The Girl Who Wasn't (26 page)

I climb to my feet without the help of
Titus—despite our cease fire, I must draw the line somewhere. When
I’m seated, he hands me a wad of tissues and I use them to apply
pressure to my bleeding nose. That is the extent of his medical
attention.

“
I need you to think back
over the attempts on your life and tell me if there’s anything you
can think of that will help us find this Melanie girl,” he says.
“Anything she has said, people you’ve seen her speak to, clues she
might’ve given.”

“
She seems to know an awful
lot about my kind,” I say. My voice is nasally from pinching my
nose shut.

“
Does she know about Twig
City?”

“
I don’t know.”

“
Anything else?”

And here it is. My moment. My opening
to tell him about Anna. Not Authentic Annalyn but Imitation Anna
from the bathroom. The one who said it was all a lie. The one who
is in hiding with Melanie—and maybe others.

“
Nothing I can think of,” I
say.

His gaze is piercing, holding me in
place. “Are you sure about that? Because it seems like you’ve been
holding back an awful lot, daughter.”

“
I’m sure.”

Voices drift closer from the hall. I
can hear Josephine speaking to Linc, asking him questions about Gus
and the extent of his wounds.

“
Keep thinking about it,”
Titus says to me as they enter. “I’m going to speak with
Daniel.”

I assure him I will and he walks out,
gesturing at Linc to follow. Josephine crouches next to Gus using
two fingers to search out a pulse. She pauses for a long moment
before rising and coming over to where I’m perched on the couch.
The same couch where Daniel touched me. The couch I never want to
sit on again.

“
Oh, honey, you’re
bleeding,” she says.

I wave her off and speak in my nasally
voice. “Looks worse than it is. Go to Gus.”

“
Ven,” she says softly. We
both know there is no use going to Gus. Instead, she sits beside me
on the couch and waits.

“
He was trying to save me,”
I say at last.

“
Linc says Daniel attacked
you. That he was the one doing all of this, sending people to hurt
you.”

“
Looks like.”

“
Honey,” she says again. She
slides a hand around my shoulders, pulling me in for a one-armed
hug. I am careful not to bleed on her. She pulls away and her smile
is sad. “Can I take a look at your nose now?”

I let her pull the tissues aside and
clean up the blood, which has apparently made the injury look a lot
worse than it is. When she’s finished, the only medical supply she
has attached to me is a small strip of adhesive bandaging across
the center of my nose. The jostling has finally triggered pain. It
aches and burns all the way across my cheeks.

“
It’s not broken?” I
ask.

“
It’s not broken,” she
assures me.

“
Hurts like it’s broken.” I
wince as her fingertips press the bandage into place.

“
The more it hurts, the less
damage there really is,” she says.

She examines my throat where it feels
like a new layer of bruises has cropped up over the old ones. Her
fingers are feather-light and cold as they skim over my tender
skin. I hold perfectly still, my attention focused on the activity
in the hallway. I listen for voices but I cannot hear the
words.

Josephine reaches into her bag and
produces a wooden depressor. “Say aah.”

“
Aah.” I open my mouth and
stick out my tongue.

“
Does it hurt?” she asks
when she’s finished.

I close my mouth. “Some.”

“
It’s going to hurt
tomorrow.” She gestures to her bag. “Do you want me to give you a
shot like last time?”

The damage left by Daniel isn’t even
close to the pain I felt after Melanie’s attack. I wonder if that
means he is weak or she is that strong. A shot is tempting.
Oblivion would be welcome, at least for tonight.

Before I can answer her, Linc appears
in the doorway, alone. I catch his eye and hold it for a long
moment. There is something in the way he looks at me that wasn’t
there before. Knowledge.

“
No shot,” I say.

Josephine looks back and forth between
us and then hastily repacks her things. “I’m going to check on you
in the morning,” she tells me. “If you want something I can give it
then.”

“
Thank you,” I tell
her.

She removes a white sheet from her bag
and spreads it over Gus. Her movements are slow, careful. This is
how humans care for their dead. I’ve never seen it before. It seems
… reverent.

I wonder if Josephine knows yet that
this Gus isn’t human.

I wait on the couch until she’s
finished and then I make my way toward the door. I can see men
outside, their hands folded stiffly behind them, faces
solemn.

“
What are they doing?” I ask
Josephine.

“
Waiting for us to leave,”
she explains. “So they can take Gus.”

I nod. I don’t know where and I don’t
ask. I need to get out of here. To be done with this.

Linc is at my side the moment I’m clear
of the room. Not close enough to touch but I can feel his proximity
just the same. Josephine remains inside the parlor, her hushed
orders directing the men how to handle the body. I can’t bear to
listen.

Linc keeps pace with me. I don’t even
know where I’m going. I have no desire to go to my room. To be
alone. But I don’t want to see Titus, either. Linc’s face is the
only comfort and he is already here so I stop abruptly and face
him.

The words die on my lips. I don’t know
what to say and even if I did, I probably couldn’t for fear of
being overheard.

“
In here,” Linc says,
reading my thoughts.

I plant my feet as he tries to lead me
through a doorway. “They will be watching, listening,” I whisper.
“It’s not safe.”

“
No, they won’t.” He pulls
on my hand but I don’t budge. “Do you trust me?” he
asks.

In the end, I let him lead me inside
and close the door.

It’s another parlor—this one warmer,
friendlier, without any residue of Daniel. Or Gus. Or death. Linc
gestures to a chair but I don’t sit. I watch as he wanders the
edges of the room. He runs his hands slowly over all of the table
surfaces and finally stops when his fingers catch on something at
the edge of the lamp. He fiddles with it and then resumes his
search. In all, he disables three devices. I’m not sure if they
were for listening or watching or both.

