“Okay,” he said. Evan didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything. Then Dumbo said, “See you guys later—in Dubuque! Heh-heh.” He backed out of the room.
I whirled on Evan. “All right. Remember what Ben said about the enigmatic alien thing?”
Then Evan Walker did something I’d never seen him do—or heard him say, to be accurate.
“Shit,” he said.
Dumbo was back in the doorway, slack-jawed, red-eared, and in the grasp of a tall girl with a cascade of honey-blond hair and striking Norwegian-model-type features, piercing blue eyes, full, pouty, collagen-packed lips, and the willowy figure of a runway fashion princess.
“Hello, Evan,” Cosmo Girl said. And of course her voice was deep and slightly scratchy like every seductive villainess ever conceived by Hollywood.
“Hello, Grace,” Evan said.
GRACE: A PERSON, not a prayer or anything close to being connected to God. And armed to the teeth: She had Dumbo’s M16 in addition to the hefty sniper rifle hanging from her back. She shoved the kid into the room and then blew out my eyesight with her megawatt smile.
“And you must be Cassiopeia, queen of the night sky. I’m surprised, Evan. She’s nothing like I pictured. Kind of a ginger. Didn’t know that was your type.”
I looked at Evan. “Who the hell is this person?”
“Grace is like me,” Evan said.
“We go way back. Ten centuries, give or take. Speaking of taking . . .” Grace motioned for my rifle. I tossed it at her feet. “Sidearm, too. And that knife strapped to your ankle, under the fatigues.”
“Let them go, Grace,” Evan said. “We don’t need them.”
Grace ignored him. She gave my rifle a little kick and told me to toss it out the window with the Luger and the knife. Evan nodded at me as if to say, Better do it. So I did. My head was spinning. I couldn’t grab hold of a single coherent thought. Grace was a Silencer like Evan—that one I could hug tight. But how did she know my name and why was she here and how did Evan know she was coming and what did he mean by Grace is the doorway? The doorway to what?
“I knew she was human.” Grace was back on Evan’s favorite subject. “But I never imagined how completely human she was.”
Evan knew it was coming, but he tried to stop it anyway. “Cassie . . .”
“Fuck you and the horse you rode in on, you fucking alien motherfucker.”
“Colorful. Imaginative. Nice.” Grace motioned with Dumbo’s rifle for me to sit.
Again, Evan shot me a look: Do it, Cassie. So I sat on the bed next to his, beside Dumbo, who was breathing through his mouth like an asthmatic. Grace remained in the doorway so she could keep an eye on the hall. Maybe she didn’t know about Sam and Megan in the next room or Ben and Poundcake waiting for Evan in the elevator downstairs. I understood Evan’s strategy then: Stall. Buy time. When Ben and Poundcake came up to see what the hell was going on, that would be our chance. I remembered Evan taking out an entire squad of 5th Wavers, outgunned and outnumbered, in pitch darkness, and thought, No, when they show up, that will be her chance.
I studied her, the way she leaned against the jamb with one ankle thrown casually over the other, golden tresses flowing over one shoulder, her head turned slightly to display for our admiration her stunning Nordic profile, and I thought, Sure, makes sense. If you can download yourself into any sort of human body, why not pick an impeccable one? Evan, too. In that sense, he was nothing but a big phony. And that’s weird to think about. Deep down, the dude who gave me the Jell-O knees was an effigy, a mask over a faceless face that probably ten thousand years ago looked like a squid or something.
“Well, they did tell us there was risk, living so long as humans among humans,” Grace said. “Tell me something, Cassiopeia: Don’t you think he’s perfectly perfect in bed?”
“Why don’t you tell me,” I shot back. “You extraterrestrial slut.”
“Feisty,” Grace said to Evan with a smile. “Like her namesake.”
“They have nothing to do with this,” Evan said. “Let them go, Grace.”
“Evan, I’m not even sure I understand what this is.” She left her post and floated—there’s no other word for it—to his bedside. “And nobody is going anywhere until I do.” She leaned over and took his face in her hands and kissed him long and lingering on the lips. He fought her—I could see that—but she immobilized him with her otherworldly überwiles, which she carried in spades in her wheelhouse. “Did you tell her, Evan?” she murmured against his cheek, though she made sure I could hear. “Does she know how all of this ends?”
“Like this,” I said, and launched myself at her, leading, as I usually did, with my head, aiming the hard crown part of it at the soft temple part of hers. The impact knocked her sideways into the closet doors. I ended up sprawled across Evan’s lap. Perfectly perfect, I thought, a little incoherently.
I pushed myself up and Evan wrapped his arms around my waist and yanked me back down. “No, Cassie.”
But he was weak and I was strong and I ripped free easily and jumped from the bed onto her back. That was a big mistake: She grabbed my arm and hurled me across the room. I smashed against the wall beside the window and plopped straight down on my ass, sending a hot jolt of pain up my back. From the hallway, I heard a door fly open, and I shouted, “Get out, Sam! Get Zombie! Get—”
She was gone before I got the second get out. The last time I saw someone move that fast was at Camp Ashpit, when the phony soldiers from Wright-Patterson spotted me hiding in the woods. Like, cartoon fast, which might be humorous if not for the reason she bolted.
Oh no you don’t, bitch. Not my little brother.
I raced past Dumbo, past Evan, who had thrown off the covers and was struggling to swing his badly wounded self out of bed, into the hall, which was empty, not a good thing, not good at all, then two steps to Sam’s room, and when my fingers touched the handle, a wrecking ball smashed into the back of my head and my nose smacked into the wood. Something went crunch, and it wasn’t the wood. I stepped backward, blood pouring down my face. I could taste my blood and somehow it was the taste that kept me upright—I didn’t know till then that rage had a taste and it tasted like your own blood.
Cold fingers locked around my neck and I watched my feet leave the ground through a shower of red rain. Then I was soaring down the length of the hallway, coming down hard on my shoulder, and rolling to a stop a foot from the window at the far end.
Grace: “Stay there.”
She was standing by Sammy’s door, a lithe shadow down a dimly lit tunnel, shimmering on the other side of the tears that welled uncontrollably and spilled down my cheeks to mix with blood.
“Leave. My. Brother. Alone.”
“That adorable little boy? He’s your brother? I’m sorry, Cassiopeia, I didn’t know.” Shaking her head in mock sadness. Like they mocked every decent human thing.
“He’s already dead.”
THREE THINGS HAPPENED then, all at the same time. Four, if you counted my heart blowing apart.