Page 195

‘They’ were women. The only examples she’d seen since her arrival who weren’t Vicers, and weren’t naked. She stared at a wooden cross that hung over one of two doors to the small room, as the two Covvie women adjusted and fluffed, busy as bees.

They wore skirts that came to the floor, and blouses with long sleeves, black like the priests, but she didn’t think they were any sort of clergy themselves. They murmured to each other over this tweak or that. Buckeye had given up asking them questions; whenever she did, they’d demur and look at the ground.

Her nerves jangled and twitched. The routine was broken. No one would tell her anything, but she no longer fought. The time for that was long past.

A mirror was there, in this room she’d determined was for priests to dress for a service. Buckeye watched the women strip away her cocoon of impersonal nudity to reveal a garish, foreign butterfly.

The clothes they’d pulled and stretched onto her body were like some pre-Delineation caricature of promiscuity. Glossy material stretched over her ass in a short, tight skirt. Stockings with honest-to-god garters ran up her legs from under the hem. The top half was the opposite of what the women wore who dressed her: straps instead of sleeves, breasts cupped high and together on a shelf of a brassiere for display. She teetered on heels that only belonged in a house of Vanity back in the The Vice.

The woman behind her was arranging Buckeye’s hair into curls. Her partner focused on Buckeye’s mouth, staining her lips red with a tiny brush. The person taking shape in the mirror was an uncanny doll version of herself. A doll meant for one purpose, but none of the priests had ever asked for anything like this before today.

When the door behind her opened, she jumped. The woman with the brush clucked her tongue, and moved her thumb to clear away a stray smear of paint.

The guards had returned. One of them had something soft clutched in a fist.

“Ten minutes,” he said, stepping behind Buckeye to shoo the other woman to the side. His left arm came around her waist; the right rose to cover her mouth with fabric. Mint rose in her nostrils. Her eyes went wide.

What? Why?

The other guard stood, arms crossed, in front of the back door. She could see him in the mirror, even as she tried not to jerk away from inhaling The Song. There was always the baton, always a worse alternative.

It had been weeks. Hadn’t she obeyed them every time? Surrendered in every way they’d asked?

“Why?” she blurted when the rag came away. It was the only time Buckeye could remember having questioned a guard.

“Insurance,” said the man in grey. And then to the women: “Finish up.”

The one with the lip brush made a face at the mussed cosmetic. “I’ll have to do this all over.”

“Then do it,” said the guard. “Now.”

The Covvie women moved in on her again with a will. In a few short breaths, Buckeye swayed in place and had to sit.

Christ, how much did they give me?

The first buzz woke between her thighs. She lost sight of the women, eyes tracking the subtle movements of the men. Shifts of muscle under their shirts. The dip of an Adam’s apple, the flex of a jaw.

It was too hot in the little room. Her lips parted. The women powdered and curled, but Buckeye imagined guards’ fingers leaving their batons to take down the straps of her too-tight shirt, to shuck down the stockings and cool her with wet, lapping tongues.

The opposite door creaked open and her attention shifted like she was underwater. Two cassocked priests entered, crowding the room to cla

ustrophobic. One was Brother Raymond, and another she remembered as Aaron. They could help her. Help her get these clothes off. They and the guards all coul—

“Good timing,” said the guard in the back. “She’s about to come unglued.”

Like the envelopes in her truck.

Her mouth curled into an unhinged smile. Raymond looked at her like he wanted to clear the room and smear the red paint back to her ear. She squeezed her new cleavage in his direction.

The women stepped back and the priests moved in to haul her up by the arms. She melted between them, ankles unsteady, but more than happy to lean on bodies she knew all too well by now.

They were walking her back through some of the same hallways. The path looked familiar, and Buckeye cooed, The Song rushing in her veins. “May I serve you today, Brothers?”

A muffled voice grew louder as they approached another door.

“You’ll serve our Father,” said Raymond. “Shh.” His words were gentle, and Buckeye simmered. They moved her through the door and into a space she knew, albeit with much less light.

Here was the back of the altar. The water in the baptistery lay still as glass. Mather stood in the pulpit, a thousand eyes fixed on him from pews reaching back and back.