“And that would be bad?” Lucas asked.
“Yes.”
Now he wanted to know more.
“Does it hurt to be the beast?” she asked.
“No. Phasing is like being a superhero. I’m faster, stronger. Everything is sharper. There are no consequences. I can let myself off the leash. But my attack variant’s venom is toxic to my human phase variant. Turning back into a man is a bitch.”
A small tremor shook his legs. Lucas grunted and closed his eyes, trying to will the pain away.
“How long will we be locked in here?”
“Until I pull through. Hours. Arthur is trying to keep me safe. I’m an asset and I’m rare and difficult to replace. We shouldn’t have come here, to this building.” The words came slowly. “This base is not secure. We rent five floors here. We don’t own the buildings and don’t control access to it.”
Karina bent down, looking closer into his eyes. Tiny red rosettes marked the skin on her cheeks and forehead. Her own transformation was closing in. Shit. He hoped she would have another day. He didn’t want her to phase here, in the vault, without medical help, without Henry to keep her calm. She could die and he wanted her to live. He had to heal fast.
Heal, Lucas willed in his mind. Heal.
The pain exploded in a white burst and dragged him under.
When the light faded he heard her voice, soothing, calm, warm. Like sitting back in the hot tub, soaking his exhausted body while she floated nearby. “. . . met in college. Jonathan was handsome. Funny. His father was the CFO for Drivers Company. It’s a big insurance company in the Southwest. Brian’s very driven, very conscious about his appearance. Brooks Brothers suits, expensive watch, a new BMW every couple of years. He and Lynda had Jonathan when they were much older, in their forties. Jonathan could do no wrong. He was their golden child. Good at sports, good at academics. He was easygoing and charming. The perfect son.”
She leaned her head against the wall. He moved closer to her and rested the back of his head on her ankle. She let him do it. From here he could see her face. He could touch her hand. Lucas closed his eyes and let himself sink into her voice.
“Things always went Jonathan’s way. I used to watch a cartoon when I was younger. Two mice were living in a lab, and one was very smart and the other one was a knucklehead. So every night the knucklehead mouse, Pinky, would ask the smart mouse, ‘And what are we going to do today, Brain?’ And Brain would say, ‘Try to take over the world!’ And Pinky would get all excited. See, Brain was serious. He was trying to take over the world. But to Pinky it was all a big game. That’s kind of how Jonathan was. The world was his huge playground and every day he’d play at taking it over. Some days he was an athlete; other days he was a student. When we met, he was finishing his MBA and I was getting my bachelor’s in accounting. My parents had died in a car accident when I was a senior in high school. I had just turned eighteen when they passed.”
“I’m sorry,” Lucas said and meant it.
“Thank you. They left me just enough money to get me through college and I had to work to feed myself. Before they died, I wanted to go into art history.” She laughed a little, a bitter, quiet sound. “I wanted to be an art appraiser. You know, the person who examines art for auctions and museums to determine if it’s authentic. I always thought it would be so neat. But I was on my own then, so I went into accounting instead. It seemed . . . sensible. I was trying to be sensible. To have some structure. And then Jonathan shot into my world like a comet. He could make anything seem exciting. He made things fun. His parents were always very formal with me. I don’t think they ever understood why he liked me, but Jonathan picked me and he could do no wrong.”
He very badly wanted to murder Jonathan.
“It was great at first. Jonathan’s father’s connections got him a position in a private equity firm. During the day he got to play a businessman and during the night he got to play a husband. And then Emily was born. Well, you’ve seen her.”
“She is pretty,” Lucas said.
“She is. Jonathan loved her. It was yet another new game: being a dad. He used to show her off like a cute purebred puppy.” She sighed again. “I should’ve seen it then. Anyway, everything was great for a few years and then the bottom fell out of the economy. Suddenly it wasn’t fun anymore.”
“The party was over,” Lucas guessed.
“Yes. Jonathan had to start working for his living and buckle down, or the firm would cut him loose. I worked, too, and we were doing okay, but we had to mind our p’s and q’s and Jonathan didn’t want to be bogged down with details. We used to have the stupidest conversations. He couldn’t understand why he couldn’t drop thirty grand on a membership at a country club. It’s like his brain couldn’t digest the concept of a budget. I mean, the man had a master’s degree in business management, for crying out loud.” Her voice rose too high and Karina fell silent.
