Serafina and the Virtual Man (Book 2 of the Serafina's Series)

by Marie Treanor

  She closed her eyes. How could she have built a fairy tale out of this? He may not have been a prince, but he was a wealthy genius, Genesis Adam. Jilly Kerr was no Cinderella. She was a computer hacker with the family from hell, and if she’d learned anything, it was how to take care of herself. She could not bring herself to walk into that room and watch her virtual fairy tale crumble. She’d leave that, at least, intact.

  Heaving her suddenly heavy body off the wall, she walked swiftly back the way she’d come, pausing at the nurses’ station to ask them to pass the flowers on to Genesis Adam. “He’s busy,” she muttered, “and I can’t wait.”

  “Of course,” the nurse said pleasantly. “Who’ll I say they’re from?”

  “JK,” Jilly said and walked away.

  Chapter Twenty

  “JK?” Adam stared at the nurse holding the flowers. “JK was here?”

  “Yes, she said she couldn’t wait.” The nurse set the vase down on his bedside table.

  “Beautiful blonde?” Adam hazarded.

  “Very,” the nurse agreed.

  “You don’t have a computer in here I could use, do you?”

  “Sorry, no.”

  So far as he knew, he didn’t even have one of his own anymore. At least Roxy had promised to buy him a phone tomorrow.

  Determinedly gathering strength, he ate a little dinner and caused a stir by insisting on taking himself to the bathroom and having a shower and a shave. Feeling better, he sat up in bed in his hospital gown—Roxy would bring better attire for him tomorrow—and waited impatiently for evening visiting.

  He seemed to be listening a long time for footsteps that always stopped short of his end of the corridor. And then, when some finally kept going, there were two of them. He recognised the owners at once.

  Sera and Jack strolled into the room.

  “Hello,” Sera said with an engaging smile. “Remember us?”

  “Vividly.” Adam held out his hand. “I owe you more thanks than I can say.”

  “Nah.” Sera took his hand and squeezed it. “Just glad to see you looking better.”

  Adam shook hands with Jack too and waved them to the chairs on either side of his bed. “JK not with you?” he asked casually.

  “Not this time,” Sera said. “Expect she doesn’t want to crowd you.”

  “She can’t crowd me from the corridor,” Adam said dryly.

  Sera frowned. “What do you mean?”

  He waved one hand at the vase on his bedside table. “She brought me flowers, left them with the nurses.”

  “What did she do that for?” Jack demanded.

  “Maybe your curtains were closed,” Sera suggested with a trace of uncertainty.

  “They weren’t. I already had a visitor, and she knows Roxy.”

  “Roxy?” Sera repeated. She appeared to search Adam’s face very closely. “You and Jilly were pretty close in the VR.”

  Adam nodded but said only, “I owe her.”

  Sera sat back, took some grapes from her bag, and offered one to Adam. He took it politely. She said, “Jilly’s a very independent spirit. If you value her, it’s up to you to show her that.”

  Adam swallowed his grape and regarded her. “You speak in riddles, psychic.”

  “No, I don’t, and it isn’t me you need to get around.”

  ****

  Sera dropped Jack outside his flat and drove on to Jilly’s. As she’d expected, Jilly was home, in her slobbing clothes, watching television. Her laptop was still in its bag.

  “You didn’t come back to work,” Sera observed, accepting the coffee Jilly passed to her.

  “Didn’t seem worth it.”

  “Thought not. Jack and I visited him tonight.”

  “How is he?”

  “What did you think?”

  Jilly shrugged. “Better.”

  “Oh, Jilly, I know you didn’t even go in!”

  “So fucking what?” Jilly demanded.

  “So why didn’t you? He was disappointed.”

  Jilly snorted and changed the subject. “Have you seen this series? It’s quite funny.”

  “Some of it. Was it because of Roxy?”

  “No!” Jilly snapped. She dragged one impatient hand through her hair, leaving it tousled. “Maybe, sort of. She was there. Just made me realise I don’t fit. So we were friends in VR; he’d make a great geek friend. Real life, maybe not.”

