He had carried Helen effortlessly, and Helen knew she was no lightweight. Most men would have struggled to move her, but this man had lifted her up and carried her as though she were a mere doll. Helen had struggled not to gasp aloud and reveal that she was conscious when he kicked down the front door. She touched her rib cage, below her breasts where his hands had cradled her. Even rushing from the burning building, he had carried her with such gentleness, laid her in the grass with such care.
Helen shook her head. This was no time to go all mutton-headed over a man, no matter how attractive he might be. If this man was working against Cindy Liu, then this man was her enemy. He had come to the lab with Patricia and Jessica to… to do what? That was the question of the night, wasn’t it? What had they been after?
Helen thought about what she’d heard Patricia say when they thought she was unconscious. Those two had brought Jessica with them, and she had gone out the window. That meant she’d been in the laboratory, rifling through Dr. Liu’s supplies and notes, taking who-knows-what. Were they looking for evidence? Surely, the police had already taken anything that would help their case. Were they looking for blackmail?
If Jessica had gone out the window, then whatever they wanted had been in the lab. And chances were they had gotten it. Helen watched the fire engulf the front of the house. Black smoke filled the night sky, which had turned a dark and ominous orange. Cindy had not been able to get the materials she had come for. She hadn’t even made it into the lab, and now, her supplies were going up in smoke.
Damn those three troublemakers. If they had simply had a little faith in Cindy, Helen knew Cindy could have helped them all, and herself. Now, what was to keep Cindy from just getting younger and younger until she reverted to infancy? Where would Helen get what she needed? Dr. Liu had been evasive about whether Helen needed to keep taking the pills to maintain her power. But Helen suspected she did. It made sense, didn’t it? If the pills triggered the gift, lack of pills would take it away. And she needed Cindy to provide the pills.
She couldn’t go back to being ordinary after this. Now that she had tasted power, knew what it was like to wield fire, how could she go back to being a realtor, living a boring life like anyone else’s? She turned to Cindy, who was now coughing and beginning to regain consciousness. She would protect this woman no matter what. Cindy Liu was her ticket to a life worth living. And a life worth living was worth fighting for. And if she had to push her way through a lizard, a hulk, and a bubble, so be it. She would.
essica stepped into her dining room, having seen her boys to bed. Her husband was still on his business trip. His text said he wouldn’t have time to call tonight. That was probably for the best. He was still angry about the police officer who had pulled him from his meeting with the implication he had harmed his wife. She’d listened to the accusatory voicemail he’d left when she decided to ignore his earlier call.
She had a feeling this was it, the crisis moment that had been building in her marriage. Now that it was here, she was taking a page from Nathan’s book and avoiding it, at least for now. She needed to decide what she wanted before she’d be able to fight for it. Did she still want Nathan? She honestly wasn’t sure.
Standing in the doorway, she looked around at the war council. That was what it was, after all. They were there to plan strategy, to figure out how to stop Dr. Liu and Helen before they hurt someone. Her eyes ranged around the table.
Leonel and David sat together at the far end of the table, talking quietly to each other in Spanish. David checked the bandage on Leonel’s head again, and Leonel patted his hand reassuringly. He gestured at Patricia and seemed to be explaining how the injury had happened.
Patricia and Suzie had taken positions opposite each other in the middle, the papers spread out in neat piles between them. They were shifting papers from one pile to another and referring to a chart sketched out on some graph paper. Suzie had her laptop open and clicked away. Her portable scanner made quiet electronic sounds as she processed all the documents they had found that weren’t already digital.
Jessica’s mother, Eva, hovered at the side buffet, fussing over the coffeepot. Her hands shook. Jessica felt guilty, putting her mother through so much stress. She went to her and rubbed her shoulder gently. “Would you like to go lie down? I can fill you in later.”
Eva smiled at her daughter and nodded. “It has been rather overwhelming.” She hugged Jessica tightly before she left the room. “I’m so glad you made it home safely.”
