Chapter 11

Ten minutes later, Gret, my shopping bags, and I were sitting on a bench in the park across the street from the grocery store. The park was a small, square plot of land dotted with supplicant trees. Ever since arriving in Supplicants Grove, I had wondered what it would be like to spend time here, but I hadn’t yet mustered the courage to sit among strangers by myself. I never could have imagined my first visit would be accompanied by a werewolf.

We sat beneath a young supplicant with only two branches. The older ones had sprouted additional arms over the years in hopes that their silent prayers would be heard. They had nothing to give but more of themselves.

A few people were milling about, but the park wasn’t crowded. A family with two small children walked by. I felt woozy looking at them, either from hunger, exhaustion, or being too close to Gret. Gret watched the family as they passed, then turned to me.

“Every law enforcement agency in America went after her, but you think you can catch her?” she asked.

Dr. Topher didn’t care about every law enforcement agency in America. She cared about me. I wrestled with how much to tell Gret, absently tapping my fingers on the bottom of the bench. When I realized I was drumming, I stilled my hands.

“We already know that Mr. Bicks is working with her,” I said. “That’s something the police don’t know.”

“So you’re gonna tell them?”

“No,” I said quickly. “If we do that, they’ll just arrest him and she’ll get away again.” I wasn’t lying. Dr. Topher knew how to cut her losses.

“But she’d have to lay low. She wouldn’t be able to go after you as easy.”

“She’d come back.”

I expected another argument, but Gret just said, “So you’re hoping Bicks will let slip where she is?”

I could actually picture that. Mr. Bicks liked to brag about how much more interesting his life was than the synthetics’, especially around Leela. He was always talking about the places he had gone that she would never see.

“He’s a lot more likely to make a mistake than Dr. Topher is,” I said. “Mr. Patter can’t stand him.”

“Why would Topher wanna work with him, then?”

“Desperation. She needs someone close to me, and that doesn’t leave a lot of options.”

“So how do you think you’ll catch Bicks in a mistake? You don’t live in that bunker anymore.”

“It’s not a bunker. My best friend lives there, and she’s friendly with everyone else. I can ask her to keep an eye on him.”

Gret chewed on her lip, her gaze roving around the park as she thought. Something caught her eye and she said, “Ah, shit.”

“What?”

Gret tilted her head in the direction of a well-dressed white man sitting on a blanket halfway across the park. He was talking to a seemingly uninterested woman. I had never seen either of them before.

Gret plucked my shopping bags off the bench. “Come on, let’s go.”

I followed Gret to the edge of the park but stopped when she turned to walk down the street. She made an impatient noise in her throat.

“My place is that way,” I said, pointing.

“Yeah, but I just told you we’re not meeting there. This conversation isn’t over.”

“I don’t want to go to your house,” I blurted.

Gret gave me a look like I was a rotting lizard she’d found in the corner of her bathroom.

“I get it. You don’t like my pack,” she said. “Kinda expected you to be less judgmental, but whatever.”

She turned on her heel and stalked away, not giving me any choice but to follow, since she was holding my groceries. My head buzzed with the word she’d just used. Pack. That was a werewolf word. Back before, Dr. Topher had taught me that werewolves had once been soldiers who warred for their communities. Once the Age of Stasis began, the now-hunted werewolves became nomads, roaming with their extended families just like true wolves did.

The other kids in the boarded-up house were not werewolves, but Gret called them her pack just the same. She must have had a real pack before them, though. What was she doing in a condemned building in Supplicants Grove? Was she an orphan, too?

When we could no longer see the trees behind us, Gret abruptly said, “That guy in the park. He’s rich. He’s thinking of giving money to my boss.”

“Money for what?”

“For her work,” Gret said vaguely, turning us into an alley. “But he won’t if he finds a reason not to. That’s why I’m avoiding him. Rich standards don’t like nonstandard squatters.”

“Squatters?”

“Did you think we got our house from a real estate agent?” Gret said, throwing a dirty look over her shoulder.

“I just didn’t know what that word meant.”

“Yeah, I guess they don’t teach you that in your bunker.”

“Stop calling it that. It’s the compound.”

“Is that supposed to sound less creepy than bunker?”

I stepped in front of her, stopping her in her tracks. “My friend. Does not live. In a bunker.”

Gret regarded me coolly. She was a little shorter than me, which I hadn’t noticed before. Everything else about her was stronger and wider, so in my mind I’d made her tall, too.