When he’s finished his sweep, he
crosses back to me with a satisfied expression. That’s when I
really notice the difference in him that I’d glimpsed before. The
set of his shoulders, the way he holds his hands just inside his
pockets. He is bracing himself.

Whatever he knows isn’t enough or he
wouldn’t still be here. But it’s more than he knew before. Either
way, for better or worse, it’s time. He is the only one on my side
and the only one I trust in this world.

I don’t think I can lie anymore. And
even if I could, I don’t want to.

Chapter Fourteen

I wait for Linc to speak first but he
only leans against the wall, expressionless. I stand behind the
chair—a barrier. A defense. Not for a single second do I think he
will hurt me. Not like Daniel, not physically. But if he rejects
me, rejects what I am … that would hurt far worse than any
near-strangling at the hands of a psycho.

“
Titus told you about Gus, I
take it,” I say finally.

“
He mentioned something
about him being not quite human, yes.”

He’s still watching me with a guarded
look that makes it impossible to know what he’s thinking. “That’s
all he said?”

“
He called him a ‘product.’
I was given the short version. The details are a little
fuzzy.”

I force myself to hold his gaze,
waiting for him to go on, but he only stares pointedly back at me.
He’s waiting for me to fill in the blanks.

“
Linc, I—” The words stick
in my throat, a cotton ball wrapped in truth wrapped in
lies.

“
If you don’t tell me the
truth, I refuse to keep saving you.”

I nod. I don’t quite trust my voice.
All I can think as I look at him is that there was a time I thought
he wasn’t worth dying for. I was wrong. The reality is I cannot
live without him. But I cannot speak around it any longer. I either
say these words to him now or starve from the emptiness.

I begin again. “I am not who you think
I am.” I pause but he does not react. He already knew this. I suck
in air and my lungs fill to bursting. When I expel the breath, it
is on a burst of words. Of truth. “My name is Ven. I am an
Imitation. A product. Like Gus.” Still, his expression hasn’t
changed. And then I deliver the killing blow. “I think the popular
term is clone.”

There is no more air. Inside me. Inside
this room. In the atmosphere.

A cacophony of emotion plays like a
strobe across his face. Shock, disbelief, curiosity, confusion. The
dark splotches in between are filled with fear. Maybe
horror.

“
You’re not …
human?”

A scream bubbles up in my chest but I
shove it down and lock it in the box with all the others. Screams
that deserve to see daylight but I’m too cowardly to let them out.
And too paralyzed.

“
No,” I answer. “Not like
you.”

A full minute passes while he watches
me, head tilted. His gaze is unfocused, distracted. He’s trying to
understand.

He pushes off from the wall and walks
up to me and I have a heart attack and die right there while my
heart still beats. Gently, he reaches up and lays his hand on my
cheek. His fingers are warm and rough and tender all at
once.

“
Amazing.”

Before I can decipher a sensible
meaning behind his word, he is cupping my cheeks in his palms and
sweetly pressing his lips to my face. My cheeks, my nose, my
forehead. Tiny reassuring kisses that make me want to turn my head
so that my mouth captures the next one. But I don’t. I stand
frozen. Nothing about this moment makes sense.

“
How?” he asks, his mouth
moving against my hair.

I give him the simplest answer I know.
“Titus.”

He holds me a moment longer, no doubt
processing my words into a more solid reality, before stepping back
to face me. His hands trail down my arms until his fingers
intertwine with my own. He is looking at something above my
shoulder. “Your tattoo … the tree.”

I press my lips together and slowly
pull my hair away from my ear. He leans forward and studies
it.

“
The tree is a symbol for
life,” I say. “We all have one.”

“
Gus didn’t.”

“
It was on the inside of his
wrist,” I explain. “I saw it earlier, when he …”

I trail off and he doesn’t make me
finish. “And the numbers?”

“
My identification code.
Unlike my DNA the numbers are unique.”

“
How many … codes are
there?”

I shrug. “I don’t know.
Hundreds?”

“
There are hundreds of
you?”

“
Well, not me, exactly. I’m
the only … Ven.” I can’t bring myself to say that I’m the only copy
of this particular original. It makes me sound entirely too fake
for the authenticity of the very human emotions I feel for him. How
can my feelings be so real when I am not?

“
Ven,” he
repeats.

The sound of my name from his lips
makes my insides curl. I lean closer. On a soft sigh, I say, “I
like it so much better when you call me that.” His lips quirk
upward on one side. A half smile. It gives me hope. “I am sorry I
didn’t tell you before. I couldn’t.”

His smile vanishes. “You didn’t trust
me. I can’t fault you for that. You had a lot at stake.”

“
No, it’s not that. It was
at first, but not now. Titus—if he knew I’d told you the truth, I
don’t know what he would do.” He huffs out a breath that sounds
suspiciously like laughter. I eye him. “What’s funny about
that?”

He shakes his head. “And here this
whole time I thought I was the one protecting you.”

For reasons I cannot
explain, this makes me angry. “You
are
protecting me. And this isn’t
funny. Nothing about it is funny. I just told you that I’m not
human. I’m a manmade
product
.” I spit the word, hating how
it sounds but needing him to understand. “And you’re standing here
laughing about something useless like who kept whom
alive.”

“
That,” he says, “is not
useless.”

“
It is if we both end up
dead for having this conversation.”

He glances toward the door and I know
what he is thinking. No place inside Rogen Tower is completely
secure.