Chapter 51
Fifty-One
NOW | JAX
“Okay, so let me get this straight,” I say, watching the copper bowl spit a blue flame. “You knew about this.”
Murtaugh’s hunched over a table cluttered with glass beakers, leather-bound books, a human skull carved with symbols, and something that looks suspiciously like a mechanical heart suspended in fluid.
This lab stopped being a normal lab years ago.
The first time O brought me here, I was out of my mind, still fighting the magic like some fool who thought there was a way out.
Murtaugh and O were right there with me, clinging to that same hope.
We ran every test. Drained so much blood I should’ve died, pumped me full of experimental shit trying to get the tar out.
We tried brute force, medication, anything.
Of course, none of it worked. Years of this, and we’re right back where we started. Square one.
Murtaugh, though, he seems to get off on it.
To him, I’m not a person; I’m an exciting project.
A mad scientist in his natural habitat. He spends his days theorizing, writing his papers about how the tar is a force to be studied, understood.
He’s wrong. It’s something you should either leave the hell alone or try everything you can to rip out by the roots.
I keep telling him, it’s a waste of time.
Behind me, Sisk makes a small, disgusted sound. “Is that a… human—”
“Dick, yeah,” I cut in, jerking my chin toward the specimen floating in cloudy preservative on the shelf.
“Told you to hide that one,” I tell him.
“It’s an anatomical study,” he replies without so much of a glance at us.
“It’s a floating penis.”
“It’s data.”
Sisk mutters, “This is insane.”
She’s right, everything in here is, me included. There are jars of preserved organs, bundles of dried herbs, vials of black tar sealed in wax, a chalkboard with equations tangled through sigils. Anyone sane would call this witchcraft. Murtaugh calls it tar physics.
“Subject J,” he says absently, already turning back to the copper bowl. “You’re late. Now, come on. Tongue out. Let’s get a sample.”
I don’t move.
“You should have come to me immediately,” he adds.
“We’ve been over this,” I snap. “There’s nothing you can do. Nothing anyone can fucking do.”
He hasn’t changed one tiny bit since O dragged me down here years ago. Same ideas, same outfit: long hair tied back and a lab coat thrown over a black turtleneck, landing between a scientist and a cult leader.
Sisk’s eyes cut to me. “Subject J?”
I shrug. “Told you he’s crazy.” I nod toward a shelf where a row of glass vials is filled with tar. Each one is labeled with a date, but the one in the middle has a different label. “See those? All mine. But that one?” I point with my chin. “That’s Subject R.”
She asks, “Who is subject R?”
“Patient confidentiality,” Murtaugh says without even turning around.
“Whoever the hell he, she, or it is, must be just as fucked up as me for you to be studying them too,” I say, sticking my tongue out.
“It’s finally time he brought you here,” Murtaugh says to Sisk, ignoring me completely as he swabs my cheek.
“Me?” she asks. “Why?”
“She hasn’t been briefed?” he says without looking up.
“She doesn’t like being left out,” Sisk says before I can answer, shooting me a look.
“Sorry,” I mutter under my breath.
He blinks at me like I’ve just grown a second head. “Apologizing?” he says. “You’re evolving after all.”
I force a smile. “For the millionth time,” I drag a hand down my face, “can we fucking drop this theory?”
“The tar isn’t stabilizing. It’s adapting. Faster than predicted.” He reaches for a tray of instruments. “And you’re deteriorating at a cellular level. So no,” he adds mildly. “We can’t drop it.”
Sisk steps forward. “What do you mean, deteriorating?”
I lean back against the metal table, letting my shoulders slump, projecting bored, as if my insides aren’t occasionally trying to rearrange themselves, literally.
“It means,” Murtaugh says, adjusting a strange brass device, “that if we don’t understand the mutation, your boyfriend is going to combust from the inside out.”
Sisk goes very still.
“Or worse,” he continues.
“Worse?” she asks.
“Lose himself to it.”
Sisk looks like she’s about to faint. I’m not exactly sure if she’s reacting to the word boyfriend or the idea of me turning into something else entirely. Either way—Murtaugh isn’t wrong.
The back door swings open, and the sound of heels clicking across the floor tells me everything I need to know. Viper steps into the lab like she’s entering a VIP section instead of a biohazard zone.
I watch Sisk’s expression shift.
Viper’s in her usual attire too. Black leather everything. Her blonde hair is yanked into a tight ponytail, exposing every inch of the snake tattoo running down her spine. It’s a sick piece of work, almost down to her ass, with the snake’s mouth open at the base like it’s about to strike.
Sisk sees it. I see her see it.
“Hey, Jax,” Viper says, casual as fuck.
“Viper.”
Sisk’s eyes snap to me.
“This is Sisk,” I say, gesturing lightly. “My girlfriend.”
The word hangs there, and I have to bite the inside of my cheek not to enjoy that too much.
