me. I tried to put on a brave face, but inside my heart flipped around like a broken bird’s. I consoled myself with the thought that this was happening because she wanted something from me. All I had to do was cooperate.
We stepped off the elevator into an empty corridor. Passing Nina’s door, I could hear Jay-Z booming out of her sound system, the chatter of party voices raised to full volume. If I yelled no one would hear. It seemed my entire building was in a conspiracy to defeat me.
She handed me my keys to open the door and herded me straight into my bedroom. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the balcony door still open. I had a brief, crazy vision of flinging myself through it, ducking the inevitable bullets, swinging over the rail, and dropping to the balcony below. They did this in movies and somehow always survived.
Eris got something out of her bag and walked toward me. A spray atomizer. I remember wanting to say something and opening my mouth as the mist hit my face. My chest tightened and the world slipped away.
Ten
“Move your legs,” the doctor ordered.
I tried and could not.
“You’re paralyzed; I was afraid of that.”
It wasn’t the voice of the grim-faced surgeon who’d stitched me up in the hospital, but an angel doctor’s. Her hair shimmered silver in the light; her ice-blue eyes, fringed with blond lashes, were clear and beautiful.
The angel’s face morphed into Eris’s.
A wave of horror crashed through me.
I lay prone on my bed, naked from the waist up, both wrists clamped onto the steel bed frame with handcuffs like giant twist ties. I tried to heave, roll over, move my legs, or even a toe. I urinated and couldn’t stop myself. From my pelvis down, my body lay like a dead weight.
I tried to talk but my words came out like the bark of a dying seal. I cleared my throat a couple of times before I could manage to whisper, “What have you done to me?”
“We need to talk.”
“You bitch.”
“Don’t use foul language around me.”
“Tell me what you’ve done.”
“You’ve been disabled. Like a car engine with a few spark plugs pulled out.”
“Is this what you used on Hal?”
Eris frowned. “We’re not here to talk about Hal. You can still use your arms. Tell me where the engraving’s hidden or I’ll yank out a few more plugs.”
I deliberately lowered my voice even more to force her to draw nearer. If she got close enough I could try to hit her head with mine and do some damage.
She didn’t take the bait. “Talk louder. I can’t hear you.”
“I told you I don’t know. My brother, Samuel, brought it over. Hal stole it from a warehouse and stashed it somewhere. You killed him so you’ve screwed yourself.”
“Tonight you met with a man, Tomas Zakar. I believe the two of you talked about retrieving the engraving. There’s no point in lying.” She peered down at me closely but maintained enough distance that I couldn’t touch her. “Are you taking all this in?”
“I want to know what you shot into me,” I rasped.
“You’re soft, John. You have no idea what it really means to be afraid.” She was seated in a chair beside me, angled so I could see her easily. She’d taken off her cardigan. On her upper arm was a green-inked tattoo, a circle with a cross extending from the bottom like the sign for female. The symbol I’d seen for Venus on the alchemy website.
I watched as she tugged her top up to the line of her breasts. Her entire stomach was criss-crossed with a network of angry red welts and scars. Not one square inch of normal flesh was visible.
She rolled her top back down. “I know something about pain. I can teach you, if you want.”
“How’d that happen?”
“Fighting in Bosnia. Now start cooperating. You don’t have a lot of time left.”
“This is a lost cause. I told you I have no idea where it is.” I’d obviously miscalculated her age at the party. If she’d seen action in Bosnia she was much older than I’d thought.
Was some sensation crawling back into my limbs? I thought I could feel the silkiness of my bedsheets and a flare of pain running up my legs.
“You’re getting tiresome,” Eris sighed. She took a syringe filled with a milky liquid out of her bag. “This is called China Cat. It’s heroin that’s been tinkered around with to strengthen its purity. If I inject it, you’ll die.” I felt the prick of the needle tip crease my skin as she leaned toward me.
I had to give her something. “All right, I’ll tell you. Just take the needle off me.”
She pressed it deeper into my flesh. “Talk then.”
“Hal did leave an indication of where to find it.”
Eris hesitated.
“Listen, I don’t want to die over a hunk of rock. Believe me.”
I could feel the sting of the needle as it pressed even deeper. “That’s not good enough.”
A flicker of feeling stole back into my legs, a cold burn traveling from the soles of my feet into my shins. Was it my imagination or was the drug wearing off? But that wouldn’t matter if she used the needle. Fear punched through my gut. Then I thought of the copy of Hal’s game.
“You didn’t know Hal. If he had a choice between dating Beyonce and playing board games, he’d choose the games. He left a map revealing the location in the form of a puzzle. So far I haven’t figured it out, but I will.”
“Where is it?” Her eyes lit up.
“Look in my back pocket.”
She withdrew the needle and dug inside my pocket. I was relieved when she pulled out the piece of paper —I hadn’t been entirely sure it was still there.
Eris fixated on it as if it were a map to King Solomon’s mines. “We’re going to keep this. Maybe we don’t need you after all.”
Did this mean I was free, or would I now be getting an armful of heroin? “You do need me,” I said. “Only someone who knew him well can solve it.”
“You mean it’s some kind of code?”
“Something like that. A word code. Probably a series of anagrams.”
“Show me.”
I tried to raise my head but was still too weak to hold it up for any length of time. “I can’t right now, but you’ll never find it without me. You’d be kissing a fortune goodbye.”
“We have other options …”
When I tried to look at her she kept slipping in and out of focus.
Voices registered outside my front door, followed by loud knocking. “John … John, are you in?” A volley of giggles. It was Nina, emerging from her loud party like a badger out of its nest. A male voice next. “He’s not there. Let’s just go in and get it, babe.”
Nina again. “He said he’d come to my party. What if he shows up now?” More giggling. “Maybe we shouldn’t go in.”
Eris bolted up in alarm, took a few steps toward the bedroom door, and listened.
The male again. “Give me the key. I’ll go in and get it.”
“No, I’d better. In case he’s there—he doesn’t know you.” Scraping sounds. The crack of the door being pushed open. Whispering.
Eris glared and signaled for me to keep quiet. She tucked the puzzle into her bag, tousled her hair, and undid a couple of buttons.
