Public Enemies (31 page)

“No thanks.” I had no yardstick for knowing if it was a
good
poem but the way he stressed
you
,
I,
and
we
put a lump in my throat. “This means a lot to me.”

He'd spent time with a pen, thinking of me and staring off into space. The idea of Kian daydreaming about me while searching for the perfect words?
I love that.
Curious, I opened my eyes and pulled the notebook down for a look. Yeah, sure enough there were false starts and scratched-out lines, words replaced with others. It looked like a poetry ransom note and took some doing to pick out the final lines amid all the edited wreckage.

“Don't judge the process.” He pulled the journal away and closed it.

“I'm not. I'm admiring. In English classes I have the worst time coming up with original material. Even my essays are too heavily bolstered with quotes from other people and indisputable facts.”

“I like that about you,” he said.

“The fact that I have no imagination?”

“That's not true. If it was, you wouldn't be so into science fiction and fantasy. And it's a pretty big leap from enjoying someone else's world to being able to create your own.”

“Hm. Well, I have too many questions about the way our world works to focus on inventing something else. Plus, some of it seems incredibly contradictory.”

“You're talking about the immortals now.”

I nodded. “It drives me crazy that I can't quantify everything.”

“Welcome to my world.”

“I've been here for a while.”

“Thank God,” he murmured, kissing the top of my head.

“Okay, so according to the clock, it's almost six. Do we go back to sleep or…?”

“I'm open to suggestions.”

“I'll probably be busy with my dad for a while.”

“Is that a warning?” He clicked off the lamp and set his poetry notebook next to it. “Don't worry, I know you'll have a lot on your plate.”

Getting my dad home, dealing with the authorities, possible vendetta with Death.
To say that almost sounded like sarcasm. But Kian meant it.

“Just a statement. I'm thinking.”

“About what?”

“Our options.”

He pulled me down so I was cuddled with my head on his chest. It took me some maneuvering to work out what to do with my arm, but once I got that, it became really comfortable. I could get used to this. Then the realist asshole part of my brain—stupid frontal lobe—whispered,
No. You can't. He's still terminal.
While I might have gotten my dad back, I'd also gotten Aaron killed, along with how many of the Teflon crew? I immediately felt horrible for being in bed with Kian—for being happy and forgetting about my mom, even for a second. If I let them, these thoughts would pull me down to a dark, dark place.

“What are they?” Thankfully his voice broke the awful spiral before it could become a shame-phoon.

“Well, we could sleep.”

“Or…?”

“We could do it again. At least,
I
could. What about you?”

“Seriously? If you had any idea how much I want you … or for how long, you'd cut the question from your vocabulary.”

“Less talk, more kissing.”

The second time was slower and less frantic, but just as good, maybe better because I wasn't nervous. It was all sweetness and heat as Kian tried to control himself. Near the end, instead of kissing me, he pressed his face into the curve of my shoulder, so I could
feel
it happening to him, crazy-wonderful when he panted and shivered. I was in the neighborhood but not … done, but I guessed he knew that. Quietly he touched me.

“You want me to … like this?”

“Here.”

It turned me on that we were both learning. Ironically his uncertainty relaxed me, so I could let go. He watched my face, killing me with the intimacy of his eyes, but I didn't look away. People had said it to me before, and I always thought they were exaggerating—that it was abstinence propaganda—but sex
did
change everything. We were more now.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“More than.” I was actually weak in the knees and my thighs were wobbly when I went to the bathroom.

Dad's waiting.
Though I wasn't ready to start the day, like Charon the Boatman, life didn't wait. It went on, always.

So would I.

 

NEVERMORE THAT MELANCHOLY BURDEN

The hospital had no reason to keep my dad, thankfully.

But once I got him home, it was tough because his behavior bordered on paranoid, not that I could blame him. I had no idea what he'd gone through while Dwyer held him hostage. The second day after he came home, he tried to go straight to the lab to check on things, and I straight up lied.

“They're still repairing,” I said, though for all I knew the university had everything fixed already. “You can't do anything there, and the doctor said you need to rest and eat well for at least a week.”

Though he grumbled, Dad sat back down on the couch. “You're making me feel like a feeble old man.”

“Anybody would need to take it easy after…” What did I even say?

He was convinced that they'd gassed us with some experimental hallucinogen and that was definitely a more logical explanation than reality offered. The fact that he was confused, afterward, made me wonder what Dwyer had done to him. At the hospital, the doctors told Detective Lutz that my father had certainly experienced a traumatic event and that some of his responses made them think someone had attempted to brainwash him. Lutz grilled us for two hours on the day Dad was discharged. I understood his frustration; there was major property damage to the university science building and he needed to know who to blame.

I had no easy answers.

That night, I made vegetable beef soup for dinner and turned on the news to watch with my dad. We both needed normal right now, as much as he needed good food and sleep. He frowned but put down the science journal he was reading. They opened wide with conflicts in various parts of the world, narrowed focus to other parts of America, and then for the last story of the night, the pretty anchorwoman said brightly, “Breaking news, extreme animal-rights group FAAN, which stands for Free All Animals Now, has claimed responsibility for the recent explosion…” She went on to explain how they'd posted some video on the Internet with their faces blurred out and voice modulators on, threatening to strike a university in New York, if all science programs didn't immediately cease and desist with all animal-related experiments.

My dad was transfixed by the broadcast clip. “But … my department doesn't do that. I'm working with lasers and mirrors, not chimpanzees.”

Since I knew damn well it was a PR grab, I could only joke, “Maybe they heard about Schrödinger's cat and made a bad logical leap.”

“Do you think so?” My dad seemed to be taking me seriously.

