I felt my spine stiffen involuntarily. “Okay.” I felt myself quiver a little on the inside at the prospect of being able to live a normal life.
“But the price,” Janus said, shaking his head. “It is …” He shook his head again.
“Look,” I said, “this is, uhm … I mean, this is something that can maybe wait until after the war is over. I clearly don’t need to touch people right now, since I’ve lived this long without—”
“It doesn’t matter when you find out,” Janus said, and another shake of his head followed the dry, scratchy pronouncement. “Let me explain the theory behind this.”
I leaned in closer, afraid to miss a word of it now that he was explaining to me how I could potentially touch—hug—caress—kiss—and—and—everything—with another person.
“You know, of course, that your power comes from the marriage of Hades and Persephone, from the hybridization of her ability to heal with touch and his to steal souls from a distance.” I saw him waiting for an acknowledgment and nodded. “Then you must understand that your power is truly the polar opposite of a Persephone. Their touch heals, yours kills.”
“I have noticed that,” I said, listening warily. I remembered telling Scott after meeting Kat for the first time that I was her opposite—she was life, I was death.
“Then you must realize that the only way to put the stopper in your deadly touch,” Janus said, drawing out every word, “is to absorb a power that would be its equal and opposite. Something that would keep it from being able to act through your touch, something that would block its use.”
I froze and remembered the touch of Adelaide’s—Andromeda’s—hand on mine as she had steered me out of the Omega facility where I’d found her. It had felt as though she was taking away my pain, gradually healing the wounds from the beatings I’d suffered before meeting her. “No,” I said and shook my head.
“Yes,” Janus said, nodding. There were bags under his eyes, I realized, the weight of his knowledge pulling on him. In that moment, his motives became clear to me and I knew why he’d rushed from the conference room earlier. I wasn’t a monster, he said. Yet the thought of what I could do, right this minute, in order to have that power, in order to be able to live a normal life and touch like a normal person flashed through my mind—
I pictured myself kissing Scott, and realized … I wanted to. As aggravated as I’d been at him for all the ups and downs lately … I wanted to. I wanted to take his face in my hands and kiss him, long and deep, feel his fingers on my face and … elsewhere.
With a shock like a cold bucket of water dousing me, I cut off that thought. I could see the look on Janus’s face and it did most of the work for me. He knew. He’d seen it in my eyes, in the way I’d reacted. “I am not a monster,” I said, repeating it aloud almost as much for his benefit as mine.
“I should hope not,” Janus said, and he looked tired beyond belief, as though he were ready to lapse into another coma, right there in front of me. “Which is why I told you.”
I swallowed, hard, and broke away from his gaze. It was natural to think about it, wasn’t it? It didn’t make me evil for considering it, did it? For thinking that only a few stories below, there was an easy answer to my desire to live a normal life?
And all I’d have to do … was kill Kat by draining her dry.
Chapter 11
Playing a dangerous game, Little Doll, Wolfe whispered in my head. And playing it close, out of sight of your friends.
“Dangerous is all I know,” I muttered as I opened the door into the bullpen on the fourth floor. There was a buzz of activity, and I could tell by the smell of melted cheese that someone had ordered pizza. I realized I was hungry, famished actually, having not really eaten since yesterday. I steered toward the smell and found an empty cubicle filled with a half dozen boxes of pizza. There were a lot of missing pieces and I could tell that they’d been hit hard in a first wave. A couple of empty boxes had already been bent in half and stuffed into a big black garbage bag that was sitting next to the table. A few two-liter containers of pop were spread out at the end of the table with paper plates and cups, and—oddly enough—plastic cutlery.
“Sienna,” J.J. said, nodding to me as I drifted into the cubicle. He was munching on a slice of pepperoni and sausage, chewing and moving his head in rhythm.
“J.J.,” I said, making my way over to the pizzas. I hovered over the Hawaiian one, and the fragrant scent of pineapple caught me like a fishhook. I grabbed a plate. “What’s the word?” I asked him, more conversationally than anything.