Liquid Lies

by Hanna Martine

  “Twenty-three languages,” he mumbled. “You did say that before. I didn’t believe you.”

  She hadn’t expected him to, but the thought of lying to him, after he’d told her about his tattoos, hadn’t seemed fair. She’d wanted to share something real with him.

  “So why exactly does Nora want you instead?”

  She could say it in any one of twenty-three languages, but the hardest was English.

  “There’s a man being held in that cabin in the woods. He knows how to help the slaves escape and I’m the only one who can speak his language.”

  Reed opened his hands, frustrated. “The only one? Come on.”

  “Yes, the only one. I can speak any language in the universe. All I have to do is hear it, and then I know it as well as my mother tongue. It’s a gift, a rare genetic trait that often skips generations. But I have it. I gave it to the Company and let them use me because I thought it was what was best for my people. I was wrong. And now Nora wants it.”

  He bent forward. “What exactly does she want you to do?”

  The question came out haltingly. She realized it was probably the first time he’d ever out-and-out asked why his target had been extracted, to use his term. She wished it hadn’t been her.

  “Nora gave me two choices. I have to either destroy the Company and many people within it, or I have to help the Tedrans leave.”

  “Leave where? The place in Nevada that Xavier took you to? Seems like a no-brainer, Gwen. Escape over death.”

  “No.” She stared at a crimson mum, completely numb. “Leave Earth.”

  He made a weird strangled sound, started to speak several times, then settled on this: “Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to jump up from that bench, act like you’re angry and make a big scene, then run for the door to the garage. I’ll be right behind you. Got it?”

  No problem. She sprung from the bench and rounded on him. She faced the cameras now. If Adine or Xavier knew how to read lips, she had to be careful what she said. So she spoke the truth.

  “I wish you’d never taken me,” she snarled, then turned and bolted for the door.

  She ran as though freedom were on the other side of that door. Reed’s boots scrambled close behind. Though she knew it was all a ruse, those fleeting moments of letting loose, of pounding the earth and bursting into the garage, let her mind fly with possibilities and hope.

  She charged into the garage and Reed followed, slamming the door behind him. They faced each other now. His chest pumped, his eyes hard. The dark place smelled of gasoline and garbage.

  “Why here?” she asked.

  “No cameras. But they’ll come to check soon.” He advanced on her like a man intent on attack, pushing her back against the white van. “You said you weren’t crazy.”

  “I’m not!” Unconsciously, she stretched to take his face in her hands and he recoiled.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to—”

  “You’re trying to tell me Nora wants you to take these…Tedrans…off Earth?”

  She stood perfectly still. The picture of sanity. The definition of calm intelligence. “Yes. Using the same ship that brought the Tedrans and my people here a hundred and fifty years ago.”

  “You’d better explain that. Fast.”

  She barely recognized him, the harsh twist to his mouth. Not even in the alley had he looked this frightening, this animalistic. But his eyes were still the same, so she focused on those cool blues as she said, “My ancestors are from a planet called Ofaria.”

  He flung himself away. Whipped back around. “Holy shit. Holy fuck, Gwen. You’re saying you’re not human?”

  She thought of what Genesai had revealed to her. How he’d been turned to water and forced down the throat of an unsuspecting human. She had no idea if the whole Ofarian race on Earth had started that way. It didn’t matter. Her parents were human, and so were their parents.

  “I am.” She lifted her chin to Reed. “I’m as human as you are. I have gifts. That’s it. That’s all that’s different between you and me.”

  He watched her, stoic mask in place, every muscle tight, including his fists.

  Say something. Anything.

  Suddenly he jerked. Grabbed her. Spun her around so her back was against his chest.

  “Fight me,” he growled.

  No problem.

  The door between the house and the garage flew open, banging back on its hinges. Xavier glowered in the opening, his face flushed. “What’s going on?”

  Reed tightened his grip as she wrestled to get out of it. “Tried to make a run for it. Went for one of the cars. I’ll lock her upstairs.”

