Legacy(105)

We settled into an uneasy silence, and Ariadne had her eyes anchored on me. “What?” I asked finally.

“You saw him die?” she asked.

“Security is bringing him in right now,” I said. “You can visit him in the morgue, if you like, but I was assured by Dr. Perugini that it was indeed Erich Winter—going by genetic sample—that he is, in fact, dead, that the likely cause of death was burns covering one hundred percent of his body, and that he was going to, and I quote, ‘Stink up the maledetto office if I don’t get his corpse out of there soon.’”

“That fast, huh?” she spoke quietly, looking down.

“That fast, what? How quickly he died?” I remembered the sound of the shrieking, something so unlike the man I’d known as Winter. “Yeah, it was about as fast as could be expected.”

“Can we talk about the giant elephant in the room?” Scott asked uneasily from the corner.

“Yeah, I know my decor sucks, but I’ll get around to it sooner or later,” I quipped, in spite of feeling not particularly witty. Bleh.

The door opened before Scott could have his say, and Reed entered, followed by my mother. “The dorm is still locked down,” she said before I could say anything. “All our little metas—the few that remain, anyway—are all locked up tight with it.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“So,” she said, “you met Sovereign.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Big surprise. He didn’t try to kill me. Like, at all. He didn’t even have a cross word for me. I’m a little confused.”

“He didn’t try very hard to kill me, either,” my mother said, warily. “Which is worrisome.”

“Count your blessings,” Reed muttered. “He’s quite content to kill everyone who’s not a woman of the Nealon family.”

I saw a haunted look on my mother’s face as she looked at Reed, and I wondered what she was thinking. I closed my eyes and pictured Sovereign’s face, the one I would have associated with Joshua Harding only a few hours before. I didn’t know how to feel about him, whether to hate him or not. Then I thought about Erich Winter and realized I didn’t really have the energy to hate anyone anymore. “Weissman will be coming,” I said.

“We better come up with another plan, then,” Scott said, “since it sounds like this one is blown. And about that elephant—”

“I don’t know why, okay?” my mother said, turning on Scott. “I don’t know.” She shot a guilty look at Reed. “I watched him kill people I cared about, and he spared me with barely a touch. He got angry, got aggressive, held me up in the air, handled me in a way I’d never been roughed up before. It scared the living hell out of me, but what was worse was that he told me he’d be watching and alluded to what he’d do if I ever had a daughter ...” she looked at me, and I saw the guilt lace through her, “... but he didn’t hurt me. Not really.”

“Am I the only one seeing the obvious motive here?” Scott asked. “Clearly, he—”

There was a knock at the door that interrupted Scott right in the middle of his thought. I gestured toward it and Reed turned the handle, letting the door swing wide to reveal Kat, standing just outside, her body partially obscured by the doorframe. “Oh,” she said. “I didn’t know you’d all be having a meeting this late.”

“It’s fine, Kat,” I said, leaning my head back on my headrest for the millionth time. “Come on in. Might as well join the party; it’ll be like a reunion  .”

“Even more than you think,” she said, and started to come in, shuffling slowly. It took a moment for her to clear the doorframe and a second longer for me to register that she had someone with her, leaning on her, getting her assistance to walk. His body was smaller than when last I’d seen him upright and moving, but it was him, nonetheless, and I felt a shot of warmth as I stood.

“Janus,” I said, and felt a little tingle of joy despite my weariness. “You’re ...” He looked up, his expression hangdog as any I can ever remember seeing, as Kat brought him into my office and helped set him on the couch in front of my desk. “You’re awake.”

“I am awake,” he said, “but only barely.” He held a hand up to his head as though he were experiencing great pain. “I have had some troubling nightmares, as you might imagine. Terrible dreams. Things that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemies, though I am told that list is not so long as it might once have been.”