Darker Than Night - Amelia Wilde Page 0,22

are light as air. I only hear them because I’m listening with my entire soul. The doors to the upstairs are closed when I get there, with no sign of Brigit, only a single lamp on in the corner.

I find her in the master bath running a brush through her hair. Our eyes meet in the mirror and I hold out the phone. “For you.”

She puts the brush down. “Who is it?”

“Dr. Jain. She wants to talk to you about results from the blood test.” It makes less sense as I say it. What results would she discuss with Brigit but not with me? Demeter’s reach had to cover most of the whorehouse.

Her face pales, all the color bleeding out. “Is it cancer?”

“No.” Maybe it is. I don’t let on that the floor is tilting beneath me. Brigit takes the phone when I press it into her hand. She holds it like a grenade, turning slightly away from me.

“Hello? Yes, it’s me.”

I wander back out to the living room like a ghost and turn on more lamps. The light from each one pools on the floor. It’s excruciating, this love. Bruising. I can’t believe she goaded me into saying it, into admitting it out loud. Again. The dark tendrils of the past slither along the floor and try to hook themselves into my ankles. It’s all very dramatic, these imaginings.

The act of sitting and waiting impatiently is a joke so I go into the kitchen and take out a bowl from the freezer. I’m leaning against the countertop and letting the bite of the cold dig into my palms when Brigit comes in.

Reading her expression is an exercise in futility. She looks surprised. Shocked. The corners of her lips turn down, firmly pressed together. I get a breath of her shampoo as she slides the phone onto the countertop, eyeing the bowl cradled in my hand. “What are those?”

“Frozen grapes.” I crush one between my teeth and swallow it, my heart a wild thing throwing a tantrum to know what’s happening, tell me what the fuck is happening. “What did Carina say?”

Brigit plucks a frozen grape from the bowl and puts it in her mouth. I have a small heart attack watching her roll it around on her tongue and bite into it. In all my years of experience I have never considered frozen grapes to be erotic.

There’s a time for everything, I suppose.

“They’re good,” she says, not looking at me.

I put the bowl on the countertop. “What did she say?”

Fuck. Was it cancer? She wasn’t supposed to be testing for that. By the time I woke up from Hades’ misguided attack, they’d already run preliminary screens on Brigit and found—whatever it was they found. Demeter’s latest experiment.

What else?

She still won’t look at me, and I can’t stand it. Brigit’s focused on some point out the kitchen window. Touching her will reignite what happened in my office, so I do it, turning her face to mine. “Sweetheart, tell me what she said, or there will be consequences.”

A short, sharp laugh bursts out of her, and she raises a hand as if to cover her mouth but puts it over mine instead, her fingers holding on tight. “There have already been consequences, I’d say.”

I know what she’s going to say before she says it. The truth is a pit in my gut, an icy denial that shoots out to the tips of my fingers. Impossible. What she’s going to say is impossible. I don’t fuck up like that. I don’t make those kinds of mistakes.

But I do, don’t I?

I have a flash of Brigit sobbing into my shoulder, the blood from the remains of her virginity on her thighs. She’s not crying now. She’s clear-eyed but nervous, her heartbeat fast under the pale skin. “I’m pregnant.” Brigit licks her lips, concentration locked on my face. “She said I’m pregnant.”

9

Brigit

My lips have gone numb. What part of the body’s fight or flight response includes numb lips? It seems like a bad idea. A trick of evolution that didn’t work out. It’s as if the small lizard part of my brain thinks that telling Zeus this news is a dangerous thing.

Rationally, it can’t be that risky. He has contingency plans for just this circumstance. He told me about them himself, and he meant it. Never mind that I was naked at the time, bent over his place setting at a fancy table, his grip relentless on my wrist.

We’re statues now, me facing his