“Don’t know.” No matter what, Ava wouldn’t allow herself to think about McKell for the rest of the day. He would consume her, and that was dangerous.
They stopped in front of Mia’s door, and a grinning Noelle pressed the speaker button. “Noelle Tramain and Ava Sans reporting for duty, sir.”
“Funny,” Mia’s raspy voice said from the speaker. There was a pause, then a click, then the door slid open.
Mia sat behind her desk, paperwork strewn around her. Her lips were compressed into a mulish line, and bruises formed half moons under her eyes. Most likely, her night had been as sleepless as Ava’s.
Dallas occupied a chair across from the desk, his expression as grim and tense as Mia’s. Unlike Mia, however, he radiated guilt. Why?
Ava and a now somber Noelle stepped inside, and the door closed behind them automatically. Ava suddenly felt … caged.
“We found Johnny,” Mia said, jumping headfirst into business. “He’s infected.”
Ava’s jaw dropped as a denial surged up her throat. “With the Schön disease?”
“What else?” Dallas asked grimly. His gaze skimmed over Noelle, lingering a bit longer than necessary, before skidding away. For some reason, his guilt seemed to intensify.
“Fuck,” Noelle breathed.
“Yeah. That’s exactly what he did. Fucked the queen.” Mia pushed out a breath. “Not one of her servants or lackeys or whatever they are, but the queen herself. So his infection has spread quickly, more quickly than any of the other victims. We gave him the last remaining supply of Bride’s blood, and that slowed things down, though we don’t think it’s healed him completely.”
Bile joined denial, but she swallowed them both. Now was not the time to allow either to overtake her. She had to stay strong, and she had to keep her wits. Poor Johnny. She harbored no ill feelings for him, well, no death wish, even though he was a tool for kissing and telling.
“No one here has been able to get any details out of him,” Mia continued. “But you, Ava, once slept with him, so we thought—”
“Accidentally,” Noelle interrupted.
Dallas’s brow furrowed. “Excuse me?”
“I, uh, accidentally slept with him,” Ava explained, cheeks heating as they always did when this subject arose.
A delicate hand punched through the air. “I don’t care if you fell from a ladder and somehow landed on his dick. He has feelings for you, so you’re going to talk to him.”
Not for a second did she think about refusing. If there was anything she could to do help, anything at all, she was going to do it. “What should I ask him?”
“I want details. What did she say to him? How did she fuck him? What position? Did they do anything afterward?”
“Also, ask him if he’s noticed any changes in his body, besides a hunger for human flesh,” Dallas added.
Mia propped her elbows on her desk, pinning Ava with her ice-blue stare. “If you’re scared, we can find someone else. Just say the—”
“I’m not scared,” she growled. A lie. The thought of being in the same room as a person with a highly contagious disease terrified her. What if Johnny spit on her? What if he leapt at her and bit? Would she be infected, too? Would that stop her, though? No. “I’ll do it. Just tell me where is he, and it’s done.”
Dallas nodded in satisfaction, gaze returning to Noelle before again skidding away, as if he didn’t trust himself to prolong even so small a contact. “I’ll lead the way.”
“I’ll come. For moral support,” Noelle said.
A muscle ticked below his eye, but he unfolded from the chair, tall and leanly muscled. A dark avenger. As he strode past Ava and Noelle—both of them had to step to the side to provide a space for him to exit—the door opened. Without missing a beat, he hit the hallway. Reminded her of McKell, when he’d left her apartment. On a mission, determined.
But she wasn’t going to think about him. Or that. Not even to distract herself from the dangerous pool she was about to jump into.
She and Noelle followed Dallas, silent. Along the way, Noelle twined their fingers and squeezed in reassurance, offering comfort.
Thank you, she mouthed.
Noelle nodded, and looked away from Ava as quickly as Dallas had looked away from her. To hide her fear, Ava knew. She gave a squeeze of her own, letting her friend know all would be well. She kept the I hope to herself.
