Page 7 of The Library at Hellebore
“I’m a teaching assistant,” said Portia, her response jarring in its sudden cheer. All traces of her earlier despondence evaporated as she spoke, her expression and tone sunny as a summer afternoon. “Hellebore doesn’t believe in scholarships, unfortunately. So I provide the faculty with help and they give me room and board as I labor to finish my PhD.”
“You do a lot of kidnapping for them?”
“I help the faculty,” said Portia without apology, winking, the little gesture so charming I almost forgave her complicity in the system. Almost but not quite. “Student enrollment is someone else’s business.”
I was back to distrusting her and everything around me, the nascent rapport gone—things for which I was grateful. Easier this than that bone-deep, marrow-level need to impress her, to want her near, to want her to smile at me and to count her freckles like I was a poet and she a muse. Easier this suspicion thanwant.Safer too. I learned that early on.
If she took any notice of my suspicion, Portia said nothing. Instead, she began to walk again, chattering in a very ambassadorial manner. I listened and nodded and exclaimed at the appropriate intervals, my responses as sincere as her confidential smiles, which is to say not at all. Everything she said sounded like paper-thin fiction: Portia allegedly had spent three years in Hellebore, graduating before going abroad (she wouldn’t elaborate on whatabroadmeant, but that was hardly a surprise) to spend three more years in training with her sisters of the Raw Grail (the name caught like a splinter; I filed it away for future contemplation) before coming back to the school to pursue her post-graduate work.
“I thought it was an institute,” I said. “Not a university.”
“I’m using the terms loosely. Don’t mind me. We can dissect that another time,” Portia said, winking, wafting a hand through the bright antiseptic air as we pulled up to an overcrowded vestibule. The walls were the same deoxygenated red as Portia’s hair, softly embossed with the school’s heraldry, a repeating pattern of antlered skull and wasps. Stairs rose on either side, leading to an elaborately stuccoed mezzanine, its floor cradled by plaster gods. Overhead, a chandelier rocked impotently, unneeded with the pitiless white sun gouting from the skylight. Everyone under its glow looked terrible.
“Oh, I have to go help with getting everyone inside the atrium.” Portia sighed, rubbernecking at the crowd.
The older girl peeled away then, vanishing into the throng. It wasn’t so much an assembly as it was a crush of bodies, like cattle herded into an abattoir. The flesh mannequins were doing their part in teasing the knots of gathered students into proper queues, an endeavor that was only partially successful: no one wanted to be within ten feet of the stinking, towering automatons and each time one moved too close, the crowdmelted back in disgust. Sometimes, this meant a line against the wall would form. Other times, students simply fled the hamburger-faced caretakers, pelting up and down the steps, creating even more chaos.
I felt a light touch on the small of my back as I was staring at the tableau.
“Assembly,” gurgled a meat man, nudging me forward.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I mumbled.
It was less of an ordeal than I thought it would be, even with the pheromonal stink of about a hundred very sweaty twentysomethings in close quarters. We were bullied up the stairs and into an enormous atrium, operatic in size, with balcony windows and an orchestra pit that was being aggressively mopped by a trio of masked individuals. All three shared an androgynous litheness, their crimson-wrappered bodies lean but wide-shouldered. I stared at them, unnerved for reasons that wouldn’t explain themselves, until my attention was taken by one of the meat men as it lumbered up to me.
“Phones,” it said.
“You want my phone?” I shook my head. “No, what the fuck?”
“Phone,” it said again gently, and with an urgency I hadn’t expected from a talking stack of uncooked burger patties. Its tone was conciliatory, as if it knew how terrible a demand it was making of me, but also what would happen if I refused to comply. It stooped so we were at eye level, and clots of meat wept from its subsequent attempt to contort its face into a smile.
“Jesus.” I withdrew a step, producing the aforementioned item. The truth was I didn’t care; it was a burner, like every phone I’d ever possessed. The Internet was a mistake, as they say: being traceable is never good, especially not here, notnow, not in a world where something might come stalking down the road to ask for your soul. Never mind the fact I probably had a few warrants out for me. “Take it.”
It accepted the device with a slow, sage nod before turning to a Korean girl, who produced a rose-gold iPhone without comment but with a roll of her eyes. The meat man continued trundling down the queue of students and the air smelled faintly rotten in its wake. The girl and I exchanged looks as it vanished into the press of bodies.
“All this power in the school and what they’re afraid of is a few telecommunication devices,” she said. She had on a spectacularhanbok,red upon reds, the colors of muscle. White peonies were embroidered on the fabric; they looked like scars trellissing her thighs, the curve of her torso. “It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”
“Maybe they don’t want us to post anything incriminating.”
Her smile was venomous. “Who’d believe us?”
We shuffled into the auditorium, drifting down two different aisles only to find ourselves seated in the same row. I sighed in relief at the chilliness of the room, sinking into a velveted copper chair. The Korean girl sat on the opposite side of a gorgeous tawny-skinned boy, his ruby-buttoned dress uniform as beautiful as his face, its elegance only slightly marred by the pattern of symbols monogrammed over the fabric. Everyone looked immaculate. Hellebore loved youth and worshiped beauty. The girl paid me no attention despite our earlier interaction, keeping her unblinking stare on the stage. The boy however looked sympathetically over to me. I glared at him. Anyone wearing the Ministry’s heraldry was immediately suspect.
“Your luggage hasn’t arrived then, I assume? It can take some time, I’m told. Something to do with the school’shelpers being so new to the role,” he said, nodding at the three in the orchestral pit. “The reanimated rarely make for good workers.”
“You should listen to Sullivan,” said a familiar voice. “He’s Ministry-born. They know all about corpses. Well, the making of them, anyway.”
That explained the branding.
I strung an arm over the back of my chair, looking over as Portia seated herself, her smile languid and slightly animal. A challenge lounged in her expression, one that the boy didn’t take, only met with a cool stare: her charms washed over him like rainwater. Instead of gawking like me, he twirled a finger in the air and half bowed at the waist.
“Miss Portia du Lac,” said Sullivan in a voice coached to resonate through ballrooms and trading floors. His accent made me think of New Orleans, except with the vowels tidied and trimmed by years of finishing school. “It’s always apleasure.”
“What about my luggage, anyway?” I said.
“Your outfit,” he said, eyes sliding over to me again. With a little thrust of his chin he continued, “You don’t look like someone who’dchooseto wear that. The uniforms aren’t mandatory, you know.”
Sullivan smiled with earnest compassion, like this was a favor he’d extended, a kindness of unimaginable scale. When I didn’t answer, he bobbed his head graciously, and looked back to the stage. A second passed and then another before he said, less graciously, “We don’ttryto make them.”
