She looked surprised for a second, then shrugged. “My laundry’s in the closet,” she said dismissively, looking at sheet music on an ornate stand. “You can make my bed, dust, or whatever. Just be quiet and don’t disturb me.”
My fingers instinctively felt for my gun and of course found a dust cloth instead. I pressed my lips together hard and managed to nod. My blood was boiling. This kid was obviously brought up to be a princess. Back in my cell, there were no princesses. The fanciest person there was Provost Allen. This house made him look like a beggar.
She ignored me as she bent her head to her fiddle and began playing. After twenty seconds I realized this was a whole other level than the fiddle playing I knew back home. It was unlike anything I’d ever heard. It was like—like if a river or a tree or a rock or something could cry. If it could wail in despair, it would make sounds like this. I guess that sounds pretty stupid.
I did actually dust, but I also noted there was only one door in and out, that the three windows opened onto tiny balconies and were three stories up, that there were a million hiding places and another million things that could be used as weapons. The windows looked out onto what seemed like a main street, four lanes wide and full of cars from the fancy car factory.
I tried not to listen to the sad, wailing music as I moved around the room, dusting, neatening, tidying. It was like I’d died and been forced to come back as Careful Cassie, atoning for my messy ways.
In the closet, which was as big as my bedroom back home, I collected the clothes strewn on the floor, and subtly tapped all the walls, listening for a fake front or hidden exit. Nothing.
The bathroom was all mirrors, white and gold. My head was spinning by now and I moved like an automaton back into the bedroom. Almost one entire wall was bookcases, with cupboards beneath. Her own bookcases in her own room, filled with hundreds of books, like she was a library.
I’d never been a great student, except for Unexpected Kill class, but suddenly I felt hungry for books. I mean, I’d loved story time in my younger grades. As I dusted, titles caught my eyes—some were fantasies, some sounded like romances—there was a whole encyclopedia with twenty-seven volumes! If she left, I could go crazy and look at all this!
“What are you doing?” Her voice was accusing.
“Nothing,” I answered, remembering just in time, “Miss Mia. Just dusting.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Just keep your eyes on your job, you hear me?”
I nodded, attempting to look bland and maidlike. Oh, I thought, I’m going to enjoy wrecking your life. And I’m gonna steal your books, too.
88
CASSIE
TURNS OUT, IF YOU STOP blood from leaking out of your body, you feel better. My shoulder still hurt like crazy, but I felt less like the walking dead.
“How’re you feeling?” Tim asked, coming up behind me so silently that I almost screamed.
I whacked the side of his leg. “Quit sneaking up on me!” I snapped. “You’re lucky I wasn’t holding a loaded gun!”
“Speaking of loaded guns,” he said, “it seems that looters did get most of them. I found this one in the back storage room.” He patted the rifle he’d used on the wild dogs the night before.
“Okay,” I said. “We can do one last thorough sweep before we go, see if we can find one or two more.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, pulling yet more stuff out of his backpack. “I also found more old paper maps—thought we might figure out where we are, where we need to go.”
“Good thinking,” I said, and he looked gratified.
At one of the dust-covered counters I found store receipts with the store’s address printed on them: 2700 CABELA DRIVE, MOLINE, ILLINOIS.
“Look for Moline, Illinois,” I told him.
He found it. “But who cares where we are if we don’t know where we’re going? The files said the capital, but we don’t know if it has any other name.”
“We should head for the biggest cell we can find,” I suggested.
“Cells aren’t marked on this map,” he said with exaggerated patience. “Cells didn’t exist back then.”
“You know what I mean,” I said, embarrassed to be caught in such a dumb mistake.
“Our best bet is to keep heading east,” he went on. “There’s a big city called Chicago there. Maybe it still exists and maybe someone there can tell us where to find the capital.”
I nodded. “Let’s load up. Meet you in thirty.”
Half an hour later he came to the broken third-floor window where we’d first come in.