CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

Red Hair, Red Heart, Red Forest

Standing on the stone path that led to Christian’s heart inside the Red Forest, I saw something I should have expected but didn’t. The sky above me no longer had a speck of brown. Now it radiated a dazzling blue. There was no sun, but there was light everywhere and it made everything in the Red Forest look less red. Even the shrine looked pinker than it had before.

I approached and let myself inside. King Christian was draped over his throne with one leg crooked over the armrest.

“You’ve been busy, I see,” I said, pointing with my thumb to the world outside.

“Simply changing corruptible for incorruptible. I see you’ve got back together with the real me. I should congratulate you, but…” he trailed off.

“I know. He hasn’t pulled the sword through,” I finished for him.

I told him about the missing heart.

“What do you think? The Other Christian got my heart beating and they cut it out immediately and gave it to Charles Lewis. What would have happened inside Charles?”

He closed his eyes and put his fingers to his temples. “If I imagine I’m him, the Other Christian, I fall through the mirror in the second chamber. If you didn’t intentionally implant versions of yourself in your heart before it was cut out, then there’s no one there, just the cells of the organ. He would have had your permission to correct the heart, so your cells would have received the permission and immediately begun the healing process. It would have started beating.” He breathed out and continued roleplaying. “When your heart was cut out… that would have shaken the Other Christian. He may not have been aware of what was happening exactly, but from that point on, the Other Christian will have very few options.”

“What kind of options?”

“He can try to stop your heart and kill Charles. If he does that, what will happen? Charles is dead, but what will happen to your heart? Will they bury him with your heart inside? Will they cremate him and see your heart unspoiled in the midst of the ashes? Will they cut it out of his corpse, put it back on ice, into storage, and eventually into someone else? If I was the Other Christian, I wouldn’t try to stop your heart from beating. I’d think of you and the real Christian looking for it and I’d know that it would be easier for you to find if I didn’t kill the host.”

“Rhuk is looking for Charles right now,” I said doggedly.

“You don’t think that’s enough, so you are headed back to Ottawa to try to find it yourselves?”

I groaned. “Would I be able to find it? Could I use some magical King Christian method to find it?”

He rubbed his jaw in contemplation. “You know who would be really good at looking for it?”

“Who?”

“Number three,” he said, pointing to the chambers deeper inside his heart.

“Not you?” I asked, wishing King Christian could help me.

He flicked his crown. “Do I look like the type of guy who can do anything about things outside my own body? If I looked like that to you, you’re wrong. I can’t do anything with stuff outside your four corners.”

I griped louder. “Isn’t there anything you can do to help me, my sovereign?”

He smiled, suddenly showing all his teeth in a dazzling array. “You do know how to talk to me, little subject.” He moved his position on the throne. He had been sitting sideways, but hearing my pleas, he moved forward and leaned his elbows on his knees. “There are two things you can do.”

“What?” I pleaded, holding my hands together.

“The first thing you can do is see if you can control the matter in another living thing. I’d try a plant, to begin with. If you can start to see inside other people’s bodies, then you won’t need Rhuk to spy for you. You can scan the city and find your heart yourself. You don’t need that third me, Doctor Christian, to tinker in other people’s bodies. Just like you entered the Red Forest of your own body yourself without any help from Christian, you can gain this ability yourself if you’re studious enough.”

I stared at him. It felt like he had given me an assignment that would take more than Charles’ lifespan to master. The gap between tinkering inside an aloe vera was on a completely different scale than scanning an entire city for body parts. I knew I’d mastered moving matter according to the other immortals in Nhagaspir, but from my perspective, I still had a long way to go. Rhuk did tons of things for me because I was lazy and I didn’t want to spend my whole life in a trance.

“The other thing you can do,” King Christian said, stroking his chin thoughtfully, “is learn how to speak the language of the gods and use the words to awaken Doctor Christian.”

“How can I do that? Brandon said it isn’t a spoken language.”

King Christian gave me a cute smile. “I don’t know how to speak it, so I can’t help you.”

“Then why are you smiling?” I asked suspiciously.

“Because the real Christian just finished dying your hair. You were using the time that he was making you over to talk to me? Well, he’s finished. He’s just drying your hair now.”

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“Is it awful? Is that why you’re smiling?”

His grin was amazing. “Red, huh? Want curls? Want me to make your red hair curly? It’s already kind of curly, but I would do a stunning job. With such perfectly sculpted curls, you would stop trains with your beauty.”

I waved my hand. “Do whatever. I entrust my leg fat to you, so why not my curls?”

He snapped his fingers. “Done. Though I really freaked myself out. The real me was heating up a straightening iron. He turned around for one second, then turned back around, and boom! Your whole head was done with exactly seven-centimeter ringlets.”

Rolling my eyes, I said, “I think he chose red because he’s hoping that if Charles Lewis sees me, he’ll think of the two percent of people who have red hair and strike up a conversation. No contact lenses though. He actually left my eyes the color they really are.”

King Christian tapped the edge of his crown irritably. “Are you planning to go around Ottawa with your actual face, or do you need me to give you a facelift?”

“That’s actually what I’m supposed to be talking to you about. I could do it, but it would take forever and you’re so handy.”

