Nita’s mind scrambled for the right words, because she couldn’t be silent this time. If she didn’t manage to tell him how she felt, if she didn’t manage to say it right, she knew she’d lose him forever.
“I wouldn’t lie to you like that. I am happy it’s over. I was scared. For me. For you.” She took another step forward, voice slightly choked. “But I’m not happy about how it ended. I never wanted you to break your rules. I never wanted to cause you pain.”
“You’re the one who wanted me to lure him somewhere so we could murder him.”
“Yes.” She let out a breath, and finally confessed, “I was wrong to ask that of you. And wrong to blame you for not being able to go through with it. I’m sorry.”
His eyes met hers, dark and wet, and Nita wondered if anyone had ever apologized to him before.
“I made a dumb mistake. I’ve never . . . I mean, I haven’t really had many friends before.” Nita looked away. “It’s hard for me to understand sometimes. That you’re your own person, with your own desires and wants that don’t always match mine. And that’s okay. I may not be comfortable with some of your choices. I may be scared by them.” She swallowed. “More than scared. I won’t lie: the screams . . . they bother me sometimes.
“But I can’t pick and choose what aspects of a person I want and make a new person for myself. That’s not how it works.”
She met his eyes again, then reached out and cupped his face in her palms. “You’ve picked the path you want. And I will always respect that. It’s your path to walk, not mine to criticize.” She laughed. “Look at me. I dissect people. I burned a market full of people alive. I murdered a bunch of strangers in cold blood. I’ve no place passing judgment.”
His skin was warm beneath her fingers, his tears damp. “I’m your friend, Kovit. And I will always support you, whatever you want to be.” Her voice shook a little. “I can’t promise I won’t make mistakes again. I can’t promise I won’t freak out when you do something that scares me. I’m not perfect. But I can promise I’ll always try, and I’ll always be on your side.”
He stared at her, eyes wide. “Nita—”
She pressed a finger to his lips. “One more thing. For what it’s worth—I don’t think you broke your rules here. Henry betrayed you. He wasn’t your friend anymore. He wasn’t even really the man you thought you knew at all.”
Nita lowered her finger down to his chin as she continued. “You had to make a choice, and one of us was going to die. He’d tortured and murdered your best friend, and threatened to do worse. If ever there was a reason to bend a rule, that would be it.
“Forgive yourself, Kovit.” She kept her eyes on his. “It’s human to care about the wrong people. Forgive yourself for making a mistake and being cornered into a desperate choice.”
Her finger trailed down his chin, and her whole body shivered at the feeling. She trembled, aware of how close they were, how warm he was, how her heart fluttered as he gazed into her eyes.
He blinked, eyelashes still damp. “Thank you.” He looked toward the open door, where Gold was presumably still crawling down the stairwell, and his body shuddered softly as another wave of her pain passed through him. “And thank you for stopping me before I really did break myself.”
“Always.” She leaned forward and pressed her forehead against his. “I won’t let you break.”
He breathed in deeply, leaning against her. Their noses were almost touching, and her heart beat faster and faster, and before she realized what she was doing, she leaned forward that last bit.
And she kissed him.
His lips were soft beneath hers. His body tensed for a moment, when she first pressed against him, but then it released, and his mouth parted slightly. His arms wrapped around her back in a hug, and her thumbs stroked the tears from his cheeks.
Swallowing, she pulled away. Her mouth felt cold without his against it.
His eyes were dark and huge. She turned her head away, clearing her throat.
His hand brushed her side and came up to her chin, tilting her face to his. His eyes flicked back and forth, as though searching for an answer in her eyes or her blush or her tingling mouth.
Then he pressed his forehead against hers and breathed her name. “Nita.”
Her whole body was hot, and the areas pressed against him burned. Her breathing was sharp, and her throat was so choked with butterflies she couldn’t make a sound.
He shivered softly as pain from the next room slid through his body. Then, still trembling from Gold’s pain, he leaned forward and kissed Nita.
