CHAPTERTHIRTY-ONE
Even if I get Alzheimer’s I will never forget the sight of Bergman huddled over his work. It’s one of my first memories of him. I’d made friends with a girl in English Lit named Lindy Melson. She and her roommate, a grad student named Miles, needed some help with the rent. When she showed me the place, the first thing I saw when she opened the apartment door was Bergman hunched over the white Formica counter, fixing the toaster so it would sound an alarm when the waffles were done.
“Miles,” I said as I walked into the RV and saw him bent over the table, “what’s up?”
“Not your bullet, that’s for sure.” He sat back and rubbed his eyes with the knuckles of both hands, a sure sign of high-end stress.
“Where’s Cassandra?”
“Bathroom, running water over themagical item .” He said the last two words as if they had personally shoved him against the lockers and tried to steal his lunch money.
I sat down across from him.
“Don’t—”
I held up my hands.
“—touch the stuff.”
I scooted over until I was right next to him.
He looked down at me suspiciously. I put my head on his shoulder, breathed him in, and felt myself begin to unfold. After a kill, it’s always hard for me to get back to real. In the six months I’d worked solo . . . Well, let’s just say this was the safest way I’d found to reground. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
“You mean besides the fact that I need my entire lab to build something this intricate?”
“Yeah, besides that.”
He moved, forcing me to look at him. “Jaz, you want a bullet hard enough to penetrate but soft enough to break apart once it’s impacted so that it doesn’t exit the victim. Hard enough to protect the inner casing but soft enough, again, to break up and allow that inner casing to light up a vampire from the inside. Do you understand how tall that order is with the equipment I have available to me?”
I stretched my hands toward the ceiling.
“Taller,” he drawled.
Cole had been leaning against the kitchen counter, absently watching the cleaning frenzy on the monitor as we talked. Now he looked at us and said, “You know what this situation calls for?”
Bergman and I shook our heads.
He reached into his pocket, pulled out his fist, sat at the table, and offered us his open hand. “Bubble gum.”
We dug in and sat in relative silence except, of course, for the blowing and the popping. Suddenly it came to me. “What if it’s not a bullet?” I asked.
Bergman sat up, a sure sign of interest. Cole blew another bubble, so who knew. I went on. “What if it’s a dart?”
“Nah,” said Bergman. “The needle’s too thin. We need something round enough to contain the pill.”
“Crossbow bolt?” suggested Cole. His eyes went from my face to Bergman’s and back again. “Hey, quit looking so shocked. Just because I have beautiful tresses doesn’t mean there isn’t a working brain underneath. Look at Cassandra.”
We tried. She’d just emerged from the bathroom, so we craned our necks, bending nearly backward to see not only her lovely long locks but also the shining silver medallion she carried on a chain between her outstretched fingers.
“Is it ready?” I asked.
“Quit bouncing, Jaz,” Bergman growled. “You’re going to knock something off the table.”
“Lemme out!” I ordered. Bergman stood up, allowing me to exit stage left. I went to Cassandra and took the medallion in my hands. When she’d put it into the pot along with all the other ingredients, it had just been a plain silver disc. Now she’d imbued it with the powers of the herbs. And magical writings, the words she’d whispered over the pot, had carved themselves into its face.
“Cool,” I whispered. She grinned with pride.
“Do you remember me telling you we needed something that belonged to Pengfei to make the spell work?” she asked.
“Yeah?”
She tapped the side of her head with a newly manicured fingernail. “I think I figured it out. While you were gone, Bergman raised Pengfei’s image on his computer.”
“Under protest,” Bergman cut in.
Cassandra ignored him. “That helped me make a detailed transfer to theEnkyklios . Then I dangled the medallion in the image replay while I spoke the words of permeation. Go on, see if it changes you,” she suggested.
“Okay, but I want to put on the dress first.” I ran into the bedroom, shimmied out of my clothes and into Pengfei’s. They were loose in the bust and tight in the butt, which made me hate her all the more. I hurried back to the living room.
Bergman and Cole had moved to the driver and passenger seats, which they’d turned to face me. Cassandra stood waiting beside Ashley.
“Okay,” I said. “Lay it on me.”
She draped the medallion over my neck.
I looked from her to Cole to Bergman. When all the color left Miles’s face I knew the spell had worked. “Take it off,” he whispered, “before it curses you!”
Ignoring him, I looked at Cassandra expectantly. “Well?”
For an answer she clapped her hands one time, hard, and smiled so big you’d have thought she’d just won the lottery.
Cole popped a bubble. “Hey, Cassandra,” he said. “Can you make me one where I look like Keith Urban?” He glanced at Bergman. “Isn’t he still married to Nicole Kidman? God, what a babe.”
But Bergman seemed to have developed blinders. Cole could’ve been broadcasting from the Space Station for all the attention Miles paid him. His hands jerked, and I realized he’d dug his fingernails into his chair’s armrests up to the first knuckle. He leaned forward, and for a second I thought he was going to lunge out of his seat, rip the medallion off my neck, throw it down, and stomp on it like some enraged second grader. Instead he fell back in the seat, closed his eyes, and took off his glasses. As if that still wasn’t enough to keep the scene before him from playing out behind his eyelids, he turned his seat around.
Okay, be that way,I thought, ignoring the fact that my inner voice sounded awfully middle school. Why did I keep letting Bergman bring out the gnarly teen in me?
“Cassandra, you did great!” I said, twirling around so she could get one last look before I dove back into my comfy clothes.
“She’ll probably turn into a pumpkin at midnight,” Bergman muttered.
“All right, that is it!” I strode to Bergman’s chair and spun it around. His eyes opened, startled and a little scared.Good . “I don’t care if your brain’s the size of a watermelon and your gadgets make my mouth water. I’m tired of your snippy little comments about Cassandra and everything related to her. She is a member of this crew and deserving of as much respect as you!”
His eyes narrowed and I could see him start to make mental excuses.My inventions are much more important and effective than her stupid little toys. I sell my goods to government agencies. She owns an organic grocery store whose top floor she’s turned into a haven for loonies and fringe dwellers. I make people better at their jobs. She just scares them. Who’s the true pro here, really?
I zoomed in on him, practically pressing my nose to his. “Your prejudice against the supernatural is affecting my mission. I can’t have that. You want to be a bigot? Go do it on your own time.”
Silence. I backed up, trying to gauge the effect of my words. I’d pissed him off, naturally. But had I blasted my way through that bank vault of a science guy door? I didn’t think so. For the sake of our relationship, I tried one last time. “I’m telling you, Bergman, if I don’t see a shitload of tolerance pouring out of you, and I mean soon, this is it for us. We’ll never work together again.”