“Nothing,” I grumble, doing my best not to stare. I set the kids’ books on a desk and search for something to distract me, but it’s no use. There’s nothing as distracting as him.
“I need your help,” he says as he turns his back to me. A horrible rash filled with black thorns stretches from his neck to just below his rib cage.
I cringe. “What are these things?”
“Nix talons. They break off in the skin and turn to poison if they aren’t removed soon enough.”
“You need to see a doctor for this,” I say.
“You have become predictable, Lyric Walker.”
“What kind of poison?” I say.
“They cause your body to overproduce blood until you swell—”
“Okay, I get it,” I interrupt as I pull the black fingernail out of his skin. It’s so gross. “Every day with you is blood.”
He turns. “You are angry with me.”
Oh, so we’re going to talk about it. “They were kids.”
“They were my age,” he says. “Some older. And they threatened us with weapons.”
“You’re stronger and faster than them,” I argue. “And you have swords in your arms.”
“They are not swords.”
“Fine, they’re jagged, sharp, stabby things that can cut a person’s hand off. You should have held back.”
“I did hold back,” he seethes. “They still live, don’t they? And let me remind you they had a jagged, sharp, stabby thing themselves.”
“Let’s not talk about it,” I say as I continue with my amateur surgery. “We’re just different.”
“Yes, we are different,” he says. “Despite your efforts to change me.”
“Change you?”
“Is that not what Doyle asked you to do? Make me human? Turn me into a person who backs down from challenges? Please inform him that you have failed.”
“I did. He’s giving you to someone else so they can try.”
He spins around on me. His eyes are full of hurt. It’s like I slapped him.
He cares.
If that’s true, I need to get out of this room. My list only works if he doesn’t have feelings for me. If he does, I won’t be able to stop myself. I turn to the door, but he takes my arm.
“I—”
“Let me go,” I say, staring at the door.
“Wait—”
“Please, let me go,” I beg.
“I cannot, Lyric Walker.”
Suddenly I am spun like a top and pushed against the wall. His hands swirl around the small of my back, and he pulls me to him. I open my mouth in surprise and he presses his to mine. His kisses are hungry, devouring. I have never been kissed like this before. I didn’t even know I could be kissed like this, dragged off my feet into his undertow, bounced and thrown around in a swell of want. This scares me, not because he is wrapped around me but because I am kissing him just as hard. We stumble around, pressing even tighter together, each of us trying to merge into the other’s body. And all around me I feel the world changing, morphing into something I know I will not recognize when I open my eyes. The ground will be up and the sky will be down and nothing will make sense to anyone, not even us. When we walk out of this room, everyone will know what we’ve done. You can’t kiss someone like this and think the world won’t see the transformation. But I don’t care. I want to drown in him.
I hear the faint whir of something mechanical, and my eyes pop open. The camera mounted on the ceiling slowly turns its eye, focusing a black lens on us. In a panic, I peel myself off of Fathom. It feels like being ripped out of my own skin.
“The camera.”
He peers at it and then scowls. “They watch us.”
“We can’t do this,” I say as I struggle to catch my breath.
“I had to. Just once, before . . .”
“Before what?”
He gives me a final pained look, then walks out without another word, leaving me behind to shake and tremble. I try to get ahold of myself, but every one of my nerve endings cries out for more of him, demanding another fix. My engorged heart feels like it’s going to push aside my ribs and explode out of my chest.
Bonnie pokes her head into the room. “That’s a first.”
I stare at her a moment until I understand she’s making a joke. Fathom was the first to walk out this time.
“Yeah, it was. I guess I’ll just sit here until the end of the hour.”
“Suit yourself,” Bonnie says, and she closes the door.
I fall into a chair and spend the rest of the time trying to calm down. When the bell rings, I’m still shaky but make my way to the door. It’s then that I notice he’s left me something. On a desk is a copy of Where the Wild Things Are, the same one he ripped in two in a fit of anger. He’s mended it with tape, carefully placing each page back the best he could.