22 Teenagers & Toddlers
Teenagers I don’t bother getting within five feet of that crib. One baby sleeps peacefully, a pacifier half drooping from his mouth. But he wakes with a cry when I take it away from him.
The third baby turns her gaze on me with a scowl when I pluck the pacifier from her mouth.
She’s awake and alert but doesn’t make a peep.
Flails one hand wildly like she’s intent on taking it back from me.
She is already fighting back, despite her helplessness.
Bright green streaks through the watery blue of her eyes, and a light peach fuzz layer of red hair covers her scalp.
I stand, looking from bassinet to bassinet, trying to look as if I were perceiving something more than which baby might be easiest. Which baby might mean the least work for me.
“This one,” I finally say, plucking the third baby up from the bassinet. They’ll all be difficult anyway, so I pick the fighter. I don’t look again at the two I didn’t choose, trying to forget, banish them from my head, but I know their faces will surface in my nightmares.
“You’re sure this time?” Mother steps forward. Zara tries to shrink back, but Mother’s hand snakes out cobra quick and pulls her in. “What do you think? Is Regina right?”
Zara looks back and forth between us, mouths words, but no sound comes out.
“You have no idea,” Mother answers for her.
“Do you hear anyone?” Mother asks me instead.
Not even the voice in my head. I’m as baffled as Zara. “I’m choosing her,” I say. Not an answer, not a denial.
Mother lifts off her mask, leans in, touches the top of the baby’s head, and stares at her face.
“My sister,” I say. I half expect her to pick a different one, make me put this one back to spite me.
“You found your family?” Mother asks me sharply.
“Yes.”
“Then she stays. Meredith, welcome to this world.”
Mother’s eyes are bright with triumph as I stalk from the room, Zara at my heels as I carry Meredith.
I don’t bother looking back.
Thunder reverberating through the floor shocks me from sleep.
My bedroom is so far underground that the light from the flashes of lightning rarely reaches me unless Adele is really serious about her experiments, but the thunder always rumbles and shakes the entire place like an earthquake.
It feels like Adele is trying to rip apart reality at the seams. A dark shadow hovers above me.
I’m already halfway up, instinctively drawing the dagger from the leg holster I never take off.
Adele gave it to me the year I was fourteen.
I woke one night to masked guards in my room, a bag over my head, my hands tied with rough twine.
I spent the better part of a day in the dungeon like that, wondering where I was, what I’d done wrong.
When Adele came to let me out, she gave me the dagger, said it was time to learn to defend myself so that it never happened for real.
“It stays on even when you sleep. I will test you periodically.”
With Adele, threats are guarantees; they are the one thing you can be sure she isn’t lying about. So I learned.
Lightning, unnaturally bright and violent, illuminates the room. Adele’s lightning is malevolent, creeping, and not right. It throws light across Zara’s tear-streaked face before the knife reaches her throat. She shrieks in pure terror, and I let a few choice swear words slip out.
“You can’t sneak up on me when I’m sleeping, Zara.”