Time After Time (Cora's Bond) (3 page)

Everything had gone wrong. I’d just watched a man die at my feet. And yet the irrational part of me—the deepest part—still firmly believed that as long as I had Dorian, nothing was entirely beyond repair. He’d find a way to fix it all, even if I lost myself in the process.

Dorian’s mouth worked down my jaw, the electric heat of his touch sizzling across my skin and running through my body within my veins, and I arched my neck into him in offering.

He pulled back and cupped my face in both his hands. “I would love nothing more than to dally with you here.”

“Dallying? Is that what it’s called now?” I quipped, catching his wrists in my hands as I straddled his lap. “I know, I know. You have your duty, don’t you? People to tell. Wheels to set in motion.”

“I do,” he agreed. “Will must have informed Elizabeth by now, but there will be very many questions for me from many other people. Questions that I currently don’t have the answers to, for the most part.”

“The Kyrioi will have had the samples for over a week now.” Another ugly, dangerous fact among far too many.

“Longer, I’d wager. Dr. Sanderson could have been corrupted any time between the day that Jean was killed and the proving before that. The following Monday was the next scheduled proving, and immediately afterward, the cultures were contaminated.” The darkness within him rose to cast shadows over Dorian’s face. “There are many things to be done about what happened. That must be done if we are to survive. What good those things will yield in a year’s time or in a century’s will remain to be seen.”

“And I’m in your way,” I concluded. “I know it’s just Saturday, but I can message Jenkins to drive me home now so you can get to work.”

“No,” Dorian said. His arms were suddenly like steel bands around me, his beautiful face drawn into tight lines. “You will stay here tonight.”

“But we’ve uncovered the plot,” I protested. “It’s done. They’re finished. The Kyrioi got what they were coming for. I should be as safe in my dorm as I ever was.”

His face was as still as if it had been carved of stone. But his words, though spoken evenly, had a force that cut through me. “I may not be, if I you leave me alone here tonight.”

I couldn’t speak. I could hardly even breathe. I just nodded, and after a too-long moment of silence, his face reanimated, and he gave me one of his twisted smiles.

“Did you get enough to eat for dinner?” he asked. It was a light question. A deflecting question. And I was glad to seize upon it, to leave this dangerous place to where the air was thinner and could actually move easily through my lungs again.

“Well, there was the mint ice cream,” I said, replying in the same tone. “I was looking forward to that.”

“Go on upstairs, then,” he urged, releasing me. “Get your shower. I’ll be up soon. And I’ll send the sherbet.”

“Sherbet,” I repeated. “Of course it was sherbet. You can’t just serve ice cream like a normal person, can you?”

I was making conversation just to fill up the room with sound as I slid off his lap and straightened my clothes. There were too many things I wanted to say, things there wasn’t time for right now. I wanted to promise to be there for him just as he had been there for me. To tell him that he’d never have to face the darkness alone again, as he had when his friend Alys Gramercy was dying.

But he was right. There were things he had to do now that didn’t have anything to do with me. So instead of saying any of that, I went to the door that led to the sitting room and the back stairs to my bedroom.

“I’ll be waiting for you,” I told him, even as I thought,
Always.
And then I left him sitting alone in the room.

I
mounted the hidden staircase to my room, unable to untangle the emotions roiling in my gut. I knew I couldn’t be any kind of help to Dorian right then. But I still irrationally resented it, feeling like a child being sent away while he did the “grown-up work”—all while simultaneously hating myself for being so selfish and feeling embarrassingly, pathetically glad that he felt that he needed me, if only in a limited way.

Not one of those feelings was I proud of, and not one would I ever like to admit to outside of the privacy of my own mind.

Even as I battled against my own base thoughts, the images of all the deaths I’d seen over the past few weeks kept rising in my mind’s eye. Hattie and Jean with their heads blown wide open, Lucretia in the pool of her own blood, and now this Dr. Sanderson, whom I barely even knew, with his eyes rolled back and his mouth flecked with foam.

