Free Dark Metropolis by Jaclyn Dolamore Page B

when the guard could easily overwhelm her.
    “You didn’t say a single thing I told you to say,” Valkenrath whispered as they led her back into the depths.
    “Why would I?”
    “I could make your life much worse.”
    “So Freddy brings us back from the dead, but he doesn’t know anything about it afterward,” she said softly.
    “I’ll tell him the truth someday,” Valkenrath said. “When he’s old enough to understand why we do it.”
    “Why do you do it?”
    “For the good of the city, Miss Davies. But I don’t expect a troubled, suicidal girl to understand.” They had stopped walking, and he pulled off the blindfold. They were back in the room where she’d changed out of her work suit. A nurse was waiting, with as much animation in her face as a coatrack, and he nodded at her.
    “I wasn’t suicidal.”
    “I wonder why you poisoned yourself, then.” He turned away from her, opening a cabinet. “Why you chose to die alone in some squalid alley.”
    The fire inside her was white-hot. He could lie all day, but she knew her own essence. She knew she had never been troubled and suicidal. She didn’t have to remember to know. “I would never do such a thing. If you take all my memories, you can tell me anything, but you can’t make me believe it.”
    “You’re sharper than most.” He watched the nurse prepare a syringe. “There’s something special about you. I do sense it. You were probably quite a charming girl in your life before. Used to getting your way. But trust me. You just haven’t been here long enough.”
    “This is ready, sir,” the nurse said.
    Valkenrath’s eyes indicated the guard should restrain Nan again, holding one pale arm out for the syringe. Her throat tightened, and she had to force herself not to struggle and fight, knowing it would only make things worse.
    “Over time,” Valkenrath said, “you will believe anything.”
    The needle entered her skin.
     

O n Thursday morning, Thea changed into a day dress to try to catch Father Gruneman at his breakfast table. After the other night, she was nervous to see him again, but if he knew anything more about what had happened to her father, she owed it to her mother to find out.
    When her father was alive, the whole family used to have dinner with Father Gruneman on occasion, but it had been so many years ago. In her childhood memories, his house was practically a mansion, but in reality it was a cottage, with a steeply pitched roof and two dormer windows. The walls were weathered, the roof patched. Like the church, it was a remnant of an earlier age when the city had not yet spread this far.
    She rapped on the door.
    Father Gruneman opened it promptly. “Thea,” he said. He was still…friendly, but not as easy with her as before. “I wondered when I’d see you. I just heard about your mother being taken away.”
    “I need to talk to you.”
    He glanced at the street behind her before motioning her in. His windows were all curtained, even though the sun was up. The house was furnished with sturdy wooden furniture, the kind that would be passed down through generations, and there were piles of dusty books. It should have seemed comfortable and lived in, but the pent-up darkness was uninviting.
    “Would you like some eggs?” he offered. “A glass of milk?”
    “I’m not hungry, really,” she said. “But don’t let me stop you from eating breakfast.”
    He briefly shook his head and motioned for her to take a chair. “I had no idea you were working at the Telephone Club.”
    “It’s a good job,” she said, trying not to sound too defensive.
    “For a young woman, I suppose. But where do you go from there? I hate that you left school for your mother’s sake.”
    “Well, I had to do something. The veteran’s widow checks aren’t even enough for the rent, and the savings are long gone.” She looked at him carefully, almost expecting to see a stranger, but it was still her Father Gruneman, with gentle eyes.