Not Even Bones Page 5

  “How do I call?” His hands chinked as he moved. “I have no phone.”

  Nita hesitated. She only had her personal phone. The bus was boarding; there was no time. He was going to miss it. She looked down at her phone and bit her lip. On the front was a sticker, mostly rubbed off, of a human heart. Ventricles and capillaries colored blue and red, colors faded so they all seemed faint and monotone, a testament to how many years she’d had the small piece of technology.

  It was just a phone, and he needed it more than she did.

  She sighed, then she handed her phone to Fabricio. “Here.”

  “Thanks.” He swallowed. “Five-five-two, right?”

  “Yeah.” INHUP numbers weren’t like 911, changing between countries. They were standard worldwide. “You’re going to miss the bus.”

  Fabricio gave her a strange look. “You’re not coming?”

  Nita blinked, surprised. “No. Of course not.”

  “You’re not . . . going back there?”

  Nita hesitated. The truth was, she didn’t have any other option. For one thing, the bus ticket and few dollars she’d given to Fabricio had cleaned her out. All her pathetic college savings gone. Not that she’d ever had much to begin with.

  Even if she’d had the money, she wouldn’t go to INHUP with Fabricio.

  Her parents always said you couldn’t trust INHUP; they were as corrupt as any other police force. Her mother even claimed that an INHUP agent gave her tips on where to find unnaturals who were in hiding in the Unnatural Protection Program. Nita wasn’t sure if it was true, but she had no doubt that INHUP couldn’t protect her from her mother. Nita had too much valuable knowledge, the kind of things that could convict her parents in an instant, for her mother to ever let her escape.

  Nita knew her mother loved her. But she also knew her mother would kill her without a second thought if Nita became a serious threat.

  “Nita.”

  “Yes, Fabricio?”

  “Won’t she . . .” He paused, shoulders hunched forward and eyes lowering in fear. “Won’t she be mad?”

  “Probably.”

  “Aren’t you scared?”

  Nita bit her lip, then nodded. “Of course. But it’ll be fine.”

  He didn’t look like he believed her.

  “She’s my mom. She can’t stay mad forever.”

  The look in his eyes was pure pity. “I’m so sorry.”

  Nita bristled. She felt like he was insulting her. “For what?”

  “You.” Shaking his head, he turned and began walking toward the bus. Halfway down the street he paused, turned back, and whispered, “Thank you.”

  Nita didn’t reply. She just started back home to await the fallout.

  Seven

  NITA HAD NEVER thought of herself as particularly brave. There was never really anything to be brave about. She’d never seen the sense in doing something you were afraid of. Your brain was smart—it wouldn’t send you fear signals without good cause.

  So, although Nita was ready to cry from terror before she even saw her mother, she still felt a little shred of pride. She’d done something, something bad, because it was good. She felt like someone had given her a particularly difficult test and she’d passed. She’d done what a good person, a moral person, would have done. There weren’t many times she could say that.

  She hoped Fabricio got to INHUP before her mother caught up with him.

  A strange realization hit her. Fabricio was the first person she’d had a real conversation with besides her parents in almost a decade. Of course, she’d ordered pizzas, and she’d asked for change at the grocery store. But not had a real conversation.

  When Nita first started going to school, she’d talked like any normal five-year-old would. But one day, she’d said something—Nita didn’t remember what, exactly—that had made the teacher speak to her parents.

  Her father sat her down and told her not to talk about anything she saw at home. Not the eyeballs in glass jars, not the shipments of white powder, not the small garden in the back where they composted what they couldn’t sell online.

  Then her mother sat down next to her. And smiled. Even as a small child, Nita had known that bad things were going to happen. After their conversation, Nita was quite certain that if she ever spoke to anyone besides her parents about anything again, she’d be the one in glass jars.

  So she simply stopped talking. If she didn’t say anything, she couldn’t say the wrong thing, right?

