by Jane Kindred
Panic started to set in, and Lucien sat on the edge of the tub trying to breathe. There was a prototype of the anti-transformative at the lab. But how the hell was he going to get there? He couldn’t risk calling a car and having something happen while he was in it that couldn’t be undone. Maybe he could take Theia’s car. He could slip out while she was sleeping, get to the lab and shut this whole process down in less than twenty minutes. The dosage hadn’t been perfected yet, but they’d been successful in reversing the shift in the animals they’d bred for the lab. It was almost ready for human trials, and there was no time like the present.
But it was becoming quickly apparent that he was running out of time. He needed a thumbprint to get into the refrigerated case where the serum was stored, and his thumb was turning scaly. Maybe the retinal scan bypass would work. He rose and saw his reflection in the mirror. His eyes looked wrong. They were still the same pale blue, but the pupil was a vertical slit. The horns positioned above them were small but obvious. And from behind his back, a pair of leathery, webbed wings in brilliant blue were unfurling.
* * *
A loud crash woke Theia from a dream about the Carter-cockatrice gloating at Edgar Smok’s bedside. Theia rolled over to see if Lucien had heard the noise, but he wasn’t in bed. Across the hall, light was visible under the closed bathroom door. Maybe he’d dropped something.
“Lucien? Are you okay?” When she didn’t get an answer, she threw off the covers and hurried to the door. “Lucien?” It was locked, and only silence emanated from behind it. Theia rattled the doorknob. “Lucien, answer me. Are you all right?”
Lucy’s words came back to her. And I suppose he told you about his suicide attempts.
“Lucien!” Glancing around for something heavy, she spied the stone doorstop behind the front door and ran to grab it. With a few sharp blows, she’d broken the doorknob, latch and all.
Theia expected to find Lucien collapsed on the floor. Instead, the room was empty. A light breeze blew the thin window curtain inward through an empty frame above the bathtub, fragments of one of the sliding panes scattered in the tub. Theia scrambled onto the edge of the tub and looked out. There was nowhere he could have gone. They were on the fifth floor. The parking lot below them was undisturbed.
Lucien’s clothes were still in her bedroom. So was his phone.
He was still using the same password, thank goodness. She selected Lucy’s number, but the call rolled to voice mail after a single ring. Why would Lucy decline a call from her brother with their father in intensive care?
A moment later, a text message came through with the answer.
Sorry, Lulu, I’m exhausted. Edgar’s condition hasn’t changed. I’ve gone home to get some rest. Consider this permission to bone your girlfriend.
Theia quickly responded.
This is Theia. Lucien’s disappeared. I’m worried.
She waited several minutes, but there was no indication that Lucy had read the message. Maybe she’d turned off her phone. After leaving a more detailed text about what had happened, Theia checked the contacts. Lucy’s address at a luxury resort in Sedona was listed. Hopefully she didn’t have more than one place she was staying.
After throwing on jeans and sandals, Theia took a quick walk around the complex before getting into her car to see if there was any sign of Lucien, but she found nothing. She drove by the lab first—where of course she couldn’t get in—and checked the hospital, both in the ICU and at admissions to see if Lucien or a John Doe had been brought in. Nothing.
It was four thirty in the morning when she arrived at Lucy’s resort. The room number was a villa with a private entrance. Theia expected her to ignore her knocking, so she kept at it until at last she heard movement inside.
“Lucy?” She shouted against the door as she continued pounding. “It’s Theia. Lucien’s missing. Open the door.”
“Maybe he’s just sick of you” came the reply from the other side.
“Can you just open up?”
“It’s four thirty in the morning, Theia.”
“And I’m going to stand out here pounding on your door until you open it, so you might as well get it over with before I wake the adjoining villas.”
There was silence for a moment followed by the clunk of a dead bolt. The door opened, and Lucy peered through the crack, the security latch stretched across the gap, her face in shadow.
Theia squinted into the darkness. “I replied to your text.”
“Yeah, I saw it.”
“Aren’t you the least bit concerned? Lucien went out a five-story window in his boxers without leaving so much as a broken twig at the bottom where he ought to have landed.”
“Maybe he just climbed down. He’s always been a good climber.”
Theia sighed. “Lucy, you obviously know something. Is he here? Is he having some kind of a breakdown?”
“No, he’s not here. I don’t know where he is. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s having a breakdown. I’m considering one myself.”
“Did you get some news about your father? I went by the hospital to see if Lucien was there. They said Edgar was sleeping and hadn’t had any visitors.”
“Edgar isn’t sleeping. He’s in a catatonic state. He will probably never sleep again—or do anything else—thanks to Hamilton and his amulet. And apparently we were all wrong about what that means.”
“Wrong how? What do you mean?”
Lucy leaned her forehead against the door frame and sighed before unhooking the security latch and stepping back to hold the door open.
When Theia entered, Lucy went to sit on the couch. The lights were off, but the pale predawn glow through the sheer curtain illuminated Lucy’s features. Her usual neatly styled hair looked tousled above her braid. Of course, she’d just been woken up at four thirty in the morning.
Theia sat on the edge of the chair opposite her. “So what did you find out?”
