Fever (The Chemical Garden #2)(38)
Author: Lauren DeStefano

I hear every footfall within this mansion, every creaking floorboard, every trill of laughter from the kitchen, every murmur and sigh from my sister wife’s bedroom when Linden visits her. There is no escaping these magnified commotions, no way to cover my ears. And even when it’s quiet, my own heart beats like gunfire.

Vaughn comes in frequently. The first few times, I keep my eyes closed and try to lie still despite my pounding heart. But then one time, while he’s fiddling with my IV bag, he says, “The orange blossoms look especially lovely today.”

I open my eyes. There are white petals on his shoulders, spilling off him when he moves and dissolving before they reach the ground. His eyes are very green today. They’re Linden’s eyes, I think. How did they find their way onto his father’s face?

Vaughn smiles at me with none of his son’s kindness. “You’re looking flushed,” he says. “Don’t worry. The fevers are normal.”

I watch as an orange tree sprouts up behind him. A flock of starlings rushes across the ceiling, and I say, “Wherever I go, you’ll find me, won’t you?”

“That’s neither here nor there,” he says as he taps the barrel of the syringe. “You’re not going anyplace.”

I stare at the ceiling tiles, knowing what he says is true. Cecily promises an escape, but this, like everything, is out of her hands. That is best, I think. She would only endanger herself by coming down here. Better for her to live upstairs. She is always trying to take charge of things much too big for her; but how can I hold that against her? I’m the same way. Jenna was right to worry. Perhaps she was the only bride who knew what she was dealing with; she accepted her fate with grace and serenity.

I can hear the rush of air through the vents; the temperature in the basement is probably regulated. Sometimes I think I hear Rose crawling through the air ducts, but none of them lead her outside. She’ll never be free either.

“Have you noticed anything unusual?” Vaughn asks me. “Chest pains? Headaches? Heartburn?”

“Just the orange blossoms,” I say, as though he’ll know that I can see them now. I turn my head and blow at the few that have settled on my shoulder.

He adjusts a bag of fluid and finds a vein, and I watch as the blood gets drawn from my arm. “Rose said you wanted me for my eyes,” I say.

“Rose was not a stupid girl,” Vaughn says. “I made suggestions that day, but my son picked you out on his own. If he hadn’t, maybe things would have been easier.”

“Because I’d be dead,” I say.

He extracts the needle from my arm, dabs alcohol on the spot. “Of course not, darling,” he says. “You’d have been here helping me find the antidote much sooner. Do you know much about heterochromia? Picture your genes like a mosaic,” he says. “All different pieces that don’t seem to blend together, but step back and you’ll find that those mismatched pieces make a coherent picture. They just take a more creative approach to making it.”

He’s losing me. But lately I have a hard time understanding even simple things. “I suspect that what you have is genetic mosaicism. Two different populations of cells, where the average person only has one. One blue eye; one brown eye.”

He leans forward and strokes the hair from my face, as if I’m a small child unable to comprehend his bedtime story.

If Rowan were here, he’d understand this. Maybe he has already figured it out on his own. But it doesn’t matter. I’ll never see him again. And I will never tell Vaughn about my brother; if Vaughn is fascinated with me, he’d be downright giddy to know I’m a twin.

“I could never have anticipated how much my son would love you,” Vaughn goes on. “I knew I couldn’t take you away from him.”

“He doesn’t love me now,” I say.

“He absolutely loves you,” Vaughn says. “Love unrequited is violent. He loves you so much that he’s turned it into hate.”

Hate. I try to picture it in Linden’s sullen face, but I can’t. Maybe it’s for the best that I don’t.

“How have you been sleeping?” Vaughn asks.

I laugh. The sound explodes into echoes. His concern for me is just that absurd.

When he leaves me, I hear Rose in the ceiling start to scream.

Chapter 25

IN MY DREAM the windmill in the golf course is spinning, its bolts loosening in the hurricane winds. Gabriel is calling for me to come back inside.

“Rhine?”

The windmill is still grating. “Cecily?” My voice is less than a whisper. “Get back inside.” Her red hair whips up over her head; she reaches for me, but I’m too far away. I watch her lips move.

“Wake up,” she says.

I open my eyes, and she’s leaning over me, breathless, flushed, lights speeding over her head. This isn’t a hurricane, though, and after a moment I realize I’m being pushed through the basement on a rolling cart. Like Rose’s corpse. Cecily is pacing to keep up. She’s surrounded by attendants in white. One of them is yelling at her to get out of the way, but she hops up onto the cart and sits beside me.

“What’s happening?” I say. Deep within me is the dull sense of panic, but my body won’t react. I can hardly feel my hand in Cecily’s grasp.