“Fair enough,” she said.

I staggered back, jamming my hands in my pockets. She’s not the one you have to fight! I yelled at myself. Yet somehow, after my outburst, Gret didn’t seem as angry anymore. When she spoke again, it was in a much more civil tone. Her speaking voice was pleasant when she wasn’t scolding me. It was deep and little rough — from howling, maybe? — but it didn’t crack and squeak like mine did.

“Rosie’s already making progress with the cuff,” Gret said, her voice pitched to travel no further than my ears. “She thinks she’ll be able to crack it before your next transformation, as long as it doesn’t happen so quick again.”

“How does Rosie know how to do that?” I asked. After the adaptationists were imprisoned for life, I’d have thought their families would have been keen to stay away from illegal activity.

“The Subconscious,” Gret said.

“The what?”

Gret looked genuinely surprised. “Wow, there really is a lot you don’t know.”

I bristled, but for once, there was no sharp edge to Gret’s words. She stretched her shoulders, grimacing at the tension.

“You’re really okay with staying out in the open by yourself while you play detective? You’re not scared that Topher’s just gonna show up?” she asked.

Not scared? I didn’t even know what that would feel like. But I’d made my decision.

“I told you, she’s not ready for me,” I said. “Besides, she’s not going to come waltzing into Supplicants Grove. It’ll be Mr. Bicks, and he doesn’t know that I know about him.”

Gret gave an unconvinced “hmm” as we emerged from the last alley and crossed to the boarded house. I stopped short.

“Luc’s not gonna leave every time you’re here. This is his home,” Gret said, her voice flat.

“I never asked —”

“And you of all people shouldn’t hold it against him.”

My face burned. “I don’t. If you don’t believe me, ask him.”

Gret considered me closely, then opened the door. I reluctantly followed her down the hallway. There were two doors on either side, all closed. We emerged into a sparse kitchen in the back of the house. A stove, fridge, square cabinet, and sink were squashed close together and surrounded by bare stone walls and floors. The light from the overhead fixture was dim and wavering; above the lamp, fan blades rotated sluggishly through the air. Rosie was sitting at a battered round table with her laptop, but she snapped it shut and stood when she saw me.

“Rosie, come on,” Gret said.

“I’m sorry, am I not doing enough work?” Rosie said, narrowing her eyes. “By which I mean all the work, since I’m the only one around here with a useful skillset?”

“Is getting over yourself a useful skillset?” Gret said.

Rosie jabbed a finger at Gret. “If she’d talked to Sandra or Luc like that, you wouldn’t let her get away with it. But when it’s me, oh, well, not worth yelling at her for that!”

“I did,” Gret said through gritted teeth.

I winced. There’s nothing werewolf about you.

“Oh,” Rosie said, taking a step back. “Really? Well — that’s good, then.”

“Forsaken hell, Rosie,” Gret snapped.

“No need for vulgarity,” Rosie said, settling back onto her chair.

Gret closed her eyes, obviously summoning patience. “Are the others in their rooms?”

“As far as I know.”

Gret stalked off to get them, stranding me in the center of the kitchen. Rosie looked me up and down once, then turned back to her laptop as though I had ceased to exist.

Fine by me.

Gret returned with Sandra and Luc. Sandra’s eyes were suspicious behind her glasses, but Luc offered me a small smile. I squeezed my hands behind my back, my bones grinding together. Luc’s smile slid away.

“So we might not be leaving as soon as I said,” Gret announced.

That got Rosie’s attention up from her screen. She and Sandra both stared at Gret. Luc continued to watch me.

“Millie wants to see if we can get Topher arrested,” Gret informed them, though that was not exactly what I had said. “We’re still gonna go ahead with getting the cuff off, since that buys us more time. But she thinks she might be able to use this Bicks guy to find out where Topher is, and I wanna give her the chance to try.”

While Gret spoke, different scenarios chased themselves through my head. Mr. Bicks and Dr. Topher in handcuffs. Police rushing into a lab, just like they did during the raids. Mr. Bicks with a bullet in his head and Dr. Topher nowhere to be found. Me, with clamps around my arms and legs and throat.

Then there was my real plan underneath it all. But I couldn’t think about that around Luc.

Sandra whistled. “Brave choice.”

I squeezed my hands harder.

Rosie drawled, “It doesn’t matter much to me, since apparently I’m still responsible for everything either way. But what happened to ‘let’s drop everything and run or else the pup will croak’?”