A few twists and turns, agents striding in the opposite direction, and they finally entered the interrogation wing of the building. So soon? she thought, panic suddenly beating hard fists in her lungs.
You can do this. You will do this.
Dallas stopped in front of an unmarked door, then motioned to the entrance next to it with a tilt of his chin. “This one’s ours. That one’s yours.” He opened his own and once again motioned with his chin, to Noelle this time. “Hustle, Tremain.”
Noelle didn’t budge. “Shouldn’t she be wearing protective gear or something?”
“You know that won’t help.”
Comforting.
His eyes, as icy a blue as Mia’s, but somehow warm despite that, met Ava’s. “He’s restrained. You can touch him, even lick him, and you’ll be fine. Just don’t blow him or screw him. That’s when problems arise. So if you don’t think you can resist doing those things …”
“I can resist. Swear to God, I can resist.” Finally, the panic faded.
He nodded his approval. “Tremain. What about that hustle?”
“Good luck. Not that you’ll need it.” Noelle gave her a quick hug before striding past Dallas and into the room.
He followed and shut the door in Ava’s face.
After a deep breath, she pivoted on her heel and approached the second door. Her hand shook as she reached out and flattened her palm on the ID box. Blue lights sparked at her fingers, then traveled to her wrist. Entire process took less than two seconds, but those seconds lasted forever—and yet not long enough.
The door slid open, and she was suddenly peering into a white room that boasted only one frivolity. A mirror. A mirror Dallas and Noelle stood behind. Johnny had been restrained, as promised, his hands cuffed to the arms of his metal chair and his ankles cuffed to its legs. He wouldn’t be able to leap at her, she thought with relief, but he could still spit on her. Bye-bye relief. At least the cold wash of panic remained at bay.
She raised her chin and marched all the way inside. He watched her, silent. She claimed the chair across from him, a table stretching between them, and studied him. Dark half-circles had formed under his eyes, like Mia’s, only bigger, and raw. Lines of tension branched from his mouth, and his skin possessed a sickly yellow tint. His lips were dry and cracked.
“Nothing to say to me?” Even his voice was different. Lower, harder. Frayed at the edges.
Just like that, even her hesitation evaporated. This was Johnny. Eager, if clueless, Johnny. She could handle him. “I’ve got plenty to say, actually. We’ll start with how stupid you were.”
Something thumped against the back of the mirror. Ava imagined Dallas pounding against the shield-armor, wanting to bust his way past the obstruction and slap her for kicking things off with criticism, and Noelle latching onto his forearms and refusing to let go. Dallas probably didn’t conduct his interviews this way, but Ava didn’t care. She had a plan. She was going to irritate Johnny so much he would be willing to answer anything to get rid of her.
She just prayed it worked.
“How could you sleep with her?” she demanded.
His eyes, glassy and blown, narrowed. “Jealous?”
As she’d learned the day after crawling out of his bed, when he cornered her at her desk and told her that he was willing to give her another chance with him, everything began and ended with Johnny’s ego. “Do you want the truth or a lie?”
Another thump against the glass.
Johnny popped his jaw. “She was hot.”
Typical, but truthful. Good. “And that made who and what she was okay?”“I didn’t know, damn it! She looked human.”
“And smelled human?” McKell had mentioned a putrid scent.
“Yes, damn it.”
So only McKell could smell the rot radiating off her? Interesting. That put him in a position of power.
“Why’d they send you, anyway?” Johnny demanded. “Everyone knows I had you, and now I’m done with you.”
“That’s what everyone knows, is it?” She didn’t try to mask her sarcasm.
His eyes narrowed a little more, becoming slits, his lashes shielding the emotion in his eyes. “Just ask your questions and get out, Ava.”
Gold star for her. The plan was a success. Only, it wasn’t pride that accompanied the victory. How sad that a once-future agent had been reduced to this. Just get it over with. “After you left the bar, she appeared to you on the street.” A statement, not a question.
