––––––––
“Do you think he’s here?” I whispered to Liam, who was stealthily creeping around the house like a cat burglar. Or James Bond. He was suave enough to be James Bond, I decided. A much younger, hotter Bond. With less slutty women and whoring around... Maybe I didn’t want him to be Bond after all.
“Shh!” He held his finger to his lips and pointed ahead of us. Against the wall I could just make out a hulking form. Nevin? I couldn’t tell. It was too dark and my sensitive Ginger eyes had trouble adjusting. Liam seemed to do just fine, however.
He grabbed my hand and we crept closer. I squinted to see if it helped, but Nevin’s outline remained blurry. Being completely stealthy and silent, I managed to trip over my own feet and crash into Liam. He caught me, eyes wide when I squeaked a little. I was gonna have to quit with the dumb girl noises.
Nevin snorted.
Actually, it wasn’t a snort, it was a snore.
He was sleeping on the job. And I don’t mean napping. Upon closer inspection, his head was leaned back and his arms were flung to his sides. He was out.
What a moron, I mouthed to Liam, who grinned and shook his head. Nevin was here to kill me and instead he was asleep on the lawn—er, well, concrete. I couldn’t believe it.
Liam set me away from him and dug around in his pockets. There was a distinctive snick and suddenly he was holding a switchblade.
“Whoa! What are you doing with that?”
“Shh!” Liam covered my mouth and nodded towards Nevin.
I shook my head, but he didn’t uncover my mouth. Oh my God! He was going to kill Nevin. Right here in the concrete jungle.
I bit him.
You better believe he moved his hand after that, turning his angry eyes on me. I put my hand on my hip and wondered whether it was smart to attack a guy holding a knife. Huh. Well, too late.
“You are not going to slaughter him. He’s asleep, for God’s sake!”
Liam rolled his eyes very dramatically. They practically rolled right out of his head like marbles. He grabbed my hand, not so nicely this time, and pulled me back to the front of the house.
“I don’t think you understand the gravity of this situation,” he whispered. The throbbing vein in his forehead was back, pulsing out an angry beat. He probably had high blood pressure or something. I didn’t think that vein was healthy. “He’s here to kill you.”
I frowned. “But...he’s just lying there. Asleep.” It was attacking a man while he was down, like stabbing someone in the back. It just wasn’t fair.
Liam rubbed his forehead. Good, I thought, push that unhealthy vein back in. “Gavyn,” he said, his voice very, very patient, like he was talking to a three-year-old. I already decided I would ignore whatever came next on principle alone. “If I don’t kill him, he will continue to come after you. And kill you.”
“Can’t we just get up to the room and portal out of here?” It seemed like a perfectly logical option to me and it didn’t involve any bloodshed. Have I mentioned that I really hate blood? It seriously freaks me out. I turn green and sometimes I pass out. And don’t even get me started on the smell.
“He’ll follow us. Or he’ll kill this reality’s Gavyn. Do you want to be responsible for that death?”
Oh. Well, of course not. I didn’t want to see a two-armed version of me murdered either. I couldn’t imagine the kind of damage that would do to my psyche. While I debated this, Liam stood there, arms crossed, the blade of his knife winking in the porch light.
Nevin lumbered around the corner, fists curled. He had something in his hand, but it was too small for me to see. For a moron he moved fast. I hardly had time to squeal—I know, another stupid girl noise—before he was on us. He collided with Liam and sent him sprawling onto the concrete.
Ah, hell. Why hadn’t I let Liam kill him?
I backed away slowly, deer in the headlights. Liam was already up, knife raised.
But Nevin wasn’t paying attention to Liam. Nevin was staring at me with his unbelievably dark and scary eyes. He kind of resembled a peach-colored Frankenstein. Minus the bolts, of course. Nevin eat brainsss. Arrrggg....Okay, so not the time to be thinking about Nevin being a monster.
Except he was a monster. And he wanted to kill me.
“Liam,” I gasped as I backed into the concrete side of the house. There was nowhere else for me to go.
Very agilely and lithe like a cat, Liam scaled Nevin and wrapped his legs around his waist. Nevin twisted first one direction and then the other, trying to throw Liam off. Liam, impervious to this, tightened his legs and held on, the blade of the knife gleaming as it caught the light. Nevin cuffed Liam in the side of the head with his fist. Liam ignored him. And then, like someone had yelled Go! Liam pressed the knife into Nevin’s throat and dragged a jagged line across his skin with the blade. I drew a sharp breath.
