by Ramy Vance
“How did the birds behave?”
I opened my eyes. I was a master at reading people, and Serena Russo wasn’t displaying an ounce of concern. No … she was intrigued.
“They shot their feathers at us. Metallic ones. And they had massive beaks and talons that they swiped when they dove for us.”
“Did they hurt you?”
I shook my head. “By some miracle. But they definitely weren’t regular birds. Doctor, you study Others. Do you know what they could have been?”
She raised a finger. “Ah, you’re thinking in the anthropological sense. You see, I study the microscopic makeup of Others. Now if you asked me about the composition of an Other’s cells, I’d be your girl.”
I eyed her. Between the two of us, I wasn’t the only one playing a role. I was the innocent, scared student. And somehow, she’d morphed into the nerdy, shut-in scientist I knew she wasn’t and had never been.
More deception.
“Ohh,” I said, nodding with wide eyes. “My mistake.”
“It’s hard for me to say what kind of birds they were without observing them.” She pulled on her glasses, turned toward the microscope. “That said, it sounds like a curfew was the right choice on the administration’s part.”
Of course, I thought. Then, Wait. Why “of course?” Why would Serena Russo approve of the curfew? As often happened in tense situations, my subconscious mind understood something my conscious mind didn’t. I realized my heart had been sledgehammering against my chest ever since she’d walked back in.
I was terrified.
“Serena, I’m going to use the restroom,” I said, pushing myself up. “I’ll be back.”
She murmured assent, her face still pressed into the microscope.
I booked it down the hall into the bathroom. Inside, I dropped onto a toilet, bowing over until my head was nearly touching my thighs. I breathed hard, fast. You haven’t been caught. She didn’t know you were looking through her papers, I repeated in my head. She didn’t know.
I repeated it until my breathing calmed, and I could sit up straight.
Empusa’s embryo. Serena Russo. The World Army. Something massive had converged on this campus—something bigger than one killer. If she was studying Empusa, then she was studying other Others. Who knew how many profiles they had?
A quavering, powerful part of me wanted to bolt out of the bathroom and back to my dorm and climb under my floral comforter with Aimee. This was the encantado part of me, the side that knew I could slip out of anything. I could take on another illusion, become someone else.
All I had to do was run.
But then I thought of Justin. I thought of the people who had died, the kid sitting in the alley with his heart carved out. I thought of those who would still die because of Empusa—because of Serena Russo and the World Army. I, Isabella Ramirez, was who they’d picked to conduct their Other research. I would be granted daily access to their facilities. I didn’t fully understand what was going on yet, but I had been given the keys, and I only needed to set them into the door and open it.
If I didn’t, more young men would die to Empusa. And I would be responsible, because I was one of the few people who had access to the knowledge of how to stop her.
I got up, walked to the sinks, and turned on the faucet. Except I didn’t move; my reflection was staring judgmentally back at me. “Well, Isa,” I whispered, “you know what you have to do.”
I set my hands under the water, clapped my wet fingers over my eyes, and fixed my hair before I walked back down the hallway to the laboratory.
Sometimes being a responsible adult sucked.
Chapter 20
The next morning, I sat down across from Justin in our favorite cafe. Which was funny, given it was the same coffeehouse where I’d once been attacked by vengeful Brazilian woman and—long story—ended up flopping around on the bathroom floor in my natural form.
All of which is to say, we’d playfully nicknamed it the Dolphin Cafe.
“You look like hell,” he said.
I set both hands around my mug, observing the frothy rosette on the surface. “Charming.”
“I meant it with the utmost affection.” I glimpsed a small smile as his hand reached out to touch my wrist.
I managed a little upturn of the lips. “If I hadn’t taken it that way, you’d have coffee all over your face right now.” I raised my eyes to observe him. “You don’t look like you slept, either.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t. Well, not much.”
“I take it you didn’t capture Empusa on your patrol last night.” I tried to keep the sarcasm out of my voice, but a little seeped in.
If he’d noticed, he ignored it. “No—but maybe we spooked her. No murders, right?”
“No murders.”
What a strange thing to be grateful for.
I took a deep breath, lifting my mug to take a sip. I was preparing to launch into the real reason I’d asked him here: to help me get access to Serena Russo’s workstation and “borrow” that file on Empusa.
Yesterday while I’d been working at the lab, a couple security guys had finished activating the keycard entry on Serena’s office door and the outer lab door. I’d received a keycard of my own, but I couldn’t just go walking into her office anymore.
So I needed to break in. And I needed help.
All of this was going to create some serious cognitive dissonance for the World Army cadet sitting in front of me.
But Justin spoke up first. “We did see those birds again. They were swarming up near that cross at Mont Royal.”
I almost dropped my mug. Instead, it clattered onto the small saucer and only spilled a little. “Did you go there?”
He nodded. “They had dispersed by the time we arrived. We didn’t find anything.”
No murders, no bodies. But the stymphalian birds had swarmed. Why? I needed to go there, to study the area with the kind of attention I suspected the World Army cadets hadn’t—and couldn’t have—given in the middle of the night.
