I exhaled the breath I’d been holding, and gave thanks to any deity who might be listening. The most extensive repair work needed on my body would be a hot shower and food in my belly. But my mind might be a different story. The remnants of my dream clung like quicksand, threatening to overtake me with every new thought.
Grabbing a change of clothing from my bag, I pushed out a deep breath and headed to the shower. A half hour later I was steady again, and had donned a racer-back tank, hooded jacket, and terry-cloth pants—all pink, of course—my hair slicked into a low ponytail, face scrubbed shiny and clean. He’d said we were going to train today, and that, I knew, would go a long way toward helping me feel more myself again.
I’d considered telling Warren about my dream, but was shocked into silence when I opened the door to find him dressed in pleated khakis, a blue button-down shirt tucked in at the waist. His face was clean, brown eyes clear and rested, hands still callused, but smooth. Were it not for the snarls gathered back from his face, I’d have pegged him for a businessman headed off on his long morning commute.
“A full recovery, I see.” Warren looked me up and down appraisingly but didn’t meet my eye. The man who’d been so flippant and ridiculous when we’d first met had been replaced by a serious, almost severe leader, and looking at him I could suddenly name the question that’d niggled at me since I woke up with bandaged eyes in Greta’s room.
If there was no traitor inside the sanctuary, as Warren so fervently insisted, why was it still so important to him that no one know my true identity?
I couldn’t ask him now, not when he was still obviously angry with me, so when he held out the studded cell phone Cher had given me—obviously dropped on my fall into the sanctuary—I just took it from his callused palm and pocketed it as I followed him out the door.
As Felix had said the day before, the sanctuary was a place of respite, where beleaguered star signs went to replenish their energy, gain knowledge, and train for whatever force or enemy they were currently facing. Most of the time it was peopled only with the support staff, children, and initiates who dwelled permanently beneath the Neon Boneyard, but now it was brimming with the remaining star signs, and the rest of the compound was buzzing with the apparent novelty of that. Warren told me the others were in a meeting, no doubt about yesterday’s events, but would soon begin the day’s combat training in a place called Saturn’s Orchard.
For me, however, the first stop was the barracks.
“Home sweet home,” Warren said, flipping a light switch and motioning me into the room. It was clean and shaped like Greta’s, but the similarities ended there. Gone were the feminine touches; the laces and frills and pastel-colored doilies. The concrete floors, like the walls, were bare and painted an unrelieved white. A queen-sized platform bed was pressed tightly against one wall, mattress naked, and a chunky coffee table in chocolate hardwood flanked one end. A wooden tray filled with rocks, all white, was the only item on the table, and a trio of white paper lanterns floated from the ceiling above it, the only lighting in the room. Twelve palm-sized floating wall shelves, also in mahogany, were suspended over the bed, and echoed the lanterns’ rectangular shape. They held clear glass votives, which no doubt lent warmth to the clean, modular room when lit.
Though sparse and utilitarian, it was still warm and sexy…though it said nothing about the person who lived there. I loved it.
“It’s perfect,” I told Warren, though what remained unspoken was that the three-hundred-square-foot room had better be perfect because my stay looked to be a lengthy one.
“What did Micah mean when he said he’d designed me so that Ajax couldn’t find me?” I asked, trying to keep the question casual as I peered into the adjacent bathroom.
“Micah’s a gifted doctor,” Warren said, joining me at the doorway. “Just as he can alter the nose on your face, he can also alter the makeup of your genetic template—your pheromones. He used science to create a synthetic formula, one different than your own, and his own magic as a fixative to secure it in place. Ajax didn’t know the new code, so he shouldn’t have been able to find you so quickly.”
He had, though, due to my distress over Ben. But I didn’t want to get into that yet. “And when he said that I was linked specifically to you?” I stared at his reflection through the bathroom mirror because it was more comfortable than facing him head on.
Warren looked marginally wary, but answered. “After inoculating you, he withdrew the essence of that compound from your bloodstream, then injected it into my own.”
I wasn’t sure I liked that. Was Warren trying to keep me safe, or was he just trying to keep tabs on me? After his accusations the day before, the latter seemed more likely. “So it’s like a tracking device…?”
“Of the emotions, yes,” he finished for me. He caught my frown in the mirror and turned toward me, forcing me to do the same. “I know it sounds intrusive, Jo, but you’re more vulnerable than the other agents. I’d never have gotten to you in time yesterday if I hadn’t been able to track you through this linking agent.”
I folded my arms. “So, basically, I’ve been bugged?”
“I’m bugged,” he corrected, tapping his own chest. “It’s like I have a second heartbeat. I know when your pulse accelerates or slows, if not why. The blood running in your veins is like a current rushing through my ears. If you break out in a sweat, my body attempts to cool it. Basically I feel any metabolic change you go through. And yes, the sense of smell is that much greater.”
“A magnified sixth sense, then?”
“More like a seventh. An eighth.” He folded his hands in front of him. “Try it now, if you like. Think of something that unsettles you, and I’ll tell you the moment it enters your mind.”
“Okay.” I closed my eyes and kept my body very still. I thought of waking that morning in Greta’s scented room, the birds chirping softly on their perch, the relief that washed over me as I escaped my dream. I thought of giggling with Cher over fizzy water and peppermint lotion. Then I zeroed in on the memory of the man across from me, asking if I’d killed an innocent, somehow entirely certain I could.
“There.” My eyes shot open to find him pointing at me. “My second heartbeat accelerated, my palms broke out in a sweat beneath my own skin, but the overriding sense was one of anger. Maybe a touch of fear.” He angled his head. “What were you thinking of?”
“Xavier. How he used to treat me,” I said, well aware Warren could smell the lie on me. I didn’t care. The man was inside me, or I inside him, and with these sudden questions about his intentions, I was determined to keep some things to myself. “So could you feel what I felt when Ajax found me?”
“I scented your fear when he entered the building. Your anger when he killed that girl…” He paused, before adding, “And the sorrow before all of it began.”
I’d known it wouldn’t take him long to circle back to that. I avoided his gaze and moved from the doorway, opening the closet to peer inside.
“You have to stay away from him, Jo,” he said, but I wasn’t paying attention.
“Whose room is this?” I asked, jerking back from the closet in surprise.
“Yours now,” he said, joining me to stare at the evenly spaced clothing filling the racks and shelves, the shoes and boots lined along the floor. All black, all female. “But it was once Zoe’s.”
Our eyes met.
He said nothing about the eagerness texturing the air in lacy patterns between us, instead using the opportunity to pull out the photo of Ben he’d taken from me the day before. I inhaled sharply as he held it up in front of my face. “You don’t want Ajax to find him, do you?” he asked softly.
Ajax who would track him, torture him, and skewer his innocent heart. And enjoy it.