did. She’d meet people at school who would invite her to social things. Maybe she’d meet a nice guy at university. An engineer. A lawyer, or a doctor. A guy who would provide for her. Maybe somebody in international business who’d take her on trips. I wondered if she’d ever traveled. Did she want to travel?
I imagined her touring the Hermitage in St. Petersburg with another guy, thought about what would be going through his mind while he watched her exclaim over a Fabergé egg, where he’d take her afterward, what he’d do to her . . . Madness. I had to stop thinking about her with any kind of possessiveness. Mariah wasn’t mine – could never be mine.
I looked again at my list. What was she interested in? Did she read? What kind of books would she like? I read constantly, anything and everything. I wrote down my favorite titles to give to her, just in case she was a reader.
I added several more items to the list, then wrote doctor . I’d take her to wherever was considered the best medical facility in the world and she’d have everything checked out. Humans needed shots, I knew, so she’d have those. And a lady parts doctor would examine her and make sure nothing was wrong so if she wanted to have children, she could. I didn’t linger too long thinking about that. I remembered every second of how it had been with Jane. Blood and tears, shame and recriminations – and we’d done it all on purpose. I couldn’t fathom what Mariah must have suffered – if my instincts were right about Emilian. How old had she been? Twelve? Thirteen?
The nice Claridge’s pencil broke between my fingers.
I looked through the sheers down to Brook Street. It was now midafternoon in London, still morning in the States. I wondered how Mariah’s reunion with Jordan had gone. Jordan would be in school now, with Key, who stayed with her because of the difficulty in being Mephisto and going about in the real world for an extended amount of time. What was Mariah doing? Maybe sleeping.
I drew the drapes to block the light and got into bed, but didn’t fall asleep for a long while. When I finally did, I dreamed about Jane and the night we had sex for the first time. The only time. Except in my dream, she didn’t stop bleeding, and my healing powers wouldn’t work. I panicked and went for help, but when I got back with the doctor, she’d morphed into Mariah, who lay there still as stone. I ran to the side of the bed and she looked up at me with no fear in her eyes, as if nothing was out of the ordinary, as if she wasn’t bleeding to death. She said my name, “Phoenix.” Then she said it again, and I said, “Mariah,” and she said my name again, and I said hers, and this went on and on, and I couldn’t stop, and I wanted her to say something besides my name, wanted her to let me help her, let the doctor save her, but she just kept saying my name, and I said hers, and all the while she was bleeding and dying.
I jerked awake , instantly aware of Jax at the end of the bed, repeating my name while he shook my foot. I sat up and blinked. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”
He ran his hands through his hair before he said in a tired, dull voice, “Eryx knows she’s Anabo.”
Holy hell. I came more awake. “How?”
“Jordan took her to her apartment in Bucharest to get some pictures of their parents , and while they were there, a lost soul came in and assaulted Mariah. Shoved her shirt up to see her birthmark. Jordan thought he intended to rape Mariah, so she smashed his head with a toaster.”
“Is Mariah hurt?”
“I just saw her and she seemed fine.”
“What about the lost soul? Did Jordan kill him?”
“No, just knocked him out. When she and Key went back for him, he’d made his way down to another floor and was texting Eryx.”
“ How did the guy even know to look?”
“Eryx hacked into the GPS system on Jordan’s phone. It’s Secret Service high tech that works anywhere on the planet. Eryx is
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