If two are placed within the stuffy, soft-walled limits of the Cage, they are at the same time close and alone. Too many hours to spend this way, in closeness and isolation. And . . . “I’m not stupid, Alexander, I can feel it. Wolves can always feel things like that.” And “Don’t you trust me, goddamn it? Aren’t we friends?” I should have heard that, should have remembered the toothless grin and the gray mane of that other one who so loved to pepper his speech with “damn it.” I should have locked myself with a million locks there and then, as soon as I was given that warning, but I’d forgotten my previous lives. The warmth of this life melted my resolve, and I talked to him the same way I talked to Sphinx, offering myself to him, but he wasn’t Sphinx, not even close, I realized it right there, in the stifling confines of the Cage, when he bared his crooked fangs and smiled: “You’re mine now!” I realized that the trap had sprung, that it was already too late. I was chained again; not an angel this time but rather a demon, because that was what he needed, and I always morphed into whatever was needed, with only one exception. “Hey, quit whining! It’s not like I want a lot from you!” I cried and hugged his knees, I crawled at his feet like the least of the shaved heads, I screamed with the pain of the reincarnation. “What are you bawling about? I’m not hurting you, I’m not doing anything to you, leave my feet alone, you miserable weirdo!” I fled into the corner, but he pulled me out again, he shook me and slapped my cheeks with cold, detached curiosity. Of course I knew what he wanted. Wolf’s innermost wish was no secret from anyone. “I don’t want him dead, understand? I’m not a murderer. Let him just walk away. Leave the House, go into the Outsides and never return. Got that?” The walls like pillows in flowery chintz, white lights, his sweaty face and angry hands . . . And “Stop the hysterics! What’s so scary about what I’m asking?” What he was asking was hideous, but I couldn’t find the words to explain why. It’s better to kill someone than to make him a slave to your desires. Wolf didn’t know that.
Are curses becoming a demon? Of course. But I didn’t do anything. I resolved to remain Alexander until the last possible moment, until I couldn’t anymore. Knowing that tomorrow the end would come, Gray House would learn the truth, and then I’d be torn apart by the seekers of miracles. Alexander would be no more. Someone else would take his place, and there would be a different House, without Sphinx, without Tabaqui, where I would be completely alone, like a gutted insect slapped between two pieces of glass to be studied through the thick lenses of a microscope. “I’ll tell everyone about you, miracle worker, every Pheasant will know, every stray dog. They’re going to tear you to pieces, understand?” I crawled away and lay on the floor. My head was swimming, needles pricked in my hands, I was burning up. My answer, my refusal, I buried deep inside my soul, along with the coming fall out of a window—or maybe off the roof, the roof was even better—and the broken rusty chain that could never again be used to bind me, forever and ever amen . . . Then the deliverance came, I freed myself of myself and roared away, through walls and ceilings, through clouds and rain, into the burning blackness of space.