Lucy chewed on a cuticle. “You’ll appreciate this. You’re into genetics. Lucien and I are monozygotic twins, like you and Rhea. We’re identical, not fraternal. But apparently, our original fertilized egg had an extra X chromosome, and when our tiny little blastocyst split, Lucien took the Y chromosome with him. Hence, identical twins but different sexes.”
It was unusual but not unheard-of. “Makes sense. You two do have an extraordinary resemblance.”
“The upshot,” said Lucy, “is that it turns out we’re both cursed by dear old Madeleine Marchant. And the amulet, it seems, has the effect of rendering Edgar effectively dead as far as the curse is concerned. So, lucky us, it kicked in early this morning.”
“What do you mean, it kicked in?”
Lucy stretched her arm along the back of the couch to switch on the lamp beside her. In the glare of the compact fluorescent bulb, her pupils contracted. Into vertical slits. And what Theia had taken for tousled hair was the result of two small but distinct garnet-colored horns. It looked like a clever Halloween costume—novelty contact lenses and carefully applied spirit gum under latex horns. But Theia had seen enough magical transformation to know it wasn’t.
“Yeah,” Lucy agreed to words Theia hadn’t said. “Kinda leaves ya speechless, doesn’t it? Of course, my first reaction was a bit more audible. And I demolished my bathroom mirror.” She held up her bloodied knuckles. “My martial arts training took over, and I tried to kill the mirror demon, but it punched me back.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah, that was the next thing I said. Plus a few other choice expletives.”
“And this just happened to Lucien, too. In my bathroom.”
“It would seem so.”
“Did he come here?”
“No. I haven’t heard from him, except a phone call I ignored because I was freaking out. But I guess that was you.”
“Yeah.” Theia pushed her hair out of h
er eyes, as if it would make Lucy’s appearance go back to normal. “But how did he manage to crawl out my bathroom window and disappear from the fifth floor?”
Lucy sighed and stood. “I imagine with the help of these.” A pair of ruby-red webbed wings unfolded at her back, extending from her shoulders at least three feet in either direction, bony segments between the webs terminating in black claws. “Ruined one of my favorite shirts. I’m not pleased.”
“Well, this is—wow.” Theia shook her head. “Lucien and I were afraid that if we—if I—if we consummated the relationship, it might trigger the transformation. Carter Hamilton intimated as much.”
“And did you?”
“No. Now I’m starting to feel pretty stupid about that.”
Lucy retracted her wings and sat back on the couch. “If it’s not too personal—oh, hell, of course it’s personal, but I don’t really give a damn. Is there a reason you’re still a virgin at age...”
Theia swallowed. “Twenty-two. For a while I thought it was because I was unfuckable.” She dismissed the notion with a shrug. “But really, it was my dreams. My visions. I kept seeing an alliance with a dark prince, and it scared me, so I kept pushing guys away.”
Lucy laughed. “And then your dark prince comes along and you miss your window of opportunity.”
“I like to think the window’s still open. I mean—you don’t think he flew...to the underworld?”
“To hell? Well, I didn’t. But maybe he’s still the one who has to pay the soul price. He did grab that Y chromosome in the zygote lottery. Who knows? I have a feeling, though, that this isn’t the final transformation.”
“You think...”
“I expect the full dragon experience is yet to come.”
“What about Smok Biotech’s research? Lucien said the lycanthropy suppressant was months away from clinical trials, but maybe it could inhibit your trigger.”
“My trigger? And what do you suppose triggered this? Obviously, it was Edgar’s collapse. I think it’s a little late for suppressing genes.”
“That’s not what it does. I mean, obviously, much of the research was geared toward isolating the gene responsible for the shift and finding a way to shut it off. But what Lucien was working toward was developing a drug to manage lycanthropy. Like you’d manage diabetes.”
“Turning into a dragon is not diabetes.”
“No, but it’s a condition that can be managed, and a response to a trigger that can be suppressed. Like inhibiting serotonin or norepinephrine reuptake in antidepressants. We just have to pinpoint the right neurotransmitter.”
“God, no wonder Lucien’s into you. You sound like a biology textbook. I’m pretty sure he jerked off to those as a kid.”
“My point is that there may be a simple fix to this. But we have to find Lucien. Do you have any idea where he would go with no clothes and no wallet?”
Lucy shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe to Polly?” Lucy seemed almost apologetic, as if she cared whether the idea was hurtful to Theia. “That’s where he’s always gone in the past when he’s been in trouble. Sometimes she gives people sanctuary at the Grotto. And she has contacts who could hide him. We’ve used them for safe houses. She doesn’t like to divulge her list, but she’ll hook people up with what they need. For a price.”
There was always a price.
* * *
Rhea and Leo were asleep in Phoebe’s room when Theia stopped by to grab some clothes. And Leo, apparently, slept in the nude. Well, they both did, but Theia had seen Rhea naked plenty. Facedown on the bed with his arm across Rhea protectively, Leo displayed a nice little half-moon above the sheets. Theia took a picture for trotting out later to mess with Rhea.
