In Irina's Cards (The Variant Conspiracy #1) (7 page)

I rounded the corner to the alley headfirst with my heart thudding between my ears. The attack and ensuing fear stayed fresh like a wound pulled open. I slapped my hand onto the peeling paint of the brick wall willed myself to stand still. I let the attack play back in my mind, begging the wall for an image of the man–or thing–I couldn’t see with my naked eyes. Nothing came.

A gust of chilly ocean air cut through the alley and I flinched. The sound of a rumbling old engine got louder and an old pickup truck pulled into the alley. A grizzled mechanic yelled at me to get out of the way as his rig passed a few feet behind me. He parked by a garage door and I heard the creak-squeak of his rusty door. Panic took over and I bolted back towards Innoviro.

As soon as I got back among the Chinatown pedestrians, I slowed my pace. Another reason to re-appear at Innoviro suddenly hit me. Mice! I’d forgotten Chester’s weekly supply and he was due for another feeding today. I veered over to the pet store, a minor detour on my way back to the office. In spite of the security at my apartment, I felt safer at Innoviro, even though I knew the truck driver wasn’t my assailant. For starters, he wasn’t at least seven feet tall.

Walking down the street with living food items bothered me less than it had the first time. I smirked at my diminishing remorse about their fate. Ilya still had my guilt’s attention at the moment, so someone else would have to mourn the mice. I swung open the main door, cradling the box in my other hand as I maneuvered through the opening. I instinctively looked over to the front desk.

Melissa’s eyes met mine. “He gives you the day off and you don’t even take it. If you kiss his ass too much, it’ll backfire, you know.”

I stared at her as the door thudded shut.

“Ivan left for Vancouver already, so he’s not here to see you working anyway,” Melissa went on, “Shouldn’t you know that, being his personal assistant and all?”

“I’m dropping off Chester’s mice. I was supposed to get them this afternoon ‘cause he’s all out and needs to eat.”

The lab door at the end of the hall opened and several people in lab-coats exited and walked towards me. I saw Jonah’s face and I felt a rush of excitement. He looked downright handsome in his lab coat. His dark hair and ocean-blue eyes stood out against the white of his coat.

He waved at me and smiled back. “Have you had lunch yet?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but Melissa’s voice cut me off. “She’s not working today. Ivan gave her the day off.” Her tone dripped with bitterness. “But, you can have lunch with me.”

“Ah, well, I guess-” Jonah struggled.

“Lunch sounds perfect.” I cut off the conversation between them. “I’m dropping off a couple of mice for Chester. Let me give him one now and put the other away.”

I sped into Ivan’s office, dropped one mouse in Chester’s terrarium and another in the small shavings-lined plastic cage on the shelf.

I returned to reception to find Jonah holding the front door for me while Melissa scowled. I nodded at her as I passed. I hopped quickly down the stairs, eager to put some distance between us and Melissa’s ears.

We reached the corridor to the street and I relaxed. “I need to talk. Can we pick a lunch spot where we’ll have some privacy?”

“I heard that Ivan took you down to the catacombs this morning.”

“So you know what I want to talk about.”

“No, but I have some ideas. There’s a little Indian cafe around the corner.” Jonah pointed at Wharf Street in the direction of the Inner Harbour. “It’s dark and the booths are very private.”

We rounded the corner and turned up the hill to find the restaurant exactly where it was supposed to be. As Jonah promised, it was a dark little storefront with three rows of booths along the wall.

A cheerful woman in a bright green and gold sari sat us at the back of the restaurant, perfectly concealed from the rest of the world. We ordered chai and the curried chicken lunch special that Jonah recommended. After the waitress left, he sipped his tea, looking at me patiently.

“Okay, here’s the deal. Ivan wants me to take a drug. Probably an injection. Probably several of them.” Suddenly, I felt terrified that I said the wrong thing to the wrong person. I had to trust someone in Victoria that I could relate to and talk to, or this bizarre new life was not going to work for long. I hoped with every cell in my body that my ‘someone’ could be Jonah. “It’s to make my visions of his missing son stronger.”

“So he told you about Ilya?”

“It’s more than that. Did you ever meet this guy, Ilya?”

“Sure, we all knew him. He didn’t really work for Innoviro, but he came around a bit to talk to Ivan.”