Gret turned away from me. “Millie has the right to try to bring Topher down.”

Rosie gave Gret an almost taunting look. “Of course.”

Luc finally tore his eyes away from me to fix Rosie with a warning glare.

“I’m not gonna let things get out of hand.” Gret’s voice was low, but she spoke so insistently that she might as well have been shouting. “If this gets too dangerous, I’ll know when to make the call. And Millie’s going to come here every day so I can make sure I know when she’s gonna transform,” she added. I definitely had not approved that part of the plan. “So is everyone okay with seeing how far Millie gets with this?”

Gret looked at each of them in turn. Rosie shrugged expansively and Sandra nodded. Luc stayed still for a long time. Only his eyes moved, focusing on my face again.

Forming each word with audible care, he said, “I hope Millie is able to bring Dr. Topher to justice.”

I locked eyes with him in spite of myself. He gave me a final searching look before lowering his gaze, his brow furrowed.

“It’s settled, then,” Gret said.

She moved in close to me, and I nearly tripped over the chair next to Rosie. I clutched the back of it, my hands striped red and white.

“If it turns out you can’t find her before the compound starts wondering why you’re not transforming, or this drags on too long and it looks like she’ll be ready for you before you’re ready for her, then we are getting out of here,” Gret said. “Agreed?”

“Sure,” I said.

As I walked past Luc to leave, I wondered if empaths could tell when someone was lying.

Chapter 12

When I got back to my apartment, I called Leela and allowed her to shower me with concern. It was easier to face her now that I had formed a plan. I wasn’t just a violent traitor to the synthetics anymore; I was the one who was going to set things right.

“Could you do something for me?” I said, interrupting Leela. I had no idea what she had just been talking about.

“Anything,” she said.

“Will you keep an eye on Mr. Bicks?”

“Why?” Leela asked, startled.

I hesitated. “I don’t know, lately it just feels like he’s taking too much of an interest.”

She knew what that meant. It had happened before with other compound employees, guards and suppliers who’d wormed their way into our world for the wrong reasons. There would always be those who wanted to see for themselves what had become of the synthetics, and especially those who wanted to sell our secrets to the highest bidder. Unfortunately for them, our secrets were actually pretty boring, and Mr. Patter had grown adept at weeding out the busybodies over the years.

“Mr. Bicks has been here forever,” Leela said. “He’s always been creepy, but —”

“I know, which is why you shouldn’t say anything to Mr. Patter. Just let me know if he says anything strange, okay?”

Leela’s phosphorescence made her expression hard to read on camera, but I could tell she wasn’t happy.

“You’re not telling me something,” she said, her voice flat.

“No, I — I just don’t like how he looks at me when I’m about to transform, that’s all,” I said.

There was a long pause, but then Leela said, “You might be right. He, um – when you were getting ready to move out, Mr. Bicks kept bothering Mr. Patter about your lawyer. He wouldn’t stop asking for all the details of their conversations. Mr. Patter yelled at him about it in the cafeteria. Markie was swiping food from the pantry, so he heard the whole thing.”

“And he told you?” I asked. “Why didn’t he tell me?”

“I mean – you don’t really talk much with the others.”

“Mr. Patter doesn’t like us to,” I mumbled.

“Hmm,” Leela said, annoyingly noncommittal. She managed to be friends with everyone without even leaving her room.

It wasn’t that I didn’t like Markie. I liked him a lot, actually. If I got to know him any better, I’d probably like him even more.

And then, as I’d yelled at Gret and Rosie, one day his organs would fail.

“Okay, so why didn’t you tell me what Markie said?” I asked.

“You were sleeping off a transformation,” Leela said quickly.

“Why didn’t you tell me afterward?”

It was Leela’s turn to be defensive. “Well – you were kind of stressed out at the time, and I didn’t want you to … I mean, if Mr. Bicks thought that your move wasn’t legit — but then it turned out it was, obviously, so none of it mattered anyway! And I … I just thought it was better for you to focus on getting excited about leaving.”

Her voice turned uncertain at the end of that sentence.

“Right. Of course,” I said.

Leela ducked under the water of her tank. The months before my move had been … well, I couldn’t blame her for being jealous. No synthetic actually wanted to spend their whole life in the compound. I’d idly dreamed of living above ground for years, but those dreams had always included Leela.

Leela reemerged. “I’ll ask the others if Mr. Bicks is being weird,” she said, her voice soothing again. “Or if you wanted to talk to them yourself …?”

