Jeb strode to her, and she struggled to stand, gasping.
“Get up,” Jeb said.
She did. But she was canted oddly.
Jeb didn't hesitate, hitting her shoulder to take her down again.
She collapsed.
Even when Jasper began to crawl, Jeb dragged her back mercilessly, her sparring uniform dragging up to breast level, and he lifted his foot.
He saw the mark from Ryan and landed his boot beside it.
Jasper shrieked, her cracked ribs making a noise like twigs snapping. Blood dribbled out of her parted lips.
“No,” she whispered.
“Yes,” Jeb growled.
“You'll kill her!” Maddie wailed.
“Stop—you’re no better than that dickhead Ryan!” Jacky said.
Ryan.
Jasper lay beneath him like a beaten, broken doll. Black hair had untangled from her braids. Her dark eyes were lipid pools of obsidian fire. The blood from her injuries pooled like red gems of condemnation.
“You're just like the rest,” she accused from a full mouth lined with blood from his fists.
No I'm not.
“I'd never harm you, Beth,” Jeb promised.
He reached out to touch her face, wiping away the blood he put there and she jerked away from him.
The scene bled away to vague mist.
*
Jeb sat straight up in bed, the linen clutched to his chest. His heart still hammered like the hooves of a galloping horse. He hit the pulse clock with his thumbprint, and numerals flared on his ceiling.
3:48 a.m.
He fell back against the bed, convulsively swallowing. He wiped his sweaty palms on his coverlet. What is happening to me?
“What's going on?” Jacky asked from the open doorway.
Jeb sat up again. “Nothing.”
His voice sounded like stone, not a tremble or vibration to prove that he'd just had the worst nightmare of his life.
“’Cause you were yelling for who?” Jacky asked, though he knew. “Beth.” Jacky's eyes were like an adult's.
Must have been a trick of the light.
“You said something like you'd never hurt her or something.”
“I wouldn't,” Jeb responded.
“Then why did you dream about it?” His accusatory gaze tracked Jeb's reactions like a hawk.
Jeb didn't answer right away. He wasn't sure why he'd dream that. Was it because of her confession about the ax Ryan had to grind?
What Jeb understood was that he needed to get his ass into medical and get a full pulse diagnostic. He knew his timepiece was degrading, which was normal for Reflectives so close to the end of their term of service. But what if something more serious was going on?
Why had he let Jasper's sad story affect him? Why was he having sadistic dreams about killing her?
Pent-up sexual tension manifesting as violence.
He needed to get laid—and fast. That would distract him from the strange turn his life was taking.
“I don't know,” he answered.
“Better figure it out.”
“Why?”
“Because this middle-of-the-night scream session? It's killinʼ my beauty sleep.”
Jacky walked back to his bedroom.
Jeb fell back, lacing his fingers behind his head.
It was a long time before sleep took him.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Beth walked into TCH, and all talking ceased.
Madeline started when she saw Beth, a loose knot of the gossiping tribe of female Reflectives falling away from her.
As Beth strode in, they turned their noses up in the air and walked away from Madeline.
Beth reserved a special cold stare just for panty-dropping Daphne. What an alley cat.
Maddie asked, “You and Jeb leave tomorrow?”
Jeb now, eh?
Beth chastised herself. In the week that Madeline had been her houseguest, she'd been nothing short of perfect. She gave Beth space when needed, she was sweet, and she kept things far neater than Beth would have.
In a word, she was the perfect Reflective female: docile, accommodating, a phenomenal jumper, and beautiful. Only her dark hair marred her shell of perfection. Yet, her unusual eye color and hour-glass figure eased the males’ pain.
However, an interesting phenomena had reared its ugly head. Madeline could certainly jump around Three and from Three without surface reflection. But not in Papilio.
In Papilio, Madeline was reduced to using mirrored surfaces to jump.
Beth couldn't say she was too broken up about it.
It wasn't typical for her to be such a horse's ass in her internal ramblings.
She blamed Merrick: he had set her on edge.
He'd come to sparring warm up as tense as she'd ever seen him and had refused to spar with her—his own partner.
A deliberate snub.
Then he'd made a beeline for that slut Daphne.
Beth understood the male Reflectives’ needs; they never bothered to hide it, as though it were their unspoken right. However, as Beth watched Daphne slink around in the bowels of TCH, she couldn't help but be offended for him.
Merrick could do better.
And what about that soulmate? His timepiece was disintegrating every moment, and then he would be the lucky one—wide open to find the One, not that it had stopped Merrick from sampling the local wares of the female Reflectives before.
He'd been neglectful of the boy, and he'd grown surly. Understandably bored and guarded closely, Jacky had thought it wise to stir up the hornet's nest—until Beth had asked if he had parents.
As it turned out, they had dissolved their union after his older brother's untimely death the year before.
Sector Three called it “divorce.”
After the divorce, Jacky had been shuttled between two parents, who by Jacky's account, had lost sight of the one thing remaining person who was still vitally important.
Him.
Jacky hadn't told her these things. Beth had easily read between the lines.