  Nita had to admire the wisdom of her child self. Even to this day, she mostly practiced that policy—though a good chunk of that was simply because she never really knew what to say to people. She couldn’t think of anything to talk about. So she stayed silent. Life was easier, and more peaceful.

  Unfortunately, her teachers hadn’t thought so. And several years later, when her mother finally grew tired of getting calls that “Nita is antisocial” and “Nita is bright but doesn’t participate in class,” she pulled Nita from school.

  After that, it was only really her parents in her life.

  Nita’s mother was waiting when Nita got home. Still wearing black pajamas, with bed head and no makeup, her mother regarded her from the kitchen table. Sitting on the table were the broken bolt cutters.

  Nita paused, the front door still open behind her, offering a quick exit if things didn’t go the way she hoped.

  She had expected her mother to fly into a rage, for her to drop her voice to that frightening hiss and do . . . something. A punishment suitable for the crime. She hadn’t thought much further than that. It was never a good idea to try to imagine what her mother would do when angry.

  But her mother didn’t do anything. She just sat at the table, hands at her side, watching Nita.

  “How long?” her mother asked.

  “How long . . . since he left?” Nita swallowed. “Half an hour?”

  Her mother looked over her shoulder at the clock, probably estimating how long it would take Fabricio to call INHUP and then give them their address, how long it would take INHUP to realize that they’d caught a fairly big fish and to petition the Peruvian police to get involved.

  Then cut that time to a quarter, because someone along the chain of command was going to be bribable and there was a decent chance they’d tip off one of her mother’s rivals. Her mother had a lot of rivals—she was good at making enemies.

  Her mother walked out of the room. “Pack your things. We’re leaving in fifteen minutes. We won’t be coming back.”

  Nita stared at the empty space her mother had just vacated. Where was the anger? Where was the reaction? An uneasy feeling began to creep through Nita. What was going on?

  Nonetheless, Nita did as she was told. She went to her bedroom, picked up her backpack, and started shoving things into it. Important things first, like the scientific magazine she was reading and her empty wallet. Then some clothes, since she wasn’t sure when they’d be stopping next. Just her favorites, a few shirts, some underwear, and a pair of jeans. She’d only just moved in and hadn’t collected much from Peru yet, so she didn’t feel any qualms about leaving things behind.

  She hesitated a moment before pulling a college textbook out from under her mattress and stuffing it into her backpack too. She hoped her mother wouldn’t look in her bag.

  Nita brought her bag to the kitchen and found her mother eating leftover pizza cold from the box. Nita looked over her mother’s shoulder, but there was none left. Her mother didn’t offer anything else, so Nita scrounged. She found a carrot, which she washed and ate.

  Nita swung her backpack over her shoulder and moved to check for messages on her cell phone before realizing she didn’t have it anymore. Her mother, hair now combed but makeup still not applied, led them out the door and into the night.

  They could’ve taken a cab, but her mother didn’t like leaving traces, and besides, taking a cab in the dark in Lima wasn’t always safe. So they walked. And walked. And walked.

  Nita kept a
wary eye out as they went, worried about being followed. Her mother’s caution had rubbed off on her.

  Nearly an hour later, her mother checked them into a hotel in San Isidro. It wasn’t a crappy hostel, nor was it the Hilton. Livable, certainly, but not nice. The room was small, and Nita lifted the mattresses to check for bloodstains. There were none. That was a relief; Nita hated bedbugs.

  Her mother put her bags down on the bed and checked her phone. She frowned, then glanced at Nita. “I need to go change some shipping addresses. I don’t want anything of ours reaching that apartment after the police arrive.”

  “How are you going to change the address if it’s already been shipped?” Nita asked.

  “I’ll have to find the person who delivers the mail to our building, won’t I?”

  Nita didn’t respond. The cold condescension of the response made her throat close in on itself, like she was suffocating on words.