“Oh my God!” I pressed my hand to my mouth. I wanted to puke.
Nevin’s face registered shock and then he crumpled to the ground. Liam jumped from his back and landed on his feet. He wiped the bloody blade on Nevin’s shirt before clicking it shut and shoving it back in his pocket.
Blood already pooled around Nevin. He was close enough now that I could see the gleam of a hypodermic needle in his thick fingers. My legs threatened to give out. I flailed my arm, searching for what, I don’t know.
Liam held out his hand to me. “Come on, we’ve gotta go.”
I shook my head, still pressed against the cool concrete wall. Liam’s hand was covered with Nevin’s blood. Nausea curdled my stomach. I leaned over and puked drunken noodles all over Liam’s totally badass boots. They tasted way better going down than they did coming back up.
Liam smiled tightly at me. “I guess I deserved that.”
While I watched, still mortified/nauseated/horrified/shocked, Liam unlaced his boots and left them next to Nevin. He removed Nevin’s boots and tied them on his own feet. Liam’s socks had little Superman symbols all over them. Nevin’s were plain white. My empty stomach ached.
“Damn,” he said, grabbing my arm and dragging me toward the house. My shaky legs rebelled as he pulled, trying to keep me in one spot. “I really liked those boots.” He threw one last mournful glance over his shoulder.
I was still woozy and not myself, so I stumbled along behind him. I felt like I’d stepped onto a boat in the middle of rough seas. The ground lurched one direction then the other. It took all my strength not to puke again. There was a suspicious scarlet streak on my arm that I didn’t want to think too hard about. Plus red had seeped into the cuticles around Liam’s nails.
“Oh God,” I mumbled. I hurled again on the porch.
Stupid drunken noodles.
Liam retrieved a tissue from his pocket and I wiped my mouth. I wondered what else he had in those pockets. The front door handle turned easily in Liam’s hand. “No locks,” he whispered, pulling me through it. We crept up the stairs. I held the banister in a vice grip, trying not to fall to my death. My muscles had turned to water.
Gavyn was asleep in her bed. Her curly hair spread across the pillow in a giant puff and she had her arms thrown over her head. She looked completely peaceful. And more important—alive. It was a little strange to see myself lying there in bed and know that it wasn’t me. She did have two arms, after all.
“How do you know she’s not the murderer?” I asked Liam, my voice hoarse from vomiting. Gavyn didn’t stir.
“She’s not.”
“But how do you know?”
He shook his head with a pointed look, but it was too late. Gavyn rolled over and stared right at us. She blinked, somewhere in between sleep and wakefulness.
Liam grabbed my hand and touched the snow globe on her nightstand. We disappeared before Gavyn became fully conscious.
***
Liam came out of the bathroom shirtless, with his jeans slung low on his waist. I gaped at him. My experience with half naked men was very, very little. Actually, it was nonexistent, unless you counted Drake, but I had a hard time placing him in the “man” category.
“Shower’s hot,” he informed me. He’d scrubbed the blood from his hands. They were pink and clean. He curled his fingers inward when he noticed me staring at them. “Look, Gavyn...” He sat on the bed next to me.
I scooted away.
Liam sighed. “I had to kill him. He would’ve hurt you.” I couldn’t tell if he sounded remorseful or just tired.
“I know.”
But like my sexual experience, my dead body and murder experience was also very slim. Nonexistent. And I preferred to keep it that way. But now it was Gavyn: zero. Dead bodies: one.
But Liam had saved my life. He deserved something for that. “I’m sorry I puked on your boots.” There. Now we were even.
He chuckled and did this funny double-look at me like he couldn’t believe who I was. Before I could examine it, Liam stood up and pulled his shirt on. “Speaking of which, I’m going to buy some new boots. Nevin’s are far too big for me.” He ruffled my hair and to my surprise I didn’t flinch away from his murderous hands. “Go take a shower. You smell like puke.”
I stood up obediently and headed for the bathroom.
“Whatever you do,” Liam called from the hotel doorway, “do not open the door.” It seemed like a very serious warning, but then he smiled and shut the door silently behind him. The triple locks engaged with a series of clicks.
The shower was steamy hot, the bathroom still humid from Liam’s shower. The hotel we were at was nearly the same as the last one, though this world was vastly different. For one, there were hovercrafts. Totally cool.
Even cooler? Liam knew how to drive them. Or fly them. Or whatever they called it.
Plus the grass was blue. And my city—the very same one I lived in at home—looked like a jungle. There were plants and flowers and trees and bushes in every shade of blue imaginable. I decided this reality was making up for the lack of foliage in the concrete jungle.
