by Kelli Kimble
“I’m already an abomination,” I hissed. “You hid all of this from me and manipulated me. You’re still manipulating me. I can’t let you do this.”
He turned away from the window. His calm face was infuriating. “The plan is already in motion and not set to come to fruition for another twenty years or more. You forget, Iris, that time is of little consequence to me. I can be patient.”
My hands curled into claws, though they stayed in their human form. I wanted to change and rip him to shreds, but it was as if my alternate form had been chained. I strained for another minute. Mr. Anu stood and watched me.
“Impressive effort, Iris. You continue to amaze me.”
“You can’t make me feel better with compliments,” I said.
“I tell you what,” he said, approaching me. “I’ll release you. I’ll find a way to remove your alternate form and you can walk away from all of this. But you’ll have to make a choice.”
I’m afraid to ask.
He made it to where I didn’t have to, continuing.
“If you so choose, I will remove your alternate form. I’ll have to break your bond with Jacob. You’ll lose each other, and he will lose his alternate form as well. But this is entirely up to you. Maybe you should discuss it with him, hmm?”
“I—”
There was a knocking at the door.
“Excuse me. Dinner is ready,” Professor Cane slid one door to the side and poked his head in. “Sorry to interrupt but we don’t want it to get cold.”
“Of course,” Mr. Anu said.
We followed Professor Cane to the dining room where everybody else was already seated. I took the empty chair beside Jacob. His forehead wrinkled as he took in my stiff carriage. Had he somehow overheard our conversation? Did he know I’d been offered the chance to go back to the way things were before we met?
The dinner passed in a blur. I tried to focus on the conversation. Mr. Anu was pleasant and charming. I was helpless to keep Siggie and Buster from falling for his promises. She wasn’t going to believe that he’d be capable of setting up a human extinction. At one point Jacob leaned over and asked if I was okay. I could only smile and nod. I didn’t trust my voice to sound normal.
After dinner, Professor Cane insisted that we retire to the library for sherry. I held Jacob back as everyone left the room. I was about to whisper to him that we needed to leave when Mr. Anu turned back. He locked eyes with mine and I clamped my mouth shut. I released Jacob and we moved into the library with everyone else.
An hour of excruciating socializing passed, mostly centering around Mr. Anu learning as much as he could about Siggie and Buster. So, it was a surprise when the evening was over, and he asked Jacob and I to remain behind for a few minutes.
My mouth went dry. Dinner and the many drinks we’d been plied with lurched around my gut. I swallowed hard, willing it to stay inside.
Professor Cane and Tessa went off to the kitchen to do dishes while Mr. Anu and the two of us lingered in the library.
“Please, sit. You should be comfortable,” he said.
A set of loveseats faced each other with a coffee table in between. We sat in one and Mr. Anu sat in the other. A basket of dusty wax fruit was set on top of the table and I found myself studying the pieces. How had they made the peach look fuzzy?
“I’ve decided how you’ll proceed with Iris’s little gaffe.”
Jacob leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees.
“You’ll both tell your groups about me and what they are. They won’t believe you at first, but I want you to be persistent. I’ve no doubt that Siggie and Buster will assist in convincing them.”
“What if they still don’t believe us?” Jacob asked.
“Simple. You’ll offer for me to come and visit. I’ll convince them myself.”
My stomach turned over and I clenched my lips tight.
“That could work,” Jacob said.
“Of course, it will. I’ll come and demonstrate my abilities to them. It will be as simple as that.”
Mr. Anu smiled. Rather, he tried to. It didn’t come naturally to him to begin with, but I had the feeling he wasn’t smiling to be friendly. “Iris has something she’d like to tell you.”
Jacob turned his attention to me.
“Um,” I said.
“Go on,” Mr. Anu said.
I exhaled, then sucked in as much air as I could so that I could make one long statement without stopping. “Mr. Anu is planning a worldwide economic collapse which he says will end in humans becoming so disorganized that they will kill each other off and I want no part of it.”
