“You bet your ass it is.” This time the smile disappeared. Lines bracketed the side of his mouth and I could tell he was more tired now than when I’d “helped” him sleep. “What did you do, Michael?” There was no Misha now. He knew what I’d done. I’d used my genetic abilities on him, though I was doing it for him. It was a violation, a huge one. That deserved my Institute name. “I would’ve woken up when you opened the door. After the mob, after what you and I lived through before, I would’ve woken up and we both know it.”
I was an ass. I hadn’t meant to be. I’d tried to do a good thing, but we were in a situation where there were no good things, only the right things. I hadn’t done the right thing. I’d been careless. “You were tired. I was only going to be out there two minutes. I wanted you to be able to sleep. I thought I was helping, but clearly I fucked up.”
He stared at me for another second. “Fucked up doesn’t begin to cover it.” He headed back to the SUV. “Let’s go. We have to get rid of your girlfriend somehow and get back to finding Peter and his goddamn posse. And we have Raynor back on our asses. I assume he’s not as dead as we’d hoped or you would’ve told me.”
I’d disappointed him. There hadn’t been a time Stefan had been disappointed in me—until now. I felt as if I’d been kicked in the stomach, a kick much worse than the ones Ariel doled out. I would’ve rather he went back to being angry with me. “Stefan,” I said quietly, “I’m sorry. I’m. . . .” I was what? What else was there to say? He’d thought he’d lost a brother again and if my healing abilities hadn’t quadrupled since I was seventeen and if he hadn’t chipped Godzilla, he might have. He was right. Fucked up didn’t cover it and neither did “sorry.” Nothing did.
I walked in silence behind him. I had issues. Anyone raised at the Institute would, but I hadn’t felt this worthless and guilty in my life. Each step I took felt mired in quicksand. He was the sole family I had and I’d let him down.
Where was my genius now?
Stefan exhaled, stopped, turned; then he hooked an arm around my neck and squeezed. “Still your brother, Misha. I love the hell out of you, jackass. We’ll write this off as lesson learned, all right? Now, get your girlfriend. Apparently she has a black belt in yoga but takes as long as a ninety-year-old woman to pee.”
My shoulders slumped in relief at his willingness to forgive. “Why is it men piss and women pee?”
“Okay, loving you a little less,” he snorted. “Go.”
I started to, but paused. “Wait. You said Peter called. When you answered instead of me, what did he say to you?”
He shook his head. “You don’t need to know. You tried to do something for my own good. I know this is for your own good. So go get the girlfriend.” He checked his gun, replaced it, and covered it with his shirt. He didn’t know he’d done it. The move was completely automatic, caused by the memory of what Peter had told him. Peter said he was curious about me. Peter was not curious about Stefan in the slightest except in how many varied ways he could dispose of him.
That wasn’t going to happen.
“Go without you? What happened to lesson learned?” I leaned against the SUV beside him. “I think I’ll stick around. ‘Bubba’ can hurry her up.”
Stefan’s lips twitched. “What if he flirts with her?”
“First, he’s in his forties. That’s disgusting. Second, if she did take him up on it, she’d kill him. His heart would give out before the Viagra kicked in.”
“There’s something to be said for dying a happy man,” he commented, eyebrows raised.
“No, there’s not.” My mood at being forgiven abruptly deflated.
“No?” The eyebrows went a fraction higher and his lips twitched again.
“No,” I said darkly, moving to the hood to see inside the Visitor Center.
Seriously, how long did it take someone to go to the bathroom?
I worried about how we were going to explain to Ariel how Stefan and Saul were waiting for us before we had a chance to call them. Despite her comment, she wasn’t going to buy psychic. Her four-year-old sister with the horse morgue and human hair shoes might buy it, but not a woman who was, I couldn’t deny any longer, more intelligent than I was. But it turned out not to be a problem. I was given a humbling example of how experience in duplicity edged out genius without trying.