Chapter 2 #2
Verity preferred to live away from the bulk of the family, and property management seemed to suit her well.
She liked her apartment, and I could feel her general contentment as I made my way toward the door.
Well, contentment and deep frustration: David, still too young for solids, had dumped his entire bowl of soft cereal on the kitchen floor, and Livvy was laughing so hard that he was taking it as incentive to throw more of the contents of his tray. Ah, the life of a single mother.
I had a key, and from the level of chaos I was picking up on, Verity wouldn’t thank me for taking the time to knock. I unlocked the door and let myself inside. “I’m just a burglar,” I called.
Her laughter drifted from the tiny dining room. “You know if I believed you, this could get real messy, right?”
“I know you never believe me about that sort of thing,” I countered, and followed her voice.
Livvy was sitting in a grown-up chair, as befit a five-nearly-six-year-old.
Her booster seat brought her up level with the table, and she watched me gravely as I approached, eyes going enormous and laughter cutting off.
David, on the other hand, kept making happy baby sounds and flinging things onto the floor.
He had moved on to his napkin and sippy cup, and was going to be entirely out of throwables very soon.
“Because I can feel you coming,” said Verity, crouched over and wiping cereal off the floor.
“Fair,” I allowed.
The longer someone spends around a cuckoo, the more they’ll become attuned to us.
On the one hand, this makes it easier for us to modify their thoughts, as we seep through their defenses like water into the foundation of a house.
On the other hand, it means they can tell when we’re nearby.
Our telepathy generates a sort of static, like a mistuned radio inside their heads, and they can use that to evade us before we’re close enough to act intentionally.
Or … I guess I shouldn’t include myself in that “us.” As a queen, I could do a lot of damage without coming close enough for the static to start.
But my family didn’t know that, and they weren’t going to know if I had anything to say about it.
I can handle them being a little cautious when they know I’m around, and I can deal with Arthur hating me.
I just don’t think I could survive them being actively afraid of me.
Maybe it was cowardly of me, but I needed my family not to be scared just because of things I hadn’t done yet, and was never intending to do.
Verity straightened up, and I knew she was smiling because she thought the word Smile in sparkly cursive lettering, like it was a placard in an old black-and-white film.
She did that sometimes, visualizing things to help me understand her facial expressions.
I always appreciated it when she made the effort.
“The hospital called you, huh?” she asked.
I nodded. “Yeah. I’m supposed to come in and talk to them about Mark.”
Verity nodded. “Dr. Morrow told me he was going to call. You want me to come with you? I can ask Malena to watch the kids.”
“No, I’m fine on my own,” I said. “I just wanted to stop in and say hello before I went over. Is it weird that I’m nervous?”
“No,” she said. “It’s natural. It means you care.”
“I do care,” I said. I wanted him to wake up. I wanted to get him back to his family, to his sister, to the people who really knew and loved him. And wanting those things came with a certain degree of caring about him. How could they not?
Verity reached over and put a hand briefly on my shoulder. “It’s going to be okay, Sarah,” she said.
“Is it?” I asked.
She didn’t have an answer.
New York is an embarrassment of riches. In addition to some of the best public transit in North America—I can’t say the best, I haven’t spent that much time in Canada—Manhattan itself is an incredibly walkable city.
It may take a while, but you can get almost anywhere from almost any starting point.
Right now, that was what I wanted. To walk through endless, teeming crowds and let myself sink into the chaotic music of a million minds, all of them consumed by their own needs and desires, all of them focused on getting through the morning.
It was only a little after eight in the morning; about half the people who passed me were on their way to work, hurrying to cram themselves behind desks and service counters for the next eight hours.
Children ran by on their way to school, retired adults strolled with more leisure in their steps, and food-cart vendors thought longingly of selling me a breakfast burrito or a hot dog.
When I reached the juice bar near St. Giles’s, I went in and ordered my smoothie, as promised.
I needed to eat something before the day got too late, and there’s nothing like a carrot juice, tomato, ginger, and honey smoothie to make me feel better.
