Chapter 17
Lila dried her damp hair and stepped from the bathroom, the frigid air chilling her skin. Her wrist ached as she tightened the knot in her robe and padded across the cold hardwood floor. Dixon handed her another ice pack from the freezer.
Sorry, he mouthed.
“It’s not your fault.” She wrapped a towel around the ice pack and held it to her wrist, still sore from the zip ties and the latest training session. She’d had to see Dr. McCrae for the second time in one day. The third doctor’s visit she’d had in twelve hours.
Gods, she was falling apart.
“I regressed so much at hand-to-hand that I’m worse than when I started. I think I impressed Connell with the depths of my failing.”
She plopped on the couch and snatched up her laptop.
“Impressed” didn’t describe Connell. “Frustrated” did. When Dixon had accidently bent her wrist a little too far during a failed defense, Connell had sent her away in a huff. He’d pointed out the bags under her eyes and her injured wrist, blaming it all on a lack of sleep. “Lessons are a waste of time if you refuse to take care of yourself.”
Lila wished she could excuse her regression so easily. Perhaps a lack of sleep had affected her recall of what she’d relearned two days ago, but she had slept well enough during her militia training.
At least Mòr had not witnessed the session.
Lila had too much work on her plate to waste an hour in the gym, anyway. She’d train after she solved the oracle’s mole problem, after she found the identities of everyone La Roux trapped for Bullstow, and after she resolved the situation with her mother.
The chairwoman had not yet returned her money.
Elizabeth Victoria Lemaire-Randolph was still broke.
Lila turned on her laptop and reached for her star drives, confused when she did not find one of them on the coffee table. Holding her ice bag on her wrist, she knelt on the rug and peered under the sofa, snatching it up from where it had fallen.
She sank back on her knees, judging the distance from the table to the sofa.
What’s wrong?
“I could have sworn…” Lila opened up her snoop programs, letting them run upon her computer.
A window flashed red upon her screen.
She turned quickly to Dixon, snapping her fingers in the quiet for his notepad. Someone was in here, she wrote. Someone tried to break into my files.
Successfully?
Lila shook her head. She took her new palm, freshly downloaded with her snoop programs, and walked around the room, searching for bugs. She found one in her room, one in Dixon’s, and two in the living room.
Lila left them in place and snapped again for Dixon’s notepad. I should have checked for bugs every time we entered. I got sloppy at the cottage.
The mole hit our cabin twice?
Lila nodded. Nico wasn’t with us at training.
Half the compound wasn’t with us during training. Do you really think he’s a mole, or do you just suspect him because he has a thing for you?
Fuck you, she mouthed.
Dixon held up hands in surrender. Shouldn’t we do something about the bugs?
No, we can use them. Let me think about how.
Lila returned to her laptop and opened the oracle’s list. Everyone who had visited or lived on the compound had been included, even the mole. Or moles. All she had to do was connect one of the people on the list to the sender of the kitten pictures.
Unfortunately, the mole had used a fake ID.
Even worse, it was a good one.
She’d have to dig deeper.
After ensuring that the mole had not installed any snoop software on her computer, Lila wrote a few lines of code. The short program would filter Connell’s list for everyone who had first accessed the compound between two and three years ago, instructing the computer to pull biographical data for each hit from state databases. While it worked, she finished reviewing the logs she’d worked on the night before, skimming through the last suspicious files she’d found in the system and tagging a few for further study.
After that, she combined her flagged data with everyone else’s from the night before, filtering for the last three years. Then she transferred a copy to Dixon’s tablet. He could review them. Perhaps he’d find something useful.
In the meantime, she opened Kenna’s list next and filtered it for those who’d arrived at the compound two to three years ago. The final list totaled twenty names.
Lila snapped for Dixon’s attention, then led him outside the cabin and onto the porch. The pair sat on the bench, heads bowed over her laptop. “Look at who Kenna’s been suspicious about,” she said quietly, the sound not traveling to the oracle children who wandered nearby.
Dixon skimmed the list. He pointed at Kara’s name.
“Gambling addict. I saw it in her messages. Kenna’s perceptive.”
Kara could be more than a gambler. If she owes enough, she might have been bought.
Lila leaned back against the cabin wall. “I suppose I can dig into her financials,” she grumbled.
