Ari was sitting on the couch with the TV on but muted, flipping aimlessly through the channels. He glanced up at me with an expression that told me nothing. His SPP, on the other hand, read as a tangle of lust, love, and sheer cold anger.
“Do you really want to watch TV?” I said.
“No.” He turned it off and set the remote down on the coffee table.
I considered where to sit. A chair would have been safer, but I couldn’t bear to have distance between us. When I sat next to him on the couch, he turned toward me.
“I left you there.” He spat it out. “The whole thing was my own sodding fault.”
“I wasn’t going to say that.”
“Good. Thank you.” He shoved his right fist hard into the palm of his left hand. “If I’d glanced back, if I’d only glanced back, I would have seen you. The others could have gone through. I knew we had a second orb in your bag. I could have picked you up and then thrown the—”
“Stop!” I laid a hand on his arm. “You’ve been rehearsing this over and over, haven’t you? For days.”
He nodded and slumped back against the cushions. “Do you know why I threw it too soon?” he said.
“No. Do you need to tell me?”
He nodded and stared across the room. “This whole business with orbs and the like. It frightens me. If it hadn’t, I would have waited to throw the sodding thing until I’d cleared it with you. I wanted to get it over with.”
“That’s a perfectly natural reaction, I think. I got used to the idea of world levels and orbs and all this stuff fairly quickly because of the way I was raised. You didn’t grow up in a family like mine.”
“Yes, I did!” He turned his head and looked me in the face. “That’s what you forget. That’s what I want to forget. The whole sodding kibbutz, my mother’s visions, all the talk of aliens—I don’t know why, but I hated it all. Once we left, I did my best to keep from thinking about it, but—” He took a deep breath. “But there it is. I can’t escape it. At times it catches up with me.”
I should have seen it long before, I realized. He’d been determined to pretend the entire psychic world simply didn’t exist, that it was all delusions and lies. He’d blocked it out of his mind so completely for so long that I’d responded to the block, not to what I rationally knew to be true.
“This is why TWIXT was so eager to enlist you, isn’t it?” I said.
“Oh, yes. I never should have gone for it. Too late now.”
I could think of fifty things to say. None would have helped. Ari slumped down a little farther on the couch, stretched his legs out in front of him, and rested his head on the sofa back. Distantly, I could hear the sea muttering at high tide. The beach was only a couple of blocks from our flat. Although I knew he was waiting for me to speak, I had to think things through first. It would have been too easy to just let him go on blaming himself for everything. That way I could avoid remembering the first time I’d let Cam make love to me, when all I’d wanted was the comfort of his arms.
“You have the right to be angry with me,” I said. “Yes, I did what I felt I had to do. But that still means I had sex with someone else.”
His expression twisted, as sour as bitter lemons.
“Look,” I said. “I would never leave you for him. If it weren’t for the kids, I’d never see him again. He needs to forget me and get over his wife’s death in the normal way. By grieving, that is, not by trying to pretend she’s still alive.”
“Rationally, I know all that.”
“Feelings aren’t rational.”
He shrugged, but I could feel his anger fading into hurt, a raw male animal hurt.
“I look at you,” Ari said, “and I feel like I can see his fingerprints all over you. I know that’s stupid of me.”
“Oh, stop! Don’t keep running yourself down! That’s making things worse.”
He took another deep breath and nodded his agreement.
“If you can see the fingerprints, let’s go wash them off.” I got up and held out my hand. “Come on.”
For a moment I was afraid he’d refuse. Then he got up and caught my hand in both of his. “A shower together?” he said.
“Yeah, but you get to scrub me down. Doesn’t water purify people, out in the desert? Like at Qumran?”
“Yes. I’ve seen the site. They had rather a lot of stone bathtubs.”
