The Thief

“I can help you.” When she nodded, he stepped in close. “I’m going to have to put my arms around you.”

As she stiffened, he gave her time to change her mind. But then she nodded—so he moved in even tighter and extended his reach, his leather jacket creaking in the cold.

“Close your eyes,” he told her.

V didn’t wait to see if she followed instruction. It wasn’t necessary, anyway. He wasn’t even sure why he said it; hell, maybe he was hoping she’d forget it was him. Or more likely…he didn’t want her to see how vulnerable he was feeling.

In a slow series of movements, he wrapped his arms around her and stepped in against her.

She fit the same. She felt different. Holding her, it was as if it was the first time all over again, that moment when you had another body against your own and all your senses were in tune to the way their shoulders hit the insides of your biceps and how their head fit under your chin and what their shampoo smelled like.

Vishous had told her to shut her eyes, but he was the one closing his lids.

“Hold on to me,” he said hoarsely. “Here we go…”

The world went on a swirl that made them the center of the universe around which all things spun, and then there was a wave and a bump—and justlikethat, the cold and the night were gone.

The Sanctuary was a rainbow wash of green lawn and multi-colored tulips, its climate a perpetual spring afternoon under a milky sky that had no obvious light source but all the illumination you could ever want. The air was still and a perfect seventy-two degrees, the humidity giving everything a dewy resonance without making you sweaty. Greco-Roman–like marble structures with open loggias and arched, pane-less windows dotted the acres, like chess pieces placed with strategy on a board.

Vishous didn’t want to let her go.

He did, however.

And as he pulled back, he felt her hands smooth over his waist—which caused lust to spike into his body.

Even though sexual frustration was typically not a male’s BFF, it felt so good to want her again. To not just remember feeling this way, but actually be in the sensation, the experience.

“Where do we go?” Jane asked in a husky voice.

He shook himself back into focus. “To my mother’s private quarters. We’ll wait there for Amalya. She already knows we’re here. The Directrix always knows when someone breaches the barrier.”

As they started walking, he wanted to take her hand. He didn’t want to push her and make things awkward, though.

“God, this place is beautiful,” Jane murmured. “The colors—it makes me think of somewhere over the rainbow.”

“What?”

“That Judy Garland movie—the one that was half in black-and-white and half in color? My sister, Hannah, before she died…she and I used to watch it every year. Jeez, my brain is going—why can’t I remember the title? There was the dog, Toto. And Auntie Em, who she wanted to get home to. The yellow brick road and the Scarecrow. The Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion. Okay, this is going to drive me nuts…there was that witch and those frickin’ monkeys. I hated those monkeys, always gave me nightmares—they made me not want to go to zoos.”

V knew what the movie was called, but he liked the sound of her talking, so he kept it to himself and let her continue to describe it as they walked over the carpet of perfectly level, golf course–worthy grass.

Up ahead, by the Scribing Temple, a high, white marble wall, so pristine it was as if a porcelain dinner plate had been stuck into the ground, delineated his mother’s private space. There was no conventional door to access the courtyard. Instead, a section parted for you if you were welcome.

As they approached, striding side by side with so much still unsaid, he wondered if they would be blocked for having a bad vibe, like they were carriers of an existential stomach flu that required quarantine. Or maybe with the Scribe Virgin gone, all would be locked out—

Nope. The opening appeared, the marble that was there now not.

Stepping inside, the sound of the fountain, which was now flowing again, was like a choir without any particular music or specific set of voices; it was more an ambiance that made him think, Ah, yes. That is good.

The songbirds he had brought up for his mother, twice, were silent for a moment. Then they resumed their lovely songs, until the warbling tunes from those avian throats became as the twinkling, falling water, a part of a landscape so perfectly engineered to both set a mood and be unobtrusive that your shoulders uncoiled and your gut eased up and your heart, still so broken moments before, began to beat a rhythm of peace.

Jane strolled forward, the boots she had put on back at the Pit no longer crusted with snow, the grass having cleaned them off. Her coat would be making her too warm, he thought—and sure enough, she removed it and ran a hand through her short hair.

I see you, he thought. And you are beautiful to me.

“So we just wait?” she said as she wandered around and then stepped into the colonnaded preamble to his mother’s suite of rooms. “Until Amalya finds us?”

“Yes.”

“Hey, look in here. There’s a bed and things—okay, well, not things really, but there is a bed.” She glanced back at him. “I didn’t really think the Scribe Virgin would sleep. You know…like us.”

V shrugged. “I don’t know what she did in there.”

She pivoted around sharply. “The Wizard of Oz. That’s the name of the movie. Guess I haven’t lost it completely.”

There was a long silence. And Vishous realized he would remember her forever here, standing in the white marble expanse, staring across at him with that parka over her arm and those snow boots.

“I’ve missed you,” he blurted. “More than I’ve wanted to admit—and now that you’re here with me, I can’t figure out why I worked so fucking hard to avoid telling you that.”

TWENTY-ONE

The following afternoon—was it afternoon? The arms on the wall clock said two and change, and it felt like afternoon—Sola stepped out of Assail’s room so that Ehlena and that other nurse, the one with the long robe, could remove his catheter.

He had been sleeping in chunks of two or three hours, and Sola had been doing the same, thanks to a cot that had been brought in for her. With him in restraints still, it wasn’t possible for them to lie together, but it was good to be stretched out and off her feet, right by him.

Ehric had been really diligent about sending her texts on the phone he’d given her about her vovó. Pictures, too, the snaps of the old woman at the stove, at the cutting board, pointing at Evale as if she were ordering him around, making Sola smile with happiness and relief. During the last month in Miami, she’d worried her vovó was slowing down, but maybe it was because she’d needed more mouths to feed, a bigger house to organize, a schedule punctuated by more than just church.

Ehlena stepped out of the room. “I think he wants a shower.”

Sola jumped to attention. “Really? I mean, yay! Are the restraints off?”

“Yes.” The other woman made slow-down motions. “Now, we really don’t know how he’s going to be. I don’t want to alarm you, but his mental status could change quickly and without warning. So please be careful.”

“I can handle myself,” Sola said grimly. “I would hate to have to with him…but I can take care of things if that’s the way it goes.”

Ehlena reached out with a reassuring hand. “Hopefully it won’t be necessary. And you know how to call us.”

“So he can have a shower? I can help him with that?”

“Yes, Dr. Manello has cleared him. There’s a chair in the stall for him to sit on and also a call button mounted on the wall, you’ll see it. I’m just one room over if you need me.”

The other nurse came out of the room, the one with the long robe, and her arm was in that same position, tucked against her torso as if she were hiding something or it hurt. But she was pleasant enough, offering that bow-thing she did and some murmured words of respect.

Sola was pleasant in response, but she didn’t waste time, flashing back into that room because she had a hunch that—yup, Assail was sitting on the edge of the bed like he was about to jump onto his feet, break off a piece of his Kit Kat bar to a disco track—and probably fall flat on his face and break all of his teeth because he was too weak to be doing anything other than giving sheets a job.