Chapter 34 James
James
Nazeera comes to a sudden and complete stop at the threshold, wearing weapons like ornaments, and stares at us in shock.
Her visible horror is somehow not enough to clear the heat from my head. I’m so far gone it doesn’t even occur to me to be
embarrassed.
I feel like I’ve been recently murdered.
I can’t remember how to speak.
“I was gone for like twenty minutes,” Nazeera says, stunned. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
In response, Rosabelle puts half the diner between us. She retreats so far into the shadows I can hardly see her face. I look
in her direction anyway, spasms of feeling still branching through my veins, stealing my breath. I can still taste her on
my tongue. I can still feel her mouth on my skin. I tug blindly at the hem of my shirt, checking to make sure I’m decent.
I’m grateful it’s dark in here. There’s nothing I can do about these pants.
She kissed my chest.
I feel drunk. I want to lie down on the ground.
Nazeera shakes her head at me in disappointment, then wordlessly tosses a rifle in my direction.
I catch it on instinct.
She tosses me a magazine. I catch that, too.
“Well,” she says, “at least part of your brain still appears to be working.”
“Yeah,” I say, taking a breath. I feel like maybe someone should punch me in the face.
“So?” says Nazeera, glancing between us. “Did you ask her?”
“What?” I take another breath. “Ask her what?”
“James!”
“What?”
“The vial,” she cries. “Did you even ask her if—”
“Oh,” I say. Shit. The vial. Shit.
“You’re unbelievable!” Nazeera cries.
“I mean, no,” I say quickly. Shit. “No, she didn’t take it.”
More than one person needs to punch me in the face. I need people to line up. Take turns.
Fuck.
“You sure?” Nazeera narrows her eyes at me. She’s sorting through some of the gear, and she tucks a couple of things in her
pocket before glancing at Rosabelle. “Because the accusations are wild right now.”
“Yes, I’m sure.” My brain is becoming slowly operational, my instincts reviving—and with it, my urgency. “And I need you to
get her back to the house so I can get out of here.”
Nazeera takes her time checking the magazine on a rifle. “Look,” she says casually, “I really don’t understand why I’m the one who has to stay behind. I’m a much better asset than you are at the moment.”
My temper is back. “Are you joking?”
“Nope, dead serious,” she says, glancing meaningfully between me and Rosabelle. “You should see yourself right now. Your head
isn’t even fully attached to your body. You should’ve seen yourself when I walked in here. You weren’t living on this planet.
And while I wouldn’t normally advocate for leaving the two of you alone together, you’re an idiot right now. You’d be nothing
but a problem in the field. Given the risks, I think you should stay behind. Besides, you’ve been nothing but a liability
lately—”
“I won’t be a liability if I know she’s back at the house!”
“I’m not going back to the house.”
Nazeera and I both turn at the sound of Rosabelle’s voice. It’s the first time she’s spoken since she single-handedly ruined
my life.
She kissed my chest.
She steps into a shaft of light, and she looks clear-eyed and angry. Gorgeous. Unreal. I want to be alone with her again.
Now. Right now. I want to cross the room and get her, then get the hell out of here. I want—
“I want to know what’s going on,” Rosabelle says. “I need to know what’s happening.”
Mentally, I punch myself in the face.
“Look, I’d love to tell you what’s going on,” Nazeera says to her, “but you haven’t earned that right yet. You’re going back
to the house one way or another, and you’re going to stay there.”
“You’re going to have to make me,” Rosabelle says softly.
“Fine,” says Nazeera. “Do you want to choose where I shoot you? Or should it be a surprise?”
I bristle, alarms going off in my head as I stare between them.
“Look, Rosabelle,” I say, trying to sound normal, “we can’t let you loose in the middle of a manhunt across the city when
you’re already the number one suspect. You’d be putting a target on your back—”
“A manhunt?” she says, recoiling.
“Nice job, genius,” says Nazeera.
“Shit.” Fuck. My brain is shit.
“What did I say?” Nazeera says. “Liability.”
“I’m still waiting for someone to answer my question,” says Rosabelle. “Is the vial missing or not?”
I realize then that Rosabelle has moved. She’s now standing perilously close to the exit.
“What are you doing?” I ask Rosabelle, at the same time Nazeera asks me, “Are you sure we can trust that she didn’t take the
vial?”
“If I were in possession of the vial,” Rosabelle says sharply, “I wouldn’t be here right now.”
“Wait, what?” This clears the lingering heat from my head. “Why not?”
“I tried to explain this to you back at the house,” she says. “I can’t go back to the Ark without it.”
“She did say that,” says Nazeera. “I remember her saying that.”
“Okay, but why not?” I ask. “What are you planning on doing with it?”
“Whoa, wait a second,” says Nazeera. “If she really didn’t take the vial, then who are we hunting across the city? Everyone
assumes she’s the suspect.”
Rosabelle rocks back on her heels. She looks around blindly, panicking, as if she’s collapsing inward. “So it’s true,” she
says. “The vial is gone. Someone stole it.”
“Yeah, okay,” Nazeera says to me. “I see why you think she didn’t take it.”
“Do you have any leads?” Rosabelle asks, regrouping. “Do you know when the vial was first reported missing?”
