“Is this the new egg?” Elio’s eyes widened in innocent amazement when he noticed me, “She’s literally glowing. Extraordinary.”

“Extraordinarily eldritch,” Alcott frowned, taking a step closer and squinting at my face. “It’s a wonder the other eggs weren’t scared senseless during the ride over.”

Elio glanced at his boss sideways, but just shook his head and mouthed me an apology from where he stood in Mr. Alcott’s blind spot.

“Crazy,” Elio signed, spinning his finger in a circle around his ear. That made me smile crookedly, which for some reason seemed to irritate Mr. Alcott.

With one rough hand, which abraded my forehead, he pushed back the towel that Judith had draped over my damp hair so he could take a better look at the ‘eldritch’ horror of me.

I swear, Judith and Elio both looked about ready to boil over.

“Do you think those bioluminescent spots are consistent throughout its whole species or is the thing just a freak altogether?”

“Erris Alcott! For heaven’s sake. The child is a ‘she’ and she can hear you,” Elio finally snapped.

“Can she now?” Mr. Alcott laughed, “That’s good. The last couple of eggs we brought in were nearly deaf, probably from the racket of the fire. But it would be a shame for our only siren to be disabled already. It would skew all the tests.”

“I don’t want to be part of any tests, Miss Antos,” I whispered, tugging on Judith’s sleeve.

And for a fraction of a second, I saw an odd expression wash over those unusually dark green eyes. 

I’ve only seen that look on her face twice since, but it was as clear as day as she crouched down until we were face to face and took my damp cheeks in her hands that she was claiming me somehow.

Maybe it was just her way of being professional. Taking her duty as my nurse life-or-death seriously.

But I needed it…

“Mr. Alcott won’t make you be a part of any tests that you don’t want to do,” Judith promised. “That would be a felony, and even that awful man doesn’t want to commit a felony.”

She glanced over her shoulder at Alcott after those words and I knew she was talking more to him than she was talking to me.

I didn’t even know what ‘felony’ meant. Back then. 

But Judith told me that ignorance is a death sentence and made me memorize all the guidelines for how the workers around the Rookery were supposed to treat me, so I could file a report directly to the head office if anyone violated them.

By the time I was 9, I knew more about legalese than I knew about Barbie and Hannah Montana.

I can still remember some of Alcott’s men laughing as they passed by my room and saw Judith helping me read through that big book of rules that weighed almost as much as I did.

It had been less than two hours since my arrival and I’d barely had a chance to look around my new room yet. I’d been washed and had my burns tended to, but I still smelled like smoke.

I couldn’t understand what all her hurry was about, back then.

Now it’s one of many reasons I’ll never be able to decide whether I love or fear her.

Can I do both at the same time?

***

In an instant, that look has vanished from Mr. George's expression and his eyes are as friendly and laughing as ever.

Now would probably be a good time to leave well enough alone.

But Judith presses her luck just a tad further, with a devilishly sweet smile, turning her gaze from Verner to Therese with a mild laugh, “Honestly, the two of you don’t look a day after 25. Wasn’t I told you were 36 and 38?”

Therese giggles like a grade-schooler at that, waving off the compliment with a shake of her head, “We get that a lot. French beauty secrets. They keep you looking ageless for quite a long time.”

She presses her unbandaged hand against her smooth cheek, as if for emphasis, and I can’t help but wonder if she’s mimicking Shirley Temple.

Yet another beauty who seemed to drink from the fountain of youth for a very long time.

I definitely wouldn’t believe that Mrs. George was the mother of a teenager if I didn’t live with and go to school with him.

Mr. George shakes his head at Therese’s cutesy pose with an affectionate sigh that seems to catch Judith off guard for a fraction of a second, like the flutter of wings can distract the most diligent of hunting dogs.

There isn’t a notable change in her expression, probably, to anyone but me, but I see the way her chin raises, just a fraction of an inch as if in defiance.

Of what?

I’ve only ever seen her make that face when she was unsure.

And Judith being unsure makes my heart fall into the pit of my stomach.

“Do everything in your power to hide your doubt,” she once told me. “Act like you know for certain until everyone believes you, then prove yourself right.”

Today the doubt is showing itself.

Is that intentional? Can Judith do anything by accident?

I watch her open her mouth like she wants to say something, but before she can, her exterminators return from the Georges’ field with something rounded and bulky in a black plastic bag.

“We’re ready to go, Miss Antos,” the tall man in the front says respectfully, and Judith nods quickly to him and then to the other men, who shuffle their feet like kids sent to the principal’s office.

“We’ll be going then, I guess-” Judith claps her hands energetically, but before she’s finished the sentence Therese tilts her head slightly, looking at the men rather than Judith.

“Any sign of the snake?”

The men look at Judith rather than Therese before answering slowly.

“Nothing but a molt, ma’am.”

Nothing but a m…?

All my blood turns to ice.

If the snake was already 80 inches long, how big could it possibly be now? How big is the dragon?

I look at Judith but she pretends not to see me.

In a minute she’s said goodbye to the Georges and piled into her truck along with her men who haven’t said another word after their comment about the molt.

What’s the matter, boys? Wizard got your tongue?

I follow Mr. and Mrs. George back inside but excuse myself to my room as they lay out plates and cups for dinner.

The moment I’ve closed my bedroom door I get a text from Judith on my 'special' phone.

“I’m not going back to the Rookery. I’ll be staying at 44 Arrow St. near the north city limits. If you see even one more potential threat or sign of suspicious behavior come straight to me immediately and leave your things behind, especially the credit card that Mrs. George gave you. I’ll be waiting to take you home.”

It takes me a long time to fully register what the message says.

Now that it has registered, I’m not sure whether it’s a relief or not.

They’re not arresting the Georges, if what the Sanctuary does to Actaeons can even be called ‘arresting,’ and I guess Judith was told to stay behind for me in case any more trouble arises.

Should I feel grateful?

For as long as I can remember, Judith’s presence, her entire existence, has given me mixed feelings.

I wanted to ignore her and imagine her away when I was trying to forget everything and pretend that I was back home in Iris Wood. Judith always stood in the way of that fantasy like a flaming reminder of the night the world I knew burned to the ground and Heloise told me to leave the forest with the strange woman in the purple suit who she promised would help me.

8 years later, she hasn’t become any less strange. And yet, I remember that when I was afraid of Mr. Alcott I always ran to Judith because I knew that he was afraid of her. 

Right now, I think the Georges are even scarier than Mr. Alcott and I wish with everything in me that Judith had taken me with her.

***

When I was 9, Judith asked Elio to babysit me once while she took an extra etiquette training course Mr. Alcott had deemed it necessary for her to complete after some shenanigans about her threatening to blast his brains out.

Elio is the one who told me that Judith hadn’t been preassigned the role of my nurse when she brought me to the Rookery. Alcott was in charge of designating caregivers for each of the eggs, and he hadn’t decided for certain by the time my wounds were cleaned up and tended to whether Judith would be my nurse long-term. 

But Judith had decided.

And according to Elio, nobody dared contradict Judith’s decisions, even back then, when they knew she when ‘dead-set on something.’

The emphasis belongs on the word dead.

“I don’t envy the man who gets between a she-bear and her cub,” Elio had laughed, “much less the man who kills that cub, even by accident, but leaves it’s mother alive.”

Judith has never really been anything like a mother to me, and I know she’s much too young for that to even have been physically possible.

Still, some nights when I’d wake up with a start and see her standing outside my room with her back to the glass door I got the impression that I was some kind of magical gem she’d cast a hex of protection over.

Or, maybe I cast the spell on her?