The Last Twilight by Marjorie M. Liu Page B

“Thank you.”
    “Hurry,” he said again, and Rikki did. She was careful as she stripped down. Had to talk herself through the act of peeling off her tank top and bra.
    The man never turned. After a time, she began to relax enough to trust his word. His unspoken acceptance of what she needed.
    She blasted herself with the hose. The water was lukewarm. The bleach burned her nostrils. She began to shake after less than a minute. Violent tremors, uncontrollable. Not from cold. She could not stop looking at the man.
    “What’s your name?” she managed to utter.
    “Amiri,” he said.
    “Call me Rikki.”
    “As you wish,” he replied softly, not turning, and Rikki closed her eyes. She closed her eyes and did not think about anyone watching her. For the first time in years, she touched her scars in the presence of another living person.
    And she was not afraid.

Chapter Four
    Bathed, dressed, inside the isolation ward, Rikki sat on a cot. She wore loose green scrubs, still damp. A new pair of tennis shoes were on her feet. Ruth had left clothing outside the curtains during the wash, and Amiri had passed a set over his shoulder. Mack had still protested afterward—promised to send a formal complaint to Larry—but that was fine. Let him. Just as long as he left her alone, unprofessional hypocrite that she was.
    Amiri had not attempted to look at her body. No words of comfort, either. There was not a sound as Rikki had hosed him down with disinfectant. He had submitted with quiet dignity, certainly more than she possessed, and no trace of that broken grief she had glimpsed in his eyes. She might have blamed her imagination, if she had one.
    Amiri sat across from her on another bed. Cross-legged. Eyes closed. A stranger, her rescuer; a dark Buddha, maybe. Serene and unaffected, his face nothing but a smooth mask. Rikki envied him. She could still taste the river in her mouth.
    Stay clinical. Stay detached. Her mantra. Her prayer. Not that it helped. She needed another distraction. Her nostrils still ached, and bleach burns covered her body. A dull throb gathered at the base of her skull. She thought of that bad afternoon two years past. Friends dead. A gun jammed in her mouth. Knives flashing.
    A certainty of death, she told herself. Her father’s face swam to mind. His gruff smile, his gnarled wrists bound together in handcuffs. That last wink before the bailiff took him away. Always trying to make her feel better.
    Rikki could use some of that now. She dug her hands into the mattress and glanced at Amiri. There was no way to tell how he felt. She wanted to poke him in the chest, rattle his chain, start a fight. Make him show something other than that deep damn calm.
    “Amiri,” she said, breaking the silence between them.
    He looked at her. In this light she could see that his eyes were a true gold, like a cat. She remembered them glowing. Told herself it was a trick. Eyes did not glow.
    The rest of him was singularly elegant: that chiseled face, the long lean body; strong arms and tapered fingers. Every movement—the turn of his head—preternaturally graceful. Beautiful. Predatory. Rikki felt like she was staring at someone who was only pretending to be human. It made her feel strange, like she was losing her mind.
    “Amiri,” she said again when still he did not speak, regarding her instead with those uncanny eyes: farseeing, dangerous.
    “Doctor Kinn,” he replied. She liked how her name sounded in his mouth, as though she were a lady. Soft and gentle. Something she had not felt for a long time.
    They stared at each other. Rikki said, “I never thanked you.”
    “I believe you did.”
    “Not about the river.”
    “Ah,” he said. Then, after a brief pause, “I would rather you did not.”
    “Oh.” She felt stupid. “Of course. I’m sorry for what happened.”
    “Sorry,” he echoed, frowning.
    “It doesn’t mean much, I know,” she told him, trying to keep her voice empty, flat. “You saved my