by Megan Morgan
“You better hurry up,” Kevin said. “And also, I think you could do this just fine without me.” He sounded bitter.
“June, if you want to save your brother, you have to ask her,” Sam said. “Suck it up and do it.”
Scarcely a thing in the world could make June get closer to the slab. The movements under the sheet were getting slower, more languid. Scarcely a thing, except the thought of Jason under that sheet.
June inched forward, forcing her feet to move, glad Sam stayed at her back and kept pushing her. She reached Kevin, way too close, and couldn’t take another step.
“Ask her,” Sam urged.
June had no idea what to say. She didn’t want to hear that voice again. She drew a shuddering breath and leaned forward a tiny bit.
“How—how do I—” Her words were shaky. “How do I get Jason out of the Institute?”
The body snapped its head toward her. June lurched back. The room seemed to brighten and spin.
“Dooon’t gooo inssssiiide,” the voice breathed out, every sound elongated in a sigh. “Maaake them briiing hiiim ouuut.”
June stared, trembling.
“Puuublic pressssure.” The voice seemed to be getting softer, weaker. “Gooo tooo the presssss.”
“The press?” Sam asked.
The corpse rolled her head slowly into a supine position. “Ethaaaan Robertssss…” The sound faded with a slow hiss and fell silent.
After a moment, when she didn’t speak again, June pulled at Sam’s grip. “Let me go.”
Sam did. “Don’t leave yet,” he said. “We need your help to get out.” He turned to Robbie. “Put her away.”
Through the buzzing in her ears, June heard the slab slide back in and the door clang shut. Her knees had gone weak. Her stomach turned.
Sam grabbed her arm. “Let’s go.”
June moved mindlessly as they made their way out of the building, down the white hallway, through the reception area, past the security desk. She spoke to people, her power surging warm inside her cold body, but she barely knew her own voice.
Outside, the icy air shocked her back to reality. She stumbled to the back of the car and vomited. Sam slid up beside her and placed a reassuring hand between her shoulder blades as she gagged and retched.
“It’s all right,” Sam said. “Most people react like this their first time.”
After the heaves passed, June remained hunched over, trembling, equal parts stricken and resembling the world’s biggest tool, her forehead pressed against the cold metal of the car. Her mouth tasted bitter, and her throat burned. Sam kept his hand on her back.
“Oh, for God sake,” Kevin muttered.
“Shut up,” Sam said. “Or else.”
Cindy had gotten out of the car. She stood a few feet away, nose scrunched up.
“You want some water?” Cindy asked. “I got some in my bag.”
Sam removed his hand, but grim understanding glowed in his eyes.
“Well”—June spat into the puddle of puke at her feet—“I guess we better do what the dead body says.”
Chapter 8
When June and Sam entered the hotel room, Micha was curled up in a chair asleep, Muse sitting on one of the sofas watching TV. She swiveled around and Sam gazed at her, not speaking. June got the impression he was sharing telepathically what had happened.
Micha stirred and lifted his head. He blinked slowly. “Oh.” His voice was thick and he licked his lips. “You guys are back.”
“Yeah.” June peeled off her jacket.
Micha's eyes were glazed, his face pale.
“You all right?” she asked.
“Yeah.” Micha sat up. He raised his eyebrows. “Wow. That’s some crazy stuff.”
“What is?” June asked.
“What you just saw.”
June stepped back, startled and confused.
Sam breezed past, coat over his arm and cell phone in hand. “I’m going to make some calls. Try to get in touch with Ethan.”
“Okay.” June said absently.
“Ethan’s a busy man,” Sam said. “I’m not talking to his voicemail.”
Micha sat up fully and placed his feet on the floor. “What did you guys get up to today?”
June didn’t answer, still too addled to handle anything else. She went out on the balcony to smoke and to bask in the cold air so she could clear her head and get her senses working again. As she finished the cigarette and contemplated another one, Sam stepped outside. She ground the butt out on the railing.
“I’ll be in touch with Ethan Roberts shortly,” he said. “I don’t know why I didn’t come up with this myself.”
“Why didn’t you tell me what you were planning at the morgue?”
“If I had, you wouldn’t have gone.”
“I would have had a choice.”
“There was no choice.”
“I would have at least been prepared.” She pulled her cigarettes out of her jacket pocket. Her fingers were numb. “You had no right to make me face that without warning.”
“I told you how the Oracle of the Dead works. You had to be the one to ask.”
“That’s not the point.” She nearly crumpled the pack in her fist. “You could have told me why we were going there, explained to me what was about to happen.”
“And you would have resisted. You know so little about yourself and the people like you. You’re a child in the wilderness. That’s why you’re in this position right now.”
She shook a cigarette out and pulled the matches from the bar out of her pocket. “You’re a bastard.” She cupped a hand around the end of the cigarette and lit it, shaking.
Sam's eyes glittered. “Am I?” He turned and went back into the room.
June smoked the cigarette. Now she had guilt to deal with on top of everything else. When she went back inside, she could barely feel her hands and feet. Sam sat in the bedroom, on the end of the bed. Muse had disappeared, and Micha was slumped in his chair, staring at the TV.
