Tainted (18 page)

I don’t care.

“What about appearances?” Emma asks when she steps into the room from the hall.

For one brilliant moment, Daniel is here, trapped. He’s woven tight into me, threads of memory in my mind, echoes in my heartbeat. What I see is enhanced by his essence. Her curves, the freckles on her nose, the blue of her eyes. My heart batters my ribs. This close to revival, I can almost taste the way she fills my forever.

“Emma,” I breathe. “Hey.”

“Hi.” Her smile is enough to melt me.

She flings both arms around my neck, and stands on tiptoe. I lean down, her breath on my lips. I can’t tease her; the need to kiss her, crush her to me is too intense. I scoop her from the floor, press her to me and kiss her like this may be our last embrace. With not knowing the results of her blood tests, or what caused her personality splits, this just may be our last real moment.

“Alex,” Paul’s voice comes over the intercom, “Emma’s test results are in.”

Reluctant to let her go, I cinch her tight to my side as we traverse the halls to Paul’s office. What I always thought was cozy becomes cramped when the four of us pack into the room lined with bookcases, cabinets and computer screens. My eyes slide past the one aimed at the empty cages of the animals that grad student Katrina had been testing on.

Bree wriggles tight up to Jason, who wraps a sheltering arm around her. Emma follows suit, her back to my chest. I drape both arms over her, pressing out the air between us.

Paul stands on the other side of his desk, a few sheets of paper in his hand. He shakes his head as he runs a finger down a row of numbers.

“What is it?” I ask.

He lifts a glance to me, then drops his focus back to the pages. Anxiety, silent and oppressive, swells to fill whatever space is left in this room.

“These test results are not helpful.” Paul says. “According to her SED Rate and other tests, there are no foreign chemicals in her system other than slightly higher residual amounts of the formula.”

Are the results real? And if they are, is Paul thinking what I am – if her breaks with reality aren’t medicinal, they’re mental.

Is
she
thinking it?

Emma suddenly feels so small in my arms, a bird with a broken wing who may never fly right again. And I caused the worst damage when I tried to fix her hurts and threw her into the sky.

“Does this stop the procedure?” she asks. “Crap. Is that what we call it?”

“It was once called Prodigal when it referred to just Alex, but now maybe it’s the thing that shall not be named,” Paul says with a half-smile. “Alex and I have always operated on a ‘less said, the better’ philosophy.”

“Ignoring it won’t make it go away,” Bree says.

“What about the Lazarus Procedure?” Jason suggests. We all turn surprised looks at him. “What?” He says. “So I paid attention in Sunday school… We’re just lacking anything remotely resembling something holy here.”

“We can call it that,” Paul says with a nod.

“Cree-eepy,” Bree whispers. If my senses weren’t on high, I may not have heard it.

Fear comes off Emma in waves. She turns her gaze to Bree; her best friend looks like she’s going to cry or start yelling. Then Emma draws in a breath and squares her shoulders.

“At least the animals are gone, right?” Emma releases my hand. She turns a quick, conflicted look at me. “If I flip out, you can always lock me in a cage.”

“I’m sure it won’t come to that,” Paul says. “Are you ready, Emma?”

“Does it matter?”

“You have some time,” he tells Em in a kind, patient voice.

“Might as well get this over with,” she says with a shrug.

With a nod, Paul scoops up a new folder, puts Em’s blood test results in it and grabs a fresh sheet to log the Lazarus Procedure results. “This way,” he says, and leads our group into the hall.

Emma keeps her head high and chin up, even though her bottom lip quivers. In the lab, she stands beside the table I recently left and says, “What next?”

“Do you have a camisole on under your sweatshirt?” Paul asks.

“Will a tank top work?”

“Of course.” Paul takes a sheet from the nearby pile, the fabric unfolding as he moves. He folds it awkwardly in half, then covers the length of the table. “Alex said you were having trouble with regulating your temperature. The metal is cold.”

I hold the table steady while Emma climbs up. Then she peels her sweatshirt and long-sleeved T-shirt off too. Bree takes the shirts, busying herself folding them while Paul slides into his serious mode. He makes quick work of attaching the monitor leads and electrodes. Emma pales when Paul swabs her arm and readies the IV.

“Take my hand,” I tell her. She nods, not bothering to hide her trembling now.

