Of Cinder and Bone Read online

  “And if it’s any consolation,” she whispered, their lips still touching. “It’s her loss if she says no.”

  She then grinned at the stunned look on his face. “I’m gonna go get some coffee.”

  With that, Faye slipped from beneath the covers and disappeared out of the room, humming “Silly” by Deniece Williams. Jack stared at the doorway long after she’d gone through it and listened to Kamala’s soft breaths against his sternum.

  CHAPTER TWO

  CATALYST

  “For the record, you and your roommate’s definition of ‘fun’ scares me beyond all reasoning,” Jack said, holding the hallway door open for Kamala.

  She slurped another mouthful of cappuccino to offset her hangover. So far, it wasn’t doing much other than burning her tongue. “You’re the one that started a bar fight.”

  “Ended, more like,” he said, sipping his own black coffee. “Not sure if I should thank you for inviting me out or learn from this grievous mistake.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Bite me.”

  He gave her a deadpan leer. “Where?”

  She burst into giggles. “Shut up, Jack.”

  He opened the lab door, and she walked through, only to stop dead after a couple of steps. Jack bumped into her, apologizing, and then immediately realized why she’d stopped.

  “Dr. Yagami,” Kamala said in a faux-sugary voice, addressing the Japanese man hunched over the desk they normally used. “What are you doing?”

  “Kamala,” he replied without looking up from the microscope. “This is commonly known as research. Is there a problem?”

  “I’ll say,” she said, stomping towards him. “We’ve been doing eight a.m. schedules for the entire year. Why are you using our lab?”

  He finally glanced at her, his face impatient. “It’s nine o’clock. You didn’t show up, so I came in to use the equipment.”

  “We’re scheduled here until noon, Yagami,” Jack interrupted. “We’re late, but we showed.”

  “First come, first serve, kids. Besides, I’m sure we can share like grownups.”

  Kamala glanced at Jack, who pantomimed snapping Yagami’s neck. A grim smile overtook her lips and she sighed, heading towards the freezer containing their research samples. “Good to know you understand what that word means.”

  “Grownups?”

  She shot him a sarcastic smile. “Share.”

  “Right,” he snorted, scribbling something down on a notepad. “Cute.”

  She took out the cooler while Jack set their stuff down on the table on the opposite side, giving them the center of the room for distance. Jack unzipped the briefcase containing her laptop and plugged it in, his dark gaze aimed at the fellow post-doc across from them.

  Like Jack, Yagami was twenty-seven and blessed with a research project in the subject of genetics, specifically in the area of DNA modification in animals. Unlike Jack, however, he’d been groomed for years to be in this field, and to find something truly revolutionary. He’d come from money, privilege, and expectations. The Sugimoto family owned several pharmaceutical companies in Japan, but they’d been searching for a way to expand their reach in the medical world even further. Even his appearance rang of his pedigree: short, neatly cut hair that was never out of place, manicured nails, a cloud of Tom Ford cologne swirling in his wake wherever he went, and designer suits whose labels Jack didn’t even recognize.

  “Think he was born that much of a douchebag or did he have to take classes?” Jack muttered once she was within earshot.

  “Got me,” Kamala answered, doing her usual check of the equipment inside.

  “A douchebag with perfect hearing,” Yagami said loudly.

  “Yeah, we know,” Jack said without an ounce of regret. “How’s your sign language?”

  Kamala stifled a laugh and pushed Jack’s arm down, as well as his one-fingered salute. “I’ll start setting up the next trial. Bring up the bibliography, would you?”

  He grunted, sat on a nearby stool, and got to work. Like always, they moved smoothly through the opening procedures: checking the progress of the samples, noting the changes in the upcoming trials, and studying the research they’d gathered. An hour sidled on by.

  “So,” Kamala said, casting a sidelong glance at her partner. “Last night.”

  Jack cleared his throat and kept staring into the microscope. “Last night.”

  “You never told me you could fight.”

  “Never had a need to.”

  Her tone softened, as did her steady gaze on him. “Your father?”

  His shoulders knotted with tension. “Yeah.”

  She exhaled through her nose and fell silent for a few heartbeats. “I’m sorry.”

  “No need to be.”

  She pushed up the sleeve of his lab coat to expose part of his forearm. A faint scar had melted into his skin long ago, leaving only a ghostly pale mark running from his wrist to his elbow instead. It was small and thin like a surgeon’s incision, though she could tell it had probably been larger and more noticeable when he was a teenager.

  Jack shivered. Her fingertips were softer than he’d thought.