What’s wrong? You’ve done it before.
“Yeah, but I knew where and how those people banked.”
Ask the oracle. Maybe they have their own banking system?
“Wouldn’t that be hilarious? A whole banking system that the matrons know nothing about.”
But the more she thought about it, the less strange it sounded. The oracle children dressed differently, lived differently, sentenced their criminals differently. It made sense they wouldn’t trust their money to the highborn families.
Dixon pointed at her screen. Camille.
“Yeah. She put down her daughter’s best friend.”
The dates line up. She and Cecily met at school a few years ago. They became best friends.
“Immediately. That’s what Kenna said.”
Dixon shifted on his perch. Are we going to interview the people on this list?
“Eventually. The problem with interviewing people is that we’ll tip our hand the second we start. The oracle children are far too intertwined with one another not to spread gossip.”
Then everyone already knows we visited the basement. We’re not just outsiders anymore. We’re here for a purpose.
“True. Even Connell’s militia can’t be trusted to keep quiet.”
How did you keep the highborn in the dark when you worked jobs for your father?
“You remember how it was, Dixon. The highborn don’t trust one another, and they certainly don’t speak with one another freely. A great deal of intel is passed through spies. I merely took command of a few key spies and bribed them into working for me.”
Money?
“Secrets, Dixon. Controlling secrets is far more powerful than coin.”
I forget sometimes how lonely a highborn compound can be. How dangerous.
Lila’s gaze flicked to Dixon. “Some families are more dangerous than others.”
He shrugged.
“Tristan honestly believes that you miss that place. That you’d rather be there than with him. He doesn’t understand—he might never understand—what you actually miss.”
What is that?
“The lack of pressure. No one forces us to chat about our feelings. No one demands we make choices or declarations within our relationships. It’s all actively discouraged. You live alone in a sea of your relations, and you never have a real conversation about anything. It is a shallow existence, everyone always needling one another into a disadvantage during the smallest of interactions. Your allies might become your enemies tomorrow. Do not give them ammunition they may use. They trained us young, didn’t they?”
He nodded.
“The differences between the compounds have not gone unnoticed.”
You like it here.
“I’d lose my mind within a week. I don’t think I could adjust.”
Liar. You’re thinking about accepting Connell’s offer after you find the mole.
“If I find the mole. Or moles.”
You will.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, but I don’t always find the culprit before time runs out. When I fail, people get hurt.”
What’s that supposed to mean?
“Nothing.”
That didn’t sound like nothing. He laid his arm on her back. Something’s going on with you lately. I don’t know what it is, but it’s more than Tristan and Katia, more than your father and Shaw, too.
Lila looked up. She could tell him about La Roux. She could tell him about the baby, too.
After all, it might be his niece or nephew in her belly.
He might even be excited at the idea.
When she opened her mouth, struggling to find the right words, an image of one of her tutors popped into her head. The sharp-nosed woman had leaned over her paper, overseeing a handwriting lesson, dictating yet another highborn proverb to copy a hundred times.
A loose tongue announces its owner’s death.
Like most things in a highborn curriculum, it had served a double purpose.
“It’s nothing, Dixon,” she said. “I just need to work. The mole has already done enough damage, don’t you think?”
Lila stood up and reentered the cabin. The desktop computer beeped as soon as she opened the door. The oracle’s list had been culled, the biographical data pulled. Two hundred names stared back at her—far too many to investigate all at once. She quickly filtered the list for those who had been in and out of the compound as recently as six months ago.
Forty names remained.
Dixon scratched his cheek and pointed. Nico.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Lila found another interesting name below Nico’s. Fiona, the captain in charge of guarding the prisoner during first shift. The prisoners had nearly escaped a few weeks before. Connell had called it a false alarm, but now, Lila wasn’t so sure.
Dixon bumped her arm, pointing again.
I thought Connell grew up here? he wrote on his notepad.
I did too, Lila typed in a small window on her laptop. This is bad, Dixon. No woman wants to hear that her lover might be a spy for the enemy.
So don’t tell her until you’re sure.
Lila pointed at the list, surprised to see another name. Annag is the compound’s head chef. How did so many people enter the compound so recently and get promoted to positions of power and influence? These people eat lunch together. Chef Annag could poison them all with one dish.