And everything was automatic. The lights, the doors, even the soaps in the shower. All I had to do was think about what I wanted and it happened. It was a one-armed girl’s paradise.
I scrubbed my hair and allowed the automatic body buffers—just like a car wash—to polish away any traces of Nevin’s blood that remained. I closed my eyes, but immediately popped them open when I saw Nevin crumpling to the ground and Liam’s triumphant expression.
Maybe this was the way things worked in Liam’s world, but not in mine. This was some sort of vigilante justice and I didn’t feel entirely comfortable with it. I understood that the Nevins wanted to kill me. I’d witnessed it. No doubt there. But what about the Gavyns? How did Liam know she wasn’t the murderer?
We all looked alike, after all. Well, mostly.
I stepped out of the shower and the water stopped automatically. Huge blow-driers dropped from the ceiling and within seconds I was dry. My reflection told me what I already feared. My hair stood like a cloud about my head. It would’ve made Marge Simpson proud. I sighed at the lost cause.
I put on the robe that hung on the back of the bathroom door. Liam was sitting on the bed wearing a completely new outfit when I came out of the shower. He did a double take, his eyes lingering on my missing arm way longer than normal. My insides fizzled like dead fireworks. He’d never minded before...
“That was fast.”
He nodded, his gaze skittering around the room. “Yeah.”
Why is he acting so weird?
“Did you find new boots?” I leaned over and inspected them. They were the same badass ones from before. “Awesome, you found the same ones.”
“Yeah.” He kept looking at me all perplexed, his eyebrows shoved together.
I patted my hair. “I know it’s awful, but you don’t have to stare.”
He stood up. “It’s not that. It’s just...I kind of feel bad about this.”
I met his steady gaze. “About what?” He was seriously acting strange. I mean, I was a freak before he left to buy new clothes. He didn’t have to act shocked about it now.
He rushed me. Because I didn’t expect it, he landed heavily on top of me and we tumbled to the poorly padded (and cheap) hotel carpet. All the air rushed out of my lungs and I couldn’t get a breath.
Damn, he was heavy.
“Just hold still,” he ordered, breathing hard.
Of course, I did exactly the opposite, wriggling and twisting and trying to get away. What the hell was he thinking?
I stilled when I noticed the knife in his hand. The blade gleamed and for the thousandth time I saw Liam kill Nevin in my head. He raised the knife, ready to strike. He paused only long enough to say, “I really am sorry.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. This was End Scene for Gavyn.
Or was it? With everything I had, I kneed him in the crotch. He grunted, but it was all high-pitched and girly. And totally satisfying. Take that, you bastard!
Suddenly all of his weight lifted from me. I rolled over and scrambled across the shitty carpet. My eyes darted around the room, trying to find Liam.
I found him, all right. Not just one Liam, but freaking two of him.
They were in some sort of stand-off, eyes locked on each other like an Old West shoot-out. They had the exact same knife raised, in the exact same hand. It was a reverse mirror image. They had twin bulging veins in their foreheads.
“Liam?” I cried. Neither one of them looked at me.
With the intensity of a gunshot, they lunged at each other, an unrecognizable cluster of arms, legs, knees, elbows, boy grunts, and slashing knives. The two Liams were equally matched in both attack and defense. Well, of course. They’re the same person. Just when I thought one would have the edge, the other would gain an advantage. I winced with each blow.
With startling similitude, both knives went flying. One of them skittered across the carpet and came to rest a foot from my hand. The Liams were at each other’s throats, locked in a deadly grasp.
“Kill him,” the first Liam hissed. The vein in his forehead was very large indeed and his face an unhealthy shade of purple.
“No, Gavyn,” the second Liam wheezed. “Kill him.”
Their eyes flickered at me alternately as my fingers inched for the knife. Well, what the hell was I supposed to do?
“I can’t tell who’s who.” My fumbling fingers clutched the knife. The handle was smooth and warm against my palm, foreign to me.
I eyed the first Liam, with his scruffy, too-long hair and bulging eyes, then the other Liam, with his perfect butt jeans and badass boots.
Damn it! They were exactly alike.
But then the bottom Liam (the first Liam) winked at me and made a kissy face through his asphyxia. Without hesitation I walked (quite calmly, mind you) to them and stabbed Liam in the back (the second Liam). He fell on top of the first Liam who pushed him away with a disgusted grunt.
Unceremoniously, I puked all over Liam’s badass boots.
The first Liam.
Damn drunken noodles.