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IMARA WENT OVER THE WORDS IN her mind again, for possibly the millionth time. Taking advantage because she was vulnerable. Was Siluk really doing that? He did seem to be at her side more often. At every possible opportunity, in fact. He was always there with a hug when she needed it... and sometimes when she didn’t.
But.
He was the first to insist Abe was dead. Even when they saw his power signal, Siluk kept saying it would go away. He claimed Abe was gone, and she needed to move on. But did he mean move on so she could be with him?
His presence had been comforting over the last few days. Not just physically, but emotionally too. For some things, she went to him before even thinking of going to Naki. It felt right since he also lost someone important to him.
Was she only going to him because she was vulnerable? Was he taking advantage?
She picked at her bandage one more time. Naki had put it on in such a hurry, it wasn’t sticking right. As she picked at it, Siluk entered the apartment with a handful of herbs and a small glass bottle. He knelt at her side, setting his things on the ground. She watched his emotions carefully, trying to decide if he was taking advantage of her.
She saw tiny cherry red puffs of love. She’d noticed those a few days ago but managed to convince herself that Siluk only loved her as a friend. It seemed so silly now. She noticed a single, scarlet thread of romantic desire flipping out and she decided to look away.
Her hila was powerful, but it wasn’t perfect. She could see negative emotions when she looked for them, and she could see love when she looked for that. Maybe she wasn’t objective enough to read emotions right now. Even if Siluk did have feelings for her, she felt certain he wouldn’t take advantage of her.
Just then, he cupped his hand over her cheek and gazed into her eyes. Despite her best intentions, the look brought a fluttering of butterflies to her stomach.
“I bought witch hazel,” he said. “It will help clean the wound. Can I take off this bandage?”
She nodded and forced herself to look away. He touched her so easily, so intimately, without even a thought. It frightened her how comfortable it felt. When had she let him into her life like that? When had she started allowing such things?
Did she want him, or did she just want someone because she was so broken with grief?
He seemed to sense her thoughts were on him. He stopped fiddling with the herbs and looked into her eyes again. When she looked away, he tucked his hand under her chin and turned her head back toward him. His lips were so close she could practically taste them.
If she had any doubt in her mind before, it all fell away now. Siluk wanted one thing right now and that one thing was her. She didn’t know if she wanted him or if she just wanted comfort, but his lips were too close to be thinking clearly. Dangerously close.
He leaned in closer and her heart raced so fast she thought she might have a heart attack.
This was it. He was going to kiss her, and she would let him. But as his face came closer, she caught a sniff of a milky, musky scent that immediately reminded her of Abe.
Abe.
Barely a second before their lips met, she asked, “Could you get me some water?”
His eyes never lost their intensity as they stared back at her. For a moment, she thought he’d kiss her anyway. But then, he nodded and disappeared into the kitchen. She knew he’d try again when he got back. He wouldn’t give her a chance to back out next time.
Now that he was far enough away, she could breathe properly.
Think properly.
She did appreciate Siluk’s presence over the last week, but did she like him like that?
She didn’t know what to think or feel. She still wanted Abe. That she knew for certain. She still wanted to cry and never stop.
Her thoughts buzzed around in her head the way they normally did. Everything during the last few days had seemed to happen inside her body instead of outside it. She was usually more aware of her actions, but now she only seemed to be aware of her thoughts.
Her ring buzzed with a phone call, and she quickly tapped her ring to see an anonymous caller. Normally, she never answered anonymous phone calls, but in this case, it may have been one of the tagged. She had promised she would always answer their calls.
As soon as she tapped it, she had the terrifying thought that maybe Santini had somehow gotten one of her taggers to call her. The terror expounded when she saw thin eyes staring back at her. But less than a second later, that terror flapped right out the window when she noticed amber hair cut into a bob.
“Keiko!” Imara exclaimed with a smile. But then her head reeled as if rolling down a hill. “Wait. How are you calling me from Egypt? The forcefield around Nairobi makes communication impossible in or out of the city.”
“We don’t have much time,” Keiko said. “It’s a long story, but basically be glad I’m so good at hacking.”
Imara opened her mouth to say more, but Keiko raised a hand to interrupt. “Listen to me. This conversation has to take less than five minutes or else Santini will be able to track us and sever the connection. Five minutes, okay?”
Imara tried to nod, but curiosity froze her motions.
“By the way,” Keiko said. “I’m not in Egypt. I’m in Kenya and we’re just outside Nairobi right now.”
“But,” Imara turned her head to the side, “has air travel been fixed? How did you get from Egypt to Kenya? It’s only been a week.”
“I flew here in a jet, a week ago. We crashed and had to walk here. I’ve spent the last few days trying to figure out how to get past the forcefield.”
The words hadn’t fully sunk in before she saw his face on the screen. Keiko turned her hologram screen so it would record a larger area. Sitting next to her was the one face Imara wanted to see more than anyone. His copper skin looked darker, maybe from traveling. His hair looked messier too. His eyes sent a shock through her body that made her clap her hands right over her mouth. Tears filled her eyes before the thought of speaking could even begin to form.
“Hi,” Abe said.
Tears streamed down her cheeks in droves. Joy spread through her, but surprisingly, it wasn’t the dominant emotion. Instead, the grief she’d been avoiding now hit her like a ton of bricks because now she could actually deal with it. “I thought you were dead.”
She didn’t mean for it to sound like an accusation. She was so happy she could barely breathe. Her legs ached with the desire to jump for joy. But her mouth seemed to have a mind of its own and it made the words sound harsh out of her lips.
