Lost. That was how she’d felt. So damned lost. She’d fallen off the face of her earth. The worlds had been so strange, many of them hostile, with so little food that she’d often had to crawl her way through a Silver to her next hope of a world, too hungry, too fevered, to have a whisper of a prayer of accessing the slipstream, Shazam hovering over her anxiously, cursing, weeping, for a novel change giving up his incessant predictions of doom, to urge her on. “You mean if I’d had this phone and hadn’t cut off the tattoo…” she trailed off. “Even in the hall?”
“I’d have come for you the moment you called.”
“Anywhere?”
“Yes.”
“Without limitation at all?” She took pains to mask her incredulity. He was that powerful?
He inclined his head.
“Why the bloody hell didn’t you give it to me back then?”
“Would you have carried it?”
Honesty with herself was now part of her spine, her fundamental structure. At fourteen, she’d carried her own cell only for the music and games. She’d have seethed at the mere idea of carrying a phone for Ryodan, considered it just one more way for him to track and control her, another chain draped around her shoulders by adults who didn’t understand her—and she’d have laughed from the belly as she flung it in the trash. Then kicked the trash can for good measure and laughed some more.
“Let me tattoo you.” He was silent a long moment then said, “Jada.”
She went utterly still, not liking him this way, not trusting this at all. He was being direct, noncaustic. Treating her as if she was exactly what she was—a woman who’d been through hell and made it back by sheer force of will and the skin of her teeth. He was calling her by her chosen name. Asking her to “allow” him to do something. No longer berating her for not being who he wanted her to be. Offering his protection. No longer jabbing at her or giving her anything to fight.
She didn’t know how to deal with this man without fighting him. “No,” she said.
“At least carry the phone.”
She regarded it as if it were a snake that would bite her the instant she reached for it. “It’s a little late to start worrying about me.”
“I always worried about you.”
The door behind her whisked open.
“Hey, guys.” Dancer stepped in to join them. He looked at her, did a double take, and said, “Wow. You look amazing, Jada.”
She felt suddenly nonplussed, a thing she’d not experienced in years. The faint heat of a blush was trying to stain her skin and she willed her capillaries to constrict and deny it. Once before Dancer had seen her in a skirt and heels, the night Ryodan made her change because her clothes smelled like Christian. She’d felt just as off-kilter with the way he’d looked at her then, with a soft stirring of butterflies in her stomach.
Sometimes she felt as split as they thought she was: a young girl hungry to spend time with a young man that was smart and good and real, a grown woman hungry for a grown man with edges sharp enough to cut herself on.
But hunger, like emotion, could drive a person to do stupid things. And the stupid didn’t survive. “It’s just a dress,” she deflected.
“It’s not the dress, Mega,” Dancer said quietly. “It’s the woman in it.”
He smiled at her and she felt herself smiling faintly back. Mega. She should correct him. How young, how naïve, she’d been all those years ago.
She’d had a crush on Dancer. The older, brilliant boygenius she’d idolized. She hadn’t known what to do with it. Hadn’t been ready for that kind of thing. She’d had so little childhood that she’d been determined to preserve what remained as long as possible. Sex was an irretrievable step into adulthood. She’d missed him in the Silvers. Had longed for his inventive, brilliant mind and way of making it seem it was the two of them against the world and that was more than enough, because they would win every battle.
She narrowed her eyes, studying him. He looked older now, especially without his glasses. He had beautiful eyes, flecked with every shade of green and blue, like a tropical sea, with thick, long dark lashes. And he was dressing differently than he used to. She was startled to realize he had a man’s body beneath his jeans and leather jacket, a man’s eyes. Perhaps he’d been dressing younger when she was young, matching her style. Perhaps her fourteen-year-old eyes simply hadn’t been able to see the parts of him she’d not been ready to deal with.
She saw them now.
Ryodan dropped the phone back into the drawer and slid it shut. “I want the two of you to gather every bit of information you have on the anomalies and bring it by tomorrow evening.”
“Already got it,” Dancer said, waving a packet of papers. “Right here.”
“I have other things to do tonight.”
Jada looked at Ryodan but his gaze was shuttered, distant, as if they’d never spoken before Dancer had arrived.
“You said you had a current map of all the black holes,” Jada said. “I want it.”
“I’ll have copies for you tomorrow night.”
“Time is of the essence,” she said coolly. Why didn’t he want to give her the map? Because he didn’t trust she’d come back once she had it?
Dancer said, “The first hole appeared more than two months ago, Jada. They’re growing slowly. I can’t see that another day will make much of a difference. Besides, the map isn’t the most important thing. Knowing their location doesn’t tell us how to fix them. I’ve been working on some other ideas about that.”
“Out. Now,” Ryodan said flatly.
Once, she would have insisted, argued, perhaps blasted up into the slipstream and raised a ruckus to get what she wanted. Or at least put on one hell of a show trying.
Now, she simply turned for the door, refusing to glance over her shoulder, although she could feel his gaze resting heavily on her.
Still, she heard Ryodan’s voice inside her head as clearly as if he’d spoken aloud.
Change your mind, Jada. Don’t be a fool. It won’t cost you anything. Let me be your anchor. I’ll never let you be lost again.
She’d always hated the doors in Chester’s.
They couldn’t be kicked open and they couldn’t be slammed shut.