June plodded into the bedroom and sat down stiffly on the end of the bed, next to Sam. He had the TV on as well and was watching the news.
“It’ll probably be morning before I hear anything,” Sam said flatly. “I was just being optimistic.”
“Look. Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for everything you’ve done for me. Everything you’re still doing for me. I appreciate it. Even if your methods scare the shit out of me.”
Sam stared at the TV.
“Sam—”
“It’s perfectly reasonable to be disturbed by what you saw today,” he said. “Hell, I’d be shocked if you weren’t. But there are horrors in this world, and though I don’t wish them upon you, you’re in a place right now where far more horrifying things may happen. Prepare yourself.”
“Yeah, I figured.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “I don’t scare easy. But I don’t like the thought of—mortality, I guess. Corpses and…ghosts.”
“Death is not easy to get used to.” His voice dropped a notch. “But someday you’ll have to accept it.”
She pictured the glass at Navy Pier, the angel leading the woman into death.
“I’m sorry I called you a bastard just now,” she said. “I didn’t mean that.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t warn you.”
They were quiet for a minute. The two televisions blared in stereo. Micha was watching the same thing.
“So,” she said, groping for some social grace she knew she must possess. “Your…brother. I take it he’s dead? Or disappeared, since you said ‘was.’”
“He’s dead.”
“Older? Younger?” she asked. “Twin?”
“He was older than me.”
“When did he die?”
“Some years ago.”
“How did he die?”
His expression was unreadable. He didn’t speak.
“Sorry,” she muttered.
&nb
sp; After another minute, Sam got to his feet. “I need to go take care of some things. Muse will be in the hotel tonight, watching over you. If you need anything, simply call out to her. She’ll hear.”
“So she’ll be monitoring our thoughts all night?”
“No, she’ll just be listening for you. So you can have some privacy.”
June didn’t bother denying anything.
After Sam left, they ordered food. Micha got into his pajama pants. June wanted to stay dressed in case Sam returned with some news and they had to leave, even if he did say it would be morning before he heard anything. Morning seemed centuries away.
The food arrived, and while they ate, sitting together on one of the sofas, Micha looked through his phone.
“What are you doing?” June asked around a mouthful of veggie burger. No bun, no cheese. “Should you really have that on? Someone might track it or something.”
“Unlikely. You need some pretty sophisticated equipment to track a cell phone. I’m looking through my pictures and my call history. Trying to remember something. About her.”
June watched him, chewing.
“The last call I made was eight days ago.”
That was when Micha had “disappeared.”
“It was to Rose,” he said.
June morbidly wondered if Rose’s voice was still on his voicemail.
“Look through the photo album.” Micha held the phone out. “I remember all those people, except her.”
She didn’t want to, but she humored him, hoping he’d forgotten he had risqué pictures of himself on there. Most of the pictures were boring, full of people June had never seen before. She stopped on one, obviously self-taken, of Micha grinning like a fool, head tilted against his wife’s shoulder. Rose was snuggled up to his side, smiling. She was gorgeous, and they looked gorgeous together. Guilt roiled in her gut, eating up anything peaceful left inside her. She lost her appetite.
“Nice.” She set the phone aside.
After they finished, June sat on a lounger in front of the wall of windows. Outside, snow fell, big fluffy flakes swirling past the glass, nearly obscuring the city glittering in the darkness beyond. Micha had gone to the bathroom, and when he returned, he stopped at the room service cart and then walked over and leaned on the back of the lounger, next to her shoulder. His form was reflected in the glass.
“Here.” He handed her a white mug. “I poured you some coffee.”
She didn’t want anything, but she took it. The smell of whiskey wafted up. “Thanks.”
“What’s on your mind?”
She didn’t even know where to begin answering that question. “I gotta get in touch with my mother somehow. Much longer without word, and she’ll fly here to find out what’s going on. I don’t want anything to happen to her.” She rubbed her hand, almost unconsciously, along the underside of her right forearm. “I also hope I don’t have to tell her Jason’s dead.”
Micha shifted closer. “Who is it?”
“Huh?”
“The portrait on your arm. I’ve been wanting to ask, but it didn’t seem appropriate.”
June bent her arm. A little girl with chubby cheeks and long, curly hair was tattooed on the underside of her forearm, the detail exquisite, all black ink, no color except June’s skin.
“It’s our little sister,” she said.
“You didn’t mention you had a sister.”
“I don’t, technically.” She lowered her arm. “She died when she was five and we were eight. Jason killed her.”
Micha gasped.
“It wasn’t his fault,” she said. “Stupid kid stuff. They were picking on each other, like brothers and sisters do. She said something dumb, made him mad. He told her to go jump off the roof. So she did. We lived in a four-story apartment building.”
Micha gaped at her in the window. “Oh my God.”
“We were just kids. We didn’t understand our power. Our parents never found out what really happened. The police told them she must have sneaked up there to play, and the owners were building a rooftop patio at the time. There weren’t any railings yet, so they said she must have slipped and fell. Hell, that’s what I believed for a long time. Jason didn’t tell me the truth until we were teenagers. He stopped using his power after she died, and I didn’t understand why until then.”
