The Fall of Crazy House, page 16
She looked surprised for a second, then shrugged. “My laundry’s in the closet,” she said dismissively, looking at sheet music on an ornate stand. “You can make my bed, dust, or whatever. Just be quiet and don’t disturb me.”
My fingers instinctively felt for my gun and of course found a dust cloth instead. I pressed my lips together hard and managed to nod. My blood was boiling. This kid was obviously brought up to be a princess. Back in my cell, there were no princesses. The fanciest person there was Provost Allen. This house made him look like a beggar.
She ignored me as she bent her head to her fiddle and began playing. After twenty seconds I realized this was a whole other level than the fiddle playing I knew back home. It was unlike anything I’d ever heard. It was like—like if a river or a tree or a rock or something could cry. If it could wail in despair, it would make sounds like this. I guess that sounds pretty stupid.
I did actually dust, but I also noted there was only one door in and out, that the three windows opened onto tiny balconies and were three stories up, that there were a million hiding places and another million things that could be used as weapons. The windows looked out onto what seemed like a main street, four lanes wide and full of cars from the fancy car factory.
I tried not to listen to the sad, wailing music as I moved around the room, dusting, neatening, tidying. It was like I’d died and been forced to come back as Careful Cassie, atoning for my messy ways.
In the closet, which was as big as my bedroom back home, I collected the clothes strewn on the floor, and subtly tapped all the walls, listening for a fake front or hidden exit. Nothing.
The bathroom was all mirrors, white and gold. My head was spinning by now and I moved like an automaton back into the bedroom. Almost one entire wall was bookcases, with cupboards beneath. Her own bookcases in her own room, filled with hundreds of books, like she was a library.
I’d never been a great student, except for Unexpected Kill class, but suddenly I felt hungry for books. I mean, I’d loved story time in my younger grades. As I dusted, titles caught my eyes—some were fantasies, some sounded like romances—there was a whole encyclopedia with twenty-seven volumes! If she left, I could go crazy and look at all this!
“What are you doing?” Her voice was accusing.
“Nothing,” I answered, remembering just in time, “Miss Mia. Just dusting.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Just keep your eyes on your job, you hear me?”
I nodded, attempting to look bland and maidlike. Oh, I thought, I’m going to enjoy wrecking your life. And I’m gonna steal your books, too.
88
CASSIE
TURNS OUT, IF YOU STOP blood from leaking out of your body, you feel better. My shoulder still hurt like crazy, but I felt less like the walking dead.
“How’re you feeling?” Tim asked, coming up behind me so silently that I almost screamed.
I whacked the side of his leg. “Quit sneaking up on me!” I snapped. “You’re lucky I wasn’t holding a loaded gun!”
“Speaking of loaded guns,” he said, “it seems that looters did get most of them. I found this one in the back storage room.” He patted the rifle he’d used on the wild dogs the night before.
“Okay,” I said. “We can do one last thorough sweep before we go, see if we can find one or two more.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, pulling yet more stuff out of his backpack. “I also found more old paper maps—thought we might figure out where we are, where we need to go.”
“Good thinking,” I said, and he looked gratified.
At one of the dust-covered counters I found store receipts with the store’s address printed on them: 2700 CABELA DRIVE, MOLINE, ILLINOIS.
“Look for Moline, Illinois,” I told him.
He found it. “But who cares where we are if we don’t know where we’re going? The files said the capital, but we don’t know if it has any other name.”
“We should head for the biggest cell we can find,” I suggested.
“Cells aren’t marked on this map,” he said with exaggerated patience. “Cells didn’t exist back then.”
“You know what I mean,” I said, embarrassed to be caught in such a dumb mistake.
“Our best bet is to keep heading east,” he went on. “There’s a big city called Chicago there. Maybe it still exists and maybe someone there can tell us where to find the capital.”
I nodded. “Let’s load up. Meet you in thirty.”
Half an hour later he came to the broken third-floor window where we’d first come in.
