“Woodrow. But he wouldn’t do that.”
“Unless he’s the father.”
Vandekamp shook his head. “He had a vasectomy a decade ago.”
“Is he the one who removed me from the dorm?”
“No, that was Tabitha. She said you were a threat to—” He bit off the end of his thought and exhaled slowly. Then his eyes closed.
Tabitha. But that made no sense. She was the one who wouldn’t let “monsters” breed.
Vandekamp twisted on the edge of his desk to pick up his phone. “Tell my wife I need to see her. Now,” he barked into the mouthpiece. Then he slammed the phone back into its cradle.
“Whose—” I cleared my throat and started over, trying to inject strength into my words, though I was no longer sure I actually wanted the answer. “Whose baby am I carrying?”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“The hell it doesn’t. Did you rent me out?”
Instead of answering, he circled his desk to sit in his chair again and began typing on his keyboard.
“You can’t just—”
Hinges squealed behind me. “Willem?” The door swung shut with a thud and a click, and I desperately wished I could turn and see Tabitha Vandekamp’s face.
Her husband stood and gestured toward a guest chair against the wall, but she only stepped into my field of vision and crossed her arms over her tailored gray suit jacket. “I’d rather stand. What’s going on?” Her gaze skipped from her husband to me, where it lingered with a weight I didn’t understand. As if she were silently asking me for something.
“Tabitha, why did you change Delilah’s diet?”
“Because she’s human.” She glanced at her husband again, then her gaze slid back to me, and I felt like I was missing some vital piece of information. Again. “We discussed this.” She turned back to him, and I could no longer tell which of us she was truly talking to. “You’re the one who convinced me she’s not a surrogate. If she’s human, we don’t have the authority to hold her here, but she’s obviously too dangerous to simply let go. So I did what I could for her. A private room. Good food. Fresh air. Exercise.”
Vandekamp crossed his arms over his chest, mirroring her defensive posture. But on him, the pose looked like skepticism. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Tabitha shrugged. “You’ve had your hands full drafting the bill, so I just took care of it.”
The bill?
“So, there’s no other—”
“Why am I still pregnant?” I demanded, tired of watching while he doled out enough rope for her hang herself with.
Tabitha swiveled to face me, her eyes wide with shock and...betrayal? “We had an agreement,” she spat.
“We what?”
Vandekamp sank onto the edge of his desk and crossed his arms over his chest. “Tabitha, what did you do?”
“I turned a thorn in the Spectacle’s paw into an opportunity. Just like you did.” Tabitha turned back to me, expectantly, as Vandekamp stood. “You told him about the pregnancy, but not our agreement?”
“I don’t remember making any agreement. Last week, I woke up missing two months’ worth of memories.”
“You’re missing...?” She turned a fiery gaze on her husband, hands on her narrow hips. “I told you there would be long-term damage. She’s not a cryptid, Willem. You can’t just go plucking things from her brain and expect her mind to remain intact!”
“There’s no way the girls accidentally took two entire months from her memory.” Vandekamp sank onto the edge of his desk again. “That’s not how it works. Someone did this intentionally.”
“Well, I had nothing to do with it,” his wife insisted. “Her memory loss doesn’t benefit me if she doesn’t remember our agreement.”
The truth was that I couldn’t see how my memory loss benefited me either. Had I meant to erase the recollection of whatever deal I’d made with her, or was that another unintended casualty of my mass memory wipe?
“What did you agree to?” I demanded.
“To let the pregnancy continue, of course.” Tabitha frowned at her husband. “Is she paralyzed?” She dug a remote from her pocket and pressed a button over his objections. Feeling returned to my chest and stomach, then spread with a tingling sensation to my limbs, and I exhaled in relief. “You can’t do that. We don’t know what kind of effect that has on the baby.”
“Why do you care?” In my mind, I saw the young nymph Magnolia fall to her knees in the dorm, weak from both her unwanted medical procedure and her brutal loss. “Why protect my baby, when you have all the others terminated?”
“Because the others weren’t babies. They were foals or colts or puppies. Animals that may as well have been born in a barn. You’re different, Delilah.” She pulled the extra guest chair closer and sat in it, putting herself at eye level with me, as if we were going to have a deep, reaffirming girl chat. “You’re human. We’ve had that verified with test after test. We’ve had you examined.”
I’d been examined?
“At first, I couldn’t figure out how that was possible. Then the oracle told me that you were going to have a baby, and I realized that you were given to us, just like the furiae was given to you.”
“She wasn’t given,” Vandekamp insisted. “I caught her myself. She and all the others were payment for the service I provided the Metzgers.”
His wife frowned at him, then turned back to me. “My point is that this is fate. How else can you explain Willem stumbling across a monster who’s one hundred percent human. For all we know, there isn’t another like you in the entire world. And then you got pregnant, just like the oracle said you would, and it all started to make sense.”
“What oracle?” I asked. “Mirela? Lala?”
“No, the middle one. The one who doesn’t talk much.”
“Rommily.” Shit. I closed my eyes and took a couple of deep breaths. “What did she say, exactly? And I mean exactly.”