He answered, anyway. “Yes.”
“Where’d you guys go?”
“Straight to my apartment.”
“Did you talk along the way?”
“Yes.”
“About what?”
A lift of his shoulders, followed by a grimace, as if even so small a movement was torture. “About how much she liked me.”
Ava allowed her doubt to show. “You’re telling the truth? Not exaggerating?”
“No, I’m not exaggerating.” Those lashes parted, and he pinned her with a dark stare. “Some women find me attractive, you know.”
“I know,” she told him softly. She simply wasn’t one of them. “So tell me exactly what she said, what she liked.”
Another shrug, limited because of the restraints and clearly just as painful. “‘Oh, Johnny, you’re so strong. You’re so beautiful.’” The falsetto was mocking, dripping with self-deprecation. “‘I’d love to see your bedroom. I’d love to touch you.’”
Didn’t take much to piece together what had happened next. “You cared only about having sex, not about what kind of person she might be.” Of course.
He nodded, a stiff jerky motion.
“What happened once you got to your bedroom?”
“The talking stopped.”
“Be specific.”
Fury flashed through his expression, and for one second, one priceless second, he resembled the agent she knew and not the sick, dying victim he’d become. “She stripped me, stripped herself, then crawled into bed with me.”
“Did you kiss her?”
Another nod.
“What’d she taste like?”
He laughed, but it was a bitter song, acrid and hate-filled. “What does that matter?”
“We’re trying to figure this woman out. Trying to find ways to identify her, to destroy her. To prevent her from doing this to other people. To save you.” As she spoke, Johnny’s fury and bitterness dulled, softening his features. “Help us. Please.”
Silence. Such heavy silence.
“What if she goes after Jeremy next?” Ava hated herself for playing on what had to be one of his deepest fears, but they were discussing life and death. Victory and defeat. What if the queen went after Noelle? McKell?
Johnny hung his head, staring down at his lap. Another bout of silence stretched between them, and Ava suspected she had failed. She didn’t know what else to say, but she leaned forward and rested her arms on the table, sliding her hands closer and closer to his side.
“Johnny. Please. Why won’t you tell me?”
“I know where you’re headed with this, and it’s humiliating,” he snapped, trying to jerk from her coming touch. His chair moved not an inch.
With a sigh, she settled back in her seat and hooked fallen tendrils of hair behind her ears. “Would you talk to someone else? A man?”
More silence. Heavier. Then, “She tasted like … roses,” he admitted, surprising her. “That’s the only thing I can think to compare it to even though I don’t actually know the taste of roses.”
“And you liked it?”
“Yes.”
“Did you … did you taste between her legs?”
“See! I knew you were going there.”
Ava didn’t back down. “Did you?”
“Yes,” he lashed out. “I did.”
Now they were getting somewhere. “What did she taste like there?”
“The same. Roses.”
O-kay. What was so humiliating about that? “Did she come?”
A growl pushed from his lips. “What the hell does that matter?”
Ah. Finally. The reason for his humiliation. No, the queen hadn’t come that way, and Johnny had taken it personally, as if he were lacking. “Thank you for your honesty. Now, afterward, you…?”
“Fucked her. Yes.”
“And did you use a condom?”
“Yes, damn it. I’m not stupid.”
So. Either the disease was stronger than latex, or Johnny had contracted it through unsuccessful oral sex. Or maybe both. Maybe he’d been doomed either way. Hell, maybe kissing her on the mouth had sealed his fate. “Did she say anything while you guys were having sex?”
“No. She was a moaner, not a talker.” The fury was returning to his tone, laced with annoyance and sprinkled with something else. Something she couldn’t name.
“Did you see anyone else in your apartment?”
“No. I was kind of busy concentrating. You remember how devoted I was to your body, right? Now, are we done here? Because I’m fucking tired!”