Serafina and the Virtual Man (18 page)

Without warning, the world changed. She was sitting not in the lab but on a sofa in the large sitting room downstairs,

“Whoa!” Jack exclaimed beside her. “What the…?”

“It’s VR,” Jilly said impatiently. “This is what he’s been working on.”

“Bloody hell,” Jack said admiringly. “You did this just from photographs?”

“And the programs already written for the new system,” Adam said. “I think we’ll call that working.”

Dizzyingly, the sitting room disappeared, and Jilly sat once more in the computer chair, blinking at Adam. “Do you always test this thoroughly?”

“Sarcasm in the ranks,” Adam observed. “I want to know what you’ve been up to.”

Jilly opened her mouth and closed it again. The impossibility of explaining this to him when she could be terribly, horribly wrong swamped her. She couldn’t find the words to use without raising what could be criminally false hopes. For both of them.

Unexpectedly, Adam’s eyes softened. “You’re tired,” he observed. “You should go home and sleep.”

“I’ll be fine,” she said uncertainly. She wasn’t used to people looking after her. It made her glow with something both warm and uncomfortable, so she aimed for humour instead. “Mind you, I’d kill for some coffee.”

“No need to go that far,” Jack said in a pleased voice. He delved inside the coat dangling over the back of his chair and produced a thermos flask. Jilly’s mouth fell open as he took off the caps and poured strong black coffee into two of them.

“Have you been sitting on that all night?” Jilly demanded, grabbing one of them.

“Thank you, Jack, how thoughtful,” he murmured.

Ignoring him, Jilly gulped down the warm liquid and closed her eyes with a sigh. “I forgive you,” she announced. “In fact, I almost like you.”

Jack snorted, and her eyes suddenly flew open.

“Shit, what about Blair?” she demanded. “It’ll be light soon; he’d better bugger off.”

Jack stood up, swallowing a mouthful of coffee. “He might have gone already. I’ll go and see.”

He took his cup with him and walked down the room, passing through the trigger point into the real world. Jilly took another sip of coffee, and turned with strange reluctance to find Adam staring at her intently.

“What
are
you up to?” he asked.

Jilly set down the plastic cup and drew in her breath. “If Blair was right, there could be some kind of secret cellar beyond the wine cellar. According to him and Jack, there was no sign of the wall being rebuilt, so there must be a way into it from the house. We don’t have time to tear the house apart, so I’ve been looking for the number of times our hosts disappear off camera for any length of time, only to reemerge from the same direction. I think I know the rough area now.”

Adam’s eyes searched hers, his own giving nothing away. “And if you don’t?” he said quietly.

“Then Blair can just break down the cellar wall. Trust me, it wouldn’t take him long.”

A flicker of amusement warmed his veiled eyes. “You guys are weird.”

“But lovable,” she said.

He reached for her, drawing her to her feet and then, into his lap. Surprise made her stiffen, and then, she relaxed against him, pressing her cheek to his and clutching his shoulders. How could she bear to let this go? To let him go…

He said, “I don’t know what keeps me here. Maybe I’ll vanish when Dale tells the truth or when you find my body.”

Her fingers dug into his shoulder so hard it should have hurt. “I don’t want… I wish you could—”

“I know,” he whispered into her hair. “It’s all right. I don’t want you ever to regret this. Whatever happens, I want you to be happy, JK.”

She nodded against his cheek, unable to speak for the tears clogging in her aching throat.

She felt his lips stretch into a smile against her temple. “You’ve made my death very happy so far.”

A strangled laugh broke from her throat in an uncivilised gurgle. She raised her head to apologise, or perhaps just to look at him because she’d have so long to remember him. But his hand moved in her hair, angling her head so that he could kiss her parted lips, and she realised that he already understood everything she had such trouble saying. He might not have known exactly how much this meant to her fucked-up soul, but he got the basics. She cared, and somehow, astoundingly, so did he.

For once, she ignored the tears, let them roll down her cheeks and into her mouth and his, because it was more important to kiss him. As it was more important to help him than to selfishly enjoy his virtual company.

“No regrets,” he whispered into her mouth.