“I don’t remember the specific words, but she said something about fury. I thought she was talking about anger until Willem told me about your calling.”
“What else?” Vandekamp said from his perch on the edge of his desk.
“She said fate’s bastard. That’s your baby, obviously, since you’re not married.”
No, fate’s bastard was me, not my unborn child. Rommily had called me that before. It meant “orphan.” But I could see her confusion. “What else did she say?”
“Something about a knife. No, a scalpel. And a belly full of blood.”
I groaned, and when Vandekamp’s gaze met mine, I knew he’d come to the same conclusion.
Tabitha was oblivious. “I assume that means you’ll need a cesarean. Which is no big deal, from what I’ve read...” Her words faded into nothing when she noticed that her husband and I were both staring at her. “What?”
“Rommily is broken, for lack of a better term,” I explained. “Death is just about the only thing she can predict.”
Tabitha smoothed her knee-length gray pencil skirt with one hand. “What does that mean?”
“Dr. Hill just sliced open his own stomach with a scalpel after making physical contact with Delilah,” Vandekamp told her. “Rommily wasn’t predicting Delilah’s pregnancy. She was predicting Dr. Hill’s death by self-evisceration.”
Tabitha blinked. Then she blinked again. “No.” She shook her head, and a strand of hair fell from her neat French twist. “That’s a coincidence.” She smoothed her hair back and sat straighter, and I could practically see her pushing a mental reset button. “What matters is that you’re here and you’re pregnant and that is very fortunate for you. If you’d gotten pregnant anywhere else, your baby would be born in chains, even if it turns out to be human, because no one else understands what you really are. But we understand.?
?? She turned to her husband, evidently expecting some sign of affirmation, but he seemed at a loss for words.
“Meaning what? You’re going to save my baby? How? Throw it into foster care?” As horrified as I was by the thought, wasn’t that better than what I could offer the poor child?
But Tabitha only stared at me, and the look in her eyes made my skin crawl. “You really don’t remember, do you?”
“Remember what?” Vandekamp asked.
I did not remember. But suddenly I understood. “You’re infertile.”
Tabitha flinched.
“You can’t have a baby of your own, so you’re going to take mine.”
“Assuming it’s human,” she admitted. “That was the deal. I agreed to safeguard your pregnancy—I gave you vitamins and exercise, and I took you off the menu for full-contact engagements.”
The fact that there was such a roster and the fact that I’d been on it horrified me in equal parts. How often had I been scheduled? How many possibilities were there for my child’s paternity?
“...and you agreed to keep the pregnancy hidden until we know the baby’s species. If it’s human, Willem and I will raise it.”
“Tabitha.” Vandekamp looked dumbfounded and livid.
I shook my head. “I would never agree to that.” Unless she’d given me no choice. What wouldn’t I have agreed to, to keep my baby alive?
But neither of them were looking at me anymore.
“You promised me a baby ten years ago,” she said. “But it’s obvious that this project is your baby, and I need more than that.”
He stood and pulled her to her feet. “Tabitha, this project—the bill, the collars, all of it—is for us. For the baby we’ll have someday.”
“Then you better work fast, because someday’s coming in seven months.”
My teeth refused to unclench, so I spoke through them. “You can’t have my baby.”
She shrugged out of her husband’s grip and turned on me. “You should be grateful. I’m giving your baby a chance at a real life. He’ll have real parents who can give him everything. Who can shower him with love and opportunity. Even if we were to let you keep him, what would you have to offer the poor child? Chains? Scraps of clothing and food?” She turned back to her husband. “If the baby is human, we’re keeping it. You made me a promise, and you’re damn well going to come through, or I will bring all of this crumbling right down on your head.” Her spread arms seemed to indicate the Savage Spectacle, and everything within it.
He exhaled slowly, and I heard resignation in the sound. “When will we know if it’s human?”
“Amniocentesis is risky before the twelfth week, and if the ultrasound is right, she’s just now eight weeks along.”
“She’s had an ultrasound?”
“At six weeks,” Tabitha said, and my head spun. No wonder the basement lab had felt so familiar, even though I had no conscious memory of it. “Everything looked fine, but you can’t tell much that early.”
“Okay,” he said. “Just promise me you won’t get your hopes up until we know for sure.”
Her smile made me want to vomit. “I promise to try.”
It doesn’t matter. Let them think what they want, if that keeps the baby alive. I wouldn’t be at the Spectacle long enough to give birth.
“Who else knows about this?” he asked.
“Just me and Dr. Grantham,” Tabitha said. “And Delilah.”
Dr. Grantham. Not Dr. Hill, of the sliced open belly.
Vandekamp frowned. “Now Michael Pagano knows, as well. Tabitha, if Grantham finds out what Delilah did to Hill, he’ll refuse to treat her.”
“Well then, we won’t tell—”
“Whose is it?” I sounded just as stunned as I felt. “Who’s the father?”
They looked at me. Then they turned back to each other, and the look that passed between them chilled me all the way to my bone marrow.
