She led him into her office, still clutching the gun in a death grip, and closed the door.
Then she told him.
He didn’t react at all. Johanna watched for signs of horror, denial, incredulity. None came. He listened to her account of Fenris’s emergence, unmoving, as if she were describing a rather uninteresting acquaintance.
That was abnormal in itself, almost frightening. She carefully edited her description of Fenris’s advances upon her, but she doubted very much that he’d failed to guess what she omitted.
When she was finished, he gazed blankly at the wall and said nothing. Minutes ticked by. Precious minutes that she dared not waste, for May’s sake as well as his.
Bolkonsky might arrive in a matter of hours. Oscar had not returned from his search for May, and if he did not come soon she’d go looking herself. Her original plan for the girl’s escape was no longer viable; Bridget would simply have to spirit May out of the area while Johanna concocted a story that Bolkonsky and Ingram were bound to find wildly implausible. But she didn’t dare risk facing them down with May still present.
Watching Quentin’s face, Johanna mourned inside. She grieved for him, for May, for the man who had been killed, whatever his crimes in life. She grieved for what had been so briefly captured last night. She longed to touch Quentin, kiss him, and knew how impossible it was. Her organs had turned to water, filling her body like a reservoir apt to spill over into a flood of tears once she opened the gates.
That she must not do. Her brain must become as sharp as a scalpel, her heart as hard as marble.
“You never suspected this,” she said at last.
“No.” He turned his head toward her, but his eyes wouldn’t focus. “Not this. I felt a shadow… the shadow I ran from. And it was always—” He laughed. “It was me all along.”
She quenched the desire to comfort him with soothing words and promises she couldn’t keep. “Not you, Quentin. A part of you, born at a time when you desperately needed help and found none.”
“Fenris,” he whispered. “It even has its own name. He.” He rose from the chaise and walked across the room, slow and halting as an old man. “All these times I’ve lost my memory—after the drinking—he’s come out. That’s what you’re saying. He lives in my body with me. He takes over and does things—terrible things.”
“So Fenris claims—and Bolkonsky. But there is no proof, Quentin.”
“Except that two people have been attacked since I came to the Haven.” He finally met her gaze. “And I don’t remember. But someone saw me, didn’t they, Johanna?”
“No one witnessed the attack on May’s father. Fenris admitted it himself.”
He closed his eyes. “Why? Why did he do it?”
“He wouldn’t say. But I think…” She prepared herself to hurt Quentin again. “Your concern for May became something different for Fenris. You share a mind and a body. He felt what you feel, knew what you knew, but he was not constrained by the bonds of civilized behavior, or by the reason that tells us right from wrong.”
“You mean that he did what I wanted to do, but couldn’t.”
“There is so much I don’t know and can only theorize. I’m sorry.”
“Your theories are more than reasonable.” He sat down again, as if he couldn’t remain still. “I never stayed long in any one place, because after a few days or weeks I always sensed something wrong. Sometimes it was just a hunch, a bad feeling in my gut. Rumors, the stares of people around me that told me that I wasn’t welcome. Sometimes I heard stories. And once in a while, the law came after me.” His voice became a monotone, devoid of emotion. “I didn’t let myself think that my drinking did serious damage to anyone but myself.” He smiled a chilling smile. “But you think that’s what lets Fenris out.”
“It’s possible, but—”
“Just as it’s possible that I killed this businessman last night.”
“I do not believe… You said that you had no memory lapse—”