Reid put his hands on Jillian’s shoulders and gave her the kindest smile I’d ever seen from him. “It’s all over. And you’re on your feet. Damn, you’re good. What happened to the other two people who were here?”
“Don’t worry about it. They’re, uh, incapacitated for the moment,” she said, her low voice coming through clearly. She wiped a tear from her eye. “Beau and Alysia are in Virginia. I don’t think they’ll be back for a least a few days.”
Upon hearing that my mother had been “incapacitated,” the tension in my chest was immediately replaced by an unnamable feeling. I focused on anything else I could. Jillian was wearing a pink silk bathrobe, identical to the one my mother hung on the back of her door. Why? And where was my mother? Every inch of Jillian’s skin was smeared with blood, and she kept flexing her fingers in an odd way. What did it mean?
The Baltimore team hung back, but when Jillian turned to them, Lark and Abby reached out and patted her shoulders.
Abby looked thoughtful. “You fight Peter?”
Jillian was taken off guard. “I…um, yes, that was me. Who are you?”
Abby bounced on her feet. “Tiger. You Miss Stabby. Friends.”
“Miss…Stabby?” Jillian echoed, her voice faint. She glanced at Berenice, who was red. “Is that what you call me?”
Berenice hesitated, then cracked into a too-wide grin before playfully punching Jillian’s arm. “Busted out of your cell, huh? Badass.” She threw her arm around Jillian’s shoulders. “You gotta tell me everything.”
Jillian shook her head. “I’m not badass,” she said softly. “The power went out and the door opened. I woke up and I…” She turned around and looked, stricken, at the guest room door nearest us. “I, uh…” She began to hyperventilate. “I…oh my God…”
“Come with me,” Ember said quickly, pulling Jillian away from Berenice, who let her go as if she’d been electrocuted.
“I’m s-sorry,” Berenice stammered. “I—I didn’t mean—”
“Benjamin, get the generator going,” Ember said, cutting Berenice off. “Marco, go with him as a lookout. Before anyone asks, Will and Mrs. Trent won’t be a problem, but we don’t know when Beau and Alysia will be back.” She pulled the blanket tighter around Jillian, who hid her face in Ember’s shoulder. “Reid, as soon as the generator’s on, get a hot meal going. You three,” she said, turning to the Baltimore team, “I’ve got a job for you.”
She inclined her head, a meaningful look passing between them. They nodded quickly and hurried down the hall, then turned towards the stairwell.
When they were gone, Ember gave Jillian a squeeze. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
Ember met my eyes. Don’t you dare get mad at me for taking her away from you. You can’t hear what I hear. She needs a shower and food. You can have the big reunion later. I’ll make sure you get it.
Ember helped Jillian down the hall and into the guest bathroom, her protective stance so sisterly and tender that it hurt to see. The door swung shut with a final, firm click.
I stood in the hallway with the two remaining men, lost for words. She was gone already.
Marco swallowed. “You know, she did need a shower,” he said, obviously aiming for nonchalance, complete with an exaggerated shrug. “I mean, am I the only one who noticed that she smelled like fish? Smelling like, I dunno, soap might help her get it together. And she’s nuts about her hair. I bet shampoo and a hairbrush would…”
Marco’s voice faded as I wandered down the hall, unable to feel my feet. All of the last two days had led up to this moment, and I still felt so empty.
But what had I expected? I didn’t know anymore. Hoping for a happy, healthy Jillian had been delusional. I could see that now. How stupid was I to really believe that she’d be okay? It was a stroke of luck that she was even mobile.
I steadied myself with a hand on the wall, focusing on the flow of breath in and out of my lungs. I just wanted to take Jillian and run. But where? The Rockies had been beautiful, when I’d taken my head out of my butt long enough to appreciate the scenery. I could steal some money and buy us a house in the mountains near a flower-strewn meadow. We could swim in a mountain creek. We could start a family. We could live in peace. They’d never find us there.
In the foyer, I looked up and saw the three Baltimore women walking around upstairs on the landing. Their murmured words were lost to me, but Berenice held armfuls of clothes.
