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Big Henry had twenty-eight floors—twenty-eight, the age when all the good stuff happened.
Lilah met resistance on the ground floor, so she climbed up to the fifth, and then finally found an open window and an elevator.
Number twenty-eight. The private floor. Maybe the richest floor in all the Fan. At least her father didn’t do mediocre.
Despite the journey taking her up, each second she stood there, she felt down. By the time the final ping sounded, there wasn’t much left of her.
DeGrasse.
She needed to find DeGrasse. She needed to find her father and an explanation.
The short hall led to a large door. Feet feeling unsteady atop the plush red carpet, Lilah willed herself to calm. She didn’t ring the doorbell, she didn’t knock; she held the knob and twisted it. It didn’t yield so she allowed the metal to heat.
Another twist broke the damn thing off and she was slow to lower it to the ground. It could stay right there until she was finished.
Despite all that effort, the damn door creaked. It brought the otherwise quiet room to life.
“Darling? Are you back so soon?”
Lilah stepped over the lingerie. She sidestepped the clothes littered on the floor. From the grand pillars of the miniature kitchen on the left, to the glass doors of the balcony on the right, she reached behind herself for the baton—a gun would be too damn fast.
Someone raced toward the door, closing a robe.
“Darling, I’m in no mood for games.”
Lilah struck, the bitch caught it, right at the throat. She also yanked it away and struck back. Lilah barely leaned away in time; it grazed her nose.
Two brown eyes regarded her in confusion but closed with a firm punch.
“Stop.”
Lilah kicked the woman’s feet with a jump, sweeping her legs from under her. A stomp to the baton sent it flying high enough for Lilah to snatch it and slam it down again.
DeGrasse rolled away in time. When she tried to scurry back, Lilah stepped on the robe to anchor her.
She would have struck if not for the other woman sitting in a chair by the sofa.
“Stop. Please stop,” the injured woman gasped. When the woman by the sofa stood, DeGrasse raised her hand to keep her back. “No. Stay there. This is a misunderstanding. I promise.”
“But Lee, she has a weapon....”
“Mother, please. Please stay there.” DeGrasse yanked her robe free and lumbered to her feet. When she turned to Lilah, she did so with a newly forming black eye. “If you’d kindly leave....”
Lilah’s readied fists shook. She wasn’t leaving. She wasn’t going anywhere.
That much realization dawned in DeGrasse’s eyes.
A small shortwave radio on the kitchen counter roared to life. “Lee. Lee, if you’re coming. This is the time to come.”
Lilah stared at it; the sound of her father’s voice bothered her greatly. Her own badge flashed, and that same voice erupted.
“Lilah, this is your father. You need to come to the medical building as fast as you can. You need to come now.”
She took the badge off and shoved it in her pocket. DeGrasse was small, shorter than even her. The old-fashioned bob of hair suited her lean face. She was young, though, and Lilah might not have taken a second glance if this woman didn’t look too familiar...right down to the AoE characteristics.
A small scan of the room left a pit in Lilah’s stomach. The pictures missing from her home. Here they were, decorating these walls.
As soon as she focused on the woman again, she recognized who she was looking at, the person...the woman before her stopped pretending they were strangers.
“Well...what do you think?”
“Is this some kind of joke?” Lilah asked. “You’re supposed to be dead. I buried you. In more ways than one. And now I find you here in this posh hotel, alive...young.”
She looked so different without the illness. Lilah’d forgotten this face.
DeGrasse held Lilah’s gaze. “I’m having a very hard time coming to terms with this myself, so I’d appreciate you not mentioning the age change. That wasn’t my choice. And it came at great expense.”
“Somehow I doubt that.” Lilah still hadn’t defrosted from her fighter’s stance.
Gesturing back at the other woman by the sofa, DeGrasse said, “She’s my mother. She sired me. Ten years ago, when I got sick, your father used his own lifeforce to keep my body alive.”
“And you couldn’t tell me any of this?”
“Darling, if you’d only put those down....”
She meant Lilah’s fists. It took some time to stand properly instead of looking for a fight.
DeGrasse tested her eye and sighed. “My mother, the E to have created me from her power, was in stasis. When she came out finally, your father sent me back to her.”
“He killed you.”
In time, DeGrasse said, “That wasn’t supposed to be in the report. The Chief promised.”
“The Chief kept his promise, but I was there when father stabbed you. I was there crying, trying to keep from crying out. I was there tending to your body as if it was...as if you’d cared, as if it was you. And I put you in the ground months ago. I was there. I was fucking there so tell me why you felt the need to put me through that.”
Lilah’s badge sounded again, but she held it steady in her pocket.
“You weren’t supposed to see that. We didn’t know if it would work. We didn’t even know if...if my mother would allow me to form again. We didn’t know what to expect because despite her being in stasis, I wasn’t. My new body was aged.” She extended her arms then lowered them again. “I hadn’t expected that. And...adjusting’s been rough...for everyone. Mostly because of me. So we wanted to tell you we’d attempt it, but we couldn’t without knowing it would work.”