“What happened?” he prompted.
“Finally he decided he was tired of playing with us. He started sending me these long rambling e-mails about how he felt constrained and unhappy and about the need to find himself. He wanted to live fully, he said. To find the zest in life. At first I was concerned, then I thought he was cheating, but he wasn’t. It’s not like we were ever on the verge of bankruptcy. We just couldn’t do exciting things anymore, like ordering champagne for the entire bar. I offered to move; he didn’t want to do it. No solution I suggested was good enough. He tortured me like that for about four months. In the end I didn’t even care anymore. I should’ve fought harder maybe, but I remember one of my friends calling and telling me she saw Jonathan at her office party without me, and you know what I thought?”
She paused. Her dark eyes were huge on her pretty face. “I thought, ‘Good. Maybe he’ll meet someone and I can divorce him.’ That’s an awful thing to think about your husband. That’s when I knew the marriage was over. We were heading downhill, except there was Emily. How do you explain to a four-year-old that Daddy decided he doesn’t want her anymore because he needs to go find himself? So I spoke to his parents. I thought maybe they would talk some sense into him.”
Lucas grimaced. “You said he could do no wrong.”
“Yes, it was stupid, but I was desperate. They called him over to have a heart-to-heart. Jonathan took me out to dinner at the end of the week. I knew something was up; I could just tell. It wasn’t a date. He told me he had filed for divorce. He had no problem paying me alimony, and I could retain all my parental rights.”
A shadow passed over her face. She seemed small all of a sudden.
“We were in the car, going to pick up Emily from the sitter’s. We were fighting about his generosity in regard to my ‘parental rights.’ ” Her voice dripped with bitterness. “He wanted to leave and stay gone. I insisted that Emily needed a father and he couldn’t just take off. He was mad. He told me that everyone had a right to be happy. He wanted to be free of me and Emily but he didn’t want to be judged for it. And then, all of a sudden, he lost consciousness. It was like someone had flipped a switch. We shot into the opposing lane. I remember headlights. I woke up in the hospital.”
She fell silent. “He had a stroke,” Karina said finally in a flat voice. “He had fibromuscular dysplasia. Nobody knew. He was healthy as a horse, played racquetball, and then he just died. It was touch and go for me for a little while but I bounced back. I was in the hospital for two weeks. Emily had to stay with his parents. They didn’t feed her.”
“What?”
“Brian, Jonathan’s father, always eats out. When Jonathan died, he spent all his time at a country club. He said it was his way to cope. Lynda is in her seventies. She has a touch of dementia. All she did was eat candy all day, but she wouldn’t give Emily any—it would ruin her teeth. She would forget to give Emily lunch, and when she did remember to feed her, she would either try to cook and burn it or she’d give Emily food that had been in the fridge for so long, it wasn’t just moldy, it was blooming.”
She was crying, not from pity but from anger. There were no tears, but he heard it in Karina’s voice, hidden behind the flat tone.
“They had a bowl of nuts set out and Emily told me she would pretend to fall asleep and then sneak out and steal them. When I got out of the hospital, she was six pounds lighter. She barely weighs anything as it is. So now you know why she hoards food. She was terrified, her father had just died, her mother was in the hospital, and her own grandparents wouldn’t feed her. I told Arthur she doesn’t have anyone except me. I meant it. We are not welcome at that house. They blame me and Emily for Jonathan’s stroke. We made his life so difficult, he died to escape.”
The red rosettes on her face were turning darker. Karina touched her hand to her forehead and looked at it. Her eyes widened. She rubbed his forearm.
“This is another reaction to the venom?”
“Mmhh-hhm,” Lucas said.
“I told you my story. Tell me yours now. It’s fair.”
“What do you want to know?” he asked, wondering what she would think if she looked inside his mind and saw him strangling her husband.
“Who are you? All of you. Who are you really? I need to know what’s happening to me.”
Lucas sighed.
She had told him too much, Karina decided. As much as she wanted for it to be a bribe, a down payment for the information he held, at least in part she told him what she did because he was lying beside her, bruised, beat up, bloody, and hurting. He needed a distraction and she had enough compassion to give him one. But she hadn’t meant to pour her heart out. It just happened. He was in pain, and although she had the means to ease his suffering, he refused to feed, because he didn’t want to hurt her. He wasn’t willing to trade his pain for hers. The least she could do was talk and try to distract him.