“This is a sanitarium,” says the man in white, “and you don’t look deviant or retarded, and anyway if you were you’d already be inside, so piss off.”

“But I only want to visit my dear auntie,” she says, and her long dark eyes say: in return for which, all things are possible.

Sixteen is not, in this particular time and place, a young age for a girl. The orderly lets the hunger in his fingers twitch a smile from his face. “Well. Maybe. What was her name again?”

“Bend down here a moment,” says Radiane sweetly, “and I’ll tell you.”