“You ready?” he asked.
I heard the impatience in his voice; he wanted to get out of here at sunrise. What other dangers were there besides wild dogs?
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m just looking at this… boat.” It was a little Sunfish, maybe nine feet long, covered with dust. Mr. Grogan had had one for fishing in Cattail Pond, back home. Sometimes he’d let me take it out by myself, sail it across the pond.
“Yeah, so?” he said.
I dumped my backpack into the rear of the Sunfish.
“Cassie. You remember the desert part, right? The great outdoors where tumbleweeds go to die?”
“Yeah,” I said, walking around the small boat. “But look—it’s attached to this trailer.”
“We can’t pull the boat across the desert,” he said flatly.
“I know. But the boat’s on a trailer, the trailer has wheels, and the boat has a sail, too. Could we maybe sail it across the desert? Save us some walking?”
His mouth dropped open. He stood back and looked at the boat.
Half an hour later, when we were about to ditch the boat, trailer, and everything else, our small sail suddenly caught the wind. It filled out, plump and beautiful, and Tim and I stared at each other for a second.
“Get in!” he yelled, and we threw ourselves into the boat.
I shrieked as the small boom almost knocked us overboard. Tim reached for the rudder, but I shook my head. It wouldn’t help us steer since we weren’t in the water; we’d have to go where the wind took us. Our only choice was to swing the boom back and forth, zigzagging across the desert.
I didn’t even have the words to describe how I felt skimming along. Happy? Maybe. For once I didn’t have a worried scowl on my face. I looked over at Tim and he seemed almost lighthearted with the wind ruffling his hair.
We nodded at each other, grinning. Then I gasped as a gust of wind sent us careening for just a second. I stumbled into him, and he grabbed my good shoulder, pulling me toward him. Looking into my startled eyes, he tilted his head and kissed me. A real kiss.
He pulled back moments later, looking shocked. I probably looked just as shocked, my face white, my fingers moving slowly to my lips.
Time stood still, for a while.
89
HELEN
MS. STREPP COULDN’T BELIEVE HER life’s work came down to this. She’d thought she could drive this mission further. All those soldiers—no, those kids. They’d believed in her. They’d been forced to believe in her. But now instead of a training camp director, she was a prisoner. A prisoner! Her! It was unbelievable, except for… the reality—the horrible, infuriating reality of now.
The door of the dank metal shipping container opened with a rusty, goose-bump-inducing shriek. It was a guard, of course. A guard from the lowest echelon of guard school. He clomped up to where she sat on the cold, wet floor. He kicked her ankle in its shackle, knocking it several feet sideways. Ms. Strepp prided herself on not looking up, not moving her foot back.
“The Vice President will be here soon,” the guard said. “She wants to meet you herself. Before you… disappear.” He giggled at the last part.
Think, Helen, think, Strepp told herself. Buy Becca more time.
The guard left, clomping through the puddles, trying to splash her. She was stoic till he left, then let her face sag. Becca. She was the best Strepp had ever trained, ever seen. But it was a difficult journey, and there were so many ways it could’ve gone wrong. What if she never made it to Chicago as Strepp had planned? It was risky keeping Becca in the dark, but Strepp couldn’t risk her getting captured and divulging their plans to the enemy. Even if she did make it, Strepp knew that Becca’s was a suicide mission. They would probably both be dead long before they accomplished their goals.
90
BECCA
“NO, THOSE GET WASHED IN the sink and then hung to dry!” Mia snapped, yanking the flimsy lace bra out of my hands. “Didn’t they teach you anything?”
Uh, they didn’t tell me how to wash your undies, but I know a couple different ways to kill you with this hanger.
Right at this minute, I was ready to use all of my deadly skills on every single person in this joint. Whenever my eyes were open, they were assaulted by beauty, culture, art, luxury. No cellfolk anywhere had anything like this stuff—real paintings, actual statues, extravagant flower arrangements in enormous vases on round marble tables.
