Fire & Frost (18 page)

“Well, except I wouldn’t blink out. There’d be two of me,” she said, “an old me here and a young me with you on a beach.”

He scowled. “Jesus.”

“Well, I figured we’d be able to alter it if we wanted. I didn’t think the computers would be destroyed. If the command did go through, that’s all set in stone now. We’d just figure something out. But Max, I’m almost sure the power was cut before the command went through. And now the computers…even if I worked around the clock for the next decade…”

“It’s okay, Veronica—”

“No, it’s not. Listen to me, Max. You asked me once if you have a soul and then you wouldn’t let me answer. The truth is, I don’t know, but—”

Max kneeled in front of her and kissed her, stopping her words in their tracks. “But I know,” he said. “I know I have a soul because of how much I love you.” He pulled away and pressed his palm to his chest. “This much love, no way could it all fit in here.”

She put her hand over his. How could she live without him now? Tears blurred her eyes. “Why didn’t I work faster?” she whispered. “Why didn’t I input it just a minute sooner? Why did I have to test it on Jophius?”

“Stop.” He kissed her. “You tried to set me free.”

“I doubt it went through.”

“But I’m here now.” He broke away and swished his hand in the water, then turned off both spigots. “We’re here now.” He pulled off his shirt as he had before. It seemed like months ago, when she’d first let him bathe her. She brought her hands to her shirt, fingers trembling.

“Oh, please.” He stood in front of her, undid her shirt for her. She really was cold. And so tired and drained. “You’re going to have to stop using all your power on these witches.”

“They won’t come for me after this. And neither will the Salvos, thanks to you.”

When she was undressed, he picked her up and stepped into the tub, lowering them both, slowly, letting the water surround them. He kissed her ear, her neck, and then stretched out under her, holding her. The warmth rolled through her, thawing her.

“So let me get this straight,” he said. “Jophius got a natural life? But not me? Should I be insulted?”

Tears rolled down her cheeks.

“Hey, it’s a joke,” he said.

“It’s not funny.”

“What are you gonna do, not re-up me?”

She splashed him. “You’re not funny at all.”

They stayed up the whole night talking. In the morning, Veronica made his favorite breakfast of steak and eggs. She was feeling almost normal.

They ate. They made love. They made snow angels out in the sunshiny day, then came back in and made love in front of the fire. They tried not to watch the clock. He’d be gone at 6:07 p.m.

Unless the command had gone through.

That evening, Veronica made steak and garlic mashed potatoes with gravy, another Max favorite, and brought it out to the living room. The grandfather clock had just struck five. Max was busy hanging something over the mantel. The drawing of her. Framed.

She just stood there, speechless.

“I want you to see always how I see you. How beautiful you really are.”

She swallowed back the tears and set down the plates. Neither of them felt like eating, though. They snuggled together, with Max getting up now and then to stoke the fire.

For the hundredth time, she went over that moment of hitting the enter key the day before, trying to tell herself that the command had gone through before the power went out.

It seemed too much to hope.

She said, “I’ll keep an eye on her from a distance. I’ll make sure that family has enough money.”

Max tightened his arms around her. “Let’s not talk like that, Veronica. Maybe the command went through. Everything’s electricity. You said so yourself, remember? Emotions and thoughts. It doesn’t only come from the wires.”

“I just want you to know it, though. That Teresa’s taken care of.”

“I want us to stop saying goodbye,” he said. “No more watching the damn clock. I want this to be a normal hour. As if we have a normal life.”

“You’re willing to watch Miami Vice?”

“Yes, Veronica. You know why?”

“Stop it.” God, she was feeling so maudlin and weepy.

“Because I love you. You should’ve known just from my willingness to watch Miami Vice with you so many times that I love you.”

“I love you, too.” She sunk into him, let herself be held.

The fire crackled.

The grandfather clock struck six.

“Hand me the whiskey,” he said. “This fucking suspense is killing me.”

“That’s not funny.” She sat up, grabbed the bottle, and gave it to him. He swigged out of it, then handed it to her. She put it down and kissed him. He tasted alcohol-sharp.

