limp.
“She’s just so
Cass gaped at Mary. Despite her beatific smile, the effect fell far short of kindliness. She had the crafty look of someone with an unspoken agenda.
“I didn’t mean to worry you,” Mary added. “You and David looked like you needed your rest, and Ruthie didn’t seem to mind when I picked her up, so we were just walking up and down the hall together. I’m Mary Vane, of course,” she added, offering her hand for Cass to shake.
Dor stumbled into the hall, rubbing his hair with one hand. “Everything okay?”
“Certainly. Why wouldn’t it be?” Mary turned her wide smile on him. A tenuous grasp on reality, a zealot’s single-mindedness: these words came to mind. She wasn’t so different from Evangeline-but in her way, she was more frightening. Evangeline’s anger made her predictable; you knew she would seize every opportunity for cruelties small and large. But Mary’s changeable veneer could be concealing anything.
The mask Dor had assumed last night with Kaufman slipped back in place. “Nice joint you’re running here.”
“Thank you. I’m here with good news. What are the odds,” Mary said, drawing out her words, savoring them. “Your daughter-and Cass-
The look on Mary’s face was calculating and intelligent, crafty and more than a little manic. Dor stepped subtly closer, putting his body between the two women.
“They told me Ruthie had a…strong reaction to the tests,” she continued. “I’m devastated, just utterly devastated, to think that we caused her any anxiety. But of course I wanted to see her for myself. She’s our youngest yet, you know-our youngest outlier.” She looked at Ruthie with something like hunger, and Cass edged closer to Dor, holding Ruthie tightly.
Mary’s gaze traveled over Cass: her face, her arms, lingering on the faint traces of the scars left over from bite wounds along her forearms. Cass felt her skin prickle and tingle under Mary’s scrutiny.
“Evangeline told me something very interesting,” she continued. “She says you were attacked by Beaters. Last summer. That you actually survived. I can’t tell you what this means, to our research, to our development program…”
Cass sucked in her breath. There was only one way Evangeline could have found out-by bribing or torturing the information from Cass’s only friend at the library. Elaine had helped her, had promised to keep her secrets. But how long would she have been able to keep them once Evangeline started pressuring her to tell?
Mary reached out a thin and bony hand, the nails chewed to red-rimmed scabs, and touched Cass’s skin so gently that the hairs tickled. It was all she could do not to jerk her arm away as she told a partial truth. “I don’t remember what happened to me.”
“Mmmm,” Mary hummed, and her hand slowly closed around Cass’s arm, tightening her grip until her knuckles went white. She lifted Cass’s wrist and stared at the pale soft underside, her nostrils flaring as though she was trying to
“I understand you were asking about the medical facility, David.”
Dor’s only reaction was a slight twitch of one eyebrow.
“Were you employed in a medical field, before? A physician perhaps?”
“No, sorry. I…sold computers, though. Had a few hospitals for clients.”
“Oh, I see. Well, as you might imagine, we do not have a great need for technical computer workers. Construction, yes. I don’t suppose you know masonry? Glazing?”
Dor shrugged. “I’m handy. I’m sure I can learn.”
“Mmmm.” She gave him a long look before turning her attention to Cass. “You, on the other hand, will be spending lots of time in the Tapp Clinic.”
Cass kept her expression neutral. “Whatever I can do to help.”
“That’s what we like to hear.” Mary’s smile widened. “Tell you what. How about you and I take a quick trip over there right now-just us girls. We can leave Ruthie here with her daddy, get you back in time for dinner. I’d love to show you around the facility myself-I hope you’ll forgive me a little bragging, but I’m just so darn proud of what we’ve accomplished so far.”
“We’ve already seen some of it, when we had the blood test yesterday.”
“Oh.” Was it Cass’s imagination, or did Mary’s smile slip a little? “Okay. Yes. The blood test. It’s too bad that…” She sighed, and for a second she looked petulant, like a spoiled child denied an audience. “They didn’t show you the operating arena yet, did they? The patient rooms?”
“Uh…no…”
“Good! Because I want to show you those myself.” Mary’s good humor was instantly restored. “It was my idea, you know, using that building for the clinic. I modeled it after some of the World War I hospitals. It was really amazing, you’d have soldiers laid out in hotel lobbies and-oh, but we can talk about it on the way.”
“Sure…great.”
Cass avoided Mary’s eyes. She was picking up on things she didn’t like, things that set off her internal alarms. Cass, who had learned to read her mother’s expressions and her stepfather’s moods as a survival skill, who had listened to a hundred tortured souls baring their deepest secrets in church basements, was far more sensitive than most people to the subtleties of human exchanges. She was picking up something disturbing about Mary, a need for attention bordering on narcissism, a near-manic changeability of her energy. Occasionally, there was someone like this in a meeting, though they never lasted long. Their need for attention was never sated in the anonymous gatherings, which focused on the steps rather than the individuals.
She gave Ruthie a quick kiss and-since Mary was watching-kissed Dor, as well. Her lips brushed his cheek, warm and rough with stubble. The kiss caught him off guard; she had already moved away from him when he caught her arm and pulled her back.
For a moment she thought he was going to chastise her, question her-but instead he kissed her again, a real kiss, his mouth hot on hers, claiming her, tasting her. Before she could think she was kissing him back, a rush of sensation and need that ended too quickly when he broke from her and murmured against her ear. “Be careful,” he whispered, and then he released her.
Cass put her hand to her mouth, breathless. It had been a physical response-nothing more; synapses conditioned to fire in response to stimuli, and yet as they left the room Cass couldn’t help turning to watch the man she barely knew cradling her daughter and staring at her with an expression as indecipherable as it was intense.
26
THIS TIME, THERE WAS NO ONE LYING ON THE table in the operating room. There was no one there at all, except for a young ponytailed man who was setting out instruments in neat rows on a table.
“We use kaysev-based alcohol to sterilize our instruments,” Mary said conversationally. Any traces of her earlier moodiness, of the manic scrutiny, had disappeared when they began the tour. Mary pointed out each feature of the clinic as though she alone had been responsible for creating it. “And we use it as an antiseptic, too. It’s remarkably effective. We have a whole team looking into new ways of preparing and using kaysev. They’re working next door-know what I named that building?”
“Um, no…”
“The Carver Lab, after George Washington Carver. You know, the peanut guy? He invented more than a hundred different products-all from peanuts.”
“Really?” Cass remembered Carver from a grade school song they’d had to sing about him, but she feigned ignorance. Mary craved recognition, and letting her be the expert seemed like it couldn’t hurt. “Like what?”
“Well, a lot of food products of course, and cosmetics and medicinal applications. But what you don’t hear much
