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Everything in the room jumped up and took off spinning. Weak-kneed, I stumbled back, ready to go down, but I didn’t. I wasn’t a fainter, but Erik didn’t know that. He caught my shoulders and held me steady as I struggled for composure. He had recently hauled my lifeless carcass from the streets to his underground home and probably thought passing out was my normal reaction to stress.
“But... how? That’s not...” My brain and mouth refused to cooperate.
“Not possible?” Erik said. “That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it? It’s what I thought too. I put a gun to my head as soon as I finished killing the bastard who bit me, but I passed out before I could pull the trigger.”
“But you’re not a...” I gulped. Did I really need to state the obvious?
“Not one of them? Nope. I woke up bleeding all over the place and blind in my left eye, but it eventually healed, and I never developed a craving for human flesh.”
I giggled inanely. “Well, thank God for big favors.”
He still had an arm around me, supporting my weight. I made a gesture toward his bed, and he helped me to the mattress. I sat, and he pressed my mug into my hands. The tea had cooled, but the sugar in it helped steady my nerves once I’d gulped it down.
“You’re not still angry with me for prying?” I asked. He hadn’t kicked me out or given me the cold shoulder again. Instead, he squatted on the floor near my knee and stared off at nothing.
Blinking, his attention returned from wherever he had gone in his thoughts. “You’re not disgusted?”
I looked him over again, searching for something that might repulse me. “No, I don’t guess so. The rest of you is so pretty, it makes up for the parts that aren’t so much.”
He made a strangled noise that turned into a wry laugh. “Pretty?”
“You know what I mean.” I stabbed a finger into his shoulder.
He snatched my hand and held it clenched in his own until his mirth subsided. “No one has ever accused me of being pretty before.”
Other people’s opinions rarely mattered to me. He was lovely, and his scars couldn’t change that. “How did it happen? How come you aren’t up there on the streets, moaning and groaning, stumbling around, and looking for your next live meal?”
His expression turned serious again, lips tilting down, brow furrowing. “I think... I’m immune.”
I gaped at him. “Immune?”
“Yes. Immune means—”
“I know what it means.” I rolled my eyes. “I just wonder what’s in those things that you could be immune to.”
To tell the truth, I had thought of it less like a sickness and more like demonic possession or something equally evil and otherworldly. Of course, that made little sense in retrospect. The churches might have stood a better chance if the Dead Disease had been something spiritual rather than physical.
Erik nodded and rubbed his thumb across my palm. Only then did I notice he still had hold of my hand. My blood stirred, and heat crept into my cheeks. “I think it’s something like the black plague that happened in Europe hundreds of years ago,” he said.
“I know about that.” I nodded. “People got sick and died, but they didn’t get back up again.”
“I’m not saying this is the same sickness. I’m just saying that back during the plague, people got sick by getting it from others, but some people didn’t get it because they were immune for some reason.”
“Like when you get pox as a kid and you can’t ever get it again.”
“Yes, maybe something like that.” He shrugged. “But I don’t think I got some sickness as a kid that put me in bed for a couple of weeks but kept me from turning into a full-blown flesh eater later in life.”
“No, I guess not.” My shoulders slumped. Lacking further theories about his potential Dead Disease immunity, I changed the subject. “Did you grow up around here?”
“Saint Theresa’s,” he said in a quiet voice.
Saint Theresa’s was an orphanage in the city’s south side, and it had been my father’s pet project. He’d donated a lot of his time and money to both the kids and the nuns who ran the orphanage. My father had often brought me along to play with the other children while he patched a hole in the roof, repaired the front porch steps, or dropped off a bundle of clothing or food or toys—whatever he thought might make the place a little more like a home, and less, well... like an orphanage.
I studied Erik again and searched my memory for a possible match from all those years ago. “How old are you?”
He let go of my hand and stood, his tall frame taking up most of the subway car’s vertical space. He crossed the room and leaned against the wall near the tapestry covering the door. “You should save your questions for finding your sister.”
I folded my arms over my chest and frowned at him. “Telling me your age has nothing to do with whether I’ll find my sister or not.”
He grimaced and pushed his way past the curtain. I jumped up and followed him. He took the lantern from its hook and went to fiddle with the big iron door at the head of the tunnel. “You got weapons on you?” he asked.
Only then did I notice my missing leather apron. He must have removed it when he dumped me on his bed. “Where’s my stuff?”
He pointed to the train car. “In there by the bed. Get your things and come on.”
“Where are we going?” I asked.
He pointed up and grinned. “To the surface.”
Nodding, I whirled on my heel and dashed into his room to collect my possessions. When I was little, my governess had said a girl should never leave home without a proper set of foundational garments. I couldn’t have agreed with her more. Regardless of whether Erik and I met any Rotters or not, going outside without my weapons was like forgetting to put on underwear. My governess had also frequently said she wasn’t sure her lessons were getting through my thick skull. Guess I proved her wrong.