Liquid Lies (32 page)

She shook out her hair. Curly, jet-black strands fell around her shoulders. She held out her arm and watched her skin transform to dusky brown.

“Jesus Christ!” Reed backed away so fast he hit the wall.

“I didn’t want to shock you like this.” Then, she dared to say in Spanish, “Your pain and confusion are killing me, you have to know. When I look at you, I see the future I might have had. It’s more than Allure for me now. It’s strange, but I never would have had you, never would have been given this chance to know you, if none of this had ever happened. I feel incredibly guilty for being grateful for that. But there are greater things at work here. Things far more important than me and you, though I wish there weren’t. And even though you look at me differently now, I won’t ever want to go back to how things were before, when I was living in ignorance and you weren’t in my life.”

“Gwen?”

He was searching her face, alternately horrified and fascinated.

She switched to English. “How about a Scandinavian?”

She sucked another
Mendacia
drop from her palm. The Tedranish words told her hair to turn golden brown, her skin to creamy pale dotted with freckles. Reed’s hand flew to his mouth.

In Norwegian she said, “Last night when you asked me to go away with you, my first response was to say yes. God, I want that. I didn’t know I wanted that until you said it, because I never would have allowed myself to fantasize about something so impossible. But I want to see where you live. I want to go to museums with you. I want to be how we were in Manny’s. I want to laugh with you. I want to…be with you.”

“What are you saying?”

In English: “Everything you don’t want to hear.”

He hissed through his teeth, like she’d touched him with a hot poker. Like he wanted her to do it again.

Hesitantly, she moved closer. He didn’t back away though he watched her with apprehension. Daring to reach out, she took his hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.

“It’s all an illusion,” she told him.

Reed shut his eyes, turned his face away. “I get it. I understand now.”

“Do you? Do you believe what I’ve told you?”

“Yes.” His hand twitched in hers. “How can I not? Now please,
please
change back to you.”

She desperately wanted to press herself to him. Wanted him to hold her in the way she knew and loved. “Why?”

“Because I don’t want anyone but you.”

Immediately, she canceled the glamour. “Hey,” she whispered, releasing his hand to brush her fingertips down his forearm. “Open your eyes. It’s me.”

When he did, and he saw her again as Gwen, his eyes churned with a mixture of desire and horror. He reached out and snatched her hands in his. They searched each other’s faces as if meeting for the first time, and the round beauty of his, softening as the seconds ticked by, made her shiver.

She reached for the Ofarian language, the one her people used only in complete privacy or during the ritualistic Water Rites. She looked deep into his eyes and said, “I could love you very easily, and I know I won’t get the chance.”

He gasped and tugged his hands free, looking at her askance. For a heartbeat, she wondered if he might actually have understood.

“What language is that?” His voice was gorgeously hoarse.

“Ofarian.”

He looked petrified, but in a completely new way. It had nothing to do with all she’d told him, and everything to do with
her
. “What did you say?”

She dared a step closer. They stood within each other’s auras, inside that shimmer of energy that sparkled whenever they got close. She’d tried to deny that place existed since pretty much the moment they met, but she refused to do that anymore. If she could have, she’d stay there forever.

“I said that I’m still me.”

And then
he
kissed
her
.

The kiss was hard and desperate, the entire force of his conflict behind it. She opened her mouth to him, and when their tongues met, he tasted of faith and torment, beauty and chaos. Emotion assaulted her, screaming in every language she knew. She wanted to ball his shirt in her fists and rip it from his pants. She wanted to slide down his zipper and touch what rose underneath. She wanted him to peel off her clothes and put his mouth to her ear, telling her what she meant to him, asking her to go away with him, if only to hear it again.

But she had to let him take the lead. Let him take what he thought he could handle.

The kiss deepened. Reed walked her backward until her legs hit the bed.
Yes. Yes.
When he dragged his hands around her stomach and started to fumble with her jeans’ zipper, she felt the shaking of his hands. Zipper loosened, he slid his hands down the back of her pants, under her panties, and gripped her ass in his palms. A long, low sound of need rolled up from deep inside her.