  “And maybe yes. You don’t know, Jilly.”

  “No,” she admitted. “And neither do you.” She shrugged. “Everyone knows he’s alive now—it was in the news. He’ll be swamped with all his old friends and colleagues.”

  Sera drank her coffee. “Want something stronger?” she suggested.

  Jilly shook her head mutely. Sera’s heart contracted. Her friend was hurting and not yet ready to have the wound probed. Sera understood that; she always had.

  She finished her coffee and stood up. “See you in the morning, Jilly.”

  Jilly nodded. She even tried a smile, which almost broke Sera’s heart.

  As she drove back to the New Town, she realised she was angry with Jilly, not for being who she was but for not grabbing her chance. Jilly was afraid of nothing and no one, and yet she couldn’t even walk into the same room as a man she might well grow to love.

  Sera hit the heels of both hands off the steering wheel. “Fight for him, damn it! Roxy didn’t lift a finger to save him. You did that. You’re the one he asked for. Risk it, damn you!”

  She couldn’t recall ever being so frustrated with Jilly. And yet she understood only too well. She and Jilly had always survived by keeping their hearts under wraps. But sometimes, you just had to unwrap a little. As she had, for Blair.

  Blair. With an unpleasant little jolt, she recognised a reflection of Jilly’s behaviour in herself. She’d let Blair in but only up to a point. She held on blindly to what she saw as her independence, forcing herself to go home at night so as not to share too much. She, who’d refused to be anyone’s sex toy, had made herself just that, tried to make Blair just that. Her throat closed up. Emotion swamped her in such a flood that she had to force herself to concentrate on the road.

  What would she do now without Blair? The weird, arrogant, controlling bastard. The monster who drank her blood and anyone else’s he fancied. The being who still fascinated her and made her laugh, who made her alive…

  If Jilly was wasting precious time, precious once-in-a-lifetime opportunity by not going to Genesis Adam, what the hell was she doing that was so much bloody better?

  With an indrawn breath that sounded more like a sob, Sera drove straight past Serafina’s and on to Blair’s house. There was a light burning in the upstairs sitting room.

  She used her own key to get in the main front door and ran along the hall, calling, “Blair?” She pushed open the sitting room door and stopped short.

  Blair rose from his armchair like a perfect gentleman. His undead guest, reclining on the sofa, smiled and raised a dusty whisky bottle to her in a silent toast.

  “Phil? I didn’t know you were back in Edinburgh.” Distracted, Sera stared at the bottle. “Is that Dale Ewan’s?” she demanded.

  Blair inclined his head, his dark eyes alight with laughter. He turned to the table behind him and picked up a bottle of red wine that also looked familiar, presenting it to her with a flourish and a bow.

  Sera’s breath caught. She wanted to laugh. “Blair—Blair, you can’t do that! You can’t nick people’s stuff as presents for your friends! Even if they’re cheating, murdering bastards.”

  “Did you come to tell me off?” he enquired telepathically.

  She met his gaze and swallowed. “No. No, I came to tell you—come here.” She grabbed his hand in her free one and dragged him out of the room and across the hall to the bedroom, since it was closest. There she dropped the wine bottle on the bed and reached up to take his handsome face between her hands.

  “I came to tell you that I’m sorry,” she said. Her voice c
racked. “And that I love you.”

  His lips and his eyes softened. In silence, he smoothed her hair, cupped her cheek, and bent to kiss her. It was a kiss of tenderness more than passion, although with Blair, that could never be entirely absent.

  When the kiss broke, she said shakily, “And if the Founder himself comes between us, I’ll stake the bastard.”

  Blair threw back his head and laughed.

  ****

  Two weeks after he’d come out of his “coma” and five days after the astonished doctors had allowed him to go home, Genesis Adam opened his door to a surprise visitor.

  Dale stood there, looking sheepish. As if he’d eaten Adam’s sandwich.

  “Fancy a pint?” he said with a weak smile.

  “No, Dale, I don’t.” Adam didn’t budge, didn’t take his eyes off his one-time friend. His neck, his whole body prickled. He supposed that was inevitable. And yet he didn’t close the door in Dale’s face. Something—curiosity, maybe—made him wait.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” he said.