“No, that’s fine,” I said quickly. “Just – don’t let them know it’s for me? Keep it vague, you know.”

“Of course,” she said quietly. “But, Millie, it’s probably nothing. You know how standards are. They all have their favorite adaptation.”

That was true, but there was a difference between people who liked werewolves and people who liked meers. The latter were romantics, collectors of beautiful things. The former loved destruction.

As soon as I got off the call, I found a copy of my apartment lease and located my lawyer’s name. Phyllis Danthrop. It sounded familiar, though as a child I had only ever called her “ma’am.”

The trial records were public domain, as were many of the articles written in the aftermath, though I had been careful about never reading them. Mr. Patter always discouraged us from researching ourselves. The first gens especially had bombarded him with questions about their origins in the early days, but his answer was always the same: move forward, not back. On this and only this, we were in agreement. What I didn’t know couldn’t matter.

But my ignorance hadn’t stopped Dr. Topher from finding me, and I couldn’t pretend that didn’t matter. I read about Ms. Danthrop with my head half turned, ready to scroll away from any mention of my name, but I was strangely absent from the story of her life. Dr. Topher wasn’t: reporter after reporter gushed that Ms. Danthrop would always be remembered for successfully prosecuting Dagny Topher in absentia.

Finally, I found a recent article, published around the same time as my relocation. It said that Ms. Danthrop was taking an unexpected early retirement and planned on going off the grid while she took a “spiritual journey” from East Africa to Western Europe, retracing her most ancient ancestors’ steps from before the Age of Stasis.

I put my head down on my desk. I couldn’t begin to guess the exact methods, but I understood the outcome. The wristband and Ms. Danthrop’s threats and donations to the compound had been Dr. Topher’s ideas. Danthrop may have been blackmailed or bribed onto an actual spiritual journey, or she was just dead. Either way, Dr. Topher had me where she wanted: away from the protections of Equilibrium Pharmaceuticals. She had planned this for a long time.

Maybe even the whole time.

I woke the next morning with a strange sense of purpose. My dreams had been full of teeth and needles, but what else was new? I had a mission to carry out. If I did my duty, then soon the only ways Dr. Topher could hurt anyone would be in nightmares and memories. First, though, I had to make sure Gret’s pack trusted me, which meant I had to act as normal as a synthetic werewolf could. As a bar, it was pretty low. To clear it, I just had to bury all my thoughts and plans deep down inside myself. I had plenty of practice with that.

Returning to work helped. The endless stream of petty complaints numbed me, making it easier to push the future out of my mind. Gret and I had determined that after I sent my last EP non-apology of the day, I would meet her in the park so she could take me back to the “squat,” as she called it. She insisted it was the safest place to talk. Her paranoia was infectious, and I had searched my apartment for hidden cameras, realizing as I did so that if anyone was watching me, I was giving them a lot of reasons to be suspicious. I hadn’t found anything. I supposed EP thought the wristband was enough, or they just assumed I had nowhere else to go.

On Monday and Tuesday, I’d endured fifteen minutes of Gret’s presence, during which she’d bullied me to drink water and bombarded me with questions about Mr. Bicks. I offered bits of unhelpful information while the rest of the pack openly eavesdropped on everything I said.

I did not tell Gret about my lawyer. In a strange way, Ms. Danthrop’s betrayal made me feel a little better. She had given me my drum, but she had also sold me to Dr. Topher, so the drum had been tainted even before I’d destroyed it. It should never have been mine to begin with.

That didn’t stop my ribcage from aching with its silence every night.

On the third day that I trudged to the park to meet Gret, I found her standing at the curb, waiting for me. “Field trip,” she announced.

She marched away. I stood dumbfounded for a moment, then trotted to catch up with her.

“Where are you taking me?”

“You make it sound like you’re being kidnapped.”

“You didn’t exactly ask permission,” I pointed out.

Gret stopped and faced me. After a pause, she said, “You’re right. I wanna give you something that’ll make the silver burns better. Except you might be allergic to that, too — but, like, probably not super allergic — so I wanna do it near the pharmacy in case I have to run in and get some allergy meds. That cool?”

I nodded mutely. I hadn’t actually expected her to ask. We’d walked another block before I realized that I had some follow-up questions.

“Probably not super allergic?”

“I’ve never heard of a werewolf who is,” Gret said, voice low.

“But I’m not —” I clamped my mouth shut.

“That’s why we’re going to the hospital.”

