“So,” Janus said in a mild voice from the doorway, “I take it you enjoyed your first night in England a bit too much?”
“What?” I said, taking a breath between heaving my lungs up. “How long have I been here?” I put my head back down in the toilet and threw up again.
“I left you at Heathrow yesterday,” he said, somewhere between impatience and amusement. “You must have made fine use of the downstairs bar and the legal drinking age of eighteen.”
“I …” I heaved my last and sat back on my haunches. “I …”
“I don’t really understand such things,” he admitted, “but then, I grew up in a time long before drinking ages, when everyone had wine for every meal, even as children.”
I smacked my lips together as a milder wave of nausea passed through me. “How lovely for you.”
“It was a simpler time,” he said. “Are you quite finished?”
“For now, I think.” I felt a pressure in the back of my throat. “Never mind.” I bent my head down again.
“Good Lord,” Janus said after another minute. “And now?”
“I hope so,” I whispered. “Dear God, I hope so.”
“We have business to attend to today,” he said, and I heard the click of his pocket watch snapping shut. “Do you need a few minutes to ready yourself?”
“Ready myself for what?” I asked, rolling over to put my back against the wall. I stared up at him and caught a pitying look as he glanced back down at me.
“Ah …” He stepped into the bathroom, leaned over the bathtub, and grasped a small towel folded on the edge. He wet it under the tap and handed it to me from a distance, as though afraid to get too close. “You might wish to consider wiping your mouth.”
“Thank you,” I said acidly and did so. I slung the wet towel across the tub’s edge when I was done. “What are we doing today?”
“I thought we could get breakfast,” he said. “A working breakfast.”
“Lovely,” I said, resting my head against the tiles of the wall. They felt cool even through my matted hair.
“I suppose I could understand if you’re not very hungry.”
“I’m surprisingly ravenous,” I said, “though I did just lose everything I’ve ever eaten and possibly things that my ancestors ate as well.”
He gave a light chuckle. “I can wait if you need to clean up.”
“Sure,” I said, gingerly getting to my feet. My stomach seemed to have settled, at least for the moment. “Let me get my bag, and you can wait for me out there.” I gestured vaguely toward the small room that lay beyond the hallway.
A few minutes later I emerged from the bathroom. Fortunately my ponytail had spared my hair from my gastrointestinal reversal, so I only had to rebind it. I showered quickly and dressed, avoiding the ordeal of washing my hair. I stepped out of the bathroom a few minutes later, fully clad in jeans and a sweatshirt, to find Janus standing at the window, which was open about three inches. He glanced back at me. “You didn’t even make it to the bed, did you?”
“No,” I said, laying my bag on one of the undisturbed single beds, the brown, ages-old comforter not leaving me with much confidence that it was clean in any way.
“You didn’t drink last night, did you?” he asked, and I could hear an edge of suspicion.
“No,” I replied.
“Perhaps … some illness from the travel,” he said, staring at me carefully, his hands in the pockets of the vest beneath his suit coat. I realized it was the vest that made him look like a banker. Having the pocket watch anchored there was an interesting affectation; he looked every part the proper and distinguished gentleman.
“Let’s hope,” I said. It probably went without saying, but I did not want to talk to him about the voices in my head, not remotely, not in any way. They were a problem, a weakness, and the fact that they could drive me to blinding pain was hardly a new discovery to me. The fact that they could somehow render me unconscious was cause for concern, but it didn’t need to be any concern of his.
Also, I was pretty sure I’d seen Dr. Zollers, the real one, invading my head, and speculating about what he was doing in there was probably a quick path to a whole tangle of mysteries that I didn’t have answers to. Like, had he been the reason I’d had the vision of Adelaide?
“Ah, well, my girl,” Janus said, and he was hesitant but reassuring. “Let us go, then.” I knew he was an empath, and it didn’t take much for me to immediately jump to the idea that he was reading me, knew I was reluctant to talk about any of it, and decided he was better off not asking. Part of me wanted to curse him for that; the other part wanted to know what he knew. I gave him a sidelong look that he ignored in favor of walking toward the door, leaving his back exposed to me. I ignored the opportunity; he’d given me no reason to club him unconscious—yet—and despite what Omega had done, Janus hadn’t wronged me. Again: yet. I was still watching for it.