I grabbed what I hoped was an extra shirt of his and rousted Gina, helping her to strip and turn on the shower. She needed it. I found a tray of bagels in his kitchen, a half-full tub of cream cheese, and a note saying Help yourself in clean block handwriting. A fresh pot of coffee, still warm, was the only thing to prove Asher’d been there.
I was on my second bagel when Gina made it down the stairs. “God, I’m so embarrassed.” On her, one of Asher’s shirts hung almost to her knees.
“Don’t be. Everyone’s been there.”
“I know. It’s just that I’m not supposed to be that person. I didn’t go to vet school for this.”
I proffered the bagels, and she shook her head, looking a little green. “I’m just glad you called me.”
“I didn’t mean to interrupt your date,” she said, and I stared blankly at her. “That guy who was here. This is his house, right?”
I snorted. “The only person I slept with last night was you. I have the tile prints on my ass to prove it.”
She made her way around the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water. “If you’re not dating him, can I have his phone number?”
“He’s not really rebound material.” Though I would bet that Asher wouldn’t be above helping someone out with revenge sex. “He’s a shapeshifter.”
Gina made a face. “Oh.”
“Yeah.” The clock on the microwave said it was ten A.M. I needed to get back home. Gideon was less independent than a houseplant, and the only reason I remembered to feed Minnie was because she’d tell me to. “Gina—”
“It’s just that they’re going to ask. That’s what sucks.” She set her glass into the sink. “I introduced him to my parents, Edie. I thought he was the one.”
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t think I’d ever felt like that. I’d stood on the edge of The Oneness before, and maybe peeked into the valley below, but I’d never made the final jump. I’d learned that if you thought of people as disposable, it hurt less when they disposed of you.
But that didn’t stop me from putting an awkward arm around Gina as she slumped over Asher’s kitchen sink and cried.
* * *
We gathered ourselves into my car not long after she stopped crying. As I drove she narrated a tangled web of semi-plausibility. She’d told her parents she was working last night, and now she’d pretend she had car problems and had to wait for the mechanics and a tow.
“Why’s it so complicated?”
“I’m the baby of the family. I live with my parents. I just tell them I’m working when I go out on spend-the-night dates.”
“I’m the baby of my family too. When I turned eighteen, my mother flung open the doors and kicked me out of the nest.”
Gina sighed. “It’s different for me. I was working and going to vet school when my mother got early-onset Alzheimer’s. One of my brothers died in the war. The other moved away. My sister has four kids—taking care of Mom and Dad just fell to me. One day I was living at home to save money, the next I was stuck there because my dad couldn’t convince my mom to take a shower otherwise.”
“God. That’s tough, Gina.”
“Tell me about it.” She shook her head. “That’s what I traded. The Shadows keep her from getting any worse, and they get me, on Y4.” I winced, but she was looking out the window. She went on. “I’ve never actually gotten to be a real vet. What I would give someday to just take care of a yippy dog. Even just a hamster. Turn here.” She pointed in front of me. “If I’d stayed bitten, I wouldn’t have been able to keep my job. Y4 fires you if you fraternize too much—the Consortium won’t allow it. It might make you too biased, I guess.”
“Nah—probably because then everyone would do it, and there’d be no one left to work on the full moon,” I teased.
She gave me a halfhearted smile. “Really, if I lost my job, where would my mom and dad be? Part of me is afraid the Shadows will keep her alive forever, just to keep me trapped.”
“That’s a reasonable fear.”
“I know. Anyhow. It is what it is now. I’ll get out someday, just not today. Or tomorrow. Or four days from now.”
I turned into a neighborhood where all the homes were packed together tightly, and she directed me into her driveway. “You going to be okay?”
“Yeah. I’ll catch the bus into work tonight. I’ll be fine.”
That wasn’t exactly what I’d meant, but I nodded. “Call me if you need anything else, Gina.”
“I will.” She gave me a tight smile. Her hand was on the door handle, but she didn’t move to open the door. I could see her steeling herself to face her parents, haunted by the memories of what could have been, fighting the depression that came with realizing you made the wrong choice, even if you’re not entirely sure which one it was.
“He doesn’t deserve you, Gina. You know that, right?”
