Chains and Memory Read Online Free Page A

lately, on trains or off them. Going home to Atlanta after Welton closed down should have been a relief. As it turned out, not so much. My mother would never yell “Go home, changeling” at anybody on a train, but her prejudice against wilders was more deeply ingrained than I’d realized.
    So I’d fled Atlanta for D.C., persuading my boss at Future Advisory Research to let me start my summer internship a few months early. At least that gave me something to think about besides my own problems—even if that something was other people’s problems. Plus, being here made it easier to meet with my lawyer, Ramos, anybody who might be able to help me. I’d testified in front of congressional committees several times, and would have been called in more if my mere presence didn’t make people’s skin crawl. It was a fine line to walk between reminding everybody who would decide my fate that I was a real live human being, and reminding them that nearly a third of my DNA actually wasn’t human.
    Letting myself think about that was a mistake. It was just a hop, a skip, and a jump from there to remembering how I got this way. My breath shallowed; my heart sped up. I made myself go through one of the calming exercises my therapist had taught me, cataloguing everything on the train. Nine support poles. Eight seats in each block. Three blocks of seats on each side of the train. I wasn’t in the Otherworld. Hell, this was one of the old train lines; with the steel rails rushing by beneath me, I was about as far from the Otherworld as I could get.
    But my nerves were frayed by stress and bad sleep, and it was easy to get worked up over nothing.
    It would have helped if I had any social life to speak of. Apart from Julian, the only human contact I got these days was with co-workers, politicians, and my lawyer. Welton had closed for the rest of the academic year, scattering my friends to the four corners of the globe. Robert’s father had pulled strings to get him enrolled in the Ardcholáiste na Draíochta in Galway, and Robert feared, not without cause, that he might not be allowed to escape Ireland a second time. Liesel was having a better time of it: she’d been allowed to sit in on an interdisciplinary program for psychiatry, empathy, and social work, even if she wasn’t earning credits for any of it. The rest of the Palladian Circle were at various schools — not that I could count myself as a part of that group anymore. The sympathetic connection between us had been severed before I left Welton, as a security measure.
    No, that wasn’t fair. Michele had sent me a message immediately afterward: You’re still one of us. That bond was sacred as well as magical, at least to her, and no athame could cut it entirely.
    But messages were no substitute for real human contact. At least I talked with Liesel on a regular basis, though it shamed me to admit half of that was because I hadn’t yet found a therapist in D.C. Liesel wasn’t a professional—not yet, anyway—but she’d been there for the events at Welton, and that mattered. I didn’t have to recount yet again how I’d been kidnapped by the Unseelie, my genes rewritten, my spirit bound to fight for their side. I didn’t have to explain my mother’s prejudices against wilders; I could just tell her how badly my mother was coping with the fact that her daughter had become one. Liesel couldn’t work her empathic mojo over a video call, but being able to talk helped.
    The PA system announced my stop. Yawning, I got to my feet and slouched out onto the platform. Nobody else got off, which was unusual. I was reaching up to tie my hair back when I realized I’d made a mistake. This was McPherson Square, not Rosslyn—but the train was already pulling out of the station.
    I stood frozen, my hands behind my head. I was tired, but not that tired. I had distinctly heard the loudspeaker