I’ll try. I’ll try.

Chapter Eighteen

When Jack stepped out of the virtual world, Blair still sat in the same chair, his back to the computer, looking completely inhuman. Pale and handsome, he appeared to be staring unblinkingly into space. He was either asleep or dead. Both, probably.

An instant later, it was worse, because his dark eyes leapt into focus on Jack, so alive with sheer hunger that Jack almost bolted back into the safety of Adam’s virtual world.

Instead, he said as calmly as he could, “You should go before daylight. Do you want a lift?”

The hungry look vanished into eerily silent laughter as Blair threw his head back in obvious mirth. Jack flushed. His offer had been stupid for many reasons, but common politeness died hard in him. After a moment, Blair met his gaze and shook his head, with at least as much courtesy as mockery in his gaze.

Consoled, Jack said, “So are you going or what?”

Blair shook his head again and passed a phone to Jack. It was his own phone, which he must have left beside Blair’s bottles at some point, and it displayed a text from Sera: “Weather better, driving down this morning. Stay with Jilly. Bringing Blair’s biking gear.”

Jack nodded, and since he had the feeling Jilly didn’t want him back too quickly, he pulled a box from the corner and sat on it, thoughtfully drinking his coffee.

It was bizarre. He could see the rest of the lab, including Jilly. Only Adam was completely absent. Although Jilly was sitting at a very peculiar angle in his chair, her arms raised, her hands gripping the air like claws.

Jack blinked. “Fuck. Is she
crying
?”

He leapt to his feet, glancing at Blair for confirmation. Blair only nodded, but when Jack began to stride forward, he suddenly found himself back on the box with an unpleasant bump and spilt coffee running down his sweater. Blair shook his head at him.

Jack swallowed. Adam wasn’t hurting her. This was their tender farewell. Although he turned his back like the gentleman he hoped he was, his lips twisted. “Who’d have thought it? I didn’t think Jilly
could
cry.”

Blair, of course, didn’t reply. Only for an instant, his eyes, which Jack always thought of as dead, betrayed a sudden storm of emotion, so profound, so all-consuming that Jack felt paralysed.

The vampire’s eyelids swept down, releasing him, but Jack felt shaken to his core. Everyone cried. Even hard-edged, tough-as-nails Jilly with the family from hell. Even Blair, who’d exist forever, an eternity without Sera. For the first time, Jack suspected Sera was more to him than the sex and snacks Jilly had accused him of wanting of her. He might not know
what
the vampire felt, but that he did feel and at least as deeply and intensely as anyone else, Jack could no longer doubt.

He suspected it was to be one of many revelations that day.

****

Dale rose with more optimism than he’d felt for a long time. The poltergeist, not Adam after all, but the fucking psycho Killearn, had gone, thanks to the psychic. And at last the new system was coming together and looked as if it would be ready in time for the planned launch. On top of which, he got to pretend that nothing had changed and to chat with Adam just like the old days.

Well, not quite the old days, he acknowledged ruefully as he emerged from the shower, vigorously towelling himself dry and reaching for his clothes. But Adam, or Adam’s program, whatever or whoever was in his lab sorting out the company mess, seemed to have forgiven him for doing so little to save his life. Now Adam just had to accept that he’d forgotten about resigning and rehab and Australia. And let’s face it, as well as good to be around, Adam was useful. On the whole, given what had happened, things could not be better.

And Petra never needed to know the latest twist in events. He glanced at her, still sound asleep, her beautiful face calm and untroubled as he hadn’t seen it for months, even in slumber. Things were coming right at last.

Dale strode out of the room, ran jauntily downstairs to the kitchen. After a quick chat with Adam, he’d head into the office again, make sure everyone knew things were turning around, and okay the publicity campaign for the launch he’d reviewed yesterday. The buzz was good, expectations were high, and the new system would blow his competitors out of the water for years to come.

He’d take Petra to St. Tropez this summer. They could buy that house they’d wanted in Florida. Or LA, if Petra preferred. Retire within two years or so and finally relax and enjoy the life he’d worked so hard for.