We both managed to smile at that. I kicked off my shoes and let him lead me to the bathroom. I let him undress me, too. He pulled the top over my head, then took off my bra, worked his way down and tossed each piece into the hallway to deal with later, until I stood shivering and naked. I watched him take off his clothes and throw them after mine. He got the shower started, then pushed me—gently, but it was still a push—into the comfortably hot water. When he joined me, he grabbed the bar of soap and rubbed it all over me, thoroughly, a little roughly in places.
I did the same for him. I washed my hair and then his, while he knelt on the shower floor and sputtered now and then at the water in his face. Thank Whomever, the hot water held out long enough for our improvised ritual. When we’d finished and dried off, he picked me up and carried me into the bedroom. He laid me down on the bed but stayed standing.
“Looking for fingerprints?” I said.
“Yes.”
“See any?”
“No.” He sat down on the edge of the bed next to me. “I’d best make sure mine are there instead.”
And he did. Twice. He was rougher with me than usual, more intense, certainly, controlling me by pinning my hands to the bed with his, letting me feel his weight and muscle. You know that old euphemism, “He possessed her?” I understood it that night. I was being possessed, treated like territory, marked as his. In the heat of it, I didn’t mind in the least.
Yet, although the sex was as good as ever, I knew something had changed between us—or was the change mine? We both fell asleep, snuggled under the covers, but I woke up a few hours later to find he’d moved over to his side of the bed. I lay in the dark for a while, thinking—or perhaps brooding was a better word for it. I was worried about Cam’s kids and about Maureen and her kids. Even if Chuck vanished from the face of the earth overnight, Caitlin and Brennan would carry scars from the entire experience of first living with him, then seeing their mother stalked. No matter how safe our family made their world from now on, they would know that worlds are never safe. Donnie and Beth had learned the same lesson in an even more painful way.
Beth had the first small symptoms of a talent, too, which would make things worse for her as she grew up. Her mother had tried to stifle the talent in her daughter just as she’d stifled her own. What would I have done if I’d married my Cam Douglas? The same thing, probably, if we’d had a child who showed the symptoms. My mother would have aided and abetted me in that. She’d tried so hard to kill her own gifts over the years. Sometimes your own family holds the danger in its heart. I knew that. I’d learned it the hard way, when she’d thrown me out of the house for protecting my future.
Ari had learned a hard lesson, too. I supposed that he would never believe me faithful again, no matter how hard we tried to work things out, not in the way men want to define “faithful,” sheer utter devotion, no eyes for anyone but them, and a blind eye turned to their own infidelities. He’d probably start leaning even harder on me to marry him. He’d want the proof that I’d do what he asked just because he wanted it.
I slipped out of bed and padded barefoot out into the hall. Our clothes still lay where he’d thrown them. We’d left the light on in the living room, too. I got dressed and walked on down the hall. When I looked out of the bay window, I could see the late spring fog swirling down the street like smoke. I shivered and turned up the thermostat to make the heat go on.
I considered working. I probably had a huge backlog of e-mail. I needed to tell the Agency I’d returned and give them a full report of the situation on Terra Six. Ari had mentioned during our drive home that Spare14
had sent me authorized intel reports on various subjects. I still had Shira Flowertree’s data to study as well. If I plunged into this ocean of words, I could stop thinking about Ari and Cam and Maureen and all the children. I could stop thinking about myself. I’d used work as a drug and a cover before, to convince myself that I wasn’t lonely, that I didn’t care about the men who told me they loved me and then fled the minute they realized that my family would swallow them whole.
I heard a shuffling sound in the hallway. I went tense, expecting an enemy or maybe just a Chaos critter, another damn squid. Instead, Ari walked into the living room. He paused by the doorway to finish zipping up his jeans, the only piece of clothing he had on at the moment.
“Nola?” he said. “Is something wrong?”
“I don’t know.” I felt impossibly tired, all of a sudden. “Is there?”
He sat down on the couch and patted the cushion next to him. I hesitated, then came over and sat.