I’d come to the conclusion that the best solution would be to level this city, tear down every cell wall everywhere, and let everyone go free to choose their own lives. Total anarchy, in other words. It would be so awesome.
“Just go.” Her snide voice broke into my fantasy. “I’m tired. You can do this tomorrow, after you bring up my breakfast tray.”
It took a lot of willpower to keep my face expressionless, and to ruthlessly force down the shriek boiling up inside me over the words “breakfast tray.”
But this wasn’t about me, my feelings. I was on a mission. I was supposed to be an emotionless weapon, as I’d been trained. Somehow the last month had broken down some of my walls. I was tired, too.
I nodded to her, my eyes down, and backed out of her highness’s room.
This job had no set hours—it was ten o’clock at night now, and I’d just been let go. If she’d wanted to keep me working till three in the morning, she could. That was one way living in a cell was better than here—we had regular work hours, by law.
The servants’ rooms were up in the attic, but I took a chance and headed to the basement, where the kitchen was. I saw the occasional roving guard—sometimes we nodded at each other. The rest of the house was quiet—all the privileged people were of course asleep in their feather beds.
In the servants’ dining hall, I found Nate asleep, his arms pillowing his head on the table. For just a minute I looked at him, remembering that Cassie loved him. He was no longer the smooth-talking, finely groomed Provost’s son. Once upon a time, he may have fit in here at the palace. He was rougher now, his hair longer and unkempt, a shadow of red beard across his jaw. I saw his hands—they were red and chapped, almost raw. How the Provost’s son had fallen.
I shook his shoulder—we had a lot of information to exchange. He woke, drowsy and grumpy. “Come on, Cinderella,” I said briskly, and he frowned.
Just then the head housekeeper, Mrs. Argyle, came in. “What are you two still doing down here?” she snapped. “Get upstairs, and mind you be quiet about it!”
Nate looked at me, and I barely managed a shrug. The male servants slept in one attic wing, and the females on the other side of the house. We couldn’t exchange info tonight.
Ten minutes later I lay on my narrow, hard cot (which was still heaven after the Crazy House) and wondered where in the world the President was. How could I kill him if I couldn’t even find him?
91
THE NEXT MORNING, WHEN I delivered Miss Mia’s breakfast tray, she wordlessly pointed to a small pile of lacy bits of cloth that barely deserved to be included in the clothing category. I took them into the bathroom and filled the sink with soapy water.
This was all bullshit, I fumed. This couldn’t have been what Strepp had in mind. True, Blondie McMystery Man had seemed pretty solid in his creds and planning. But really? How was washing goddamn underwear part of the larger plan? I wondered how Bunny and the rest of the squad were managing in their new roles. Each of them had been assigned a role to play—not in the palace, like me and Nate, but still decent assignments.
I was rinsing the clothes maybe a bit too roughly when Miss Mia came in and I had to put on my ridiculously inappropriate submissive face.
“I’m going to a riding lesson,” she said without looking at me. “Change the sheets on my bed and be sure to dust the bookshelves.”
Okay. This was more like it. As soon as I was sure she was gone, I searched her room again, tapping the walls, listening for hidden doors to a safe room or an escape route. I found nothing. Simultaneously I looked for bugs and cameras, any kind of alarm system, any kind of surveillance, and to my surprise I found nothing. The only visible alarm nodes were on the windows. Strepp had explained that rich people usually had personal surveillance or panic buttons.
Next, the bookcases. Dust cloth in hand, my eyes raked the titles of hundreds of books, looking for anything that could help me. The Proud History of the United caught my eye and I pulled it out, then pushed it back in fast as the door was opened.
That was a quick lesson, I thought, but turned blank-faced to see—not Mia.
“Well, hello there,” a guy said. I guessed he was from the family—he had Mia’s dark hair and blue eyes but hadn’t been so lucky in the bone structure or the acne-free skin. I just looked at him.
“I’m Master Kirt,” he said. “Miss Mia’s big brother.”