I could steal a lot of money and buy Jillian a new wardrobe. We’d go to New York City and blow a fortune at designer boutiques. She’d complain that the tiny haute coutour outfits were made for Ember-sized individuals, not warrior women with muscles. I’d kiss her nose and offer to buy her an ice cream to make herself feel better. She’d ask for a pretzel instead. Somehow we’d end up with both. We’d have so much fun.
I walked into the kitchen. It was exactly the same as I remembered it, scrubbed to within an inch of its life, yet lush in its own particular way.
The white marble floor had been recently waxed; I could see my reflection staring up at me. Shining copper pots and pans hung from a bar on the ceiling above the enormous range, itself placed in a huge granite-topped island lined with five leather stools. Baskets of fat, ripe fruit were placed here and there around the room. Curtains of Spanish lace softly covered the window above the sink, which looked out over the enormous backyard pool. I’d pushed Beau into the pool once. It had been hilarious.
Maybe I’d take Jillian on a cruise to the Caribbean. I’d reserve the biggest suite, and we’d spend three weeks lounging around poolside decks, sipping on fruity drinks with little umbrellas in them. Jillian would admire the splendor, and I’d admire Jillian in a bikini. In St. Maarten, I’d buy her so many diamonds that she’d clink when she walked.
Nobody had shut the back door, so I walked out onto the deck. The freezing winter wind sucked the air out of my lungs, and I closed my eyes to listen to whatever I could. My hearing was improving—the overhead roar of an airplane headed in to BWI was audible.
“Hey, let’s get the generator going,” Marco said from behind me.
I didn’t even turn around. Instead, I wordlessly led him to the side of the house, where an ugly generator sat next to the air conditioning unit. I’d loved to speak into the blowing air when I was a child to hear my “robot voice.”
I pulled the starter cord on the bottom twice and backed up as the machine coughed to life. Immediately, the porch lights above the deck flickered on, and a light upstairs shone through the window. With a dull pang I realized it was my old bedroom’s light. Were the Baltimore team in there? Were they going through my things and making fun of my former life?
I walked past Marco and into the kitchen again. Reid was already poking around the fridge, taking out nearly everything and reviewing his options. The pantry door was open, too, and I was pleased to see that it was as stuffed as ever.
Reid looked over his shoulder. “You need to sit down. I’ve got some coffee going.”
My mother had enjoyed cooking in her immense, immaculate kitchen. Every birthday of mine had been marked with a homemade feast of all my favorite foods: fried potatoes and waffles for breakfast, club sandwiches and chips for lunch, and meatball marinara subs for dinner. Her cakes were delicious, especially her secret carrot cake recipe.
She’d be so angry to know that a superhero was standing in her spot, using her utensils, preparing her groceries. She would be beyond furious to know that someone had left smeary, bloody footprints as they’d walked from the hallway over to the part of the counter bearing the knife block.
I sat at my old spot on the island. He pushed me a juice box and sat next to me. I sipped the juice, but couldn’t taste it.
He folded his hands in front of him. “You don’t look good.”
I took a deep breath. “I don’t feel good.”
“I’m a hypocrite for saying this, but you need to talk to me. What are you thinking about right now?”
I stared
down at the little box in my hand. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
I looked up at him. I couldn’t feel my fingers anymore. “I don’t know what I’m thinking. I have all these memories of my childhood and…and plans with…Jillian…is…not with me…”
“Listen to me,” he said firmly, leaning forward. “Listen very carefully to my words. Jill is safe with Ember. Ember is helping her get clean, and then she’ll be out here. I’m making her a hot meal. There are no enemies in the house or nearby. She’s safe. We’re all safe.”
I was going to throw up.
A loud, crackling whoosh made us both look over at the living room, where Marco had ignited an enormous fire in the hearth. He sat on the bricks and poked at it, apparently at ease now that he was warm.
I turned back to Reid. “Thank you for the juice.”
Reid sighed and slid off the stool.
For a few minutes I watched him prepare my family’s favorite brand of macaroni and cheese in a large pot, and chicken broth in a smaller pot. Ground beef sizzled in a sauté pan, and when it was browned he added fresh chopped vegetables from the bottom drawer of the fridge.
