The Hunt - Megan Shepherd Page 0,90

more pain.

What about everything she had learned?

What about proving their worth?

“Little rabbits are no use if they’re dead,” a familiar voice said.

Anya.

Cora dried her face on her arm and told herself to breathe. To count to ten. Leon and Anya were ahead, somewhere. By now, Leon would be halfway to that deranged dollhouse to rescue Nok and Rolf. But once word got out that Cassian had been arrested, the Council would surely suspect Serassi too. Leon might be walking straight into a trap.

“Follow the trail of bread crumbs,” Anya’s voice said. “You’ll find us.”

Bread crumbs?

And then Cora noticed another mark at the corner of the tunnel. A dollhouse, with an arrow.

Anya was telling her to follow Leon’s markings.

Cora started to crawl faster.

Cassian had told her now was the time to give up, but there were some people she could never give up on. She crawled onward and hoped she wasn’t too late.

37

Rolf

ROLF CHECKED THE DOLLHOUSE’S typewriter for the hundredth time. Nothing.

He paced the upstairs hallway, past the photographs Serassi had hung on the walls of herself with the baby. The smell of meat loaf wafted up from the kitchen, where Nok was microwaving their dinner.

He started down the hall, glancing out through the missing wall at the seating area. Empty, for now. He and Nok had developed a routine. The moment Serassi and the other observers were gone, they would take turns racing upstairs to see if Cora had left them a note on the typewriter.

It had been seven days since he’d last seen her, and no word.

“Nok?” he called, heading for the stairs. “When you saw her, are you sure she didn’t say anything else?” He passed the nursery, glancing into it by habit, but caught sight of a shadow and stopped.

Cautiously, he approached the darkened room. His hand went by instinct toward the light switch, but something made him pause.

It wasn’t a shadow.

A figure loomed over the crib. Nearly seven feet tall, hair slicked back in a tight knot, gazing down at the empty bedding.

Serassi.

She must have heard him calling to Nok, but she certainly didn’t seem to care. What was she even doing here? She’d never snuck around the house before without their knowledge . . . at least not that they knew.

His hand fell away from the light switch.

He started to tiptoe backward, but then Serassi turned toward the window and he caught sight of something in her arms. It was wrapped in a soft blanket like a baby, but it wasn’t moving. A glimpse of a tiny plastic hand caught the light.

A baby doll.

“Go to sleep,” Serassi whispered flatly, in a poor imitation of singing. “Go to sleep, little sugary baby. . . .”

Rolf practically ran back downstairs, stumbling over his own feet. When he appeared, disheveled and out of breath, in the kitchen, Nok raised a questioning eyebrow.

“Serassi’s in the nursery,” he breathed. “I don’t think it’s the research that has her fascinated anymore. I think . . . I think she wants a baby of her own.”

The microwave dinged, and Nok jumped.

“I told you we have to get out of here,” she whispered. “Still no message from Cora?”

He shook his head. “A million things could have gone wrong. It might just be you and me, and in that case—”

Clipped footsteps sounded on the stairs, and they instantly snapped into their well-rehearsed roles. Nok, smiling, setting out the dinner plates. Rolf opening a drawer for napkins. “I just remembered something my grandmother in Oslo used to say about a home remedy for how to get newborns to sleep,” he said loudly. “It involved pickled beet juice. . . .”

Serassi darkened the kitchen doorway. Rolf turned, feigning surprise. “Oh! I didn’t know you were here. We were just sitting down to dinner—would you like to join us—”

Serassi held up a notebook.

Nok’s face went immediately white, though it took Rolf a second to recognize the notebook. It was Nok’s, the one she hid beneath the cushion of the rocking chair in the nursery and only brought out when the researchers were gone. It was where she wrote down all the lies they made up about baby care, meticulously documenting everything in case Serassi or the other researchers were to ask about something again, and they’d need to keep the answers straight.

Rolf glanced at Nok. She was usually so quick with a lie, but now her face was slack, her lips slightly parted in fear.

“Oh, you found my journal.” He stood quickly. “I’m glad. I thought I