“In theory.”
“So yesterday, when we were running all over the place trying to save you—that was all just a show?” Bethany’s words were crisp, and her voice went up an octave or two. “You were just pretending to be sick?”
“No.” The word burst out of my mouth with so much force that I realized that I really didn’t want her to think that yesterday was something I’d faked, that it somehow didn’t count.
“What I am,” I said carefully, “the things I can do … I can’t always do them.”
“This is ridiculous,” Elliot said, speaking up for the first time. “I can’t believe we’re even sitting here talking about this like it’s not insane. If there were people out there who were born to hunt the preternatural, don’t you think we’d know about them? Don’t you think the government would know about them? It makes no sense.”
“Yeah, well, take a time machine back to middle school and tell me that,” I snapped, but the words came out wispy and small. “Because I was twelve when this started happening, and I didn’t know why, or what was going on, or who I could tell, because it was crazy. It’s still crazy. It makes no sense. Sometimes I’m human, and sometimes I’m not. If Bethany really wants to slap me, all she has to do is wait seventeen hours and change, and I’ll feel it the same way anyone else would.”
“Seventeen hours?” Elliot repeated. “That would be around seven a.m.”
“Dawn,” Skylar supplied helpfully. “You’ll be human again at dawn.”
I nodded. I’d already said enough. Too much, probably.
“So when you took the chupacabra, you didn’t know if you could kill it?” Bethany was stuck on that one moment in time—though considering it had been life-or-death for her, I could understand the fixation.
“I thought if I made it to sunrise, the chupacabra would die, and I’d be fine.” I shrugged. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“And none of this—the healing, the warrior-princess act, the crazy eyes … none of that is because of the chupacabra?”
Beth’s face was guarded, but I found that I could get inside her head as easily as if I were the psychic one. She’d seen the way the ouroboros had spread out over my torso. She’d known her father was experimenting on chupacabras. And then she’d seen me do the impossible.
It made perfect sense that she’d wondered if the two were related. And, yeah, they kind of were—but not in the way she thought.
“It would have killed you,” I said, keeping things simple. “Whoever injected you had no way of knowing that it wouldn’t.”
I realized a second after saying it that for an hour, Bethany might have been able to tell herself that her father hadn’t been playing around with her life—that he’d found a way to make her faster, stronger. That whatever cure he was after for Tyler, there might have been hope.
And there I was, telling her she was wrong.
“People like me”—it felt weird to say that phrase out loud, I’d spent so much time thinking it to myself—“we have a different reaction to chupacabras. When I was human, it was killing me, but when I switched …” I gestured to the newly healed skin on my arms. “I don’t normally heal this fast. A couple of days ago, I might not have been able to bounce back from this at all. Whatever chupacabras do to humans, they do the opposite to me.”
Don’t tell them about the blood, Zev advised in what I’m sure he thought passed for a very sage tone. Humans are remarkably queasy about our liquid diet.
“Would you just shut up?” I didn’t realize I’d said the words out loud until everyone else in the room started giving me the “she’s losing it again” look in a single, synchronized motion.
“Not you guys,” I clarified. “It’s like this …”
If explaining the whole “every other day” thing was hard, trying to tell them that being bitten had given me a psychic bond with another person—who’d also been bitten—was darn near impossible, but I gave it my best shot.
Skylar was the first to recover. “So he’s in your head, and you’re in his? That’s significantly psychic phenomena.” She seemed enthused. “Can you guys actually speak, or is it just images? Do you feel what he feels? Can you swap bodies at will?”
I got the feeling she would have gone on indefinitely, but Bethany stopped her.
“We have bigger problems right now than the fact that if Kali makes out with someone, it might qualify as a ménage à trois,” she said. “Do you have any idea what will happen if my father figures out what you can do? If the company he works for does? They’ll want to take you apart piece by piece, just to see how it all works.”
I could see Bethany wondering herself—how it worked, whether or not my cells really did hold the answer her father was looking for.
For Tyler.
“That can’t happen,” Bethany said finally, and I got the distinct feeling she was saying that as much for her own benefit as for mine. “They’d use you as a guinea-pig lab rat and bleed you dry. That can’t happen.”
Guinea-pig lab rat? Zev sounded either amused or insulted—I wasn’t sure which.
“I know exactly what they’d do to me, Beth.” For once, she didn’t correct me on the use of the nickname. I took that as a good sign and plowed on. “I know because that’s exactly what they’re doing to Zev.”
In the silence that followed, I realized that I was almost out of secrets. I hadn’t meant to tell them about Zev. I hadn’t meant to ask for help. Bethany had already told me no once today. Now that she knew what I was, I couldn’t imagine that the answer would be any different. She still had her mother to think about, and if one thing was perfectly, crystalline clear, it was that I could take care of myself.
I just kept coming and coming and coming.
I was what I was.
“You know Chimera has your psychic boy toy. You also know that they’d probably love to add you to their collection, too.” Bethany’s hands snaked out to her hips. “Please tell me you’re not planning a rescue mission.”
The look on my face must have said it all.
Bethany rolled her eyes, and I wondered if I’d imagined the way she’d washed my body clean of blood, her touch light, her bedside manner gentle. “Right. You’re Kali. Of course you’re planning a rescue mission. Stupid self-sacrifice is kind of your thing.”
Beside her, Elliot cleared his throat. At first, I thought he was trying to get her to show a little tact, but then I realized the throat-clearing was for my benefit, not hers.
“Yes?” I said, meeting his eyes, feeling his gaze on my body and not knowing whether that was a good sign or a bad one.
Elliot opened his mouth, a muscle in his jaw tensing and betraying the seemingly calm tone in his voice. “Forget rescue missions,” he said. “Am I the only one here who thinks we should call the police?”
22
Elliot was indeed the only person present who thought we should call the police. Skylar closed her eyes, hummed for a moment, and declared that she didn’t think that was a very good idea. Bethany was positive her phone and the landline were tapped and that Chimera would know the second we placed the call. And Vaughn had a different suggestion.
“Call Reid.”
Skylar made a face, and even though Elliot wouldn’t have admitted it, he did the same.
“Who’s Reid?” I asked.
“The brother I would have to promote if Elliot doesn’t stop treating me like I’m five,” Skylar said. “He’s … difficult.”
“And by that, she means that he’s a hard-ass.” Elliot leaned back against the wall. “Black-and-white moral code, nobody else ever measures up.”
I turned to Vaughn, expecting him to weigh in, but he just shrugged. “He’s a Fed.”
Right. Because the one thing that could make this situation better was the involvement of the federal government. Why didn’t I just take out a billboard, volunteering to let the army play Dissect the Kali for fun?