the man I thought much more likely to converse with me on the subject.

  I found him in his red room, standing near one of the windows that were set to either side of the balcony doors and straightening the tie on the curtains.

  “Schuyler, may I ask you a question, please?” I knew that Quinn was the one who could give me the most detailed answers if he chose; but that was the sticking point. I felt for a certainty that he would choose not to.

  “Of course, Elsewhere.” Schuyler smiled gently and shook his head. “I am still finding it odd that you own up to such a nickname when your own name might be much more suitable and glamorous. Won't you tell it to me?”

  I got the same look on my face that I always did whenever Schuyler asked me to reveal my name to him — a much different expression than I wore when the same question was asked by Quinn.

  Perhaps that was why Quinn was still so reluctant to answer any of my questions; I had hardly been forthcoming with in-depth answers in response to his.

  “What is your question, then, my dear?” Schuyler prompted.

  “What manner of illness is it ailing Jib?”

  Schuyler's smile dissolved, revealing a deep unyielding sorrow beneath. “His ailment is one of his body's own making. It is not something that he came down with or caught by contagion.”

  “How so?”

  “The way Quinn explains it, and I assure you he would explain it much better than I can—”

  “If only he'd explain it. You know that if I ask…” My words faded, and we shared a moment of understanding.

  “I know that Quinn has withheld answers you've asked for. But then, he does this to us all. On this subject, I don't believe he would feel the need to be as secretive. If he had not wanted you to get to know the others, he would have continued on keeping you sequestered from them.”

  “Well, perhaps he would explain it in terms I could not understand anyway. So it is still better if you try.”

  “You should be flattered.” Schuyler shrugged as he fussed with the lace on the cuff of his sleeve, first on the left, then the right. “Quinn never condescends to you. Never tries to oversimplify things in explanation which would be, to his mind, considered an insult.” He now straightened the lapels on his jacket and seemed to take stock of his appearance in the faint reflection he saw in the window.

  He lifted his eyes to look at me, or rather I should say at my reflection as well, as he never actually turned to face me the entire time we were speaking.

  “He thinks very highly of your mind,” Schuyler added. The tone of his voice changed a little, just for a second, and that change troubled me. It implied that even if only for a moment, he envied me.

  “Nonsense,” I quickly added, moving away because I could no longer stand the power of his penetrating stare. “I am but a girl, and that is how Doctor Godspeed sees me. That is why I believe if I asked him this question, he would not answer. So please, Schuyler, will you, at last, answer?”

  “Very well.” Schuyler sighed. He moved away from the window and took up his usual spot in the velvet-covered chair in the corner. “Jib's ailment is, as I said, one of his body's own creation. His body seems to be attacking itself, that is the way Quinn described it to me. His systems all gone mad, and destroying his organs in the process.”

  “Is there nothing for it?”

  “Quinn has tried many treatments over the past five years, since the boy first presented with the symptoms. But, sadly, none have held the destruction at bay. It was very difficult the first time that we…” There was an obvious hitch in Schuyler's voice now, and he stopped to clear his throat before continuing. “The first time that we saw him wheel himself in, in that chair.”

  “What does the future hold for him, if the doctor cannot find a cure?”

  Schuyler looked at me, his eyes pooling with tears he could not prevent, and he simply shook his head. Clearly overcome by emotion, he sought to escape the room, and the conversation. “Pardon,” he whispered, as he rose from the chair and swept past me, leaving me to draw my own heartbreaking conclusion.

  * * *

  Still deep in thought, I retreated to the silence of my room.

  Not long after, I heard the sound of footsteps and immediately sat up straighter in the rocking chair.

  I heard a voice outside the door and sank lower into the cushion again.

  It was not Quinn.

  Quinn never spoke beyond the door; he only knocked once and then waited; though lately he had cut the waiting time down to a certain number of seconds seemingly agreed upon by us through force of habit. After that, his key would go into the lock, assuming I was too fatigued by then to open the door myself, which was a good thing because usually, I was.

  “Else?” I recognized the muffled, familiar speech pattern as belonging to Penn. “Open the door, will you?”

