“I can’t,” he said, very gently. “I can’t tell you what to do, my lady. You must choose it on your own. I’ve done enough.”
She looked back at the crazier, dirtier version of him, huddled now in a crouch on the ground, and said, “I love him, you know. He has . . . vision. And freedom.”
“He’s quite mad,” Myrnin said. “But I suppose you know that, too.”
“I know. But I can’t let him be slaughtered in the streets. I’ll see him safe.”
“Yes. You will.”
She turned again, facing him, and I figured that was the end of it . . . but she didn’t let him go. “If you know me, you’ll know that I’ve never been much for propriety,” she said. “I do what I like.”
“It is your very best quality—”
She cut him off by planting a kiss on him. Not a little peck on the cheek, oh no—a full-on press of her lips on his, with her arms slipping around him and holding on, and wow, that was a kiss. He seemed shocked at first, and then he got into it. Well, I could understand that, although I really didn’t need to see it; his hands traveled up her sides, her arms, cupped the sides of her head, and she moaned and pressed up against him, and he didn’t seem to mind that at all. In fact, he gave it right back, to the point where I was starting to wonder just how far this was going to go, because—damn.
And then Jesse pulled back, lips red and eyes wild, and whispered, “Stay. Stay with me. I need you to stay.”
“No,” Myrnin said. He didn’t sound too convinced. “I can’t.”
“I’ve been alone for so long, and this—this you is more my patient than anything else. I love him, but he’s broken, and will be so long in healing. Just bide with me a day. Only a day.”
“I . . . can’t . . .”
Yeah, that sounded like a man who was seriously thinking about it. And he hadn’t let her go. He brushed hair back from her pale face and kissed her again. Hard. This was not a side of Myrnin I’d ever really imagined seeing. I was starting to hope I never saw it again, because I couldn’t help but see Claire in Jesse’s place, and that was an oh, hell no kind of experience.
“Hey, man,” I said to him. “Gotta go. Come on.”
He didn’t listen. I reached for him at the extent of my stretch, not letting go of the button, and got him. I grabbed hold of the back of his coat, and dragged him a step back to where I could get a good grip on his collar.
Lady Grey turned on me, snarling, and the frustrated anger in her eyes made me remember all the men she’d just laid out dead on the street. Whoa. There was wanting, and then there was wanting. This lady wasn’t used to being told no.
He hadn’t told me so, but I figured it must be time to bail. Myrnin hadn’t made it clear whether I needed to be touching skin or just his clothes, but I grabbed the cold back of his neck before I let go of the button.
And the darkness cut off like . . . well, like somebody had flipped on the lights. And Myrnin and I were standing there in the same place, next to the lab table, and the only difference was that he had a book in the pocket of his coat, and he was shaking like a leaf. He put his hands to his face. To his lips.
“Sorry to be your anti-wingman,” I told him, “but you said don’t let you stay. Looked like you were tempted to me.”
“Tempted,” he repeated faintly. “Yes. She is very tempting. She was . . . different in those days. Less in control. More . . . feral.”
“Sexy as hell is the phrase you’re looking for.”
He glanced at me and turned away, bracing his hands on the lab table, head down.
“So, you got what you wanted? This book thing?”
“Yes,” he said. “With it, I can rebuild many of the systems on which I based Morganville, but better. More powerful. So why do I feel that I’ve . . . lost something? Left something?”
“Because you didn’t get to have the wild sexy night with Victorian Jesse?”
“She was not Jesse. Not then. She was . . . Lady Grey. And Lady Grey only. But she never . . . We have never . . . It was more that I idolized her. She saved me. She brought me out of the dark and back from the dead, in many ways that matter. And I feel . . . robbed of knowing more of her now.”
“Good thing you told me to pull you back,” I said. “What would have happened if you’d stayed and I let go of the button, anyway?”
“I’d have died. More importantly, I suppose, I would have never existed. Two of the same cannot exist in the same space and time. The only reason this was possible was my tether, using the box, to this time. There are calculations, if you’d care to see them. . . .”
“Pass,” I blurted. “And if you’d have never existed . . .”
“Morganville would never have existed,” he said. “Or at least, not in this form. The world would change. You might not be here. Claire might not. Things would be . . . quite different.”
I didn’t want different. I shuddered to think about it, actually. “Thanks for warning me about that up front, man.”
“I didn’t!”