“The visions I started having in Prince George, the one that truly compelled me to come Victoria, was of Ilya. Something about him and the look on his face . . . I knew I
HAD
to come here. Ivan says his gift is like Rubin’s because he can read minds, but Ilya is stronger and capable of creating illusions. So maybe he reached out to me. If this guy ‘sent’ a vision, is he responsible for all of it? Or maybe Rubin was involved from the get-go, driving my need to come to Victoria. Who knows, but now I feel like finding Ilya is something I’m meant to do. It’s a huge leap though, letting a man I hardly know put an experimental drug in my veins.” I looked down at the table and noticed I gripped the edge with white-knuckled fingers.

“So you’re afraid to take the drug?” Jonah’s expression suggested he absorbed some of my tension.

“Shouldn’t I have some reservations? Wouldn’t you?”

“I’ve been working for Ivan a lot longer, so I know from experience that he’s not the malicious sort. But he takes risks. Everything we do is experimental and that’s risky. I’m not going to tell you to do what he says, but if it were me, I would. I have before,” he said, getting quieter.

We exchanged a look and I told him with my eyes that I wasn’t judging him. “Is that something you want to talk about? Or can you?”

“I wasn’t born with . . . the way I am. At university, I did some really stupid shit with a virus and I got really sick. Ivan found me in the hospital in Vancouver and he offered me treatments to stabilize what I’d done to myself. It’s not extreme to say he saved my life.”

“The more I learn about Ivan, the more it sounds like he’s some kind of saint. How can I
not
help his son?”

“I wish I could make this easier, Irina, but it sounds like time is a factor.”

“If it were any other medical treatment, I’d get a second opinion or do some research. But this isn’t exactly something I can look up in Wikipedia, is it?”

“How about this? I’ll look around a bit this afternoon. I’ll ask a few people if I can. Maybe I can find out specifically what Ivan referenced so you’ve got a bit more information before you decide.”

“I don’t want you to get into trouble over this.”

“I won’t do anything stupid. Do you know how to find the Harbourside Pub?”

I nodded. It was down the road from my new apartment.

“Meet me there at eight o’clock tonight. We’ll have a few drinks and hopefully I’ll provide some reassurance.” Jonah reached out and held my hand.

Blood rushed up into my cheeks and I looked away.

After we had left the restaurant and said goodbye, I made a pit stop at a cell phone store. I’d promised myself a laptop and a phone with my first paycheck, which sat idly in my bank account. It was finally time to make big purchases. For the phone, I already knew what I wanted–something that still had actual buttons, but didn’t look like a relic from the 90’s.

I wanted something for texting rather than browsing the Internet. I said ‘no’ to several monthly plans in favor of a pay-as-you-go system until I set up a credit card. It was the most inconvenient system, but it was cheap and, in case I ran out of money again, the most sensible choice.

On the next block over, I made my way to a mid-size computer store I’d walked past several times. I already knew what not to bother with, what I really needed. I wanted more than a netbook, but I didn’t need hard-core processing capabilities or enough storage for huge applications. I wouldn’t make movies or mix music or play RAM-sucking video games. I didn’t want an inflated warranty either. I left the store pleased with a middle-of-the-road laptop in hand and made my way straight home.

I set the bag from the phone store down on my small dining table and brought my laptop into the living room. My first major task was to figure out how to connect myself to the building’s wireless network. Rubin had provided the password when I moved in, but I was surprised at how easily I connected. The laptop automatically detected the network and asked me for a password. In minutes, I resumed my search for information on psychic phenomenon. Not much else mattered.

I checked my email, nothing new. The prospect of doing research exhausted me after such an eventful day. I wasn’t even sure where to start, beyond replicating my earlier Google search. I sat back for a moment to stretch my legs. It had been a long day, but I had a lot to show for it, including plans for the evening that made me smile. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. My good day wasn’t over yet.

Giddy excitement made me restless. I pictured Jonah’s face, specifically, his magnetic ocean-blue eyes. No, his smile–and his wavy black hair. I let the memory of dancing with him overtake my mind. I snuggled into my couch and let myself dream of his strong arms around me again. It might happen again soon. Did I want to do a spread of my Tarot cards and see how soon?