I can’t say it does anything for my blood sugar, because we’re not sure I have blood sugar in the classical sense—we’ve had so few opportunities to study cuckoos on a biological level that I have more questions than answers when it comes to my own body.
Experimenting on myself has never been an option.
Even if my parents would allow it, I don’t like pain, and with as unpredictable as my abilities can be, I try not to push the issue.
The clerk didn’t bat an eye or spare a thought for my order, which was far from the strangest thing he’d ever shoved into a blender, or even shoved into a blender since they’d opened that day.
I accepted the cup with a smile, tucking a five-dollar bill into his tip jar, and left.
No one noticed that I hadn’t paid. Being a telepathic predator comes with its advantages.
The “no one notices Sarah” theme continued as I opened a metal grate in the sidewalk and descended the stairs on the other side, pulling the grate closed again behind me.
This was one of the more-direct entrances to the hospital.
Most people skipped it during the day, since it was difficult to use without being seen. I didn’t have that issue.
The stairs ended in a wide, flat stretch of unused sewer tunnel.
Humans weren’t the only people involved in building the original city, and the cryptids who had a hand in things made sure the infrastructure for us to survive was present and solid enough to stand up for centuries.
I followed the tunnel until I came to another door, opening it on the clean white hospital reception area.
It looked like every other hospital waiting room I’d ever seen: stark lighting, hard plastic chairs, and big potted plants that looked like they couldn’t decide whether to die or put out another leaf that would somehow be half-browned even as it opened.
There were no windows, and the walls were dotted with inspirational posters about health and safety.
Many of them were illustrated with cheerful cartoon versions of common cryptid species—a dragon, a bogeyman, a lepidoular …
a cuckoo. The picture of the cuckoo showed a girl who looked unnervingly like me staring directly at the viewer.
“LEARN THE SIGNS YOUR MIND HAS BEEN CHANGED FOR YOU,” read the text. “YOU ARE NOT IMMUNE TO PSYCHIC MANIPULATION.”
I looked at this reminder of what people thought of my entire species and shuddered before approaching the reception desk.
A woman in a white jacket sat there, a horseshoe-shaped clip holding her hair back and a rabbit’s foot dangling from one wrist. She looked up as I got closer, forcing a veneer of calm that almost managed to conceal her deep discomfort.
“Sarah, hello,” she said. “Dr. Morrow has been waiting for you. Let me call and tell him you’ve arrived.”
“Thank you, Michelle,” I said.
She managed a weak smile, thinking about it as much as doing it, and picked up the phone, twisting her body so I couldn’t see her mouth as she spoke.
It didn’t matter; her thoughts were clear.
She’d been trying to trade shifts since she heard I’d be coming to the hospital, wanting to avoid running into me directly.
I’d never intentionally done anything to hurt the staff at St. Giles’s.
But when my Aunt Jane—Artie’s mother—died, I’d blamed myself and come to Mark’s bedside in a desperate attempt at self-soothing.
I’d been too lost in my own distress to cloak my presence, and so I’d just stopped people from getting too close to me instead.
When Michelle had approached me in her official capacity as one of the head nurses, I’d put her to sleep, and she’d stayed that way for hours, until my attention turned elsewhere and the telepathic whammy I’d put on her wore off.
It was understandable that she didn’t want to deal with me.
I wouldn’t have wanted to deal with me either.
She’d been pretty successful about avoiding me up until this point. This was the first time I’d seen her since the incident.
“Hey,” I said, voice gentle. “I’m sorry about knocking you out that time. I was really upset, and I wasn’t clamping down on myself properly. It won’t happen again.”
She leaned away from me, radiating distrust and disbelief.
“I’ve spoken to Dr. Morrow. He says that if you touch a member of his staff again, you’ll be banned from the premises.
” Like you always should have been, added her thoughts, so clear and loud that I couldn’t help overhearing.
Cuckoos shouldn’t be allowed inside the building.
I kept my face as composed as I could. “I promise, it won’t happen again.”
“Good.” She eyed me suspiciously as I turned to look at the posters on the walls, studying them like they were the most interesting things I’d ever seen.