“Me, too. What would we do without me?” Jessica grinned. She was pleased to see that her mother smiled at the weak attempt at humor. They’d make it through this.
Looking around at the other four people at the table, Jessica wondered what she was doing there. The others seemed to think she should be there, but she couldn’t for the life of her imagine what use she could be, other than maybe having a ready supply of coffee and a large dining room table. She had no idea what they should do from here. Nothing in her life had prepared her to make sense of the lab notes they had stolen or to guess what a madwoman might do next. She was in way over her depth.
She poured herself a cup of coffee, wishing it tasted as good as Ms. Liu’s tea had, and sat down at the head of the table, sipping and waiting for someone to start the discussion. For at least the third time since this had all began, Jessica felt invisible and useless.
As she waited, Jessica played with the green stones she picked up from Dr. Liu’s lab. She had put them in a little silk bag hung on a long chain and wore them around her neck inside her shirt. She found she was already developing a habit of pulling them out to play with whenever she was idle. She liked how they felt in her hand. Running her finger along the bumps and hard smooth edges was soothing. They were always cool to the touch, even when they’d been against her skin.
She wasn’t entirely sure why she had taken them. She knew they were important to Dr. Liu, so that was part of it. After all, Dr. Liu had kidnapped her and kept her in a space age tube in the basement. The woman had offered help and given harm instead. The gems were the first of the payments Jessica intended to extract for her trouble. But now that she had them, she knew there was more to it than that. She was drawn to the gems themselves. She wanted them because she wanted them.
Eventually, Patricia sat back and looked around at all of them. “Okay. Here’s what we have. Suzie?”
Jessica turned her attention to the presentation and to the young woman that had come with Patricia, her intern, apparently. Jessica wondered idly what else there was to their relationship. She was certainly very pretty and obviously worshiped Patricia. Patricia seemed a little less frightening when Suzie was around, too. Softer somehow.
Suzie turned her laptop around so that it faced the center of the table. Jessica and Leonel obligingly scooted their chairs around so everyone could see. “All of you used Dr. Liu’s products. Jessica drank her tea. Leonel used her soap. Patricia used her skin cream. I took some of Patricia’s skin cream to a chem lab yesterday for analysis. If you will share some of your tea and soap with me, I can have them analyzed as well.”
The other women nodded their assents, and Suzie continued, “The interesting thing, so far, is the complexity of the product. It was all I could do to get back out of the lab this afternoon. The tech was so excited. He said he’d never seen anything like it. There were ingredients in it he hadn’t been able to identify.”
Leonel chimed in, “I bet the fire lady used something, too.”
Patricia grunted agreement. “And Cindy has been doing something to herself as well. Did you see how young she looked? She’s almost ten years older than me!”
Suzie added Helen and Cindy’s names to her graphic with question marks for product information. Leonel raised his hand, like he was at school, and Patricia waved for him to speak. “Ms. Liu sold her soap at the farmer’s market in my neighborhood. I know I wasn’t the only woman to use it. You are also probably not the only people who are using her t
ea and her skin cream. So, why us? Why did it change us and not others?”
Suzie frowned. “That’s been puzzling me as well. I can’t find a common demographic among you. You have different ethnic origins, different ages, different home addresses, different ways of life in just about every way. At first, I thought maybe it had something to do with hormones associated with menopause, because that’s what started Patricia’s complaint, but Jessica is much too young for that to be a factor.”
“No, I’m not,” Jessica said, blushing a deep red when all eyes turned to her. She tried to keep her voice even and act like it was no big deal, even though she was shaking inside. “I’m a survivor,” she said. Everyone looked at her blankly, and she knew they didn’t understand. She took a deep breath. “Cancer. Ovarian cancer. I lost my ovaries about a year ago. It sent me into early menopause. I was drinking Dr. Liu’s tea to help with the depression.”
Leonel shoved back her chair and rushed to Jessica’s side. Hugging her, he cried, “Oh, you poor girl!”