Chapter 7

I woke up on my couch staring at the rain screensaver I’d chosen at the computer store. I looked at the clock on the wall. It was somewhere between eight-forty-five and nine o’clock. The clock only had dots for each quarter hour. Either way, I was horribly late to meet Jonah. I leaped off the couch, quickly scanned the room for my purse, grabbed it, and slung it on in one motion.

Checking my reflection in the hall mirror, I ran for the front door. I pressed the elevator button, but after a few seconds of waiting, I turned and raced down the stairs. At the bottom, I flung the door open and found myself at the side entrance. I hit the pavement running and almost made it to the front sidewalk before I heard my name.

“You’re lucky. I know where you live,” said Jonah with a sly smile as I reached him at the front door.

I stood in front of him, panting. He grinned and I felt a flush of heat in my cheeks. “I fell asleep! I’m sorry,” I blurted, embarrassed. “I didn’t forget or anything.”

“It’s okay. I stopped by the pub and it’s hopping busy. I don’t want to wait for a table. I should have thought of that.”

“There’s a cute little ice cream stand down at the sea wall, near the park. How about ice cream?”

Great, ice cream. Good and childish.
Why couldn’t I make note of some hip bistro or fusion joint? And
did
I want that drink, mostly to soothe my nerves? I wanted Jonah to have several drinks and relax a bit too. Now that I had committed to staying in Victoria, I could commit to having a boyfriend. Whether or not he felt the same was debatable.

Adam, my last boyfriend had been a short-lived situation. He was tall and slim with light blonde hair and an angular, but attractive face. He was smart enough to keep up an interesting conversation, but not so accomplished that I felt intimidated. Adam hadn’t shown a strong interest in me, but he flirted with me at a bush party one night. The next day, I called and invited him out for coffee. I felt like I’d taken charge. We dated for about two months until fall came and he left for trade school in Alberta. Only a few weeks passed before he called to tell me he’d met someone else and he had no plans to return to Prince George.

Jonah hadn’t shown a strong interest in me either. Not outwardly. So why was I staring up at his bright eyes with so much anticipation?

“I’d love to get ice cream.” He smiled. “I think I know the place you mean. You know I haven’t had ice cream in years.”

Of course he hadn’t had ice cream in years. He’d been dating grown-ups. I decided to roll with it anyway. A booze-free setting was better for learning whatever he managed to dig up about Ivan’s drug programs. After all, that’s why he wanted to meet me for a drink. He was keeping a promise and ideally getting me to cooperate with our boss.

Jonah followed me toward the park entrance. We turned down the paved path that bordered the park fence and the apartment building next to mine. The ice cream stand–shaped like a large blackberry for some reason–had a few moms and children milling around its service counter. We waited for our turn while an indecisive toddler chose between an ice cream sandwich and a scoop of chocolate. When it was our turn, the adolescent boy behind the counter quickly produced our plain vanilla soft-serve cones. We walked towards the ocean under a gentle breeze. As we walked, I concentrated on licking off all the frilled edges from my tower of ice cream.

“So I did some poking around at work this afternoon,” Jonah said. “I checked some of the obvious drives and folders. My workstation has a relatively high permissions level, but anything worth looking at is password protected.”

“I totally understand. Don’t dig too deep. I don’t want you to get in trouble for me,” I said with as much sincerity as I could muster through my frustration.

“I would have asked around, but I don’t know anyone in pharmacology all that well. I’m sure Ivan has documentation and testing records on whatever drug he wants to give you. If you ask him, I think he’ll share the information. He won’t want you to participate in anything that you’re not comfortable doing. If you have to learn more, I think he’ll help.”

We walked a bit farther in silence. I had assumed Jonah would find something, at least a mention of the drug, within the files at Innoviro. How could something either guarded or fresh out of the lab, be a trustworthy substance I should let them inject into my veins? Even if Ivan showed me charts and research findings, what insight could I gain from them?

Jonah and I rounded a corner. The path diverged around a ring of shrubs and a large arbutus tree. On the one side, the path jutted out to a viewpoint looking over to the Inner Harbour. On the other, a bench sat tucked into a semicircle of overgrown juniper bushes. The sun had nearly dropped behind the hills in Esquimalt, casting vivid yellow-orange light onto downtown. Bright pink clouds floated like cotton candy in the sky. If we kept going the Harbour would greet us in its gown of twinkling lights. My sunroom balcony had that view at every sunset. I turned towards the bench. I suddenly felt like I needed a break.