  “You told me this came from falling off a tractor,” Kamala said softly. “Only broken bone you’ve ever had. Fractured ulna. Was that…?”

  He didn’t reply and she nodded. “I don’t mean to pry. I sometimes wonder why you don’t like to talk about your life before MIT, but now that’s becoming clearer to me.”

  He watched her for a moment or two. “I didn’t want you to look at me like that.”

  She blinked a couple times. “Like what?”

  Jack’s jaw twitched. “Pity. Remorse. Sympathy. Whatever you want to call it. When people find out, they start treating me like I’m made of paper mache. It’s not a particularly welcome feeling.”

  “If you were worried I’d treat you differently, you’re wrong. I can respect your privacy. But what I saw last night…I thought maybe you needed to get something off your chest.”

  Jack’s heartbeat did a brief imitation of a drummer having an epileptic fit. He licked his lips. “Like what?”

  She shrugged. “You’re a hard man to read, Jack. But you don’t punch a drunken frat boy in the head twice unless you’re really stressed out. You can talk to me about things other than the project. I just want you to know that.”

  “I do know that, Kam. But thanks for saying it anyway. Sorry if I’m a bit of a bore.”

  She lifted an eyebrow. “You’re doing a research project about trying to resurrect a living, breathing dragon, and you got in a bar fight last night. Boring is not the word I’d use to describe you, Jack.”

  His cheeks reddened and she giggled. “And you’re cute as a button when you blush.”

  He scowled and turned back to his work. “I don’t like being called cute, just FYI. And also for your information, you’re not exactly an open book, Dr. Anjali.”

  “How dare you,” she scoffed. “I am perfectly willing to answer any question you have about my personal life.”

  He shot her a sly look. “Oh, are you? So, tell me why you don’t have a boyfriend.”

  Her mouth clamped shut, and he got the sudden impression that he’d stunned her. “I…haven’t been looking all that hard, to be honest.”

  “Why not?”

  “Boyfriends complicate things. I like simple.” She smirked. “Hence why I’m partners with you.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Weak. Do better.”

  “I’m twenty-eight. There’ll be plenty of time for men after our world-shattering research is published and we become filthy rich famous snobs. Besides, when’s the last time you’ve showed up with a hickey, Mr. Nosy?”

  He coughed. “Touché.”

  She flopped down on her stool and scribbled a few things into her spiral notebook. “To tell you the absolute truth, I got tired of being interrogated by my pare
nts. They tried to introduce me to a couple of different guys they approved of, but my suitors were arrogant and spoiled. The kind of guys who want me to stay home and take care of their brood. Be a more ‘traditional’ southern Indian girl.”

  “Traditional,” Jack snorted. “Right. Marriage to a complete stranger who expects you to clean up after him and be pretty. How could you refuse such an offer, you tramp?”

  “Who knows? It’s less messy not to have boyfriends around. I assume it’s the same for you. Well, that and your terrible social skills.”

  Jack let out an impressive Neanderthal grunt and she chuckled. “Though I should warn you: Faye likes tough guys. Now that she’s seen you hit someone, she might come after you.”

  Jack shuddered visibly. “That is too scary to even picture.”

  “Rhett Jackson actually struck someone?” Yagami mused, walking past them to dump some contaminated needles in the bright orange Haz-mat bucket bolted to the wall behind them. “On purpose?”

  “Shit happens,” Jack answered, narrowing his eyes at Yagami’s smirk.

  “Let me guess: someone made a pass at your girlfriend?” He aimed his gaze at Kamala.

  “She’s not my girlfriend, for the seven-hundredth time.”

  Yagami clucked his tongue and shook his head. “Men of action are in short supply these days. It’s probably for the best, then.”

  Jack’s right hand balled into a fist and Kamala laid a hand on his shoulder, her eyes never leaving Yagami’s. “You’re such an impressive man, Dr. Sugimoto.”

  His smirk widened. “Am I?”

  “Yes. Do tell me how you manage to walk upright with your head so far up your ass?”

  The smirk crumbled. “Profanity is the inevitable linguistic crutch of the inarticulate.”

  Kamala batted her long eyelashes and smiled prettily. “Fuck you, troglodyte.”

  He rolled his eyes and returned to his side of the lab. Jack stared at Kamala.

  “What?”

  “Marry me.”

  ~ * ~

  “I’m missing something.”

  Kamala glanced up from the iPad in her lap. Jack sat across from her at the dinner table, long fingers in his lightly tousled hair, frowning down at his own tablet. The lines in his face were deeper than they should have been. He looked as if he’d aged several years in the last few minutes.

