Five days passed before she was allowed her escape. The clinic doctor had declared her fit enough to leave after extensive tests and questions. Her legs still didn't allow her to stand for very long periods, so she'd have to push herself about in a wheelchair. The nurses helped her into it the same as they'd helped her bathe and dress, without fanfare or comment. Wearing clothes — a uniform, especially — felt strange after spending so long a time in nightgowns. She waited in her chair for the person who'd be escorting her, picking at the dove-grey wool of her skirt and trying not to hate the heaviness of it. The nurses had insisted she dress in her winter-weight uniform, however; the weather had started to turn towards fall this last week.

When the hour turned to seven o'clock, she took to glancing at herself in the tall standing mirror that one of the nurses had brought by, trying to memorize her own face. What stood out to her most was the eyes with the generous lids and the ghostly pink-white face above the navy of her blazer. The rest of the uniform, from the goldenrod cardigan vest to the stockings on her legs, seemed a little loose on her. She must've lost weight since being in the clinic.

"Don't worry, dear," said one of the nurses, as she neared Elise's bed. "You'll fill out soon enough."

A furious heat seeped into Elise, one that showed in her reflection. She rubbed at her cheeks. "When did you say my escort was coming, miss?"

"Soon, just in time to whisk you off to breakfast."

That proved to be the truth, and a terrible one. The person who came for her on September the eighteenth was not Willow Travere, as she'd been hoping, but Professor Gerver. He emerged into view around the end of her bed, his long, black coat hanging about him like the robes of the Grim Reaper. If only he'd been as chalk white as he'd looked in the dark! The light of morning shone harshly on the plains of his corpse-grey face and his nearly colorless eyes, picking out the blackened veins within his flesh like polluted, glistening rivers in an aerial photograph. But that wasn't the worst part. Whatever had turned him Extraordinary had also left him the remnants of a former handsomeness. To look at him was to look at a proud, beautiful ruin half sunk into a swamp. How horrible it had to be for him to go around looking like that.

"Sorry to crush your spirits, Miss Ellsworth," he said, and she fixed her eyes to the hands folded in her lap, "but I am still your acting guardian, and thus it is my duty to shuffle you about after a stay in the clinic."

Her hands tightened together. "Have you ever stopped?" she said. "Acting as my guardian? Have you been watching over me the entire time I've been injured?"

He inched closer to her wheelchair. "Would you like me to lie?"

She shook her head.

"Then my answer is no, I've never stopped." His words struck her so hard that they may as well have been a physical blow. More came, each more painful than the last. "I've been your guardian since you've started university, and I have no doubt that I shall remain so until you leave."

Elise forced herself to breathe. The ache in her heart wasn't from missing a family she couldn't remember, but from the acute loneliness of her situation, and the loneliness of the girl she'd been before. The Ellsworths hadn't cared enough about her to participate in her recovery. They'd just left it up to a stranger. Worse, they'd left her to him since she'd first come to Rambling a year ago. She felt sorry for their so-called daughter, and sorry for herself. Other than Willow, no one seemed to be close to her. She craned her neck up and met Gerver's gaze, where something dangerously close to sympathy lurked. The emotion looked alien on him, yet the sight warmed her. It'd been cruel of her to judge his looks in the way that she had done only moments ago. No matter what he looked like, he was still human, and one of the few who seemed to be concerned about her well-being. That he'd done it out of duty didn't matter — he did what he had to do. That was more than certain other people could say.

"Thank you," she said, pushing the words through the pinhole of her throat, "for being truthful."

Gerver nodded, looking distinctly uncomfortable at her gratitude — or maybe only uncomfortable at the sincerity of it. He got round to the back of her wheelchair, and took hold of it. They journeyed in silence out of the stark white clinic into a large column-lined corridor that looked as if it belonged in a grand and ancient country estate somewhere overseas. Paintings hung on the emerald wallpaper above the dark wainscoting, so many of them that she'd hardly looked at one before another came into view. Occasionally, a statue or bust on pedestal broke up the clutter of still lifes and portraits. Globes of gaslights that protruded from the walls in regular intervals, flickering into life as they moved under them. The corridor was so long that the windows at either end didn't let in enough natural light to illuminate its considerable middle. Here and there were differently colored doors that gave no hint of the rooms behind them.

