Today's Reading

The woman I knew was short, blond, muscular, with a voice turned hoarse from chain-smoking. Today, she towered over her guests. The sunset glowed on her milky skin and high cheekbones, and flecks of silver glimmered in the whites of her eyes. Scarlet hair tumbled past elegant shoulders, and a blue pearl necklace sat at her collarbone, her signature jewelry.

The big house, the servants, and the personal chefs couldn't have come cheap. But that body had probably cost more than the rest put together.

Clementine smirked. "It's a Freya Hampton. Bones as hard as steel. Skin like ivory. Hand-stitched muscles, with five times the normal fiber density. I transferred my Pith this morning."

The party guests drew close to her, murmuring. Her Pith. Her mind, her consciousness. The flickering web of lightning in her skull. A soul as black and empty as they came.

I finished pouring and stepped away. As I reached for the doorknob, Gabriel Heywood called to me. "Servant. Edgar."

I swallowed. Edgar wasn't my name. But it was the name of my chassis model. A cheap, common face, worn by thousands of men and boys across the Eight Oceans. Sometimes, as shorthand, people used the model's name instead of a real one.

I turned to him, wrenching my mouth into a smile. "Yes, sir. Can I help you?"

He grinned. "What's your name, Edgar?"

"Anabelle, sir. Anabelle Gage."

"Edgar," he slurred. "What's wrong with your skin?" He pointed to a stony patch of flesh on my arm, an island of grey in my rough olive complexion.

I stared at the pink floor tiles, pulling my sleeve over the blemish. "That's how they're designed," said Clementine, shrugging. "Edgars are made on the cheap, so their skin is less pale. That's why they look a bit&"

"Foreign," said another guest.

"Confused," said Clementine.

My cheeks burned, and I shrank back.

"Not its normal skin tone," said Heywood. "The grey stuff. How did you get 'that'?"

"I—" My voice caught in my throat. My smile wavered.

"Answer him, Ana," said Clementine, her voice soft but menacing.

"I was born a girl, sir." I forced the words out. "When I was nine, I developed a terminal illness. My mother went to the black market, and this Edgar body was all she could afford." A defective body.

Heywood sniggered. "Hope she didn't spend too much."

'Just her life savings and then some.'

"Too bad you're not a Paragon rat," said Heywood. "They give out spare chassis like candy to students."

"Paragon," scoffed Clementine. "Some dusty old castle for pompous freaks. Believe me, no one needs that pigsty."

I clenched my teeth.

In the three years I'd worked for Clementine, I'd never seen her wield a single scrap of the supernatural. She, almost certainly, was a Humdrum. An ordinary human, without a drop of magic in her blood. Her tiny mind would never grasp the true world of magic.

"I don't know," said Jasper Isley, a known terrorist mercenary. "I think that chassis would do just fine at a pigsty." The others laughed. Clementine smiled.

A droplet of sweat rolled down my back. My eyes bored holes into the floor. 'You're all right', I told myself. 'It won't always be like this.' I let the dining room fade and pictured myself somewhere else: the lounge in one of Paragon's dormitories.

I imagined sitting on a couch, feet stretched toward a crackling fireplace. Surrounded by my friends, studying and playing cards like they did in the photos, cracking jokes with brilliant, beautiful heroes like Adam Weaver. Sipping a cup of pomegranate cider with unblemished hands.

I could almost taste it.

I'd failed the entrance exam twice already. But I'd studied even harder this year. I'd crammed thousands of pages into my mind, camping in libraries, passing out on piles of textbooks. And I'd practiced the one magic spell I knew for hours, testing it on alley cats until my skull burned.

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