“You’ll feel a little pinch,” Paul warns and slides the needle into her vein.

“Just a few minutes,” I promise. I hope.

He has the syringe in the port, ready to introduce the sedative into Emma’s IV, then Paul asks, “Ready?”

“Yes,” Emma says. Then whispers, “Alex, please don’t leave me.”

“I’ll be here waiting.”

Her eyelids sink shortly after Paul pumps the drug into her IV. I brush bangs away from her face, and when the tension leaves her hand, I lay it beside her.

“You don’t want to look,” Jason says behind me. Stubborn Bree refuses to turn away, and instead tries to watch everything, her eyes darting from monitor to monitor to IV.

“Formula now,” Paul says, his voice slightly sing-song like he’s teaching a lecture on thwarting God and trying to make it soothing. He presses a button on the IV pump and a premeasured, preloaded dose of my red, life-sustaining serum mixes with the clear solution in the tube leading into Emma’s arm.

“Bree,” Jason’s voice has taken a firmer edge. “Trust me. You don’t want to see what I did.”

His girlfriend remains rigidly facing forward until the last of the red passes into Emma’s body. Paul lifts his stopwatch, fingers of the other hand on Emma’s wrist as he counts heart beats. When he reaches, “Five… four… three…” Bree spins and buries her face in Jason’s shoulder.

“Two… one,” Paul says. I suck in a breath when he presses “execute”.

The lights flicker above us as the system routes electricity into Emma to charge the formula. Energy crawls over my skin, buzzes in the air as the program modulates to the highest power levels, activating the chemicals. Emma’s body responds, every muscle standing in tight corded bunches, her jaw snapping shut. No convulsions this time. When the wattage output decreases, Emma’s body relaxes, and I can breathe again.

Lights return to normal above us, the tingle leaves the air, and the program hits the final phase, shutting the electricity completely off.

“Emma?” Bree whispers.

“Wait,” Paul says, arms crossed as he observes. “Give her time.”

Em’s eyes snap open and she leans to the side, coughing, gagging as if there’s water in her throat. Nothing comes up. When she can draw a breath, she wheezes, “Alex?”

“Right here,” I place a hand on her shoulder. “I’m right here.”

Her fingers coil around mine, a tight grip charged with electricity. Tingles dance in the air between us when she drags my arm around her. Em presses her face to my chest, breath warm on my skin before tears wet my shirt.

“All I wanted was air,” she whimpers, “and you. When I realized I would never breathe again, all I wanted was you.”

A strangled sound rips free of Bree, like a sob she couldn’t quite swallow. Jason holds her closer, strokes her hair. Even Paul wipes at something on his cheek and busies himself with anything that excludes looking in our direction.

“I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you, Em.” My voice cracks and I don’t care.

“You brought me back,” she says and squeezes me tighter.

“I couldn’t let you go…” I hold her as tight as I dare. “I’m here now.”

I can’t promise I always will be. Her mother is determined to keep some kind of wedge between us.

Poor Paul. I’m not letting go and neither is Em. He bobs and weaves through wires and tubes to work Em free from the monitors. He even manages to remove the IV and tape a bandage over the spot. “We should probably run a neurological evaluation,” he suggests in a calm voice, “Just to be sure.”

“Can do,” Emma says. “That cage is clean, right?”

“You won’t be needing a cage.” He is so kind, so reassuring. Nothing like my father ever was. Nothing like a murderer, or conniver would be. “But,” he adds, “you will have to let go of Alex for a while.”

“In a minute,” I say.

I twist around her on the table until we’re face to face. Her skin glows, hair spills in waves around her face. I thread my fingers through the strands, until I can lace them behind her head. I drown in the blue of her eyes, then lean in to taste her breath. Our lips meet in a surge of electricity that jolts my heart. Emma’s my everything, and I tell her through this kiss.

She asked for me when she woke. “When I realized I would never breathe again, all I wanted was you.”
Nothing can defeat us. Not the dark my father created. Not the shadows looming over us now.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

New Year’s Eve, and tomorrow night is the Reindeer Games. I can’t sleep. Energy runs laps through my nerves and vessels, buzzes and echoes in my bones. If it wasn’t a holiday, I would go to the gym and hit the treadmill, even if it meant running into Trent.

Tonight, I have better plans. Those that Emma set in motion when she apologized for hurting the deer.

