Darkyn - Private Demon Part 17

No being, human or Darkyn, had ever held out their arms to Valentin Jaus.

"I didn't know Jema at the time, and I had no idea that she belonged to my neighbor, Mrs. Shaw. All I knew of Meryl was that she was wheelchair-bound, and that an accident in Greece had killed her husband."

He told Alex how he had rescued baby Jema from the mess and brought her into his pristine, child-free home. How he had picked the shards out of her hands and cleaned the cuts, and arranged fresh clothing, a bath, and a bottle of warm milk.

"I wouldn't let anyone else care for her or take her from me." He was still not sure why he had been so adamant about that. It may have been the alarming size of her-she was no bigger or heavier than his lightest dagger-or the way she curled up against him, her cheek pressed over his heart, her small thumb tucked into her mouth. "While Sacher notified the police, I fed Jema the bottle and rocked her to sleep. I refused to put her down so that my tresora could take a photograph of her for the jardin files-we photograph all humans we come in contact with-and that is how I ended up in the picture."

"You must have given her to the police."

"It was terribly hard to do that, when they came to collect her. I'd never held a baby, and I felt so possessive of Jema. That night, the police informed me that Jema had been identified as the daughter of my nearest neighbor. Imagine my surprise." He felt a bitter amus.e.m.e.nt over the memory. "When they called, I had started working out how I might adopt her as my own daughter. I felt as if someone had stolen her from me."

Alexandra sighed. "Oh, s.h.i.t."

"A good description of how I felt." He rose and walked around the room. "It was much easier when Jema was a child. I know what you are thinking, but I only felt the most distant and paternal-minded of affection for her."

"I get that." She nodded. "Then she grew up on you, and wham."

"Wham indeed. I began to see her not as a child, but as a woman. I don't know why. Jema has a lovely face, but she is no way robust, or anything like the women I prefer."

She rolled her eyes. "Yeah, us skinny, dark American chicks can't compete with those zaftig, blond Austrian babes."

"I couldn't see the attraction, and then it was so simple and clear to me. She is not like any woman I have ever known." He gave her an ironic look. "I have known my share."

Alex grinned. "I bet you have, Valentin."

"That was when I began collecting moments I shared with Jema. In the last thirty years, I have spent at least an hour in the simple honesty of her gaze. I have heard perhaps ten minutes of the sweet cascade of her laughter. I have watched the elegance of her hands dance for I know not how long. They always make me forget the time." He made a face. "I make a poor poet."

"What are you talking about?" She rested her hand against her cheek. "I think I'm in love with you now."

It felt ludicrous to laugh, but what else was his situation?

"Once I knew my feelings would not change, I became disgusted with myself for a time and eliminated all possibility of contact between us. I told myself over and over that she was a child, a fragile, often gravely ill child, and I had no right even to think of her in such a way. Then, too, came the time when I had to pretend to die and return to Derabend Hall as my 'son.' The Kyn who stay in one place must do so regularly to prevent suspicions among the locals. Thus Jema will never know that the man who found her in his garden, the man she thought was my father, was in fact me."

"You're breaking my heart here, Val." Alexandra shook her head. "Isn't there some way you two can be together?" "Jema doesn't know I love her. She's dying. Juvenile diabetes." He came to stand beside her chair. "There is one way, but I never considered it. We have not been able to change humans for the last five hundred years... until you, Alex."

Her expression changed. "You're not talking about... oh, no." She got up from the chair and held up one hand. "I don't even know why I survived being infected, and my mutation isn't the same. Kyn blood kills every living thing that I've exposed to it. Before you ask, no, I am not experimenting on humans."

He felt confused. Cyprien had told him how diligently Alexandra had been working on fathoming the origins of the Kyn. "But Michael said that you're studying us. He said there was a possibility-"

"I'm looking for a cure. A way to turn us back into human beings," she told him flatly.

Despair turned into disbelief. "Why would we wish to be human again?"

"We're still human. We're just really powerful and our diet sucks. Excuse the pun." The humor left her eyes. "Let's be clear on this. If I did discover how to change a human into Kyn without killing them, then I'd never tell anyone. I am not restocking Tremayne's army of darkness."