He froze. Pushed her away. Off-balance, she fell backward onto the bed. He towered over her, the back of one hand pressed to his still-moist lips. “I can’t.”

As he stumbled into the bathroom, he trampled all over her heart where it had fallen to the rug. He bent over the sink, splashed water on his face, and slapped off the faucet. Hands braced on either side of the basin, he stared down into it.

Using the fact he hadn’t slammed the door in her face, she fastened her jeans and scrounged up the courage to stand. She only went as far as the doorway, though. The DMZ wasn’t the DMZ anymore. It was a full-blown minefield.

“The information you have on Adine?” she said. “It’s useless.”

His head sagged between his shoulders. Then he snapped vertical, snatched a towel off the wall, dried his hands, and threw the towel to the floor. “Of course it is.” He stood there with his hands on his hips. “How did you know about that?”

“Nora told me. She was gloating, saying you knew something big about Adine but that it didn’t matter. She’d let you go on believing it gave you an advantage so you’d do what she asked.”

“Fuck.”

The exclamation slid down her spine, filling her with dread.

“I couldn’t say anything when I found out because at that point I couldn’t tell you anything about our world. And I didn’t want you to leave.” He threw her a warning glance, telling her not to venture into anything emotional. “I don’t know what that information is exactly, but Nora’s right. Even if you use what you think is your weapon, it won’t make any difference. They’ll be long gone before it gets where you want it to go. And I wouldn’t be surprised if they destroyed you, too, on their way out.”

He slowly shook his head.

“You’re not questioning me,” she added. “Which means you know I’m right.”

“It means a lot of things. It means that what I know about Adine can’t help you anymore.” He lifted his eyes to hers.

Nothing could help her at this point, except him. She didn’t say that, but she didn’t have to. He looked away again, one whole side of his face scrunching up.

“Nora knows some things about me,” he said at length. “One big thing, actually.”

“Your name,” she guessed, flipping through all the breadcrumbs he’d dropped since the moment they met. “Who you really are.”

“Yep.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be good at hiding?”

He didn’t answer that. He went to the toilet, flipped down the lid, and sat on it. “My last job, I reneged on the contract. I met with the guy, took his down payment, did all the target research possible, went in to get the kid, and…” He trailed off and his skin paled.

“What?”

“I got a strange feeling about it. A
bad
feeling. Like taking the kid would have been seriously wrong. Nora alluded it was something sexual, but I don’t think so. I didn’t get that vibe from Tracker. The job was more than I bargained for, and there was something else about it, something
off
. So I got out and I took his money with me.”

“You could’ve given it back.”

The guilty clasp of his fingers between his legs gave him away. No, he wouldn’t have given the money back. He liked it too much. Gwen had, too, at one point, until she realized its cost. Now she thought of all those zeros in her bank account and wanted to vomit.

A tingling sensation—not so different from sensing Secondaries—flitted across her skin. “What felt off about the job?”

He just stared at her.

“It had something to do with magic. Didn’t it.”

“None that I ever actually saw, no.” His cheeks puffed out. “Tracker wanted me to get this boy out from a hospital. I thought, okay fine, wouldn’t be the first. But then once I dug further into the job, after accepting and taking his advance, I found out the hospital was a federal psych ward and this kid was under massive security.”

She didn’t want to ask. “Why?”

“He, uh, claimed to be a superhero. That he had…powers.”

“Like mine?”

“No.” He gave an uncomfortable laugh. “The intel said he claimed he could split himself in two. That he could become two completely different people at the same time.”

That made her relax some. “Oh. You mean like multiple personality disorder.”

He shrugged. “Dunno, never saw it. But if that was the case, why federal protection?”

She couldn’t answer that, but the information settled awkwardly into her brain.

“Anyway”—he waved a hand—“I got out. Ran. Too much attention on one kid, and I started to wonder why Tracker wanted him. He’s after me now, and Nora threatened to tell him my real name and how to find me if I didn’t follow her orders.”

Reed’s behavior toward both Gwen and Nora now made a world of sense.