Suzie had a thoughtful look on her face. “And you, Leonel? You are also a little young.”
Leonel shrugged. “It happens early in my familia. My grandmother was only forty-five. I am forty-eight. I stopped―Lo siento, David―six months ago―the bleeding.” Leonel dropped his voice and whispered the last two words, like they were a secret. Jessica noted that David had turned his careful attention to the window behind him. She smiled. Men could be so delicate about the female body.
Patricia waved her hand in a gesture that said none of this was important. “What happened to us isn’t what matters now. We need to figure out what Cindy is going to do next. One of the folders I found was her reports on herself. They show a series of tests for reversal of effects of aging. At first, the change was gradual, but here, lately, it has accelerated. She was trying a variety of compounds to slow it down. I think that’s why she was at the lab last night: to find something she needed to slow down the process. In the space of a week, she has easily lost ten years in appearance.”
Leonel jumped in. “We should find out more about her friend as well. Cindy may be the crazy one, but this Helen is dangerous. We need to watch out for her, find out how to stop her.”
Patricia seemed annoyed. “I had it under control, Leonel. If you hadn’t thrown yourself at her, we could have gotten out of there without burning the whole place down.”
“Under control?” Leonel stood, bumping his head on the chandelier as he did. “That’s what you call control? She would have killed you. I was saving you!”
“I didn’t need saving.” Patricia leaned across the table, growling. Scales moved across her cheeks, and David and Suzie both leaped back, alarmed.
“How was I supposed to know that? You didn’t even see fit to warn me that our little adventure might end with a fireball hurtling at my head!”
“I didn’t know she would be there!”
“That’s not the point, Patricia.” Leonel’s voice was calm and steady. Jessica recognized the tone as the one you use when you’re talking to an unruly child and are worried you might just start screaming. A smart child figures out when Mommy is that kind of calm, you’d better shape up. “You knew that was possible, and you didn’t even tell us. What happened to working together?” Leonel reached out an arm and touched Patricia’s elbow.
“If you had just done what I said, we wouldn’t have been in that mess. I had a plan, and you ruined it.”
Leonel drew back his hand, his face stiffening. “What plan? How was I supposed to know what your plan was? What made you think we would all just follow you blindly?”
Patricia’s face turned a frightening shade of purple. “I know Cindy. That made me the best person to handle her. What? You think we should follow you just because you’re a man?”
Stricken, Leonel gasped like he’d been physically slapped. His lips trembled, and silent tears began to run down his cheeks. Jessica and David grabbed Leonel’s arms and soothed him, shooting twin accusing glares at Patricia, who threw her arms into the air and growled at the ceiling. “Women!”
Suzie stepped up. “Please sit down, everyone. We can work this out.”
Just then, Eva came clattering into the room on her heeled slides, her eyes wide. “Jessica! You’ve got to see this!”
They all followed Eva into the family room where the TV news was playing. Eva clicked rewind to start the segment over again. As the images ran backward, they all saw a close up of Patricia in her dinosaur shape, chasing people away from the scene of the fire. Her scales appeared to almost glow in the strange light of the street. When Eva pressed play, they saw Patricia thrust her claws out in front of her and bellow. The group gathered, fascinated.
As they all watched, Eva grabbed her daughter’s arm and looked pointedly at Patricia. Jessica nodded. Yes, the lizard lady was Patricia. Her intentions were good, but the bedside manner could have used some work. She had gotten the people away from the danger of the burning house full of potentially explosive things, but she had also scared the hell out of them. Jessica was beginning to understand that Patricia was an “ends justify the means” sort of person.
The clip ended when the video went all topsy-turvy as the photographer changed his mind about standing his ground and ran away. The news reporter said the footage had been taken earlier that evening just outside a house fire in midtown. The cause of the fire was as yet unknown, and no injuries or deaths had been reported. The image changed on the screen behind the reporter’s head and showed a still picture of a fiery cloud engulfing the back of the house. Jessica couldn’t believe how close they had all come to being blown up.
