Free House Immortal by Devon Monk

starlight.
    â€œI just mean you’re something of a celebrity, aren’t you?”
    â€œYes. All of us are. Except you.” He said it as if I would fill in my story, tell him how I’d been made and why I’d been hiding out all these years. I had no intention of telling him anything more about me.
    â€œSo, there’s more than one of you . . . of galvanized?” I latched onto safer ground in the conversation.
    â€œTwelve.” He held my gaze. “Thirteen now.”
    â€œI don’t count myself as galvanized.” I reached out with a large glob of jelly on my fingertips. “Lots of people go under a doctor’s needle and thread. I’m just like anyone else who’s been mended. This might hurt a bit.”
    â€œIt won’t,” he said. “Nothing does.”
    I didn’t care how tough he talked. This was going to sting.
    I slathered the jelly against his wound carefully but firmly enough that it would hold to his skin and sink in between the stitches.
    He pushed back and up out of that chair like I’d set him on fire. Took three steps away and pressed one wide palm over the stitches.
    â€œWhat is that?”
    â€œJelly,” I said, slow enough for a three-year-old.
    I held up the jar again, and the scent of licorice and lemon that masked the heavy antiseptic tang wafted through the air.
    â€œI felt it.”
    I raised my eyebrows. “Right. I told you it would sting.”
    He looked over at Neds. “I
felt
it,” he repeated.
    â€œMaybe if you didn’t have a breezeway open to your spine, you wouldn’t,” Left Ned said.
    â€œYou do not understand.” He took those same three steps back to me.
    I stood up from the stool because I wasn’t the kind of gal who took a direct confrontation sitting down.
    â€œGalvanized don’t feel pain or pleasure.”
    He pressed his thumb down to the last knuckle into his wound until blood oozed out. He didn’t wince, his pupils didn’t dilate, his breathing didn’t change. He was either a very good actor or he really didn’t feel that wound.
    â€œStop that.” I slapped his hands away from the cut. He sucked in a quick breath. “You’re wasting jelly and making the cut worse.”
    He caught at my hand, held it as if my touch was infecting him with sensation. “What are you doing?” This time he sounded genuinely spooked. “What are you doing to me? How are you doing this to me?”
    â€œI am trying to bandage your injury. And you are the worst patient I’ve ever tended.”
    Neds snorted.
    â€œSo how about you hold still for a straight sixty and stop getting in my way?”
    â€œWhat are you?” he asked.
    Funny; not too long ago, he’d been pretty certain what I was.
    â€œIrritated,” I said, “so hush and let me work.”
    He hushed and stood still.
    I finished with the jelly while he stayed on his feet, then tied the wraps back in place, doing my best not to actually come in contact with his skin. Every time I did, he flinched and his breathing changed. It was worrisome.
    â€œYou still haven’t told me who started this,” I said, giving the cloth one last tug. “Who told you my father was alive?”
    The sound of engines seared across the sky.
    It had been years since a drone flew over, and just today I’d heard two.
    Also worrisome.
    Abraham’s cinnamon gaze shifted across the smooth white of the ceiling as if he could track the aircraft through it.
    â€œDevil rut ’em,” Right Ned whispered. “Tilly, you and I should talk.”
    â€œAre those drones looking for my home?” I asked calmly as I screwed the lid back on the jar. My heart was beating too hard. “Are they looking for my father?”
    â€œYes.” He drew his eyes down from the ceiling andheld my gaze. Not panicked—he was waiting for me to make a decision.
    â€œDid you send