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The questions came so rapidly I didn’t know which to answer first. “What’s thistalentthing?” It was the same word that Sylvia had used when she checked me in. “I color hair and I can draw. I’m not even sure why they arrested me. They came to the hair salon where I work and then they all just piled in and drove me away—” I stopped as my chest constricted at the memory of Bess’s face.

But the person I was talking to just laughed softly again. “Oh, Meira,” she said. “You weren’t arrested. You were acquisitioned.”

I scowled. “Acquisitioned? Like selected or something.”

She was quiet, and I assumed she was either shaking or nodding her head… Or she’d disappeared on me. I cast another glance at the door, unable to see anything clearly. Not shapes. Since the entrance was a distance away, I looked in the direction of the door and directly to the side, so I could make out the murky shapes. If only the technique worked for the space under the bed. Everything seemed quiet, still. There was no great fuss like someone had been discovered having a conversation via the vent shafts.

I fidgeted in the unexpected silence. What the hell had she meant,acquisitioned? It sounded so… impersonal and dehumanizing. Like I was some sort of object. My eyes widened.

For a collection… Shit.

“Who the hell would want a hair colorist from Sweetwater, Florida?” I whispered. It seemed like the more information I knew, the less made sense.

Perhaps some of the others in this area of the building were delusional or insane.

“We all were,” she said eventually. “They hand-picked each of us.”

“Hand-picked?” I’d started just repeating her words back to her, and I considered shimmying back out from under the bed instead of taking part in this ridiculous conversation.

At least I was taking part in a conversation. It had been too long since I talked to anyone.

So I stayed.

“Yes.” She sounded quite serious. “Hand-picked.”

“But what the hell?Why? Why the hell would you eventhinkthat?”

She was quiet so long this time I began to wonder if I’d offended her. Maybe my whisper had been a little too cutting this time.

But she laughed, and it was dark. “You really don’t know, do you?”

I shook my head, and my hair caught around the leg of the bed. Know what? “What are you talking about?” She might have been the only person willing to talk to me, but I was growing tired of this game. It seemed like everything she said was riddles or depended on them.

“Do you even know where you are?” She moved from sounding incredulous to curious.

I swallowed. “Some sort of government facility. But it’s a mistake. A case of mistaken identity.”

She laughed again. “Oh, they do many things, but mistaken identity isn’t one of them.”

“What do you mean?” My skin chilled. “What is it they think I can do?”

“Whatcanyou do?” Her reply was almost instant.

But I shook my head before I remembered she couldn’t see me. “Nothing. I… I don’t know. What do you mean?” I touched the vent like I could strengthen our connection.

“We’re all supernatural.” Her words were so unexpected that I barked out a laugh.

“Don’t you think I’d know if I was supernatural?” Really. I’d heard and seen a lot of weird shit here, but this was definitely the weirdest. So many weird things… My thoughts churned. Supernatural? No way in hell. Yet… people with fangs?

And it proved my point that she was delusional.

“Of course we are.” She sounded so serious. “How have you been explaining the others to yourself?”

I cast my mind back over the other people I’d met. It was a small group of people. “I haven’t met many of the people here. I’ve spent most of my time by myself.” Self-pity rose within me for a moment. “They keep me in the dark.”

She sighed, and I almost felt the air she released brush over my cheek.

“What’s wrong? What’s going on?” I didn’t understand.