Nita let out a breath and got out of bed. There was no use speculating now. She’d have to ask her mother when she saw her.
As she dressed, the floripondio flower fell from her pocket onto the tiled floor. Nita knelt down to pick it up. She twirled in in her hands. Consuming a few petals of this would be enough to kill someone.
Someone like Fabricio.
She hesitated, looking at the flower. Did she really want to do that? Did she really want to kill him?
Nita had done terrible things. She’d murdered her captor, she’d burned a market full of people alive.
She’d do it again.
If she were back in the market, back in her cage, if she had a chance to do everything over, she didn’t think she’d do anything differently. She would still kill her captor. She would still ask Kovit to torture a man to steal his money. She would still burn everyone in the market alive. She wouldn’t enjoy it, but she’d do it. She would do anything and everything necessary to protect herself and stay alive.
So did she want to kill Fabricio? The boy who’d betrayed her and left her to that horror?
Yes. She did.
But did it make sense to kill him? His death would raise suspicions. She could be caught.
Yet leaving him alive was a far more dangerous prospect. He knew who she was, who her mother was. If he ratted her out, Nita could be arrested. And once she was in prison, well, anything could happen. She was money waiting to be made for the right murderer. Even the guards would be tempted by the amount of money the black market would offer for her body parts.
If she ratted on Fabricio . . . what? He was the son of a powerful man running a legal firm. Sure, everyone knew his father was neck deep in the black market, but they couldn’t prove it. And they certainly couldn’t prove anything about Fabricio. And even though he’d sold Nita, her evidence would never be enough to convict him.
The only danger to Fabricio was if a corrupt INHUP agent tried to use him for blackmail like her mother had. Or, if Fabricio was to be believed, being shipped home. She didn’t know why he was so afraid of returning, or what terrible secrets he was hiding, but whatever they were, she couldn’t trust they were enough to keep his mouth shut.
No, Nita needed to eliminate this threat before he changed his mind and betrayed her again.
She took a Kleenex and laid it flat on the counter. She crumpled the flower petals, shredding them into thin strips, holding them over the air conditioner until they dried out, then crumbled them into a fine powder. They looked a little like pink tea mix.
She carefully wrapped the flower dust in her Kleenex and tucked it in her pocket.
Giving herself a firm nod in the mirror, she left her room and went to see Quispe.
Outside of the refugee wing, the INHUP building was bustling. Men and women in button-up white shirts and slacks strode with purpose, briefcases in hand. Nita waited with a group of other people at the elevator. When it came, it was already overcrowded, and the idea of being crushed against so many bodies made her cringe. She imagined the stench of body odor from dozens of people, the press of skin against skin, someone’s hand caught in an uncomfortable position that they’d say was accidental but was probably on purpose.
She took the stairs.
On the third floor, she clanged out of the stairwell and into a hallway with gray tiles and beige-yellow walls. Cubicle style desks were scattered around the room just like a regular office building.
Framed photos of famous INHUP agents covered the walls. There was Nadezhda Novikova, founder of INHUP and killer of the Russian vampire Bessanov. Bessanov had supposedly wiped out entire military platoons single-handedly, but in the end he’d been taken down by a sixteen-year-old girl out for vengeance.
Nita may not have liked INHUP, but she’d always been impressed by its founder.
The pictures continued along the wall, starting out black-and-white and eventually gaining color. Smiling and stern men and women of the past stared out at her. Some of the labels had explanations of who they were: head of the first INHUP office in South America, in Montevideo, Uruguay; the agent who foiled a major unnatural trafficking ring and saved nearly ten thousand unnatural children; the investigator who captured a famous serial killer hunting in northern Brazil.
Nita actually had heard of that one. Everyone had thought the killer was an unnatural because the faces of the victims had been eaten, so INHUP got involved, but it turned out he was a human after all.
Most people forgot that last part.
Nita stopped in front of Quispe’s small office, tucked in the corner away from the cubicles.
When Nita first arrived, she’d checked for Quispe’s name on the list of corrupt INHUP agents she’d stolen from Reyes. She hadn’t found it. It didn’t mean Quispe wasn’t corrupt, but it made Nita relax all the same.
Quispe looked up when Nita entered. “Yes?”
Nita cleared her throat. “I got an email from my aunt. She’s going to pick me up from the office in Toronto.”
Nita and her mother had a signal system. The T at the end of her message stood for Theresa—Nita’s nonexistent aunt Theresa. Nita had an entire backstory for her fake aunt memorized, and her mother had the forged documents to back it up. It was one of their many aliases.
Quispe lowered her laptop screen so it dimmed. “That’s great.”
Nita swallowed the lump of fear in her chest. “Yeah.”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like to avail yourself of some of INHUP’s protective services? That video of you . . .”
That fucking video.
Reyes took a video of Nita demonstrating her healing abilities and posted it to all the wrong circles online. It meant everyone who wanted to hunt Nita knew her face. And unlike the rest of her body, that wasn’t something she knew how to permanently modify.
It destroyed all Nita’s chances of living her life without looking over her shoulder every five minutes.
Nita shook her head and lied, “I’ll be fine.”
“All right.” Quispe didn’t sound like she believed Nita, but she let it go. “The flight leaves tomorrow. Be ready to leave for the airport at three A.M.”
“Three A.M.?” Nita’s eyes bugged out.
“The flight is at six.” Quispe sighed. “I know. We can sleep on the flight.”
“We?”
“I’ll be escorting you to Toronto and handing you off to the agents there.”
“I see.” No unsupervised time, then.
“Make sure you go to bed early tonight.” Quispe rubbed the bridge of her nose. “It’s going to be a long day tomorrow.”
Quispe went back to work and Nita smiled. “Of course.”
She left the office and made her way back to the stairwell. Several floors down, her phone buzzed.
She had a message from Kovit.
Her fingers swiped across the screen, fast and sure.
I’m okay.
Nita closed her eyes, and let herself sink in the stairwell with relief. She hadn’t realized how worried she’d been about his bullet wound. The risk of infection was so high, given the dirt and river water that had gotten in it, and the hours of dehydration rowing their tiny boat back to civilization.
I’m in Detroit, visiting a friend.
Nita frowned at that. She wasn’t sure if he meant an actual friend, a former colleague that he couldn’t talk about because he was worried their communication was being monitored, or someone else entirely.