“I disturb people.” A thin, creepy smile crossed his face. “And I don’t mind that. It’s worked well in the past.”
“But you didn’t want to scare them.”
He nodded. “And it got worse. It turned out that Anna had severe fibromyalgia.”
Oh. Oh no.
“That comes with considerable pain, doesn’t it?” Nita had a bad feeling about where this was going.
“Yes.” He dragged the s sound out into a hiss. “Oh, it can be quite considerable.”
She closed her eyes, not wanting to hear the rest, but unable to quell her curiosity. “What happened?”
“I was me. You’ve seen me with pain. It’s not like I can shut off if I absorb it or not. And I was”—he swallowed—“deeply affected. I couldn’t even function normally. It was so obvious.”
“They found out you’re a zannie?” Fear laced her voice.
“I told them it was seizures,” he admitted. “I don’t know if they believed me. I wouldn’t have believed me.”
Nita wouldn’t either. Seizures usually weren’t enjoyable, and Kovit getting high on pain made him look like he was lost in ecstasy. Though both involved spasming muscles, that was where the similarities ended.
“I didn’t want to have to kill them if they learned what I was. I was already disturbed by the fact that I was eating the pain of a friend. It felt so wrong.”
“So you left.” Nita finished.
He nodded, and his hands curled into claws by his side. He stopped and Nita looked up. They’d reached the subway station.
Hesitating, Nita took a step closer to him, so she was standing beside him, their arms brushing. “Do you regret going to see them?”
“I don’t know,” he whispered. “I never knew that Anna had fibromyalgia. She never mentioned it. She even tried to hide it when we met up, but, well.” His smile was twisted and self-deprecating. “There’s no hiding pain from me.”
“No, I imagine not.”
“We were all keeping so many secrets.” His voice was quiet. “Was it ever a real friendship, without any of us seeing the real faces of each other? How many secrets does it take before it’s all a lie?”
Nita tilted her head to the side. “I don’t know. Do you really need to know every detail about someone to be their friend?”
He looked at her, gaze frank and open. “I don’t know.”
“You started with shared interests. But you don’t really have those anymore.”
“No.”
“So, what connected you?”
“I don’t know.” He shook his head, fingers running through his hair and mussing it up. “Things. It never really mattered to me what we talked about. They were just . . . an escape. A way for me to not lose touch with the real world.”
He looked down. “When I was feeling awful, I could go online, and they were there. They had no idea what was wrong, but they’d say nice things. They said things I needed to hear. They made me feel like I was more than my life. They gave me perspective.”
Nita shrugged. “Maybe that’s what friends are, then. People who say the things you need to hear.”
He laughed, his smile crooked. “And what do I need to hear?”
She looked at his hand, curled into a fist, and put her own over it.
His skin was warm, and her hand tingled, like mild electricity.
“I’m here, Kovit. I’ve already seen your monster.” She met his eyes. “And I’m not leaving.”
He stared at her, eyes dark and brows drawn together. Then he raised his arms and enfolded her in a hug. His arms were gentle as he pulled her close, and their cheeks brushed. Nita’s heart raced, and her palms were sweaty where they wrapped around his back.
“I did need to hear that,” he whispered. “Thank you.”
Her arms tightened around him. “Always.”
But she wasn’t sure if she was telling the truth.
Eleven
THEY WALKED DOWN the stairs to the subway platform in silence. It was crowded near the stairs, so they strolled to the very end of the platform where it was emptier. Thick, towering pillars were scattered along the pathway, holding up the ceiling. Nita wondered if the weight of Toronto above would crush them without the pillars.
A couple of students were sitting on the only set of metal chairs, bulky backpacks in their laps. Kovit met their eyes and smiled at them. It was not a nice smile.
Both of the students stared at Kovit for a moment, then the petite redhead pulled her heavily muscled Asian friend to his feet and tugged him away, heading for the other side of the platform. Their eyes never left Kovit.
It was always fascinating to see bulky, tough-looking people cower in front of Kovit, who was lean and wiry and on the short side.
“You really need to tone down the serial killer look in public,” Nita sighed, watching until the two students had completely vanished from view.
He snorted. “It’s not that far from the truth.”
Nita just raised an eyebrow. “Are you trying to scare me or something?”
He grinned at her, smile wide and crooked. “Are you scared?”
He was smiling, but there was something in his eyes that made Nita pause before she answered.
“No,” she lied, even though the screams of the girl he’d tortured still haunted her nightmares. Then she told the truth. “I know you won’t hurt me.”
But just because she wasn’t afraid for herself didn’t mean she wasn’t afraid at all.
Kovit walked a few steps away to check the timetable, and Nita shuffled her feet before taking a seat on a metal mesh chair. Kovit had scared away its previous occupant for her, it would be rude of her not to use it.
She leaned back and looked up at the cement ceiling and the bright fluorescents jammed into it. There was a noise behind her, but she ignored it, pretending the other passenger wasn’t there.
Until a garrote pulled tight across her throat, cutting into her flesh.
Nita tried to gasp, to scream, to make any kind of sound, but the garrote dug into her throat and choked off her voice so only gurgles of blood escaped.
Her fingers shot up, clawing at the garrote, but it was embedded too deep already, she couldn’t pull it out. She reached around, grabbing for her attacker. But her hand scrabbled against a smooth jacket, and the garrote sliced into her fingers when she slid them under the wire to block it from her throat.
Time slowed down as her neurons frantically connected the dots. If the garrote severed her artery and she couldn’t remove it, it wouldn’t matter that she could heal because she would continue to be cut.
She needed to get the garrote out first and focus on healing damage later.
Snarling, she stopped her instinctive repairing of blood vessels that were only getting damaged again, planted her feet on the ground, and shoved backwards.
The back of the metal chair dug into her spine, but Nita ignored the pain.
The human body was capable of incredible feats when scared. Mothers lifted cars off children or broke through walls.
Nita cared more about her life than about any child. And she wasn’t going to die here.
Nita prepped her sympathetic nervous system, adrenal glands dumping cortisol and adrenaline into her bloodstream. She restricted her carotid arteries and rerouted her blood directly to her muscles.