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“Yeah.” He sounded like he was wary of a trap. “And? So?”
“This implies that there was a time in which you were wondering if I wasn’t.”
He grunted. “I wasn’t even sure if you were a hallucination, Red. But my family all sees you, too. And they’re all grateful. So I’m pretty sure you’re flesh and blood. If this is a dream, I don’t want to wake up. If it’s a drug trip, I don’t want to come down.”
“But why would you think I wasn’t real?”
He laughed at me. “Oh, come on, Red. Beauty, brains, and nerves of steel? You seem like a fantasy. My hot, sexy, indomitable red queen.”
His. Wow. Bold words, but this guy was fresh out of a long imprisonment in a uniquely horrible prison. Nothing he said could be held against him, or considered binding in any way. I had to remember that. Remind myself of it constantly.
And even so, I liked it. I liked it so much, it scared me.
“Holly really gets along with your little sister,” he said.
“Reggie is soaking it all up,” I said. “Tonight, she told me she doesn’t know how long she has in this world, so she’s going to make the most of every moment.”
I felt him tense. “Jesus. She said that? She’s so sure she’ll get sick again?”
I nodded. “She saw our mother die of Varen’s. She almost died herself, before she went to that clinic. If he actually did infect her somehow…” My voice trailed off.
“You’re still doubting it?”
“I doubt everything these days,” I said. “But Jana was very convincing. Her own mother died of Tamiko’s. But Jana discovered later that Halliwell has this collection of fake diseases to play God with. Tamiko’s is one of them. Varen’s is another.”
“Rose will be here tomorrow. She’ll tell us more. We’ll find a solution.”
“Thank you for saying that, but some problems have no solutions,” I said. “You just have to swallow the pill. Reggie told me that this evening. More or less.”
“We’ll see,” he said stubbornly. “I won’t accept that.”
I hesitated for a moment. “If we could use SmokeScreen, I could hack deep enough into the Coatesworth to find whatever compound they were sending to that clinic. Or at least find out how he’s making her sick.”
Shane was silent for an agonizingly long minute. “It’s not up to me, Red,” he said finally. “When I told Halliwell I didn’t have access to the code, I wasn’t lying. The access codes were bashed right out of my head, or else I would have given them to Vincent and Nicole when they were torturing me. Or to Halliwell, later on. The only way to resist torture is to just fucking not have the information to give.”
“I understand,” I said quietly.
“SmokeScreen is Ethan’s baby,” Shane said. “And he regrets creating it. He was going to destroy it, but I convinced him to let me use it, just once, and then never again. And I fucked all of our lives sideways. He won’t make that mistake again.”
Not even to keep Reggie alive.That was the subtext. A wave of sadness came over me. I hid my face against his chest.
“Red—”
“Please, just stop talking,” I whispered. “It won’t help.”
“I’ll help you find a solution. I swear it.”
Yeah, he’d help look for a solution. Just not that one. The best one. And if the truth were acknowledged, probably the only one. I gritted my teeth and just didn’t say it. It wasn’t fair to him. But he heard it in the air.
“We’ll see what Rose and Demiguel tell us.” He rolled me up onto his body, straddling him.
I crossed my arms on his chest and rested my chin on them. “Hey, you.”
“I keep thinking about that kiss,” he said.
“Which one?” I asked. “All of them have been memorable.”
“The first one,” he said. “The first time I touched you. When the glass wall magically disappeared. I was so shocked by actually touching you, I forgot that bastard was watching us. I couldn’t see anything but you. And you know what?”
