Body of Stars Laura Walter (chrome ebook reader .txt) 📖

to hire you over others, your transcript might not matter as much.”

As Julia spoke, my gaze drifted to a chart hanging on the far wall in her office. I left my chair and wandered toward it, drawn as if it held the energy of a changeling girl. In a way, it did—it was a chart listing all the clients Miles and Julia had seen since the beginning of that year. It contained hundreds of records listing the date, anonymous client number, and either a positive or negative result for the abduction marking. The vast majority were denoted as negative.

“What’s this?”

“It helps us track.” Julia approached the chart and drew her finger down the column of abduction findings. “We don’t have enough data yet to be sure, but we hypothesize that the rate of girls who have the abduction marking seems to be incrementally decreasing. Right now, all we can do is record and observe.”

“And hope that we’re right,” Miles added.

“I don’t understand.” I scanned the chart again. “The girls who come here for readings have the same juvenile markings they’ve had since birth. It’s not as though they can change.”

“No,” Julia said. “But if things were fated to shift—if your brother’s discovery of the abduction pattern is set to make a real difference—then the number of girls fated for abduction may begin to decline as we continue our work.”

I felt like a child again, struggling to understand. “So we’re not changing the outcome so much as the fact that Miles was fated to make this discovery, and we were fated to help him, all of which will be reflected over time as fewer girls are shown to bear the abduction marking.”

“Yes,” Miles said. “It’s like that study you sent us from the mountain last year, about those scientists who tracked how fate evolved over time by analyzing the fated behavior in individual lives over many years. We don’t have the luxury of studying a time period spanning decades, but this is a start.”

I put my finger to one of the few positive results on the chart. The girl was identified only as Client 145, which made her results seem clinical and detached, but I knew the truth. She was a girl marked to be taken, to have her life wrenched apart. No matter how many outcomes we studied, we could never answer why such terrible things happened. It was something my friends and I discussed often on the mountain—why the overarching course of fate allowed tragedy, and why our free will wasn’t enough to overcome it. How we acted the best we could within the confines of our own fate.

“With your help,” Miles said, “we should be able to see more girls, and to earn the trust of others who don’t yet believe in what we do.” He nodded to the chart. “Soon enough, you’ll be making your own entries.”

“You’re forgetting that I’m not like you. I’m not gifted at interpretation.”

“You can do this, Celeste. You just have to learn.”

Julia went to the door. “We can start right now,” she said. “I’ll get Victoria.”

She slipped out of the office. When she returned, a pre-changeling girl, brown-skinned with amber markings, followed her. The girl perched on the edge of the exam table in the corner and crossed her ankles demurely.

“This is Victoria,” Julia told me. “Miles identified the abduction pattern in her markings last month. She’s agreed to help us by letting us practice reading her. Victoria, this is Celeste, Miles’s sister.”

Victoria and I nodded warily at each other.

“Is it all right if we show Celeste your markings?” Miles asked, and Victoria pushed up her left sleeve in response.

I was still trying to process the fact that I was standing before a girl predicted to be taken. I felt sick on her behalf.

“Go on,” Miles said.

I held Victoria’s arm gingerly and focused on the undefined smattering of markings by her elbow. I’d long been taught that women were the root of the future, the cause and effect all at once. But at that moment, the future betrayed me. I came up empty.

“I don’t see it.” I frowned. The markings on Victoria’s arm did not match the juvenile markings I had in that place. Without a reliable pattern, I didn’t understand how to read the prediction.

“It’s not what’s there.” Miles hovered over me. I could feel his breath on my shoulder. “Look for what’s missing.”

He could explain it eighteen different ways and I would never grasp how to locate something that simply wasn’t there. Even if this prediction was added to Mapping the Future, it would be a challenge to describe it. It wasn’t like the other markings, which could largely be identified on sight alone. That was probably enough reason for the Office of the Future to dismiss it.

I continued brushing my fingertips over Victoria’s left elbow. She watched me with interest, as if she were rooting for me. After a few moments, something came alive there—a tingling series of jolts, like Morse code. It faded just as quickly. Surely I’d imagined it.

“There,” Miles said, nodding. “I think you’re getting it.”

“I didn’t feel anything.” I dropped Victoria’s arm.

“You need to try harder,” Julia said.

“I can’t do this.” I started backing my way to the door. “This is all wrong—I wasn’t meant to be an interpreter.”

Miles and Julia looked at each other.

“It takes time,” Julia said gently. “Why don’t you go home and rest. We’ll be back at it tomorrow.”

I couldn’t look at either of them. I kept my eyes on the carpet as I left the office, where Angel was waiting in the hallway. She stepped in front of me, blocking my path.

“You can’t leave us.” She grabbed my arm and looked as fierce as I’d remembered her back in Chloe’s waiting room. “Celeste, listen. Chloe’s leaving her money to Julia. Part of it goes to me, part to fund Julia’s business. So Julia can pay you like a real interpreter.”

I shook her off. “I don’t believe you. Chloe is a