“The hospital?” I said, my voice squeaking. “You said the pharmacy!”

“The pharmacy is in the hospital,” Gret said, giving me a don’t-you-know-anything look.

But how was I supposed to know that? Synthetics weren’t seen by normal doctors. Besides, every time a hospital showed up in one of Leela’s soap operas, she always sank beneath the water, and I would watch from between my fingers so I could signal when it was safe to resurface. Doctors roamed the fluorescent halls in bright white coats, clipboards clutched to their chests as they analyzed their patients’ bodies, searching for the results that would prove their hypotheses.

Gret and I passed the turn to the squat. I had never been in this part of town, but everything in Supplicants Grove looked the same: dumpy buildings, peeling business signs, and a solid mass of blue sky hanging over it all. Only the cracks in the sidewalk changed.

“The silver burns go away eventually,” I said.

“So EP just lets you suffer until they do?”

“I have ointment.”

“Standard stuff,” Gret scoffed.

We approached a blocky, colorless parking garage. There was one closer to my apartment, too. Many of the roads were too narrow and the houses too close together for the few car owners in Supplicants Grove to park near their homes. I expected to walk past the garage, but Gret led me into its shade.

“You have a car?”

“The hospital’s all the way on the north side. Do you know where anything in this town is?”

“I’ve only been here four months.”

“The hospital’s the first place you should find when you move somewhere new,” Gret admonished.

I made sure she wasn’t looking before I rolled my eyes.

We stopped in front of a car in the corner of the lot. At least I assumed it was a car. Living in the desert, I didn’t have much experience with nice things, but this machine took “junk” to a whole new level. It was so rusty and misshapen that I feared it would fall apart if I breathed on it too hard. Worse, I could see vague shapes moving behind its darkened windows. My left eye began to twitch.

“Why is this a group effort?” I asked.

“Contingency plan,” Gret said cryptically.

“Can this thing even make it to the north side?”

“Just get in.”

She wrenched the passenger door open. After a dumbstruck moment, during which Sandra snickered from the driver’s seat, I sat down on the plush, pristine upholstery. It was softer than cotton swabs. The dashboard was alight with gleaming switches and screens. I had never seen such luxury.

“What did you do?” I asked.

Luc piped up from the backseat. “It’s possible that Rosie did not have permission to take this car. We disguised it.”

Sandra added, “The rust’s actually paint. Me and Gret used to hang around construction sites. We’ve picked up a lot of supplies. Luc did most of the painting. He has a good eye.”

“But the dents —”

Sandra laughed. “Rosie plus crowbar equals one sad-lookin’ vehicle. You should’ve seen her go.”

Rosie snorted but didn’t look up from her phone.

Sandra noiselessly pulled us out of the garage. To my surprise, she was a much better driver than I was used to. She skirted the potholes neatly instead of slamming into them and swearing the way Mr. Bicks always did.

I cut off that line of thinking, but not before I heard a sharp intake of breath from Luc in the backseat. I forced my attention to the town sliding past the window. Two young children threw a ball back and forth in front of a crumbling house. I wondered who had taught them to do that.

As we drove, the buildings grew larger. I craned my neck, trying not to miss the new sights, but then immediately regretted it. In the spaces between the buildings, I could see the twisted concrete and metal remains of what had come before. Foundations that had survived the bombings lurked behind the newer structures like a threat: this could happen to you. The city that had once existed here had lasted nearly until the end of the war times, an oasis of pleasure for the rich in the middle of what even then had already been a wasteland. But just like most things humanity had built, it, too, eventually burned.

Belatedly, I realized that Sandra was talking and probably had been for a while. I hastily tuned in as she concluded her tour of the town.

“… and that’s the junior high school, also known as the deepest hell, and then once we turn this corner, that up ahead is the hospital!”

She took her hand off the steering wheel to point at a hodgepodge of low, long buildings nestled into the base of the nearest mountain, a fair distance away from the closest ruins. The hospital didn’t look at all like the gleaming towers of metal and glass from Leela’s soaps. Then again, the characters in those shows went to hospitals to have babies or to sleep off fainting spells brought on by the latest plot twist, not because they had gray burns all over their bodies.

Sandra pulled into the parking lot and found a spot close to the doors. “Sit tight, everyone,” Gret said, slinging a satchel over her shoulder and throwing her door open. “I probably won’t need you, but keep an eye on your phones. See you in a few.”