After tiptoeing to the dresser and sliding open the drawers as quietly as she could, Theia turned around with a pair of Phoebe’s capris and a clean T-shirt to find she’d disturbed Rhea anyway.
Rhea rubbed her eye with a fist, looking crabby. “What time is it? What are you doing here?”
“I’ll tell you when you wake up. Go back to sleep.”
Puddleglum appeared and jumped onto the pillow above Rhea’s head to announce that it was time for breakfast. Whoever slept in Phoebe’s bed, apparently, was the designated server.
Rhea sighed and slid out from under Leo’s arm. “I’m up, you philistine.”
With her eyes half-open, Rhea fed Puddleglum while Theia brewed a pot of coffee.
Rhea shuffled to the breakfast bar and slouched onto a stool, yawning. “How’s Lucien? What’s the word on his dad?”
“That...is a complicated story.”
“Of course it is.”
“You can go back to bed.”
“Shut up. Just tell me.”
“Edgar is in a vegetative state. Probably thanks to Carter Hamilton. And Lucien...took off.”
“Took off?”
The coffeemaker beeped, and Theia waited until she’d poured them each a cup. “He went into the bathroom in the middle of the night, apparently developed secondary dragon characteristics and flew out the window.”
Rhea nearly choked on her coffee. “You pulled an Ione, didn’t you? You screwed his brains out and turned him into a dragon. You little minx.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Of course you did. Just own it.”
“I didn’t.”
“Come on. What makes you think it wasn’t you?”
“Because I haven’t had sex with him.”
Rhea nearly snorted coffee through her nose. “Right. Because you’re saving yourself for marriage.” Her mocking grin faded slightly as she took in the serious expression on Theia’s face. “You... Theia... You’ve had sex before.”
Theia didn’t respond. Which was response enough.
Rhea set her mug on the bar with a bang, sloshing coffee over the top, her mouth hanging open. “You’ve never had sex and you never told me?” Her shocked expression turned to aggravation. “I can’t believe you don’t tell me things. Our whole lives, I thought we were open books to each other. We shared everything. Who are you?”
The equilibrium Theia strove to maintain, like an internal level that kept her on an even keel, not buffeted by the stress of other people’s confusing emotions or intrusive visions, suddenly snapped.
“Do you realize that I’ve never had anything private, never kept a secret—from any of you—for most of my life? Everybody always assumed that whatever you did, I did, like I wasn’t a whole person, I was just half of a twin set. I never needed to act up. I’d get in trouble in school—and at home—for things you’d done. People never asked my opinion on anything, just filled in what they thought I was thinking. Thought I’d like whatever you liked. I always got birthday and Christmas presents in your favorite colors, books and video games that were on your wish list. Doesn’t that bother you? Didn’t it ever drive you crazy when people acted like we were interchangeable?”
Rhea, for once in her life, was at a loss for words. “I...got you in trouble on purpose, stupid. Because you were Miss Perfect. And now I find out I was living with a creepy pod person the whole time.”
“Very funny.”
“That’s me. The hilarious one. See? People know that about me. We’re totally different. No one thinks you’re funny at all.”
Theia growled and threw her hands in the air, dropping onto the stool beside Rhea to drink her coffee in resignation.
“Sorry.” Rhea nudged her with her elbow. “It never bothered me because I was always trying to live up to your image. When people thought I was you, it made me look good.” She took a sip of her coffee and muttered into it, “I may have given certain people the impression that you were a total slut in high school, though.”
“Nice.”
“So what are you going to do about Lucien? Do you want me to send Leo after him?”
“What
is he, a bloodhound?”
“No, I just figured...” Rhea considered for a moment. “No, I guess he can’t just automatically find magical people. He hunts down murderers and oath breakers.”
Theia swallowed a sip of coffee. “I’m going to go talk to Polly.”
Rhea swiveled on her stool to stare at her. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“You think I can’t handle talking to his ex? You talked to Faye plenty of times, if I recall correctly.”
“Polly didn’t seem like that much of an ex the other night. And Faye’s different.” Rhea lowered her head over her mug. “We have an arrangement.”
Theia paused with her cup halfway to her mouth. “Have an arrangement? What arrangement? I thought she released him from his bond when you broke the Norns’ curse.”
“She did. She just...sometimes we...the three of us get together and...”
Theia had tried to take another sip of coffee, and she nearly choked on it. “Oh. My. God.”
Rhea sneaked a glance from the corner of one eye, a mischievous grin on her face. “You’re such a prude. Virgin.”
“I am not a prude. I just don’t... I thought you said you were just experimenting in college.”
“You, of all people, should know how experiments go. You have to do it multiple times to see if you can duplicate the results.”
“Wow.” This was a whole new side to Rhea she’d never suspected. Apparently, Theia wasn’t the only one with secrets. “Regardless, that is not happening with Polly. I don’t need to conduct any research on that subject.”
Rhea shook her head. “That’s a shame. I mean, a siren, come on.”
Theia concentrated on her coffee. “So, anyway, I’m going to go talk to her and see if Lucien sought sanctuary with her or maybe is hiding out someplace she knows about. Lucy says Polly keeps lists of information on people in the magical community.”
“Well, that doesn’t sound at all shifty.”