“You rented me out.” I hadn’t truly believed it until that moment. Despite the evidence occupying my womb, deep down, I’d been convinced that if it had happened, I’d remember on some level. “How many times?”
“Call Dr. Grantham and let’s get another checkup,” Vandekamp said, and I realized he wasn’t going to answer.
“How many possibilities are there?” I demanded, unable to stop my eyes from watering. When no one spoke, I stood. “At least give me a number. What does it matter to you?”
“Sit,” Vandekamp ordered, aiming his remote at me. But Tabitha put her hand over the screen.
“I’m not taking any chances with this baby,” she insisted. “Let’s just try to keep her calm.”
“This isn’t going to work, Tabitha,” Vandekamp said, as if I couldn’t hear them. “We can’t control her without the collar.”
“We have nothing to fear from Delilah, because her furiae has no bone to pick with us.” She was watching me, though she spoke to him, and her infuriatingly calm smile triggered a realization—she’d made sure that I’d never seen either of them personally abuse any of the captives. “Besides that, she cares about the baby.” Tabitha met my gaze. “Sit down, Delilah, and I’ll answer your questions.”
I sat, as much to indulge her sense of security as for the promised answers.
“There was only one client,” she said. “I’m not going to tell you who he was. It doesn’t matter.”
“Does he know about the baby?”
“Of course not. That would complicate things.”
“Wait.” Tension made my shoulders strain against my restraints. “If there was only one client, and he was human, how could the baby possibly be cryptid? Why do you need an amniocentesis?”
She glanced at Vandekamp, and he shrugged as he sat on the edge of his desk again. “You wanted to answer her questions.”
Before he’d known about the baby—before he’d told his wife she could have it—he would have had me dragged back to my cell in excruciating pain rather than voluntarily give me information.
“There’s another possibility for paternity,” Tabitha finally said. “One of the clients was a voyeur. He rented a selection of cryptids and paid extra for the right to...pair them.”
Her words played over and over in my head, but for a few merciful seconds, they meant nothing. Comprehension would not come.
“No,” I said as the brutal understanding finally crashed over me, paralyzing me as surely as my collar ever had. “What the hell gives you the right to play with people’s lives like that? As if locking us up and trotting us out on display wasn’t bad enough, you sick fucks have to double down on horror and abuse, like you invented the concepts. You can’t just rent people out like toys. You can’t pair people off and make them perform for you.”
I closed my eyes, but when I tried to scrub my face with my hands, pain shot through my shoulders. I’d forgotten I was cuffed.
“I didn’t do that,” I insisted, shaking my head firmly. “I wouldn’t do that. Not ever.”
But I had. I could see it in their faces. I’d given up that last piece of myself because if I hadn’t, someone would have taken it.
That’s what I’d been trying to forget when I hid my own memories. It had to be.
But buried secrets have a way of digging themselves up.
Voyeur.
A selection of cryptids.
With a cruel resurgence of horror, I realized I might be the only one at the Spectacle who didn’t know.
“Who was it?” I demanded, my voice as steady as I could make it, while I stared at the floor. I wasn’t ready to hear, but I had to know.
Tabitha sighed, and I could hear her disgust in that one long breath. “It was Gallagher.”
For Immediate Release
Dr. Willem Vandekamp has been granted the world’s firs
t patent for a hormonal suppression technique designed to prevent the metamorphosis of cryptid hybrid shifters...
—from a 2005 press release by the United States Patent and Trademark Office
Delilah
“No.” My vision swam, warping Vandekamp’s office furniture until I could have been looking into the mirror maze at the menagerie. “No. Gallagher would never sacrifice his honor like that, and I wouldn’t either. We wouldn’t... He couldn’t. He swore to protect...”
Understanding hit me like a punch to the gut. “That’s what he was doing, wasn’t he? Protecting me?”
Tabitha shrugged. “My understanding is that if it hadn’t been him, it would have been someone else.”
Gallagher. My sworn champion and best friend, who chafed at the misconception that our relationship was based on anything as trivial and fleeting as physical attraction, might be the father of a baby neither of us ever meant to have. A child that could be human or fear dearg or some unprecedented combination of the two.
“I don’t...” I closed my eyes, trying to block the Vandekamps out. I wanted nothing else in the world but to be alone. To process my shock and trauma away from cruel mouths and prying eyes.
“We’ll know how to proceed in a month,” Tabitha said in a tone that fell horrifically short of the comfort she obviously thought she was providing. Protecting my baby in case it was human didn’t absolve her of her willingness to kill that same child if Gallagher turned out to be the father.
I opened my eyes, and all I could think about was how badly I wanted to claw their eyes out and spit on their corpses, and how little help the furiae would be in that endeavor.
“I want the test. Now.” I hadn’t even known what I was going to say until the words were out, and I didn’t realize I meant them until I heard them. “The amniocentesis.”
“But there’s a risk for the baby,” Tabitha protested.
“Life is a risk for this baby.”
“What’s the biggest risk from amniocentesis? Miscarriage?” Vandekamp asked. Tabitha nodded. “What’s the risk? Give me the numbers.”