Liquid Lies (34 page)

Xavier may have been desperate, angry, and uncouth, but he wasn’t dumb. He nodded and backed up a step.

“This is Xavier. He’s a…friend,” she told Genesai, hoping he wouldn’t pick up on the pause before that last word. “Remember what I told you about the Tedrans being held in captivity by the Ofarians?”

Genesai’s face darkened. “Yes.”

“Xavier was one of those slaves. He escaped. Now he’s trying to help the others. He needs you.”

Genesai gazed at Xavier with new, clear eyes, his wariness dissolving into compassion. “If he is Tedran, then he hurts like I do.”

Well said. Almost too much so, because the pressure in her chest hindered her ability to talk. “Yes. Very much so.”

Genesai’s arms dropped to his sides, serenity erasing the shaking of his limbs, a dramatic and sudden shift from agitated to sympathetic.

“You told him who I am?” Xavier murmured.

She nodded.

“I am pleased to meet you, Genesai,” he said, and Gwen translated, her heart warming unexpectedly at Xavier’s gentle tone.

“I will be honored to help you,” Genesai replied.

She fell into the easy rhythm of interpretation, one language flowing into her ears, another streaming from her lips.

Xavier cleared his throat, ventured closer. “Will the ship fly even if it’s been underwater for a century and a half?”

Genesai chose his words carefully. “I have always believed she would fly for me in any condition, on any world, in any circumstance. But now I will need to make sure before I say such a thing. Water is unpredictable.”

He wasn’t accusing her of anything—he didn’t even know what she was—but Gwen sensed the tension in his words and the hatred for the element associated with his altered form and his greatest enemy: her people.

Beside her, Xavier sank to his knees. The way he looked up at Genesai, glassy eyes alighting upon a savior, knocked the breath from her chest.

“We’re so close,” whispered the Tedran. He raised his palms as though asking for some sort of benediction. “And if it doesn’t work…if the ship won’t run…if he can’t take us back to Tedra…”

Would Nora give her another chance? If Reed’s contact attempt had failed and her people were not, indeed, coming for her, would they let Gwen go back to the Board on her own terms? Could this really end in everyone’s favor?

Genesai’s train of thought was far different from hers. Like a person’s name, the name of a planet sounded the same in any language.

“Tedra?” Genesai narrowed his eyes. “Why does he mention Tedra?”

“Because…because…” A cold sweat broke out over her skin, stealing her words. Genesai’s head tilted like a dog’s. She stepped closer. “We are asking you to return the enslaved Tedrans to their homeworld.”

Genesai stumbled backward, knocking aside a chair, until his back struck the wall. “No, no, no. We will not go back there.”

“He says—”

“He doesn’t want to go back to Tedra. Yeah, I think I got that.” Xavier rocked to his feet and looked down at her, incredulous and disgusted. “You didn’t tell him that before?”

“War on Tedra,” Genesai mumbled. “Ofarian invaders. Ofarian thieves. Ofarian slavers.”

Each mention of her people’s name, spewed in that repulsed tone, was a punch in her gut. She couldn’t move, couldn’t find any more words in Genesai’s tongue.

Xavier came to her side, spoke low. “And you didn’t tell him what you are, did you?”

Razors cut her throat as she swallowed. “No. He won’t do it if he knows. Don’t say anything or you’ll be stuck here.”

Xavier walked past her, his steps light and nonthreatening, straight for Genesai. Xavier placed a hand on his own chest. “Tell him,” he said, “that there are no more Ofarians on Tedra. Tell him that if he helps us, all he has to do is set down, let us go, and then he and his ship can go anywhere they like. No one will harm him.”

“Xavier, you don’t know if that’s true. No one has any clue what’s happened on Tedra since we left.”

“You left. We were taken.”

She looked away, thinking how incredibly difficult it would be to convince her whole race to adjust their knowledge about history.

“I believe we were about to win our freedom,” Xavier said quietly. “I believe that my people were winning the war, which is why the Ofarians fled. There are no more Ofarians there. We are free. Tell him. Please.”

She told Genesai what Xavier wanted him to hear. Not because she was forced to, but because, for once, there was no malice in Xavier’s tone. Just heartbreak. And hope.

Hundreds of lives rode on that hope.

Genesai believed her, a rotten-toothy grin providing proof. It ripped her in half.