“Sure. I can help you sculpt your face, but once I get it in place, I want you to practice holding it.”

I nodded.

He stood up. “Who do you want to look like?”

“I don’t want to look like anyone. I think things have gotten too dangerous to steal someone’s identity. I told Christian all that when we were making our plans. I know you heard me.”

“I heard you… I just wasn’t sure if you were being completely honest with him.”

I scowled. King Christian was right. “I was thinking of a few ladies it would be nice to look like, but it wouldn’t do any good to look like a famous actress. I am not supposed to draw that much attention to myself and your disguises are so good, people might think I was her.”

“What about a dead actress?” he suggested cagily.

I whined, “I can’t be the spitting image of Vivian Leigh. People still know what she looked like.”

“Makes sense. Tell you what. I’ll have you look like someone who has been dead so long, no one will know you look like her.”

“You remember something that intricate? I thought your memory was clouded.”

“It is, but I remember a few faces. I deal in faces, and I remember a few doozies.”

“Like whose?”

“There was once a very evil emperor of Rome, Nero. He loved a woman so much that he had his first wife beheaded so he could be with her. When his second wife died too… Some say he killed her… he married for the third time, but she was not who he loved. I arranged the release of a lot of people from prison with the promise that I would make another woman look like his second wife. I rearranged her features and he married her immediately.”

“And you could do that?” I grimaced.

“I didn’t do the deed. Doctor Christian down the way did it, but I remember what he did and I don’t need his powers to give you her face.”

“You can’t make me too pretty. I am not supposed to stand out,” I balked.

“You are supposed to stand out. Has the real Christian ever been ugly?” he suddenly asked me.

“Huh?”

“When Christian changes his face, is he ever ugly?”

I lowered my gaze, recalling how different Christian had looked when he wore hazel contacts and pretended to be Christian Henderson, then later when he played Rogan Cormack with blue contacts. They were both heartthrobs. “No.”

“Then stop complaining. Besides, Beth, she will not be prettier than you because you are heaven itself. She will only be different from you, and you’d better remember forever that it is you that I want, not her, or anyone else.” His voice caressed my ear and whispered reassurance to my soul.

I agreed and he began twisting my features to make me into someone new.

He smiled and I knew he was pleased.

When I woke up in the real world, my face felt pinched. It felt like parts of my face were stretched. Other parts felt like they had been folded over themselves and stapled. It wasn’t exactly painful, but it was enough of a sensation that I was never likely to forget that I was not wearing the face I was born with.

Looking around, I was in a hotel room in Ottawa. We were stopping there to get our faces on before we went to a townhouse Christian owned. We wanted to show up with our disguises in place.

Christian was in the bathroom, dying his hair and singing softly. The sound of his casual song filled me with pleasure. Every moment we were together was a moment to stop and relish.

I slowly raised myself to my feet. “I’m finished.”

“One sec,” Christian replied. A moment later, the bathroom door was open and he came out with a towel wrapped around his shoulders. He looked at my face from the front, then circled around to the side, and then the other side. He crouched and looked up at me and then stood on tiptoes and looked down at me. “I wouldn’t recognize you on a crowded street, or alone in a hallway,” he admitted, pulling his towel off his bare shoulders with a slap.

I scooted around him to get to the bathroom, so I could see myself in the mirror. I looked at my face and gasped. Then I smiled. Christian tiptoed up behind me while I made all sorts of grotesque faces in the mirror.

“That good, eh?” he whispered playfully.

I groaned. “I’m never going to get used to this. My forehead is tiny, my bottom lip is huge and my upper lip is non-existent. I have never had cheekbones like this… and…” I said helplessly, “I don’t look like me.”

Christian kissed the back of my hand. “The first time is the most jarring.”

I turned to him. “What are you going to do with your face?”

“I was thinking of something plain.”

“How plain?”

“I began by dying my hair brown. When have you ever seen me with brown hair?”

I chuckled. Actually, I had never seen him with brown hair. It was naturally blond and when he dressed as Christian Henderson, it was dark blond. As Rogan, it was black. As I went through all the disguises I’d seen him wear, none of them had brown hair.

Well, his hair was brown now as he had already finished dying it. The exact shade of brown he’d selected was like walnuts and cinnamon. I liked it.

“What about your face?” I asked.

“I thought I’d leave my eyes their natural color. I’m tired of messing with contacts. I might as well have a break. But I’ll have to do a lot of work on my eye shape.”

Christian’s eyes tilted up in the corners, so he began by making them level. Then he smoothed out the sharp angle in his nose. It turned out that the widow’s peak he had as part of the whole Christian Henderson look was real, so he did some work on his forehead. Soon, he had a square hairline. Then he thinned out his lips and changed the shape of his jaw.

When he was finished, I chuckled. “That’s plain? You look like the cover of a romance novel.”

He must have used that face before as he knew exactly what to do with his eyes when they cut across to me. “I can’t look too plain for my new wife.” He kissed the knuckles on my hand and I squirmed.

Nothing had changed between us. We weren’t married legally or eternally, and I was fast learning that one of the finest upswings of having control over your body meant you never got too hot.

I pushed him away. “Put a shirt on.”