Page 2 of Bought for Blood

I’m six from the front. I roll my shoulders, feel the cuffs shift against my wrist bones. The runes flare brighter, then dim back to a steady burn. Under it, my glamour’s still there; thinner than it’s ever been, but there. I reach for it, just to check. It shifts slightly, but not enough.

Three ahead of me. Then two. The tubes fill dark, capped and racked.

Monday’s rhythm is precise. Snap, swab, stick, tape, fill, cap. Thirty seconds per arm. She spends longer on me—always has. Three tubes where the others get one. Red caps on mine instead of clear. More blood. More of whatever’s in my blood that put me in this ward instead of a worse one.

Worse…

I suppress a shudder, thinking of the place I came from. Where they might have Grace.

Please let her be out of there…

The stool scrapes back, and my wolf lifts her head. It’s the smell that gets her, not the sound. The woman ahead of me stands up too fast and sways. The scent of her blood hits me through the taped cotton, thin and metallic. My wolf sharpens for one second, then the cuffs flare and push her back down.

Easy. Take it easy.

She settles. She always settles. But she settles slower each time, and I don’t know what that means yet.

One. My turn.

I step up, palm on the steel table. The steel’s cold enough to hurt, and I let it. I don’t flinch. Flinching gets you noticed. I turn my forearm, scars silvery against my skin. Monday positions the needle. The stick hurts, sharp and quick. I don’t let it show.

The first tube fills. I go back to counting rivets.

Forty-one to the weld.

By the second tube, the cold’s climbed past my knees. By the third, my hands have gone numb; I have to look down to make sure they’re there. The count gets harder to hold onto than it was a minute ago.

Monday caps the last tube, presses a cotton square into the crook of my arm, folds my elbow closed over it, and tapes it down. She’s already reaching for the rack before I’m off the stool.Behind me, the new girl takes my place. She doesn’t make a sound.

Quick learner.

I move more slowly this time. I’ve learned that much. The line thins at both ends, those with drawn arms filing back toward the cells. I file with them, one hand close to the wall in case my legs give out.

The young guard falls in step beside me halfway down the aisle. He chews the inside of his cheek, over and over. Bored, same as always.

“Big day for you, princess.” He’s smirking. “Something special lined up for you girls.”

Don’t ask. Don’t give him that.

I don’t look up. “That so?”

“I’m serious.” He leans in, drops his voice. “Real special. You’ll see.”

“Good for me.”

“You could at least look excited.”

“I’ll get right on that.”

He laughs, short and mean, and doesn’t say anything else about it. He waits a beat. Hoping I’ll ask. I don’t.

He peels off toward the station, hands in his pockets, already scanning the line for somebody who’ll flinch.

We pass cell seven, and the air changes. It always does here…a warmth under the disinfectant; something scorched and sweet that the industrial cleaners have never quite reached. My wolf lifts toward it, even at her lowest, even with the cuffs burning. She doesn’t lift toward anything else anymore.

She’s there. Her back against our shared wall, knees drawn up, flame-red hair catching the light that reaches this far corner of the ward. She’s never in the line. Nobody walks her to the draw table; whatever they take from her, they take behind that door, and the door is thicker than ours. The guards swing wide aroundit, boots angling away before they’re even close. The cuffs and the wards fit her the same as us. But they reinforced her cell anyway; extra plating over the door, in case the first ones weren’t enough.

Her head comes up as I pass. Gold-ringed eyes, lit from somewhere the fluorescents can’t account for. They go to the cotton taped in my elbow, then to my face. I tip my chin, barely. She tips hers back.