Jonah sat down next to me. He touched the side of my mouth and I jumped.

“Sorry; you had some ice cream . . .” he said sheepishly.

I wished I was the kind of girl who carried a mirror in my purse, but I knew better than to bother searching. I looked out at the ocean and the pink pieces of light floating on the water.

“You look tense.”

His arm slipped behind my back as I kept staring ahead. I turned to answer and found myself nose to nose with him. I tried to think of something to say as he tilted his head and leaned in, brushing my lips with his. I’d forgotten how sweet a gentle kiss could be and I reached out to hold him. The gesture encouraged him. He wrapped one arm around my back and with the other hand gently cradled my neck.

His tongue encircled mine. My hand slid up from his shoulder, along the back of his neck and into his soft black hair as I wrapped my other arm around his waist. He moved around me, lowering his hand from my neck to my breast. Heat surged through my body with a wave of physical need while my tongue responded to his escalating movement. And suddenly something was different.

My mouth went dry, in spite of Jonah’s passionate kiss. I felt tired, even sleepy. A pounding pain started inside my head. I couldn’t breathe . . .

I woke up in my apartment, lying flat on my couch. Jonah sat on my coffee table. His elbows rested on his knees with his hands clasped as he stared intently down at me. Fortunately, he had thought to go through my purse and find my guest pendant, so we didn’t set off some sort of alarm.

I still didn’t know exactly what would happen if someone came in here without a special amulet. Would that person contract a freak illness? Or a curse of another sort? I made a mental note to ask Ivan or Rubin exactly what tea and runes had to do with a high tech science lab.

I sat up, feeling as though I’d been asleep longer than Sleeping Beauty. I blinked painfully.

Jonah looked nervous and angry as he wrung his hands, grinding nothing. “Oh thank God!” He reached out, and then retracted his arm before touching me.

“Did I . . . pass out or something?” The sudden thought that I’d been drugged made my stomach drop like a stone. Jonah handed me a glass of water he had ready at his side.

“No, not really,” Jonah said cautiously. “It’s my fault. I thought since you were different, varied, like me, you’d be immune. I was so sure!” He spoke to himself, more than me.

“You don’t think there was something in that ice cream, do you?” I said, after a sip of water.

“No, it literally
was
my fault. But I would never drug you–or hurt you! Shit. This is complicated,” he said as he stood. “I sort of drained you. You know the human body is mostly water, right?”

I frowned again, but nodded.

“Remember in the restaurant when I moved that water on the menu and absorbed it with my hand?”

“Sure, I get it. You can manipulate water,” I said groggily.

“It’s more than telekinesis though. Ivan calls it ‘aquakinesis’ which I think is stupid, because there’s more to it than that. My body feeds off water. I’m constantly drawing it in from the air around me. And it’s getting worse. It’s why I need to live in a humid climate, near water if possible.” He paced to the far side of my living room. “I’m so sorry.” He darted towards the door and I heard it slam a half-second later.

I tried to get up off the couch and my head swam. I lay back down on the comfortable plush cushions. I tried to say something and nearly choked. I grabbed my glass of water and downed the entire thing. I wanted to run after Jonah, but it took all my energy to adjust myself on the couch. My eyelids grew heavier and heavier. I gave in, let sleep take me.

Saturday morning sun brightened my apartment by six in the morning. For the first time, the space was utterly void of sound and the memory of the night before flooded back. I saw Jonah’s face and remembered the kiss, accompanied by a stab of self-pity.

A throbbing headache knocked around my skull, worse than any hangover I remembered. Did this mean I could never kiss Jonah, let alone do anything truly intimate? His inability to touch another person must have been the reason he’d let Ivan experiment on him already.

I went to the kitchen and made a pot of coffee. Knowing the coffee wouldn’t help dehydration, I chugged another glass of water while the coffee brewed. I sat at my kitchen table to wait, prying my laptop open as I did. I loved how quickly it booted up and I grinned in spite of my miserable state. I clicked on the curled up orange Firefox logo and I typed ‘aqua-kinesis’ into Google. I found an entry in the Urban Dictionary that read,
‘The ability to manipulate water, create water or to change the state of water.’

