by BETH KERY
I was in Madaster’s tower.
Ima hurried to a swinging, wooden door in the back of the room and disappeared. Madaster manipulated his chair to a seating area around a coffee table. There was a luxurious but worn leather couch and two upholstered chairs around the table. I approached him cautiously.
“So. You do like the sunlight,” I said, glancing around the illuminated tower-room.
“It’s why I chose this suite after my injury. Do you think I turned to ash in the sunlight? I’m sure your husband had you convinced of that.”
Irritation spiked through me at the ironic way he’d said husband. I started to give an irritated response when my gaze landed on the coffee table. An electronic box lay on it, about twelve by four by eight inches. There were wires… and a cap of what looked like electrodes or sensors.
I glanced up at him in stark disbelief. It was the Analyzer. Surely it was. He’d placed it brazenly on the coffee table, for me to see. He’d done it to set me off balance. To taunt me.
Test me.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“You act as if you’re offended by the fact that Evan might call you a monster.” I glanced down at the equipment on the table with disgust. “Or a vampire. But you’re not really, are you? You know what you are.”
“I know exactly what I am, Anna. Self-knowledge is power.” His blue eyes blazed at me through that skull-face. “The question is, do you know what you are? I don’t believe you do.”
“I couldn’t care less what you believe.”
His smile seemed like it would crack his face wide open.
“But you should,” he said. He turned, and I realized Ima had entered the room. She carried a tray with two iced teas on it. He waved vaguely at the coffee table.
“Set them down and go.”
“Yes, Dr. Madaster.”
Anger spiked through me at the demonstration of his casual superiority and Ima’s submission. Did Madaster use the Analyzer on his nurse? The thought disgusted me. I hated this place.
I hated him, even though I barely knew him.
He leaned forward and placed a glass in front of one of the upholstered chairs next to him. He glanced at me expectantly.
“You aren’t going to have this conversation standing, are you?”
“I’m not going to stay for long.”
“However long you stay, it will be enough. Please, join me,” he said, waving gracefully with his left hand toward the chair.
I hadn’t come here to just to stare at him. Feeling highly uneasy, I walked over to the chair.
“You take it without sugar, I assume?” he asked, nodding at my glass of iced tea.
I didn’t know why he would assume any such thing.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, even though I did, indeed, drink my iced tea straight. I took a gulp of it to soothe my raw throat and set down the glass, keeping my gaze averted from that ugly device on the table. I laced my hands over my stomach, trying to still the panicking butterflies in there.
“You seem upset, Anna,” he said, his brow creasing in concern. False concern. Anyone could see that. “Learning that you’re the double of my daughter Elizabeth must have come as quite a blow to you.”
“How did you find out about that?”
“I have my ways.”
“Don’t be so dramatic. Wes Ryder told you, didn’t he? I said something to Valeria, his girlfriend. She must have been alarmed enough by my shock that she mentioned it to Wes. And he told you. Or maybe that librarian called you?”
“It doesn’t matter how I found out. It only matters now that the truth is out. How did Evan explain his manipulation of you?”
“He told me that he’s been planning revenge on you, ever since Elizabeth disappeared. He believes that you murdered your daughter,” I admitted bluntly. “Did you?”
His laugh had nothing to do with mirth.
“I knew he couldn’t resist turning me into the villain of this affair. I knew it. The man is so predictable,” he said, shaking his head and taking a healthy swallow of his iced tea. “Did Evan say anything to you about the tunnel? The one between the Twins?”
I was set off balance by his abrupt question. “He told me that he filled it in and sealed it, when he found out what you and Elizabeth were using it for.”
His widening smile confused me. The bastard seemed infuriatingly satisfied by everything I said.
“He was always missing the point, your husband. The fact of the matter is, Elizabeth would be alive today if Evan hadn’t inserted himself into our lives.” His gaze ran over my face. “She would be sitting where you are right now, happy.”
“Happy?” I asked incredulously. I glanced at the Analyzer on the table. “You mean controlled, don’t you?”
“If Evan gave you the impression that Elizabeth could be controlled in anything, he was dead wrong. It was just easier for him to imagine she was being coerced, when in reality, Elizabeth never did anything she didn’t want to do. She was a force of nature.”
“One that you created and fashioned. You disgust me. You’re the vilest man I’ve ever imagined.”
He made a fake “sad face” and gave a little shrug. Still, I had a feeling that his sarcastic, flippant display was a show.
Madaster did care what I thought of him.
“So… you’ve decided to take Evan’s side, despite the fact that he’s been using you? You’re miserably in love with him, aren’t you?”
“Yes. I love him,” I said. I didn’t hesitate, although I probably should have, given what Evan had done to me. It just struck me in that moment that speaking honestly about love was a weapon against which this man couldn’t defend. But instead of seeming taken aback by my declaration, he again appeared alarmingly self-satisfied.
“I’m not saying that I trust everything Evan says,” I continued. “But you… I trust you far less.”
“And how are you making that judgment?” he asked, suddenly very interested. Focused. Fascinated, even.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“How are you coming to this certain conclusion about me and my character, when you just met me a few minutes ago? You must be swallowing Evan’s story, wholesale.”
