She turned to her side, wanting to simply hold him now. His breathing was heavy, his skin damp with perspiration, but she could see little else of him in the patchy darkness. She called to the room’s sensors to turn on the lights and then smiled as she met his eyes.
“I’m glad you didn’t go tonight,” she said, cradling his face in her hands. “I’m glad . . . for a lot of things.”
“Me too,” he said, trailing a finger down her neck. She shivered at his touch, hoping it would lead to more. The odds seemed good as he traced the line of her cleavage, pausing to examine the charm he’d given her, which she still wore on its plain cord. It had stayed on when the rest of their clothing had been heedlessly flung away. The content look on his face shifted to a frown as he touched the symbol etched on the charm. He opened his mouth to speak, then seemed to think better of it and stayed quiet.
A surreal moment struck Mae because she’d been almost certain he was about to ask her what the charm was—which made no sense since he’d given it to her. “Surprised I’ve still got it?” she asked.
He gave no answer and simply drew her hands to his lips, kissing the tops of each of them. That strange sense of something being off spread through her, even though she tried to ignore it and focus on the way his lips felt against her skin, the way the light shone on his dark hair and—
“Why did you turn off the lights?” she asked suddenly.
It was an old joke between them. Mae, never comfortable with even her lovers seeing her vulnerability, tended to have sex in the dark. That was how it had been in Panama, and afterward, he’d warned her that next time, he’d keep the lights on so that he could watch every emotion play across her face in the throes of passion. It had been a threat that had started off terrifying but had become tantalizing the more time had passed, and she’d found herself longing to give all of her to him, not just her body. In fact, she realized, he’d even alluded it to it back in his room earlier tonight: You’re the one. There’s no one else I feel this connected to. And if I could do all those things, stay with you, make love—with the lights on—tell you everything that weighs on me, I would. Believe me, Mae, I would.
“I thought you’d like it better that way,” he said now.
Mae felt her breath catch and couldn’t make her voice work for several moments as a coldness filled her. “Because I asked for it earlier,” she suggested.
“Yes,” he said. He started to relax, but she must have given something away in her face, given away that she’d caught him in the lie. He jerked away at the same moment she reached for him.
“Who are you—” She started to say, her words painfully cut off as he backhanded her with a force she wouldn’t have thought Justin capable. He sprang from the bed and tore out of the room naked. The hit threw her off for a few seconds, giving him a slight lead, but then she recovered and took off after him, ripping a robe off the wall as she passed by it.
She made it to the living room in time to hear her front door slam. Without even the slightest hesitation, she gave chase. Whoever he was—whatever he was—she had the advantage of her implant. Surely, even with his lead, the burst of life and adrenaline powering her would close the distance. But she heard the lobby’s main door close while she was still on the stairs, and when she finally burst outside, he was nowhere in sight. A few pedestrians gave her a curious look as she tightened her robe and peered around, certain he couldn’t have gone far. She checked both directions on the street and sidewalk and even looked in the hedges surrounding the building’s entrance. Nothing. It was as though he’d vanished into thin air.
No one can do that, she thought. But then, no one should have been able to walk into her home wearing Justin’s face. She returned to her apartment shaking, both from the implant’s letdown and fear over what she couldn’t understand. Her mind nonetheless tried one last attempt at rationalization, refusing to admit that she had just been involved—very involved—with something beyond normal human abilities. Maybe it had been Justin, confused and high on some drug that had made him forget things he had no business forgetting.
She settled on her couch, wrapping her arms tightly around herself as she told her living room screen to call him. For a moment, it didn’t seem he would answer, and when he finally did, she wished he hadn’t.
There was no question where he was, from his tuxedo to the well- dressed people milling behind him to Lucian’s voice echoing on a sound system in the background. Justin was at the senate party, where he was supposed to be. He wasn’t running naked down her street. He wasn’t here. He never had been. Bile rose up in Mae’s throat.
“Sorry it took me a minute,” he said, pitching his voice over the background noise. “I had to sneak away to answer and—what’s wrong?”
The trembling in her body threatened to become a seizure. She could form no words, only shake her head as he asked her three more times what was wrong. After that fourth time, he told her he was coming over and walked out of the party.
He came straight to her apartment door, as the real Justin would have earlier. Mae’s state hadn’t improved, but as he sat with her on the couch, she managed to finally speak enough to get out a slightly disorganized but otherwise accurate retelling of what had taken place. Partway through, he started to reach for her and then seemed to realize she didn’t want to be touched. His hands fell back into his lap, and a storm of emotions played over his face, disbelief and horror and anger and compassion. She knew they must make a ludicrous sight, him so polished in his tuxedo and her disheveled in the robe. Nonetheless, she tried to use his face and steady eyes as a centering point to calm herself down. Instead, all she achieved was an internal berating that she could’ve possibly confused anyone else for him.
“I have to go,” she said abruptly, when she finished the sordid tale. “I—I have to shower. I have to wash him off of me. I can still feel him everywhere. I have to—”
“No, wait,” said Justin, grabbing her arm. He immediately let go when she recoiled. “No—don’t. Not yet. I know it’s a terrible thing to ask, but if you go to a hospital, check in as a rape victim—”
“I wasn’t raped!” she exclaimed. But then she faltered. “I mean . . .”
“Call it whatever you want. They can do a DNA check. They can
ID whoever this was from the registry. We’ll find out who did it.”
“And what if the results come back, and they find out it was you?” He winced at that. “I suppose that’s very possible, depending on the extent of this . . . I don’t know, illusion. Look, we’ll say you and I went out tonight, had sex at my place and that you were attacked walking home. That park around the corner’s got a lot of shady spots, and I’m pretty sure there are no cameras. Give some generic plebeian description, say you couldn’t see much in the dark, and then just wait for science to do the rest.”
“And so I go on record saying I slept with two guys in one night.” She stiffened. “And that I’m a praetorian who let herself get assaulted. If they believe that, then they’ll probably lose all faith in our military.”
Justin remained calm, despite how difficult she knew she was being. “Mae, I know this is hard on your pride, but please. This is the fastest way to get answers. We’ve talked about the War of the Elect, and now it’s found you—in a way I don’t think either of us could have predicted.”