Should we grab a cup of tea before dinner? We could scope her out.
Lila nodded. “Let’s have tea, Dixon. I need a break. Just give me a few moments to change.”
Five minutes was all she needed to slip into a pair of trousers, a sweater, and boots. She grabbed her coat and swept her damp curls into a ponytail, regretting her decision immediately when the first burst of cold air hit her.
She and Dixon entered the cafeteria, the tables already scrubbed for the next meal. Striding up the center of the room, they flitted through the double doors in the back. A row of cooks stood inside a room of wall-to-wall stainless steel, hunching over cutting boards, mincing garlic, dicing celery, and chopping tomatoes. Knives smacked against the cutting boards in a rapid staccato. A cook on the end tilted a bowl, whisking its contents with a sharp scraping of metal against metal. Their little white hats cocked to the side as they worked, slipping from the sheen of sweat on their faces.
All wore purple smocks with the oracle’s mark silkscreened across the front, except for Chef Annag. Her white smock had been trimmed in purple, the eye and wings stitched beautifully on her breast. She peered over each person’s shoulder, handing out admonishments for the slightest imperfections.
When she finally reached the end, she noticed Lila. After turning off the heat under a kettle, she strode toward her and Dixon. No sweat dripped off the chef’s skin. “What are you doing in my kitchen?” she asked.
“I just wanted a—”
“Want? This is not the place for wants. You eat what I give you when I give it to you. Dinner is in half an hour. You’ll not starve in the meantime. Now get.”
Lila eyed the kettle on the stove. “I just wanted some tea.”
The woman harrumphed. “Lorea, see to her. Tea is beneath my abilities.”
The whisker abandoned her bowl and fetched a mug from a shelf. She dropped a tea bag into it, then poured in boiling water from the kettle. “Ay dioses míos,” she mumbled, glaring at Chef Annag.
“What’s her problem?” Lila whispered, taking the opportunity to chat.
Lorea had appeared on the list too.
“Nothing a good kick in the rear wouldn’t fix. Do you want milk or sugar?”
“Both, please.” Lila settled at the counter, watching Lorea spoon out the sugar. “Chef Annag seems interesting to work for.”
“Ha! Interesting. If you think this is interesting, you should hear her during Shark Week. We mark it on our calendars every month. No one speaks for days until she stops gorging herself on chocolate.”
“You can’t find work somewhere else?”
“This is work somewhere else. Luckily, I’ll return to La Verde this summer. I can’t believe I’ve made it this long without strangling her.”
“You chose to work with her?”
“Of course, New Bristol was my first choice. Annag is the best chef in Saxony.” Lorea’s gaze drifted back down to the tea. “I apologize for making it from a bag. I hope that will suit you, but I really must get back to work.”
Lila didn’t budge. “Why does the oracle allow her to stay if she’s so horrible to everyone?”
“It’s not a crime to be unpleasant. It’s just rude. Talent covers a multitude of personality flaws, which is why she’s so horrible. She knows she can get away it. Just between you and me, she’s going to push someone too far one of these days. She’ll get her nose broken, and I won’t be sorry about it.”
The cook bustled away and returned to her whisking.
“Scram!” Chef Annag shouted from across the room.
Lila startled.
The tea sloshed over the mug’s rim. A river of fire poured over her skin.
So much for an interrogation, Dixon scrawled as they returned to the dining hall.
“So much for a lot of things.”
After handing Dixon her dripping mug, she stuck her hand underneath a tap in the back of the dining room, cooling her pink skin until it no longer throbbed.
The door to the cafeteria opened.
Camille entered with a large thermos and stopped at a counter in the front of the room. A few electric kettles and coffee pots littered the surface, as well as an ice and soda machine.
Dixon’s palm vibrated. Lila glimpsed the name as he pulled the device from his pocket.
Tristan.
“Don’t ignore it,” she told him, taking back her mug. She left Dixon to message his brother, and joined Camille at the drink counter.
“So this is where I was supposed to go for my tea.”
Camille laughed and filled a kettle with water, then replaced it on the heating plate. “You didn’t dare interrupt the great Chef Annag, did you?”
“I might have.”
“Well, I am impressed you lived to tell the tale. Did she throw a pot?”
“Was that a possibility?”
“It’s usually a reality.”
