ribs.
The steel needle slipped into one of his infected veins and he hit the plunger-
“What are you doing?”
His sister’s voice jacked his head up. In the mirror, she was staring at the needle in his arm and his red, rancid veins.
His first thought was to bark at her to get the fuck out. He didn’t want her to see this, and not just because it meant more lying. It was private.
Instead, he calmly pulled the syringe free, capped it, and tossed it. As the shower hissed, he pulled his sleeve down, then put on his jacket and his sable coat.
He turned off the water.
“I’m diabetic,” he said. Shit, he’d told Ehlena he had Parkinson’s. Damn it.
Well, it wasn’t like the two were going to meet anytime soon.
Bella lifted her hand to her mouth. “Since when? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” He forced a smile. “Are you okay?”
“Wait, since when has this been going on?”
“I’ve been injecting myself for about two years now.” At least that wasn’t a lie. “I see Havers regularly.” Ding! Ding! Another truth. “I’m managing it well.”
Bella looked at his arm. “Is that why you’re always cold?”
“Bad circulation. It’s why I need the cane. Bad balance.”
“I thought you said that was because of an injury?”
“The diabetes compromises how I heal.”
“Oh, right.” She nodded sadly. “I wish I’d known.”
As she stared up at him with her big blue eyes, he hated lying to her, but all he had to do was think of his mother’s peaceful face.
Rehv put his arm around his sister and led her out of the bathroom. “It’s no big deal. I’m on it.”
The air was cooler in the bedroom, but he knew this only because Bella wrapped her arms around herself and hunkered in.
“When should we do the ceremony?” she asked.
“I’ll call the clinic and have Havers come out here at nightfall and wrap her. Then we have to decide where to bury her.”
“At the Brotherhood compound. That’s where I want her.”
“If Wrath will let the doggen and me come, that’s fine.”
“Of course. Z’s on the phone with the king now.”
“I don’t think there’s much of the glymera left in town who’d want to say good-bye.”
“I’ll get her address book from downstairs and put together an announcement.”
Such a factual, practical conversation, illustrating that death was indeed part of living.
When Bella let out a soft sob, Rehv pulled her against his chest. “Come here, sister mine.”
As they stood together with her head on his chest, he thought of the number of times he’d tried to save her from the world. Life, however, had happened anyway.
God, when she had been small, before her transition, he had been so certain he could protect her and take care of her. When she was hungry, he made sure she had food. When she needed clothes, he bought them for her. When she couldn’t sleep, he stayed with her until her eyes closed. Now that she had grown up, though, he felt like his repertoire was restricted to nothing but placations. Although maybe that was the way it worked. When you were young, a good lullaby was all you needed to ease the stress of the day and make you feel safe.
Holding her now, he wished there were such a quick fix for grown-ups.
“I’m going to miss her,” Bella said. “We weren’t very much alike, but I always loved her.”
“You were her great joy. Always.”
Bella pulled back. “And you as well.”
He tucked a stray hair behind her ear. “Would you and your family like to have a rest here?”
Bella nodded. “Where do you want us?”
“Ask mahmen’s doggen.”
“Will do.” Bella gave his hand a squeeze that he couldn’t feel and left his room.
When he was alone, he went over to the bed and took out his cell phone. Ehlena never had texted him the night before, and as he retrieved the clinic’s number from his address book, he tried not to worry. Maybe she had done the overday shift. God, he hoped she had.
Chances were small something bad had happened. Very small.
But he was calling her next.
“Hello, clinic,” came the voice in the Old Language.
“This is Rehvenge, son of Rempoon. My mother has just passed, and I need to make arrangements for her body to be preserved.”
The female on the other end gasped. None of the nurses liked him, but they had all adored his mother. Everyone did-
Everyone had, that was.
He rubbed his mohawk. “Is there any way Havers could come out to the house at nightfall?”
“Yes, absolutely, and may I say on behalf of all of us, we are deeply aggrieved at her passing and wish her safe passage unto the Fade.”
“Thank you.”
“Hold a moment.” When the female came back on, she said, “The doctor will come immediately after sundown. With your permission, he will bring someone to assist-”
“Who.” He wasn’t sure how he’d feel about it being Ehlena. He didn’t want her to have to deal with another body so soon, and the fact that it was his mother’s might make it even harder on her. “Ehlena?”
The nurse hesitated. “Ah, no, not Ehlena.”
He frowned, his symphath instincts triggered by the female’s tone. “Did Ehlena make it in last night?” Another pause. “Did she?”
“I’m sorry, I cannot discuss-”
His voice dropped to a growl. “Did she come in or not. Simple question. Did she. Or not.”
The nurse became flustered. “Yes, yes, she came in-”
“And?”
“Nothing. She-”
“So what’s the problem?”
“There isn’t one.” The exasperation in that voice told him it was happy interactions like this that were part of what made them all dislike him so much.
He tried to make his voice more even. “Clearly there is a problem, and you’re going to tell me what’s doing or I’m going to keep calling back until someone talks to me. And if no one will, I’m going to show up at your front desk and drive every single one of you insane until a member of the staff cracks and talks to me.”
There was a pause that vibrated with you-are-such-an-asshole. “Fine. She doesn’t work here anymore.”
Rehv’s breath sucked in on a hiss and his hand shot to the plastic Baggie full of penicillin he’d been keeping in his suit’s breast pocket. “Why?”
“That I will not disclose to you no matter what you do.”
There was a click as she hung up on him.
Ehlena sat upstairs at the crappy kitchen table, her father’s manuscript in front of her. She’d read it twice at his desk, then put him to bed and come up here, where she’d gone through it again.
The title was In the Rain Forest of the Monkey Mind.
Dearest Virgin Scribe, if she’d thought she had sympathy for the male before, now she had empathy for him. The three hundred handwritten pages were a guided tour through his mental illness, a vivid, walk-a-mile-in-his- shoes study of when the disease had started and where it had taken him.
She glanced over at the aluminum foil that covered the windows. The voices in his mind that tortured him came from a variety of sources, and one way was through radio waves beamed down from satellites orbiting the