“And once it had,” Lilah said through gritted teeth. “A call would be too much?”
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DeGrasse swallowed down her response and lowered her gaze. “Ten years. Ten years withering away in a body barely functioning. Once I got over the shock. I...I just wanted him. I just wanted your father around and nothing. Hell, he’s so worried that he’s brought my mother here to make certain I don’t make another attempt to throw myself from the balcony again.” She let out a sigh. “He gave me what little he had left of his youth, and for a while there...I guess we forgot we got old. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry you saw all that. And I’m sorry...sorry we’ve been absent.”
They’d been absent for years. Nobody and nothing else mattered beyond this illness. Not Gus-Gus who longed to help. Not even Lilah who tried to remind them she was still very much around.
“Lee? How is your eye?” the woman asked.
Tentative fingers to her cheek, DeGrasse called back. “Mother, if you’d give me a moment....” At the silence, she set her sights on Lilah again. “I didn’t intend for any of this. I crossed Karen Blackwell, and she poisoned me. Your father kept right on reviving my body, and it took a lot out of him to do it day in day out for ten years. So when...when freedom and a new start came. We—I just...I just wanted to forget for a minute.”
“Even us?”
A tear fell from DeGrasse’s right eye as she nodded. “Even you. Everything. Every obligation. Every job assignment. Every damn thing. Just everything for a while. For a short while.”
“And then what?” Lilah asked, fighting back her own tears. “You were going to show up next year? A year after that?” She didn’t get an answer. “When exactly where you going to reveal yourself to us? Were you ever going to reveal yourself?”
DeGrasse colored and admitted, “For a second there...I thought maybe I wouldn’t.”
Lilah’s breath hitched. A slap to the face would hurt far less.
“Oh, Lilah.” DeGrasse sighed. “What are you doing here? Lilah, my perfect, always play it safe, never doing what you want always doing what you think mommy and daddy expect, but you don’t realize that they don’t care Lilah.”
A tear fell down Lilah’s cheek that time, but she held the others back. To be mocked.... To have her very real pain and anguish...mocked.
“I was glad when I heard about you and Escott breaking up.” DeGrasse’s eyes closed. “So, so glad. Because he was your biggest safety net.”
Lilah struggled to breathe. Her chest felt heavy, her insides crushed.
“You’re laughing at me.”
“I’m crying for you,” DeGrasse said. “I’ve been crying for you for years now. This is older than the sickness. You are a snob, but you have every right to be, because I raised you as a snob and your father spoiled you rotten put on top of it. I recognized it for what it was. So no...no, I wasn’t sure I’d meet you again after I finally accepted this new body. No. I wasn’t sure I’d try to be mommy to you instead of a patient. And no, I didn’t consider it only because of selfishness. I considered it because of you. Even Gus-Gus agreed. You took on too much, you always do. You play your life so safe that you’re practically the definition of a volt.”
Another tear escaped and Lilah held a nearby chair to steady herself. She let go again for fear of looking weak.
“Gus has seen you?” she asked.
It took a lifetime before DeGrasse said, “Yes. Gus saw me. He saw us. He figured your father was up here. He didn’t mean to run into me. And after he had a good cry...he told me to stay here and be well.” She shook her head. “But I don’t think you’ll tell me that.”
Lilah hated her. No word could describe it better. She hated them both.
The radio sounded again.
“Lee, you’re fucking scaring me. Answer.”
Before DeGrasse could step forward, Lilah blocked her path. “No. You don’t get to answer. Nobody else gets your time before I do.” The sound of her own voice, quivering and weak, turned her stomach, but she refused to budge. “Nobody else gets to take the very, very precious little time you afford me. Do not touch that radio.”
DeGrasse stood her ground. “Nothing good will come from this.”
“I’ve got something to say.”
“Then say it.” She stood bold. “Then say it, Lilah. Open your damn mouth and say what it is you want. Do what it is you want. Go wherever the fuck it is that you want. Stop trying to fit a perfect form that no one even wanted you to embody. For fuck’s sake.”
Lilah gritted her teeth. “Stop swearing. You never swear. You never swear, so stop swearing.”
The look in DeGrasse’s eyes told Lilah her words had betrayed her.
“You were trying to be like me?” The woman rubbed her face with a sigh. “Darling. That’s not me. I played the I’m dying, but I don’t mind role for the benefit of you and your brother but rest assured, at night I cried myself to sleep in my husband’s arms. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to die at all. The time when life finally made sense, when we formed a family, less than a year later the underground started collapsing and all life faded.” She calmed and said, “I fell in love with your father again when we had to rebuild, but...but I hated putting him through all this. I hated putting all of you through it. I thought if I kept out of sight, you could enjoy life. But you didn’t. The more I stopped going out, the more you did, too.”
Teeth chattering, Lilah confessed. “It wouldn’t be right. I just want to be proper. I just want to be strong. I am strong,” Lilah said. “I always felt like you failed to see that.”