Snow fluffs back at me with each powdery ball I lob. A thin layer of white covers the bedroom window where Emma’s supposed to be sleeping at the Ransoms’. The light flicks on, and a silhouette darkens the frame. Emma. I feel it. For fun, I toss another snowball. The shadow disappears, the lights turn off.

I trace Emma’s path through the house by the progression of lights going on and off. Hallway. Stairs. Living room. Kitchen. Back door.

She’s in jeans, boots, down jacket, mittens, just like I suggested, even a white hat over her wavy hair.

“Good,” I say and sweep her into my arms. “You got my text.”

“Yep.” She tips her chin down and peers at me through her eyelashes. “So what’s this moonlight escapade you’re proposing?”

“It’s not a proposal, Em.” I duck in for a quick kiss, a brush of lips, a promise of more. “You’re my prisoner.”

She squeaks a surprised noise when I swing her over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry. Her attempts at escaping are weak, mostly little kicks and wiggles, silenced with a swat on her butt. Then the brat hangs limp, drumming her fingers on my back while I hike around the Ransoms’ two-story house to my car, parked and running at the curb.

“Well,” she asks when I put her down, “can you tell me where we’re going?”

“And spoil it?” I open her door and nudge her into the front seat. “Where’s the fun in that?”

A pretend scowl darkens her features. She holds the fake expression until well after I climb in the car, and turn onto the deserted street. I kill it, though, when I stop under a red light, incline toward her and run my fingertips from her cheeks, down the sides of her neck, and unzip the neck of her winter coat. Her are cheeks pink, and a smile crooks her lips. Close to her, kissing distance, I say, “You’re so cute when you angry.”

“And you’re annoying,” she says, her lips touching mine.

“Only around you.” I love this game, teasing, touching, seeing the blush rise in her cheeks. I reach into the glove box and pull out a blindfold. She blinks, looks from me to the black silk in my hands. “Don’t you trust me?” I ask.

She goes very still. “With my life.”

I tie the blindfold over her eyes, then bury her in a kiss. This is not playtime, this is me pouring every emotion I’ve felt into one touch. Her mitten-covered hands come up, grab the sides of my head and lock us together. I slide a hand behind her back, pulling her up from the seat to hold her tighter to me. She sighs, and then giggles when I slide my fingers under her jacket. “That’s tickles,” she whispers.

Good thing, too. We might’ve ended up with indecent exposure instead of what I have planned.

“Tell me,” she says.

“Tell you what?” I play dumb.

“Where we’re going.”

“Somewhere.” I drive the twisty, turny, snow-choked back roads toward Stony Lake. “It’s beautiful out here,” I tell her. “The world is a black and white fairyland, dark tree trunks, white-coated branches and ground.”

She fumbles across the console to hold my hand. “This is exciting,” she says, voice soft and wistful.

“Good.”

Trees tower over us, trunks so dark they almost disappear in the night. Here and there, snow clings to branches, highlighting saplings vying for life among the monsters. I park the car in the private drive of a family friend who winters in Florida. Paul’s brother owns property out here next to this summertime estate.

“Are we there yet?” she asks.

“Not quite,” I say, and fish the paddock keys from my glove compartment. “We have a little hike.”

Cool wind smelling of the winter lake whisks through when I exit the car, and then open the door for Emma and take her hand. She stops, braces a mitten on the car. She tips her head back and draws deep breaths through her nose. “I can smell the lake,” she says.

“It’s just over the hill.”

“And pine trees.” She inhales again. “And wood smoke. Where
are
we?”

“I’m not telling you. And if you don’t promise to stay quiet until I tell you it’s safe, I’m putting you back in the car and bringing you back to Bree’s.”

She pantomimes zipping her lips beneath the blindfold.

Holding her hand, I lead her down a path I recently shoveled, through our friend’s property to the fence bordering Paul’s brother’s farm. Skirting around the edge, we finally reach the gate to the animals’ paddock. I pull out the key, unlock the gate, then lead Emma inside. At the inner gate, I scoop a bucketful of treats and then lead her into the enclosure.

Shadows dart and slip between the trees, creeping closer, brought by the smell of food.

“Cup your hands in front of you,” I tell her.

She obeys, and I pour the food into the bowl formed by her mittens.