  Her mother looked at Nita and then picked up her purse. “I need to take care of this now. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

  “Okay.” Nita swallowed, not liking that her mother hadn’t addressed what happened at all. “Um . . . about what happened.”

  Her mother held up a hand. “Not now, Anita.”

  “But—”

  “No.” Her voice dipped low and cold. “You do not want me to talk about this now.”

  Nita quieted, but she couldn’t stop her hands trembling against her sides.

  Her mother slammed the door behind her without looking back. The reverberation caused the crappy flower painting on the other side of the room to rattle on its hook and fall off, smacking into the hard cement floor. The frame cracked audibly.

  Nita flopped down on her bed and closed her eyes. It could have gone worse.

  A newspaper lay on the bed beside Nita. Her mother had taken it from the lobby, more likely out of habit than to actually read.

  Nita picked it up. On the front was a picture of the zannie she’d dissected earlier that week. The government confirmed his death, and the paper listed his crimes as well as some information on zannies. Nita let her eyes skim the article, eager for the distraction.

  Native to Southeast Asia, zannies were skilled torturers, notoriously amoral, and universally despised. Over the years, zannies had spread across the world, and their small population made them highly paid and in higher demand. Every dictator and genocidal maniac worth his salt had a zannie on staff. Nita heard they also made particularly good mafia enforcers.

  While Nita agreed zannies were evil, she wasn’t so sure about zannies being on the list. It wasn’t that she thought zannies weren’t dangerous—she was firmly in the shoot-first, ask-questions-later camp on that. But the list contained creatures who needed to kill others for their continued survival, like unicorns, which ate the souls of virgins, or kappa, which ate human internal organs. Technically, people survived torture. Occasionally. So zannies didn’t need to kill. Just, you know, cause the kind of horrific pain only found in torture.

  Technicalities like that bothered Nita. They needed to redefine the mandate of the list so that zannies fit in there properly. What if someone tried to challenge the letter of the law and a zannie walked free?

  Nita sighed, dropping the paper, unable to bring herself to care at the moment. Her mind wouldn’t focus.

  She bit her lip, fingers hovering over her pocket for a moment before she sat up. She found her mother’s bag and pulled the laptop out, logged into her email, and composed a message to her father. I think I did something really stupid. I’m scared. I’ve never seen Mom like this before.

  There was no response. But then, there wouldn’t be. Dawn was just breaking outside, and there was no way her father would be up yet. The US had just started daylight saving time, which meant she was in the same time zone as her father. The same far-too-early-in-the-morning time.

  Nita closed the laptop. She really wanted to talk to him.

  Maybe she should just call and wake him?

  But she had no cell phone. Ugh. She could Skype him, if he was awake. But the fact that he probably wasn’t awake was the problem.

  Nita rolled over and smushed her face into her pillow with a groan.

  The snick of a key in the door lock made Nita sit upright in bed. Was her mother back? It couldn’t have been half an hour since she’d left.

  The door didn’t open.

  Nita’s heart began to race. This wasn’t her mother. She didn’t know why or how she knew, but she could feel it, as surely as she could feel the itchy polyester blanket on the bed beneath her.

  Shit. Had they been followed?

  Getting to her feet as silently as she could, Nita looked around for a weapon. Her eyes skittered from one corner of the room to another, but all she saw were pillows, blankets, and a backpack full of clothes. Creeping forward, she picked up the broken picture from the floor. The frame was made of some sort of wood—or cardboard painted to look like wood, the cynical side of her said. But it was all she had.

  She watched the door, trying to keep her breath shallow and quiet. Waiting. The door creaked open an inch, and Nita took a step back, picture frame at the ready.

  She was so focused on the door in front of her, she didn’t even notice the person come in through the open window behind her. Not until a needle stabbed into her shoulder and she spun around to see a young man’s blurry face. Black hair, dark eyes, white smile.