“You are the weakest person I’ve ever met in my life.”
No harsher words had ever cut Lilah in two.
“The weakest.” DeGrasse marveled. “You have fire in the palm of your hand, my darling, and I bet you can count how many times you’ve wielded it on said hand.”
Lilah’s posture wilted.
“You’re smart, you’re well-trained, but you are afraid of being alive and you can’t be alive without making a fucking mistake.” DeGrasse stepped forward and challenged. “Tell me I’m wrong. I dare you.”
Each attempt Lilah made at opening her mouth only came with a sob. She shut it again.
“And poor Essy. Not realizing that you lean on him, and you tug him this way and that because he’s the one person alive you know won’t hurt you.”
Unable to hold her gaze, Lilah hugged herself. “Now I know what you think of me. I supposed it would have been better if you’d remained dead, after all.”
Two arms held her tight. She wanted to shove DeGrasse back. She wanted to punch her. She didn’t mean to break down.
“Oh my darling, this isn’t what I intended for you. This isn’t about what I want. I wanted you to be bold and smart. Not pine away like some bitter old noblewoman. No. I’m not going back. You need something else to focus on. You need to take care of yourself now. You alone. Not us. Not poor Essy. Just you.”
Lilah struggled in the hold but with little success.
The radio sounded again and just like that the embrace faded.
“No,” Lilah warned. “If you touch that radio, I’ll never forgive you.”
DeGrasse studied Lilah’s face and then glanced back at her own mother and said, “I know you probably won’t.” She met Lilah’s gaze again. “And why would you? I was like that. And now, nearly forty years later, I’m looking to start over. I’m looking to get to know someone I didn’t forgive, either.”
“Please,” Lilah begged. “Please....” She wasn’t sure what she was asking, maybe for more time...but something.
“And you’re welcomed to that same anger,” DeGrasse said, “careful it’s not all you end up with after you’ve pushed everyone away.”
Her fingers gripped the device, but Lilah felt gutted.
“Darling, I’m here,” DeGrasse said with so much composure she nearly fooled Lilah. “How is everything? Can I still come?”
“No,” her husband said. “No. It’s too late. She’s gone. She’s fucking gone. And I can’t find Lilah, but I’m coming home once I do.”
“Oh, love, I’m so sorry. And listen, before you come, I just want you to know that I rushed to get this and hit my eye on the chair. I don’t want you storming the castle thinking I’m hurting myself.”
“Your eye...? You’re hurt?”
DeGrasse hesitated. “Just a tad.”
“She wasn’t supposed to leave you alone.”
“She hasn’t—”
“You stay right there. I’m coming right now. Don’t you dare move, Lee. I’m coming right now.” His voice cracked before it faded.
DeGrasse rubbed her brow. “Fuck.” Head still hung, she swung around to face Lilah. “It’s been hard on everybody. Your father’s had to make the most massive adjustment in history. He didn’t ask for any of this and could have run and not look back, too. And now I’ve upset him. Consider for a second that when he had to stab me, he didn’t know if he’d ever see me again. So while the mountain of sympathy I have for you diminishes down to a hill, I’d like to ask you to do the one thing I cannot do for you: go and live your life.”
Lilah trembled.
“And do it now before your father comes here.”
A hover bike engine sputtered and stopped on the balcony. Lilah thought to look, but the tears and anger written on DeGrasse’s face was enough. Lilah wasn’t wanted. Without saying another word, Lilah turned and hurried out.
The door slammed firmer into place once she was gone.
“Lee? Lee, where the fuck are you? Lee.”
“Love. I’m here.” DeGrasse still rested against the door. “Oh darling, please don’t cry. I’m fine. I’m fine. I promise.”
“Did you cut yourself again?”
“I’m fine. Honest. I’m fine.”
Silence followed and then.... “What the fuck happened to the doorknob?”
DeGrasse gasped. “I...I was.... Oh darling, don’t, please don’t. You don’t have to cancel work. I’m fine.”
“They can give me another fucking month. And that goes for the fucking show, too. I knew it was too soon. I knew it.”
Five minutes later, the door opened and DeGrasse’s mother inched out. The door across the hall couldn’t have led far; most of the expansive flat took up the entire floor.
The woman paused at the threshold and said, “I’d never expected to see the sun again much less living above ground. I hope we can meet on better terms.” She glanced back at DeGrasse’s door. “But this is my second chance, too, and I can’t let it pass. Take care.”
And she left. Lilah stood there, feeling like a fool. It took everything in her to march into that elevator, put her badge on, and ride it down to the bottom. She was going into work. That had to be better than this.
When it reached one, she noticed the top button no longer lit up. She pressed it to be certain. Button two took her up again, button one took her down, but those lit up. Another press of number twenty-eight meant absolutely nothing. The elevator wouldn’t rise.
Sucking in a deep breath, Lilah wiped her face, brushed her hair back and wore the coldest expression she could muster as she stepped out.