“That information is above your pay grade,” I say to her. “You’re not going out there, Rosabelle. If you go out there, they’ll
kill you. No one trusts you. You’re living on borrowed time. Everyone already thinks you stole it—”
“None of that matters to me,” she says. “If I don’t get that vial, I may as well be dead—”
“Why?” I demand. “What’s in it? Why is it so important?”
“Where are we right now?” Rosabelle asks, looking around. “Why were there so many soldiers in this restaurant?”
“Rosabelle, stop,” I say angrily. “This is not your mission. You are not authorized to participate. Stand down.”
“I don’t answer to your people,” she says darkly. “And if you want to stop me, you’re going to have to fight me.”
“All right. Fine.” Nazeera sounds irritated but resigned as she turns to me. “You’re right. Liability or not, I did sign up for this, and you’re clearly too far gone in the head to manage her. I’ll take her back to the house and keep her there.”
“I’m not going back to the house.”
“Rosabelle—”
I hear Nazeera’s shocked cry before I even register the clatter; Rosabelle flung a plate like a Frisbee, striking Nazeera
in the sternum so hard she gasps, staggering backward before hitting the window.
The heavy plate hits the ground and shatters.
I watch, horrified, as Nazeera slides, stunned, halfway down the wall.
I explode. “Rosabelle, what the hell—”
Rosabelle flings two more plates, one hitting Nazeera in the stomach, interrupting her air supply, and the other in the knee,
collapsing her. Half-eaten waffles and breakfast potatoes fly across the room like shrapnel, hitting walls and chairs with
soggy thuds. She throws a fourth plate, but Nazeera doubles over in pain, struggling for breath, and manages to shift just
out of the way. The plate crashes into the window behind her, sending a rain of shattered glass into the room. Nazeera spits
out a shard, her lip bleeding. A fried egg splats against the door, yolk smearing as gravity drags it downward.
Nazeera groans.
Rosabelle is already across the room, tugging weaponry out of Nazeera’s limp arms. She pulls a strap over her head, then aims
a gun at Nazeera, who’s fighting to recover, grasping at her chest with one hand, searching herself for a weapon with the
other.
I’m literally speechless.
I stare at Rosabelle in disbelief.
“Oh my God,” Nazeera wheezes, her head rocking back against the wall, glass clinking as it releases from her clothing, hitting
the ground. She’s still trying to breathe, her face seizing with pain. “You’re such an asshole.”
“What’s your big plan, Rosabelle?” I say angrily, finding my voice. “What are you going to do now? You don’t know where you
are and you don’t know how to get out of here. It’s not as easy as you think it is to just leave this place—”
“Your world is held together with tape,” she says, meeting my eyes. “Taking it apart requires little effort.”
This shocks me into a laugh.
Nazeera manages to grab clumsily at the hilt of another gun hidden in her jacket, and Rosabelle kicks it, hard, out of her
hands.
“I avoided using anything sharp,” she says, looking Nazeera over. “Your injuries should be manageable.”
Even now, grimacing in pain, Nazeera makes a wry, humorless sound. “So this was you being nice?”
“You’ve been kind to me,” Rosabelle says to her, even as she steps past her slumped body. “I’m genuinely sorry about this.”
Nazeera winces. “I hate that I kind of respect you right now.”
Rosabelle pushes open the door. It rings softly.
“Stop.” I rack my gun.
She turns at the sound of my voice. For a moment she just looks at me, her pale eyes glinting in the spectral glow. Her body is braced in the doorframe, her silhouette backlit by the moon. She doesn’t even glance at the gun I’m pointing in her direction.
She looks ethereal.
Surreal.
She kissed my chest.
A breeze pushes into the restaurant, whipping her long hair around her face, and the silver lengths glimmer in the moonlight;
metallic; razor-sharp. She slowly lowers her weapon.
“Go ahead,” she says, looking me dead in the eyes. “Shoot me.”
“Rosabelle—”
“You still don’t understand,” she says to me. “I will protect you with my life. If that means I have to fight you, I will.
If that means I have to suffer in order to keep you safe, I will.”
My finger falters on the trigger. “What?” I draw back, ruined all over again. “Rosabelle, what are you talking about—”
“Don’t follow me,” she says, and disappears, the door ringing shut behind her.
For a full second I stand there, frozen in the aftermath. The gun nearly slips out of my hand. I don’t know how to reconcile
all the damage coming loose in my heart.
I am a liability.
Warner was right. Everyone was right. I can’t be an asset to my family, not like this. I’ve lost all objectivity. I’ll never be able to hurt her. I should be taken out back and shot.
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
I turn at the sound of Nazeera’s voice, my mind rushing back into my body, common sense catching up.
Jesus.
I can’t just let Rosabelle run wild in The Waffle.
I cross the room, doing a quick sweep for Rosabelle’s coat, but I can’t find it in this darkened mess. I shrug on my denim
jacket, then bolt for the exit, throwing open the door before remembering, as I’m about to cross the threshold, that Nazeera’s
been injured.
I hesitate, then pivot to look at her. “Are you going to be okay?”
Nazeera looks rough, but she has enough energy to roll her eyes at me. “Get out of here, dumbass.”
“Right.” I turn to leave, then hesitate again. “You know, if you’d just listened to me the first time and taken her back to
the house like you were supposed to—”
Nazeera chucks a shard of broken plate at me.
“Okay, all right, I’m sorry,” I say, and duck out the door.