“I know. Doesn’t make it hurt any less.” She reached over and hugged me before jumping out of my car. I watched her till her front door opened, then waved as I pulled out of her driveway.
I wished I could have helped her out more, but I had problems of my own to get home to.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“Honey, I’m home!” I announced as I walked into my house. There was a groan from the vicinity of my bathroom, and an accusatory meow from Minnie.
I walked around the bar and into my kitchen. I put an extra bagel into my fridge, noticing an empty space on my small kitchen counter where my toaster oven had been. Huh. Over by the couch, the mister bottle was empty. Hopefully some of that had gotten into Gideon’s mouth. I paused and listened for more noise. Gideon would be dead if Veronica had woken up—and God help Sike if she didn’t take Gideon with her when they took Veronica. I walked down my hall and pressed my ear to the bathroom door. There was silence beyond.
“Hey, I really want to take a shower.” Speaking of which, he probably needed one too. Goddammit, if I had to shower people on my off days, I should at least be getting paid minimum wage.
Another groan. Gideon always sounded like an end-stage liver failure patient, with too many toxins in his brain to think straight. Like a seal having sex on a beach. “One for yes, two for no,” I said. “Are you okay in there?”
Silence.
Fuck.
“I’m coming in.” I opened up the door—it stopped when it hit my electric scale. Which was on the floor and, for some reason, dismembered. “Gideon?”
Gideon stood in front of the mirror, his naked back to me, blocking his own reflection. I shoved the scale away with my toe and stepped inside. “You okay?” I asked, then gasped. The floor around my sink was spattered with blood, and Gideon’s image in the mirror was not the same.
“What happened to you?”
With the mirror I could see his face—his eyelids still dangled over empty sockets, and his teeth were still exposed—but in his chest there was a piece of plastic, embedded in his flesh. There were raised welts where it had inserted itself—or where he had inserted it himself. Oh, my, God. There were other fragments elsewhere, like a jigsaw puzzle scattered on his chest. I felt a small part of my brain just shut off at the horror.
“Gideon … what did you do?”
Things that were not veins ran inside his chest; I could see them looping, curled, creating new circulatory paths. I reached out to turn him around, and he put up his hands to stop me—the ends of his fingers were spiked with pieces of metal, tines from something. My brain slowly parsed them—they were from the grill from my toaster oven.
“What. Happened.”
A red light turned on near the apex of his shoulder. Like a webcam. Say, from my laptop. And I knew who’d been behind all of this.
“Grandfather.”
Gideon didn’t answer me. He couldn’t while missing a tongue. But German muttered out from Gideon’s chest, where the CD player rode under Gideon’s skin like a pacemaker, the edges ragged and raw.
“How the hell did this happen?”
I’d only been gone for a night. One night. And Grandfather had taken all the electronics in my house and shoved them under Gideon’s skin, like he was a fucking piñata. I wanted to throw up, but Gideon was blocking my path to the toilet, and I didn’t want to step in his blood.
“What? How?” I sputtered. I let go of Gideon, and addressed the vicinity of his chest. “Did you even give him a choice?”
“Wir sind beide zufrieden.”
“Did he actually give you a choice?” I asked Gideon, my voice rising.
“Unsere Wahl war offensichtlich.” The man—the human beneath whatever the hell Grandfather had done—nodded. But maybe Grandfather was controlling him. Who knew. Who would ever know again.
I made to reach for the sink, and stopped myself before I put my hand into a smear of blood.
Gideon’s hands weren’t completely articulated, but he’d managed to get the hot water on. “That toaster oven was a graduation gift,” I said.
Grandfather continued talking.
“I could try to translate what you’re saying, but you ate my laptop.” My brain was trying to get a wrap around what had happened. I could feel it revving up, and then spinning out of control. It was one thing keeping Grandfather around, thinking he was some moody German ghost—and another to have him blacksmith himself into a cyborg.
“I need a shower.” I took some deep breaths. “This will all make more sense after a shower.” Surely it couldn’t get worse. I stepped aside, so Gideon could get past me.
He didn’t move.
“A shower, by myself. Out. Now,” I clarified.
Gideon held up his right forefinger, which had been replaced by the temperature-dialing rheostat from my toaster oven. And then he turned toward my bathroom mirror and sketched out something upon the fogging glass.