And he’s not even looking at me.
“Artemis…” Victor says in a sort of gasp.
I gasp too, stunned, and I turn my head to see the woman behind me, the same woman who dressed me and fixed my hair and did my makeup. The same woman who told me that she was someone else. And then, as if a dam has been opened, the answers to everything rushes into my head like a raging river. Ah, so that’s what that traumatized look is on Victor’s face. Now I know exactly how I must appear to him.
I feel a hand on the center of my back, and my body is pushed forward. With my wrists tied behind me, I fall, skinning my knees on the floor; my shoulder hits next, and then my face. Oomph! A sharp stab darts through my head and spreads throughout my jaw, neck, and back, and my only consolation is knowing it was from the fall, and not the cattle prod this time. I don’t know how much more of the electric shock my heart can take.
Artemis walks past me as if I’m not even here, and steps closer to Victor and the cage.
I’m lifted from the floor by unseen hands, and am shoved onto the chair I sat on before I was whisked away to this crazy bitch’s beauty salon. “Don’t move,” I hear Apollo say behind me.
Suddenly I feel the pull of Victor’s gaze; he isn’t looking at me, but I feel like he wants to—or that he’s trying not to.
“Victor?” I say, but he doesn’t answer, and he doesn’t look my way; I’m not sure what I would say if I did happen to get his attention.
But why won’t he look at me? Why is Artemis the only person in the room he acknowledges? I mean sure, he thought she was dead, he thought he killed her himself, but the look-like-he’s-seen-a-ghost syndrome should be wearing off by now.
How is she alive?
And why, Victor, won’t you look at me?
Victor
It takes every ounce of strength I have to keep from looking at Izabel right now. The second my eyes stray from Artemis, the very moment in which Artemis sees me look at anyone other than her, and Izabel will be punished for it.
I focus only on her. It is what Artemis wants: my devoted, undivided attention. She has waited so long for this day, this moment; she has trained for it no doubt—I would not be in this cage if she had not, if Apollo had not worked with her. And as I look at her, secretly studying her movements, the expression in her eyes, the confidence in her walk, I know that the woman before me is a far cry from the woman she used to be. Artemis Stone, my first love, my first real mistake, she is so very different from the woman I once knew. And I know that whatever happens here tonight, whatever kind of beast that unleashes from within her, that it was created by me fifteen years ago. And I know that I deserve the havoc it will wreak.
“The police,” I begin with the first of many things swirling around in my mind—I indicate Apollo with the tilt of my head, but never take my eyes from Artemis. “He knew he could not get to you before Osiris, so he called the police. That’s how they got there so quickly that night.”
Artemis steps up to the bars, curls her long, delicate fingers around them with both hands. For seconds that feel like minutes, she just looks at me, unblinking, unflinching, and I feel slightly destabilized by it.
More than a minute goes by, and still she says nothing. She just stares at me, injecting discomfort into every one of my limbs, weakening my confidence. Why will she not speak?
“Artemis—”
She raises her right hand to stop me, and I do. Then the same hand moves slowly toward her throat, and carefully she takes the zipper tab of her bodysuit between her thumb and index finger, and slides it down. Slowly, very slowly. Her penetrating gaze never wavers, and still, her eyes never seem to blink. Only when the zipper has stopped, just above her cleavage, and her hand moves to her side, do I look away from her eyes and behold the thing she wants me to see.
A long scar, smooth-looking and raised above the skin, discolored against her natural brown flesh, looks back at me. Ashamed and consumed by guilt and regret, my gaze finally falls from hers and I can look at no one, nor anything, except the palms of my hands. I hold them out in front of me, remembering the blood, Artemis’s blood, seeping through my fingers the night that I killed her. Because I did kill her—I killed the person she was.
“Look at me, Victor,” Artemis says, calmly, yet with command. “Look at what you’ve done.”
What I’ve created…
I raise my head. And I swallow.
“Now do you know why you’re here?” she asks.
I nod, unable to offer a verbal response. I want to look at Izabel behind Artemis, but I cannot do that, either.
Apollo stands quietly off to the side.
“Tell me why you’re here, Victor,” Artemis insists.
I do not. I cannot say it aloud, not when Izabel is in earshot. I see the dress that Izabel wears; I see the makeup and the curled hair; I see the black high-heel shoes—I see Izabel as a copy of Artemis fifteen years ago when she and I spent our one-year anniversary in that restaurant, the night I killed her. Yes, I know why we are here. I know why…
“Answer her,” Apollo finally speaks up.
He steps forward.
“No, Apollo,” Artemis says, without looking at him. “Please let me do this. You’ll get your turn, but right now, it’s all me.”
Apollo holds his position, and his tongue.
Artemis crosses her arms. “You asked my brother,” she begins, “why fifteen years—let me tell you the real answer to that question.” She cocks her head to one side. “In the beginning,” she says, “I just wanted to be prepared; I needed to be trained. I wasn’t anything when you knew me; I was just the daughter of criminals, a sister to a traitorous brother. I could hardly defend myself from a mugger at a bus station, much less hunt down a dangerous and elusive, not to mention elite contract killer, and manage to kill him without him killing me first. And I knew I had to keep to the shadows, stay dead to you.” She stands directly in front of me, fiercely holding my gaze. “And I did it. I pulled it off, to my surprise, to my brother’s surprise.” She pauses, and then says, “I guess since you thought you killed me, you had no reason to look out for me, giving me the chance to fly under your radar until I was ready. And when I was ready, Apollo said something to me the day I planned to make my move against you—tell him what you told me, Apollo.”