That didn’t sound so bad. And not a recipe for draining the life out of people. Something had gone awfully wrong because he had done it to himself, unnaturally. I would probably never understand the science, not for Jonah’s work, Cole’s, Ivan’s, or anyone else inside the walls at Innoviro. Not in a way that would actually serve a purpose.

The only thing left to look for was my own gift, even though I knew I wasn’t going to get real answers from the Internet. I typed ‘precognition’ into the search engine and hit the Enter key after a moment’s hesitation. A Wikipedia entry came up first and the most reliable source as far as I was concerned, so I opened the page without skimming the rest of my results.

‘In parapsychology, precognition, also called future sight, and second sight, is a type of extrasensory perception that would involve the acquisition or effect of future information that cannot be deduced from presently available and normally acquired sense-based information or laws of physics and/or nature.’

I knew I’d also seen past events in my visions, so again, there was more going on than a website could reveal. What did I think was going to happen, anyway? If I bought a computer of my own and searched in private, some new resource would turn up or a miraculous insight would unravel in my mind? These answers weren’t up for grabs online and I had to accept that.

I snapped the laptop shut on
Wikipedia
. Only Ivan could help me. I’d have to be brave, ask, and trust him to find out what I wanted to know. The saying ‘curiosity killed the cat’ flitted through my mind and I felt the now familiar hopelessness of failing to make sense of the bizarre tangle of my new life.

After I clicked on my television, I remembered the bag on my dining table. I hadn’t set up my phone yet. I could do something practical that had a measurable result. Suddenly I wanted to hear my mom’s voice very badly. I grabbed the bag and opened the box. The manual with the phone was a thick text-heavy booklet, but after impatiently re-reading the first few pages, I figured out what number I had to call and the key combination I’d need to punch to activate the phone. Another few frustrating pages revealed how to add the pre-paid phone card money. In less than half an hour I had a phone number. Before a full hour had passed, I’d transferred my collection of phone numbers from sticky notes, receipts in my purse, and from my memory, into my shiny new personal cell.

I revisited one of the first numbers I’d programmed–my parents’ home phone in Prince George. My finger hovered over the button with the green symbol of a receiver. Would Mom get angry again? Or would Darryl answer the phone and quiz me about the quality and stability of my new job? I pressed the red receiver symbol instead.

Fat lot of good a phone would to do me if I had nobody to call. I scrolled through the rest of the address book I’d just created and stalled on a strange name. I had Faith’s number and I decided to call it. I didn’t really know what I planned to say, or if I’d have the guts to ask her about the pharmacology department, but the idea sounded reasonable so I dialed. And she answered on the first ring.

“Hi Faith, it’s Irina. I hope I didn’t catch you . . .” but she was so excited to hear my voice, I didn’t get a chance to finish. She’d been waiting to hear from me. She wanted to know if I’d come watch her game. Faith was on Victoria’s only roller derby team and they were playing a team from Vancouver that evening. I had only a general idea what roller derby involved–roller skates and a rink.

Faith must have thought I had enough knowledge to enjoy the game, but I also got the impression she wanted to put butts in seats and would have asked a girl on the street to come see her play. I didn’t know Faith very well apart from one meal and a few nods at work. But I usually read people fairly accurately. Was that part of my gift? She did sound sincere in wanting me to come out. I refocused on Faith’s instructions to get the details I needed.

I agreed to meet her at the Esquimalt Arena, which was actually not far from my apartment. In the meantime, I needed groceries before I could even have breakfast, and then a well-earned hot shower.

I lived less than a block from a run-down, but reliable supermarket. Victoria reminded me with her little nuances how long the city had been standing. Compared to Prince George, Victoria was the Old World and the streets of suburban Esquimalt were no exception. As I walked down the street away from my building, towards the supermarket, I noted in more detail how the structures around me documented the passage of time. I passed restored heritage houses from the early 1900’s as well as weathered 60’s and 70’s complexes not yet worthy of rescue. One large glass and metal tower contrasted the original bricks and vines of the neighborhood.

Street signs bore the poppy-based insignia of Canadian veterans, marking the area as belonging to the military, much as the red dragon signs on Fisgard pointed me down to Chinatown. By the time I reached the dated plaza with the old supermarket, I thought I might actually spot naval uniforms among the pedestrians and drivers around me. Nothing yet, but I planned to keep my eye out for them, if for no reason other than to see if my mental image of one of the Village People was an accurate portrayal of a contemporary sailor.