From Black Rooms (33 page)

"Your mom is so cool." Amalfia sat up, propping her elbows on her knees. "It must be exciting to be around her al the time."

Cal ie thought of al the times she'd been captured and almost kil ed by crazy men because of her mother's work. "Yeah, I guess."

"I want to be just like her," the teen said, stil checking her eyes in the mirror occasional y to see if she'd missed any new developments. "Dr. Pancrit and Deathdreamer have promised I can go to the Conduit Academy right away. I so can't wait! What's it like?"

"I wouldn't know." Scrunched down inside her sleeping bag, Cal ie rol ed onto her side with her back to Amalfia.

The teen didn't get the hint. "But I thought al Violets went to the School, like, as soon as they could talk."

"Not this one."

"How do you get your training?"

"My mom teaches me."

Amalfia set aside the compact. "Yeah, and I'm sure she's great and al , but what about your job training?

Like me--I want to work with the police. Murder cases and stuff."

"I want to be a veterinarian," Cal ie lied, envy turning her stomach. After more than four years, she stil had nightmares about Vincent Thresher, dreams in which she caught ghastly glimpses of the terrible things the kil er had made her do when he took control of her body--and even worse things he would have done if he'd been al owed to stay. The bad man her mother cal ed "Evan" had just murdered Grandpa Wade, and he kept giving the rest of them dark, angry looks. Because of Thresher and Evan, Cal ie had secretly aspired to police work; she wanted to help F.B.I. agents like her father put bad men away where they could never hurt anyone again. She wanted to be like her mother, but couldn't. She was born a Violet, but was denied the use of the one thing that made her special. And now this stupid girl who'd never been inhabited by a soul in her life was going to go to the School and become a conduit for the police, just like Cal ie's mom had been. It wasn't fair.

"You want to be a vet?" Amalfia said, as if to rub it in.

"That seems like a total waste, if you ask me." Cal ie snapped upright. "Yeah? Wel , no one asked you, did they?"

Amalfia looked as hurt as if Cal ie had hit her. "Sor-ry!

Gee, what's wrong with you?"

My grandpa was just murdered, she could have

answered, or Dr. Pancrit tried to kil me today. But Cal ie didn't feel like sharing such personal details with Amalfia. She'd even excused herself several times to go to the women's restroom to cry for Grandpa Wade in private.

"You don't know anything about me," she taunted Amalfia. "You don't know anything about being a Violet. You don't know anything about anything." The teen stiffened like a teacher with an insolent pupil.

"Hey! I've read every book there is--"

"It's not the same."

"Oh, yeah? I bet I know more about your mom's Violet work than you do."

"Think so, huh?" Cal ie gave a spiteful smile. "That just proves how dumb you are. You don't even know who

your boyfriend, Deathdreamer, is."

Amalfia's supreme confidence wavered into

uncertainty. "What do you know about him?"

"Mom told me that his real name's Evan and he's a bad man. He kil ed my grandpa and kidnapped my mom and me to bring us here."

The teenager shook her head. "No, you're wrong. Deathdreamer wouldn't--" Her eyes widened as a thought unsettled her. "Evan?"

She snatched up that paperback book she always kept within arm's reach--the one about the Violet Murders. Cal ie hadn't learned anything about the Violet

Murders--it was one of many subjects her mom

avoided--but she relished the growing panic with

which Amalfia thumbed through the pages.

She came to rest on one of the black-and-white photo pages at the center of the book, trembling as she stared at it. "Deathdreamer...

"Did somebody cal ?"

Amalfia gasped and dropped the book as she glanced up at the speaker. Cal ie went from smug to fearful when she turned to see Evan standing in the open archway of the lounge entrance. She hadn't heard him approach and didn't know how long he'd been listening to their conversation.

"My ears were burning," Evan murmured, striding over to them. From Cal ie's vantage point on the floor, he seemed about ten feet tal . "I hope you ladies know it's not nice to talk about someone behind his back." Amalfia yelped and skittered back as he shot a hand down to seize her book.

Evan thrust the paperback toward her, shaking it in accusation. "I especial y don't like people who believe lies about me. You wouldn't do that, would you,

Amalfia? 'Cause that might make me real y, real y
mad."