“I’m not.”
“Then answer my question!”
I started at his shout… at his abrupt cruelty.
“I’m coming to my conclusions by sitting here in your disgusting presence,” I found myself shouting back. My face felt very hot. “I decided what I thought of you by meeting your wife, whom you and that witch-nurse of yours ignore and half-starve, when she’s clearly in need of care. I understand all I need to know of your character by the fact that you’ve taunted me by putting that… ”—I pointed at the Analyzer on the table as if it were a live snake—“that thing on the table for me to see.”
His smile ratcheted my fury up another notch.
“I came to my conclusions about you because I know how rotten you are to the core.”
“How do you know?”
“I just know. I don’t know how, but I know you,” I seethed.
“I know how you know,” he said. His blue eyes shone with blazing confidence.
He didn’t move in his chair, but I had the vivid impression that in Madaster’s head, he danced with excitement.
“It’s a little known fact, revealed only to the highest echelons of society—a chosen few,” he said. “It’s why Egyptian kings took their sisters as their wives. It’s why European royalty intermarried. They did it to keep the genes pure. Because if the bloodline can be kept pure enough, certain gifts are given… gifts that yield natural leaders. Psychic abilities, for one thing, most notably with living relatives. The faculty to communicate with and see the deceased ancestors, for another.”
I must have started in shock, because his stare on me grew even m
ore avid. Hungry.
“You have heard her, haven’t you?” He studied my face like he thought it held the secrets to the universe. “You’ve seen her.”
It struck me at that moment, what I heard ringing in his voice. Envy. He envied me, because he thought I’d heard and seen Elizabeth.
Abruptly, I laughed.
“You’re crazy,” I declared, feeling incredulous, but also oddly fevered and light-headed. I picked up the iced tea and took several swallows, then pressed the cool glass against my cheek. I panted, trying to bring myself under control. I met his manic, electric stare, dread creeping into my awareness when I fully registered what I saw. “God, you are. You’re crazy as a loon. You don’t know anything.”
“You wouldn’t have come here if you thought I didn’t know anything. Tell me why you came here, Anna. Tell me, and if it’s in my power to give you answers, I will.”
“I wanted to meet you myself. I wanted to see if Evan’s hatred of you was justified. To know if he has even a tiny bit of a decent defense for what he’s done to me.”
“You’ve decided that he does?” Madaster said. “But you’ve hardly given me a chance yet to tell my side of the story.”
“You never wanted to defend yourself,” I said with certainty, glancing down at the Analyzer on the table, my lip curling in disgust. “That not why you asked me here.”
“No, you’re correct. It isn’t,” he said, his pleasant manner infuriating me further.
“I want to know what you did with her body. Elizabeth’s. Tell me,” I ordered him. Determinedly, I held his stare, willing him to do it. To confess.
His eyes widened slightly at that. Then he grinned again, pure triumph in his expression. “My God. You are like her. You look so soft, but you could probably have men jumping off cliffs for you, if you put your mind to it. So alike. And to think… you never even knew her. It’s all a matter of genes. Those amazing, perfect genes,” he mused. His avid stare ran over me, making me feel hot. Dizzy.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I told him frankly. I hadn’t expected him to be insane. He was crazier than Lorraine, but in a much more frightening way. Madaster’s lunacy was horrifyingly lucid and focused.
“No, I realize you don’t understand me. But you will. Tell me about your family. They live in Illinois, don’t they?”
I leaned back in the soft chair, trying to still my spinning head. The idea that Noah Madaster knew about my parents and sister, the very thought of his spidery, poisonous reach touching them from so far away, had hit me like a blow.
“How do you know about my family?”
Again, that chafing laugh.
“I had to do my research, Anna. What else was I supposed to do, when I saw you standing there, down at that overlook? It was like seeing Elizabeth sprung to life again. At first, I thought it was her. But no,” he muttered, his expression darkening. “She will not come to me. You were flesh and blood. A living woman, brought here by Evan to torment me.
“Evan hired people in order to find you. He enlisted the help of friends, like Tommy Higoshi, in order to draw you into his plot of revenge. So I hired people, too. I talked to Tommy Higoshi. Rather, I forced Tommy to talk to me, so that I could find out about how you two ended up together.”
“Tommy talked to you?”
Madaster shrugged. “Evan had launched an attack. What else was I supposed to do but launch a counterattack? Evan brought you here to make me crack like an egg in his fist. He thought I was helpless and easy prey, all because he’d learned that these don’t work anymore,” he hissed, viciously slapping at an immobile, atrophied leg. “But he underestimated me, as usual. God, his idea of revenge isn’t only weak and ineffectual, it ended up being the opposite of what he intended. It really is hysterical.”
“Shut up,” I said, because he was laughing again, and his laughter hurt like a fingernail scratching on the same spot on my skin, over and over.
“He intended for you to be his tool of revenge, but you’ve ended up being mine. You’re mine, Anna.”
