you like you’re some kind of freak.”
I frowned at him. “What are you talking about? They stare, they whisper—it’s a full-blown epidemic of gossip, just like it has been since the beginning—”
“Wrong,” Reed said with a little more energy and a slight smile. “Some of that, yeah. But they’re staring at you because they’re teenage boys, and because you’re—”
“What?” I let my voice rise and drew looks. “You’re way off.”
“Not so. You may be my sister—”
“Half-sister,” I corrected.
“—but yeah, I still know. And they’re not looking because they’re gossiping.”
“Awkward,” I said with raised eyebrows. “But thanks for that.”
He shrugged, but wore a smile. “I’m here to help.” His face shifted a little, expression almost pensive. “I never asked you this, but you really didn’t know I was your...?”
I let my face scrunch up to show my incredulity. “How would I have known that? Do you think my mother gave me a lesson in family history?”
“Just curious.” His eyes went back to the teenaged boys in line behind me, and I followed his gaze. All but the one with glasses averted their eyes before we caught them looking. The one with glasses, he didn’t seem to care, staring back at me, absolutely cool. “So you didn’t ever feel like...” Reed let his words trail off.
“Like what?” I tore my eyes away from the teenager in line and looked back to Reed. “Like you were an awkward teenage boy?”
“Hah! No.” He nodded toward the kid again. “You know...like he is towards you, but...towards me? Because you didn’t know?”
A slow dawning came over me. “What? You mean like...” my voice turned hushed, “romantic? Ugh. Awkward much? No. No, never.” I watched his olive skin darken and his brow furrowed. “I mean, nothing personal, you’re a good guy, but—”
“Yeah.” He held up a hand in a dismissive wave. “Friend zone. I got it.”
“You’re my brother, for crying out loud!” I kept my exclamation to a low whisper, but I still drew some swiveled heads.
“Yeah, but you didn’t know that,” he said, and nudged me in the ribs with his elbow. After a minute he grinned, and I shook my head, a smile of my own on my face. “Just needling you. You know, you should probably smile more often, Ms. Squad Leader. Maybe be more approachable. You might end up expanding your circle of friends.”
“I’m good for now, I think. See you in a little bit?”
“I’ll be there,” he promised, and gave me a wave as he turned and walked out of the dormitory.
I watched him go, then turned and caught that teenager and his friends looking at me again. I shook my head and walked to the elevator bank just down the hall and pressed the button, causing a loud ding to sound immediately as one of the elevators opened for me. I stepped inside and pressed the button for the third floor, and waited for the doors to close as I pondered Reed’s words. I had imagined myself to be rumored about in unkind ways, just as I had been a few months ago. It had always been that way for as long as I’d been at the Directorate, since I stood by and let Ariadne and Old Man Winter protect me while Wolfe was slaughtering his way through innocent people to get me to surrender to him.
The thought of people talking badly about me was nothing new, and easily enough dealt with; I had friends to help me cope, after all. The thought of people talking about me in more pleasant terms—for some reason, that bothered me. I had seen people steer away from me in the halls, and I preferred the idea of being feared to the idea of being lusted after. It creeped me out and brought back associations with Wolfe in unfavorable ways.
I felt a stir in the back of my head as the doors dinged open, and I realized it had been almost twenty-four hours since my last dose of chloridamide, the medication that kept my demons in check. Wolfe and Gavrikov were with me, always, and I could feel them through the medication sometimes, moving in the back of my head, like faint voices in an empty room. The chloridamide made it possible to (mostly) ignore them, to shut them away where I didn’t have to deal with them on a constant basis. A couple months ago I had gone a day with a diminished dose to see if I could control them naturally; the increased