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“You do understand what would happen if you told anyone?”
Eliana nodded. She thought of a scandal that had broken when she was a little girl—no, not a scandal, exactly, but a news story, something her parents had talked about at di
The cyborg had been deported, kicked back to Japan where it had come from. But she remembered people saying it should have been dismantled, that it was u
Lady Luna was staring at her.
“Why did you come here?” Eliana asked.
Lady Luna blinked. “I don’t know. I couldn’t stand the thought of going home.” She pressed her hand to her mouth, her eyes glittering with intensity. “Really, I’m just afraid that Ignacio’s men might still be at the house. I should have fought them when they came. Why I didn’t . . .” Her voice trailed off, and her expression glazed over. “Of course, I didn’t want them to know what I was—but they’ll wonder how I survived out in the desert—”
Lady Luna seemed to recede into herself. She slumped against the chair, her face blank. Eliana jumped up and ran over and shook her shoulder. Lady Luna stirred, blinking.
“Are you okay?”
Lady Luna turned to Eliana. “No. I’m not sure. I feel strange.” She pressed her hand against her forehead. “I think it’s passing.”
“We should go to a hospital.”
“No!” Lady Luna’s shout echoed around the office. “No,” she said softly. “We can’t do that.”
Eliana’s cheeks burned. She felt stupid. An automobile accident. “No, of course not. But if you’re hurt—”
“I’m fine.”
Eliana didn’t believe that. “Okay. But you’re probably cold, right?” She could hear the brightness in her voice, trying to pretend like this was normal.
Lady Luna hesitated. “It’s uncomfortable, yes. I’d like some dry clothes, at the very least.” One of those small smiles. “I’m afraid this dress is probably ruined.”
Eliana’s laughter twanged with discomfort. “My apartment’s only a fifteen-minute walk from here. You can borrow some of my clothes and get warm, and we can figure out—something.”
Lady Luna shook her head. “You don’t have to help me. Your silence is all I ask.”
Eliana considered this. Why did she want to help Lady Luna? The woman was just some aristocrat, after all, with her own private dome.
Except she wasn’t.
Lady Luna stared blankly off into space. Eliana wondered if Diego had been there, if he’d seen it happen and hadn’t stopped it.
If he’d pushed her out himself.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Eliana said. “You showed up here. You obviously don’t want to be alone.”
Lady Luna blinked and became more present. “I didn’t think about it that way.”
“Well, that’s what I’m here for.” Eliana nodded toward the door. “You ready?”
Lady Luna didn’t move.
“You can wear my coat,” Eliana said.
“All right.”
Lady Luna stood up. Her movements were more natural now, not as stiff. Eliana still couldn’t imagine her as part machine.
Eliana gathered up her coat and scarf and gave them both to Lady Luna, who tossed the coat around her shoulders and draped the scarf over her half-frozen hair. She looked almost glamorous.
They left the office, Eliana locking up behind them. The streets were more crowded than Eliana had expected, and Lady Luna tightened the coat around her chest and tilted her head down. Whenever someone passed too close to her, she bumped against Eliana, as if by their touching she somehow gained strength.
It was fu
They were about five blocks from Eliana’s apartment when they passed the big neighborhood church. Eliana walked a few paces before she realized that Lady Luna was no longer walking alongside her. When she looked back, she found Lady Luna standing in front of the steps, looking toward the carved wooden doors.
“Lady Luna?” Panic rippled through her. “Is something wrong?” She jogged over to Lady Luna’s side. Lady Luna’s face was pale, her hair dark with water.
“If you don’t mind,” she said in a small voice, “I’d like to stop here for a moment.”
“The church?”
Lady Luna nodded.
“But don’t you need to—” Eliana waved her hands around, not wanting to finish her thought out loud.
Lady Luna smiled. “It won’t take long. And I—I’m fine.” Her voice wobbled. “I’m not cold.” She lurched up the steps. Eliana hadn’t been inside a church in years, not since she’d been a little girl and her mother had taken her to Easter services out of a sense of obligation. All she knew of the church was the sound the bells made when they rang out for mass to begin.
But Lady Luna was already slipping through those heavy wooden doors.
The inside of the church was dim, lit only by thin colored light seeping through the stained glass. It was also empty. Lady Luna blessed herself with holy water and then knelt down in the back pew, her hands folded and her eyes closed. Eliana hung back at the door, unsure if a si
A Mado
Lady Luna didn’t take long. She crossed herself again, then knelt and crossed herself a second time when she left the pew. She didn’t say anything until they were back out on the street.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Uh, no problem.”
“You must think it’s strange, my nature being what it is.”
Eliana shrugged, not wanting to say yes.
“It’s all right. My husband thought it was strange too. He used to tease me.”
“Oh.” Eliana paused. “Your husband knew? About the—” She wasn’t about to say it on the street.
“Oh yes. I told him. Our marriage was basically arranged, you have to understand—not in any explicit way, but that’s what it amounted to. I hadn’t particularly wanted to marry him. He was much older than me, and my parents only wanted it because they were ru
Eliana was burning alive with questions, but of course she and Lady Luna were still surrounded by people. Her apartment building rose up in the distance, pale gray walls and rows of darkened windows. The air had an acrid scent to it, like something burning. The heaters. All those machines keeping them from freezing to death.
Well, keeping Eliana from freezing to death. But then she glanced at Lady Luna out of the corner of her eye, elegant still in her borrowed coat, and felt guilty for her private nastiness.
“I told him,” Lady Luna said, breaking the silence, “because I wanted him to reject me.”
“Wasn’t that dangerous?”
“Oh, very. I was young, though. Barely eighteen.” She laughed. “When you’re young, you think nothing bad will ever happen to you. Then you grow up and you realize that’s all life is.”
Eliana started. Her mother had said something similar to her once, just before she died.
They arrived at Eliana’s building. She unlocked the front door, and they rode the rickety elevator up to her floor, not speaking. When the elevator opened, Eliana had a moment’s panic that Diego would be lounging by her apartment door, smoking a cigarette, waiting not for her but for Lady Luna. She didn’t want that final proof that he was a murderer and not just an errand-ru