“Maxine,” Grant said, staring at me. “Your aura.”
“Later,” I said softly, staring past him at the old woman resting on the bed. Giving her a good long look that drew readily from fresh memories.
She seemed so ordinary. Such a sick, wounded, ordinary woman. Wrinkled, shriveled, with oxygen lines running directly into her nose, and heart monitors disappearing up her short sleeve to her chest. It was a miracle she still lived.
Or maybe not so much a miracle. I saw the truth. I saw it in a way that I never would have, had I not looked the Black Cat in the face. Despite the odds, despite her advanced age, this was not Winifred Cohen.
The woman lying in the bed in front of me was the Black Cat of Shanghai.
“This is not who we thought,” I whispered.
“I know,” Grant replied solemnly, rising with a wince from his chair. “Look at her arms.”
I had not even paid attention, but I looked. Scar tissue covered her arms; rough, as though an electric sander had been taken to her skin. Or a knife. Something sharp that had cut and peeled.
“The doctors found those scars everywhere, as though she had been skinned alive,” Grant said, his voice tight with disgust. “They asked me about it, but of course I knew nothing. It got me thinking, though. And then, the longer I was with her, and the more I studied her aura—”
“That dark patch you saw.”
“Something…demonic. Buried so deeply, she might not even know it exists. There are many odd things about her aura. Fragments, just…floating. I’m not sure she knows who she is.”
I did not care. The real Winifred Cohen was probably dead—and if so, this woman had killed her, or paid someone else do it. Set up the others, even as she took over the woman’s life.
Should have finished the job. Should have finished. I felt my grandmother’s consternation. I shared it, thinking of Ernie. I had not done enough. Not enough, by far.
I walked to the far side of the bed where the shadows were thick, and tapped my foot on the ground. Zee rolled free, giving me an uneasy look.
“You knew,” I said. “You must have. You pretended she was safe. Why the hell would you go to so much trouble?”
“Many reasons,” he rasped, but a nurse chose that moment to approach the room, and he rolled back under the bed—leaving me fuming. The woman who entered took one look at my face—and then my ragged, ill-fitting clothing from 1944—and said sharply, “Is everything all right here?”
“Just fine,” Grant soothed, a melody in his voice. “If you could give us a moment?”
The nurse shot him a piercing look that lasted for all of two seconds. She swayed, touching her head. Grant said something else to her, his voice little more than a buzz to my distracted mind. The woman nodded absently, dreamily, and backed out of the room. He shut the door behind her.
I said, “Can you wake her up?”
Grant limped close, studying my face, probably seeing all kinds of ugly emotions rising from my heart. But there was only compassion in his eyes. “You went somewhere. Back.”
“Back,” I agreed. “Can you do it?”
Grant hesitated, staring from me to the old woman. His eyes grew distant, thoughtful.
“She’s aware of you,” he said, limping to the side of the bed. “Even unconscious, a part of her is reaching toward you.”
A chill raced over me. I watched the old Black Cat’s slack face. Remembered her golden eyes, the vibrancy of her lush curves. That cruel zombie smile.
Antonina, I told myself. Not the Black Cat.
And yet, I could not separate the two. It was impossible.
Grant bent over, and placed his mouth close to the unconscious woman’s ear. He sang to her, softly, but his voice rolled through me like the ghost of a summer storm, rich and heavy with thunder. I moved closer.
Her eyelids flickered. Her mouth moved, tongue darting over cracked lips. Grant motioned for me to grab a bottle of water from the nightstand, and I was ready when the old woman drew in a long, rasping breath. I rested the mouth of the bottle against her lips, and she instinctively tried to drink. I was careful only to let her sip. She finally opened her eyes, and met my gaze.
She recognized me immediately, but I could see now that it went deeper than that. I should have noticed before—realized something was wrong. The first time I had met this woman, believing she was Winifred Cohen, she had known things about me. I assumed, erroneously, that she had witnessed my grandmother in action. Only half right. Winifred had seen little or nothing. But the zombie, on the other hand, and her host…
“I know who you are,” I said softly to the old woman, when I was certain I had her full, conscious, attention. “Antonina. Black Cat.”
The faintest hint of a smile touched her mouth, sending a chill through me. I wanted to back away, but held steady, forcing myself to hold her gaze; golden-flecked, with shimmers that rose from the very human brown of her eyes. I would never forget those eyes.
“Hunter,” she whispered. “She was so taken with you.”
“The demon who possessed you,” I said.
She wet her lips. “My protector. I searched for her. For years. I felt her close sometimes, as though she was watching me, but she never…came home. Not after that day. You kept her from me. Both of you did.”
I ignored that. “You’ve been up to your old tricks. Hurting people.”
“Making right,” replied the old Black Cat. “I forgot you all, for a time. I forgot so much, but the Kuomingdang would not believe that. They did many things to me, trying to make me talk. All I could tell them were stories about Siberia. But one day they pushed me too far. I killed those men. I didn’t know how. Just that they were dead. I got out, and forgot them, too.”
The Black Cat closed her eyes, sighing. “I had such terrible dreams, Hunter. I wanted a new life. I wanted to be someone else.”
“You cut those tattoos off your body.”
“Part of the bad dream.” Her voice softened so much I could hardly hear her. “But I kept them. You don’t…throw away pieces of yourself. Like trash.”
Grant placed his hand on my shoulder. I straightened, fighting for my voice. “It was all a lie. You set Ernie up. You killed Samuel and Lizbet. Finally, you killed them. And you had yourself shot.”
“Making right,” she whispered again. “I dreamed of you, Hunter. All these years, dreaming of you. Feeling you, in my veins. And then one day I crossed paths with Winifred Cohen. I found her. I think I had been searching, all along. Quiet woman. But I could hear her.” The Black Cat brushed fingers across her brow, but barely, as if the effort hurt and weakened her. Her hand fell limp into the covers, and her eyes drifted shut. “I…absorbed her. I made her tell me what she knew of the others. And your grandmother. I wanted to punish that woman. She loved those children.
“But it all became a dream again,” she added, a moment later—sounding confused, and sad, and tired.
Grant drew me away. “Before, when we first met her, she truly believed she was Winifred Cohen. She believed everything she told us, right down to cutting the skin off a live woman. Which she did, apparently. Just to herself. Her immersion in that personality was flawless, even to me.”
“And now?”
“It’s like watching a quilt that has been cut into pieces. She’s floating in and out. Part of her is reaching for the Winifred personality. Other parts are just…resting in what she was. She’s crazy, Maxine. Well and truly scrambled. I think it’s possible she ordered the hit on herself, believing she deserved it. That she was Winifred and needed to die.”