Part 20 (1/2)
I shook my head. ”No, you won't.”
”Did I kill your leopard?” he asked.
”Did you aim for him?” I asked.
He smiled, his teeth red with his own blood. ”Yes.”
”Why?” I asked.
”Because you love them all more than you love me.” He coughed so hard that something thick and meaty fell onto the floor as if he'd coughed up some lung. Anyone who could heal from this much silver damage was so very powerful.
”Good-bye, Haven.”
He snarled up at me and started to shapes.h.i.+ft. His power washed over my skin in a wash of electric heat. My lioness snarled. His blue eyes filled with lion amber. I pulled the trigger. The amber slid away and I pulled the trigger the second time, staring into the same blue eyes I'd watched in bed above me more than once. The second shot made it impossible to look into his eyes. I dropped to my knees and put the barrel against his face for the third shot. At such close range, it blew the back of his head out. Like Noel, just like Noel. I was left blinking blood and thicker things out of my eyes. Too close. Blowback, it was blowback.
I dry-fired twice before I realized the revolver was empty. I got to my feet and let the empty gun fall to the floor. Without bullets it was just a heavy rock, and that wouldn't help me against anyone in this room.
Everyone moved out of my way. No one tried to touch me, or comfort me, or talk to me. They just moved and watched me. I walked back to Nathaniel. Micah was there now, holding his hand. Nathaniel smiled up at me. I smiled back.
”I love you,” he said.
”I love you, too,” I said.
Micah took my hand, but I shook my head and got to my feet. I told him, ”Stay with Nathaniel.”
”He didn't leave you a choice,” Micah said.
I nodded. ”I know.” Then I started walking back toward the hallway. I just kept walking. I had a vague idea I needed to clean up again. I kept walking. Jason was in the hallway with J.J. She stared at me with wide eyes. Jason tried to get her back in his bedroom, away from all the blood and death.
I walked until I found the new showers that Jean-Claude had put in when we realized just how many people were living in the underground of the Circus. It was a big open shower like at a gym. I turned on the nearest shower head and stepped under it. I hadn't taken off any clothes, that seemed wrong, but I just grabbed for the soap in the wall dispensers. I washed Nathaniel's blood off my hands. I washed Haven's blood out of my hair and off my face. Noel's blood had soaked into my jeans from the knee down and was all over my shoes. I couldn't get it out. I took off the jogging shoes and threw them across the room. I took off the pants and tried to scrub the knees clean.
”Anita, Anita.”
I kept scrubbing at my jeans. ”I can't get it out. I can't get the blood out.”
”Anita!” Richard grabbed my arms, turned me to look at him while the water poured down my face and onto the front of his body. He was tall enough that the water didn't touch higher than his chest. His brown eyes held pity, sorrow, things I couldn't decipher.
I held the jeans up to him. ”I can't get the blood out.”
He took the jeans out of my hands. ”It's okay,” he said.
I shook my head. ”It's not.”
He drew me in against his chest while the water beat on my back. ”No, it's not. I'm so sorry, Anita, so sorry.”
I was stiff in his arms, and he just kept holding me tight and close, and gradually my arms unclenched and I wrapped them around his waist. I buried my face against the wet T-s.h.i.+rt and the muscled strength of his chest. He was just the right height so that my ear was against his chest. I held on to him, listening to the thick, strong beat of his heart.
He stroked my hair and murmured, ”I'm here, I'm here. I'm so sorry, but I'm here.”
I managed to say, ”I'm glad you're here.” And then I was crying. I cried until my legs fell out from under me and he had to catch me. He lifted me up into his arms, holding me close, putting his face against mine and whispering, ”I'm here, I'm here.” And sometimes, that's all you can say. Sometimes that's all the comfort you have to offer and all you can expect.