A metal ic snap drew Cal ie's attention back to the lounge's archway, and she was overjoyed to see Serena standing there, locking the slide of her automatic pistol into place to chamber a bul et.

"Speaking of getting mad, I'm gonna be real steamed if you don't get out of here in about two seconds," she told Evan.

As he turned to face her, his hand moved toward the butt of the tranquilizer gun stuck under the waistband of his black jeans.

"Oh, please." Serena leveled the .45 at him. "Give me a reason."

Radiating rage, Evan did not draw the dart gun. Instead, he tore Amalfia's book asunder, first ripping it in half along the spine, then shredding the pages into clumps of crumpled paper. He stalked from the room, strewing the confetti of text behind him like the feathers of a plucked hen.

"You girls get some sleep," Serena said when he was gone. "I'l make sure he doesn't bother you again." Cal ie nodded as if sleep were real y possible, and Serena left. When the girls were alone, Amalfia

uncurled from the shivering bal she'd become and reached out to touch the cast-off pages in front of her. As she began to cry, Cal ie lowered her head in shame. If she hadn't tried to goad Amalfia by tel ing her about Evan, he wouldn't have exploded. They were lucky that the paperback was the only thing he destroyed.

"I'm sorry about your book," Cal ie said quietly. "We can get you a new one. I could even get Mom to sign it for you...if you want."

Amalfia raised her tear-streaked face, her look

expressing both gratitude for the gesture of friendship and surprise at its source. "That's...that's very sweet of you... She gave an embarrassed chuckle, wiping her cheeks with the back of her hand. "I'm sorry. I forgot your name."

"Cal ie." She let the implied slight go, and extended her hand to Amalfia with a smile. "Cal ie Lindstrom."
29

A Promised Bond

AMALFIA FANCIED SHE COULD see in her brown

irises in the hours after the injection actual y began to appear after about a day. The remaining flecks of green in Calvin's eyes also disappeared, supplanted by the rich violet color that bled into them with imperceptible slowness. Natalie had grown so accustomed to the twotone beauty of those hybrid irises that she was almost disappointed when they became homogenized like hers. For both Amalfia and Calvin, the change was

accompanied by a mild sore throat and runny nose-the reaction of their immune systems to the infecting adenovirus, Pancrit told them. He checked on them at regular intervals during every waking hour, examining the progress of their eyes with a penlight and

questioning them about their sensitivity to the facility's knocking souls. Each time, Calvin reported that he was stil ridden with whispers, to which Amalfia was stil deaf. Pancrit would note the observations on his

clipboard then withdraw to the seclusion of his office, where he'd apparently spent the night.

Although Natalie felt it was best for al of them to stay together in the staff lounge, it made for cramped quarters. The foot of her and Calvin's bedrol s lay only a yard away from those of Amalfia and Cal ie. Corporal Johnston brought them frozen meals to heat in the room's microwave and a pack of playing cards to keep the girls occupied. Cal ie taught Amalfia how to play Crazy Eights, Amalfia taught Cal ie how to play Kings Corners, and they played Gin Rummy and Go Fish and Concentration, and were both bored stiff inside of three hours. Natalie and Calvin chatted about art and read al the outdated magazines cover to cover.

As if the tedium were not enough to deal with, they also had to suffer the constant intrusion of either Block or Tackle, who took shifts patrol ing the corridor. Evan, too, lurked in the hal way, and though he had not dared to reenter the lounge since Serena forced him out at gunpoint, he hovered around it like a circling buzzard. For her part, Serena never let him out of her sight. She always kept her back to the wal , never lay down, and hardly seemed to blink. Natalie knew why, too. If Serena let down her guard for one second, someone would try to disarm her.

"This is like old times for me," Calvin quipped about their confinement as he scraped the last of his mac-andcheese dinner from its tray with a plastic spoon.

"Except the food is better, and there's more privacy." He kept his voice hushed, for the girls had already bedded down for the night in their sleeping bags at the end of the staff lounge, opposite the table where they sat. It was close to midnight of their second day at the facility, and Natalie and Calvin had deliberately waited to dine until late so they could talk undisturbed. The reference to his term in prison jarred her. Natalie had grown so comfortable with him that she'd let his past slip her mind.

