Some unmeasurable time later, Amelia opened her eyes to find she was back in her cell on the third floor. She had an instant to wonder where Elizabeth and Janey were before the pain roared to life and drove every other thought from her mind. Her face throbbed in time with her heartbeat, and she reached up with careful, shaking fingers to touch it. Her cheek was puffy, and the eye above it was nearly swollen shut. Hurt like quicksilver ran in channels down into her jaw and up around her eye.
Her stomach roiled, and she fought not to be sick, afraid even to imagine what it would feel like in her current state. Finally, the nausea receded. With exquisite care, Amelia eased herself over, laying the uninjured side of her face on the mattress. Mara’s familiar sobbing echoed through the hall. In the cell beside Amelia’s, the haggard woman called for her cat. Amelia stared at the wall, counting her breaths and watching the light fade.
When the evening meal arrived, she slid the tray toward herself with desperate hope. She dipped her little finger in the mug of water and watched a droplet dance on the tip before she touched it to her tongue. Bitter. She nearly wept with relief. She tipped the vessel to her mouth and drank, one tiny sip at a time. She consumed most of the cup and lay back, closing her eyes and waiting for the angry little darts to stop shooting through her head.
As night came on, Amelia fell into a stuttering sleep, skipping in and out of consciousness like a stone across a pond, bodiless and floating between jolts of hurt.
Trapped somewhere in the space between dream and waking, she ran across a foggy plain, her chest heaving, pursued by apparitions she knew were there but could not see. She was safe in her cell, but something caught her and dug its claws into her face. She fought a damp, clinging creature shaped like the blanket covering her. She thrust it away and shivered in her victory. Footsteps echoed in the hallway outside the cell, and Amelia let out a soundless scream of terror. She fled as their echoes died behind her.
She blinked. A towering being cloaked in mist stood at her door. It floated, then melted away with a metallic shriek. Clouds passed over the moon. A shadow thinned and lengthened across the floor. A threat swelled in the air, and Amelia tried to call out a warning, but the drug stole her voice. The words died in her throat. Something rustled. There was a flutter in the air like a halting exhalation. It brushed past her face with a whisper.
A distant, lucid sliver of her mind chattered, trying to be heard. There was something here to be marked, it said. Something significant. Amelia sought to follow the thread, to track the feathered thing through the air, but it turned to smoke, dwindled, and vanished. She let go of the thought with regret as she floated away again.
In the morning, cries of alarm from the hallway roused Amelia from a fitful doze. She wrapped herself in the blanket and wobbled to the door, her head pounding, the deep ache in her cheek already promising another day’s misery. Dull and listless, Amelia leaned her forehead against the cold bars. She watched as a stretcher was carried from the cell beside hers, bearing a still form wrapped in a gray blanket, the ragged stuffed cat perched on top. As it was borne away, something tickled at the back of her mind—the nagging unease of something important, forgotten.