“You want that?” I asked incredulously.
“No, of course not. I don’t want them to follow any of us. But if they do, I have faith that you and I can lose them easier than the others.” She frowned in thought. “Okay, you get us on the road, and let me see your phone.” I handed it over and pulled out onto the road, more than glad to be getting away from this place. “Where was he taking them?” she asked.
“South. Toward Mexico, though we planned to meet up with each other again about an hour from Death Valley. He didn’t know if he was going to cross the border or not, but there was a place near it he was going to hide out.”
She nodded and scanned a few things on my phone before setting it down. “Okay, then we go north. Northeast, actually.” I couldn’t see her with my eyes on the road, but I could hear a smile in her voice. “You still any good at poker?”
“Why? Are you finally going to play strip poker with me? I’ve only asked like a hundred times.”
“No such luck. Yet. But we’re going to need some cash, and Nevada’s right around the corner. I bet there are casinos as soon as we cross the border.”
“I know there are,” I told her. “I’ve driven through it twice this week. I don’t have much to offer up as a bet, so if you’re hoping for an overnight fortune, I can’t help.”
“I’ll settle for a hotel room, dinner, and a change of clothes.”
“That I can do. Although …” I gave her a sidelong look. “I thought you didn’t approve of me using spirit to play cards?” I couldn’t actually read people’s minds, of course, but seeing auras was almost as good. I could always tell who was bluffing and who was telling the truth.
She sighed and leaned back into her seat. “I don’t. Or of you using spirit for anything. But these are kind of unusual circumstances we’re facing. Maybe once this is all over, and we’re settled, you can go back on your pills.”
“You wouldn’t be with me now if I’d stayed on those pills,” I said quietly.
“I know … and you know I’m grateful. The spirit issue is one we’ll have to deal with again sometime, but …”
“Right now we have bigger problems?” I finished.
“Nothing’s bigger to me than you,” she said firmly. “How have you been feeling? You said in one of our dreams that you stopped the pills as soon as I was gone. How has that been? You seem like you’re doing well, like you have the mood swings under control.”
There was a note of hope in her voice, and I couldn’t bear to tell her that the reason I had the mood swings under control was because they’d been replaced instead by a delusion of my dead aunt.
“I’m alive and well here, aren’t I?” I said glibly. “Don’t try to change the subject. You’ve gone through a hell of a lot more than me.”
“We don’t need to talk about it now,” she said.
We fell into silence, both of us keeping our own secrets of what we’d suffered in the other’s absence. I wondered if we were trying to protect each other or simply didn’t want to admit to our own fears and weaknesses. Not that I thought Sydney was weak in the least. But I’d seen her aura when we were back at the re-education center, around the other Alchemists, and there was definitely an edge of fear surrounding her and the other detainees. I knew she probably thought that was a failing.
“Well,” I said, trying to cheer her up. “At least open your presents.”
“You got me a ‘congratulations on getting out of re-education’ gift?” she asked.
“Not exactly. Just check the bag that’s over there.”
She did, exclaiming in surprise as she opened it. “My God! If I’d had these amulets in re-education, it would’ve made things a heck of a lot—Hopper!”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her lift the little golden dragon. When she spoke again, I thought she might start crying.
“Oh, Hopper. I’ve thought about him, you know. I wondered what had happened to him and what he must be going through. …” She started to speak the words of a spell and then stopped. “He’ll be hungry. Let’s wait until we get some food. I wouldn’t mind a real meal myself.”
“That I can accommodate even without hitting the poker tables,” I told her. “What are you in the mood for? Steak? Sushi? Name it, and it’s yours.”
She laughed. “Nothing that fancy for me. I don’t think my stomach could take it just yet after—” Her laughter faded.
“After what?” I asked quietly.
“Later,” she said. “We’ll talk about it later.”
I sighed. “So we keep saying. When is later going to be?”
“When we’re more than a few minutes out from the Alchemist holding facility,” she returned. “We need to focus on this escape.”
She had a point, but that didn’t mean I liked it. In fact, it troubled me more and more as the drive continued, not knowing the full extent of what she’d been through. She was quick to tell me she loved me and had missed me and that nothing made her happier than being with me again. I believed all of that, but it didn’t mean I could so easily let the past go.
Aunt Tatiana whispered: Are you sure that’s true? Maybe you don’t actually want to know what happened to her. You saw a glimpse of what it was like in there. Do you want confirmation of the atrocities she suffered?
If Sydney was able to endure it, then the least I can do is handle hearing about it, I silently retorted. And yet … I wondered if my phantom aunt had a point.
We crossed into Nevada about an hour and a half later, with no sign of pursuit. We did, however, get a call from Marcus just as we were pulling into a small hotel with an adjacent casino.
“Did you get lost?” asked Marcus. He didn’t sound mad exactly, but something in his tone told me he knew perfectly well that we had not, in fact, gotten lost.
“More like we took a detour,” I said cheerfully.
He groaned. “Adrian, we hashed this out! Everything’s gone perfectly until now. Why would you even think about deviating from the plan?”
“Um, because that’s how we roll?”