I didn’t let myself wonder why he was chopping carrots with a steak knife instead of the large chef’s knife. It was probably in the dishwasher.
Reid lovingly arranged saltines on a ceramic plate he’d found in the china cabinet, then poured steaming broth into a small bowl and placed it on the plate. He took a glass from the glass cabinet and poured some grape juice halfway into it, then filled up the rest with cold water from the pitcher.
Curiosity beat out my melancholy, and I pointed to the glass. “What’s that f—”
He smiled again and inclined his head, his eyes on something behind me. I whirled around.
Ember led a scrubbed Jillian by the hand into the kitchen. My wife’s long, dark hair was stringy and wet, pulled into a loose ponytail. She wore a set of ill-fitting pink linen pajamas I thought I recognized as Eleanor’s from years before. That’s what Ember must have set the Baltimore ladies out to find. Over the pajamas, Jillian wore my old black bathrobe. Her feet were clad in my old slippers, which were stylishly monogrammed with my initials, BPT.
Jillian let go of Ember’s hand and shuffled towards me. I jumped off my stool and helped her onto it, gently keeping my hand on her back as she got comfortable. Though she didn’t smile, she kissed my hand before looking up at Reid and saying, “Thank you for making dinner. What did—”
She broke off, coughing uncontrollably. Her entire body spasmed with each large, wet cough.
Reid grabbed a hand towel and gave it to her. After nearly twenty seconds of coughing, she stopped and stared at the wet spot on the towel with a grimace. She folded the towel and stuck it on her lap. “Sorry,” she muttered, embarrassed. “I’m still battling the flu. It’s only been, what, four or five days since I was taken?”
There was an awkward silence in the kitchen. “Um, it’s been almost exactly forty-eight hours,” I said, unable to meet her eyes.
She’d assumed she’d been in captivity for the better part of a week. That wasn’t illness or confusion speaking; that had to be a guess based on how long her ordeal had felt. She couldn’t even have been formally “interrogated” that long, since Beau and company had had to drive her from Georgia to Maryland.
We never should’ve stopped in Baltimore, we should’ve gone straight to Annapolis. I’d been a moron to think that she’d be okay, but if we’d somehow stormed the house twelve or fifteen hours after she’d been captured, the damage would have been significantly less. That was a fact.
And the Baltimore team would’ve been killed—another fact.
I hid my eyes with my hand, mortified by my own train of thought. As if to make me feel worse, Jillian turned around on her stool. “Hey, y’all.”
The remaining members of the Baltimore team came into the kitchen. “We got almost all the cameras you told us about,” Lark said, holding up a small handful of SIM cards. “But when we heard your pretty voice, we thought we’d come see you instead.”
Jillian zeroed in on the tiny cards, her face paling. “Berenice, please destroy those,” she said, her voice constrained.
“Happy to,” Berenice said. She scooped up the SIM cards in one hand and reduced them to dust with a twist of her fingers. Glittery bits of plastic and metal fell from her hand, dusting the marble floor and her boots.
Jillian stared at the dusty mess for a long second, then turned back around on her stool. “I’m hungry,” she said, taking a deep breath. She broke into another fit of coughing. When she was done, she pointed toward the steaming bowl of broth and crackers. “Is that for me?”
Everyone must have taken that as a cue to sit down for a meal, because there was a sudden scraping of chairs and stools as we all converged around the island, which was more spacious than the kitchen table. Reid ladled out our macaroni and cheese slash veggie slash beef dish, though when he reached Ember he gave her a reserved bowl of the dish without beef.
Ember accepted it with the tiniest of smiles, her hands brushing his. “Thank you,” she said softly. “It look delicious.”
Reid blushed pink and blinked quickly, then began to pour our waters from the crystal pitcher in the fridge. Each glass had chopped kiwi and fat berries floating in it. He gave Jillian the watered-down juice, which she gratefully accepted.