“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“Look what happened to my arm,” she said, peeling the bandage away. She didn’t know why it seemed like the perfect moment to bring up her injury. It hadn’t been bothering her, but she needed to feel Abe’s presence. She needed to tell him something that only he could understand in his own special way.
“Did you put ointment on it? You have a tub of my painkiller ointment, right?”
“Do either of you have any idea how short five minutes is?” Keiko said, leaning in front of Abe. “I know you guys miss each other, and you’re desperately in love and all that, but if you can’t focus on the conversation, I swear I’ll make Abe go into the other room.”
“I can focus,” Imara said with complete and utter belief that she could.
But then Abe mouthed I love you and her whole stomach turned to mush and she was smiling the dopiest smile she had ever made in her entire life.
“Pathetic,” Keiko said with an eye roll. But Imara saw silver gems of delight tumbling off Keiko’s skin as she spoke.
“We have a plan,” Abe said. His face had turned professional. “Keiko can get us into the city, even with the forcefield. She can also bring the forcefield down, but to do it, we have to blow up the glass dome.”
Imara bit her lip, her brain immediately serious. “All the council members are there. We’re working on a way to get them out, but we haven’t figured out how to get past the taggers who are guarding the halls.”
Keiko’s face fell. Abe’s matched it for a moment, but then swirls of hope flew out of him—and she knew it was cheesy, but she couldn’t think of a time he looked more attractive than then. “Do you think you can figure out by tomorrow? If we blow up the glass dome, the council members can get the vote canceled for good.”
Imara reached for the hair on the back of her neck, stroking and tugging as she thought. “I don’t know. Naki had an idea earlier, but she left without telling me anything about it. I think we might have a chance.”
“How are the tagged?” Abe asked.
All at once, a wave of guilt smothered her from the inside out. She covered her face with both hands and let out a groan. “I haven’t been helping them like I should be. I was, but then Mali got captured and I focused on stopping the vote. I was supposed to do both, save the tagged and stop the vote, but the vote has taken so much time.” She hung her head. The guilt crept up her spine until it seized her muscles. “I’m supposed to keep people from dying, but I’ve been too busy worrying about the vote to do that. What kind of a person does that make me now? I’m only a good person because I save people’s lives.”
“No.” Abe’s answer was so sure and so simple it caught her by surprise. She looked up and found him staring back at her carefully. “You save people’s lives because you’re a good person. It’s not the other way around. There are lots of other things that make you a good person.”
A tiny smile started growing at the side of her mouth. She wanted to wrap up the way he was looking at her and package it for use when she was feeling down. Abe always had a way of making her feel better than she really was.
“Have you been practicing with the mirror?” he asked.
She let out a laugh. “Uh, no.”
“Do it today.”
She looked up at him, worry seeming to fill every space in her brain. “I can’t, Abe. Not without you.”
“You can. And you need to. You have to see that saving people isn’t the only good thing about you.”
She wanted to grab his face and kiss him right through the hologram screen. Before she could entertain that thought too far, she sensed Siluk’s presence less than a meter away. He’d positioned himself so he could see her screen, but so he stayed out of sight.
The memory of their almost-kiss gripped her by the throat. This time, she actually had to cough it out before she could speak. “Where’s Darius?” she managed.
“Well,” said a familiar voice. Darius’s golden curls appeared on the screen just before his hazel eyes did. “Glad to know you remembered me eventually.”
Siluk let out a breath of relief but didn’t move any nearer to the screen.
“Time’s up,” Keiko said suddenly. “We’ll call you tomorrow if we can.”
With that, the phone call ended, and Imara was left with a crushing guilt that only grew as she thought about facing Siluk. She glanced toward him carefully.
He wore a strange mixture of emotions on his face, but they were nothing compared to the emotions coming off his skin. She expected the canary yellow fizzing bubbles of excitement. The maroon mounds of frustration surprised her. She didn’t like seeing the cobalt blue drops of sadness pelting off him. But worst of all, his scarlet red threads of desire reached for her with even more purpose than they had before. The sight of it twisted her stomach in ways she didn’t expect.
“They’re alive, huh?” Siluk said. Was that disappointment in his voice?
“Isn’t it wonderful?” she asked, jumping up from the couch.
Siluk pushed a glass of water into her hands. She tried to take it without letting their fingers touch, but Siluk seemed intent on having the opposite happen. His skin felt hot against hers. She turned away from him as she drank.
“How did they call through the forcefield?”
“I don’t know.” She took another sip from the cup.
“Why did Abe’s power signal die?”
“I don’t know,” she said again. “Keiko didn’t have time to explain.” She plucked the bottle of witch hazel from the ground and poured a few drops onto the towel she had dropped earlier.
“They want us to focus all our energy on trying to get the council members out of the glass dome? What about the tagged? Are we supposed to just ignore them?”
The hint of disgust in his voice was unmistakable now. She wanted to tell herself that he cared about the tagged and that’s why he was so angry, but she knew that wasn’t true. Things had changed now, and Siluk wasn’t happy about it. Maybe he was happy about Darius, but not about Abe.
She decided to ignore it. Maybe if she didn’t acknowledge his feelings, he wouldn’t admit to them. She dabbed the witch hazel onto her cut, reveling in the stinging sensation it provided. Anything to get her mind off this conversation. “We have to focus on stopping the vote now.”
“And what do we do after that?” Siluk stepped closer to her. Close enough that he could reach out for her hand if he wanted to. But she didn’t want that. More than anything, she was scared he’d take the chance.
She threw the towel to the ground and didn’t bother to re-bandage the cut on her arm. It wasn’t bleeding anymore anyway. Running toward the door, she said, “We have to find Naki. She has an idea.”