Through the kitchen window, while he waited for his toast to pop up, Dale saw with surprise that it had snowed last night. Although it was thawing now into dirty slush all over his garden, he could see it piled high on the garage roof. He remembered a particularly amusing snowball fight with Adam and Stuart and a bunch of others when they were students. In the days when life was half fun and half ambition, before women had become more than the former and complicated everything.

Just for a few minutes, while he ate his toast and contemplated the snow, he let himself yearn for those simpler days. Now Dale owned a highly successful computer gaming company that was about to reach its greatest triumph so far; Stuart was a slightly maverick but increasingly respected neurosurgeon, and Adam was…

Dead. It was so hard to keep remembering, to keep telling himself.

“Fuck,” Dale whispered, bumping his forehead against the glass. Not just dead, but with his reputation in tatters. A tragic footnote in the history of the company that bore his name. That wasn’t fair.

But it couldn’t be undone. Dale dropped his uneaten crust on the plate and reached for his coffee. He strode out of the kitchen, whistling, trying to recapture his earlier mood of optimism. It would be easy with Adam.

Sweeping through the gracious entrance hall toward the stairs, he frowned, realizing the place looked untidy. Three pairs of boots skulked by the pristine glass of the front door. One dainty ladies’ pair of ankle boots, one large pair of green wellies, and an equally large pair of Doc Martens. Presumably the gardener had arrived with his assistant to clear the paths and driveway and they were having breakfast first with the housekeeper. Irritation rose and was squashed. Better they took their shoes off than trailed dirt and slush all through the house. And he knew the footwear would be gone from his view by the time he left for the office.

But first, to see what magical progress Adam had made with the work backlog! He felt curiously excited to see his old friend again—like meeting up again at university for a new term, or the euphoria of first setting up the company together. It was a new era, a new chapter, that was all. The basics were still, surely, the same.

Dale bounded up the stairs, pleased by his own fitness, and breezed into his study, barely pausing to close the door against the prying eyes of the housekeeper who would inevitably clean up here, before keying in the code to the lab. She hadn’t been here already because the curtains were still closed. He didn’t pause to do it himself but strode into the lab, punching the Close button with the heel of his hand.

He surged through the trigger point, calling out, “Adam? It’s all going great! We’ve almost caught up f—”

He broke off and stopped dead in his tracks. “What the…?” He was back downstairs, in his sitting room. Disoriented to the point of dizziness, he dimly realised two other things. It wasn’t daylight, but nighttime, for the spotlights were casting their atmospheric glow. And Adam was sprawled on one of the sofas, gazing up at him. He still looked tired, but now he was clean-shaven and wearing not the worn old jeans and T-shirt of before, but chinos and a dark, open-necked shirt that Dale vividly remembered.

Petra sat on the other sofa, twisting her gin and tonic in her fingers.

Shit, was I dreaming and never got up? Or… Fuck, did the last five months never happen? Oh, please, God…

“So what do you really think?” Adam asked.

Dale’s knees almost buckled. Those were the words Adam had said to him the night he’d died, the night after showing him the new system, after they’d played with it a bit and then had dinner with Petra and retired to the sitting room. Dale had been blown away by Adam’s new toy, which was far more than he’d ever expected. Adam had always shown flashes of brilliance, but this new system was pure genius…

I
did
dream all that came after that? Thank Christ, thank Christ… Only what do I say? What did I say then?

“I think you’re fishing for compliments,” Dale said huskily. “And for once in your life, you deserve them. You know you do.”
That
was it, word for word.
This is weird… But better. Surely much, much better…

Adam grinned. “Who’s the genius?”

“You’re the fucking genius.” Dale threw a cushion at him, and he caught it with his usual deftness.

For an instant, just like he remembered, as Adam’s smile faded, there was a hint of uncertainty in his dark eyes. “This could be really big, couldn’t it?”

“Shit, Adam, this
is
really big. Even better than I’d imagined from what you told me. We are
so
set up for life.”

And this time,
this
time, Adam would keep his life too. Fuck St. Tropez and Florida. They could wait a couple of years. He
wanted
to wait a couple of years.

