Page 19

THE SUN BEAMED directly in her eyes, but did not light her room—a punishment from a higher being. Ruby groaned, cursed her mother for never enrolling her in Sunday school, and pulled the covers over her head.

“Morning sunshine.” Someone chirped above her. “Or should I say good afternoon? Good evening? What’s the most appropriate greeting for someone who was high until six p.m?”

Groaning louder, more guttural, Ruby threw away her blankets and blinked straight into a flashlight camera. Kavya grinned down at her, long black hair brushing against Ruby’s cheeks, a giant tote bag slung over her shoulder.

“Why are you here?” If Ruby didn’t sit up, maybe she’d leave. She grabbed for the covers but Kavya tugged them to her feet.

“Because apparently, no one ever enrolled you in the DARE program at school.” Kavya left her side, strode across the room and opened the blinds. The sun had started to set, casting the room in oranges and throwing shadows from the furniture onto the walls. “How’s your head?”

“I don’t get headaches.” She did get nausea, and the bile threatening to make its way up her throat was sure to be unpleasant. “But I do feel like a bidet full blast shot up my asshole and through my stomach.”

“That is the most disgusting way I’ve ever heard someone describe a hangover. Why a bidet?”

Ruby shrugged. “You ever used one?”

“No?”

“They look uncomfortable.”

“I agree.” Kavya cocked her hip. “You’re a weird person, you know that?”

Ruby slunk back into her sheets. “Not a person, but an understandable mistake.”

“It smells like a college dorm in here.” Kavya’s nose wrinkled. “Weed, sweat, and sadness. All you’re missing is the stale pizza.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“You didn’t go to college?”

The bowl of fruit on her coffee table smelled of rot.

Ruby had asked the hotel staff to stop refiling it during their twice weekly cleaning, citing an orange allergy.

They instead filled it with bananas and apples that decayed time after time.

It mocked her. She sighed and rolled onto her side, the foam mattress shifting beneath her weight.

“Nope. Got married at nineteen. Didn’t have much time for anything else after.”

“Why?”

“Did I get married? I was from a poor family. He had money, treated me well, and was fairly handsome. Swept me off my little teenage feet.”

“Andy?” The name sent a jolt of electricity up Ruby’s spine. Her stomach rolled and she fought back the brewing uprising. “That was his name, right? The one Edward burned when he turned you?”

Ruby looked away. “Yeah, Andy was the one he burned.”

Desperate to change the subject, she nodded at the open box on the table. “How’d you know?”

Kavya quirked an eyebrow. “About the drugs in general? Or that you were using today?”

“Either.”

“I know about the drugs because the TCA helps to supply them.”

Ruby’s mouth popped open and Kavya chuckled.

“You didn’t think Lucas got them on his own, did you?

Where would he get them? His DND group? Sit up.

” She grabbed Ruby under the arms, tugging her into an upward position.

“And I knew you would be using them because the night I found out about the TCA’s ‘disposal process’, I passed out in an alleyway three feet from a bar I am now permanently banned from. ”

Kavya opened her giant bag, pulling out one of Ruby’s normal herbal cigarettes and a lighter. She handed the cigarette over and lit it as Ruby put it between her lips.

"You knew?"

A nod. “I have for a while.”

"Does Jonah?"

"Know how they're burned? No. Not the specifics."

The wording struck Ruby as odd, she narrowed her eyes. “Does he know something else I don't?"

Kavya toed a discarded bra and snorted. "How to clean his hotel room."

Ruby scooted to the other edge of the bed and patted the space beside her. Kavya slipped under the covers, tilting her head back and against the wall. She took the cigarette when Ruby finished and snuffed it in the crystal ashtray on the nightstand.

"I think the hardest part is knowing they—we—could be someone’s son or daughter. They were people, with lives and families. They were people." Ruby broke the silence.

Kavya shook her head. "Not anymore. Whoever they were before is gone, replaced by the bacteria." She peeked over at Ruby. "But you don’t have to worry about that. You're different."

Ruby had spent so long telling herself the same thing.

That she was special. That she was more human than the others.

But Gerald… Gerald had no clue what he was, didn’t have an ounce of malice in his withered frame.

He ran his store, waited for his wife, and smoked his cigar.

Nothing he did was cruel or dangerous to anyone.

His monotonous life was perfectly human in nature.