  Too tired to both speak and move, I stood slowly. I knew the creaking in the floor would sound louder to him than anyone else in the house. I cringed. I hated so much the thought of causing him pain, and so many things did.

  I turned the key in the interior lock. Upon opening the door, I saw Penn holding a tray fixed for a proper tea.

  My heart sank ever lower — apparently Quinn was too busy for our usual tea today. The days went by so much more slowly when I didn't get to spend that time with him, time as informal and, risking misuse of the word, as relaxed a time as I believed Quinn spent with anyone.

  “Schuyler says you need to eat something.”

  “I am not hungry.”

  “He said you would say that.”

  I grumbled softly as Penn set the tray down on the small table beside the rocking chair. He jumped as the china teacups clinked against their saucers, shook his head and looked up at me.

  “Don't know if I'll ever get used to it.”

  I regarded him with the deepest and sincerest sympathy one human being could offer another, for I didn't know if I would ever get used to the changes that had been inflicted upon my body either.

  He poured the tea into my cup and without asking added in a good amount of cream and two teaspoons of sugar.

  “Nothing much gets past you, does it, Penn?” I tried to steady my hands as best I could to take the cup and saucer from him, but still I sloshed some of the contents over the side before the liquid actually reached my lips.

  “Not even the things I wish would get past me.” He was still standing, I realized, and I glanced over to the small, tufted stool that sat before the mirrored vanity.

  “Please, sit down. There are two cups here; apparently, I was not meant to take tea alone.”

  He looked anxiously at the door, then back at me, before finally taking hold of the stool. His eyes asked me if he should continue moving nearer the table and I nodded. I watched him, so uncomfortable in his own skin, and wondered if he had been that way before he'd come to be one of the latest patients of Doctor Quinn Godspeed.

  He grimaced as the metal legs of the stool dragged across the wood floor. I winced once again at the very sight of his pain, and I thought now to ask him a question that I never had before.

  “Does it always hurt?”

  “Does what always hurt?”

  “Hearing.”

  He looked away. “I'm grateful to be able to hear. The doctor has been very good to me.”

  “That's not what I asked you.” I felt the tea begin to revive me and suddenly had more energy, with this opportunity to ask not only quest
ions about Penn himself, but also about the entire structure of this family of sorts as I had come to see it.

  “Yes.” He reached beneath his shaggy, sand colored hair and ran his fingertip gingerly along a dark object that was readily visible against his pale skin. It was about the size of a small coin and I knew that it was as much integrated into the organic circuitry of his body as the charm was to mine. It was both blessing and malediction: both gift, and curse.

  An identical device was affixed to the opposite side of his head.

  “How long have you had them?”

  “The amplifiers?”

  I nodded, and slowly reached out for one of Schuyler's famous powder-dusted sugar biscuits.

  “Soon it'll be one year since.”

  “How did you meet him?”

  “The doctor? I knew of his existence before I actually met him. Unlike the others, who took a very long and indirect route to get here, I searched him out. I…” He sighed, ignored the tea but reached for a biscuit. “I actually came looking for this.”

  “Is it too much to ask, if I told you I'd like to hear the story?”

  He shrugged. “Not too much.” He bit off a large chunk of biscuit, chewed it thoughtfully, then popped the rest into his mouth and poured himself some tea. He waited a moment after he'd finished swallowing to speak, appearing almost dizzy for an instant. When he looked up at me again, his eyes were rimmed with red and watering. “Even eating,” he said in his usual, muffled manner, “is loud.”

  “I'm sorry,” I said, and he could tell I truly was.

  “Don't be. I mean, look at yo—” He stopped before he finished, but it was too late. I knew what he'd been thinking, and he looked at me apologetically. “I didn't mean it like that, Else. I only meant that you've got your own troubles. You don't need to be worried about mine.”

  “But I do worry about you, Penn. So I'd like to know, if you don't mind telling me, as much as you wish to tell. And I'm sorry for upsetting you at dinner that first night. Forgive me, please.”

  “Nothing to forgive.” He shrugged. “So you want to know about me? I'd bet you're not going to return the favor though, are you?”