  “I know.” Dale’s gaze moved beyond him. He actually twisted his neck to peer through the open living room door. “What are you doing?”

  “Work. For the launch.”

  Dale straightened. “I signed all the responsibility over to you.”

  “I know. They’ll still do you for fraud.”

  Dale drew in his breath. “I came to say I’m sorry.”

  Adam laughed.

  Dale coloured. “I know it’s inadequate, but what else is there?”

  “Nothing, Dale,” Adam said deliberately. “Nothing at all.”

  “I’ll go to prison. We both will.”

  “I hate to be vindictive, but so you bloody should.”

  “I know,” Dale said humbly. “And I know it’s out of your hands. You couldn’t stop it if you wanted to, and I don’t blame you for not wanting.”

  “Good.”

  “I just—I just wanted you to understand. It was for her. Petra.”

  “I know.”

  “I love her. Can you understand that?”

  For the first time, pity for Dale began to outweigh all Adam’s confused emotions of hurt and anger and disgust.

  “I can understand love,” he said evenly. “What I can’t understand is loving someone who’d want or even accept what Petra demanded of you. I’ve known you for years. I was best man at your wedding. And yet I never fucking knew you.”

  “I never knew myself,” Dale said hollowly. “I never meant to kill you, just take the company from you. I thought you’d just storm off in a rage and set up on your own. I thought I could live without your friendship if we had all the company, all the income from the new system.”

  Adam stared at him. “Why didn’t you just ask?”

  Dale shook his head. “You’d have said no.”

  That was probably true.

  “A poor excuse for theft,” Dale added quickly. “But as you know it went beyond that and I had to cover my own ass as well as Petra’s. At first I was just relieved Petra hadn’t killed you. It was Petra who kept you from bleeding to death, you know.” His lips tugged upward at one side. “She said we couldn’t bury two bodies in the garden, and Killearn was already dead. It was my idea to hook you up to the VR. I could pretend to myself we hadn’t killed you that way, and when Petra wanted to turn off the VR and deal with the problem, I wouldn’t let her, even when we thought the poltergeist might be you. You could say she did that for me.

  “But it got harder to keep everything straight. Trying to think of you as dead so I didn’t betray you were alive. Thinking of you alive to stop myself going mad with guilt.”

  Dale stopped talking. Getting no response, he swallowed. “I just want you to understand, I’m sorry I couldn’t change it.”

  Adam’s smile was twisted. “No, you couldn’t, could you? I gave you the opportunity, and even in a game you wouldn’t stop her. I think we’re finished here, Dale, don’t you?”

  Dale nodded with genuine misery and half turned away. “At any rate, I’m glad to see you looking so well.”

  “No harm done, eh?” Adam mocked, and Dale’s uncomfortable flush deepened. Adam took pity once more. “For what it’s worth, you probably did the world a favour. Stuart and the rest of the medical profession are stunned by what the VR machine did for me over five months. They’re investigating possibilities for coma victims.”

  Dale almost laughed, almost like old times, almost like the half-guilty laughter over sick student jokes. But only almost.

  ****

  On Saturday morning, while Jilly was having a late breakfast, the buzzer sounded and she found her brother Andy on her doorstep. She let him in the security door without a word and opened the flat door for him while she went to put the kettle on.

  “What’s got you up so early?” she asked, when he strolled into the kitchen.

  He shrugged and threw himself onto a kitchen chair. He wore tracksuit bottoms, and a hoodie covered his fair head. He looked as if he’d had a hard night out stealing cars. “Ma said you were looking for me. And I wanted to tell you Axel’s in clink. No bail.” He grinned at her. “Thanks.”

  Jilly grunted. “Keep it in your trousers if you don’t want it cut off.” She poured two mugs of tea and shoved one across the table to him before sitting down, taking the bank notes from under the salt cellar, and pushing them toward him too.

  “What’s this?” Andy asked suspiciously.