Part of her didn’t want him to believe. That same part told her to tell him what she was. No matter what had happened with Reed in the general store, this whole situation wasn’t in her favor. It never really had been, but at least, for a few moments, she’d had a chance. What had she to lose if she tripped up Nora’s plan right here and now? She was back to square one anyway. Maybe, if Genesai knew the truth, he’d stall, giving her more time to figure something else out on her own.

Then she caught sight of Genesai, his head slowly moving back and forth, up and down to take in the fluttering wallpaper of drawings he’d made of his ship. Such love in his eyes. Such longing. Seeing that, she knew what she had to do.

Maybe, just maybe,
someone
could have a happy ending in this mess.

Wearily, she turned to Xavier. “What now?”

He looked at his watch as if their success came down to minutes, not days. Perhaps it did.

The thing hadn’t gone off while they’d been in the cabin. The Secondaries’ secrets were still their own.

Xavier nodded at Genesai. “We take him to Nora. And then to his ship. We have to know if it’ll fly.”

She resisted correcting Xavier. It was not
the
ship, but
Genesai’s
ship. It was not an
it
, but a
her
.

Xavier flung open the door. Sunlight and cold mountain air streamed inside. Genesai jumped back, staring with terror at the dust motes swirling inside the sunbeam.

“It’s time to go.” She touched Genesai’s shoulder. “It’s time to finally see her.”

He took a tentative step forward then a giant leap back. Every time she tried to steer him toward the door, he eluded her. He started to sob, snot running into his mouth.

“What’s the matter?” she asked soothingly. “Don’t you want to see her?”

His sharp face jerked to the corners of the shack. “I’ve been here, in this room, for so long. The world outside scares me. It scared me when we first flew over it so long ago. It scared me when I was forced to land here. It’s filled with people who look like you.” He gazed down at his pasty body as if seeing it for the first time. “And like me. I feel stuffed into skin that is too small.” One leg started to kick repeatedly out to the side.

“No one will know who you are,” she assured him. “No one on Earth knows about the Tedrans and Ofarians.”

But they will, regardless of what I do
.

Xavier came forward. “You’re safe with us.”

The dual reassurances seemed to pacify Genesai for a moment, but when his toe pierced a sunbeam, he jolted as if burned.

“We prefer the dark,” he hissed through gritted teeth. “We like the black and the stars.”

He spoke as though he were already reunited with his ship, and it hardened Gwen’s resolve to make that come true.

She went to the bed and retrieved his scratchy, holey blanket. She shook it out, adding more dust to the light, and draped it over his head. Instantly he relaxed. Putting her arm around his shoulders, she nudged him into the daylight.

“You’re in the sun now,” she told him. “How do you feel?”

She heard the smile in his voice. “The light coming through the blanket looks like stars.”

Xavier stopped next to them, his face turned up the cliff side toward Reed. Examining. Thinking.

Even though Reed leaned against the car, the false disinterest plastered on his face and evident in his posture, Xavier frowned and asked her in Tedranish, “What does the Primary know?”

“Nothing.”

“You lied to us about Genesai. Which makes me think you lied to me about him.”

Oh no
. “He has nothing to do with this.”

She guided Genesai up the steep path before Xavier could ask any more. At the top, Reed took in the sight of a blanketed Genesai in stride and twirled the key ring on a finger. “We all set?”

“Gwen,” Xavier ordered. “Get in the car.”

She couldn’t protest, couldn’t resist, without revealing her hand. So she pressed Genesai into the backseat and stared out the windshield. Inside, Genesai could not sit still, every limb shooting out to test its limits. Outside, her lover and her jailer each had a hand on the Range Rover’s hood. She could hear their conversation.

“What do you know?” Xavier asked.

Gwen dug her fingers into the seat edge. Leaned forward.

Reed looked Xavier right in the eye. “Nothing, man.”

Xavier shook his head at the ground. When he raised it, he wore an ugly smile. “I’ll ask you again. What do you know?”

“I’m
paid
to know nothing. You think I’d jeopardize that?”

Reed swiped off his skull cap and scrubbed at his head. She recognized that sign; she’d seen it several times since they’d met, but only now just pieced it together. He may be a poker player, but he wasn’t a good one. What a tell. He was uncomfortable, not anywhere near at ease as what he was projecting.