"Then Jema and I can never be together." He turned away from her and went to the window to look at the gardens.

Alex tried to placate him. "You still have her human lifetime to share. You could make it work."

"Jema's thirtieth birthday is next week." He knew which flowers he would send to Shaw House. "I have spoken with doctors, and thirty years is far beyond what was predicted for her life expectancy. Her decline cannot be reversed.

The next time I send her flowers, it will be for her funeral."

Chapter 13.

The antique clock Jema kept by her bed told her she had woken up fifteen minutes late for work. The more dependable LED alarm clock behind it confirmed the time.

"Nice going, Shaw." She shoved her face in her pillow so she wouldn't have to see the evidence of her extreme laziness.

It was his fault again. Golden Eyes.

Over the last week she'd woken up each morning remembering a little more of her dreams. The first day it had been only a fragment; she recalled something about a ballroom and dancing with a tall, dark man with golden eyes. The second morning came with a vague recollection of a conversation she'd had with the same man. She'd been in a precolonial muslin gown; he'd been dressed in buckskins. They'd been standing under a waterfall lit from the outside with torches, and she remembered feeling cold and miserably wet. He'd told her that she would have to endure it, as he endured... something. The dream evaporated from there.

Yet as each day pa.s.sed, less of her dreams vanished when she woke. None of them was recurring, but she became convinced that the men in them were all the same man. His appearance and clothes varied from one night to the next, but at some point in the dream, his pupils would contract into thin, dark lines like a cat's, and the irises would turn to gold.

Jema remembered most of the dream she'd had last night. "I can't believe I picked him up in a bar, or let him do that to me. On a pool table." She wrapped her arms around herself and giggled like a girl. "Too bad it didn't last long enough for me to... oh, I am depraved." She pulled back the covers and laughed again when she realized she was naked. "Completely, thoroughly depraved."

She stopped laughing when she breathed in and smelled fresh gardenias, and saw the faint marks on her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and thighs.

Jema walked naked into the bathroom and switched on all the lights to examine herself in the mirror. What appeared to be light pink and lavender smudges circled both of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. There were five on each side. Three more, darker purple marks like bruises marred the inside of her right thigh. She turned and found four more marks just like them on her left b.u.t.tock.

"I've heard of convincing yourself that you're pregnant, but convincing yourself that you've been manhandled?"

Jema had had one brief romance with a boy who had loved to nibble and suck on her neck, and she remembered how her easily bruised skin reacted to that. Daniel had nearly had a heart attack, thinking that she was showing symptoms of a secondary blood disorder, until she'd stuttered out an explanation. To make matters worse, that particular boyfriend had dumped her the very next day.

She touched one of the marks on her breast gently, testing it. They didn't hurt, and there wasn't any abrasion to the skin itself. It was the sort of mark left when someone took hold of a person and squeezed.

The way he squeezed me. Jema's face burned as that portion of the dream suddenly came back to her with vivid, intimate detail. The way he touched her; it had been embarra.s.sing and thrilling and totally outside her fairly dismal experiences in bed with men. Either I have a wonderful imagination, or I miss s.e.x more than I thought.

Jema started to make a hideous face at her reflection and stopped cold when that, too, struck her. She rarely looked at herself in the mirror. Now, because of some silly female version of a wet dream, she was feeling up her own b.r.e.a.s.t.s and clowning around in front of one, as if she did it every day.

Mirrors are not my friends.

With wary steps, she retreated back into the bedroom and took one of her work outfits from the closet. One of the maids must have sprayed some sort of concentrated air freshener in her room; the air was thick with the scent of gardenias.

Jema took an appreciative sniff. Good thing I like the smell. It made her feel great, for some reason. She'd have to ask Micki what it was so she could take some in to the museum. Her office could use some serious freshening treatment.

She hated going into work late-everyone took extra pains to ignore her for acting like the boss's daughter-but it was better than sitting around the house listening to her mother describe the depth and breadth of her imaginary chest pains. That she could listen to anytime. Plus she wanted to see Luisa before the weekend. Since she was already late, she could stop by the hospital on the way to work.

If she tried very hard, she could probably forget all about the marks and the fact that her room smelled like a hothouse.

