Chapter 14
I would behard-pressed to imagine a less attractive scenario than fucking a perfect woman into the mattress on a private plane, then immediately having an out-of-control episode and throwing up on a towel—thrice—before her eyes. The only way this could be worse is if the plane crashes while I’m still naked. If that happens, I’ll know there was supernatural interference, and whoever is in charge of the universe hates me so much that they wanted me to die without the slightest shred of dignity intact.
The plane continues to fly.
I lie on the bed for another fifteen minutes to be sure I won’t embarrass myself, then gingerly sit up.
“Okay,” says Artemis. “Can we turn the plane around now?”
“No. We’re too far away from land to do that.”
“Can we pick a different place to land, then? This can’t be worth risking your life over.”
“I’m risking my life either way,” I point out.
Graciously, Artemis does not point out that I’m also risking her life. Both our lives are at risk. I’m beginning to think that they were in serious jeopardy from the moment I walked into her parents’ house at eleven years old. I’m not sure what made me think that the past could never catch up to me. As if one miracle in the form of a kind, rich man would wipe everything clean.
She hovers, refusing to let me out of the bed and refusing to say what we both know is true: that of all bad omens, this is the worst one.
I’ve never had an episode start while she was in the room. I’ve never had one stubbornly resist ending in Artemis’s presence. I’ve never had one that didn’t also make her cheeks turn pink, which means we can’t predict any of this anymore. Maybe they’ll only affect me from here on out. Or maybe they’ll reverse, and Artemis will get the brunt of the symptoms.
Feeling like total shit is less terrifying than the uncertainty. From the thinly concealed worry on Artemis’s face, she thinks the same thing. I can’t allow myself to think too hard about what I would do if the situations were reversed. I’d much rather be the one dying than watching her die.
She wouldn’t appreciate me saying that, so I don’t.
Artemis asks a few more questions about Morcia. I explain, as blandly as possible, what I know about the political situation in the country and the tensions between the two political parties.
“Hang on.” Artemis pushes herself up on one elbow and stares down at me, the bedsheet draped over her collarbone like an enkylon. “Are we talking about terrorists? You’re meeting with terrorists?”
“I think what I’m trying to do is prevent them from becoming terrorists.”
“By what? Negotiating with them? That’s not what you’re supposed to do with terrorists, Apollo.”
“By—” I’m tired. My brain isn’t working at full capacity. I don’t recommend having an episode before or during any blackmailing being done on you or while taking an international flight. “By hosting a meeting with the…other political party.”
“The non-terrorist party?”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve…done this before?”
My heart leaps up from its resting rate and sprints around, apparently realizing that this is one conversation in particular I wanted to avoid. Unfortunately, I’ve already ruined that for myself, haven’t I? I remember saying something about this when the fever came.
“I didn’t negotiate for terrorists.” It’s not a beginning that bodes well for the rest of the story. “There’s a country next to Mociar. Rathbek. They elected that president a few years ago?—”
“Oh, God. The bad president?”
“Yes. He was a very bad president.”
“Apollo, everyone knew he was so bad. Even Castor and Pollux knew he was bad.”
“That’s why I thought…” It’s so exhausting to remember this. “That’s why I thought the opposition party might be better. But it wasn’t about what I thought. I’m the one who’s deciding foreign policy.”
“Right.”
“They wanted me to broker a meeting between the president and the general, so I did. I don’t know, Artemis, it was—there was going to be trouble with the elections. People were turning on each other. They wanted a peaceful dialogue, and that’s what I gave them. Representatives in a room.”
“And then what?”
“And they decided to cooperate with each other for the good of the country. Except the cooperative part wasn’t between the government and the people. It was between the government and the military.”
“Apollo. You did not orchestrate a military coup.”
“Fucking crickets, Artemis, no! I didn’t! I don’t have the influence to orchestrate a coup.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Maybe I do.” I can’t help it. I reach my hand up and put my fingers in her hair. I’m beginning to think that touching her won’t actually save me from anything, much less my own ridiculous body, but I want it anyway. “But I’ve never been interested in a coup in my life.”