Xavier turned his head and found her eyes through the windshield. “She’s gorgeous.”

Reed did
not
look at her. “Yeah. So?”

Xavier’s pause was as long and cold as winter on the tundra. “So I guess we’ll have to see whether you earned that pay.”

As the Range Rover descended down the lake house driveway
, Gwen spotted Nora and Adine waiting for them on the front stoop. She’d been distracted by soothing Genesai during the trip back and hadn’t paid attention to Xavier. What had that stupid watch told him? What had he typed into it?

Nora was waiting for her. That couldn’t be anything but bad.

The wind blew hard, snatching leaves from trees and throwing them around the circular drive. It smelled like snow might be near. The two women—mother and daughter—looked so very different. Adine’s dull brown hair whipped about her head and she fruitlessly kept trying to shove it behind her ears. Nora had abandoned her regular loose garb for leggings and a plain, long-sleeved T-shirt. With her tighter clothing and close-cropped hair, the wind seemed not to touch her.
Nothing
seemed to touch her.

Xavier hopped out of the car. For about one point three seconds, it was just Genesai, Reed, and her in the Range Rover. She imagined Reed gunning the engine, swooping back up the drive, and busting out of the black gate. They’d race toward San Francisco at warp speed. She had Genesai, she had Reed; she’d find a way to make this end the way it should.

Then she caught Nora’s stare through the tinted windows and that fantasy vanished.

In a daze and using him as a crutch, Gwen guided a blanketed Genesai over to Nora.

“Tell him I am glad he is here,” Nora said, her hands clasped together like the fakest of kindly grandmothers.

“I recognize that voice,” Genesai said with wonder. “She used to visit me. I never understood her and she never understood me.”

Gwen translated between them without thinking, staring at an unseemly crack in the stoop brickwork.

“It’s wonderful he remembers.” Nora laughed. “Everything in this world is still so new to him. Think about it. He doesn’t know how a telephone works. He doesn’t know to look both ways before crossing a street.”

Gwen glanced at Xavier, who was shifting on his feet, his jaw clenching tightly. Not too long ago, Nora could have said the same about him.

“And,” Nora added, drawing Gwen’s attention with her raspy bite, “he doesn’t know how to lie. Isn’t that amazing?”

That Gwen didn’t translate.

Her soul was weary. She couldn’t even muster a sneer. Nora had her by the balls and the little Tedran knew it.

Nora’s false smile vanished. “Adine will take you and Genesai down to the ship.”

Gwen blinked. “Now?”

“Yes. Now.”

“This way.” Adine gestured around the south edge of the house, still trying to get control of her hair.

Arm still around Genesai’s shoulders, Gwen whispered where they were going. He shivered in excitement.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Reed move to follow them—follow
her
—as he’d been paid to do.

Nora called out, “Not you, Reed. We need to talk.”

THIRTY-TWO

Without thought, Gwen swiveled toward Reed
.

He shrugged at Nora. “Sure.” One hand reached up and scrubbed at his head.

Gwen watched him turn into the house, Nora at his heels, and a terrible sinking feeling threatened to level her.

Xavier stepped in front of her, blocking her view of the door. He examined her face, and she feared what he saw there because at that point she was incapable of disguising her dread. He looked satisfied, sure of himself.

“Go.” He prodded her toward Adine.

Did she have any other choice?

The ground passed under her feet in a blur. Genesai shifted under her arm, and she loosened her intense grip. Adine led them to the end of the dock and told them to wait while she went to the boathouse.

The gray choppiness of Lake Tahoe called to Gwen. In the rush that morning, neither Reed nor Xavier had remembered to give her
nelicoda
. For the first time in nearly a week, she could sense the greatness of the water’s pull, listen to its language that rang like music. Like people, each body of water—no matter how great or how small—had its own voice. So, so easily she could dive into it, blend into the lake, touch what made her Ofarian. Disappear.

Except that Genesai and the Tedrans depended on her. And Nora had Reed up at the house.

Last night she’d wholeheartedly, unquestioningly given Reed her trust. It was now his to protect or disregard. She refused to believe that Nora would drag out his duplicity. Gwen had glimpsed Reed’s gentle soul. He wouldn’t sell her out to save himself from Tracker.