"It...must have been hard for you," she said, trying to be broad-minded, sympathetic. "I've heard such terrible things about those places--the things they do to you there... Natalie imagined that a handsome, sensitive guy like Calvin would be a prime target for the hardcore prisoners to push around--or worse. Calvin seemed as horrified by the notion as she was and shook his head as if trying to dislodge the image from his mind. "Oh! No...it wasn't like that. I went to Club Fed. Minimum-security camp in Englewood. No

murderers or rapists, only nonviolent short-timers like me and middle-aged, white-col ar wusses who'd get the crap beat out of them in the Big House. I bunked in a cubicle with a CFO busted for insider trading. Nice guy. We used to play foosbal together, and he'd share the brownies his wife brought him."

Despite the almost nostalgic tone with which Calvin reminisced, Natalie could see his eyes turn glassy, could hear his voice become reedy with desolation. "Must have been something bad about the place," she said softly, not wanting to pry.

"It wasn't the place. Worst they ever did was make us pick up trash along the freeway." His mouth twitched but failed to smile. "The bad part is finding out exactly how worthless you are. Al those beautiful people in the art world. Al the girls I used to hang with. Al my socal ed friends. Even my folks... He rubbed his watering eye as if it actual y itched, then hacked up a laugh. "Nobody brought this boy any brownies." Natalie ached for him. She remembered that Dan had once described how his family welcomed him back into their fold, even after he had accidental y shot and kil ed an innocent man in the line of duty. He said that was when he realized that, no matter what you did, no matter how badly you screwed up, the people who

loved you would always take you back. That had

certainly been the case with Natalie's own loved ones, who had forgiven her time and again for the countless mistakes she'd made and continued to make. But Calvin had no one to forgive him.

"You're not worthless, Calvin," she said. "You're priceless."

He hid his face behind his hands. "If I could only believe you meant that."

She smiled. "Believe in Natalie."

"I do." He looked at her, his almost-violet eyes reddened with inflamed capil aries. "You're the only one who's ever stuck with me, and if I could get you and Cal ie out of here, I'l at least have done one good thing in my life."

The hope and anxiety that had been brewing within Natalie over the past week roiled in her stomach.

"And...what happens after that? What happens when
you get out of here?"

"You mean if," he said.

"I know you wil ," she insisted. "We al wil . What then?" He stared at her, and Natalie became afraid that she sounded pushy, needy, perhaps desperate. She

backed away from the question, shrugged as if it were simply a casual inquiry. "I mean...did you have any plans? Pancrit promised you a place in the Corps's Art Division--that's a pretty sweet deal."

Disappointment dimmed the light in Calvin's eyes, as if he'd expected her to say something else. "Yeah, that. I haven't given it much thought. You know, about what it'l be like...

To be a Violet, she finished for him silently.

"You should go for it. You'l be perfect." She hoped she sounded encouraging, not jealous. "You deserve a fresh start."

"A fresh start." He drew a deep breath and slowly exhaled, the way she often did when trying to work up courage for something. "That's what I real y want, Natalie. I want to try again."

"You mean your own art? That's an awesome idea--"

"No, I mean with you. Like on the couch." The fact that she had secretly longed for this moment only made its actuality more terrifying.

Be careful what you wish for, she thought, her emotions
on the edge of a precipice over which she could not see. Yes, Calvin was attractive, he was funny, and he was smart. He was the best artist she'd ever known, and he'd risked his life to save her and Cal ie. In many ways, he felt like the twin from whom she'd been

separated at birth...but she'd only known him for a handful of days, less time than she'd spent with Dan. What if it didn't work out? What if he hurt her? Or, perhaps worse, what if she hurt him? He'd already been hurt so much...

"I want that." Natalie reached over to him, nearly touched his cheek, her trembling fingers hovering over the stubbly skin as if pushing against a force field. "I want another chance with you. Maybe when we get

back--"

"What if we don't get back?"

The possibility that this might be their only time together left her stunned and silent, and she withdrew her hand. Desire clashed with caution. Was it better to give in to her feelings, even if it meant only one night of happiness and a lifetime of lingering heartbreak afterward? Her brief relationship with Dan had brought her years of sadness, yet she would not have forgone that love for al the world. Would the agony of never knowing what she might have had with Calvin be even worse than the pain of al owing him into her heart only to lose him forever?