  Nita could feel the chemical sliding through her body, and she tried to prevent it from slipping through her bloodstream by blocking receptors and flinging white blood cells at it. But it was too fast, skipping through her body and attaching to the glutamate receptors in her nerve cells.

  Nita swung the picture frame at the face in front of her, but her arms were too heavy, and she couldn’t lift them more than waist height. He blocked her easily, and she stumbled back, trying to get away. If she could just reach the bathroom, she could lock herself in and wait for her mother to return. Her mother would take care of these people in minutes.

  No matter how she strained, her legs wouldn’t obey her, and instead, her knees folded and she fell to the floor.

  She felt like her heart should be speeding up to match the panic jittering through her skull, but everything was slow and blurry. Her chest hurt like it had been hit with a meat tenderizer. Only her breathing obeyed her, coming fast and harsh, and she made a sound somewhere between a gasp and a sob.

  How had they found her? She’d thought they hadn’t been followed.

  Her whole body began to tingle and go numb, until she couldn’t even feel where the needle had gone in. She struggled to crawl away, desperate to stall for time until her mother got back, but she only managed to creep a few inches. The sound of shoes on floor reverberated in her skull as her face pressed into the ground.

  The world spiraled into copies of itself as her vision doubled, then tripled. A few seconds later, everything blurred into darkness.

  Eight

  NITA’S HEAD HURT. She thought she might be awake, because it hurt, but she wasn’t sure, because the ground was buzzing, and she was twitching, and someone was singing, but maybe that was just a dream and when her eyes opened the world was a Dalmatian. Before she slid back into unconsciousness, she realized the roar and the shaking might be from an engine. A really loud one, like on a plane.

  Or muscle spasms and a headache.

  When she woke up next, she thought there was sky above her, but she also thought she was on the sky, or maybe falling into it, and the clouds seemed to copy each other. There was still a roar and a buzzing, so maybe she was still on the plane. If there was a plane. Did planes have sky? Was that sky?

  Obviously you’re looking out the ceiling window of the plane, idiot.

  Planes don’t have ceiling windows, idiot.

  But then the blue resolved itself into gray, so maybe that wasn’t the sun, but the overhead lights.

  Before she could follow the train of thought any further, she lost consciousne
ss again.

  This time, when she woke, she stayed awake. Her head throbbed, and her breathing was short and rapid, like she’d been running. Her skin was clammy and itchy with dried sweat. Her T-shirt stuck to her body where she was lying on the cot. Some of her hair had glued itself to her forehead, and she raised a trembling hand to peel it off.

  She held out her arm in front of her, but it wavered and twitched. She tried to raise herself onto her elbows, but felt dizzy and had to lie back down. What had they given her?

  Nita squeezed her eyelids together to prevent the tears burning behind them, but there was no moisture left in her body to cry with.

  What were they going to do to her?

  Her imagination supplied her with all sorts of ideas.

  All. Sorts.

  Panic tried to claw its way up her throat, but she choked on it with a croaky gasp that should have been a sob.

  Calm down, Nita. You won’t do yourself any favors panicking. You don’t even know where you are. Assess. Analyze.

  Calm. Right. She could be calm. Panic could come later, when she realized the scope of her situation.

  She tried to concentrate and push the drugs out of her system—after all, what was the use of having the ability to control your body if you didn’t use it? But it was too hard; Nita couldn’t focus well enough to do anything, and trying just worsened her headache.

  Swallowing with a dry throat, she tried to gauge how long she’d been out. A while. She turned her head to get a better view of where she was, but her vision was still double and the world was tilted sideways, making her nauseous. She closed her eyes, hoping it would pass.

  Trying to relax her breathing, Nita focused on pulling her thoughts together. She’d been kidnapped, that much was clear. The major question was: Was this a random kidnapping, or had she been targeted?

  If random, then they would be holding her for ransom. And while her mother could pay the money, Nita thought she was more likely to track down the kidnappers and slaughter them. You didn’t get to be a professional unnatural hunter without some detective skills.