Sydney took the phone from me before I could offer any more compelling explanations. She used the same arguments she’d made with me, though Marcus wasn’t as swayed by her beautiful eyes as I was. It was clear he wasn’t won over by the end of the call, and Sydney finally ended it with a vague, “We’ll be in touch.”
I offered to take her out for a nice dinner, but she didn’t even want to go to the hotel’s front desk in her khaki clothes, let alone a public meal. I checked us in and discovered I had enough cash for a small suite. It wasn’t anything glamorous—certainly nowhere near as posh as the place she and I had stayed when snowed in in Pennsylvania—but it had a separate bedroom and larger bathroom than the hotel’s regular rooms. Maybe I didn’t know all the details of what she’d gone through, but I knew enough to say she deserved an upgrade.
The look on her face when she sat on the bed confirmed as much. It was just average to me, but from her delighted sigh, you’d think it was made of angel wing feathers. She stretched out on it and closed her eyes.
“This. Is. Glorious,” she stated. I stretched out beside her and felt my chest swell with joy. Once, I’d thought that if I was in bed with her, there was only one activity I’d want, but honestly, right now? I was pretty sure there was no greater contentment than just seeing her safe and happy and within arm’s reach. After so much time apart, her very presence was a miracle.
“There’s a shopping center across the street,” I said. “I’ll grab us some stuff … unless you want to come with me? I’m worried about leaving you alone. …”
She shook her head. “I’ll be fine. Besides, there’s an amulet in Ms. Terwilliger’s bag that could blow a hole open in that wall. Just hurry back.”
I fully intended to. I sprinted across the street, only realizing halfway through that I was violating basic rules of Moroi safety by going outside at night alone in a strange area. Hell, we were taught at a young age that being out alone
at night in known areas was dangerous. I’d never imagined I’d reach a point in my life where Strigoi were no longer my first priority when it came to personal safety.
I’d undressed Sydney enough to know her size and bought her some basic clothes and toiletries. At a neighboring deli, I opted for turkey sandwiches and a variety of small snacks, hoping that’d be bland enough after whatever her stomach had been through. I cut myself off there, since I still needed money for poker stakes. The whole round trip took about twenty minutes, but when I got back to the hotel, Sydney wasn’t in the suite’s living room or bedroom. My heart stopped. I felt like someone in a fairy tale, who’d just woken up to realize everything he thought he’d won was just a dream, falling apart to stardust before his eyes.
I noticed then that the bathroom door wasn’t quite closed and that the light was on. I hesitated outside. “Sydney?”
“Come in,” she said.
I opened the door and was nearly knocked over with the cloying scent of jasmine. Sydney was in the tub, nearly up to her neck in bubbles, and the room felt like a sauna. “How hot is that bath?” I asked, eyeing the steam hovering in the air.
She laughed. “As hot as I could make it. You don’t know how long it’s been since I was really, truly warm.” A slender arm reached out and picked up a small plastic bottle with the hotel’s logo on it. “Or just smelled something … pretty. Everything was so sterile in re-education, almost medicinal smelling. I kind of went crazy with this stuff and used the whole bottle.”
“We’ll have them send up more if you like it that much.” I lifted up the bottle and read the label. It was just a cheap bath gel. “Or get you some real jasmine perfume when I have my poker winnings in hand.”
“You don’t understand,” she said, sinking a little deeper into the suds. “After what I’ve been through … this stuff is the height of luxury. I don’t need anything fancier.”
“Maybe we could talk about what you’ve been through,” I suggested. “You can help me understand.”
“Another time,” she said evasively. “If you brought food back, I’d rather have that right now.”
“And leave your boiling cauldron behind?”
“There’ll be more baths,” she said simply. “And I already managed to shave my legs, which was half my goal. Four months. Ugh.”
She then stood up without warning, treating me to a view of her body, naked except for a few clinging suds and wisps of steam. It warmed my heart—and my blood—that things had stayed the same enough for her to not feel self-conscious around me. I had to work to keep my shock off my face, though. I had noticed she’d lost weight when we got her out of the facility, but I hadn’t realized the extent of it until now. I could practically count her ribs, and even she, with her history of obsessive weight control, had to know that she’d far exceeded healthy limitations.
“Not what you expected, huh?” she asked in a sad voice.
I wrapped a towel around her and drew her close to me. “I expected to see the most beautiful woman in the world, to feel my heart skip a beat in her presence, and to want to carry her off to bed for a night neither of us will forget. So to answer your question, I got exactly what I expected.”
A smile split her face, and she leaned into me. “Oh, Adrian.”
In the other room, I showed her my purchases, and she laughed as she sifted through them, pausing to lift up a fuchsia T-shirt. “Have you ever seen me wear this color?”
“No,” I said. “And it’s about time, especially after those.” I pointed at the pile of khakis on the floor. “Which we’re going to burn.”
She laughed again, and it was the most exquisite sound I’d ever heard. She went with the fuchsia shirt and a pair of white shorts. “You’re the best,” she told me.
