The harsh lab lights seemed to get hotter by the second, increasing the sweat on my face that I was no longer trying to swipe away, making my breathing shallower. The way I jumped at every sound. She knew. She knew what this was doing to me and what it might do to her. But all she did was nod, her free hand closed around both of mine.
“Ready?”
Despite myself, I tightened my grip.
“We can wait, if?—”
“No. Do it now, or we won’t get to do it at all.” A noise like an electronic chime sounded from somewhere in the lab.
“Shit. Does that mean they’re inside?”
She bit her lip. “It might.”
“Do it.” I gasped. “Do it now. Don’t wait.”
She nodded and took a deep breath. “Don’t look at it,” she advised. “Okay? Keep your eyes on me.”
“Okay,” I managed to say. “But after you do it, just—just don’t let go. Until?—”
“I won’t,” she said. “I promise. I’m not going anywhere.”
I hadn’t been able to see Louisa’s face when she’d said those words, facing death another time. And I’d never thought I’d see that face again.
“You can pretend I’m her,” Lemaya said quietly. “If you want.”
I nodded. Blinked. Tried to swallow. Tried to settle my now-blurry gaze on something, anything. A shard of light hit the one piece of jewelry she still wore—a silver crescent moon with some Arabic writing underneath. I’d read that these—and crosses and stars and other shapes, too—were very popular generations ago, when God was more than just a storybook character.
“Do you know how to pray?” I rasped. “Did they teach you that?”
She nodded. “My first mistress did, a little bit. Everyone thought she was nuts. For believinganybodyhad souls, let alone slaves.”
Well. Shewasnuts. My mind hadn’t changed.
I didn’t think it had, anyway. Ihadtried asking “God”—whoever or whatever that was—for a favor, and it hadn’t done me any good.
Or maybe it had. I’d seen Louisa again, hadn’t I? Once.
And I was seeing her now. Gray eyes like the stormy North Sea, then a smile like the sun coming out after a twenty-year tempest. And grace. Yes, amazing grace. Things I didn’t deserve, but she’d offered me just the same. And whatwasa miracle, anyway?
“I prayed with Maeve.” Lemaya’s eyes—dark brown, almost black—stayed locked on mine.
“Will you?—”
“Of course.” She closed her eyes. Mumbled something that sounded like singing. Something I was so content to listen to that I didn’t realize the needle was already in. Something that surely was a blessing.
A blessing, too—as the acrid taste of chemicals thronged my sinuses and raced through my every capillary, as I lost my grip on Lemaya’s hand and fell away from the steel table, sending the chair spinning, and smashing the rack of test tubes behind me—that my hands, just for a second, had been warm in hers.
Because everything after that was very, very cold.
12
HER
Home.
Let’s face it: While it contained people I needed to see, it certainly contained no one Iwantedto see.
Right now, though, I couldn’t have what I wanted. But maybe by going home, I could give myself a better shot.