She unbuttoned his shirt and kissed his broad chest, then laid her cheek against him, listening to his heartbeat. “After we saw Teresa’s band play, you said you were all torn up. I wanted to feel like that, too. I was jealous of all your wild feelings. But I know what it is to be torn up, Max. I know what it is, now, and I don’t want it.”

“Don’t say that. Being alive sometimes gets you all torn up, but you still want it.”

“Not without you.”

“Yes, without me. You’re brave, baby.”

“Stop it.”

The fire crackled on.

Soon he’d vanish, and she’d be lying on the couch alone. She tried not to think of that. She just tried to soak up what they had left.

After lying there a bit more, she got the thought that it had been longer than seven minutes since the clock chimed six. She looked out the window at the moon. The moon had moved a lot since then, it seemed.

But if she said something, it might jinx things.

She kissed his chest. His cheek.

“Veronica.”

“Yes?”

“Does it seem like…?”

“More than seven minutes?” She sat up. “I’ve been afraid to ask.”

“I think it’s been more than seven minutes.”

“Should we check?” she asked.

He watched her eyes. Neither of them wanted to check. She kissed him, pressing herself against him, tasting his lips, his mouth. She loved him.

And what if…

Every second that ticked away made it more possible that he was staying. That the command had gone through.

He pulled away. “Now it seems really like it was more than seven minutes. That was at least a minute-long kiss.”

She kissed him again.

“A minute and a half. That’s it, I’m checking,” he said.

“Wait,” she looked into his eyes. “I don’t want you to disappear while you’re apart from me.”

“This is stupid. I’m checking, Veronica.” He got up and went around the couch and over to the clock. Veronica watched, gripping the back of the couch.

He regarded the clock for a while, then turned his head, looked back with that lopsided smile.

Her heart soared. “It’s after six-oh-seven?”

“It’s six-thirty.” He came to her and she tumbled into his arms. He kissed her. “Twenty goddamn minutes we’ve been agonizing.”

“You’re here for good.”

“You and me and Jophius, baby. Apparently you are the baddest of the bad.”

She kissed his nose. “Don’t you forget it.”

“I won’t,” he whispered. “You hungry?”

“Starving.” She warmed up the steak.

He stoked up the fire.

There would be no Miami Vice tonight.

Wrecked

A Tale of the Iron Seas

Meljean Brook

HER FATHER’S HUNTERS HAD FOUND her.

Elizabeth recognized them as soon as she rounded the corner toward home—a man and a woman flanking the front door of her boarding house. Heart thumping in her chest, she resisted the impulse to dart behind a passing steamcoach. A quick movement would draw the hunters’ attention.

Dear God. They were so close. In another twenty steps, she would have crossed the busy street and fallen straight into their hands.

Without a change in pace, Elizabeth tucked her chin deeper into her woolen scarf, burying the bottom of her face. Acrid smoke billowed behind the steamcoach as it rattled past, the dingy cloud obscuring her view of the hunters—and preventing them from seeing her slip into a tinkerer’s shop. Inside, she pretended to browse the clockwork novelties displayed in the window, stealing glances at the hunters as she wound up a jumping frog.

Matthias and Amelia. Almost five years had passed since Elizabeth had seen either of them, but both looked the same as they had when delivering wild beasts to her father’s sanctuary. Wide-brimmed hats shadowed their eyes. Ankle-length brown coats buckled over their chests and concealed the weapons harnesses they always wore.

Nothing about the hunters looked overtly threatening, but passersby seemed to sense the danger. A pair of gentlemen cast their gazes to the ground, as if hoping to avoid notice. A young boy and girl who had been laughing up at the sparsely falling snow and trying to catch the tiny flakes on their tongues suddenly had their hands gripped by their governess and were hurried past the boarding house. In this part of Brighton, where moneyed travelers browsed the shops for expensive trinkets and enjoyed the cleanest air that England had to offer, Matthias and Amelia were wolves among hens. But Elizabeth had seen a hunter receive the same wary glances from residents of the lawless smuggling towns she’d hidden in after escaping her father’s estate. No matter where she ran to, people seemed to recognize what the hunters were.