“I had to make this work two ways. I had to protect myself, yeah, but first and foremost, I wanted to protect you.”

It took all her effort not to go to him. “You can still protect me,” she murmured. “You can help me.”

He sat up straight, planted his hands on his knees. “How do I know you aren’t using my emotions to get me to do what you want?”

“How do I know you won’t sell me out and take more money from Nora for telling her I lied to her face?”

It was a fair question, and his jaw tightened. “I wouldn’t do that.”

“Then we just have to trust each other. It’s as simple as that.”

“Or as hard.”

He jumped from the toilet and spun around, scrubbing his head like mad. “This is crazy. This is insane. And I’m not even talking about all”—he waved a hand behind her—“
that
that you told me. Getting out of here will be tricky shit.”

Tell her about it. According to Xavier, the Ofarians thought she was dead. If she somehow figured out how to contact her father, he’d immediately notify the Board. Jonah. The Vice Chairman didn’t get to his position for being dense. He’d put two and two together. Gwen was taken to Nevada the same night she saw Tedrans in San Francisco. He’d know they were somehow connected. Jonah would do something with the Plant, which would tip off Nora.

All that dangerous proof of Secondary existence would fly right out of Nora’s fingers.

“So you came to me.” Reed stared hard. “What’s your plan?”

Oxygen filled her lungs several times over. “Contact my father.”

He actually laughed. “No way will that work.”

“It’s all I have.”

He looked so huge in that tiny bathroom, standing there with his hands on his hips. “You actually believe that he doesn’t know about the Plant?”

She searched deep inside herself for the answer to that question.

“You don’t believe it,” he said. “I can see it in your eyes.”

She held up a hand and answered carefully, “Maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t. Above all, I have to believe that he has doubts. Compassion. Or else I have nothing.”

“You don’t have anything anyway!” He checked his volume, tilting an ear toward the hall. Xavier would probably expect them to be fighting, given their violent show in the garage. Reed lowered his voice and continued, the back of one hand slapping the opposite palm. “You’re talking about ending the slavery, but you also said this product rules your society. You’re a fool if you think they’re going to let that go so easily.”

“The majority of my people will be disgusted—”

“
But not the people in power
. Not the ones who control the information. I know the types, Gwen. I know them very, very well, and I know them from the opposite side of the desk than you. If your culture is so ingrained, if this secret has been kept from thousands of people for generations, they won’t let you waltz through the front doors, claiming to be back from the dead, and destroy their work and their revenue stream. They’ll spin your return like you’ve been brainwashed. They’ll hide you away.”

“They won’t. They can’t.” But she could feel the cracks in her resolve widening.

“Yes, they will. Especially if you’re talking about a shitload of money.”

It wasn’t just money. Reed had called it; it was about culture.
Mendacia
was all her people knew. Every Ofarian was connected to it somehow, however tangentially.

To end the product meant the end of Ofarian society as it had been for well over a century. The Board would never allow that. Could she?

Reed was right; she couldn’t go straight for her dad. She turned and shuffled back into her bedroom, falling in a crooked heap on the bench opposite the bed.

“I have another idea,” she said after sitting there for a few minutes. “You’re not going to like it.”

“I didn’t think I would.” His voice sounded so very far away.

“I have to be rescued.”

“How?”

She licked her lips. There was too much doubt surrounding her father. There was only one other option. “Griffin.”

Reed went into his room and shut the door.

THIRTY

The pounding on the hallway door reached into Gwen’s hard
sleep and yanked her, kicking and screaming, into morning. She came awake with a gasp, threw the covers off, and realized that it was not her door being pounded on.

She heard Reed’s footsteps cross his room, followed by his muffled voice. Xavier’s voice responded.

The two said about three words to each other in the hallway, then the door to her bedroom flew open. Xavier stormed in, his long legs eating up the small space. His eyes swept around determinedly. What he was looking for, she couldn’t guess, until his gaze fell on the bed, with her still in it. Even though she was fully clothed, she clutched the blankets higher on her chest. Then she realized he wasn’t looking at her, but at the neat, blank space and fluffy pillow next to her.