There was a long pause while Jacob looked at me with his mouth hanging open.
“Excuse me?” he finally asked.
“You heard her, Jacob. She speaks the truth. But she hasn’t told you how she plans to get out of it.”
“He offered me — us — a deal.”
Jacob’s eyes swung back and forth between me and Mr. Anu. “Is one of you going to tell me what the deal is?”
“He’ll reverse the ceremony. Neither of us will have to participate in his plans and we’ll lose our alternate forms.”
“Don’t forget your bond. That will be broken as well.” He leaned forward and tapped at the air between Jacob and me. There was a jerking sensation in my scar; I felt it as clearly as if he’d physically touched me. I gasped.
“You said our bond was forever, and that we’d die without each other,” Jacob said.
He nodded. “I did say that.”
Jacob popped up, banging his knees against the coffee table. A wax apple tumbled out of the bowl and rolled across the table towards Mr. Anu. He caught it before it hit the floor with a motion so quick, I almost missed it.
“I don’t think I understand,” Jacob said. “You’re offering a deal where our end of the bargain is that we get to die?”
“You understand perfectly,” Mr. Anu said. “And once you die, I’ll resume my plans. I think Buster and Sigourney could be a suitable replacement for your roles.”
“You didn’t say we’d die. You said we wouldn’t love each other anymore,” I said.
He nodded again. “Yes, I said that. You won’t love each other anymore. But Jacob is right. You’re soulmates. You can’t live without your bond.”
“We were fine before we bonded,” I argued.
“Did you not feel me touch your bond just now? It is the strongest I’ve ever seen. It’s visible on the physical plane.” He studied the air between us with a nod of approval.
My hand flew to the scarred spot. As Jacob moved closer, the mass of it manifested in my grip. I looked up sharply at Jacob.
“How can you even be considering this?” Jacob asked. “You pushed me into this, remember?”
Had I? Now my memory of what happened wasn’t so certain. Was it me who’d done the pushing or was it Mr. Anu?
“My dear Miss Hond,” Mr. Anu said, sighing. “We can argue this all night. The simple fact is, I’ll have my power whether you help me or not. And if you don’t help me, you’ll both die alone and miserable. Because of course I can’t offer you my guidance to the other side if you force me to reverse the ceremony.” He cocked his head to the side and raised his eyebrows in an expression of mock sympathy.
Jacob held his hand out to help me from the sofa. “Come on, Iris. It’s obvious this isn’t a deal. We have no choice but to move forward.”
I stared at his hand. Didn’t we have a choice? The death of two over thousands, maybe millions more? It seemed like an easy math problem to me. Then again, self-preservation is our greatest instinct. Maybe for an Anubian it’s even greater. Did I have it in me to sacrifice myself? To sacrifice Jacob? He jerked his hand, a clear gesture for me to take it. I still hesitated, and he dropped to his knees to meet my eyes.
“Iris. Think about this. What would it do to your parents? And what about Tessa and Kal? They’ve already lost so much.”
My gut wrenched at the mention of my parents
.
Mr. Anu rose. “My offer expires at sundown tomorrow.” He sniffed, as if the deal had left a discernible bad scent in the room. “I trust you’ll do the right thing. Now if you don’t mind, I shall retire to the kitchen to assist the professor. He’s been a most gracious host.” He nodded once and left the room. It was the first time that I sensed genuine disappointment in me from him. I frowned.
Jacob was still kneeling in front of me. “Iris,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “I can’t believe you’d consider sacrificing what we share. Sacrificing me.”
I opened my mouth to answer, but nothing came out. He shook his head.
“Don’t. Let’s just go.”
He stood up and went to the door, this time not offering to help me from my seat. It was rude to leave without saying goodbye, but I didn’t want to endure Professor Cane’s prying eyes, or Tessa’s pity-filled stares. I grabbed my coat from the closet, threw it on and went out to the porch. Jacob followed me. In spite of the crisp chill of the late fall air, I felt stifled. I moved ahead, keeping a step or two in front of him. He didn’t speak and neither did I.
