“I would have thought you’d pay more attention to your closest competition.”
“I would—if you were competition worth paying attention to.”
“Is that what you were doing in my room?” he asks after a moment.
I sigh. Why am I telling him any of this? “Yes. I was on assignment.”
“I was your assignment?”
“Yes.”
He hesitates a moment, then grins. “That’s kind of hot.”
“You guys dated, didn’t you?”
“Are you insane? Not even if the continuation of our kind depended on it would I be tempted to do something so awful.”
“Creepy Hollow?” He snorts. “Like Sleepy Hollow?”
“No, like Creepy Hollow. It has nothing to do with sleeping.”
“Colors shift like smoke within the branch beneath our feet. Sprites jump from leaf to leaf, leaving sprinklings of glittery dust in the air behind them. Droplets of water are strung like pearls from the silver strands of a spider’s web. Bluebottle glow-bugs stick to the leaves and branches, lighting up the night with their blue-green bodies. And high above us, clouds are draped like sashes of color across the sky. Amethyst, azure, jade.”
“Are you serious? Vi’s arm has been magically barbequed and you think she
needs a cupcake?”
“Seelie Court,” murmurs Nate. “Sounds familiar. Was it in a computer game?”
“Do I look like someone who plays computer games?”
A grin stretches across Nate’s face. “You look like someone who could be in a computer game.”
“I refuse to let you talk me into a make-out session in a dodgy, underground tunnel. I have standards, you know.”
“It’s hard to say no to Nate, even when he’s wearing a shirt. I should have made him cover his face too.”
“Did you really think I wouldn’t look for you?”
“Honestly? Yes. You seemed a little busy losing your tongue down someone else’s throat.”
“Whatever game you’re playing, you’re going to lose,” he whispers. “And I’ll be right there to rub your nose in it when it happens.”
“Great. Well, at least I have something to look forward to.” I cross my arms. “Now why don’t you go parade your lack of dignity somewhere else?”
“I angle my head down and peer up at him through my lashes in what I hope is an alluring manner. I have zero experience in this area though, so it’s possible I look like a total moron.”
“The bathroom door swings open and Nate walks out. He’s toweling his damp hair and wearing nothing but a pair of boxers.
Crap. I should have left this for a more appropriately clothed time of day.”
“Whoa, this isn’t the Training Center, you know,” I tell him. “There’s a certain level of clothing etiquette in this house, and you’re currently violating it.”
He reaches for his jacket. “I believe you’re the one who tore my clothes off in the first place, and now you’re complaining?”
“Trust me, there was no tearing involved. You’ll have to get that fantasy fulfilled somewhere else.”
“You’re not the kind of person to just randomly fall in love. You’re way too . . .”
My eyes shoot to his. “Too what?”
“Well, you know, emotionally closed off.”
“I will emotionally close off every orifice in your face if you don’t shut up about this right now.”
“I put my hands on my hips. “What’s wrong with the way I look?”
“Come on, Vi,” he says, keeping his voice low. “You just need to add your boots and you’re like the forest version of Lara Croft.”
“Excuse me? Lara who?”
“I mean, it’s really sexy and everything.” He pulls me closer and slips his arms around my waist. “But it’s not exactly the way I’d want you to meet my mom.”
“Nate laughs. “Even if I read you some love poetry? Would you still refuse a kiss?”
“We’re kids, aren't we?
Yes, kids with grown-up powers.”
“But words are vain; reject them all—
They utter but a feeble part:
Hear thou the depths from which they call,
The voiceless longing of my heart.”
“That settles it,” said Mr. Trapwood. “We’re going back to the pension. We’re going to pack. We’re going to be on the Bishop first thing tomorrow. Sir Aubrey will have to send someone else out. Nothing is worth another day in this hellhole.”
Mr. Low did not answer. He had caught a fever and was lying in the bottom of a large canoe owned by the Brothers of the São Gabriel Mission, who had arranged for the crows to be taken back to Manaus. His eyes were closed and he was wandering a little in his mind, mumbling about a boy with hair the color of the belly of the golden toad which squatted on the lily leaves of the Mamari River.
There had, of course, been no golden-haired boys; there hadn’t been any boys at all. What there had been was a leper colony, run by the Brothers of Saint Patrick, a group of Irish missionaries to whom the crows had been sent.
“They’re good men, the Brothers,” a man on the docks had told them as they set off on their last search for Taverner’s son. “They take in all sorts of strays--orphans, boys with no homes. If anyone knows where Taverner’s lad might be, it’ll be them.”
Then he had spat cheerfully into the river because he was a crony of the chief of police and liked the idea of Mr. Low and Mr. Trapwood spending time with the Brothers, who were very holy men indeed and slept on the hard ground, and ate porridge made from manioc roots, and got up four times in the night to pray.
The Brothers’ mission was on a swampy part of the river and very unhealthy, but the Brothers thought only about God and helping their fellowmen. They welcomed Mr. Trapwood and Mr. Low and said they could look over the leper colony to see if they could find anyone who might turn out to be the boy they were looking for.
“They’re a jolly lot, the lepers,” said Father Liam. “People who’ve suffered don’t have time to grumble.”
But the crows, turning green, thought there wouldn’t be much point. Even if there was a boy there the right age, Sir Aubrey probably wouldn’t think that a boy who was a leper could manage Westwood.
Later a group of pilgrims arrived who had been walking on foot from the Andes and were on their way to a shrine on the Madeira River, and the Brothers knelt and washed their feet.
“We know you’ll be proud to share the sleeping hut with our friends here,” they said to Mr. Low and Mr. Trapwood, and the crows spent the night on the floor with twelve snoring, grunting men--and woke to find two large and hungry-looking vultures squatting in the doorway.
By the time they returned to Manaus the crows were beaten men. They didn’t care any longer about Taverner’s son or Sir Aubrey, or even the hundred-pound bonus they had lost. All they cared about was getting onto the Bishop and steaming away as fast as it could be done.”
“The future was one thing that could never be broken, because it had not yet had the chance to be anything.”
“In Hitler’s Third Reich it is estimated that there was one Gestapo agent for every 2000 citizens, and in Stalin’s USSR there was one KGB agent for every 5830 people. In the GDR, there was one Stasi officer or informant for every sixty-three people. If part-time informers are included, some estimates have the ratio as high as one informer for every 6.5 citizens.”
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