“Christ, that’s horrible,” Micha whispered. “I’m sorry, June.”
“Thanks. But like I said, it wasn’t his fault. That was the final straw between our parents, though. They lost their one normal kid, and our dad wanted rid of us.” She tapped her fingers against her mug. “When they were making Jason use his power at the Institute, it was like they were torturing him. The whole way here, he was uptight about it. Neither of us wanted to come, but the Institute was so insistent. And they promised us all this money. I was gonna give mine to our mother so she could pay off her house.”
Micha placed his hands on her shoulders. He didn’t say anything, just started kneading.
“I barely remember Katie. But I found a picture my mom had in a photo album. I didn’t get the tattoo in her memory. I got it to remind myself what I’m capable of. What I can do if I’m not careful.”
“So many dangers,” Micha said softly. “So much to fear. I know I can never understand, not really, but I try. I want to understand, so I can help.”
She squeezed her fingers around the mug. “Thanks. I shouldn’t have given you a hard time about it. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. I’m used to it.”
Quiet swaddled them. June slowly relaxed, the combination of whiskey and Micha’s massage softening her muscles. And doing other things.
“So you don’t have a boyfriend?” Micha asked, his voice drifting down like the flakes of snow.
June took a sip of the coffee. “No. Relationships make me nervous.”
Micha dug his fingers in harder, above her collarbone. “I know the answer.”
“The answer?”
“When I said I liked you. You told me I had the wrong answer.” He slid his fingers around the base of her throat. “I do like you. But you’re not interesting. You’re a normal person with normal hopes and fears and you just want a normal life. You don’t want to be special. You just want to be you. Plain, regular, simple you.”
June tilted her head back between Micha’s arms. He smiled down at her. She reached up, groped for a handful of silky gold-and-brown hair, and drew him down.
“You know we shouldn’t do this,” she whispered.
“I know.”
Kissing in such an awkward position hurt her neck, and their lips met at a strange angle, so June got up. Standing proved awkward as well, since she had to push up on her tiptoes to even be sort of at face-level with him. She had such a love-hate relationship with being short. She hated her stature, but she loved tall men.
She forgot about the unequal heights, though, when Micha pushed his hands up under her shirt and toyed with the posts through her nipples. Apparently he’d seen them through her shirt the night before, as she suspected. He finished checking them out and slid his hands down her sides, to the top of her pants. She broke away from his mouth and started kissing his neck. He smelled ridiculously good for a man who had been in hiding for a week. She could tell he’d showered while they were gone.
“I like how tiny you are,” he murmured. He slid his hands back up her sides, fingers passing over her ribs, making her aware of each one. “Like I could just pick you up and do whatever I wanted with you.”
June drew back. Micha’s eyes were glimmering. He had such a strong, handsome face; she imagined pushing his chin back and licking all the way from his throat to his jaw.
“A bit on the dominant side, are we?” she said.
“Not really.”
“No?”
“I know what I want, but I’m not dominant. A little aggressive, maybe.”
June rubbed a hand over her mouth a
nd chin, wet from the kissing. “I’m aggressive too. We might have a power struggle here.”
“Kinky.” Micha gripped her hands and drew her, while walking backwards, toward the bedroom. “So I take it this won’t be romantic?”
“If it’s romance you’re looking for, you’ve got the wrong gal.”
Micha chuckled. They entered the bedroom, and he let go of her hands. He tugged his T-shirt up and off. He had a broad chest and a tightly-muscled torso. A faint trail of sandy hair stretched downward from his navel on his smooth, flat stomach. June forgot how to talk for a moment. He smiled at her, all come-hither like.
“So”—she managed to untie her tongue—“you sure?”
“Yes.”
“I feel like I’m doing something really bad right now.”
“Shouldn’t that make it more fun?”
“Not bad like, oh no, my mom is gonna find out.” She pushed a hand through her hair. “I mean like actual bad, like I’m a bad person.”
“You’re not a bad person.” He backed toward the bed. “Come on.”
She turned off the bedside lamp, hoping darkness would somehow make things easier. The glow of the city through the snowfall infused the room. June got in bed with him.
“Don’t worry about being aggressive,” she said, close to his ear, close enough to his body to do terribly intimate things. “I’m not fragile.”
His breath ghosted hot across her jaw. “I’m not either.”
She swallowed. “I just don’t want you to regret this, if—you know. Your memory comes back.”
“Even if it does, I won’t hold it against you. I promise.”
“I just…” She couldn’t believe she was arguing when he was so close, so ready, so willing.
“Just touch me,” Micha whispered. “It’s all right.”
She pulled the waistband of his pajama bottoms out and pushed a hand inside. His groin was warm, his cock hard. He did want this. She pressed against him, equally aroused despite her protests, clenching and liquid inside. She tried not to think of Rose or the terrifying notion she might suddenly appear next to the bed with a knife in her hand.
“Can I check out your piercing?” Micha asked, his voice husky. He slid a hand down her thigh, and she instinctually spread her legs. He wasn’t talking about her nipples this time.
