Chapter Seventeen

 

It’s getting dark. The people stuck milling around are clamoring to go home. And the cops are everywhere.

Tyson looks uncomfortable, because the Zantite cops are deferring to him. He glances at me, a hint of accusation in those golden whiteless eyes. If I hadn’t asked him to stay to see my graduation, he’d be nowhere near here.

Frank’s standing next to him, wearing a dark gray pea coat to protect against the chill in the evening air. It feels like it may rain soon.

Police Chief Dghax holds out a ragged piece of metal, which Tyson takes carefully by the edge. There’s a partial handprint on it – an Earthling-sized palm and two fingers, formed of softly glowing sticky sap. “The team who did the security check before the show is certain there was nothing attached to this as of early this morning. But you can see the adhesive where one of the bombs was taped.”

Tyson looks over at me again. This time he tilts his cabeza, questioning, and at the intensity of his peligroso gaze, I feel my bladder tense up.

Only a few people here have hands that small. One in particular leaps to mind: Kaliel. He was cutting up glow-fruit earlier on the show.

En serio though, Kaliel may have had a few lapses in judgement lately, pero he wouldn’t attack people.

And yet, he had barred the door, like he had known something was about to happen.

Tyson tilts his cabeza even farther and stares at me, trying to figure out what I’ve just figured out.

Dghax says, “I recommend we get a list of names and contact information and let these people go home. It’s obvious who our suspect is.” He looks over at me.

My heart jolts. Me? My hands ball into fists as the shakes get worse. “Por qué? One of those bombs nearly blew up my sisters!”

Dghax shrugs. “I’ve heard humans don’t care much for their children. Leave them in dumpsters sometimes if they think they’re ugly, or out on mountainsides if they come out the wrong sex.” He leans down, hands on his knees, until he’s my height. “You’ve been at the center of three criminal incidents, and you’ve only been here a couple of weeks. That’s not normal.”

“It has to have been Kaliel,” Frank says. “Otherwise, why’d he run?”

I turn to Frank, give him a pleading look to shut up. I can’t deny that Kaliel had flitdashed, right after we came back from that picnic table. Brill tried to stop him from leaving and gotten socked in the jaw for his trouble. I turn back to Dghax. “Un momento, por favor.”

Once Frank and I are far enough away, I ask, “Couldn’t it have been Jimena? She’s the one who was acting extraño when we filmed the first show, like she wanted it to crashbomb.”

“That’s not possible.”

“Por qué? Because she’s such a mousy girl?”

“Because she couldn’t have been here.” He turns his head to look me straight in the eye, and as he shifts, I see a splatter of blood on his jaw, right beneath his ear. Like he’d missed it when he wiped the rest away. “Not all day.”

My chest feels all sparkly, and goosebumps run the length of my limbs. He’d killed Jimena. Not only that, he’d spent an entire day with her before he’d decided she was dangerous and ended her life. How can mi mamá love someone so cold?

“Right after you talked to me on the phone, Frank, really?” I gesture at the blood. “Good thing you’re so good with knives. Because you just volunteered to be my new prep chef.”

Not that I expect there to be another show after this.

“Guns, actually,” Frank quips. “She had one too.”

I hold up a hand to stop him sharing the grithorror details of his gunning down my prep chef. “I really, really don’t want to know.”

“Tell me about the chef from Earth. Aidan what’s-his-face.”

My face goes hot, and my chest goes cold. “No y no. You leave him alone. He’s just a kid, and he hasn’t been anywhere near Minda’s set.”

“He knew Verex. They were seen together at the club.” Frank straightens his coat collar. “Kids can be dangerous.”

“Not like how you’re dangerous.”

“I still ought to look into him. What if he’s been working with Jimena to–”

“Por favor, Frank. Don’t. Mamá keeps saying I should forgive you, and then you keep doing things like this.”

“I was protecting you.” He rubs at his jaw with the back of his hand.

“Unless I get blamed for Jimena’s disappearance, too.” I sigh. “I’m surprised they haven’t said I did something to Kayla.” Wait. Could Frank have killed Kayla too? I stare at him for a second. Pero no, the timing doesn’t line up.

Frank gives me a reproachful look. “Your friend’s shuttle landed safely at Skadish, but nobody remembers seeing her get off, and she didn’t book a flight from there back to Earth, or to anywhere else.”

“You looked into that? Because I was worried?”

“I keep telling you, I’m not a monster.” Ironic, given the way he’s rubbing the bloodstain from his face onto a handkerchief. “But if Kayla went off the grid, and then Kaliel took off running, maybe Kayla was laying the groundwork for his escape.”

“Kayla wouldn’t be a part of something like that.”

Frank puts a hand on my arm. I force myself not to jump. He’s never touched me before, certainly not in a way meant to bring comfort. “She’s your friend, Bodacious. Trust your gut here. What do you think is going on?”