She did hear Daniel and her mother in the library, and stopped there on her way to pick up something to take with her for breakfast. She was tempted to a.s.sume her usual listening post, to gauge how things were going inside, but suddenly she was tired of eavesdropping for mood swings. She knocked once and walked in.

"Good morning. I overslept a little." She glanced from Daniel to her mother. "Hey. You two look nice."

Meryl wore what Jema recognized as her favorite outfit, a ruffled skirt and lace blouse in a pearly cream shade that didn't leach all the color from her skin the way her other Snow Queen white outfits did. Daniel was his usual tidy self in his tweed jacket and pressed navy trousers, but he'd put on a good tie with a small gold caduceus tie pin.

"Are you feeling ill?" her mother asked at once. "It's not like you to leave so late. You should stay home today."

"I'm terrific. I can't wait to get to work; I have a mystery to solve. Then again, that's my job." Jema grinned as she noticed a large pile of legal doc.u.ments sitting on her mother's desk. "Speaking of which-you never told me why you two were out on the town so late the other night. Everything okay with the family fortune?"

Meryl drew back as if Jema had spit in her face, while Daniel avoided her gaze. It was such an unexpected reaction that Jema laughed.

"Everything is okay, right?" she asked, more tentatively now.

"Of course it is." Meryl recovered first, with a vengeance. "Daniel took me to see a heart specialist, and the tests took longer than we had expected."

Daniel cleared his throat and shuffled his feet. "We should have the results in next week."

Were these two acting guilty? Jema almost asked, but then remembered that her birthday was next week. Her mother had never celebrated it in a big way, but it was a landmark date-she'd always been told she'd be lucky to live to thirty.

Well, I made it, and if I keep hitting the bran m.u.f.fins and the sugar-free, lactose-free yogurt, I might even make it to thirty-five. "Let me know how it turns out. See you tonight. I shouldn't be late."

Jema liked visiting Luisa in the mornings. At night the hospital could be a little creepy, especially when they turned down the lights in the hallways. Today she stopped by the gift shop to pick up a small flower arrangement for Luisa's room. She made sure to pick flowers that had a nice scent, as her friend wouldn't be able to see them.

"I brought you a present," she said as soon as she came into the room.

Dr. Keller, who was standing at the window, glanced back at her. "Oh, you shouldn't have."

Jema put the arrangement within Luisa's reach-she felt sure that when she was alone, the girl liked to touch the soft petals-and squared her shoulders to face the doctor. She didn't like Alexandra Keller, but she could try to be polite to her. "I didn't think I'd see you here again, Dr. Keller."

"I try to be unpredictable, Miss Shaw." Alex gestured to Luisa. "Our mutual friend doesn't want me around, but I came today hoping to change her mind."

"You shouldn't upset her." Jema didn't feel like verbally sparring with Alex, and went to sit by the bed. "Did the eye doctor come by to check on you? It should be time to take the bandages off soon."

"Yeah, he did." Luisa reached for the flowers and caressed them with her fingertips. "What you buy me these for? It ain't my birthday."

"It's almost mine." Jema chuckled. "I thought you might like to smell something besides Nurse Kohler."

"The one that leaves a trail like a skunk?" Luisa shook her head. "My mama say she uglier than roadkill. Smell like it, too."

Jema thought of Nurse Kohler's trademark bright blue eye shadow. "Let's say she's cosmetically challenged." She saw Alex watching them, and then she saw two Alexes. With all her bouncing around this morning, she'd forgotten to take her morning injection. "Uh-oh." Fighting off the weakness, she groped for her purse. She could feel all the color fading from her skin, and Alex was staring at her. "May I use your bathroom, Luisa?"

"If Nurse Kohler ain't in there. She go a lot."

Jema walked carefully to the small lavatory and put her purse on the sink. She considered shutting the door, but the dizziness was getting worse, and she didn't want to pa.s.s out and scare Luisa.

"Need a hand?" Alex came in after her.

"With this, no, thank you." Daniel gave her prefilled syringes to carry in her purse kit, so all she had to do was strap up and raise a vein, which was never a problem. "I'm a diabetic, in case you're wondering."

"I heard that you were." Alex's reflection frowned at her. "You take your insulin intravenously."