“Of course there’s still something wrong,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean there will be forever. You’re not trying to make me leave you, are you? I did have that thought, that you might want to just get rid of me.”
It had never occurred to me that he might ever feel insecure.
“What?” I could barely speak. “No!”
He held out an arm. I slid over and snuggled up to him. He sighed and pulled me even closer.
“This is rather like having a bad cold, isn’t it?” Ari said. “We know we’ll get over it, but it’s quite unpleasant for the duration.”
“That’s for sure.” I rested my head on his shoulder. “We need psychological nose tissues.”
He muttered his usual tormented chuckle. We sat in silence for a few minutes.
“There’s one last thing I have to tell you,” he said. “I apologize for taking so long to come around to it.”
Dread tastes like tonic water, the bitter quinine kind. I pulled away and turned slightly so I could see his face.
“I’ve been reprimanded for the incident,” Ari continued. “For throwing the sodding orb too soon, that is. It’s in my file. It’s not the first write-up I’ve ever had, but all the others were in the army, and they were all for my sodding temper.”
“What? I don’t understand. Why would they—”
“I disobeyed your direct order. I didn’t wait.”
What do you do when you can think of absolutely nothing to say and someone you love needs you to say something? I made an odd little choking noise. “I’m sorry,” I finally came out with that.
“They’ll want you to sign off on it.”
First impulse: say I won’t. Squelched that. “I’ll have to read it first,” I said. “There were circumstances they probably don’t understand.”
“You don’t have to make excuses for me.”
“I won’t.”
“Good.”
“You mean that, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“That’s another reason I love you.”
He started to speak, then merely sighed. We sat in silence again and watched the digital clock on my desk flash red minutes.
“It’s three o’clock in the sodding morning,” he said. “Come back to bed, will you?”
“Sure. Good idea.”
This time I turned out the living room light. We returned to the bedroom and went back to sleep.
The first thing I did in the morning was open the wall safe, get out my engagement ring, and put it on. The second thing I did was remember the reprimand. I took the ring off and put it back into its box. Ari quirked an eyebrow.
“Aren’t we engaged any longer?” he said.
I realized I’d just hurt feelings I didn’t know he had. “Of course we’re still engaged,” I said. “I don’t want to wear it while I’ve got housework and stuff to do.”
He smiled in relief. I hurried out of the room to pick up the rest of the clothing we’d left lying in the hall. I was stuffing his shirt into the dirty clothes hamper when I remembered that Cam needed to hire a housekeeper. Someone had to be there when the kids came home from school. In my mind I could hear Beth’s singsong about Aunt Maureen. Ari, who was getting dressed, turned to me.
“What?” Ari said. “You’ve got that look on your face again.”
“I just had an idea. It depends on whether or not that gate in the Houlihan house is really stable, but if it is, I wonder if Maureen would be interested in a housekeeping job. Cam has plenty of room for her and the kids. She’d be safe from Chuck there. Dad could stay in touch through the gate. She could even visit us.”
“True, but what about the terrorists?”
“Good point. Unfortunately. Although they don’t know or care that she exists. If she stayed out in the Excelsior, away from the danger zones? If they stayed in L.A.?”
“Possibly.” He crossed his arms over his chest and scowled. “I suppose you’d need to go talk to him about it.”
“Not me. Dad will take care of it. Besides, she’s beautiful, she’s another O’Grady, and she’s a lot closer to his age than his wife was. I bet they’d get along famously.”
Ari relaxed. “It sounds like an ideal solution.” He smiled his tight-lipped tiger’s smile. “For everyone concerned.”
“Especially the children.” I decided to leave his implication alone. “They’ve been through hell, all four of them, though the Douglas kids have had it the worst, losing their mother. I just hope they never figure out exactly how she died.”
“Bad?”
“Her legs were crushed by falling masonry, and then she burned to death.”
His face lost all expression, a sign that he was deeply moved.
“Izumi’s right,” I said eventually. “Those terrorists, they’re crazy. They don’t care who they kill or how.”
