Izabel snarls, and rolls her eyes. “That’s not what I meant by your tongue, Niklas. I mean that you can’t seem to shut up; your mouth is always running ninety to nothing”—she presses the fingers and thumb of her right hand together rapidly—“with your vulgar, disgusting comments; loud and obnoxious personality; pretending to be a thoughtless, heartless bastard with thick skin, when really you’re just a brokenhearted little boy on the inside, scared to death that someone is going to swoop in and pull the scab off your heart.” She cocks her head to one side. “Why don’t you try being yourself for once?”
Niklas’s wide eyes seem stuck, unblinking.
Finally, he says bitterly, “I am myself.” He waves both hands down the front of his chest. “Who you see here is one hundred percent me. I’ve never pretended to be someone I’m not, and quite fuckin’ honestly, I’m offended you’d accuse me of it.”
Izabel steps up into Niklas’s face, looking upward at his tall height so he can see the seriousness in her eyes. “Then say it,” she challenges. “Say you love and miss your kid sister, Naeva. Or are you too proud?” She steps up even closer; my own stomach is suddenly twisting into one solid knot, as if I somehow know that what she is about to say next will make me extremely uncomfortable. “Or better yet, Niklas…admit that you have feelings for—.” She stops abruptly. She glances at me, clears her throat, and then turns back to Niklas. “Feelings for Nora.”
That is not what Izabel had started to say to my brother…
Niklas tosses his head back and roars with laughter. He laughs for a full five long seconds, before finally lowering his head and letting the laughter fade.
“Wow,” he says, “that’s probably the most asinine thing I’ve ever heard you say, Izzy.” He shakes his head, still laughing under his breath. “If you believe that, you’re not as smart as you’re trying to make us believe—you’re doing a shitty job trying to prove your point. Ha! Ha! Ha!”
“And you, James,” Izabel says, sharply, and she turns swiftly to face him. I get the feeling she only wanted to cut Niklas off before that particular conversation got too revealing. And I am glad for it.
James Woodard frowns; his chubby fingers wind around one another nervously down in front of him.
Izabel pauses, looks him over, contemplates.
Then she waves a hand dismissively and says, “Honestly, you’re the only normal person here.”
“Nora,” Niklas says, still with laughter in his voice. “Unbelievable…”
“And speaking of Nora,” Izabel goes back to making her point. “She may truly be the thoughtless, heartless human being that Niklas pretends to be; she may have more experience than anyone here other than Victor, but that woman is the epitome of one-track-mind, and her inability to feel emotions is going to be her downfall one day. She’s a disaster waiting to happen.”
Now she looks at me, and all of the moisture evaporates from my mouth.
“And you, Victor…you know very well what your biggest weakness is.”
Yes—you are.
“Your biggest weakness is yourself,” she says. But she does me the courtesy of not extending the detailed, and humiliating, explanation that she did with everyone else.
“If you go to Mexico,” Niklas says, “you’re only gonna get yourself killed, and that’s all there is to it.” He looks to me, as if expecting me to step in and say something to back him up, but Izabel quickly gets his attention again.
She lifts the hem of her black silk blouse, revealing her stomach.
“You tried to kill me once,” she says, showing him the scar from her gunshot wound, “but you failed.”
Niklas’s jaw tightens.
Izabel’s blouse falls back over her stomach. She walks back to the very center of the room, and gazes at all of us standing around her. Then she reaches up and takes an end of the sheer black scarf, pulling it slowly away from her throat. Her scar blazes at us all, affects us all in different ways: Woodard lowers his head with sadness; Gustavsson shakes his head with disbelief; Niklas’s head turns red with anger; my head feels like it is going to explode with rage. I take a deep breath as Artemis’s face flashes across my mind.
“I have been shot,” Izabel begins. “I’ve had my throat cut open. I have been…” She stops, appears to be contemplating. “I don’t need to explain anything to any of you,” she says at last. “I’m going to Mexico, and I’m going to be the one who smokes the real Vonnegut out of that hole he’s been hiding in all these years. I know what I’m getting myself into; I know what not only could happen to me while I’m there, but what will happen to me while I’m there. I’m prepared for it—all of it. And if any of you have any objections, you can, quite frankly, shove them up your ass.”
The room remains stiffly silent for several long seconds.
“Victor!” Niklas breaks that silence; his hand juts out, pointing at Izabel. “Tell her she’s not going.”
“Again,” Gustavsson says, “I agree with Niklas. Mexico is the last place Izabel should ever go alone. What happened to the plan with Nora going along?”
“I-I care about you, Izabel,” Woodard speaks up, “and that’s why I agree w-with Niklas and Fredrik.”
The entire time, while everyone else is going back and forth about all the reasons why Izabel should not go, she never once takes her eyes from mine. In this moment, all I see is her, all that I hear are her thoughts conveyed through that steadfast look in her eyes, and the last conversation we had the night I naïvely asked her to marry me.
Finally, I look up, breaking our gaze, and I announce amid the carrying voices, “Izabel will go to Mexico,” and the same voices cease to express another word. “She is right—she is the best candidate for the job. She will go on her own terms, make all of the decisions, and if anyone intervenes in any way whatsoever, the repercussions will be…unfortunate.”
Gustavsson appears to think on it a moment, and then nods, gracefully as always stepping out of the way of the situation.
Woodard is too much of a coward to step out of his comfort zone surrounded by his technology to ever consider setting one foot out in the field—he would never interfere.
Niklas looks as though he would very much like to cave my nose into the back of my skull. He clenches both of his fists, then reaches into the back pocket of his jeans and retrieves a pack of cigarettes. After putting a cigarette between his lips and pocketing the pack, he lights up. After a long drag, smoke swirling around his head when he pulls the cigarette from his mouth, he looks at no one in particular and says with the shrug of his shoulders, “Whatever. I’m outta here. Call me when you fuckers have your shit together,” and then he exits the room, a trail of cigarette smoke in his wake.
Sending Izabel to Mexico is the last thing I want, but if I try to stand in her way like I have in the past, I know I will never see her again. I have to let her do this. And I have to let her do it her way.
Besides, the truth is that I have absolutely no doubts about her ability to pull off this mission. She is the best candidate for the job, not only because of her experience, but because of her skill. Izabel is more than capable of doing it, and every part of me tells me so. She has eluded death enough that, between the two of us, I believe that she is the immortal one. Yes. She will go back to Mexico, and she will suffer unimaginable trials, but she will live. Of this I have every confidence.