Justin kept going. “Even so, I really feel like I’m helping, Isa. I feel like a part of something.”
I focused on him. For the first time since we’d arrived, his blue eyes had brightened. “What ‘something?’ ”
“A cause. I’m protecting this campus, and the people I care about.”
“A cause.”
He nodded, sitting straighter, as though the spirit of Sergeant Johnson stood next to us. “I’ve been a little uncertain about what I want to do with my life for … well, basically all of college. But I’m starting to see a future now.”
Unease filled me. “What kind of future?”
“As a protector. A few months ago, Kat and I dealt with, to put it bluntly, a superhero infestation on campus.
“I remember.” I had walked by a crater the size of an elephant on my way to class that afternoon.
“Right. Well, back then I told her how much I would have loved to have superhero powers. Being a cadet makes me feel like I have those powers. Even if I am just a human. Part of it is just being with the other guys—the camaraderie and the commitment boosting us all.”
“Commitment to what?”
He paused. I knew he was reconsidering his first response to my question—figuring out a more delicate phrasing. “To protecting this campus. But also to protecting the world.”
I didn’t say anything. I knew the more I questioned him, the closer we would get to the truth of it. To the wedge that existed between us.
He was committed to protecting humans from Others.
I took another sip of my coffee, and in those few moments, I knew I couldn’t ask Justin to help me with this. It wasn’t just the cognitive dissonance of working for the World Army and undermining it all at the same time. It was that, in asking Justin to help me, I would be tainting the goodwill and sweet connection between us. I would be hurting us.
And no matter what, I didn’t want to hurt us.
I lowered my mug, pushing Sere
na Russo to the back of my mind. I allowed the encantado in me to emerge, leaning closer toward him. “You mentioned Kat. Did you and she talk?”
That brightness slipped from his eyes. “Not yet. I did get a call from a strange number, though.”
“And you think it was her calling from that strange number?”
“I don’t get many calls from random numbers in the middle of the night. And there was a voicemail … I briefly heard breathing before it cut off.”
“Her breathing?”
I waited, but Justin didn’t offer up anything else. I knew he didn’t want to admit how many times he’d probably listened to that voicemail, trying to decipher the breathing on the other end. It would be embarrassing.
So I only slipped my hand across the table and touched his fingers. “When will she be back?”
He responded to the touch, gripping my fingers in his warmth. His thumb slid over my hand in a reassuring way. “I don’t know. Soon, I hope. She and I need to talk.” He paused. “I think we’re going to break up.”
I nodded as he stared at my hand. I wanted to be with him, and I was about to say as much, but something stopped me. It wasn’t just that it was still too early. It was also that wedge, the stickiness of the World Army. Right now, despite our connection, we wanted very different things.
Most of all, it was clear he wasn’t over Kat—that, at the very least, he still had something to prove to her.
So I squeezed his hand. “Justin, I care about you.”
“But,” he said.
“ ‘But?’ ”
“That was the precursor to a ‘but …’ ”
I laughed. “Very perceptive, frat bro.”
“It’s almost like socializing all the time makes me socially aware.”
“Touche. Yes, there’s a but.” I inhaled, removing my hand. “But you and she need to work out what’s going on between you before anything more happens between us.”
He watched my fingers disappear beneath the table. “If I were a lesser frat bro, I would think you’re calling me a serial monogamist.”
I lifted both hands, palms out to him. “Hey, encantado here.”
And with surprising grace, he nodded. “I understand. But I want you to know that I really like you, Isa. I mean well.”
It was time to get real. Really, uncomfortably real. “I really like you, too. The thing is,” I blurted, “I’m not human.”
He watched me, waiting for me to go on.
“I’m an Other. You saw my natural form.”
In my long life, every man who’d beheld my true form—what amounted to a pink dolphin—had reacted in one of two ways: fear or disgust. And because I liked Justin so much, I didn’t know if I could handle rejection. Not from him. So I’d held back every time the topic came up.
Except now I was out of excuses.
“I saw you,” Justin said.
“And?”
“And I don’t care what you look like.”
My gut cinched, emotion rising up through my chest and neck and into my face. I wanted to push those words away. They had to be lies; they couldn’t possibly be the truth.
“Just know that I’m trying to do the right thing by you both,” he whispered.
“OK,” I said. When he handed me a napkin, I realized I’d been crying. “I believe you.”
↔
“So what you’re saying is, Justin Truly potentially breaking up with Katrina Darling is the least interesting part of today?”
From her perch on the end of her bed, Aimee looked skeptical.
My eyes drifted from the TV, which I’d been watching for three mind-numbing hours as I debated how to move forward. It was helping my nerves, even if cable TV had turned into nothing but commercials. “That’s what I’m saying.”
“All right, change my mind.”
So I told her about Dr. Serena Russo. The World Army. The file on Empusa, and what I’d seen under the microscope.
Finally, I told her what I needed to do in order to see that file again.
And sweet, cornflower-haired, blue-eyed Aimee? She laughed.
My arms folded over my chest. “I’m not joking.”