  As Xavier stepped back, Reed lugged her through the door. She dared to hope that her anger and Reed’s harsh treatment would mollify Xavier. Reed was brilliant. But of course, deception was his thing.

  Gwen kicked and struggled, not only because she was supposed to, but because her whole body wanted to scream in frustration. Reed dragged her upstairs, shoved her into her room, and locked the door behind them.

  She opened her mouth to say something but he held up a hand. Alone at last, his entire body sagged. His big hands fell to his sides with a slap. The heaviness in his expression took her heart and snapped it in two. Silent as a ghost, he turned and walked through the bathroom to his own room. The lock clicked to red.

  The Primary notion of souls had always seemed strange to her, but as she watched Reed walk away, she finally thought she understood. His denial and disappointment had just ripped the soul from her body.

  Tentatively she crossed the bathroom. The tile was back to being the demilitarized zone. Careful. Guns are trained on you, he’d said joking. But it was true now.

  She pressed her hands to the door as if feeling the warmth of his skin through it. She spoke into the crack.

  “You think I don’t know how all of this sounds, but I do. I live in the same world as you. I know how things like this are perceived. Like fiction.” She cleared her throat. “But I can give you proof. Nora keeps a bottle of Mendacia in the tall cabinet in the corner of the living room. I saw her put it there. I’m sure it’s locked and I’m sure there are cameras on it, but I know that shouldn’t stop a guy like you. If you bring it to me, I can prove everything I said.”

  She didn’t expect an answer. Still, she waited. After many long minutes, she resigned and shuffled back to her room.

  She must have fallen asleep, because when she woke up, the moon blazed bright right over the lake. A huge silhouette cut between the bed and the window, throwing her into shadow. A hard object plopped onto the pillow next to her head. She heard the distinctive gloop of viscous liquid inside.

  Read cleared his throat. “Is this what you wanted?”

  TWENTY-NINE

  Gwen curled her legs beneath her and stretched for the wobbly table lamp next to the bed. When it clicked on, Reed was looking at the label-less Mendacia bottle in utter bewilderment. His gaze flicked up to meet hers, and he actually stumbled backward. He circled around to stand at the foot of the bed, as far away from her as he could get, and the movement was a club to the back of her head.

  “I want proof,” he said, “but I’m scared to death of it.”

  “Please don’t be.” She thought of the stigma surrounding magic in the modern world. “It’s not evil or frightening. It’s not demonic.”

  He was shaking his head before she even finished. “That’s not what I’m scared of.” Closing his eyes, he stood arrow straight and pumped his fists several times. “I look at you and I see this woman who has made me feel…” As his voice died, she tried to speak, but he cut her off. “I’ve told you more about myself than I’ve really ever told anyone—not even to the girl I once considered marrying. I’m not touching you, Gwen, but I can still feel your skin in my hands. I’m not kissing you, but I can still taste you. I’ve known you less than a week—because of my job, no less—and I can’t imagine being without you,
and then you drop this on me.”

  “Reed.”

  At last he opened his eyes. Found hers. The pain there…ah! It hurt her even more to know she was the cause.

  “Everything you’ve said, I know it should change the way I feel about you,” he said, “but it doesn’t. It’s like my feelings for you are inside this concrete block and your words are bouncing off it. There.” He slashed the air with a hand. “There you have it. I’ve laid it out for you. Now you know how easy it could be to manipulate me, but I won’t let that happen. I won’t be made a fool of.”

  She pressed her hands to her chest, rose to her knees on the bed. “I’m not! I swear to you. I’m coming to you because I desperately need your help. Not because I want to use you.”

  The roll of his eyes made her stomach roll in echo. “Listen to what you just said. Do you understand how hard it is for me to know the difference?”

  Yes, she did. But she couldn’t retreat now.

  “These stories, these crazy things you say”—he shook his head—“they aren’t sinking in. They’re hitting that concrete block and just laying there. I can’t believe anything you’ve told me. Or maybe I just don’t want to.”

