I licked my chapped lips and smiled, a little manic at the thought, probably a defense against the real emotion underneath. “Yep, she did. Big surprise, huh?”
“I’m guessing it was for you,” Zollers said, and there was warmth in it. “Am I wrong?”
“Nope,” I said, keeping it succinct and overly zesty. “You’re not wrong. It was a big honking surprise. She saved my life from James – the Omega operative – and then she turned on me in about three shakes, when I started to put together some things.”
“Some things?” he asked. “You mean about who she really was?”
I nodded and unbound my hair from the tight ponytail I had it in, stuck the hair tie in my mouth and bit down on it while I redid my ponytail. “That’s right. About how she was a crazy psycho who would drain men for the fun of it, for the rush, or to get money or information. Sounded like she must have killed quite a few people. Just like James, actually,” I said with a little thought, and that allowed me to skirt the edge of a really big emotion that burned inside – betrayal.
“Tell me about James,” he said. “What happened?”
“He tried to kill me,” I said, with a great, exaggerated shrug of my shoulders. “Not much else to tell.”
“Before that,” he said, not letting it go, but doing so gently. “You broke up with Zack?”
“That a matter of public record?” I turned away.
“Not really,” he said. “But I got the gist of it from him when I talked to him in the medical unit. What happened?”
“What always happens,” I said, walking back to the wall of weapons and admiring my distorted reflection in the blade of a curved sickle. “Things fall apart.”
“What a classical answer,” he said, and I caught snark. “But when that happens, it’s because the center cannot hold, right?”
“You an English major or a psychiatrist?” I flashed him a sharp smile, like the reaper I had just turned away from.
“Maybe I’m both,” he said. “Don’t change the subject. You broke up with him. Why?”
“Because it was going nowhere.” I took a deep breath, tried to use it to give myself a chance to think for a second. “Because there is no next level of relationship for Zack and me,” I said. “And that matters.”
“To whom?” he asked, polite. His hands were tucked behind him, his weight on one leg, totally casual.
“To the guy who stocks the vending machines around the campus,” I said with snark of my own. “Do I really have to answer obvious questions?”
“You don’t have to answer any questions you don’t want to,” he said without expression. “But you should maybe try, because I don’t think the answer is as obvious as you think.”
“It matters to me,” I said coolly. “It matters to Zack.”
“How much does it matter to you?”
“A lot,” I said. “I’m not a nun, okay? I’m not super excited about spending my life close to a man and never being able to sleep with him. It…is desperately unsatisfying.”
“So you pushed him away?” Relentless. Driving.
“Sure,” I said, and went back to inspecting a pair of sais hung next to the sickle. I saw him in the reflection this time, not me.
“Because if you can’t be wholly satisfied, why be with someone?”
“Because maybe I’d keep him from being happy with someone else,” I answered, and ran my finger down the blade. It was deceptive, and I cut myself, a little line in the flesh of my index finger that filled with blood, pooling at the end of the cut, turning into a droplet. I turned to look at him again. “Because maybe I’m sick of this false closeness, this feeling of everything-but-intimacy.”
“Is sex your definition of giving your all?” There was genuine curiosity in his returned gaze.
I looked back to the blood on my finger, as it traced a line to my palm and began to gather there. “No.”
“You were going to have sex with James, weren’t you?” He held his distance, about twenty feet between us, and I stared at the blood gathering in my palm. “Would you have considered that giving him your all?”
“No,” I said. “I would have considered it…” I felt a sting. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I would have considered it. Expedient, maybe.”
“It would be expedient to sleep with a man you didn’t really know, just because you could?”
I didn’t hear any judgment from him, but there was worlds of it in my head. “Right after I broke up with my boyfriend, you mean?” I didn’t whirl at him; I kept composed. “Not even twenty-four hours later? What you must think of me.”
“I don’t think anything bad of you,” he said, soothing.
“How can you not?” I asked, and laughed just a little, but again, manic. I felt the first stutter of emotion I’d been holding back since before I’d seen Andromeda bleeding, the red circle radiating out on her chest. “I am death. I get people killed, Doc. I couldn’t stand that I couldn’t be close to my boyfriend, so I pushed him away, broke up with him, then I went to a bar that very night, got drunk, and would have slept with a man who worked for the enemy, because I could.” I said it with gusto, almost relishing the buildup of torturous emotion, like I was enjoying thrusting a knife into my own midsection and savoring the twist. “If Kat hadn’t stopped me, I would have. And after that, my aunt betrayed me, my mother left me – again! And I got another person killed.” I pictured Andromeda’s youthful face, her wet and tangled hair, as she’d looked when I held her, as she died. She wasn’t any older than I was. I broke into a laugh that turned into a half-sob. “How can you not think awful things of me? My own mother…” I felt my face twist. “She didn’t take me with her.”
There was a certain growing alarm on his face. “You can’t think—”
“How can I not?” I held my hands apart, and felt the blood drip off my palm to the floor. “Not only am I good at getting people killed and driving others away, but my own mother—”
I stopped as I saw movement behind the windows. There was a man coming down the hall. Tall, balding, lean and wearing a suit with a white shirt and red tie. My eyes traced him as he came along, his demeanor straitlaced. He stopped at the glass door and it swung open.
“Time’s up, Doc,” he said with excessive casualness. “She’ll have plenty of time for a counseling session later, but I need to talk with her now. Ariadne’s orders.” He nodded to me. “Come on.”
Doc Zollers didn’t turn to look at him, just stood there still fixated on me. “Mormont, I need a few more minutes—”
“Now,” Michael Mormont said, not harsh, but without an ounce of give. “Come on, Nealon.”
Zollers wheeled, and walked his way to Mormont, who watched him with a wary eye, and I saw him whisper something into Mormont’s ear. I’m a meta, so I heard it too. “She’s vulnerable right now,” Zollers said, “and I need to help her through some trauma. I just need a few more minutes.”
Mormont leaned in and whispered back. “She’s vulnerable? Good. Then she’ll answer my questions without fighting me as hard as her reputation leads me to believe she normally would.” He slapped the doctor on the back and I saw a grin that was almost a sneer. “Don’t worry, Doc. You’re a master. You can pick up the pieces when I’m all done.” With a finger he beckoned to me, and I caught the look from Zollers, the uncertainty.
I walked, one foot after another, toward him, passing Zollers, shrugging off the arm he tried to put around me, and out the door that Michael Mormont held open for me, into the hallway, where the cold of the air conditioner seemed overwhelming for some reason.
Chapter 9
Still bleeding, I walked out of the building, at which point I let Mormont cross in front of me. He shot me a sidelong glance as he passed, and I caught a glimpse of his smooth skin, not even a hint of five o’clock shadow on his face. His eyebrows were heavier, and his face held a bit of a smirk that he flashed me as he passed. He turned his back to me as he led me across the campus, following the paths that cut through the grass.