Viper turns slowly, taking Sisk in from boots to shoulders. “Oh,” she says. “You’re the one.”
Sisk folds her arms slowly. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Murtaugh doesn’t even glance up from his notes. “It means he broke my sister’s heart for you and she hasn’t fully recovered.”
I cough.
Sisk looks at me.
Viper laughs softly and starts walking toward me like this is a continuation of a private conversation and Sisk’s just background noise.
“He’s not wrong,” she says and she takes my arm without permission, her fingers sliding up the inside of my elbow to push my sleeve back, exposing the tar vein she’s drawn blood from more times than I can count.
Sisk goes rigid.
“You’re tense,” Viper murmurs, thumb dragging lightly over my vein. “I hope that doesn’t have anything to do with me.”
Sisk’s voice is calm. Too calm. “It might have to do with the fact that he’s deteriorating.”
Viper glances at her. “Oh? Is that what we’re calling it now?”
Murtaugh hums approvingly.
Viper’s thumb presses harder into my vein. Sisk is staring, and the fun I was having a second ago just evaporates. I shift my weight, suddenly wishing I was anywhere else.
“I’m fine,” I grit out, staring at the far wall.
Sisk steps closer.
“Good,” Viper says softly. “Because if this was about me, that would be deeply embarrassing.”
Sisk tilts her head slightly. “Viper, isn’t it? Very creative. Are you done performing,” she asks softly, “or do you need the spotlight a little longer?” Her eyes flick to the hand still wrapped around my arm. “Because I’d like to get back to the part where he might die.”
Murtaugh’s pen actually pauses.
Viper’s smile doesn’t disappear—it just tightens. “Feisty for a ballerina,” she says lightly. “Or is it just dance instructor now? Jax told me about your almost.”
“Almost?” Sisk repeats mildly. “Is that what he told you? The reason I’m teaching now? That I didn’t make it?”
“I didn’t say that—”
“It’s fine, Jax,” Sisk cuts me off. Her eyes drift slowly over the leather, the snake, the posture. “She’s bitter because she almost had you.”
I physically feel the temperature in the room shift.
Viper exhales through her nose. “Oh sweetheart,” she says, stepping closer, “if I’d wanted to keep him—”
“Nobody cares,” Sisk cuts in.
Viper’s hand twitches but her fingers trail higher on my arm, inspecting the dark vein threading faintly under my skin. “It’s spreading,” she says, changing the topic. Her finger traces up toward my bicep.
“Enough,” I snarl, ripping my arm away.
The copper bowl flares, the blue flame surges high. Every loose instrument on the table rattles, the brass compass device spins violently before snapping toward Sisk like it found north.
No one moves.
Murtaugh exhales. “Interesting.”
Viper actually steps back.
“What do you know about the eclipse?” I ask Murtaugh, cutting the tension clean down the middle.
He adjusts another instrument on the table. “Wasn’t an eclipse,” he says. “Shadow Sun. It accelerated the tar cycle though. You’ll start feeling the full moon effects earlier than expected.”
His eyes flick to me, then to Sisk. “We need her blood too.”
Viper gestures to the chair beside me with exaggerated politeness. “After you.”
Sisk looks at me instead. “You should’ve told me about this,” she says firmly.
I don’t know if she means about Viper or the science, either way, I don’t want to fucking talk about it.
“For what it’s worth,” Viper says smugly, reaching for a fresh syringe, “he wasn’t very good at communication when we were together either.”
“We were never together,” I snap. She’s going too far.
She arches a brow. “You slept in my bed.”
Sisk settles into the chair. “And still… he left.”
Viper’s mouth twitches but she draws Sisk’s blood with clinical precision.
When the needle slides out, Sisk presses the gauze to her own arm before Viper can.
Right here, right now, I realize something deeply inconvenient: I’m an idiot.
Having Sisk meet Viper this way was a really fucking terrible idea.
Murtaugh slides both samples under a glass testing square. The tar in my blood sample shifts, separating like oil from water, and it starts to pull toward Sisk’s. The thin black filaments stretch across the glass, reaching for the drop of Sisk’s blood like a magnet.
Murtaugh leans in. “There,” he breathes. “Do you see that?”
We all lean in.
“It’s responding,” Murtaugh says quietly.
“You mean—” Sisk starts.
“I mean,” he says to us all, “the tar in Jax is connected to you, Sisk. I need you both to be extremely honest,” Murtaugh says carefully. “No judgment.”
Sisk exhales slowly. “Okay.”
“What happened that night?”
“You know what I did,” I snap. “You know about the fucking bargain. We are leaving.” I push off the table.
But Sisk doesn’t. “Jax, wait.”
“Sisk, I told you. This is nothing. They know everything. There’s nothing they can do—”
“They don’t know everything,” she cuts in.
The room stills.
“You don’t know everything,” she finishes.
I look at her.
“The fuck does that mean?”
“I made a bargain that night too,” she says.
What in the actual fuck did she just say?