“Stay.” I held on to his hands as tightly as I could.
“I have to go down there, Edie. It’s the only way I’ll know. I have to talk to her while she’s still alive.” He squeezed my hands back then let go, reaching into the closet behind him for his suit pants.
“Talk to her about what?” I asked, but I already knew, watching him dress. “You’re going down there as him. To talk to her.”
He nodded and began thumbing his belt through loops.
“Then … what?”
“If I can figure out his game—”
I started shaking my head before I butted in. “I don’t want you to go. You can’t just leave me here.”
“It’s the only way I can protect you.”
“No. No no no.” I hadn’t wanted to come on this ship in the first place, and I was pregnant by accident—this was going to get to be my choice, this one thing, decided on by me. He could not leave.
But he was already laying his tie across his shoulders.
“So you’re going to go down there? And do what, precisely? Comfort her? Doing an impression of her husband?”
“No. I’m going to ask her what she knows. He’s here himself, Edie. There’s some way he’s not getting ill. Maybe she knows how.”
“While she’s delirious and you’re pretending to be related to her?” He ignored me and pulled on his suit jacket. Anger and impotence stirred in my stomach to make a nauseating brew.
“Is this what you miss about being what you were?” I asked. His hands paused over his tie, and I pressed. “All the hanging out with people that you want to push overboard?”
He finished knotting his tie, pulling the tail through with finality. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“I need you here.”
“Edie, I’m doing this to save you.”
“Then I don’t want to be saved.”
He looked at me, his eyes full of sadness, and then his face settled into the shape of someone new: Nathaniel from years ago, back when Asher had still had his powers. More stern than the man we’d eaten dinner with last night. A stronger jaw, a more aquiline nose. I didn’t think he realized it, the way the lips he wore sneered down at me. “You don’t mean that. And I couldn’t live with myself if anything happened to you.”
Listening to his words come out of someone else’s mouth—only years of attempting to seem unflappable as a nurse saved me from jumping back.
I shook my head again involuntarily, trying to negate everything that’d happened this morning—his shitty plan, this conversation, this trip, all the things I’d found out that I hadn’t wanted to know. If I kept shaking, maybe I could rewind back to the part where everything was simple again.
“Edie, I wanted to believe he was on vacation here,” Asher tried to explain. “More than anything else in the world. I wanted to believe that he could change.”
“Because if he could, you could too,” I said. Accusing him. Trying to guilt him into staying.
“I have changed. You know it.” He sank down beside me on the bed. “You do, don’t you?”
Of course I do, I wanted to say, while being aware it made me sound like one of those hopeless women who fell for serial killers in prison. But if I said yes, then he’d leave me. Although looking into his eyes, even if they weren’t the ones I was familiar with, I could tell that if I lied and didn’t say yes, I’d break his heart.
“I do.”
He swallowed and stood. “Good. I love you—and I’m sorry. I may not have much time. I have to hurry.”
Eyes that weren’t the ones I loved blinked drily, and he shook his head before speaking with another man’s voice. “I’ll be back. Just give me twenty-four hours to see this thing through. She may not talk at first, but if she does I’ll figure out a way. Order a ton of room service now; you might not get the chance later if it spreads. Choose things that won’t go bad.”
“I’m not okay with this.”
“Just stay inside the room until I get back,” Nathaniel’s voice commanded. He leaned in to kiss me again, and this time I jerked away from him, unused to the strange face he wore. “I’m sorry,” he apologized.
I was so mad and scared that I didn’t know what to say—and it was clear he was going, no matter what. I didn’t want him to leave like this. I scrunched up my face a second time, and closed my eyes so I wouldn’t see him coming in. A stranger’s lips touched mine.
“I’ll be back in twenty-four hours,” he repeated.
“Be careful. You’re not as supernatural as you used to be,” I reminded him.
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine,” he said, and let himself out the door.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
This was bullshit. Everything about it was bullshit.
I knew—deep-down bone-level knew—that Asher was different now. But his past seemed destined to follow us. I imagined it indistinct and dark, lurking underneath the waves outside, bigger than the boat, waiting for us to make a mistake and swallow us whole.
How could I love a man who’d facilitated, even for an instant, testing anything on people? Even if he hadn’t hurt anyone personally, he’d helped a vampire sympathizer to get ahead.
Then again, I’d saved Anna—which had been the right thing to do at the time, I was sure—but I’d also saved Dren. Who had untold deaths on his hands, maybe more since I’d set him free. It’s not like he’d converted into being a vegetarian because I’d been crazy enough to save him. Or like such a thing were even possible for a vampire.
Good substitutes for human blood didn’t exist. Red blood cells did too many things that weren’t imitable. They were small, they were flexible enough to squeeze through capillaries, and they transported oxygen everywhere. Some blood substitutes had managed to be two of those things, but never all three at the same time. Yet.
A bad allergic reaction to the fake blood, or a stroke-causing clot: That would be the end of things, and probably fatal to boot. No one would willingly volunteer for the duty, so who were they testing on? And where? And—under what conditions? If they were paying them, a big if, they’d have to be desperate, either for cures or for cash. How could I love a man who’d profited on other people’s sorrow? What kind of person did that make me for loving him—evil once removed?
