"My deepest apologies for interrupting," said a very unapologetic Gerver from the shadows where Andrews had been standing earlier, "but Miss Ellsworth's supper is on the way." He seemed slightly pleased at the way he had made both girls jump in surprise.

Getting to her feet, Willow spoke in a great rush. "Oh, sorry about that, professor. I'll be getting out of your hair." She bent down to kiss Elise on the cheek again. "Eat everything on your plate, kid, especially your vegetables."

"Sure thing," Elise said, not quite getting the joke that seemed to be in those words.

The girls then bid each other goodnight, proceedings that Gerver withstood and pretended not to hear. When they'd finished, he escorted Willow out of the clinic. The sight was one of relief and disappointment for Elise — relief that she didn't need to be cheerful for some friend she'd forgotten, and disappointment for all her unanswered questions. The rest of her twisted guiltily because the one thing that she didn't feel was a sense of loss at Willow Travere's departure. She wriggled down into her covers, intending to feign sleep if Gerver decided to haunt her again.

Marek arrived before she could get a single wink, wheeling a cart to the side of her bed. Its triple tiers were laden with pitchers of water, milk, lemonade; barnacled by covered bowls, platters, and tureens; bursting with pots of what soon proved to be coffee and tea and hot chocolate. Plates, cups, and a ridiculous number of utensils clattered against one another as he brought it up to her bedside. In short, what he'd collected for one looked like it'd keep a small dinner party of six in a good mood.

The festivities didn't end there. He had divested himself of his jacket before he'd got here. Now in shirtsleeves, waistcoat, and a white apron tied at his waist, he held out an arm at the grand affair and gave a little bow.

"Dinner is served," he said.

"You've got some sense of humor," she said. Her stomach growled, and she looked sheepishly away from him. "Not that you don't have my thanks, but it'd be a shame to waste all this. Will you join me?"

He snapped upright. "Thank you," he said, grabbing the nearby chair. He twirled it about, then plonked down to sit the wrong way around. "But no thank you. I've already eaten, and I've heard that you get quite the appetite when you're recovering."

"Have you heard a lot about me?"

He nodded — once, twice — in an exaggerated way. "All kinds of things, most of them terrible."

That could've been serious or a joke. Difficult to tell. She bet on the side of joke, and offered him a small smile. "I must've been an interesting person, then."

His own smile was a mere flicker. "You don't know the half of it."

A riposte seemed required, but she could barely think. Her stomach, now awakened, was gnawing on itself. Another growl sounded.

This didn't slip by Marek. "Let's get you fed," he said, and plucked the first silver lid away.

* * *

All of it. That was how much she ate. From the roast beef to the salad, straight down to the very last drop of hot chocolate that she paired with the remaining sliver of coconut cake, she ate everything that Marek had brought. She devoured the vegetables, too, just as Willow had advised. Eating all that shouldn't have been possible, and yet it was. Her appetite had only grown as she moved from dish to dish, plate to plate, cup to cup. Even when licking the sweet crumbs of cake from her fork did her stomach grumble for more.

But the most amazing thing had to be the way that she felt afterward. She hadn't risked drinking any more of the silvery medicine no matter how easily it made her pain disappear, so its effects had been wearing off. Aches and pains had steadily reemerged during the meal. Yet each bite or drink of something had soothed her ills. Many faded to a bearable degree. Her legs and hips still felt awful, but the rest of her had little trouble moving comfortably.

Only when she set down her fork did she notice that Marek was still hanging around, and he'd been joined by another audience member: Gerver. The latter had no lady president of anything with him, which was just as well. Elise's face already felt like a sidewalk during a hot day.

She grabbed up the nearest napkin, as much to clean any wayward crumbs from her face as to hide her embarrassment. "S-sorry," she said. "I hadn't noticed you come back, sir."

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Shaking his head, he waved his hand at her, spreading the smoke of another odious cigarette her way. "It's a shame I hadn't returned earlier," he said. "I've never seen this part of your ability in action, at least not whilst you were conscious." He drew on his cigarette, then exhaled towards the ceiling, where the drafts unraveled the smoke. "The doctors and nurses did the best they could through gavage feeding, but what can be forced down tubes isn't the same as proper food."

It took a moment before she waded through his deluge of words to find his purpose in saying them. Or guess at it, anyway. "What has eating to do with my power?"

Gerver tapped ashes into the same glass he'd used before, the empty one sitting under the lamp. "A house knocked down by a hurricane can't be rebuilt from its debris, can it?"