Something inside her relaxed at that, at the knowledge that this weird, amorphous thing in her wasn’t one-sided, that he wanted her the way she wanted him.
And even though she was sure everyone in the world would think they were so wrong, right there, at that moment, with his mouth against hers and her body humming with electricity, everything felt just right.
Forty-Seven
NITA WASN’T SURE how long after the kiss ended they stood there, foreheads pressed together, noses touching, eyes closed. But eventually she pulled away and took a step back.
She cleared her throat, and looked down at Henry’s dead body. The first time she and Kovit had killed someone, Nita had felt like a monster for laughing over the dead body a few minutes later. How times had changed.
Kovit seemed a little out of breath, his lips swollen. His tears were gone, but his eyes still shone.
Nita cleared her throat. “We should, ah, get Gold.”
Kovit blinked. “Right.” He cleared his throat and took a step away from Nita. “Yes. Let’s.”
They found her halfway down the stairwell, her body twisted from the effort of getting down the stairs. She was weeping softly, tears coating her cheeks and pain carved in every line of her face. Kovit thrummed with her pain.
Gold gasped when she saw them and opened her mouth to scream again, even though there was no one to hear her.
Kovit knelt beside her. “It’s okay. You don’t need to be afraid. I won’t hurt you.”
“Of course you will. It’s your nature,” she spat, curling in on herself like a wounded animal.
He sighed, soft and sad. “Whether you believe me or not, May, it’s the truth. I won’t hurt you.”
Gold hesitated. Nita wondered if she understood the significance that Kovit was choosing to name her, to specifically give her the label of friend in his mind.
Gold narrowed her eyes as she examined Kovit. “You called me May.”
“Would you prefer Gold?” he asked, kneeling over her and examining her knee. Nita knelt beside him, her fingers running expertly over the skin. Just dislocated.
Gold swallowed and shook her head. “Gold will follow in her father’s footsteps and run the Family by any means necessary. May is a nonexistent girl who has internet friends and cried when Matt died.”
“May, then.” Kovit’s voice was decisive. “All right, May, we’re going to pop your joints back together. It’s going to hurt a lot for a moment and then it will feel a lot better.”
She hesitated, eyes flicking to him, fear lurking in their depths.
“I’ll pop them in.” Nita moved around to get a better angle. “Kovit’s just going to hold you still.”
She looked like she was going to reject the offer, but then she nodded, mouth firming into a tight line.
Before she could say anything, Nita grabbed her knee and snapped it back in.
Gold gasped, but didn’t scream. Beside her, Kovit jerked, a small moan escaping his lips.
“Better?” Nita asked, examining her handiwork.
Gold nodded tightly. “Much.”
They did the same thing with the shoulder, and Gold groaned softly as Kovit shivered in pleasure, his whole body shuddering like he’d been dunked in cold water.
Gold leaned against the wall of the hallway, her fingers trailing gently over her tender knee and shoulder.
“You probably shouldn’t walk on that leg or
use that arm for a bit,” Nita told her.
She nodded. “I know.”
They were all silent for a long moment.
Finally Gold spoke. Her voice was soft and curious and slightly suspicious. “Why didn’t you come back to Henry right after you got out of the market?”
He shrugged, and looked away. “I didn’t really enjoy being his pet monster.”
“But you’re so good at it.” Her voice was mocking. “I thought you’d be chomping at the bit to go back to your torture chamber.”
“I guess you don’t know me that well, then,” he snapped.
“I think I know more than enough.” Her mouth was tight, and there was undisguised hatred in her eyes. “You’re evil.”
“Look at the pot calling the kettle black.”
“There’s something called scale. Shoplifting isn’t the same as robbing the Federal Reserve. What I do is nothing compared to what you do.”
Kovit clenched his jaw, and it was like a switch flicked off, and he met Gold’s eyes with a ferocity that seemed to burn him up from the inside out. “Enough is enough. I’m sick of you using me as an excuse to feel better about yourself as a human.”