I couldn’t believe I’d let him go, but I didn’t know how I could have possibly stopped him. I felt so impotent and abandoned, and that was the worst, knowing there was nothing I would have done differently.
I ordered room service angrily, and sat on the bed like it was an island, and watched piped-in programs on daytime TV. Movies slid by, family-friendly fare, where grown-ups were stupid and preternaturally smart kids saved the day, and I loathed them all.
Including the small traitor part of me that agreed with him. Not about him leaving me, but the staying-in-here-safely part, hiding from all the germs in the outside world. Protecting myself and the baby inside me.
“I hate it,” I said, unsure what I was hating precisely—this place, Asher, the baby, me—just knowing that I meant what I said.
I threw up a couple more times, out of anger or regret, and returned to my perch on the bed. The ocean raced by outside the closed balcony doors, waves sharply drawn like carved stone.
* * *
When room service arrived I tipped them all the money left in Asher’s wallet as a small act of rebellion.
I set the room service trays out—sandwiches and cheese platters and cookies, anything that might possibly sound good over the course of the next day—and left all the silver lids on, so I wouldn’t have to smell all of them at once. I carefully tested my stomach’s tolerance of a french fry. My stomach disagreed with everything but the salt. I licked the fry clean, and chunked it into the trash can afterward.
I was licking the salt off another fry when I saw something out of the corner of my eye. A man, splay-legged, tumbling like a snowflake, outside my window. Down to the sea.
I raced to the balcony doors and
flung them open. Cold salt air smacked me like a wall. My bare feet slid across the short space to the railing, slick with condensation from the coming storm. I clung to the railing, my T-shirt and jeans not up to the task of keeping me warm, and leaned over, trying to see where he’d fallen. Trying to prove that I’d seen him at all. The churning ocean beneath the Maraschino was the color of the mist enveloping us—I couldn’t see anything, really.
But I knew I’d seen a man fall.
I closed my eyes, trying to pull up the memory precisely, to slow it down and really see it. I pictured the railing like a microscope’s cover slip—and a man falling, like a protozoan darting beneath.
Where did he come from? And why? I leaned out and looked up, in case anyone else was staring down like me, but I couldn’t see past the bottom of the balcony above. And no one else was leaning out on my deck, or staring like me, below. I was alone. Again.
I carefully stepped back inside my room and called the front desk.
* * *
I couldn’t make a decent report, as I wasn’t even sure who I’d seen, just that I’d seen someone. I could tell that the person listening to me was trying to be considerate, but I knew I sounded insane.
“I just saw a man go overboard. You need to stop the boat. I’m in room six thirty-one. He fell down from above me somewhere. I think he was older, and he had a green shirt on.”
“Please calm down, Mrs. Stonefield,” she said. Of course. Asher had booked our rooms under his own name. I had to bite my tongue not to correct her. “We’ll be looking into things,” she went on.
“He might still be alive—” I said before I stopped to ponder the odds. Could anyone survive the fall? How high up had he started, anyhow? And how much would the water have felt like cement when he hit it? I sat on the bed, staring out at the ocean through the balcony doors, as though I might catch sight of someone else falling there. It didn’t look like we were plowing through the waves any more slowly.
“We’ve already sent out a tender boat—”
“Someone else saw him?” If so, how had they managed to call in faster than me?
“Uh—” The woman paused on the far end of the line.
Either she was lying to me—or she wasn’t. And there’d been another reason for a search boat to already be out in the sea.
“How many people have gone overboard?”
The woman cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, I can’t tell you official ship’s business. Please trust that we’re looking into things, though, Mrs. Stonefield, honestly we are.” And the line clicked dead.
I tried calling back, but the line was busy and went to hold music immediately. I waited for five minutes and then gave up in disgust.
Maybe they couldn’t stop the ship if we were going to outrace the storm and get the sick people safely off. That was better than thinking that they didn’t care—or that they were already overwhelmed. I went out on the balcony for a second look.
The ship hadn’t even tried to slow down, but even if it had, what would be the point? I assumed cruise ships were like trains: It would take the Maraschino miles to decelerate at the speed we were going, and after that, who knew how much longer to turn around? The ocean outside was as wild as it had been the day before, when I’d been pushing Claire. Knowing it had taken someone made it seem worse somehow, more stark and unforgiving, even hungry.
I returned to the warmth of the cabin and locked the balcony doors behind me, pulled the curtains tight, and tried to ignore the fact that the bed I curled up on was far too big for just me.
Had that man been pushed overboard? By … Asher? I grimaced and rolled my eyes at the thought. No, he hadn’t been screaming on his way down—I would have heard. He’d jumped.
Inside my mind, I made up a whole story for him. He was on board with his only daughter; his wife had died in childbirth long ago. When his daughter got sick, coming down with whatever Thomas had had, and died, he’d flung himself overboard in grief.