I soon found out I wasn’t the only one in her heart, however, when we settled down to eat our dinner. She summoned Hopper out of his inert state, and tears spilled from her eyes when he transformed from a rigid glittering statue to a dull-scaled, weak little creature that was nearly as skinny as she was. She cradled him to her chest and rocked him, telling him the kinds of nonsensical things people do to comfort pets and small children. She told him over and over that everything would be okay now, and I almost wondered if she were comforting herself as much as him. She kept breaking off little bites of her turkey sandwich for him and was halfway through when I finally realized what was happening.
“Hey, hey,” I said. “Save some for yourself.”
“He’s so hungry,” she said. “He can’t even make that little pathetic mewling sound he usually does when he wants food.”
“And that extra-small T-shirt is still too big on you. Finish your sandwich, and he can have my crusts.”
She reluctantly handed him over, and I swore Hopper glared at me for depriving him of her attention. I loved the little guy too, but there was no way he was getting preferential treatment over Sydney. She ate the rest of her sandwich under my watchful eye but wouldn’t touch any of the assorted candy bars I’d bought, no matter my urging. I honestly would’ve liked to have seen her eat them all but knew better than to point out how much she needed sugar and fat.
Hopper fell asleep after that, and I thought Sydney would too. Instead, she invited me to the bedroom and drew me on to the bed with her. “You sure you don’t need some rest?” I asked.
She wrapped her arms around my neck. “I need you.”
Our lips met in our first real kiss since she’d been taken away. It set me aflame, reminding me just how agonizingly much I’d missed her. I’d meant what I told her: It didn’t matter how thin she’d become. She was still the most beautiful woman in the world to me, and there was no one else I wanted more. Not only that, there was no one else whose presence I felt more right in. Even in the midst of our escape from Death Valley and getting situated in these uncertain conditions, there was a comfortable certainty that just in being with her, there was nothing that couldn’t be accomplished.
I trailed kisses down her neck and mentally took back what I’d said about the bath gel being cheap. The jasmine mingled with her own natural scent was intoxicating, far better than any perfume I’d ever gotten her. Her legs felt like silk under my touch, and I was astonished at how quickly my desire ramped up—even more astonished at how hers did too. I worried it might be too much too soon, but when I tried to dissuade her again, she only pulled me closer.
“You don’t understand,” she murmured, running one of her hands through my hair. “You don’t understand how much I need this, how much I need you and to remember I’m alive and in love. They try to take that from you in that place, but I never forgot. I never forgot you, Adrian, and now that you’re here, I …”
She couldn’t finish, and she didn’t have to. I knew exactly what she meant. We kissed again, the kind of kiss that bound us in way that was so much more than physical. I was trying to pull her shirt off when she suddenly paused and asked breathlessly, “You did get something at the store, right?”
My brain was too addled with lust and thoughts of her to fully process what she was saying. “Huh? I got lots of things.”
“Protection,” she said meaningfully. “Wasn’t there a drugstore across the street? Bigger selection there than the other place.”
“I—oh. That kind of thing. Uh, no, I didn’t. I guess I forgot.”
Before Sydney had been taken, she’d been on the pill, and I’d never really had to think about birth control. I think she preferred it that way, not really trusting anyone but herself to handle such important matters. I sighed.
“Don’t I get points for being more concerned about feeding you and dressing you in bright colors than I was about getting you into bed?”
She placed a light kiss against my lips and smiled. “You get lots of points. But unfortunately, you don’t get this.”
I leaned over her and brushed golden strands of hair from her face. “Do you know how torn I am right now? I mean, I’m disappointed, obviously … but at the sa
me time, I’m kind of in love with you even more for still being your meticulously careful self, in spite of everything that’s happened.”
“Really?” She shifted so that I could rest my head on her chest. “My meticulous and careful nature is what you love?”
“There’re so many things to love, Sage. Who can keep track?”
As frustrating as it was to be unexpectedly denied that physical consummation, I still found myself basking in that earlier sense of bliss that just came from being near her. Did I want sex? Sure, but I wanted her more—her presence, her laughter, her spirit. The churning hormones in my body soon quieted, and I found more than enough ecstasy just lying in her arms. And when she dozed off soon thereafter, I had a feeling my oversight in not going to the drugstore might have been for the best, no matter what she’d said. Getting her back to full health was most important right now, and I was pretty sure rest and candy bars were the best way to help.
As for me, I was too restless. Part of it was just the day’s excitement and being with her. Another part was that it was still earlier than I was used to going to sleep. I loved being entwined with her, but after a while, I cautiously slipped out of bed and tucked the covers around her. I studied her fondly a few moments before turning off the lights and creeping out to the living room, careful to close the door behind me so as not to disturb her.
I settled onto the couch with a candy bar and watched TV at a low volume, needing to settle my spinning mind. I knew Sydney would undoubtedly have all sorts of plans and deductions that were better than mine, but it was hard not to think about the future. Where could we go? Was there a safe place? And whether it was with Marcus or on our own, what exactly was it we were going to do with our lives? So much energy had just been spent on being together—itself a daunting task—that we’d hardly ever paused to discuss what we’d truly do. One of our outlandish escape plans? College for her? An obscure life in the middle of nowhere? Fighting for the freedom of Moroi and ex-Alchemists?