“Oh, yes. Which reminds me. Spare14 sent us a report on Izumi’s testimony. She’s in custody on One. The public solicitor there is working out a plea bargaining agreement, but I don’t know how lenient they can be.”
“She was an accessory to attempted murder at the least.” I was thinking of Murphy, the world-walker who’d been stabbed and robbed. “God only knows what else she was involved in.”
“Yes. You need to eat, by the way. Eileen sent some of those scones home with us. Can I interest you in some jam? And butter?”
“Sure. But if you want tuna fish on yours, please eat it in the other room.”
He wandered off to the kitchen. I sat down at my computer. As it was booting up, I realized that Ari had been home alone with both my desktop and my laptop. Had he messed with them? I had boot passwords and encryptions, sure, but they could be cracked. The desktop security routines showed no tampering. On the other hand, Ari was good at what he did. Anything on TranceWeb would be safe, I supposed. You can’t hack what you can’t see.
When I logged onto the Web, I found a string of e-mails from Y among all the usual bureaucratic crud. I read the most recent of them and learned that the liaison with TWIXT was going forward. He wanted to tell me that he was reconciled to the new arrangement. He also hoped that someday I’d be “in a position” to read his e-mail, which I interpreted as meaning “still alive.” Much to my shock, he admitted that he’d made a bad decision by not giving me official status. I assumed that he’d written that particular sentence after Annie had blistered his metaphoric hide.
I sent him a brief note, allowing as how I was home safe and sound, had read the e-mail about the liaison, and approved. The answer came back about one minute after I sent it. “You can’t know how glad I am to hear from you. Trance meeting later in the week. Explanations to follow then. Y.” He’d been keeping an eye on his e-mail on Sunday. Good, I thought. I hope he suffered!
I switched to my other e-mail address, glanced through the short queue, and found the letter I was dreading: from Spare14 concerning the reprimand. He hadn’t been the one to write Ari up; he made that clear in his first sentence. The official note was brief and to the point.
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“Agent Nathan acted in haste. He failed to consult his superior officer before taking action. Case pending until the final outcome is received and noted. Superior officer may be permanently lost thanks to Nathan’s reckless action. If so, recommendation is full hearing for possible dismissal.”
“Crud!” I muttered.
Spare14 had added a note of his own to me. “If you’re reading this, O’Grady, you’re not lost, and I sincerely hope that’s true. Since I know certain things about your family, I insisted that the case be left on pending status. Some officers at HQ did not approve of the unusual recruitment procedure I pushed through for Nathan. I suspect that may be a factor in their eagerness to reprimand. One of them, I fear, is my own clone-brother, Spare13. We have had fraternal difficulties before.”
Fraternal difficulties. Even a batch of clones had to deal with family politics. There’s no escape, I thought, and sent Spare14 a quick answer: I’m alive, I’m here, and no, I won’t sign off on the reprimand as it now stands.
Ari returned from the kitchen with food and coffee, which he set down on the coffee table. I logged off and joined him on the sofa. Being home felt so good that I ate an entire scone and some yogurt without even thinking about it. He smiled at me and picked a crumb off my décolletage. I was about to suggest that we go for a walk on our day off when the phone in his shirt pocket rang. He retrieved it.
“Nathan here. Yes? Right … we’ll get down as fast as we can. Dress officially? No, blend with the locals. Very well. I see … yes, I’ll tell her.”
So much for Sunday rest and recreation. I thought of a number of unladylike remarks but kept them to myself. Ari clicked off and stowed the phone.
“That was Spare14,” he said. “Important intel’s come in from Hendriks on Three. We need to get down to the office. Danvers-Jones will meet us in South Park after the briefing.”
“On the run again! What is it that you’re supposed to tell me?”
“That the Agency contacted him just now. You’re officially on loan to TWIXT for the duration of this case. He’ll have the proper ID waiting for you.”