  Her body felt like a balloon, buoyant in the emotion behind his words. She picked through all she needed to say, trying to find the best way in.

  “You’ve asked me about my something-like-that boyfriend. Griffin. He’s actually my assigned protector. We’re old friends, but we’re not in love.”

  “What’s your point?” he said, exasperated. “Why the hell would you tell me this now? And do not say it’s because you care about me, because it’ll only confuse me.”

  She accepted the sting from his words, her buoyancy deflating. “Because I want you to know certain things about my people. It relates to what I need to do here.”

  He crossed his arms. “What exactly do you want me to know about him?”

  “That we were supposed to get married. Marriages among my people are arranged. To create the strongest possible Ofarian bloodlines, to keep the race pure. The ruling Board chose Griffin and I for each other.”

  Reed shifted awkwardly on his feet.

  “To be honest, I’ve never been truly comfortable with that aspect of our society, but I understood why it was done. I never wanted to go against them. Until you brought me here.”

  Silence.

  “My sister was banished from Ofarian society. Not because she found out about Mendacia, but because she fell in love with a Primary and wanted to marry outside the race. His name was John; I’ve never even let myself say his name before because I’ve been trained to push it aside. I don’t want to push any of it aside anymore because it’s all part of the big lie. I haven’t spoken to Delia in six years. I don’t know where she is. I sided with my father when he sentenced her. I used to hate her for her decision. Now I envy her. I wish I’d had her strength.”

  “Am I a ‘Primary’?” He spit out the word.

  “Yes. You are.”

  He rubbed a hand over his head, refusing to meet her eyes.

  “But my point is that now I’m not just questioning the marriage edict. I’m questioning everything. There are serious, serious problems with rules I’ve followed my whole life. We’ve based our existence on a product that can no longer exist. I know if I can just talk to my dad about what I’ve witnessed here, that he will question everything, too. He’ll see things through my eyes. He can effect change. I believe he can bring the slaves justice, but not in the way Nora wants it. She’s wrong. Justice shouldn’t include death or torture for the majority of the Ofarians who never knew this was happening.”

  Reed looked at her from under his lashes. “What will happen if Nora gets her way?”

  She told him about Nora’s messy rescue plan that included leaving weak Tedrans behind. She told him how worldwide hysteria would follow. She told him about Genesai and the spaceship lying on the bottom of Lake Tahoe.

  He thrust a finger at the darkened window. “That Lake Tahoe?”

  With great pain, she nodded. “Do you see where I’m coming from? Even if I do exactly as Nora says and the Tedrans get away safely, I’ll be locked away in a lab somewhere. I’m sure of it. And I won’t be the only one. The whole world will have seen the ship rise from the lake. No Secondary will be a truly free person ever again. That is why I said I couldn’t go home with you. Because I know, after the ship flies away, that even though I want to be with you, it can never happen.”

  The words just flew out. Instantly she regretted them.

  Reed winced as he pressed his palms to his forehead. “Don’t say that. Don’t mix your feelings into this. Don’t toy with mine.”

  “I’m sorry.” She could say it ten more times and it wouldn’t make any difference.

  “I’m trying my best to believe you. To not, as you said, think you’re on medication.”

  Her fingers wrapped around the bottle of Mendacia. “Can I prove it to you now?”

  The slow, tense way he drew breath reminded Gwen of the way she’d felt before walking into her mom’s funeral—dread very nearly overpowering courage. Reed nodded once, curtly.

  Her turn to take a deep breath. “You remember when we were in the back of the van and the cops pulled us over and I screamed and kicked? Xavier didn’t pay them off, as you thought. He used his glamour to hide our sounds and make the van appear still. He did the same to us when he took me through the Plant. He made us essentially invisible.”

  “You understand that is very, very hard to believe.”

