“Run or be ripped. Not much of a choice. I might have done it years ago if I’d known about Kincaid. He immediately opened his home to me.”
“I had not thought I could love again until Valery entered my life,” Kincaid says, raising her hand to his lips again.
My head is starting to spin and I stare down at my plate, wondering if food might help me digest this news, but I discover it’s gone, stripped away by the valet while I was distracted. My fingers reach for a lock of loose hair and I twist it nervously. Valery and Kincaid can’t have known each other more than a few days. It doesn’t make sense.
“My dear, your arm,” Kincaid says.
Without the jacket I left in the drawing room, the burns I suffered from the falling aeroship debris are evident. They’ve healed into rough scabs that are more unsightly than painful. I shrug it off, flashing a smile at Dante, whose eyes narrow.
“An accident,” I assure Kincaid.
“They look like chemical burns,” Dante says. It’s an innocuous comment, but he’s already accused me of bringing down the aeroship our first day on Earth and I know he’s tallying this as further evidence.
“I insist that one of my men take a look at it. Don’t let your time in the Icebox fool you,” Kincaid says. “We’re not all barbarians here. We have our own renewal-patching methods available.”
I thank him although I have no intention of taking him up on it.
“Ahh, dessert,” Kincaid calls as a server appears with another platter. “Sweets for my sweet.” Valery giggles and nuzzles his hand.
“If I ever act like that, promise to kill me,” I whisper to Jost.
“Deal,” he says without hesitation.
Across from us, Erik is chewing on his cheek in what I’m guessing is an attempt to bite back laughter at the absurdity of the scene in front of us.
Despite the whirl of emotions I’m feeling, I take a spoonful of the custard in front of me. It melts across my tongue and floods my mouth with the slightest sweet creaminess. One more bite reveals spicy chocolate swirled through it.
“Lovely, no?” Kincaid asks with greedy eyes.
“It’s delicious,” I admit, but I set down my spoon. I’ve been a gracious guest, but I have something I need to do.
“Kincaid has excellent taste in everything he procures,” Valery tells me. There’s a warning in her voice and I search her face for a signal, but it stays placid under her mask of cosmetics.
“Dante said you could help us,” Jost says, clearly having grown impatient with the doublespeak.
Kincaid leans forward in an ominous way, dabbing the corners of his mouth with a linen napkin. “We’re going to help each other.”
NINE
THERE’S NO LOGICAL REASON TO GO TO her, but I excuse myself from lunch early, ready to hold Dante to the promise he made when we left the safe house. Given the events of the past week, I’m reeling as though my world is turning so fast, spinning so uncontrollably, that I can’t count on my feet to hold me upright. When I left the Coventry, I was an orphan, but now my mother is alive. It’s too much to process. I knew who I was a week ago, but I’m not so sure anymore, and my mother is the one person who might have the answer.
The guards give me a little grief when I ask to see my mother, but Dante himself called in the request, so they acquiesce.
Of course, I’m not sure that I want to see my mom.
They’re keeping her in the highest-security facility they have on the estate. A guard leads me there past dusty paintings, rolled-up rugs, and discarded busts, which they must have no additional room for in the main house. As we walk, he explains what will protect me from her trying to attack. I never thought I’d have to be protected from my mom. It seems like uncertainty is the only sure thing these days.
“It’s a huge power drain,” the guard tells me as he leads me down a barely lit corridor, past dozens of empty cells. “We usually don’t keep Remnants more than a few hours before…”
He hesitates, but I already know the answer.
“Before you execute them,” I finish.
“It sounds horrible,” he says. “But we’ve tried to help them. We’ve done everything we can. There is no redeeming these creatures.”
“Creatures?” There’s disgust in my voice, but I know I’m being a hypocrite. Don’t I think of them the same way?
“You’ve seen them. What they can do. You can waste your time feeling sorry for them if you want, but not all of us have that luxury.” He keeps his face turned from me as he speaks.
I wonder who he lost to this dirty war between worlds. It’s in his voice—the pain of it.
“So why are these such a drain?” I ask, shifting the topic back to the cells, which look ordinary enough to me.
“These ones aren’t. We primarily use them for holding Rems before termination. But our newest visitor is going to be staying awhile. She’s been patched up and healed, so Dante wants to be sure she doesn’t try to escape.”
“You catch a lot of Remnants?” I ask, wondering at the need for so many enclosures.
“A fair few,” he hedges before abruptly adding, “We’re here.”
He stops at a small gray door and enters a code. The door zips open and I follow him into the high-security cell. The room is lit by halogen but only enough for me to make out her shape lying in the corner. There are two sets of bars between us, which seems a bit excessive.
“You want me to stay with you?” he asks, but I can hear how much he’s hoping I’ll say no, so I shake my head.
“I’ll be fine,” I say confidently. After all, it is my mother.
“Okay,” he says, but he doesn’t sound convinced. “Whatever you do, don’t stick your hands through the bars.”
I glare at him. “Or she’ll bite me, right?”
“No,” he says, pretty patiently considering how surly I’m being. He pulls something from his pocket and tosses it through the bars, but it doesn’t make it into the cell. Instead it cracks and sizzles as it makes contact with an invisible wall between the bars. A moment later a thin layer of ash drops to the ground.
Well, that explains the power drain.
“Don’t you think that’s a bit much?” I ask, staring at the ash.
“You’ve seen them in action. What do you think?”
He has a point, but I don’t tell him so. “I’ll keep my hands to myself,” I assure him.
He gives me a bemused look and leaves me alone. My mother stays in the corner, not acknowledging my entrance.
“Mom,” I call softly. Then I feel silly. Whoever this woman is, she’s not my mother anymore and she’s not likely to remember she once was. But to my surprise, she turns her head to stare at me.
“Mom.” I try again.
She rolls over, keeping her eyes on me. They’ve cleaned her up, given her fresh clothes, and brushed her hair. It strikes me as odd that they’d bother with such things for someone they don’t consider human.
I smile, hoping to make her feel safe, to coax her into speaking to me.
She bares her teeth.
“Mom,” I say again, this time more sternly. Ironically, I’m channeling how she used to sound when I was being reprimanded.
She closes her lips back over her teeth and then she starts to crawl toward the bars. This was a horrible