“She had one of her apprentices make it for me.”
“Ah, word has spread to the kitchen staff. You and your friend aren’t just any outsiders. You’re important. You might not believe it, but you were treated to Chef’s best behavior.”
“Important, are we?”
“Of course you’re important. You dine with the oracle almost every day. I even heard a rumor at lunch that you two visited the security building. Connell escorted you and not in handcuffs. That’s unheard of for outsiders.”
“You’re an outsider. You dine with the oracle frequently.”
“I don’t dine with the oracle. I dine with Cecily. The oracle children know the difference.”
“When do people move from outsiders to insiders?”
“They don’t. I’ll always be an outsider, even if I marry a purplecoat and have tiny purple babies.”
“Do you want that?”
“Maybe. It might have escaped your attention, but there are some seriously attractive people running around this compound.” Camille opened a drawer filled with tea and chocolate mix. Paper packets rustled as she picked among them. “One of them likes you.”
“I have a feeling Nico likes everyone with breasts.”
“He’s male and straight. Of course he likes everyone with breasts. He seems particularly interested in yours, though. I saw him working out with you, lifting up his silly shirt to show you his muscles, holding on to you a little too long during your drills. Usually he sets women up and lets them run to his cabin in heat. I’ve never seen him chase before. His usual tricks aren’t working with you, and I think it’s driving him mad. He’s not-so-casually interrogated me several times, asking questions about you.”
“Oh really?”
“He usually cooks for the oracle every couple of weeks. Lately, he’s there every day. I wonder why that is.”
“What sort of questions has he asked?”
“Ah, you’re interested too, are you? Let’s see, what hasn’t he asked? He wants to know if you’ve mentioned him or his food when he’s not around. He’s also trying to find out your full name. I couldn’t help him with that. I’ve only heard the oracle and Connell call you Lila. I told him I’d try to find out.”
She looked at Lila expectantly.
After a rather long moment, Camille grinned. “Good. If I were you, I wouldn’t tell him either. I suspect he intends to dig up whatever he can about you online, all so he can figure out how to woo you.”
“That’s not creepy.”
“It is, isn’t it? He’s absolutely clueless. He has no idea how to handle being on this end of things, and I enjoy watching him squirm. Don’t run to his cabin, will you? For once in his life, make him work for it.”
Camille dumped several packets of hot chocolate mix into the thermos and closed the drawer with a rolling whoosh. “Don’t tell Kenna you saw me here, okay? Cecily’s mother doesn’t like for her to have a lot sugar, especially right before dinner. I thought this would perk her up, though.”
“Your secret is safe with me. How’s she doing?”
“It’s been a few weeks since she and Achille broke up, but she’s still crying her eyes out. I keep trying, but nothing I say or do seems to help.”
“Nothing anyone says will help. She just needs time.”
“I know. I just keep thinking if I find the right thing to say…” She watched bubbles form in the electric kettle.
“There is no right thing to say, no argument that will make it better. Feelings don’t obey logic. If they did, we’d never have feelings for anyone. They’re stupid.”
“You sound like Blair.”
“Your friend gave her heart to someone who didn’t deserve it, someone who didn’t mean a damn thing he said, someone who disappeared without even having the decency to send her a note. She’s not just mourning the guy. She’s mourning herself. She thought she was smarter than that. It’s hard to realize that you’re as much of an idiot as everyone else.”
Camille pulled the kettle off the electric warmer. “Are we still talking about Cecily?”
Lila sipped her tea and didn’t reply.
“That’s why you haven’t visited Nico’s cabin, isn’t it? You just broke up with someone. You’re really good at hiding your feelings.”
“Things still have to get done.”
“Yes, they do. You should come over tonight. Cecily and I are watching movies. Comedies only. Well, comedies and horror. I might toss in a few selections where the heroine gets revenge upon an ex-lover, splashing the screen with his blood and intestines.”
Lila chuckled as Camille waggled her fingers.
“It’s been ages since I saw a movie,” Lila said.
“Think about it. You could tell her all that stuff you just said. Perhaps a new face would cheer her up a little. Mine isn’t.”
Lila leaned against the counter. Camille reminded her so much of Alex, her former best friend. Until recently, she’d always been at Lila’s side, always trying to cheer her up when she grew sad.