She got out of the car and opened my door. Pale desert soil dusted her knees and the hem of her faded red shirt.

“We have to go in?” I croaked.

“We’re just gonna go to the bathroom,” Gret said. “Do you want to feel better or not?”

“I told you, I’m fine.”

“Uch, if she’s fine, then why are we doing this?” Rosie said.

“She’s not fine,” Gret snapped. “Can’t you see how she’s sitting? She doesn’t even want her shirt to touch her skin. C’mon, Millie, this’ll take ten minutes.”

She stalked away. I hesitated, then pushed myself out of the car with a sigh, careful not to bump my side – because of course she was right about how I was sitting, which was possibly the most irritating thing I had ever heard.

I didn’t close the door quite in time to miss Luc’s laugh.          

Chapter 13

Gret and I crossed the parking lot together. I stared at the cracked corners of the hospital building, but I couldn’t distract myself from the way Gret’s satchel bounced on her hip as she walked. My fingers itched to provide a counter-rhythm.

“There’s a bunch of cars here. That’s good,” Gret said. “They’ll be too busy at intake to pay attention to us. Turn right when you get in. There’s a bathroom next to the pharmacy. We’ll go in there.”

“You’ve been here before?” I asked.

“Sure,” Gret said. “This is where we found Luc.”

With that astonishing statement, the hospital doors swished open. The first thing I thought was that Dr. Topher wouldn’t be caught dead here. The light fixtures were cracked, the chairs were fraying, and everyone was in a rush. Adaptationists liked their labs to be pristine, methodical, and precise. Even though there were adults in white coats here, they were just doctors, nothing more.

Still, I pressed in close to Gret, almost stepping on her heels. Don’t be unfair, I thought. You’ll make her feel like she can protect you.

Gret walked past the doctors and patients like she owned the place. Nothing bore any resemblance to the sets from Leela’s soaps. For one thing, the busy doctors didn’t have impeccable hair and makeup; for another, not all of them were white. Instead of a gift shop overflowing with flowers, this hospital just had a dimly lit pharmacy behind greasy glass doors. A man in a uniform checked people’s bags as they left. Next to the pharmacy was a door with two signs on it: RESTROOM and PATIENTS ONLY. Gret ignored the latter and ushered me through.

The bathroom had two stalls, both empty. An old woman washed her hands at the sink. I couldn’t help staring at the dark stains and bulging veins below her knuckles. I had never been this close to someone who’d survived so many decades. She definitely remembered the end of the last wars. Questions that I couldn’t ask flooded my mind. Did she believe the treaties would hold? Had she always lived in the desert? Was she standard?

Oblivious to my curiosity, the woman dried her arthritic hands and shuffled towards the exit. Gret held the door open, and the woman nodded at her with a vague smile. I didn’t think a stranger had ever smiled at me, unless I counted Sandra and Rosie before I yelled at them, which I didn’t.

When the woman was gone, Gret pulled a small, sealed container out of her satchel. She directed me towards the swinging door of one of the stalls.

“If anyone comes in, pretend you’re peeing,” she said, opening the container.

I coughed and turned my head away. “What is that stuff?”

“Mud,” Gret said. “It’s rich in sulfur and selenium. It should help.”

Sulfur and selenium sounded like science words. Every year, my chemistry and biology tutors had given up on me in disgust. I never listened to them. Too many of those terms made my pulse drop a beat.

Gret stirred the smelly mud with her finger. “Hold out your wrist. I’m just gonna start with a tiny bit.”

I raised my arm. When Gret touched the tip of her finger to the burn mark, my hand jerked like a live current had passed from her skin to mine. Gret froze.

“Does it hurt?” she asked.

“No,” I said, face heating. “Sorry.”

I gritted my teeth while Gret smoothed the mud onto the jutting bone of my wrist. She stepped back and peered into my face.

“How’s it feel?” she asked. “Any itching? Tingling?”

I shook my head. The mud was cool and soothing. I hadn’t even realized that the burn was still raw, but now the tiny dot where the pain was absent alerted me to how unhealed the skin around it was.

“It’s working, isn’t it?” Gret said. She leaned forward to inspect the dot of mud, exposing the back of her neck to me. Just beneath the bristly hollow of her hairline was the brainstem that choreographed her every decisive movement. Dr. Topher would give anything to get her hands on that untouched nonstandard organ.

I would never give her that chance.

Gret looked up. “Why’d you go all tense? There’s no reaction happening.”

