would drive me into a violent unreality. Would it be Arthur who killed me, eventually?
But today I wasn’t scared. I was only sad.
Fifer seemed to read my mind. “You’re already a monster,” she said. “Poor widdle beastie. Trying so hard to be human, when all anybody else sees is your scales and teeth.”
“Do you want me?” I said. “I’m making you my offer. You can take me. Let Pilar and Tabitha go.”
Her eyes glittered.
I was too good at math not to know that I might be handing her the winning cards—not just over me, but over all of us. Without the danger I represented, would she really allow Pilar and Tabitha to walk out of here? The best I could hope for was that it would alter some inputs. Give the two of them the slimmest of chances.
That was okay with me today.
Hands still in the air, I took a step forward. Then another. I didn’t need to look again at the bomb to know we were at less than two minutes. “If you’re all about chaos, I promise I can cause it.”
“You won’t have a choice,” she said. “Frankenstein’s creation, King Kong … we tell the story over and over, how the creature that is feared and shunned will turn and shit on humanity. It’s inevitable.”
“You’ll make the trade, then.”
Fifer twisted with the hand clenched on the dead man’s switch to dig around in the messenger bag holding her bomb. She came up with something and tossed it at me. It clattered to the smooth hardwood floor of the wine cellar and rolled to a stop at my feet, against the debris from the ceiling.
A syringe.
“It’s a sedative,” Fifer said. “You’ll wake up, though you’re not going to want to at that point. My own personal monster!” She giggled again and also dug out a pair of handcuffs, which she flung my way with a finger. “Punch the drugs into a muscle. Then cuff yourself up.”
I crouched, keeping tabs on Pilar out of the corner of my eye. She still had her CZ aimed at Fifer in a one-handed grip, the other hand braced against the wall. Shit, she better not be so busted up that she wouldn’t be able to get Tabitha out.
Probabilities bayed at me, pessimistic, but I didn’t allow myself to consider them. Instead, I picked up the syringe and stuck the needle into my upper arm, through my clothes. Pushed the plunger.
The sedative felt cold going in.
If it was a sedative. If she hadn’t just poisoned me.
I still wasn’t afraid.
Willow Grace’s eyes narrowed greedily as she watched me. “Go on now. Cuffs, and then come stand in front of me. Can’t have cute little Pilar shooting me, and we’re all out of time.”
She waved the dead man’s switch at me. Fifty-four seconds.
I reached out to retrieve the cuffs and slid the metal over my wrists. Click, click click, click. The sedative was already affecting my movements, making my fingers heavy.
“Now, come block your friend’s line of fire,” Willow Grace instructed. “Easy now. Not too close.”
I stumped forward between Pilar and Willow Grace. The latter pulled Tabitha a few steps to the side and cuffed her to one of the wine racks, then drew a stubby little revolver with her free hand and trained it on me. The bomb was counting down past twenty seconds; Fifer stepped away from Arthur’s daughter, moved toward the stairs, and manipulated something one-handed on the device that made the LED clock click off.
Good, I thought. One threat down.
Though it wasn’t like Fifer couldn’t toss another device down once she got us out of the basement. Pilar might only have seconds. It was all I could give. It would have to be enough.
“This is a good compromise,” Fifer said, back in her taunting singsong, her hand steady with the revolver aimed right between my eyes. “Now keep coming. Nice and slow. Try anything and I’ll shoot you.”
I believed her. I muzzily added reaction time and movements, subtracted, and concluded that I could not jump her. She was keeping me too far away, and had arranged us so I was exactly in Pilar’s line of fire—I could drop to the ground, but the data showed Willow Grace’s reaction time as faster than Pilar’s. She’d be able to shoot Pilar before Pilar could shoot her.
I still wasn’t afraid. I knew all the data and I wasn’t afraid.
Fifer groped a foot behind her for the steps, never taking her eyes off me. I drew