Weirdly, her eyes began to play tricks on her. The frame around the picture appeared to be rolling slowly and then picked up speed. She glanced back to look at Player. He was staring at the picture, his eyes very focused. They were holding hands, sitting close together, backs to the headboard, staring at her grandfather’s drawing.
Her heart began to pound as she forced herself to look at Sorbacov. His head had completely faded away. Those malevolent eyes were staring at them, and they were all too real. Around the eyes was absolutely nothing but black. There were no lines. No charcoal drawings. The eyes did seem to be set back into the drawing, not out in front of it, as if the drawing itself were some kind of a tube.
“Player.” She whispered his name, knowing the entity was gone, but still terrified. She needed the connection of her hand on his thigh, but raised the other one defensively to her throat. “What is that thing? Why is it here in my bedroom with us? It really does look like it’s inside my grandfather’s picture.”
He suddenly gathered her into his arms and pulled her onto his lap. “Stop shaking. We’ll figure this out. I can take you and your grandmother out of here and put you somewhere safe until we know what is going on.”
Zyah buried her face in his throat. He was always so warm, his body comforting. “My instincts are very strong about this, Player, telling me we can’t be separated. From the very beginning I felt we had to be together.” At no time had that changed. If anything, her feeling had grown even stronger that they needed to stay together for safety.
“I believe this man has something to do with the bomb,” Player said. “I just don’t know what. I don’t understand how he managed to get into this room. I had to have brought him here, but I don’t recognize him. Can you sketch those eyes? It’s possible Czar might recognize him from his eyes, but I sure as hell don’t.”
The eyes had been very dark brown. Zyah slid off his lap and reached for the notebook and pen so she could hastily sketch the eyes while she had them in her head so starkly. Very heavily lashed. There were lines around the outside corners of his eyes as if he’d seen a great deal of sun, but because the eyes sat right in the middle of an empty black hole, it was difficult to even see those. That was more of an impression.
“I think you’re right, Player, but how would he know about the bomb? How could anyone know unless he saw you building them as a child?” She put the notebook down and rubbed her chin on her knee. “He would have had to know about not only your illusions but the fact that your illusions can morph into reality if you suffer a brain injury.”
He shook his head. “It can happen if I hold an illusion too long.”
“Not even your brothers and sisters knew that, right? Czar didn’t know. You went there the other night to tell him. You were so upset that you’d held that information back from him. If none of them knew, who could have known? An instructor at the school? Did Sorbacov know? Could he have told someone?”
Player tilted his neck until he rested the back of his head against the headboard. “That’s a lot of questions, babe. I have no idea who could have known. Not one of the instructors. Certainly, none of the other students. My people had eyes on me, and they didn’t catch on. The other kids didn’t know me that well. They wouldn’t have had a clue even if a life-sized bunny hopped through the room. Sorbacov is a different story. It’s difficult to say what he knew. He had cameras planted everywhere. Once we began to kill . . .” He broke off and glanced at her.
Zyah pressed her lips together and then looked down at her hands. Player had lived a horrific life. They couldn’t pretend he hadn’t, and they couldn’t tiptoe around it, not if they were going to be together in the way she needed to be with him. She wanted a total connection. A total sharing between them. She wasn’t the kind of woman to be in a partial relationship. It was all or nothing for her. If he didn’t feel the same way, she needed to know that now.
“I realize you and the others had no choice, Player. Not only do I believe you had no choice to do what you did, I think there was justice in it. I don’t like the fact that you were children—babies, really—but there was no one else. If you were going to survive, how else were you going to do it? Ask nicely? I doubt if that would have gotten you anywhere.”
Player touched her face with gentle fingers, brushed across her lips and then down her chin. “I don’t know how I got so lucky to meet someone like you. I don’t like that you have to share what happened to me when I have nightmares—and I have them all the time. I don’t normally build real bombs. I build bombs that don’t work just to clear my mind. But you shouldn’t have to see that world I grew up in, and if you stick with me, Zyah, it will continue to happen.”
Zyah shrugged. “I like the intimacy of telepathic communication, which means being in your mind. I like knowing things about you that you don’t share with others.” Not even his Torpedo Ink brothers and sisters, but she didn’t say that aloud. “If you’re going to have a real relationship with me, and I’m not saying you are because I just don’t know if I can trust this yet, I won’t settle for second best. I won’t settle for halfway. That means occasionally neither one of us is going to be comfortable.”
“I said you shouldn’t have to see the world I grew up in, baby, I didn’t say I wasn’t willing for you to see it. I think it’s a little late to pretend I’m Prince Charming.” He gave her a little half smile that tugged at the corners of her heart. “I’m willing to take you any way I can get you. One tiny piece of you at a time. And I’m not so proud I won’t tell you so.”
She lowered her lashes, veiling the expression in her eyes. He could read her so easily. That gift he’d given her. The basket was right there. So close. The contents exactly right for her and thoughtful. “You have to stop saying things like that.”
Deliberately, she turned her attention back to her grandfather’s drawing. “Do you really believe that you can see something in his drawing that I haven’t, when I’ve looked at it for all these years? And my grandmother. If she knew, surely she would have said something to me.”
“I’ve considered that,” Player said. He slid from the bed again and walked over to where the picture was hung on the wall.
Zyah’s heart accelerated, pounding hard. She hadn’t wanted to believe her grandfather’s art had anything to do with the entity that had been in her bedroom, but now that she wasn’t certain, she didn’t want Player anywhere near it. She jumped up and quickly turned on the light, dispelling the shadows, hopefully making it impossible for the thing— or person— to sneak back.
Player glanced at her over his shoulder. “He can’t get back right now.”
“How do you know?”
She came up to him, quite close, one arm sliding around his waist, not-so-subtly hinting. He reacted exactly the way she knew he would—he put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her to him, her front to his ribs, tucking her close the way he so often did. She took a deep breath, inhaling him into her lungs, and then turned her head to look at the picture.
Every line, thin or thick, was so familiar to her. She knew them by heart. The frame, that beautifully rolled frame, carved with such loving detail into an intricate scroll of ancient time, complete with symbols. She’d traced every one of them a thousand times and pressed kisses onto her fingertips and then onto those etchings just to connect with her father. She moved her head from side to side, fast and then slow, to try to see if the lines in the drawing changed at all. Once or twice she thought they did, but nothing very significant, and it could have been an illusion, simply because Player had suggested it.