CHAPTER 25
I SAT ON the edge of Jean-Claude's bed. Even after a year of living here almost every day of the week I still didn't think of it as our bed. I was wrapped in a soft navy blue blanket because one, my hair was wet again, and two, all my robes were silk. Jean-Claude knelt behind me in his black velvet robe with the fur lapels that were as black as the rest of the robe. I usually liked him in that robe a lot, but today I didn't seem to care. He held a bunch of my curls in his hand and rested them on the big, toothy-looking head of the diffuser on the dryer. I usually let my hair dry naturally, but I'd been s.h.i.+vering, so he'd asked to dry my hair. Fine with me, I didn't care. The best thing about the dryer besides the warmth was it was too loud for anyone to talk around me. Talking felt very overrated.
Jean-Claude picked up another bunch of my curls and laid it over the blow dryer. I sat there and let the hot air bathe my scalp, let him play with my hair. He'd rubbed some kind of leave-in conditioner into it, gently, so the dryer didn't dry out my hair. He'd asked first, and my answer had been what it had been for the last hour: ”Fine.”
To the question, ”Are you all right?” my answer had been, ”I'm fine.” If it was a lie, I didn't know the truth yet. I was fine.
He turned the dryer off and laid it on the bed beside him. He bunched my curls in his hands, settling them in some order that made him happy. I sat and blinked. I had seldom cared less about what my hair looked like than right now.
I heard the door open behind us. I didn't turn around. It didn't seem important enough. Then I smelled coffee. My pulse sped a little, and I sat up and realized just how much I'd been huddling in on myself. I forced myself to sit straighter, shoulders back, spine straight. I would not hunch like a dog that had been kicked once too often; the fact that that described how parts of me were feeling was neither here nor there. My emotions felt kicked to h.e.l.l, but I could not let it make me look like I'd been kicked.
Richard was in front of me s.h.i.+rtless, in a pair of jeans so faded they had white patches here and there, as if there'd been some sort of bleach accident. Richard threw out jeans when they looked like that. He was barefoot, too.
”Sorry all your clothes got wet,” I said. My voice didn't sound right, as if there were an echo between what I was saying and the inside of my head.
He held a red coffee mug down to me. It was one of the new mugs that went with the new dishes that Nathaniel had picked out for here. Just like back at our house, he had picked two contrasting colors of plain, heavy dinnerware. For our house it was green and blue, but for the Circus he'd picked red and black. The dishes sat in the newly installed kitchen that had gone in at the same time as all the new bathrooms. Good thing nothing went this wrong when we'd had all the workmen in here.
Richard knelt in front of me and held out the mug. ”Coffee. You need it.”
I nodded but made no move to take it. All I could think of was that Nathaniel was down the hall with doctors and Micah to hold his hand. I was waiting to get my s.h.i.+t together before I went down to see him. There was a quiet part of me that kept repeating, ”Haven tried to kill Nathaniel. He meant it to be Nathaniel lying there with his brains all over the floor.” Then I'd shove the thoughts away and try to stop thinking about anything.
”Do you not want the coffee?” he asked.
”It smells good,” I said, and my voice sounded as numb as I felt.
Richard touched my hand where it showed around the edge of the blanket and wrapped my fingers around the handle of the mug. ”Drink it.”
My hand started to shake as I raised the mug, so I had to use my other hand to steady it. Two hands were better. I took a moment to smell the aroma: rich, dark, good coffee. Nathaniel had been doing my coffee shopping for me. He was the only one who always got what I wanted.
”How's Nathaniel?” I asked.
”As I've answered before, ma pet.i.te ma pet.i.te, he is fine. He will be fine. He is hurt, but it is not permanent.”
”Drink the coffee while it's hot, Anita,” Richard said.
I sipped the coffee and it was good. There wasn't quite the right amount of sugar in it, but Richard didn't know that I'd started putting in more sugar. He hadn't been around enough to know that I'd changed anything.
”How do we keep everyone safe?” I asked, and I wasn't sure who I was asking.
”We will meet with the tigers when you are ready,” Jean-Claude said.
I shook my head. ”I don't mean from Marmee Noir, I mean from things like what just happened. I thought Haven and I had worked things out. I thought it was safe.”
”We all did,” Richard said.