Predatory, unrelenting…merciless. After they sighted their prey, they’d stop at nothing to bring it in.

Elizabeth edged a little farther away from the window, the instinct to flee yanking at her every nerve. Matthias and Amelia had been standing long enough that a dusting of snow had accumulated on their hat brims and shoulders. Had they searched the boarding house yet, or were they waiting for someone who was already inside?

Was Caius Trachter with them?

A familiar ache started in her chest.
Caius.
After she’d fled from home, he’d pursued her halfway around the world and back again—and two years before, he’d finally caught her in the Ivory Market, on the western coast of Africa. Elizabeth had made the mistake of bolting the moment she’d seen him, trying to lose him in the chaotic marketplace, but it wouldn’t have mattered if she’d run or calmly continued walking. Caius had already spotted her. He’d taken her down with an opium dart as if she were an animal, and she’d woken tied to a bed in an airship bound for the Americas.

Caius had attended to her every need during the voyage…also as if she were an animal. Her father’s hunters didn’t kill their prey; they cared for the captured beasts until delivering them into her father’s keeping. So Caius had fed Elizabeth, guarded her door—from inside the cabin, with his back to her—while she’d bathed, and walked with her on the promenade deck for exercise. For a week, he’d rarely left her side, sharing her every meal and sleeping on the floor beside her bed. In those few moments when he’d left her alone, she’d been tied again.

But animals didn’t talk to their captors, and Elizabeth had barely allowed hers a moment’s peace. She’d begged for Caius to free her. She’d threatened him. She’d promised to give him
anything
if he released her.

When she’d realized that she couldn’t give Caius what he wanted most—his own freedom—she’d appealed to his compassion instead. She’d told him of the fate awaiting her at home and the horror that had forced her to flee on the night of her twentieth birthday.

For a short time, she’d believed that her pleas had affected him. She’d believed that Caius no longer saw her as prey—or as the pampered girl he’d met when he’d been forced into her father’s service to pay off his family’s debts.

Two years older than Elizabeth, he’d been a sullen, dark-haired fifteen-year-old boy with a gleaming shackle of indenture around his left wrist and resentment burning in his eyes every time he’d looked at her. Apprenticed to a hunter, then a huntsman in his own right, Caius had spent most of his time away from her father’s sanctuary, returning only when he’d brought new animals in. The years had passed, and she’d watched him grow from a sullen youth into a hardened young man. By the time Elizabeth was sixteen, his resentment had cooled into quiet hostility—and with every encounter, his obvious dislike only made her determined to change his opinion. She’d wanted him to smile at her, to talk with her.

And with every encounter, she’d been increasingly bewildered and hurt by his icy, insulting responses. She’d done nothing to deserve them. Yet his hostility only seemed to grow.

But he’d warmed to her on the airship. At least, she’d believed that he had.

Though Caius had been all but silent during the first part of the voyage, in the days before they’d reached Johannesland he’d told her stories of his hunts for lions and rhinoceros and zebra—animals that she’d seen when he’d brought them in, but she’d never heard how he’d caught them or of the dangers he’d encountered transporting them out of zombie-infested lands. He’d joked about how a machete could be a man’s closest friend when facing one of the ravenous creatures. He’d mentioned fighting mercenaries and rival hunters who’d attempted to steal the valuable animals for collectors or naturalists in competition with her father. He’d spoken of the people he’d met while pursuing her around the world, the letters he’d received from his mother and sister since leaving home, and of the life he’d planned to have before his father had died and left his family destitute. He’d told her of how he’d once hoped to attend a university, obtain a comfortable position as a solicitor, and marry the girl he’d loved at fifteen—a pretty blonde named Katarina.

But after they’d reached the shores of Johannesland and boarded the locomotive that would carry them over the last leg of their journey, Caius told her that if he brought her back home, Elizabeth’s father had promised to release him from his service. All debts paid in full, and the thirty-year period of indenture would end the moment Caius walked through the door with Elizabeth in hand.

Aboard that locomotive, Elizabeth had realized two things. One, Caius hadn’t warmed to her. He’d been explaining why he would never release her. Given an option between his freedom and hers, Caius had chosen his own.