All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund [4]
“Thanks, Cee,” Fiona said, and tugged on her stockings. How could something so tight fit so poorly?
“Thanks,” Eliot murmured. He sat and dragged a bowl closer, grimacing.
Fiona shot him a look. Cee did try. It wasn’t her fault she no longer had a sense of smell or taste.
Eliot stirred the mixture in front of him in an attempt to make it palatable.
She pulled a bowl closer as well and segregated the inedible bits from the stuff that looked like it could be choked down.
Sometimes having a severed and only partially repaired appetite had its advantages.
Fiona spooned the lumps into her mouth. It tasted like sawdust . . . but then almost everything did these days. She knew she had to force herself to eat, or she’d faint from malnutrition.
So she chewed until the oatmeal could be swallowed without gagging.
In fact, if she didn’t force herself to feel something, she didn’t feel much of anything. That was because when she’d cut her appetite to save herself from those addictive Infernal chocolates . . . she cut deeper . . . cut part of the connection to her emotions. Like what she felt for Robert. It was so unclear. Did she really miss him? Or had it been some crush brought on by their shared adventures this summer?
No, there was something there.
It was complicated, because she was now part of the League of Immortals, and Robert had just been fired by the League. Fired meaning that some Immortals had a grudge against him, and if they ever saw him, it might be the end of his life.
How could she be with someone who was endangered by her very presence?
She watched Eliot struggle with his oatmeal, his face contorting through various shades of discomfort and strangulation as he swallowed. She did feel some tiny punitive pleasure from that.
Vermiform locomotion borne, huh? She tried to smooth her stockings again, but it was hopeless. Her legs did look like two wrinkled worms.
Outside, fog covered the sun. The golden light tinged iron gray, and the temperature in the room dropped.
Audrey descended the spiral staircase that led to her office. She joined them at the table.
She wore faded jeans, chamois soft boots, and a deep blue silk blouse that matched the color of San Francisco Bay. Diamond studs adorned her earlobes and flashed cold rainbows upon her throat and slicked-back silver hair. She carried a slender briefcase. She was the picture of grace and understated elegance, and looked perfectly at ease in their new surroundings.
But it wasn’t only the new clothes that made Audrey look different today.
When Fiona came back from her summer vacation, this woman was no longer the “grandmother” she had known for the last fifteen years. That masquerade was over. She was her mother now and the goddess Atropos, and both titles seems equally perplexing to Fiona.
“Good morning, Audrey,” Fiona said. She couldn’t call her Grandmother anymore, and the word Mother caught in her throat, so Fiona had settled on Audrey.
“Good morning,” Eliot echoed.
“Good morning, children,” Audrey replied. She poked carbonized bacon with a fork and then decided to pour herself a glass of juice. “I’ve ordered the books you’ll need for Paxington . . . assuming you do well enough on the entrance examinations today. I have every confidence that you will.”
If she had every confidence, then why even mention it?
Those books—which would join the thousands and thousands already here—had to be ordered because many of their books had pages crossed out to the point of unreadability. Those were the books on mythologies, legends and folklores, ghost stories, tales of demons and gods—all omitted because their mother had the notion that she could hide Fiona and Eliot from the truth . . . and hide the truth from them.
“I guess . . . ,” Eliot started, but his voice died. He swallowed and tried again. “I guess that means Rule Fifty-five doesn’t apply anymore?”
Rule 55 was one of the 106 household rules that governed every aspect of Fiona’s and her brother’s lives. It was the “nothing made up” rule.
RULE 55: No books, comics, films, or other media of the science