But in the end, she’d just been another lying highborn.
Lila hoped Camille wasn’t the same.
“I have to work, but maybe someday soon I’ll take your advice. Comedies and horror flicks should be watched after a breakup, is that the idea?”
“That’s my prescription. That and a few pints of chocolate ice cream. Other flavors are available, of course.”
“Cecily is lucky to have you as a friend.”
Camille nodded, her face barely readable. She wasn’t touched. She seemed sad.
A shadow of guilt played around her eyes.
“What are you thinking of right now?”
Camille poured water into her thermos. “I introduced them. Achille was just some cute guy in one of my classes. He wasn’t even Cecily’s type, but I thought they had something in common.”
“Apparently, they did. They dated, didn’t they?”
“For a time, I thought they might marry.”
“Marry? So oracle children marry? They’re not like highborn?”
“You mean, how do they love?”
Lila nodded.
“From what I can see, they’re like cats. They do whatever pleases them, whenever it pleases them. Some are like Kenna and the highborn—they take more than one lover at a time, and marriage is never in the picture, either out of duty or position or their own temperament. Others are like the oracle and the workborn. They choose only one lover at a time. I’ve never seen the oracle with anyone else except Connell since I’ve known Cecily, and Connell has never even looked at another woman. Cecily believes they’ll marry.”
“How does it work when everyone is mixed together? What if Kenna wished to date someone like Connell?”
“Then she’d have to accept his terms and see only him.” Camille stirred the chocolate mix. “That’s the unwritten rule here. Sometimes those who love many can’t handle that.”
“Does everyone choose lovers among those on the compound, then? It seems a bit incestuous.”
“People visit other compounds all the time. They date outsiders too. Highborn, lowborn, workborn…”
“And what are you?”
Camille smirked. “You are blunt in your questions, aren’t you?”
“Blunt and curious.” Lila’s eyes flitted toward Dixon, still jabbing at his palm. “My friend seems to have taken an interest in someone on the compound. I want to look out for him, just as you wish to look out for Cecily.”
“I’m not sure what I can tell you about Blair. I thought she couldn’t give a fig about any of it. People surprise you sometimes, don’t they?”
“What do you think the oracle would say if they began to date?”
“Congratulations? It doesn’t matter who you date here. Not much matters, so long as you get your work done. That’s why I hate leaving this place, even to attend class. This compound is freedom with very few limitations.”
“Sounds restful.”
“It is. It’s not like outside. I suppose I’m lowborn, if you really want to know. My parents died when I was young. I was raised by workborn foster parents while my relations stole every credit my parents had set aside for me. I won a scholarship to university, or I would never have been able to attend.”
“What do you think about the workborn, then? Are they really monogamous? I’ve heard they cheat on one another all the time.”
“You’re lowborn, then. The plot thickens,” Camille said. “Cheating isn’t the same as not being monogamous, you know. The highborn cheat on their lovers when they do not disclose one to the others.”
“Workborn cheat in other ways. They lie. They make promises and declarations while their thoughts stray to another. Ones they don’t speak about. None of what they say is real.”
“Geesh, someone did a number on you.” Camille screwed on the lid to her thermos. “Lila, you’re still the same person now that you were before your ex. Don’t think yourself smaller. People don’t shrink.”
Lila cocked her head to the side. “That’s oddly helpful, Camille. Cecily really is lucky to have such a good friend.”
“I try. I love her.”
Lila noticed a speck of bitterness in her tone. “You’ve been friends for a while now?”
“Best friends. I care for her dearly.”
She noted the downgrade. From love to care. “Who do you like here?”
Camille blushed. “You do ask so many personal questions. You and Blair would make great friends.”
Lila sipped her tea. “I guess you can’t tell Cecily about it, since she’s still upset over Achille, but she’ll feel better soon.”
“I just want to see her smile again. You haven’t seen her smile yet. It lights up her whole face. It can brighten a whole room.”
Care. Love. Bitterness. Guilt. Longing. The change of mood made more sense now, as did Kenna’s suspicion. The young woman was hiding something.
Camille was in love with Cecily.
She and Pax had an awful lot in common.
Dixon finally slipped his palm into his pocket, and Lila excused herself, washing up her mug in the back of the room.
She’d update Dixon on the way to dinner.