The Seeker - Isobelle Carmody [48]
I glanced around, wondering where Madam Vega had gone. I noticed an enormous and very fine portrait of a woman hanging in a small alcove. I felt instantly repelled by the painted face, which seemed cruel and cold to me.
“I see you are looking at my dear grandmama,” said the doctor. He gazed at the painting for a long moment, and several emotions flickered over his face: fear, awe, confusion. “Her name was Marisa,” he whispered.
I saw the chance to ingratiate myself. “She is beautiful,” I said admiringly, though I thought the face too sharp and cold for beauty. But she was handsome, and there was a fiery gleaming intelligence in the eyes. Yellow eyes, I noticed.
“She was beautiful,” said the doctor. “It was such a shame she had to die.”
This was such an odd thing to say that I turned to look at him, but the doctor had discovered a pencil at last. “Elspeth Gordie, wasn’t it?”
I nodded, and he bent over a scrap of parchment and scribed laboriously, muttering, “Misfits are not always what they appear to be, you know. Often there are more demons that the treatment reveals. Do you know I once treated a girl who harbored amazing demons? Selmar was her name. Once I had forced the demons to reveal themselves, I was able to offer treatments that rendered her quite docile in the end. Presently, I am treating another who may be hiding demons.”
The only demons you find in people’s minds are the ones you put there with your treatments, I thought, all amusement at his foolish smile and dithering manner swallowed up in a surge of outrage at the knowledge that he was talking about Cameo. I looked at my feet, afraid the cold hatred of my heart would show in my eyes.
“Doctor, I do not think you should discuss such matters with a Misfit,” said a voice as rich and smooth as undiluted honey.
“Alexi,” said the doctor, looking over my shoulder with a flustered, almost guilty expression. I turned slowly and there stood a tall, beautiful man with shining white hair. His skin was pale and soft like that of a child, and his eyes were the coldest and darkest I had ever seen. As he stepped closer, I stood up, fighting an overpowering urge to back away.
“Of course, you’re right. I was forgetting,” said the doctor, talking too quickly, getting to his feet as well. He seemed afraid of the other man. Alexi flicked his unsettling eyes over me.
“Alexi is my assistant,” the doctor said, and I fought the impulse to gape. “Would you like to examine her, Alexi? The tainted water may have acted as a catalyst—”
“I am sick of this,” Alexi snarled, cutting the doctor off. “I have no use for yet another dreamer. Get rid of her. Where is Vega?” he asked imperiously.
The doctor looked around vaguely. “She was here … a moment ago,” he said.
The other man turned his shadow-dark eyes on me. The irises seemed to be much larger than usual, with very little white visible around them. “Well, sit down. I might as well see if there is any use in you.”
I sat down again, and Alexi sat in the chair vacated by the doctor.
“Her name is Elspeth,” bleated the doctor, hovering nervously behind him.
Alexi ignored him and fixed me in his frigid black stare. “Your family were seditioners?” he asked.
I did not know if he was asking or telling me, so I nodded slightly.
“They were burned by the Herders?”
I nodded again, aware that he must have read my record, too.
“You dream true?” he asked.
“Sometimes,” I said, but my voice came out as a croak.
“Are you able to know what people feel or think before they tell you?” he asked.
My heart almost stopped, but I managed to shake my head.
“Can you sometimes sense things that have happened before, in rooms or … or from an object?”
I shook my head again.
“What was the crime of your parents?” he asked. “For what were they charged?”
“Sedition,” I said.
Without warning, he leapt to his feet, knocking the chair he had been sitting