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"The clinic," Gerver began, making her jump in surprise, "is on the southern end of the ground floor — the first floor, if you wish to be American about it." He pushed her chair at a leisurely pace, one reflected in the languid tone of his voice. "At the northern end are the president and vice president's offices. Our destination is at the very center."

"What's at the center, sir?" she said. The huge corridor seemed to swallow her words.

"Marek must've neglected to give you a map to go along with all those books," he said, with a touch of annoyance. He gave a real answer, though, after a brief pause. "The Refectory is at the center. It's the University's canteen — that is to say, dining hall. Your friends should likely be there. Even if they're not, your fellows of Hall Seven are. They should help situate you well enough, and if they don't, well, your friends shall do so."

Apprehension fluttered in her stomach. Would she really be left to her own devices so quickly?

"You'll adapt," he said. "What frightens you now shall be routine later." His pace slowed the slightest bit. "But do remember to see me if you have any trouble, for I'll do my best to help you."

"Because you're my Hall Overseer."

"Hall Overseer, professor, Chief of Security, I am many things, as we've established."

The wheels of her chair sounded enormous as they turned beneath her on the black marble floor. "It seems unfair to give one person so many duties."

He made a noise that might've been a stillborn laugh. "Fairness has little to do with it, and capability everything."

"I don't understand what you mean," she said, burning with shame and frustration. Why did he have to be so tricky with his words? Couldn't he see what trouble he was giving her? Or did he see it, and decided that he didn't care?

If he felt any of his own frustration over her clueless state, he didn't give it away. "I've been given so many duties because I can execute them," he said. "Besides, my role as the Chief of Security is largely ornamental."

"Because the town is so safe?"

"That's certainly one way to phrase it."

He slowed almost to a crawl when they reached a pair of large black doors to their right. These doors opened by themselves upon a room so massive that it could have held the clinic twice over — four times over if stacked side to side and top to bottom. Chocolate-colored wood panels covered the walls all the way up to the domed ceiling, the latter of which was constructed of wrought iron and green glass, save for the very center where a clear circular window looked out onto the sky. The floor was of white marble like that in the clinic. The combination of colors made the Refectory look like nothing less than the world's strangest forest sprouting out of snow. Nine tables totals lined the room like fields of bizarre flowers that had human faces. To the very left and very right were two tables occupied by older men and women who must've been professors or staff. The seven tables in the very center contained only students.

And all of them were very loud. Voices rose and fell between the clatter of cutlery and dishes, an ocean of sound that crashed over Elise.

"The farthest left table is where the staff sits," Gerver said over the din. "The president and vice president of Rambling are both there tonight, at the center."

Two people sat at the very center of the table, one a man and the other a small woman. Her attention was inevitably drawn to the woman, for her carefully coiffed hair was the very color of violets. She wore an ivory women's suit that made her stand out against the rich interior of the grand room. Her gaze found Elise's even at a great distance, as if she'd sensed the girl looking

"Is that her?" Elise said, but she already knew. "Rambling's president?"

"Yes," Gerver said, "that is the one and only President Wong." The chair veered to the right of the Refectory. "At the far end ahead is the professors' table, where I sit meals. Between Scylla and Charybdis are the student tables, numbered for their Halls."

As the two of them passed by the nearest, she caught sight of a glinting brass oval attached to the end of it, hanging down like a shop sign. It was embossed with the number five. Students quieted as they craned round to stare at Elise and her escort. She focused her eyes on her lap again, unable to bear the scrutiny. Gerver brought her all the way to the table with a seven on its brass marker. He curtly commanded the students at the very end one of the long benches to "budge over," which they scrambled to do.

"Shall you have any trouble seating yourself?" he said to her.

If she said yes, she had little doubt that he'd lug her onto the bench in the name of responsibility. That couldn't happen. She quickly shook her head. "I've practiced," she said. "Getting in and out of the chair."

He waited until she proved this statement, watching her haul herself from wheelchair to bench. The only reply he gave to her efforts was a small nod, and then he headed to the professors' table to the right of Hall Seven's, where he deposited himself between two rather startled colleagues who'd been chattering away.