I tried to relax my muscles. “Maybe it’s delayed.”

“No, I’d be able to tell.”

“Oh, come one!” I scoffed.

Gret gave me a look, but I’d had it up to my ears with the sage werewolf routine.

“You can’t smell an allergic reaction,” I said. “Especially not over this goop.”

“Shows what you know,” Gret shot back. “Our senses are extra tuned into any sign of distress in one of our own.”

“Good thing I’m not that, then,” I snapped.

Gret thrust the container at my chest. “Just get in the stall and put it on.”

I snatched the mud out of her hands and slammed the stall door — or at least I tried to. It bounced back open and I had to catch it before it smacked me in the head. Gret snorted. I closed the door more gently, my face on fire. Why was it always werewolves, werewolves, werewolves with her?

The faucet turned on outside the stall. I looked down at the mud, then sat on the cracked toilet seat and lifted up my shirt to survey the damage. Red rashes still stained my ribs, with gray-blue welts striating the worst sections. At least most of the blisters had flattened.

Hesitantly, I smeared a thin layer of mud over my lower left ribs. I gasped at the near instant relief. Its coolness drew the heat right out of my skin. It felt a hundred times better than Brenna’s ointment. Greedily, I slathered on more.

“When you get home, put some of the mud into a smaller container so you can carry it around,” Gret said. “Most of us always keep a little on us in case we have any accidental contact. Not that any of us lead particularly silvery lives, but you know.”

“Yeah, okay. I’ll give you back the rest tomorrow.”

“Oh, no, that’s not mine. It’s all for you.”

“But —”

“I’m not the one getting wrapped in cages all the time. And it wasn’t hard to get. I work at — um, I guess you haven’t noticed the greenhouses in the base of the valley?”

“No.”

“Well, I work there. Different plants need different nutrients, and my boss has lots of element samples.”

“Your boss lets you take her stuff?”

“I took a little at a time,” Gret hedged.

So she stole for me. The bathroom door opened, cutting our conversation short. The container sat heavily on my legs. Could Gret have gotten fired for this? What did she do for people she actually liked, fling herself into oncoming traffic?

I rubbed more mud on myself, then stopped, staring at my filthy hands. I wasn’t the only one who’d been hurt during my last transformation. The welts and blisters reminded me of what I had done and what I still needed to do.

But.

I really wanted to stop hurting.

The door opened and closed again, and Gret and I were alone once more. A new thought occurred to me. I asked, “If you just took a little at a time, how long have you been collecting this?”

Gret hesitated, then answered, “Four months.”

I watched her boots pass by under the stall door as she paced between the sinks. I could still feel the place where she had pressed her fingerprint into my wrist.

“I told you I knew you were here. And I knew you had silver poisoning. I didn’t know what was gonna happen with the videos and stuff then, but I thought I could at least …” She trailed off.

The bathroom door opened again. “All right, girls, clear out,” a harsh male voice said. Then, “Ugh, it reeks in here!”

“It’s a bathroom,” Gret said, her voice flat. “Did we do something wrong, sir?”

“This bathroom is for patients,” the man sneered. “Or can’t you read?”

“We are patients,” Gret said.

“Try again. The nurse who was just in here didn’t see you at intake.”

“That’s ’cause we haven’t been yet. When we got here, my mom had to go to the bathroom. We’ll go to intake when she’s done.”

“Your mom? Other patients said two girls walked in.” But he didn’t sound sure. Maybe someone had mentioned how haggard I was.

“She’s my mom. And she’s sick. Is that all?” Gret said.

I heard the thrilling note of danger in Gret’s voice, but apparently the man didn’t. He came forward and banged on my stall door. I jerked back, whacking the back of my leg against the toilet.

“Miss?” the man called, too loudly. “This your daughter out here?”

I coughed and said, “Uh, yes, yeah, she’s my — yes.” My voice was even raspier than usual.

Gret said, “See? She’s sick.”

The man grumbled under his breath, then said, “See that you two go straight to intake when you’re done in here. I’ll be watching.”

“You do that,” Gret said. The man left, and she added, “Shit.”

“What are we going to do?” I hissed.

“I’m on it,” Gret said. I heard her tapping on her phone, and then she said, “Hey, Rosie? Yeah, listen, the security guard from the pharmacy just came in …” She relayed the past minute, then said, “All I need is for you to distract him. No — no, Sandra can’t — you do it, Rosie! No, you.” She paused. “I don’t know, just pick the flashiest car in the lot and say you saw a bunch of kids around it. Let him think the worst.” Another pause. “He won’t, Rosie. Because no one does! Yeah, fine. Let me know when he’s out of the way.” She ended the call and muttered, “I have to think of freaking everything.”