“That’s what I thought,” Adam said with engaging relief. “I’ve been too close to it, too involved to get things in proper focus. Sorry,” he added, reaching for his beer, “I haven’t been doing my share of the day-to-day stuff. I never mean to dump on you, but I know I do.”

Dale shook his head mutely, for panic was galloping through him. How much of the past was real? Which parts were dream, which reality?

Reality! Shit, am I in virtual reality? I just walked through the trigger
—
of course I fucking am!

“Adam,” he said hoarsely, just as the curtain flapped and the wild figure of James Killearn charged across the room, wielding his machete. Petra screamed; Dale staggered backward in spite of himself, and Adam leapt to his feet, just as he’d done when it had really happened.

What’s going on? Why is he doing this? Is this his punishment, making me relive it?

“Arse!” he shouted. “You think I want to live through it all again? You think I won’t just wish myself out of this?”

Adam, rolling on the floor in a deadly struggle with the brutal Killearn, actually laughed. That was the only thing he hadn’t done the night this had actually happened. “Make it different, then,” he gasped, hanging on to Killearn’s wrist and bashing his hand repeatedly on the hearth. “Show me what happened, or what you wish had happened. Choose and play, you bastard.”

In spite of everything, the challenge spoke to the gamer in him, stopped him leaving instantly. And then he couldn’t take his eyes off the struggling men, looking for faults in Adam’s memory of events. It looked pretty much as it was. Then he scanned the room, because if he was going to play, it had to be right. Then he could make different choices, and even if it made no difference to the outcome in reality, at least Adam would know he’d make it right if he could.

Adam? This weird, digital spirit of Adam, whatever it was.
Christ, this is doing my head in… Don’t think, just play.

His hunting rifle lay on top of the drinks cabinet. That was wrong. Wrong gun, wrong place. He couldn’t change the gun, but he could put it closer to where it was meant to be. Picking it up, he walked around the struggling bodies on the floor toward the empty sofa where the still figure of Petra sat. She didn’t bat an eyelid as he pushed it down the cushions behind her. But then it wasn’t Petra, it was Adam’s program of Petra, and he’d obviously had no idea what she’d been doing after the fight began. Good. This could be changed with ease…

So why was he so terrified of the outcome? Because even after everything that had happened, he wanted Adam’s approval, Adam’s forgiveness?

Then why was he as afraid of Adam killing Killearn as of the other way around? He couldn’t help it; he just was.

Because that was how he’d felt the first time, the night this had really happened. The VR machine knew what he knew and was casting his own memory in his way. Adam had known it would. That was why he’d done this.
Fuck, not so easy after all…

He found he was clutching his head, circling the fighters much as he’d done on the night in question, only now for rather different reasons. Back then, he’d been paralysed by the knowledge of who’d brought James Killearn into his home. He’d read it in her calm face.

****

Jack emerged from under the desk in Dale’s outer study and shook himself. It was as well the desk was large, since it had had to hide both himself and Blair.

“Better stay there just now,” Jack warned the vampire and walked out the study into the gallery.

Jilly should really be doing this part, he thought ruefully, but she’d refused point-blank to leave Adam and insisted on recording everything herself from behind the virtual sitting room sofa.

What did he do? Walk up to her bedroom door and knock?
Mrs. Ewan? Your husband is asking for you in his office
. That might work. He certainly didn’t want to go in there and carry her sleeping person from her bed to the scene unfolding in the lab.

Although Jilly had seemed to think this the best possible outcome. “She’ll wake into the world and assume it’s real,” she’d said with considerable satisfaction.

“Well, you do it, then,” Jack had said flatly, and she’d backed down, since she couldn’t actually force him to do it her way.

In the end, it was taken out of both their hands. As he walked along the gallery to the Ewans’ bedroom, the door of it opened and Petra emerged in a long, fluffy white robe. Wearing no makeup, she looked a little older than the virtual-reality Petra Adam had shown him, but she was still undeniably beautiful and walked with the kind of sexy elegance that would make any man weak at the knees. Jack, however, being a realist, suspected his own shaking limbs had more to do with his mission than his libido.