"I'm a bad diabetic." She tied off her arm, flicked a likely spot with her fingernail, and then prepared the syringe. She felt self-conscious about injecting herself in front of Alex, but it couldn't be helped. "I was born this way."

The dizziness receded a few seconds later. She applied a small round Band-Aid to cover the injection spot and looked around for the biohazardous waste container, but saw none.

"Who manages your case, Miss Shaw?" Alex asked.

"Dr. Daniel Bradford. He's our family physician." She packed up her kit and washed her hands at the sink. "He lives at Shaw House with me and my mother. We both require a lot of monitoring. He's taken care of me almost from the day I was born."

"Sounds like a very dedicated guy." Alex handed her a paper towel. "Have you seen anyone else about your condition?"

"Dr. Bradford takes great care of me and my mother." Jema knew that Alex was simply being a good doctor, but she didn't like her insinuations. "He's become an expert on diabetes over the years, of course, and he's also done all sorts of research into treatments for lower spine trauma and paralysis. He has a full lab set up at our home. Unfortunately my mother will never recover, and neither will I." She gave her a cool smile. "We've never felt the need to go looking for a second opinion."

"That's great. You're lucky. And you look much better." Alex reached out and pressed the back of her hand against Jema's cheek. "A little flushed, but that's probably my fault for poking my nose in your medical business."

"Did you have to walk out on Luisa the way you did?" Jema asked on impulse. "Couldn't you have stayed in Chicago until she was stable?"

Now it was Alex's turn to pale. "I had no choice. I can't get into the details, but believe me, Miss Shaw, I wanted to be here."

Jema could hear the sincerity in her voice. "It was very generous of you to give her mother all that money. I know it's made a big difference in the quality of her care and recovery." She looked down at the used syringe and capped the needle. "I'd better take this out to the nurses' station. I think they have a needle box out there."

"Let me. I've got to get going anyway." Alex held out her hand, and when Jema gave her the syringe she tucked it in her pocket. "One more sort of nosy question before I go. Do you have any other family besides your mother?"

Jema frowned. "Well, my mother's family, but they disowned her for marrying my dad and they've never had any contact with me. My dad was an orphan."

"Your mother owns your father's estate, and I a.s.sume you're her heir," Alex stated. "Who inherits from you?"

"My mother," Jema said. "We set up our wills so that if one of us dies, the other inherits. If we both die at the same time, or close to each other, everything goes to fund the museum and about a hundred charities. One of them is this burn ward. Why?"

"Eventually the money I gave Mrs. Lopez will run out. I'm going to arrange a life trust fund to pay for Luisa's medical care, and I thought you might like to mention her in your will." Alex glanced out at the girl, who was holding the flower arrangement Jema had brought and was exploring the petals with her fingers. "Not that I'm wishing you an early death, but she'll need certain treatments and physical therapy for the rest of her life."

"That's a marvelous idea," Jema said, liking Alex a little more. "I'll speak to my mother about it."

Things did not go so well for Jema when she got to the museum. The doors had not yet opened to the public, thanks to a staff scheduling problem, which had administration in something of a muddle.

"I need three guards on the floor, not two," the head curator was telling the events coordinator.

"You can't use my tour manager for security," the coordinator argued. "She isn't trained for it."

Jema never interfered with the daily management of the museum, but as she needed help bringing up crates, she was obliged to get involved. With a little creative juggling of the staff, she was able to help the head curator get the museum open, and find a tour guide for the events coordinator to help her with a middle school cla.s.s scheduled that day. That allowed her to borrow Thomas for an hour of work downstairs.

"I don't know what the deal is with Roy," Tom told her as they went into the storage area. "He's never missed more than one shift, and only when he's really sick. I even tried to call him, but he doesn't answer his phone."

"People have problems that are more important than work sometimes. Roy's a good employee; I'm sure he'll turn up." Jema went to the storage shelves designated for the Athos dig, but one of the crates for lot two-forty was missing.

"Okay. Now I know this was right here last week. I did a count for the inventory program and I had to requisition more sample containers to send to the Wisconsin lab."

"You know, Roy was down here a couple of nights back, arranging things," Thomas told her as he helped her look.