“Stop it. I’m not your anything,” I seethed. I spun. No, the room did. Noah Madaster’s hateful, leering face swam in my vision. Pain sliced through me. It took a few seconds for me to compute that Madaster had grabbed me. I cried out, trying to pull my hand from his grip. He pressed tightly on the nail bed of my thumb, the pain shockingly precise.
“You have it, too,” he gloated. “I knew you would. They call it the murderer’s thumb, you know. But that’s just an ignorant fortune-tellers’ misnomer. Elizabeth had it on both hands. I have one, too. Right thumb. Just like you.”
“Let go of me,” I yelled, pulling on my hand. Nausea bloomed in my stomach. He applied more pressure on the thumb, and I cried out.
“BDD. Brachydactyly type D. Shortened thumb. Stub thumb, some people call it. It’s a harmless little genetic anomaly. It’s a little ugly, but at least yours is subtler than Elizabeth’s. Yours is barely noticeable. And of course, it causes no dysfunction. Surely you’ve noticed you had one? A stub thumb? This one is two thirds the size of your other one.”
I jerked on my hand, wincing in sharp pain. I barely absorbed what he was saying. All I wanted to do was escape his vise-like grip on me… make the pain and the spinning in my head stop. I had the crazy idea he was transferring his madness to me through his touch.
“I’ll wager your parents don’t have a stub thumb. How did they explain yours to you, Anna?”
“Let go of me, you bastard. Help! Someone help me,” I screamed. My body shook. It seemed to be short-circuiting. I fell on my knees onto the floor, but Madaster refused to relinquish his hold. I clawed at him with my free hand and hit at his arms, but he only squeezed tighter on the nail bed. I dug with my fingers on his forearm. Blood seeped up to the surface of his parchment-like skin. It ran under my fingernails. Madaster appeared not to notice.
“They say it’s common among European royalty, which makes sense, because the Madaster family tree is entwined with that of kings and queens. You should be proud. It’s a sign of superior genes, Anna, that ugly little thumb. It’s the mark of a Madaster.”
I stopped clawing at his arms. I tried to focus on his face, but it was nearly impossible through my vertigo. I vaguely realized that tears ran down my cheeks in a steady stream.
“Madaster?” I muttered.
“Yes,” he said. “You’re Elizabeth’s child. I’m almost certain of it. But we’ll just check to be certain. Ima!”
He abruptly released his hold on me. I had struggled to be free of his grip, but with it gone, I sagged onto the carpet, weak, dizzy, and sick.
(They drugged you, darling. Daddy loves his drugs.)
“What did… what did… you give me?” I asked, using all my energy and will to get out the words. The world had become a nauseating smear, like someone had taken their hand and swiped over it, blurring it, and then wickedly spinning it like a top.
“You’ll be fine after a rest. Don’t panic. Just be still for a second,” I heard Madaster say.
Then someone was pinching my lip, forcing open my mouth. I cried out in protest, and felt something swipe the inside of my cheek. I slapped at the hand near my face, holding onto the wrist. I forced my eyeballs to focus utilizing a monumental effort. For a split second, I saw Ima’s face just a foot away from me.
“Get away from me, you bitch,” I said, but it sounded more like, “Gid away frod me, y’ bid.”
Ima punched at my forearm, releasing my useless grip on her. Suddenly, the disdain on Ima’s face segued to alarm and fear. As if by magic, Ima flew to the side. I heard her body thump heavily on the floor.
“How dare you hit her, you pig. She’s a Madaster. Get out of here before I smash your ugly face to a pulp,” I heard Madaster shout.
“No.”
But my shout sounded feeble to my ears. I struggled again
st those three words—She’s a Madaster—harder than I fought not to lose consciousness. Surely, he hadn’t meant me. Suddenly, Madaster’s face swam into my sight. Blackness edged my vision of him.
“I’m not Elizabeth’s. I’m not yours,” I managed to get out.
His smile slid over straight, yellow teeth.
“Oh, you’re not Elizabeth’s and mine. You’re Elizabeth’s and Evan’s child.”
I heard his laugh as if it echoed through a long stone tunnel.
“That holier than thou husband of yours brought you here to break me. But how do you think he’s going to take it when he learns that he’s every bit as foul as he supposes I am. He’s judged me for sleeping with Elizabeth. He holds a vendetta against me, but he’ll be the one punished when he realizes what he’s done. He not only slept with his daughter. He married her. God, the brilliant irony of it all.”
Blackness narrowed down my vision until it was just a pinpoint. Than, there was only darkness. My hearing remained intact though, at least for a little longer than my vision did. I heard a furious shout.
“I’ll kill you for this, Noah,” I heard Evan roar.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The first time I woke up, it was through a fog. I saw a narrow bed and white sheets, and the form of a body beneath them. It was all disjointed, though. The body didn’t belong to me, it was just an inanimate thing, like the railing on the bed or the white sheets.
The next time I opened my eyes, I was back inside myself—if that makes any sense.
I looked around, not recognizing anything about the small, confined space where I lay. I searched backward in my memory, clawing for some handhold as to why I lay on a skinny bed with ugly, industrial-looking light blue curtains all around me. I couldn’t find anything to grab onto as to why I was here. There was only darkness: a black hole.