“Who knows? People who blow things up to make a point about being more compassionate … do you figure they're firing on all cylinders?”

“Probably not,” he conceded. “But … it doesn't explain why I was taken. The men who held me never said anything about animal rights.”

Damn. Dad's too smart for fall for that.

“Maybe someone approached them.”

“To blow up the lab to cover my kidnapping?” He paused, turning that over in his head.

Please decide it makes sense.

“Could be,” he admitted eventually. “I'm not sure why these men were so fixated on me, though, if they paid a fringe group to ensure the focus was elsewhere.”

For the timing of this to be perfect, FAAN would've needed to announce their responsibility sooner but my dad didn't seem as bothered anymore. “Your work is pretty famous. How many magazines have you been featured in now?”

“I don't even remember.” That wasn't surprising. “I suppose they might've been in cahoots. I've heard FAAN is international … and I'm sure my captors were foreign nationals.”

“Why?” I asked.

“They kept asking me to work for them. One of them said they'd make much better use of my research and that they'd pay me handsomely to switch allegiance.”

I bet they were talking about Wedderburn, not America.
But under no circumstances could my father find out about any of that. “What was it like?”

“Tiring,” he said softly. “At first it was just endless talking. I tried to explain that I don't work for the government … that I'm not in the private sector and I'm not interested in their consortium but they didn't take no for an answer.”

“They wouldn't.” He couldn't know how true that was. Immortals weren't used to being gainsaid, which was how I'd pissed the Harbinger off.

“I wouldn't eat anything they gave me because I was afraid I'd start hallucinating again. For a while I was alone in a room, nothing but a chair and white walls. Then they took me to an incredibly well-equipped lab, I guess to show me how much money was on offer. And I tried to explain that my work is still largely theoretical—that I'm decades away from a prototype or a trial. But none of them paid any attention. From there, it got … rougher.”

That would be the brainwashing that they mentioned at the hospital. “Ice water, bright lights, message on repeat, no sleep?”

Averting his eyes, he nodded as the news shifted to a sitcom. “If you don't mind, I'd rather not talk about it anymore.”

“Sorry.”

“Don't be. It's natural that you're trying to make sense of it all. I've been doing exactly the same thing.”

“Making progress?”

Eyes closing, he nodded. “If you want to turn on a movie, something funny maybe, I'd like that a lot.”

“Okay.” I found an old comedy on Netflix and sat with him while he slept.

At half past nine, I persuaded him to go to bed and I made sure he actually turned off the lights. Before he was taken, I'd had the unsettling thought that I was becoming the parent and now having him back only underscored that reality. I never thought I would but I missed the days when he lectured me about weird stuff and took up hours of my time with strange, random fascinations I didn't share. My dad used to lean more than a little toward the Asperger's side of social interaction, but now he was just a shadow.

Around ten, Kian texted me.
Everything okay?

Yeah,
I sent back.
You?

Like I'd suspected, I hadn't seen him much in the last few days. I didn't like leaving my dad alone. He still wasn't himself or he'd be asking why the heck I wasn't in school. For some reason he hadn't connected the fact that it was early February, yet I wandered around our beige apartment free as a bird. Doing my homework felt like a waste of time when I might buy it any day now, thanks to my potential feud with Death.

God, my life is weird.

Missing you,
he replied.

It hasn't been that long.

Eventually I caved and did some homework then e-mailed it to my teachers, and I was happy to hear from Vi as I hit send on the last assignment. It seemed like a long time since I'd talked to her back when things were at their worst; I did my best to dodge and talk to her only enough to keep her from hopping on a plane for an emergency intervention. I put her on video and saw she'd gotten some cute pink tips, all very ragged-punk, and it suited her. She was also wearing lipstick, something I'd never seen on Vi before.

“You Skyped with Seth first,” I said, smirking.

She blushed. “Duh. I'm glad you finally answered. What's been going on?”

Shit.
She didn't know
anything
about my dad's disappearance. So I downplayed it as much as I could and stressed the fact that my dad was home and safe. I also left out my own role in bringing him back. At this point, I suspected I knew how it felt to be Batman, always weighing what I could share, how much, and with whom.

This sucks. I should totally have gotten a cape and a utility belt.

“Oh my God,” Vi said when I finished. Her eyes were huge. “Do you think the people who kidnapped your dad had something to do with…” She trailed off, unable to complete the thought or even say “your mom” in that context.

I didn't blame her. Skirting Mom's death had become a habit for me. Since I'd wept at her grave, I didn't like thinking about her, especially now that I had the wakizashi. Part of me wanted nothing more than to forget
everything
and hunt down the bag man along with those creepy kids. It would be different now that I had a spirit familiar and Aegis. Unlike last time when they'd lured me out, taunting me, I wouldn't need the Harbinger to intervene.

You're powerful,
Cameron whispered. His voice in my head felt like a vein of black ice, chilling me to the core. But he also made all the pain stop. No more conflict. No more doubt. Just a dark, delicious promise.
You wanted revenge on us … and you got it. Just imagine what you could do now.

“Edie?” Vi seemed to have been repeating my name for a while. “Are you okay?”

“With everything going on, I'm pretty tired. What were we talking about?”

“I just asked—or didn't actually—but I wondered…”

“If the same people who killed my mom also took my dad?” There, I said it, my tone sharp and glacial.

“Yeah.” She couldn't meet my gaze, playing with some pens lined up on her desk.

“Probably. It seems to be connected to their work.”

“Are you safe?” she asked.

God, she was a good friend. No matter how much I avoided or ignored her, she didn't stop caring. The cold kernel burning like dry ice at the heart of me thawed a little. I stopped thinking about the bag man.