When we got to Alpha Nu, he walked with me to the front sidewalk.
“Listen,” he said, scrubbing the back of his neck. “I don’t want to leave this between us. Anu said it was up to you. What are you going to do?”
“I know we’re not human. But do you want to participate in something that ends like that for them?”
“Of course not.”
“But you don’t want to die, either.”
“Look, Iris. Anu has a plan, yeah. And that plan includes us. Or someone like us. But I can tell you this: if we die, we’re definitely not going to change his mind or stop it from happening.”
I exhaled a long shaky breath. “Can I ask you something?”
“You know you can.”
“Before we went through the ceremony. You said that Mr. Anu showed you the book, and he told you something that convinced you. What was it?”
He winced. “It’s going to sound stupid.”
“Please, Jacob.”
“He told me that if I wanted to, he could make me president.”
“President of what?”
“The United . . . oh, forget it. It’s stupid.”
I wanted to kick myself. Jacob was a charming guy. He’d had some trouble at school towards the end, just like I had. But up until then, Kal had told me he was well-liked by his classmates. I’d never considered that he could use his charm for a purpose, and now this was the second time in as many days that political aspirations had been mentioned.
“No, I get it,” I said. “It’s something you’d be good at.”
He brightened. “You think so?”
“Yeah.”
“Thanks.” We stood in awkward silence for a minute. I absently touched my hand to the scar. He was standing even closer than he’d been at Professor Cane’s, and my fingers twanged at it. I winced.
“Hey, you understand what I mean about the deal, right?” he asked.
“You want to try to stop him, then?”
“I think we can come up with a plan. Yeah.”
Now it was my turn to brighten. “Really?”
“Well, he is a god. But we’ll do our best.”
Chapter 17
Siggie pounced on me as soon as we were alone.
“This is going to be so great, Iris. You, Jacob, Buster, me; all wolfing it around and taking people to the afterlife.” Her eyes widened and she squealed. “Does it make you immortal?”
I thought about Mr. Anu stabbing me in the heart. I’d died when he did that, right? Maybe I was immortal. But I couldn’t trust Mr. Anu to tell me the truth about it now.
“I don’t know if I’m immortal. I guess not, since he says he can kill me.”
She shed her dress and hung it up in her closet. Maybe she was trying to be neater now that the Alpha Nu members might see what a slob she is. “What did you think about his plan?”
“Plan?” I gulped down a big wad of spit that suddenly congealed in my mouth. Did she hear Anu talking about his plans?
“Yeah. You think the members will believe him?”
Oooh. That plan.
“He can be very convincing,” I said.
“You don’t sound like you believe that.”
I turned away from her gaze and began undressing. “Believing isn’t the problem.”
She grasped my elbow and turned me towards her. “Then what is the problem?”
“I don’t want you to do the ceremony,” I said. The words tumbled out before I could stop them.
She looked like she was trying to swallow an ostrich egg whole. “What?”
“Mr. Anu has plans for the future. Plans for the world that I think are wrong. And I don’t want to pull you into it any further.”
Her expression clouded and she dropped my arm. “Is this about Buster and me having a strong bond? We’re not trying to replace you.”
“I know that. But no. It’s not about that. You just have to trust me. Do you trust me?”
Her eyebrows knit together, and she frowned. “I think I trust you. But you have to admit, you’ve done some bonehead stuff lately.”
“Siggie, I have a moral obligation to stop you from joining with him. He’s bad news. I only just found out myself, or I never would have told you about the Anubian thing to begin with. I would’ve just let everyone think it was some stupid wolf-man joke.”
“Explain.” She folded her arms over her chest and gave me a look that read strict schoolmarm. I weighed the pros and cons of telling her. Would she still want to be friends if I prevented her from reaching her full potential? I shook that thought out of my head. If you care about her, then you can’t let her do this, no matter what it does to your relationship. I was going to have to tell her.