“The Housemaster would have your head if he saw you down here, child,” one of the attendants tells her, and she scowls.

“I’m no child. And my father-in-law will do no such thing,” she says pertly. “Because he won’t know.”

“Who keeps letting her down here?” the attendant says.

“Can’t very well tell House Governor Linden’s bride how to behave,” another says.

Cecily winks at me, smug. “Housemaster Vaughn isn’t here,” she whispers to me. I can just make out her voice over the grating of the wheels. “He’s in Seattle giving a presentation on antibodies.”

The cart stops moving. “Off,” a voice commands, and Cecily lets go of my hand. My arm drops to my side, as heavy and useless as a board. I’m transferred from the gurney to a bed that leaves me propped at an incline. An IV is hooked into my arm, and I wait for the familiar fade of unconsciousness, but it doesn’t come. My eyelids are taped open, but I wouldn’t be able to blink them now if I tried. Before the numbness overtakes me, I can just move my lips enough to get out my sister wife’s name one last time, and she’s there.

Cecily climbs onto the bed and inches behind me so that her knees straddle my body, my back against her stomach. She puts her chin on my shoulder, and suddenly I can feel the heat of her cheeks, can imagine them turning red the way they do when she’s about to cry. It takes me a while to realize that the words she’s whispering over and over are “Be brave.”

The attendants are all gone, except for one who is fiddling with a piece of machinery I am having a hard time seeing. Everything is starting to blur.

A voice booms through the speakers, annoyed and firm. “Off the bed, please, Lady Cecily.”

“Go to hell,” she says.

There’s a whirring noise. Through the blur I see the attendant adjusting a large mechanical arm that comes down from the ceiling. Some sort of needle protrudes from it, as long as my leg.

“Rhine,” Cecily whispers into my ear. “Remember the stories you told me, about the kites?”

The voice in the speaker starts prattling off commands for the attendant with the needle. Adjustments. Fluid levels. Something about video recording and monitors.

“Well, I tried making some out of paper, but they wouldn’t fly. So I was thinking maybe I would ask Linden about ordering some plastic sheets. So the air wouldn’t move straight through them, and maybe they’d fly then.”

She pets my hair, and the voice in the ceiling says, “Keep the subject’s head still.” So she does. She holds my temples in her palms. The attendant reaches over me and draws down some sort of helmet device that will prevent my head from moving—not that I can move anyway. He secures it over my head and locks my chin in with a strap. “Move her back three quarters of an inch,” the voice says. The attendant obliges.

“Is it going to hurt?” Cecily asks. I want to tell her that I can’t feel my body at all, so I doubt it, but I can’t move my tongue to form the words. The attendant doesn’t answer.

“Lady Cecily, if she’s moved during this procedure, she could be blinded. Do you want that?”

She listens this time. She climbs off the bed. “I’m right here with you,” she says while the attendant repositions me as the voice in the ceiling directs.

I try to answer, but I can’t. I try to blink, but I can’t.

Maybe this numbness is an act of mercy. I’ve almost convinced myself that this experiment will be no worse than the others. Until the attendant brings the needle closer to my eye and I realize what’s about to happen.

Whatever they’re using to numb my body is no longer effective at keeping my heart still. It’s pounding in my ears. It’s hard to breathe. Cecily starts up a desperate tangent about kite tails and spring breezes.

I want to scream. I’ve never wanted to scream so badly in my life. I am thousands of wings flapping in a tiny cage. But the sound I make is less than a whimper. My body is useless, miles away, though my mind is still very much awake.

The needle breaks into my pupil. I think I hear the impact. Count. When I dislocated my shoulder, my brother told me to count the seconds as he prepared to snap it back into place. Count, and it won’t be so bad. So I do.

I count forty-five seconds before the needle leaves my eye.

That’s five seconds less than the next needle.

When it’s over, the helmet is removed, the tape pulled from my eyelids. My head drops lifelessly to Cecily’s waiting palm. She is still telling me about what would make a kite fly, as the IV is removed from my arm and I’m transferred to the gurney and wheeled out into the hallway.

“I figured it out eventually,” she says. She’s sitting on the edge of the gurney again; her features slowly materialize as my vision clears. “It’s momentum.”

“What?” I whisper. The feeling is returning to my lips, spreading out to my fingertips and toes.

“Momentum,” she repeats. “You can’t just stand there if you want something to fly. You have to run.”

Vaughn returns, smelling of fresh spring air and the leather interior of the limo—all the places he’s been. I can tell he has stopped to visit me even before changing after his trip from Seattle.

“They tell me you didn’t make a sound during the retinal procedure,” he says, stroking my cheek like I’m some sort of pet. His hand is cool. I don’t tell him that I would have screamed during his procedure if only I’d been able.