  Gwen hadn’t done Mendacia since she was ten. She and her friend David had found a bottle of it in her dad’s office at home. They’d known about the product, of course. The reasons their families lived so well were not unknown. They dreamed of working for the Company one day, maybe even being chosen to be taught the supersecret process for making Mendacia.

  Dad had been preparing to head to Houston to deliver an important order and the two ten-year-olds had snuck into his office. The bottle and spell words, customized to the client’s specific desires, sat in his top desk drawer and David had dared her to try it. The client was a female oil CEO who was about to do a huge deal with a Saudi Arabian partner. Things would go easier all around if the Saudi dealt with a man, but rather than entrust the contact to one of her male vice presidents, the CEO wanted to do it herself. So she seamlessly disguised herself as a man.

  The length of the glamour depended on either how much one used, or the speaking of cancellation words. Gwen only stole one drop that day, but David had had to hide her in the hall closet until it wore off and she looked like herself again, because they didn’t know the words to cancel it out. It had been a close one, though. Dad had almost caught her and she was sufficiently freaked out to never go near it again. Until now.

  She rose from the bed. Tipping the bottle, a single drop beaded on her fingertip. She stared at it, haunted by the Tedran life it had cost to create. She told herself that by using it once now, it could stop all future use. It only made her feel partially better.

  Tedranish filled her head. Before, when she had spent days translating the Mendacia instructions into their clients’ native languages, she had known only what few Tedranish words had been supplied from the Plant. Now she knew the entire commanding language.

  She licked the Mendacia off her finger. It tasted how it looked: like metal. Tedranish commands spilled from her mouth. She didn’t feel any change to her body because it wasn’t actually changing, but the sight of Reed’s face confirmed the spell was working.

  His eyes ballooned and he waved his arms in front of him. “Where’d you go?”

  “I’m still here. It just looks like I’m not.” The door beckoned to her. She held a slice of freedom in her hands. “I could walk right out of this room, out of this house, if I wanted. You’d never see me again.”

  “Gwen,” he warned, sliding in front of the door.

  “But I won’t. I can’t. If I escaped, Xavier would send
his proof to the government. And”—she skirted around the bed, closer to Reed—“if I left, I’d never have your trust.”

  His eyebrows drew together. So much fear on his face.

  Gwen reversed the invisibility glamour.

  “Holy crap,” he whispered.

  “Do you believe me now?” she asked gently.

  Still, he shook his head. An eternal doubter, scrutinizer. Just one thing that made him so good in his line of work.

  “What type of woman do you like, Reed? Latinas?”

  His head snapped up. “What?”

  Another Mendacia drop touched her tongue. Another string of Tedranish commands.

  She shook out her hair. Curly, jet-black strands fell around her shoulders. She held out her arm and watched her skin transform to dusky brown.

  “Jesus Christ!” Reed backed away so fast he hit the wall.

  “I didn’t want to shock you like this.” Then, she dared to say in Spanish, “Your pain and confusion are killing me, you have to know. When I look at you, I see the future I might have had. It’s more than Allure for me now. It’s strange, but I never would have had you, never would have been given this chance to know you, if none of this had ever happened. I feel incredibly guilty for being grateful for that. But there are greater things at work here. Things far more important than me and you, though I wish there weren’t. And even though you look at me differently now, I won’t ever want to go back to how things were before, when I was living in ignorance and you weren’t in my life.”

  “Gwen?”

  He was searching her face, alternately horrified and fascinated.

  She switched to English. “How about a Scandinavian?”

  She sucked another Mendacia drop from her palm. The Tedranish words told her hair to turn golden brown, her skin to creamy pale dotted with freckles. Reed’s hand flew to his mouth.

  In Norwegian she said, “Last night when you asked me to go away with you, my first response was to say yes. God, I want that. I didn’t know I wanted that until you said it, because I never would have allowed myself to fantasize about something so impossible. But I want to see where you live. I want to go to museums with you. I want to be how we were in Manny’s. I want to laugh with you. I want to…be with you.”