“No sé.” I don’t know.

“Do you think Kaliel killed her? If there’s something wrong with him mentally–”

“No. Por favor. No.” I pull my arm away. “None of this makes any sense, nunca. Kaliel has always been a good guy.”

Word comes over the radio that they found something else, and Frank goes inside to check it out. I try calling Kaliel again. If he would just answer, just explain why he ran, maybe I could stop this here, before it gets loco.

After a few minutes, Frank says something to Tyson and they both say something to Dghax. Dghax starts shouting into his phone, sending out orders to lock down the spaceports and halt the ferry service, putting half the police force on an island-wide Earthling-hunt. For Kaliel. Because whatever they found inside ties him to the bombing.

It’s a small island, and as far as I know, Kaliel has no experience hiding out from anyone. This will end soon, likely with his muerte, and that breaks my heart.

Kaliel’s the guy who wouldn’t flitdash to save his own life back on Earth, even knowing he faced the shave, because running would make him look guilty.

So why would he run now? It doesn’t add up.

Unless whatever came back from the river isn’t Kaliel at all.

Could he be a doppelganger, the science fiction version of an evil twin, after all?

Pero, that’s loco, no?

Mertex would have told me if there were shape-shifting monsters in the woods.

So I’m left with the idea of a virus, which sounds loco too, or a brain injury from his accident, to explain why Kaliel’s acting in opposition to his own moral code.

 

Minda walks towards us, her face lit in an ethereal glow from the frosting of the cake she’s holding in her hands. “Mertex rescued the layers for me from the bombing site. Even though he was injured.” She smiles, and there’s a bit of frosting glowing on one of her front teeth. “It didn’t blow up this time.”

There is something to be said for small victories on a day like today. I tell her, “That looks beautiful. It makes you look beautiful, too.”

“Bo, my ego’s fine. You don’t have to say that.” But then she blinks. “You can see Zantites as beautiful?”

“Some Zantites, sí. Then again. I only think some Earthlings are beautiful too, no?” It never occurred to me to wonder what Minda sees when she looks at me.

Minda hands her cake to Frank, and peers at me, though surely she can hardly see me in the dark. “One aesthetically pleasing thing about you is your hair. It balances the smallness of your face, adds shadows of motion when you move. It doesn’t have heat-coloration like the rest of you, but that’s what makes it fascinating.”

“Heat coloration?” I ask.

She explains that Zantite vision combines something resembling the way I see, plus detail based on ambient temperature.

“I never knew that.” I wonder what Mertex looks like to her. It might explain why I think he looks like a dork, but she’s so smitten.

And when Murry had said it was amazing watching the warmth coming back into mi vida’s face – that small miracle must have looked more beautiful than I could ever have imagined.

I look over at the cake, which must be even more spectacular through Minda’s eyes. “Small victories, right?”

“What?”

I don’t explain, just walk over to the cluster of cops and announce, “I think Kaliel has a virus. Or something.”

I look back at Frank. Jimena might have had the virus – or whatever it is – too. Could she still be alive if I’d explained my loco theory when I’d had Frank on the phone? Heat blooms in my face, and I realize that to a Zantite, that’s as much of an emotional giveaway as the shifts in Krom eyes.

“Is he contagious?” Police Chief Dghax asks, stepping away from me as though I’m the one who’s sick.

“I don’t know. Just… there was something off about the way he kissed me. Like he was a completely different person.” I can’t mention Jimena here, or Fizzax, so it sounds un poco estúpido. I lie, adding their symptoms to Kaliel. “He’s had fever, nausea and headaches. Try to bring him back alive, por favor, so that we can find out what’s really going on.”

Dghax asks, “Have you had any of those symptoms?”

“No, gracias a Dios.”

Tyson sucks at his mouth, skeptical, yet he keeps silent.

Doc’s assistant Rex – not so much. “That’s preposterous. There aren’t any viruses on Zant that cause those symptoms. And if something like that came from Earth – well, you guys would know about it.”

My cheeks flame even hotter. Dios mio. At least Brill has some control over what his eyes are doing. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“Offplanet viruses do happen,” Dghax says. “Not everyone who lands planetside comes through decontamination. You remember that Evevron ship that crashed here about a decade ago? Their people said they were sick.”

Rex sniff-snorts. “They only said that so we wouldn’t eat them. Space spores only happen in Earth movies.”

He’s talking about Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Which is kind of what this situation feels like.

That ship I’d seen in the water really was a plague vessel. And people have been swimming out to it for years. Something about it starts to click in mi cabeza, pero before it can, Mertex comes hobbling up, holding onto his side. “My cousin called to check on me after she heard about the bombing. Kaliel had just rented one of her boats.”

“Even if he makes it across to the southern island, the spaceports are closed.” Dghax pulls out his phone. “We just need to widen the search area.”