It was melodramatic, the stuff of old fairy tales or tragic myth. But I found solace in it nonetheless, because it was a story. And stories had to make sense in a way that it increasingly looked like my life did not.
* * *
I didn’t remember falling asleep, or even being tired. But sometimes my body shut down under stress, and maybe the pregnancy, or me not eating much but puking a ton, had taken a toll. I woke to a commotion out in the hall as the sun began to set, and looked at the alarm clock on Asher’s empty side of the bed: 8 P.M., local time. Not even twelve hours since he’d left.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I thought about taking the mask out with me. But if I brought it, there was the chance that people would want to know how I’d gotten it—what was so special about me? I doubted they were like life jackets, one for everyone on board. I’d seen enough mob mentality in the hospital; I didn’t want to invite it. Besides, if whatever Nathaniel had set on us was that contagious, I’d probably already been exposed to it. I just wouldn’t touch anything or come within droplet range of anyone and trust my nursing immune system to do the rest. I opened up my door and listened—and all the voices I heard were angry. I carefully snuck out and walked down the hall.
“You’re kidding me—I’ve got a dinner reservation at Le Poisson Affamé tonight,” someone in a suit was saying ahead, butchering the pronunciation. “I booked it before I even got on board!”
I reached the back of a small group of people who were complaining to two cruise employees stationed at the stairs and noticed that the floor indicator lights above the elevators were off.
“What’s going on?” I asked a woman standing near the back.
“They’ve just shut down all travel between floors,” she said, crossing her arms, face sour. “And I’ve got late-night bingo plans.”
“You will be refunded,” one of the employees was explaining to the angry man. “But we need you all to go back to your rooms.”
“This is unacceptable,” the bingo woman muttered.
“The captain will be explaining things shortly.” The cruise employees were burly, but they didn’t look pleased to be playing the heavy in the face of so many angry vacationers. “Please go back to your rooms, and stay indoors.”
“How long?” I asked, over the crowd.
“The captain will be explaining shortly—” the man repeated, patting the air in front of him to get us to settle down.
Just in time, chimes sounded overhead, and people quieted to hear what the captain would say.
“This is Captain Ames speaking. I’m sure you all have noticed that we are no longer allowing travel between floors. While there is no reason to panic, we need you all to stay in your rooms for a short portion of our voyage.”
“How long is that?” one of the angry people asked aloud, as if the captain could hear him and answer back.
“Our legendary room service will continue to be available upon request. If you need anything, or begin to feel ill, please contact guest services immediately. Please be patient, and we’ll continue to keep you informed.”
The chimes descended in tone, letting us know the captain was tuning out.
“What’s that even mean?” complained the man missing his reservation.
“It means you will be refunded for the special dinner you are missing tonight,” one of the employees repeated.
“My travel agent’s going to hear about this. And the entire Internet. And my bingo club!” the woman complained.
One of the guards tried hard not to crack a smile at that. If guest services hadn’t been overwhelmed earlier, they would be now. Maybe that’s why people were jumping—they couldn’t handle the horror of the bingo club cancellation.
I snorted, and then I realized the captain had stopped just short of calling this what it was—a quarantine. I stepped back, keeping even more space between me and the other complaining passengers.
“You heard the captain. Please go back to your rooms, and this will all be over by morning,” the
cruise employee repeated.
Which wasn’t precisely what the man had said, but I suspected the “guards” here would have changed shifts by then, and his lie would be someone else’s problem at dawn.
I hung back in the hallway, not touching the wall nor anyone else around me as the crowd dispersed, and then I approached the two cruise employees, trying to seem pleasant and meek.
“Hi there—my husband was out earlier on, and I’m not sure where he is now.” Might as well lie all the way. Husband had a weight that fiancé did not. “I think he might be trapped on another floor.”
“The phone systems on board are fine. I’m sure he’ll call your room soon,” he said, with an emphasis on the word room, with the implication that I wouldn’t know if he’d called unless I was back there. “Please don’t worry, this is just temporary.”
I inhaled to fight him, but I didn’t know with what. I could hardly tell him that there was a mad scientist on board. I didn’t like being turned away, but I wasn’t sure what else to say. “Sure, okay.”
* * *
I walked back to my room, as pissed off as the bingo-lady and a hundred times more frightened. I heard someone sneezing in their room as I passed by and thought darkly about calling guest services to make a report. I shook my head and opened my room door with more questions than answers, again.
I washed my hands, and then paced. There were no messages waiting for me on the room phone. I pulled out Asher’s cell phone and tried to call out, but I didn’t get a signal. I hadn’t brought a laptop, since we were supposed to be vacationing. And I tried to make an outside call from the in-room phone, only to find that that system had been disconnected as well. Probably so people like my neighbor couldn’t already be complaining to their bingo buddies. Guest services got through, but only to hold music, and then a “your call will be answered in thirty-seven minutes” automated system.
The most sensible thing to do would be to wait here for the full twenty-four hours. Asher would come back, or if he couldn’t, he’d figure out some way to contact me.
Edie Spence [04] Deadshifted Page 9