After dipping a saltine into the broth and nibbling on it, she put down her cracker and gazed at all of us. “I know you all have questions. But first, where are Topher and Reuben? And that jerk, Peter? If they’re outside watching for intruders, they don’t have to. I sent Beau and Alysia on a snipe hunt. They’ll be at least another day. Probably more, because of the storm.” She paused to cough again.
The Baltimore team exchanged sad looks.
When Jillian was done coughing, Berenice folded her hands on the island. “Peter died,” she said simply. “None of us are upset, so don’t waste your energy pretending you are, either. Reuben is with Gabriela. She’s pregnant and—” She glanced at me, “—it was agreed that he’d be better off with her instead of being here with us and worrying. Topher…” She stared down into her bowl.
“Topher died in the fight with the strike team,” Lark finished. She put her hands on her teammates’. “Peter’s death was ruled unwarranted by guess who, so they sent a strike team after us. If your team hadn’t showed up when they did, we’d all be dead.”
“Which, I guess, we’ve never really thanked you for,” Berenice said, her eyes averted. “So thanks.”
Marco, Ember, and Reid murmured little pleasantries, but I was watching Jillian stir her broth in silence. I knew she was searching for some way to blame herself for Topher’s death. I didn’t know if she’d ever been close to him, or had even met him before her trip to Baltimore after the tribunal, but she was clearly troubled by it.
I patted her thigh before saying, “Let’s just focus on the now. How are you feeling?”
She finally took a sip of broth. “My stomach is a little queasy. And my head aches. I had a bad fever last night, so your brother gave me a shot of something and the fever went down. I figured that’s what brought my powers back.”
Everyone stopped eating at the same time. Lark’s fork was halfway to her mouth.
“Your powers are back?” Reid repeated. “Wow, that JM-104 stuff really is crap. Reuben’s came back halfway through the fight with the strike team.”
I recovered from my shock quickly, having guessed already that her powers might come back if Reuben’s had. “If Reuben’s power came back without an injection, than Jill’s probably did, too. I imagine he probably just gave her a fever reducer.”
I mentally tabulated the dates. Reuben had been given a three-month dose that had only lasted about a month. Jillian had been given a three-week dose that had lasted a little over a week. From what I knew of the substance, Bell Enterprises had stopped producing it decades ago, driving up the price.
It had probably entered its chemical half-life, thus lowering its effectiveness by two-thirds.
Or maybe Bell had purposely given the elders an ineffective product?
Jill took another sip of broth. “Well, anyway, my powers came back and I knew if I could just get Beau and the rest to leave me alone for a while, I could probably figure out a way to escape. I pretended to cave and made up some bullcrap about where the JM-104 was. They bought it, and left me in my cell while they went to search. I was still coming up with an escape plan when the power went out and my door opened. I sorta just…” she trailed off, her eyes flicking towards me. “I’d like to talk to Benjamin alone, please.”
There was a pause, and then everyone slid out of their chairs and grabbed their bowls. I took Jillian’s hand in mine and pointed towards the stairs. “If you go upstairs and to the right, the third door on the left is a rec room. Make yourselves at home. The bathroom is right next door.” They trooped out.
When we were alone, I led Jillian to the living room, where the fire was crackling merrily and bathing us in warmth. We sat down on the squishy couch and I tossed an afghan over her lap. She stared at the brightly-colored blanket for nearly a minute before whispering, “I’m Miss Stabby.”
I wasn’t sure if I heard her correctly. “What was that, sweetheart?”
She looked at me, tears sliding down her cheeks again. “That’s what Abby called me. I’m Miss Stabby.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Berenice called you that in jest back at Gabriela’s. It wasn’t an insult, I promise. But if you want, I’ll ask her to apologize.” Actually, I’d ask Ember to ask Berenice to apologize, and make it clear that failure wasn’t an option in this case.
But Jillian just shook her head. “No, she’s right.” The tears came harder. “After my cell opened, I don’t know what happened. I don’t remember deciding on what I was going to do. I was running and then I was in the kitchen at the knife block…and then I was hunting them down.” She looked up, her lip trembling. “I killed Will in his bed. I’ve never felt like that before. I just kept stabbing him over and over and over. My vision wasn’t normal. I wasn’t even human for a minute.”
Mercury Page 17