Yet he was put down like a dog, as all thermies were.

"Am I? And what if I said that late at night all I can think of is phlogiston? What if sometimes I want nothing more than to burn and consume? What if I have to stop myself from ripping off my mask every time I see that little purple fog?"

Kavya shrugged with stiff shoulders. “We all have dark thoughts. You don’t act on them. That’s what makes you more…human, I guess, than other thermies.” She settled into the bed. “You know, you’re the reason I stayed a TCA agent.”

The AC kicked on, cold air blasting through the room. Ruby tugged the comforter closer to Kavya. “Me?”

“You were the first thermy I saw in person. The videos don’t do y’all justice.

You were so strong, so incredibly fast. I knew there were others who would abuse that strength.

Before your demonstration, I was going to quit.

The more I learned about thermies, the more scared I was.

And then I saw you up there, all the power in the world and all the reason to give in to the bacteria but still wanting to do the right thing.

I wanted to be like you. I didn’t want to be scared.

I wanted to be strong, even if it was a different type of strength.

I wanted to protect the people I cared about. ”

Discomfort coiled around Ruby’s legs, wrapping and crawling its way up her body. Her smile wavered. “I feel like I should be apologizing then. This is one hell of a career choice.”

Kavya typed out a message on her phone. “Take the compliment, you dick.”

Ruby needed someone to see it—to see her. Not the monster, not the thing people whispered about in rooms they thought she couldn’t hear. She needed someone to look at her and know she wasn’t like the others. Because she wasn’t. She couldn’t be.

If she was, then what was the point of all of this? The pretending, the restraint, the careful way she walked through the world? “I thought you didn’t like me.”

“True. I didn’t. I tolerate you now.” Kavya set her phone to the side, ignoring it as it dinged. “Hard to be scared of someone who doesn’t understand Uno. It was downright embarrassing.”

“That was not regular Uno.”

“It had like two extra rules.”

“It was at least five.”

“You had the instructions in front of you.”

Ruby sighed. “So what now?”

“We have a human case tomorrow. Drug dealer. Lucas thinks he’s hiding at his mom’s house.”

“Do you enjoy doing these?”

“I think I have a permanent indent on my shoulder from the camera.” She cracked her neck. “But I don’t mind it. It’s a job. And someone needs to do it.”

“Bounty hunting?”

“Babysitting Jonah.”

Ruby let that spin in her mind. “He’s a human. I don’t get it.”

“He serves a…” She paused, contemplating her words. “Different purpose than most agents.”

“What purpose would that be?”

“You know I can’t tell you.”

“The TCA kinda sucks.”

Kavya tossed the comforter to the side and stood. “A necessary evil.”

“Be honest. How awkward is it going to be with Jonah tomorrow? I’m still pretty steamed and I imagine he’s feeling about the same.” Ruby rolled her way out of the bed, clumsily, her stomach sloshing and chest burning from the acid.

The look Kavya sent her was half pity, half something she couldn’t place. Hesitance, perhaps. “He’s currently getting shitfaced at the bar.”

Ruby ran a hand over her face. “That bad, huh?”

“You should probably see for yourself. Talk it out, as much as you can in the state he’s in.”

“And it can’t wait until tomorrow?”

Kavya squatted and picked up a discarded purse from the floor.

It was brown, shaped like a heart, the brand Celine printed in a small print near the top.

She pulled it up toward her nose, sniffed, winced, and put it down.

A thermophile had once thrown an open jar of pickles at Ruby while trying to run away.

The bag ended up in the resulting puddle for half an hour as Ruby tracked her down.

Crouching beside her suitcase, Ruby tugged out a pair of blue trousers and a white blouse. “I’ll have to shower first.” She would go see him, but only after throwing up, showering, and clearing her head. “Where’s the bar? Here in Denver?”

“He’s downstairs.”

Ruby blinked. A flutter rose in her stomach. She beat it down with Jonah’s last words. At least he’s not a murderer. “The hotel bar? Why?”

“Didn’t want to leave you alone. Wanted to be close in case you needed him.” The corner of Kavya’s lips twitched.

“Are we talking about the same person?” she scoffed. “Jonah hates me.”

Kavya smirked and headed for the door. “You know what they say about love and hate.” She pinched her fingers together and mouthed, “thin line, baby. thin line.”