I couldn’t make sense of any of it. The only completely clear thought I had was that I wished I was a better person, that I had the vision, skill, and determination to not only see the right thing but to do it.

But I didn’t even know what the right thing was for me just then.

I made it into my room—my beige room, my blank room that was like a canvas ready for me to assert myself, if I even knew who I really was. Not caring for once what my lady’s maid Jane Worth thought of me, I pulled off my clothes as I crossed to the bathroom, dropping them heedlessly on the floor. Once inside, I flipped on the lights, shut the door, and leaned against it, blinking dully at the marble and chrome.

Dorian even realized my tendency to flee into the bath or the shower when I was upset, I realized. He’d suggested that I shower not just because I took my showers at night but also because he knew it would make me feel better.

But it shouldn’t. A shower wouldn’t change anything at all.

I was still wearing my underwear, but my pants with my new cellphone in the pocket were outside in the bedroom. I suddenly felt crushingly, impossibly lonely, and I went out to root through my discarded clothes to retrieve it.

My bargain-bin Hello Kitty case had ended up in a pool of Lucretia’s blood, removed and hidden in her clothes before she had smashed my old phone’s glass screen to cut her own throat. I hadn’t wanted it back, but the new phone that Dorian had gotten me, with its plain purple case, still didn’t seem like mine.

I relaxed, though, when I pulled up Instagram and pictures belonging to my friends streamed across the screen. I liked a few and switched to Facebook, where it nagged me to move to the Messenger app.

I clicked over and saw a message from Lisette.

Nice birthday?
she’d written, accompanied by a sticker of a broadly grinning yellow face.

I snorted at her message because that was as close as she’d ever come to asking me about my sex life.

It was pretty good,
I wrote back, walking over to sit on the closed lid of the toilet as I typed with my thumbs.
Did you have a fun time this weekend?

Thought about seeing a movie,
she wrote back almost instantly
. Went to the STAMP instead. Invited Clarissa. She’s amazing!

I made a face at the screen.
I know. Amazing how, exactly, though?

She beat everybody at ping pong. Even Ross! And then she beat everyone at bowling. And pool.

I hope no one was taking bets,
I wrote. Not that it was something that we normally did, but with Clarissa in the picture, I couldn’t be sure about anything.

Let’s just say that she didn’t pay for any of her sodas,
Lisette wrote back.

Yeah, I’d bet.

So what have you been up to?
she wrote after another moment in her usual, innocently prying manner.

Dorian took me on a date to a closed track to drive a fancy car,
I wrote her.
And he gave me some Jane Austen books. Fancy ones.

That sounds creative,
Lisette wrote.

I couldn’t help but smile at her diplomacy.

It was actually awesome,
I typed back.
I wouldn’t have picked the driving, but you know, it was pretty exciting, and I ended up having a lot of fun.

There was a pause, and then Lisette wrote,
You’re not going to be back tomorrow night, are you?

Tomorrow was Sunday. I’d intended to spend every Sunday night in the dorm so I’d be ready for early Monday-morning class.

Probably not,
I wrote back.
Monday morning.

Your homework all done, then?

That wasn’t very subtle. But then again, neither was the way I kept taking off to spend time with Dorian—or the way I worked desperately in any spare moment I could wrangle to try to get some of my schoolwork done.

Yeah,
I typed, glad I could be honest.
I finished it all yesterday.

I’d done it when Dorian had gone away on some business of his own and I’d been left feeling bored and a little sorry for myself to be alone my birthday, if only for a little while. I’d gone back to the library and sat under the disapproving glares of the muses painted there—the nymphs and satyrs didn’t pay me any attention at all—and spent a solid four hours getting caught up, so I wouldn’t have a repeat of the last econometrics test.

Good.
Lisette’s answer practically oozed primness.
Oh, my gosh, Sarah and Mike got in the biggest fight after your party last night.

What about?
I asked. That wasn’t like them at all. They were the most drama-free couple I’d ever seen. After Hannah and Sarah had rented
Bridget Jones’s Diary,
we’d spent the next month calling them the “smug marrieds.”