92
RIGHT AWAY MY FINGERS ITCHED for a weapon. His oily voice made the hairs on my arms stand up.
“Sir,” I said quietly, and continued to carefully dust the books.
“They said the new maid was a looker,” Kirt said. “They weren’t wrong.”
I said nothing—all I needed was Mrs. Argyle hearing me telling Kirt to go stuff himself. She’d probably cut my tongue out.
He came closer. He reminded me of a snake, the kind of snake that farmers cut the head off of with a shovel.
“Are you assigned only to my sister?” he asked. “Or are you part of my father’s entourage as well? He’s due back today.”
I almost stopped dusting. Finally! Something useful from this most useless of families! The President was due back today!
“I serve only Miss Mia,” I said, trying to keep excitement out of my voice.
“Good,” he said, and he actually reached out and touched my hair, the few locks that weren’t covered by my maid’s kerchief. If I aimed the handle of the duster right, I could get it right through his ear and into his brain. I considered it, now almost shaking with fury.
“I’m glad you’re not assigned to Father.” His voice dropped. He was so close to me now that I could easily have chopped him in the kidney. He’d be pissing blood for weeks. “I hear that serving Father can be… taxing for the maids.”
The blood drained from my face as I got his meaning.
Practically whispering in my ear, curling an escaped strand of my hair around his finger, Master Kirt went on: “But you don’t have to fear the third-floor study. I’m much more reasonable, and I’m practically right next door.”
So the President’s study was on the third floor, not the first, as I’d assumed! For just a second I considered flirting with this gross schmuck to get more info, and in the second I let down my guard, he sprang at me, pushing me onto Mia’s bed.
Becca, you idiot! I thought, as he became an octopus, all hands and mouth. If I used my instinctive fighting skills, he would instantly know I was a trained soldier, which would get me kicked into prison at best, and killed at worst. So I squirmed, ineffectually trying to push him away. The same way I had tried to push my teacher, Mr. Harrison, off me back in grade twelve. Before I was adept at killing people. While Master Kirt writhed on top of me, I dully remembered my horrible miscarriage and how incredibly heartless Strepp had been about it. Cruel to be kind.
I gritted my teeth and tried to fend Kirt off in a normal, outraged girl way, pushing at him, clenching my mouth shut, turning my head.
“Kirt!”
It took me a moment to identify the furious voice as Miss Mia’s.
“Goddamnit, not again!” she shouted, and I heard the whiz of a riding crop slicing through the air and landing on Kirt’s back. “Get off!” She whipped him with the riding crop again.
He scrambled off me, red-faced. “Watch it, you bitch!” he shouted. “She’s just the maid! Goddamnit! What’s wrong with you?”
“Get out of this room,” she spat at him, and I was amazed at the different Mia I was seeing.
“Screw you!” he said, but he left the room and slammed the door so hard that a small framed picture fell to the floor and broke.
I sat up and pulled my uniform down, retied the kerchief around my head.
“Thank you, Miss Mia,” I said, surprised to hear a convincing tremble in my voice. “I don’t know—”
“Just don’t let him get you alone,” she said briskly. “Now help me get cleaned up—we’re going out.”
93
CASSIE
I FELT A SMALL BUG crawling beneath my untucked shirt but didn’t move, keeping the binoculars riveted on the action below. I’d been sad to leave our boat at the edge of the hard, cracked desert but once the tall-grass prairie started, it’d been useless. For the last day and a half, we’d waded through sharp-edged grass taller than my head, with Tim breaking a path and me traveling miserably in his wake. The air here was heavy, cool but humid, and we kept being assaulted by horrible clouds of stinging gnats. After the dry, bugless air of the desert, this felt unbearable.
“Here.” I handed him the binoculars, lying in the grass next to me. We were hidden well—the prairie ended here, but three feet into the grass, no one could see us.
He gave a low whistle while I smashed the bug and shook it out of my shirt.
“Right?” I said. “Like the biggest cell in the whole United.”