  “Go to London if you want. Go and find that girl if you were prepared to risk the wrath of Axel for her. Just get out of this, Andy.”

  Andy stared at her, glanced at the money, then back to her face. “Can’t, can I?”

  “I spoke to Mum.”

  “Is that what upset her?”

  “Probably. I put the responsibility in her hands, where it should always have been since he won’t take it himself. I said if she insisted on staying with him, if she wanted to keep him out of prison, then she had to make sure he gave no further cause to be there. I made some threats I’m not proud of, but I’m quite prepared to carry out. I’m as sure as I can be he’s safe.”

  Andy’s breath shook. “Fuck, Jillian.”

  “I’m sorry. It wasn’t fair what I made you do. None of it was fair.”

  “You didn’t make me, Jillian. He’s my dad too.”

  “He’s not mine,” Jilly said in small, hard voice. She made an effort and smiled. Surprisingly, it was easy. The shadow blighting her life seemed to have lifted. Or at least been cast into insignificance by a different unhappiness. Stupid cow. “Anyway, that’s to get you away if you want to go. If you don’t, use it for something I won’t hit you for later. Cheers.”

  Andy pushed down his hood, grinned at her, and raised his mug. “Cheers. Fuck, I might even pay you back.”

  Jilly snorted with derision, but they both knew she was pleased. And she really did have hopes for Andy, she thought as she closed the flat door behind him. This time.

  She walked back into the kitchen and put the used tea mugs in the sink. She was just rinsing them out when a knock sounded at the door.

  She hurried to the door, already speaking as she pulled it open. “Andy, for G—”

  It wasn’t Andy.

  Genesis Adam stood facing her, a faint, slightly crooked smile tugging at his lips. His dark hair was as untidy as ever, and he wore a black leather jacket open over jeans and a blue sweatshirt. He carried a large bouquet of flowers, which he lifted toward her.

  “Hello. I brought you these in return for mine.”

  Jilly swallowed, trying to find her voice amidst the insane drumming of her heart. “Mine trump yours,” she managed.

  “Well, you’re prettier, and you did more to deserve them.”

  Fuck. I’m wearing old jeans, and I haven’t even brushed my hair.

  Who cares? He’s seen me in worse states.

  But this is real. He‘s real now.

  According to Sera, he remembered everything th
at happened during his virtual reality adventure. Everything.

  She took the flowers because she could do nothing else, and then, of course, common courtesy won out. “Coffee?”

  He grinned, the same appealing, boyish grin she remembered, and her heart turned over. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  Her legs showed an alarming tendency to shake as she crossed her tiny hall. Although she flapped one arm toward the living room on the right, he followed her into the kitchen.

  Genesis Adam is in my kitchen. The real un-virtual Genesis Adam… And she was more aware of him than she had ever been. Tall and lean, he propped one shoulder against the doorframe, seeming to fill the small, mundane room with his physical presence, with his sheer personality.

  She’d had sex with this man.

  Virtual sex.

  Oh Jesus, what would it be like…?

  Do not go there!

  “Milk?” she said desperately.

  “No, thanks.” He strolled further in and slouched into the kitchen chair Andy had so recently vacated. As she pushed down the plunger of the coffeemaker, he glanced around the room. “Looks different. Brighter.”

  “In reality?” she said lightly.

  “It’s all reality of a sort.”

  She cast him a quick glance before pouring coffee into a fresh mug. Already awash with tea, she didn’t really want anything more to drink, but she needed something to do with her hands to stop them shaking.

  What a ridiculous state to get into over one man making a courtesy visit! Pull yourself together, JK!

  “You’re looking well,” she managed as she sat down opposite him. “Sera told me you were out of hospital.”

  “I’d have told you too if I could ever get you on chat.”

  Jilly had disabled her chat program just so she wouldn’t be disappointed when Exodus didn’t contact her. She swallowed a large mouthful of coffee. “Sorry. I’ve been busy.”

  “Me too.”

  “Of course. I hear the launch goes ahead as planned.”

  “Got a bit more publicity than we bargained for there, but at least we’re still mysterious. Are you going to come?”