After losing his own family, he’d adopted his peer group as his pseudo family, and he got by on what he coined “the aura-reader juju.”
Loosely translated, when someone’s aura appeared tainted, he steered clear. It had saved him some scrapes with the criminal element.
The time had come for his return. Madeline was beginning to integrate, and Jacky could not remain. He was not Reflective, and there was nothing for him on Papilio.
“Are you going now?” Madeline asked, and Beth started.
She'd been so deep in her head that she was still trying to swim out of the well of her own thoughts.
“Yes. Merrick will meet me here, and we'll travel from the jumping room.”
Madeline's brows scrunched together across her perfect forehead. It would remain perfect for many years.
On Papilio, things like aging crawled to a standstill.
No one had explained her near-immortality to her yet. Information about her new life was best delivered in increments.
“It's… it is where we jump from, so that's what we call it.”
“That's funny. Does it have a fancy name like all the other places here?”
“Not really… well, come on. Let me show you.”
Beth was early for her rendezvous with Merrick—Jacky tagging along; she could afford to show Madeline the parts of her job that caused her soul to stir.
They came to the jumping room.
It mimicked the entrance to TCH, but had been built on a smaller scale.
Two marble columns with heavy fluting flowed up to the top and were crowned with cylindrical ends. A small pediment anchored the pair together, where two gallery doors nestled in between moldings of matching apricot-colored casement and jambs.
“It's so fancy!” Madeline said, stroking the smooth surfaces. The quartz within the bed of marble shimmered like snow blanketing Papilio hillsides on a rare cold day, when the sun caused i
t to glitter like a million diamonds.
Madeline was right. It was beautiful. It was also a serious place.
Above the entrance, the name of the order was etched into the marble:
Salire verum.
“Jump true,” Madeline translated, her eyes roving each scrolled letter. “Latin?”
Beth's brows lifted. “It looks like English?”
Madeline gave a bemused shake of her head. “I'm not really sure. I think I just understand it as it is, without knowing it's different.”
Just then, Jacky and Merrick walked up, and Beth stepped away from the entrance.
There were deep circles underneath Merrick's eyes. Beth would have asked the reason if they had been alone.
Madeline's anxious eyes tracked Merrick's every move, and Beth immediately understood that she had a schoolgirl crush on him.
However, for all her beauty, Merrick didn't seem to notice. His eyes were on Beth.
“What?” she asked him.
He rocked back on the heels of his All Star tennis shoes, which were still all the rage after an apparent one-hundred-year-plus popularity run on Three.
Beth had dressed herself in super-tight denims, a type of flat shoe with a small bow, and a top that had sleeves that ran too long; and elastic band held her hair. After their arrival, she would have to take it out later and roll the band onto her wrist—also some kind of fashion statement.
Beth hated conceding jumps without her typical braids, but they were odd on Three.
“Nothing,” he answered. “Just anxious to take off.” Merrick had switched to the English of Three.
“Me, too. This place!”
“Jacky, come on,” Madeline said, reprimand clear in her tone.
He ignored her. “It's B.O.R.I.N.G.”
“And him…” Jacky pointed to Jeb. “Never home.” Jacky's hair flopped around as he shook his head.
“Too busy getting his swag on.”
Merrick's neck reddened, and he gave Jacky a glare, which the boy ignored. It seemed like a pattern.
Booty calls, as Merrick was so fond of calling them. Beth was not enamored of the colloquialism.
They had never discussed how Ryan had put her in medical all those years ago. Or how likely it was to happen again.
He hadn't seemed to want to talk about it. That was fine by Beth. Telling him wouldn't change the outcome. Ryan hated her because he saw her as beneath him. The ultimate degradation would be for her to give into him in every way. Then she would stop being a threat.
Males were fairly transparent. As far as she was concerned, Ryan had Small Penis Predicament.
Beth didn't realize she was smiling when Merrick posed the sharp question of what she was thinking.
“Nothing,” she answered, shaking her head and not meeting his eyes. Suddenly, Beth remembered something.
“Did you get checked out by medical?”
She checked off the list of crap he could have—a host of untreatable STDs, for starters. Those had not been an easy thing to cure on any sector. They were stubborn and pervasive.
Merrick's chin kicked up at the expression on her face.
“What's wrong?” Madeline asked, searching the stern planes of his face.
“Don't get soft, Maddie—he's fine, or he wouldn't be able to jump, right?”
Merrick nodded, his face tightening at Jacky's rebuttal. Their postures were tense.
“My timepiece has gone sideways. It's no longer accurate.”
Beth clasped her hands behind her back.
“Slowed?”
That was the most common issue. A Reflective with a slowed timepiece would be hampered during the search for his or her soul mate because the timepiece kept ticking after the term of service.
“Sped.” His answer was clipped and final, brooking no further discussion.
Beth tread where the angels of legend did not dare, “Nightmares, decreased appetite?” Libido on fire?
He simply nodded.
Beth's eyes narrowed. “They cleared you for the jump?”
It was perilous times if medical had cleared Merrick despite a hosed timepiece.
She waited.
Merrick put his strong hands on his hips. The silence stretched.