“Oh.”
“So, did I change your mind about my day?”
Within a few seconds, Aimee looked like someone had told her her dog had just died. Her eyes filled with tears, and she lifted both hands, gesturing for a hug.
When I sat down next to her, she wrapped her arms around me. She really was the most touchy-feely person I knew, and in an encantado’s life, that was saying a lot. But it did feel nice.
“That’s so dangerous, Isa,” she said.
“I know.”
“I’ll help you.”
I turned on her. “You’ll what?”
The pale-blue eyes lifted. “I said I’ll help you.”
“But you just said it’s dangerous.”
“Justin’s with the World Army now. You can’t get him to help you infiltrate the evil scientist’s workstation. Who else can you trust?”
I swallowed. Even if she was joking, “the evil scientist’s workstation” didn’t inspire much confidence in Aimee as my second. But she was right: who else could I trust? I felt strangely alone, vulnerable. The forces at work weren’t just powerful … they were lethal.
“You’re shivering,” Aimee said.
I glanced down, found my hands trembling on my thighs. I hadn’t realized I’d been shaking. “I think I know where to find Empusa.”
“Where?”
I closed my eyes; I couldn’t stop shivering. “Maybe … I don’t know. My brain’s a muddle.”
Telling Aimee everything—and especially thinking of going after Empusa—had brought out such a visceral reaction that my heart had started into a hard pounding against my chest. My whole nervous system felt on edge.
I was a runner, not a fighter. And yet here I was, trying to be the opposite.
She rolled across her bed, popped open the side table drawer. With a crinkle, out came a little baggie.
“No,” I said.
“Hear me out. Are you actually going to let me help you get into Dr. Russo’s workstation?”
“No.”
“Are you going to let me go with you to find Empusa?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Do you have any idea how you’re going to tackle either of those things?”
I paused. Then, “No.”
She shook the bag. “This is how I can help you.”
“I don’t know how that’s going to help,” I said, even as I reached for it. Did I mention how susceptible encantado are to mind-altering drugs? And I had decided to be a college student. Que bonito!
Twenty minutes later, I sat with the phone to my ear. In a moment of hazy brilliance, we had figured out exactly what we needed to do.
Cancel our cable TV subscription.
I mean, we were only getting like fifty mediocre channels, and half the time we weren’t even watching actual shows—just commercials. It was a total, infuriating ripoff.
Across the room, Aimee stared at me with big, red eyes. Smoke drifted around us.
“What?” I said.
“How long have you been on hold?”
I glanced at the clock on my desk. “Eighteen minutes.” Elevator muzak rang in my left ear, and I reached for the blunt. Aimee passed it over.
“Why are you still staring at me?” I said.
“I had a thought.”
“About the whole World Army-Dr. Russo-Empusa situation?”
She shook her head.
“OK—what?”
“If you burned time to get you off hold faster, would you actually be saving time, or losing it?”
I blinked. My mouth opened, closed again. “No,” I said. “Just no.”
“One minute.”
“That’s one minute off my life, Aimee!”
“You’ve been alive since like, 1502.”
“Hey, you swore you wouldn’t talk about my ag
e.”
“Yeah, in public.”
“I’m not burning time to get off hold faster.”
“Thirty seconds.”
I was about to disappoint her again, but something on the shelf by her head caught my eye. Professor Allman’s textbook.
She followed my gaze. “Don’t tell me you’re thinking about biology.”
“I’m thinking about biology,” I said, setting the phone down. “Aimee, you’re a genius.”
“Well, yes …”
“Professor Allman wasn’t happy about the World Army getting involved in the biology department’s work. I could tell from the start.”
She looked impressed, and then her eyes narrowed. “You’re going to ask Professor Allman to help you infiltrate a high-level World Army scientist’s workstation?”
I took a long draw off the blunt, poured smoke out of the side of my lips. “And he’s going to say yes. Know why?”
She leaned forward. “Why?”
“Encantado magic.”
Chapter 21
I’d never been great at walking in heels. Today, I had to be genius.
When Serena Russo walked out of the biology building with her purse over her shoulder, I glanced at the time on my phone. 12:15 p.m.
I had one hour.
I was lucky to be her protege in the lab, to know she had a “lunch engagement” this afternoon and wouldn’t be available to supervise my research.
Fine by me.
I walked into the biology building as soon as she’d disappeared around the corner and stepped into the first women’s bathroom I encountered. I checked to be sure all the stalls were empty, and then locked the main door to start the inexpert process of turning into Serena Russo.
Well, not turning into her, precisely. Looking like her. Sounding like her.
This was going to hurt.
I took off all my clothes and stood in front of the mirror, pressing my red hair behind my ears and closing my eyes. Before the gods left, this used to be a giddy moment, as familiar to me as getting dressed in the morning.
Now I felt only dread.
Some days I would shift between three or four illusions between dawn and dusk. I could snap my fingers and my hair would tumble black, then brown, then red. I could blink and be blue-eyed, blink again and hazel, violet, gray. Whatever a man wanted. Whatever I felt like that day.