Enemies(25)

“I controlled myself just fine,” I said, leaning back in my chair. “I saw her, I punched her in the face, and I kept myself from beating her to death afterward.” I shrugged. “I could have done a lot worse.”

Janus let out a loud sigh that I was fairly certain wasn’t exaggerated at all. “You could have restrained yourself entirely.”

Kat was sitting next to me, looking resentful as she held a tissue against her face. “Sweetie, she broke my nose.”

“Call him that around me again and your jaw is next.” I smiled bitterly and Kat’s visage turned horrified, then looked to Janus as if expecting him to referee our tête-à-tête.

“Is this really necessary?” Janus asked.

I started to answer. “She betrayed—”

“Your organization,” Janus interrupted. “An organization which betrayed you less than half an hour after you found out she had done so. Was it really so terrible, what she did to them—to them, not you?”

“I don’t know,” I said, cracking my knuckles, “why don’t you have her lean a little closer and we’ll see how I feel about it?”

Janus made a noise of despair and waved for Kat to leave, which she did, a sullen look on her cheerleader face. “Is this how it is going to be?”

“You work with monsters,” I said, “a little face-punching shouldn’t be that hard to cope with.”

“I expect it from monsters,” Janus said. “Not from you.”

“You don’t know me.”

“I do, actually.” He calmly came around his desk and sat down, easing into the brown, leather padded chair. It squeaked as his frame hit it. “I can sense your emotion, you know, on a minute-by-minute basis—”

“Which didn’t seem to help you stop me from obliterating your girlfriend’s nose.”

“Because it was too fast,” he said with a shrug. “You spun from enjoying a subtle needling of Bastet to rather extreme violence at the sight of Klementina within a second, second and a half perhaps.” He watched me as he raised a leg and rested it on the edge of his desk, leaning back in his chair to match my uncaring posture. “She betrayed the Directorate. Are you truly that upset about it?”

I stared back at him with some sullen of my own. “She betrayed me,” I said, but I felt a dash of unease. In the moment, I had felt like she’d betrayed me, but some things that happened after that pissed me off even worse. The thought of her touching Janus, calling him “Sweetie” made me ill. As I watched him, I knew he was sifting my emotions at the same time I was. A face popped into my head as I saw her in my mind’s eye on the night of the Directorate explosion, of how she touched Janus and my vision turned red—

“Oh,” I said quietly.

“Oh, indeed,” he replied with a quiet all his own. “It would appear that you are truly not that upset with Klementina on the basis of her betrayal of the Directorate.”

“It annoys me,” I said. “That’s plenty enough for me to punch her in the face.”

“Perhaps,” Janus replied. “But I think we both know that is not why you did it. Feeling … angry and avenging for another’s sake are somewhat noble emotions—”

“Don’t get too far up on that high horse,” I said, standing abruptly and causing my wooden chair to squeal as I pushed the legs against the floor. “You’re not Dr. Zollers and I don’t need a therapist, anyhow.”

He watched me from where he sat at his desk, judging carefully. “Perhaps not. But I think … a friend … might not go amiss right now.”

I laughed. “Let’s keep it professional, Janus. I know who my friends are.”

“Do you?” There was genuine curiosity in his voice, as though he were studying something particularly peculiar.

“It’s easy enough to keep track of,” I said, stepping behind my chair, as if interposing it between the two of us was enough to protect me from him, from anything he said. “There are so few left. Enemies, on the other hand, those I seem to have plenty of.”

“Probably not as many as you think,” Janus said, pushing back and standing up himself. “But then again, how would you know?”

“If it’s less than I think,” I said, watching him, “it’s only because they’re dying at a vastly accelerated rate, so quickly I can’t keep track of all of them kicking off.”

He shrugged. “If that’s the way you feel—”

“It is.”

“All right, then,” he said, wary again. “I do ask you to try and refrain from making more enemies while you are here. I don’t think Klementina bears you any ill will—”