“I’m not—”
“You are. You’re so terribly convinced that zannies, that all unnaturals, that we’re all nothing but monsters. That you’re so superior. That you’re just a better person. Well, guess what, you’re not.”
“How dare you? You’re not even a person.”
“You know that’s not true, May. Seven years in a chatroom together, half of the time spent on private chats between us. You know perfectly well I’m as human as you. You just don’t want to face that fact because it means that if I’m not biologically, fundamentally worse than you, you have to ask questions about yourself and how bad a person you are.”
“I know I’m not as bad a person as you.” Her voice was high and sharp and angry.
He smiled at her expression, and it wasn’t a nice smile. “Let me tell you something, Gold. Anything I’ve done, you’re just as culpable of. Why? Because you knew what was happening. And you never tried to stop it. You had so many options. Talking to me. Your father. The police. INHUP.”
He leaned forward. “So don’t try and tell me you’re better than me, when all you’ve done is express tacit agreement for the Family and their choices with your inaction. Your silence is deafening.”
Gold stared at him, and for a moment her face was a perfect mask of shock before it morphed into rage.
“Fuck you,” she snarled. “How fucking dare you.”
“No, May. How fucking dare you. We were friends. We were allies. And you turned on me the second you found out I wasn’t human. And don’t tell me it was because I was ‘evil’. You were a spy, you knew I was in the Family, and you were still my friend. You only changed your tune when you found out I wasn’t ‘human’ the way you thought I was.”
Gold was quiet for a long moment, and something inside her seemed to shift, her back straightening and her eyes hardening. Finally she said, voice soft and cold, “I won’t apologize for my assumptions. I didn’t think zannies were capable of the kind of emotion and personality I knew your online presence had.”
“Had you even met a zannie before?” Kovit’s voice was as smooth and slippery as butter.
“Yes. I had. You.” She glared at him. “And you, the you I saw in the Family events, the you that people whispered about in the hallways, were a very different person than the boy in the chat.”
Kovit’s face hardened.
“And you can’t blame me for being afraid of that boy and thinking he was a monster. I’m trying to reconcile two very different people, and you can’t claim to be this misunderstood tragic hero, because I fucking know what you did for the Family, and I’ve seen the videos Henry was blackmailing you with.”
Kovit didn’t react except for a slight tightening of his shoulders. “Fine. So you don’t like me now that you know who I am.”
“I don’t know you, though.” Gold’s anger melted away, and grief took its place, her mouth turning down and lips pressing together like she was holding her emotions in. She looked at Kovit like she was looking at the dead body of her best friend. “Not really. I know who you pretended to be for the Family. I know who you pretended to be on the chatroom. But you? I don’t know who you are.”
Kovit was silent.
Gold wrapped her arms around her knees, sadness whispering through her voice. “I don’t know you at all, Kovit. Just the masks you’ve worn.”
Kovit let out a long breath. His hair fell across his eyes, and Nita wasn’t sure she wanted to see what expression they held right now. Because Gold, whether she knew it or not, had called all of his online friendships fake. She’d isolated him even more.
“I understand.” Kovit’s voice was dead.
Gold tried to straighten and cursed.
Nita let out a long breath. They’d dallied enough here. “Kovit, take Gold and go to wherever Henry’s staying. Message me the location, and I’ll see you there later.”
“Wait.” Gold’s eyes widened. “You can’t leave me with him. What if he hurts me?”
“I won’t hurt you.” Kovit’s voice was frosty.
“My shoulder and knee tell a different story,” Gold snapped, turning back to Nita.
“May.” He turned to glare at her. “I get that you don’t like me. But just pretend you’re with Kevin from the chat.”
Nita laughed. “Your online name is Kevin?”
He shrugged. “I wanted something close to my name that sounded American-y. I don’t know. It was stupid, I wanted to blend in. And it wasn’t like they could see me over the internet.”
