Page 23 of Night in a Waste Land

Morgan said, “Thank you.” She closed the book, and set it aside – an old bird-watching manual, Rose saw, from the cover – and reached for the tray. All of her movements were precise and unhurried, just like her speech. The voice and body of the child she had been before, and the tone and mannerisms of an ancient being who would live to see eternity, and who did not flitter or rush.

“Do you need anything?” Rose asked, surveying the cell. No windows, no furniture save the desk, chair, and cot, its covers pulled up and tucked in with military precision. Books were stacked on the desk, and beneath it, and along the wall. “I don’t know how much more reading material we have around here.” The base’s library was shameful, and mostly military manuals and dry history texts.

Morgan had already devoured half the dish of pudding. She said, “No, this is all I require.”

There was no reason to stay, but Rose did, for some reason, shifting her weight side to side, watching the girl possessed by an angel neatly plow her way through thousands of calories of food without spilling a drop or getting one crumb on her shirt.

Without looking toward Rose, she said, “You’re curious.”

Busted. “Well,” she said, because she couldn’t very well deny it.

Morgan set her spoon down and turned to sit facing her, an elbow propped on the back of the chair. “You mistrust me, though – you mistrust all conduits. And you don’t like them, either.”

“You saidtheminstead ofus,” Rose hedged.

“There are conduits, and then there’s me.”

“You’re special, then?”

“Yes.” Said without any boastfulness or condescension. A simple statement of fact.

Rose held her gaze unflinching, though it took an effort. Sweat prickled between her shoulder blades, and the truth spilled out, unbidden. “A conduit was responsible for the disappearance of my–” She cut herself off. She didn’t have words for what Beck was.Boyfriendsounded paltry and childish.Loversounded like something from a book.Everythingwas the only suitable word, and it got stuck in her throat.

“I see,” Morgan said. “That would create animosity.” She gestured with one tiny hand toward the cot. “Would you like to sit?”

This wasn’t the first time Rose had come to the cell; she’d brought food, and books, and carried messages from Captain Bedlam. She continually volunteered, every time it was announced that someone needed to act as conduit liaison. She hadn’t examined her reasons for it, so she paused, now, and regarded the cot. Wondered if it would somehow feel different to sit down somewhere where an angel-possessed body slept each night. Did conduits toss and thrash? Have nightmares? Sweat through their pajamas?

“You may interrogate me,” Morgan said, placidly.

Rose let out a frustrated breath and sat, quickly, before she could change her mind. The backs of her legs tingled, but she knew that was only her imagination, and not conduit cooties seeping through her clothes.

“I don’t want to interrogate you.”

“But you have questions.”

“Lots,” Rose said with a sigh.

Morgan made an inviting gesture.

Had Captain Bedlam known she was here now, being invited to ask questions, there would have been a list involved. Important questions about conduits, their vulnerabilities, the hell beasts and demons. Questions about the war, the potential scope of it. The captain would have wanted to know why Morgan was here, willingly, ready to help them.

But Rose said, “My – the person I lost. He was standing in a pool of blood. He stabbed the conduit who’d opened it, and there was a flash, and then they were both gone. What” – her breath shivered in her lungs – “what happened to him?”

Morgan didn’t blink as often as a human. She blinked now, and said, “It was a hell portal.”

“I thought so.”

“He went down inside it, then.”

Rose had known that, but it still sent a shaft of pain through her chest to hear it confirmed by one of the few creatures who could know for sure. She nodded, and wet her lips, and tried to come up with something to say.

Morgan said, “Was he alive when the portal closed?”

“Yes.”

“Then he lives, still.”

Rose swallowed around the lump in her throat. “In hell?”

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