“I have always liked this about you.” His eyes are beetles, flat and black. Lifeless. “How you are so willing to take risks. An entire restaurant filled with sentient life, including those that you cohabitate with and have feelings for, and yet you are willing to blow me and this room up without a second thought.”
My other hand angles, but he catches that one, too, crunching more small bones like they’re nothing. OH MY GODS OH MY GODS. Searing pain tears through every nerve ending in my body. He slams me back against the sink, the hard porcelain unforgiving against my hipbones.
This time the urge to scream out in agony consumes me, but before I can, one of his papery, disgusting hands clamps over my mouth.
“Can you do it, little Creator? Can you simply think of a change, and make it so?”
Why is . . . why . . . how . . . I shake my head desperately, but it’s hard, so hard to think of anything else but the pain raging through me. I need . . . must . . . cage? No—will him out—
Gods, I can’t think.
Jens clamps down harder the fragile fragments left intact in one of my hands. Darkness swarms my vision. “We cannot converse if you keep trying to attack me. Be a good girl and show some respect.”
He removes his hand from my mouth slowly. Tiny white flakes rain down between us. “Jens . . . why . . .?” Even to me, my voice is slurred.
“Do you really not know?” he asks, amused. “Can you not feel it?”
Any attempt at coherent thought is countered with various pressure adjustments against my still trapped hand.
“Oh, little Creator. I’m worse than disappointed. You should know that appearances are always deceptive.”
I’m teetering on the edge of blackness. “Who . . . not . . . Jens?”
He closes in on me; a putrid smell threatens to overwhelm the remaining, functional senses I’ve got going for me. He taps my forehand with a long finger. “Think, little Creator. Think. You can figure it out. You’re a bright girl.” That ugly smile of his curves upward once more. “Shall I let you in on a secret?”
I actually throw up now. Between the pain and the smell, I can’t stop myself.
If Jens, or whoever this is, is bothered by the rancid remains of my recently consumed dinner all over his shirt, he doesn’t let on. “We have been in the midst of a game together for some time now. It has been droll, this game of cat and mouse we play. In the spirit of our burgeoning relationship, tonight will be all about riddles. You have asked me a question, and I was gracious enough to give you a clue. Now, it is my turn. Tell me, little Creator. Which one is out there right now? What is the name it goes by?”
I struggle to focus, but all I want to do is to let myself fall into darkness. What . . . what is he talking about?
Surprisingly, the pressure on my ruined hand relents momentarily. Jens leans forward, his ashy lips too close to my ear. Nausea rushes back like a tsunami. “I have to admit, I cannot tell those two apart.” The hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention. “All I can see is that they are two halves of a whole.”
Is he . . . Jonah? He’s asking about Jonah? I struggle, panicked, but lights flash before my eyes as my hand is refolded tightly into his.
“Abominations.” And now his lips do make contact, on the space right before my ear; bile surges once more up my throat. “Fate should not have allowed that. I would not have allowed that. Once, such perversions would have become tributes. Offerings of appeasement.”
My eyes, already unfocused and swinging wildly, land for a brief moment on his hand, still holding mine in a vise-like grip. There’s a signet ring on the pinky. This is Jens’ ring. Every single time I’ve ever seen him, he’s been wearing this ring.
This is Jens, and yet it is not. Because Jens . . . Jens knew the difference between Jonah and Kellan.
I wish Caleb were still in my head, to tell me what to do. Tell me who is here with me. I close my eyes, let myself sink into the abyss threatening to take me, but a sharp crack against my face forces me back up once more. “My patience wears thin,” the Jens person says.
I think he might have shattered my cheekbone, too. “I’ll die . . . before I . . .” I pull in a shuddery breath.
Jens smiles, and then laughs. It is not Jens’ laugh. It is sly, old, filled with countless atrocities and immeasurable power. “Oh, no, little Creator. There will be no death allowed for you, not for some time now. I cannot guarantee that for those nearby, though.”
My concentration, on the verge of coherency, is shattered once more as he clamps down on both of my hands. I gasp, “Don’t . . . please . . . don’t hurt them . . .”
“It is beneath you to try to protect those who are inferior, and yet you still try. You are a Creator; every life is beneath you. Dealing death is not to be feared. It is to be revered.”
I start to cry. Flat out cry.