“You know how we studied that tulip mania phenomena? He’s going to cause a full-scale economic collapse that will leave humankind helpless. He says they’ll turn on each other, all social and moral constructs will be out the window . . .” I trailed off. Siggie had collapsed onto her bed cross-legged and was now giggling so hard that tears were running down her face. “What are you laughing at?”
It was some time before she calmed down enough to answer. “Do you hear yourself? Social constructs? Economic collapse? That can’t possibly be true.”
“Siggie. He told me it was true. I asked, and he said so. I’m not making this up.”
She bunched up her pillow and put it over her legs, leaning forward onto it with her elbows. “Why would he do that? He’s already a god. He’s putting you through school so he’s not hurting for money. He doesn’t seem to age, and he looks pretty attractive for an old person. He’s living the American dream already.”
I explained how I’d heard him telling Tessa to buy stocks, and that I’d confronted both Tessa and Mr. Anu and they’d agreed that was the plan. Then I told her about how they expected the collapse to cause people to turn on each other, stealing and killing and raping and whatever harm they could think of to survive. Or maybe just because they could.
“How would he even know what stocks to buy? You’re saying he’s some kind of Wall Street savant?”
“He has a book that tells him about the future, Siggie. Besides that, he’s a god? Remember?”
“I don’t buy it.”
I put on my nightgown and went to sit beside her on her bed.
“There’s more,” I said.
“Go on, then.”
It struck me then how unfair I’d been to Siggie. I’d kept her in the dark about what she was until it was convenient for me. And now that she knew, and had even under impossible odds found her soulmate, I was trying to take it away. Whether she believed me or not about Mr. Anu’s intentions, I was going to have to let her make her own decisions. I couldn’t tell her about Mr. Anu’s deal.
“It’s nothing. Never mind. But what he plans… . . . it’s wrong. I’m not going to let him do it. And I’d reall
y rather that you not get caught up in it, either.”
She smiled. “Iris, you’re a good friend. And don’t worry. We’re going to get through this together. I won’t let you do this alone. And besides, reaching my true potential? I can’t wait for that. It’s like something inside me is thirsting for it.”
“It's your instincts,” I said. I tried to hide my sense of defeat. She wasn’t going to follow my advice; she was using the same ‘be a good friend’ logic that I was. She was just going to have to get caught in the web along with me.
She checked her bedside clock. “Wow, we’ve got to get to bed. Don’t forget tomorrow is the welcome brunch.”
“The what?”
“The welcome brunch. To welcome us to the house? Didn’t I tell you about that?”
I sighed and moved to my own bed, peeling back the covers, and slipping between the sheets. This bed was a regular mattress and box spring and it didn’t stink or make a horrendous noise when I moved around. In spite of all that had happened, it felt like heaven; I tried to savor it for a moment before I responded. “No, I don’t think you did.”
She turned off the light. “It’s just the board and their roommates. It’ll be the perfect time for us to start convincing them. Where do you think we should start? Could you maybe get Mr. Anu to stop by tomorrow night before he goes home? You think he would?”
The pillow was feeling extra soft, and I wanted to pretend like I hadn’t heard her. But I managed to mumble agreement before drifting to sleep.
* * *
Shirley handed me a plate. “Help yourself,” she said. She and Mimi had made eggs, bacon, toast, and gravy and set it all out in a tidy little buffet. Next, she poured me a glass of what I thought was orange juice, but as she handed it to me, she winked and whispered, “mimosa.”
I wasn’t sure drinking something that Shirley had mixed up was a good idea, but the buffet line was backing up behind me, so I accepted it with thanks and went to sit. Instead of a formal breakfast in the dining room, we ate holding our plates while sitting in the parlor. I fumbled with my plate as I sank into my chair, and narrowly missed dumping it on Francis. She raised an eyebrow at me before moving surreptitiously away.