“How do you know he has a flashy car?” I asked.

“He probably doesn’t,” Gret said. “It’ll belong to one of the doctors, maybe even a visiting one from the Preservations who’s, like, being charitable here. This hospital only has the one pharmacy guard in charge the whole place. He won’t want any vandalism to happen on his watch.”

I fought back a wholly unexpected urge to grin. We waited in silence while another patient came in to use the bathroom. After they left, Gret’s phone beeped.

“All right, stick close to me and follow my lead,” Gret said.

I stepped out of the stall. “What about the nurse who reported us?”

“We’ll slip past her.” At my dubious look, she added, “I’ve been in spots like this before. We’ll be fine. Put your hair over your face. I’ll lead you out.”

I did as she said, then Gret offered me her arm. When I didn’t take it, she wiggled her elbow impatiently.

“Lean on me and look sick,” she said.

The latter was easy, but the former? I pushed my hair so far forward that I could barely see. Hoping that my expression was as concealed as my eyes, I placed my hand as lightly as I could on Gret’s forearm.Her skin was warm.

Gret took the container from me and dropped it in her satchel. She led me swiftly into the hall, then stopped short as we reached the edge of the intake area. I didn’t breathe until she whispered, “She’s gone. Let’s move.”

We hurried to the hospital doors, where I stumbled over the threshold. Involuntarily, I gripped Gret’s arm tighter. Her other hand rose to steady me. The staleness of the hospital air evaporated into the dry desert twilight, and I breathed deeply for the first time since seeing those white coats. I fought off a wave of giddiness as we crossed the parking lot. We’d gotten away! That man tried to catch us, but he couldn’t!

Gret shifted her arm and I realized I was still holding her. I dropped my hand like she was made of silver.

“You’re still moving weird,” Gret accused. “Didn’t you cover all your burns?”

My giddiness fizzled. “It smells so, uh, strong. I didn’t want the whole hospital turning to look at us.”

“Hmm,” Gret said, either in consideration or suspicion. “But it works?”

“It works,” I said, squinting into the setting sun.

We reached the misleading car and climbed inside. Rosie had not yet returned. Sandra wrinkled her nose and Luc coughed politely at the smell of the mud. I blushed, feeling more conspicuous than ever.

“Rosie’s pissed,” Sandra reported cheerfully.

“Yeah, well,” Gret sighed. “Thank you for not charging in.”

Sandra waved her hand. “Full of charm and innocence, that Rosie. Who needs me?”

I didn’t follow that exchange at all, not least because “charm and innocence” were not exactly the words I’d use to describe Rosie. As though summoned by Sandra’s comment, Rosie wrenched open the back door and flung herself half onto Gret’s lap. I peeked around the headrest as Rosie dropped a package of adhesive bandages on Gret’s leg.

“I had to pretend I was there to buy something,” she said.

“We needed more anyway,” Gret said.

Rosie gave Gret a poisonous look. Gret didn’t seem bothered. She bumped Rosie’s shoulder with her own.

“Thanks, kid,” she said.

“Just paying off my debt,” Rosie sniffed.

“You don’t owe me anything.”

“Fine. Then you owe me.”

Sandra laughed and peeled out of the parking lot. When we neared my apartment, Gret leaned forward and handed me the container of mud.

“Use it,” she ordered.

I didn’t look at Luc, but I could feel his eyes on me.

“Thank you,” I said.

“No problem,” Gret said.

But that wasn’t true. The theft of the mud and the trip to the hospital had been a problem. Gret had put herself at risk for me. I left the container of mud in my bathroom and tried to forget it was there, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the burns now that Gret had called so much attention to them. I hadn’t applied any of the mud to my back. Lying in bed, the pain warped my perception of my skin. Several times, I jolted upright in a panic, not sure where my body began and ended. When I still wasn’t asleep by the 3:00 AM prick of the wristband, I sat up in a sudden rage. That powerful will I had felt before my last transformation was awake again.

“I want to feel better!” I shouted at the empty room.

I shot out of bed and tore off my clothes like they were on fire. In the bathroom, I coated myself with the thick, foul-smelling mud. I crawled back under the covers, my fury spent. Enshrouded in the filth of comfort, I finally slept.