The house, another reporter said, speaking from in front of the burned out shell that had once been Ms. Liu’s laboratory, belonged to a sixty-seven year old woman who was not on the scene and had not yet been located. The image of Cindy Liu must have come from her driver’s license. The greenish cast of the photograph added to the appearance of a madwoman. Police were at the house just days before to investigate a possible kidnapping.
Jessica squeezed her mother’s hand, reassuringly. “We’ll find her,” she said. “Don’t worry.” Jessica could tell by her mother’s face that worry wasn’t something she’d be able to turn off, but she seemed to appreciate the attempt at reassurance, anyway. Eva smiled wanly and turned back to the television.
This was the second sighting of the strange lizard woman. She had been seen at the shopping mall during a hostage standoff a few days earlier. Grainy security camera footage was shown, including the moment when the boy with the gun hit the stage like a sack of potatoes. The women watched in stunned silence as it was announced that authorities wanted to question this mysterious woman and were offering a reward for information.
The anchorwoman tried to laugh it off as a prank, but no one in Jessica’s family room was laughing. All eyes turned to Patricia, who shrugged. “So much for working in secret,” she said.
elen sat on the bed bewildered, listening to Cindy sobbing in the bathroom. What had happened to the strong woman she’d met at The Market? Where was the scientist? The visionary? Now, Helen was worried she had saddled herself with an infant, blubbering all the time. This was getting old fast. She wanted to leave but needed to keep Cindy on her side. No Cindy, no pills. No pills, no powers. Besides, the woman couldn’t even take care of herself in this state.
At last, Cindy came out of the bathroom, rubbing her face with a hotel washcloth. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” She tossed the washcloth over her shoulder in the general direction of the bathroom and threw herself on the bed, sprawling there on her belly.
“I do,” Helen said. “Puberty.”
Cindy laughed, but then gasped, smacking herself in the forehead. “Shit. You could be right. I’ve got to be―what do you think? Fifteen?”
Helen nodded. Cindy had that lanky half-unformed look girls in their early teens develop. Legs as long as horses with torsos still slender as a child’s. When
her daughter had been at that stage, they called her The Gazelle. Mary had cried for what seemed like three years straight. Helen had strongly considered child abuse. “Think about it,” she said. “You’ve been a mess these past few days. The younger you look, the worse you get.”
Cindy looked thoughtful, picking out a small pimple on her chin. “I’ve got to get some more emerald powder. It slows the process. It’ll give me time to figure out how to reverse it, or at least stop it from going further.”
Helen frowned. “But your lab is up in smoke now. Where can we get more?”
“I’ve got a source, but it takes weeks. Technically, it’s illegal to export to the United States.” Cindy was starting to sound like she might cry again. That hitch was in her voice again, that whine that drove Helen crazy.
Helen stood up and paced the small living room area of the hotel suite. She set each of her fingertips aflame in turn and extinguished them by popping them into her mouth. It tickled the inside of her cheeks. Suddenly, she stopped. “Could your supply have survived the fire?”
Helen hadn’t mentioned the fire since it happened, feeling guilty that she had destroyed her friend’s home, even if she had done it defending them both from intruders and thieves. Luckily, Cindy didn’t see it that way. She seemed to think it had been lucky Helen was there to defend her from her erstwhile friend and the mysterious brute that had attacked them in the living room.
Cindy rolled over onto her back, facing the ceiling. She ran her fingers through her hair, apparently considering. “Yes. Maybe. It’s not flammable itself or explosive. If the fire didn’t burn too hot…yes!”
“Then we’ve got to go back.”
Cindy agreed. “Yes, as soon as it is dark.”
A few hours later, Helen and Cindy were exiting the rented little red sports car parked three blocks over from Cindy’s wreckage of a house and skirting through backyards and tree-lines to get there. It was three in the morning. They had agreed it was better to go during the sweet spot after the night owls had gone to sleep and before the early birds were still sleeping.
Going Through the Change Page 20
