resecure the wall and gate before I interrogate him.” She didn’t look at me as she said, “Thank you, Sallie. That will be all.”
I tried to read her face, to see if she was pleased with me. Then she turned away and strode over to the steel door to begin whatever spells she was going to cast.
Was this some sort of a test? I wondered, my stomach dropping little by little. And did I fail?
“Come on now, girl,” Mr. Jameson said, starting back toward the church. And as every eye in Elysium turned toward me, I had no choice but to follow.
The rest of the day dragged by agonizingly slowly. I rearranged things in my new room, putting away dusty flour-sack dresses and worn boots, moving furniture, opening the curtains and closing them and opening them again.
After lunch (chipped beef on toast—“shit on a shingle,” as Papa used to call it) was brought up to me by a dour, disapproving-looking woman named Mrs. Winthrop, I decided to take a walk, unable to stand the crampedness and the boredom anymore. I went out into the streets of Elysium as the sun was setting.
My eyes kept drifting over to the jail, where Asa Skander was being kept. Mindlessly, I reached into my pocket and fished out the quarter he’d tossed me and looked at it for the first time.
It was a simple enough quarter, worthless now, stained on the back with something that might have been blood. But then I flipped it over to the heads side and I saw something that made my heart leap to my mouth and stay there, speeding.
The date on the quarter was 1944. Nine years after our world ended.
This quarter had been made somewhere else—somewhere that still existed beyond the desert.
“Oh my God…” I breathed. I had to tell Mr. Jameson… or, better yet, Mother Morevna.
I ran toward the jail, slipping through the shadows, hoping to catch her. But when I reached the jail, two guards blocked my way.
“Mother Morevna’s already gone,” one of them said. “Says he’s good to go as soon as we get him some lodgings.”
“Oh.” I fumbled with the quarter, then, thinking quickly: “She just had a couple of minor questions for Mr. Skander. She sent me down to… er… try my hand at interrogation.”
The guards exchanged glances, wondering whether or not to believe me.
“Unless you doubt her word?” I added.
“Oh, no, of course not,” said the guards, deciding they better not risk it. The shorter guard pushed the door open and held it for me. “Keep it short, though,” he said. “We gotta be getting on home.” And the door shut behind me.
The jail was small and dusty, with slightly crooked, framed daguerreotypes on the walls. There was only one cell. Inside, on a cot, sat Asa Skander. He grinned brightly when I came in.
“Ah, Miss Wilkerson,” he said. “I didn’t expect you back this evening.” He gestured to a stool outside the cell, where Mother Morevna must have sat during the interrogation.
I sat down, my limbs too long for the short stool. Across from me, Asa Skander sat, one leg propped up on his other knee, as though his cell were a comfortable living room and I was a guest he’d invited over for tea. But the strangeness was still there, and the hairs on my arms had already begun to stand on end.
“So,” he said. “To what do I owe this visit, my lovely benefactor?”
Taking a deep breath, I opened my palm and let the quarter shine in the dim light, heads up.
“Where did you get this?” I asked.
“Oh, that old thing?” Asa said. “I just… picked it up on the journey. I’m like a magpie, you know, always picking up shiny things.”
I focused on him, tried as hard as I could, but I could feel no deception.
“But the world outside the desert,” I said. “It still exists, then? We’re not the only ones?”
“I assume so,” he said. “To me this world seems like… like a cake under a glass dome. Separate, protected. It would have to be so the Game could happen, wouldn’t it?” He blinked. “All conjecture, of course. I don’t know.”
I frowned. I hadn’t felt anything different from his usual strangeness. He was being truthful.
“Look,” I said. “If you are from outside the desert, Chicago or whatever since before the Game began, tell me. I’ll keep your secret as long as you’re not dangerous or anything. But I’ve got to know: What is happening? Is the