“You’re interested in world peace,” Artemis says softly.
“I am…” Interested in making up for how ruined I am. “Very, very interested in world peace. I wouldn’t have hosted the meeting if I knew what would happen after.”
She furrows her brow. “Why didn’t you tell me about all this when it was happening?”
“Because doing a military coup isn’t hot.” My heart wiggles up into my throat. “I wouldn’t blame you if you were disgusted.”
“I’m not disgusted with you. I’m disgusted with bad presidents. And bad military leaders. And whoever wants you to…” A wary frown. “Get the terrorists to go away?”
“I sincerely hope that they want the terrorists to go away.”
“But you don’t know?”
“I don’t know anything right now. Except that I don’t want this country to have a civil war that kills a lot of innocent people, and that seems like it might happen if nobody steps in. And I’d rather stay on this plane with you forever.”
It isn’t meant to be, because time does a time. The ocean slides away under us.
And then we’re descending, and I’m numb. We’re getting dressed, but I can’t get warm. It’s an odd and unsettling contrast from the fever. I finish putting on my jacket and find Artemis in a long coat, her hair swept back like she’s the most dangerous version of her father’s daughter.
And then we’re meeting a man with a forgettable face and clothes that look like U.S. Army castoffs at the airfield and getting into a nondescript car.
And then we’re moving over a pockmarked road in the predawn dark, Artemis holding tight to my hand.
“This is just a meeting,” she says, putting on a calm face.
“It’s just a meeting,” I agree.
It’s not just a meeting. If it was as innocent as it seemed, nobody would have felt it necessary to blackmail me into coming.
The meeting isn’t in the capital city.
Of course it’s not.
It’s on a warfront. Barbed wire. Armed guards. A trench, like there’s a possibility of fighting that way. A low, brick building with a punched-out hole in one corner. A wall made of sandbags.
And for a brief instant, through a gap in the sandbags:
Tents, with people inside, looking out. So many people. Fucking assets. None of whom are making a goddamn cent off of promethium, most of whom probably don’t even own smartphones. These are just…people. They aren’t worth anything. They just want what everyone wants—to feel safe. No one deserves to be made a pawn in someone else’s war.
So to me, they’re worth everything. And I will not be using them as bargaining chips.
Artemis gets out of the car with me, but a guard stops her at the door.
“I’m going in with him,” she says.
“No,” the guard says, in heavily accented English. “You’re not.” He looks at me. “The colonel is inside.”
I want us both out of here. I don’t want to do anything to prolong our stay.
So I squeeze her hand and look her in the eye. “It’s just a meeting. If I’m not out in fifteen minutes, you get in the car and leave.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“Fifteen minutes.”
A heavy pause.
“Okay,” Artemis says. She’s lying through her teeth, but she gets up on tiptoe to kiss my cheek like she’s telling the truth. “I love you.”
“I love you,” I answer, and I want to spit out the desperate, hopeless taste of the words, but I can’t.
I kiss her once, too fast and too light, and drop her hand.
The fever’s already starting when I step into the building. It’s the most atrocious time for an episode I could have imagined, but I won’t be here more than fifteen minutes. I won’t be here more than ten. I’m going to make this deal, the deal that will save anyone else from appearing in photos like mine, and then I’m leaving, and I’m never coming back.
One way or another.
Too bad there isn’t a deal to save me.
I move through a narrow outer room that smells like gasoline and past another hallway into the back, where a man sits behind a desk lit by a small oil lamp. It looks like a movie set. All this could be fake, and what a relief that would be. The man at the desk is writing something on a piece of paper, and he doesn’t look up when I come in.
I make my footsteps as sturdy as I can and come to a stop at the edge of the desk.
He looks up from his paper and smiles.
Everything—the shadow-face on the Senator, the background menaces in the photos from that envelope, the voice in my ear—comes together in one sickening thud.
“Apollo,” the man says, and his voice is exactly the same as it was in that room, when his hand was on my shoulder and my brother was chained up in the other room and my mother— “I see you’ve come to do me a favor.”