"It could, but —" Oh, he actually had a point by being irritating. Her hand dropped into her lap, taking the napkin with it. "It could be rebuilt from the debris, but it wouldn't be the same and it wouldn't be as strong."

"Remarkable." He stopped short of taking another drag. "Not your observation, I mean, but the fact that you can think at all. For a girl who has forgotten herself, the rest of your mind seems wonderfully intact." Her fingers itched to take up the nearest knife before he'd finished that sentence. Perhaps she'd had a murderous gleam in her eyes, for he added, "I'd meant no offense by it."

Liar. "What happens when you do mean it?"

Marek, who had been enjoying the conversation, spoke up. "Dogs howl, statues weep, the oceans themselves tremble ..."

Turning aside into the shadows, Gerver said, "You've forgotten the sulfur, Marek."

"So I have, sir, so I have."

She settled against her pillows, suddenly and tremendously weary. There were a few things she wanted to get straight before she went to sleep, though. "Miss Travere — I mean Willow — she said that you're responsible for me since I'm in Hall Seven."

Smoke writhed around him and into the circle of gaslight. "Miss Travere is correct." The tip of his cigarette glowed red, presumably as he inhaled. "As an Overseer, one of seven in the University, I do have added responsibilities that other professors do not."

Her gaze turned to the photo album now resting to one side of her bed, just as her thoughts turned to the photographs inside those pages. "Do those responsibilities include taking the place of absent family members?"

His next exhalation sounded suspiciously like a sigh. "I suspect that we both know the answer to that one, Miss Ellsworth."

Hearing that might've hurt if she still had her memories. Without them, it was only a statement of fact. This man had the authority to act as her guardian in the stead of her adoptive parents, and that was that. "I'm sorry if I've troubled you," she said.

The ember winked. "Do I seem troubled?"

"You're a professor and in charge of the University's security. Of course I'm troubling you."

Mischief danced in Marek's eyes. "Old Gerver here is a man of many talents, some of them useful. One more challenge is nothing to him."

This remark seemed to go unheard by Gerver. "Our town is a very safe place when young women aren't falling down staircases, so I ordinarily have the delightful task of teaching students like yourself how not to die." He paused for another puff of his cigarette. "That is a roundabout way of saying that you can't trouble me anymore than I'm already troubled on a daily basis."

She pulled her blankets up to her chin. Although something deep within her said that falling asleep like this in front of two strange men had to be inappropriate, she didn't much care. Her hunger had been sated, her pain had faded, and now sleep called to her. Wrapped in the soft cotton of exhaustion, she was inured even to Gerver's rudeness. "That doesn't sound very safe to me."

He shifted enough for the light to fall on his ghastly face. His visible eye looked like a single silver coin frozen mid-tumble through the air. "Being Extraordinary can turn a person into a sword and the hand holding it at the same time," he said. "One must learn how to wield such a blade if one is to control it at all." His words traced her deep into her drowsiness, letting her eyes flutter closed. It must've been familiar to part of her, that voice, if she could feel at such ease in its presence. "Learning when to sheath that weapon is equally important as learning to strike with it." He paused, perhaps to finish off that dreadful cigarette of his. "I teach more conventional methods of combat and defense, of course, but that's not nearly as exciting as the other kind."

"All that fighting," she murmured, then yawned. "Every boy in school must have your class as his favorite."

"Not just the boys." He sounded very far away now. "You've earned top marks in my course since you first started it. Not in close combat, that isn't your forte — you'll always be bested at your size — but with firearms or more interesting weapons, you can be counted as one of my more brilliant students."

Marek's voice floated into her ear. "Translating that to American, you're a real pistol, Ellsworth."

She cracked an eye open, catching his wry face, then Gerver's much more sober one. The professor had stepped into the edge of the gaslight again so he could check his pocket watch. "With all that said," continued Gerver, "you must now steel yourself. It shan't be long before the president arrives."

He kept talking, but she scarcely heard him. When she woke in the morning, it was to the soft noise and chatter of nurses in starched white uniforms. They brought her more food, but that breakfast didn't taste nearly as good as the feast she'd been given after midnight by two sideshow specimens. Afterward, when she'd kept her hunger at bay for another few hours, she read the books and papers that had been left on the bedside table. On the very top of this formidable stack was a note from Marek telling her that he'd given her his notes from last year, along with all the assignments she'd missed. Being a sophomore, he'd already gone through all the courses she'd be taking this time around. Gerver, he'd written, had asked him to help her. He said he would've done it anyway, just because he needed a new hobby.

It wasn't quite an overture of friendship, but it made her smile all the same.