Wedding nerves, I think. The whole planning thing is pretty stressful, even for Sarah.

Sarah, who’d already had a five-page wedding Pinterest board her freshman year of college.

I smiled at Lisette’s attempt at fishing for information. I decided to answer it directly.
Dorian and I are doing fine. There’s just lots of drama with his friends. Bad things keep happening to them, and it gets him down.

The ones who died?
she wrote back instantly.

Yeah, them. And there’s more stuff. It’s all stupid. I don’t want to talk about that, though. What else did you do this weekend?

I sat back against the cold porcelain tank, focusing on the tiny screen in my hand and willing myself out of this dangerous, complicated world and back into Lisette’s simpler one, if only for a moment.

Hannah had gotten into loud 1980s sweaters and was establishing an eye-blinding collection from the local thrift store, throwing Sarah into despair about ever setting her up with a guy, which was Sarah’s stated goal in life for every one of her friends.

Meanwhile, Lisette had extracted promises from all our friends not to walk alone on campus at night after yet another student had gone missing, and she’d gotten into a tiff with Sabrina about it after Sabrina had pointed out that the police had said that three of the five missing students had left clear signs of having run away after the first disappearance.

And Geoff had eased back into the group after the last party, showing a keen and growing interest in Clarissa.

Wouldn’t it be awesome if they got together?
Lisette wrote.

It would be something,
I wrote back as my brain cringed away from the image.

Aw, don’t be jelly! You have Dorian!

Yeah, jealous wasn’t the word I was thinking of.

I wished I could type,
Keep him away! She eats people!
But that would require far more explaining than I was willing to do, and even if Lisette believed me, next time she met Clarissa, she wouldn’t care.

I guessed that I’d just have to trust Clarissa, as uncomfortable and potentially disastrous as that sounded.

So, where’s your billionaire douchebag?
Lisette typed, adding a series of stickers to let me know that she was joking.

Ahahaha,
I wrote.
You’re so funny.
But I felt a twinge of guilt because she’d surmised—correctly—that I wouldn’t be talking to her if he were there.

As if summoned by that thought, there was a knock on the bathroom door. I leaned out past the half-wall that blocked the view of the door from the toilet seat as the handle twisted and Dorian stepped in. He was wearing his pants and a dress shirt from dinner, but the collar was open, his cuffs rolled up, and his feet were bare.

He’s right here,
I typed quickly.
TTYL!
I clicked out of the Messenger app.

“I could have been on the pot, you know,” I said.

The deep shadows under his eyes lightened fractionally as he crossed to stand in front of me. “It looks to me like you are.”

“I meant...doing my business.” I frowned at him.

“I know what you meant, but you lock the door when you do that,” he said.

I reviewed my routine and realized that he was right. I always did. “Okay, but how do you know that? And how come you never rattle the doorknob when I’ve got it locked?”

He held up one finger. “I have very good hearing.” He raised a second finger beside the first. “I use the house app. It tells me which doors are locked, and that way, I know I’m never interrupting you.”

I made a face at him and leaned against the toilet tank again. “The stalker app. I should have known.”

He didn’t retort, merely raising his eyebrows. “You haven’t showered yet.”

I stood up and waved my phone. “I didn’t know how long you’d be. I expected you to take longer, to be honest. So I was chatting with my friend. You know, you can do that with a phone and not just use it to spy on people.”

It came out a little defensively. I hadn’t meant it to, but talking to Lisette seemed suddenly pretty childish in the grand scheme of things, and I was all too aware of how little help I’d been—and could be—in this situation.

Dorian stood aside to let me out of the toilet alcove. I set the phone on the counter next to the sink and turned to face him again.

“You should talk to your friends,” he said simply.

I snorted, leaning back against the edge of the counter. “Let’s see. You’re trying to fight against the Kyrioi for the future of the world, but it’s important that I chat with my friends. That makes sense.”