“You understand the delicacy of this mission?”
Beth nodded, not allowing her eyes to move one iota toward Madeline.
Her stepfather would be dead in the next four hours if she and Merrick had anything to do with it.
Some might see their follow-through mission as murder.
They would deliver Jacky, who would be safe in his own sector. They would then witness the demise of Joe Zondorae, closing the original mission loop forever.
Then they would sanction Chuck, beater of females. That last part pleased Beth.
“I do.”
“Then you know why I must go.”
“Hey, guys, cut the Latin. It's rude as hell to talk in front of somebody in another language. Just sayin'.”
“It's a hush-hush mission, sass-pot,” Madeline replied, her mouth held oddly.
Beth realized that was her version of holding in laughter.
“God, Maddie! Not interested in being clueless.”
She released a smile. “You promised you'd check on my mom.” It was subtle, but Beth saw the quiver of her lip.
Madeline missed her mother.
Beth missed her own mother, though she’d never known her. Her birth parents were a dark secret to which only a very few were privy.
It pissed Beth off. What? Would she shrivel up and die if she were, say, part Section Seven? Maybe she had vamp blood, was shifter, or came from the fabled Singer ancestry? That would be interesting, though unlikely.
It didn't matter; they couldn't keep her records sealed forever. At twenty-one cycles she would know all that The Cause knew.
Beth dreamed of finding her birth parents—and of having a reunion.
“You did?” Merrick asked.
“Yes.” Beth gave him a full look, coming back to the present. “I promised to make sure she was well.”
Jacky snorted, and Merrick glared at him for silence, as if that would ever be effective. Beth's only sadness about depositing Jacky back on Three was that she wouldn't see the man he would become. Jacky would have made an excellent Reflective.
She smiled at him a little sadly then shook off her thoughts. “Let's jump.”
They pushed through the doors and entered the vestibule, a glass viewing box sandwiched between the jumping room and the entrance.
Beth turned to Madeline.
“You can watch from here.”
Madeline nodded, a small smile touching her lips. She appeared sad but determined to stay where her life was better. And she trusted that Beth would look after her mother.
“Don't open the door,” Beth cautioned.
Her face scrunched.
Beth laughed. “You'll get sucked into the vortex of the jump.”
“Oh.”
“Like a flushed toilet.” Jacky hooted.
“Great analogy,” Merrick scoffed.
“Works for me.” Jacky shrugged.
Madeline grinned. It faded when she looked at Jacky. “Come ’ere, goofball.”
His face turned red, but he did.
“Take care of yourself Jack-man.”
He allowed the awkward hug, just barely.
Jacky pulled away, swinging his hair out of his green eyes, all the more emerald for the bright-red shirt he wore.
“Chance'd be glad you were here, safe.”
Swollen silence reigned.
She nodded, swallowing. “I know.”
“See ya, Maddie.”
She put her hand in the air, and he tipped his finger at her.
The Reflectives walked into the jumping room.
Madeline didn't touch the glass when Beth put the shiny silver sphere in its nest on the marble pedestal.
Merrick took Jacky's hand, sandwiched between them.
&nb
sp; Beth turned at the last second, making eye contact with Madeline. She knew from experience that Madeline would only see a vague iridescent outline of her body.
Ryan stood behind Madeline.
He waved at Beth.
*
Beth tumbled through the pathway, for once immune to the creeping sensation of burning ice.
Her mind was on the mental image of Ryan standing behind Madeline.
He would not hurt her, Beth knew.
She intimately understood how much it pleased Ryan to make her nervous.
He'd been successful.
Why he was sniffing around Madeline when there were a couple dozen female Reflectives more than willing to lay with him was confounding to Beth—and disturbing.
There had been nothing she could say to Rachett against his inclusion back into the ranks of Reflectives.
The memories of her conversation with Rachett flowed through her mind. She was helpless to shut them down.
*
“Reflective Jasper.”
“Yes,” she replied through gritted teeth.
“He has paid for his crime against you. Sector One is the vilest punishment we can offer.”
“What?” she asked. “He didn’t get to stick his wick in anything with a hole for a month? He didn’t get to parlay with all his wealthy Barringer buddies?”
Rachett’s face was like thunder. She’d overstepped her bounds by a kilometer.
“I cannot afford to show favoritism, Beth.”
“This?” she stabbed her own chest with her thumb. “This is favoritism? Ryan almost killed me.”
Rachett nodded. “I am aware. And no, there was no sex, no parties.”
“There was something, though.”
“What?” Her eyes searched Rachett’s face. She’d never forget the look in his eyes—as deep as the grave.
“Torture.”
Beth couldn’t contain her surprise, and he acknowledged it with a nod, pouring an amber liquid over the top of cubed ice in a crystal tumbler.
He tipped his head and threw it back.
It would have caught Beth’s throat on fire, but Rachett’s expression never changed.
“We have selected a group of Section One bloodlings….
“Bloodlings…” Beth whispered in muted horror.
The creatures of legend, half-vampire, half-One, were rumored to have the ability to walk in the day, unlike their cousins who hunted the night in Sector Seven.
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