Nita frowned, imagining a small desperate child wanting nothing more than to fit in. To belong.
She thought of Adair’s comment—that if Kovit hadn’t been hunted by INHUP, he never would have become who he was. And she thought about all the things he probably did to try and belong in the Family. She wondered if perhaps Adair was right.
Not that it would change anything.
Nita turned to Gold. “Look, he’s not going to hurt you. You’re going to be fine. I need you guys to go ahead while I deal with the bodies.”
Kovit’s face shadowed as he looked up the stairwell toward the room where Henry’s body lay. Nita reached over, grabbed his chin, and turned him to face her.
“I will deal with the bodies.” Her voice was firm. “You will go and find Henry’s computer and get rid of all trace of those incriminating videos he was emailing you.”
Kovit swallowed. “Adair can deal with the bodies—”
“Adair,” Nita hissed, “is going to be one of the bodies soon.”
Kovit’s eyes widened.
Nita leaned forward. “No one sells me out and doesn’t pay for it.”
Kovit swallowed. “Do you need—”
“Backup?” Nita shook her head. “Oh no, I can deal with Adair all on my own.”
Adair was going to learn that Nita didn’t need to dissect a kelpie to know their weaknesses.
Kovit hesitated, then nodded. “What will you do with the bodies?”
Nita raised her eyebrows. “Do you really want to know?”
Kovit looked away. “No.”
Nita’s smile was tight as she turned away.
“Nita?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t . . . I mean . . . Henry’s body . . .”
Nita sighed. “I’ll get rid of it. Respectfully.”
“But you won’t do anything . . . unnecessary to it.” His eyes couldn’t hold hers.
“No. I won’t dissect his body. I promise.”
She didn’t say anything about the other one.
He gave her a soft smile. “Thanks.”
“Always.”
He knelt beside Gold, hauled her up by her good arm, and acted like a crutch so she could walk. She was tense and tight, and Nita couldn’t tell if the thought of being touched by Kovit made her skin c
rawl or she was in a lot of pain. Kovit wasn’t reacting, but he had a lot of practice controlling himself.
Kovit smiled at Nita, a soft, sad expression that reminded her that while they’d had their moment, he’d still broken something inside, and it ate away at his soul. She had the most horrible feeling that he’d taken a step toward the darkness, and he could never take that step back.
It was a feeling she knew well.
Then he was gone, hauling Gold along with him. Nita forced herself to turn away from them and return to a room with two dead bodies.
Nita let out a breath as the shop door slammed behind them. The world seemed emptier without him there.
Sighing, she opened the apartment door and examined the scene in front of her. The only sign of violence was the bloodstain on the wall. And obviously, the bodies.
Nita nodded. She could do this.
First, she would set up a trap for when Adair returned.
And while she waited . . . well. She had a scalpel. She had a body. And she had all the time in the world.
Forty-Eight
N ITA TOOK HER TIME with her dissection.
It was hard to slow herself down, to not punch a hole in the body’s chest and start ripping out organs. But she didn’t. She was controlled, contained.
She sliced the skin of the chest in a Y incision, and used her enhanced muscles to crack the rib cage with brute force. Greedy fingers reached in, and her eyes shone with a desperate hunger.
When Adair came in and interrupted her, Nita was nearly done.
The door opened, and Nita rose from the floor, her arms up to her elbows covered in blood from where she’d ripped the man’s organs out of his chest and lined them up alongside him like she was preparing to embalm an Egyptian mummy.
Adair stopped in the doorway. His black hair was mussed, and his skin pale, stretched tight by the frown across his face, which melted into shock as he took in the room. His eyes flicked between Nita, crouched over one gory body, and Henry’s body, still lying on the bed where it had fallen.
In that second of staring at each other, the tub of hot water Nita had perched on top of the cabinet beside the door slowly tipped over, tugged by a string attaching the basin to the open door.
Only Ashes Remain Page 29