  “We’re both missing something,” she corrected, taking a sip of the cooling coffee next to her. “A good night’s sleep and various scores of brain cells.”

  He shook his head. “No. I mean…we should have gotten there by now. The theories, the projections, the diagrams should have pointed us to the solution. They haven’t. I missed something.”

  “We’ll get there, Jack,” she said gently. “We’re close.”

  He sat back in his creaky chair, exhaling. “We’ve been close for a year. Over a year. I don’t know that we can do this in time.”

  Kamala stood up. He didn’t look at her as she walked over and sat on the edge of the table, crossing her legs. “Do you know why I decided to work on this project?”

  “Yes. You told me you believed in my work, and in my intention to rebuild ecosystems of animals we destroyed by polluting and hunting certain species to extinction.”

  “And that’s true.” She leaned in until their faces were level. “But it was you, Jack. When we first met, you couldn’t shut up about the thousands of different ways this could work, how it could change the way we understand genetics and biological engineering. Do you think I didn’t have other options? I graduated top of my class. I could have gone anywhere. I chose here. I chose this project. I chose you. Do you think for a second I’d have thrown my future away if we weren’t going to find the answer?”

  He swallowed. “No.”

  She rested her hand on his, her small fingers warm and strong. “Everyone loses faith, Jack. Everyone. One way or another. But the difference between us and them is getting it back. You only fail when you give up. Everything else is just an inconvenience.”

  “What if I’m wrong?”

  “You’re not. You’re overworked and you haven’t been sleeping well.”

  Jack blinked at her and she smiled. “Your skin gets dry and pale when you’re tired. Also, you’ve ingested so much coffee you must be pooping espresso beans.”

  He laughed then. “There we go. A smile, at least. Now come on, let’s take a break.”

  Jack sighed. “We don’t have time for a break; just a breakthrough.”

  “Shut up and come over here.” She got up and headed for the bookshelf next to Jack’s flat-screen T.V. Like her own shelf, it was cluttered with both literature and movies, but that was the only similarity in their apartments. The Anjali family came from wealth and prosperity, based mainly in medical and business fields. She and Faye lived on Amory Street, near the commonly known Squares that made up Cambridge and the nearby Harvard area.

  Jack hadn’t been quite as fortunate. He lived in a one-bedroom closer to the Boston area, and while it was no dump, it was a far cry from the shiny modern palace of Benjamin Apartments. The furniture was clean, but secondhand. His kitchen could only fit one person at a time and he usually ate at the table since the den was too cramped to fit both a coffee table and a sofa. The bedroom was about the same, with just enough room for his king-sized bed, a sturdy desk and chair, and one dresser for his clothes. Most of the time, he insisted on studying at Kamala’s since he felt slightly self-conscious about his home, but she never seemed to mind.

  He turned on the television while she browsed his movie collection, flipping channels. He groaned suddenly.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Yagami’s family is in the news again.” He squinted at the headline and listened to the newscaster. “Oh, wait, doesn’t sound like good news.”

  He turned up the volume.

  “C.E.O. Makoto Sugimoto has announced that he will be stepping down from the position to retire, as his declining health has been causing issues as of late. Sugimoto’s son, Yagami, a post-doc researcher here at MIT, is expected to inherit the company, but there are rumors that his sister, Keiko, is in the running as well. Yagami has declined to comment on whether he intends to return home to run his father’s empire. Keiko, however, has been in the media touring with her father, and has expressed interest in Sugimoto Pharmaceutical Company’s future.”

  “Well, at least that partly explains why he’s such a dick-nugget,” Jack grumbled. “Old man’s bad health is stressful enough without the results of his project having the same deadline as ours. Guess I should start being nicer to him.”

  Kamala wrinkled her nose as she chose a movie. “You’re creeping me out just by saying that, Jack.”

  “I aim to please. What’s the cinematic masterpiece for the night?”

  She brandished the case, beaming. “Reign of Fire. Nothing helps one decompress like bald, shirtless Matthew McConaughey, chewing the scenery and harpooning dragons in the face.”

  “Ugh. Your roommate bought me that for Christmas as a joke. I’ve never actually seen it, but it felt rude to throw it away.”

  She popped it into the Blu-Ray player and flopped down on the couch next to him. “Trust me, you won’t regret it. Who knows? Maybe you’ll get an inspiration.”

  “To puke, maybe. God, I’m gonna need another beer for this.”

  ~ * ~

  Around the time Van Zan, Quinn, and Alex were crouching inside a burnt, totaled bus to discuss their plan to kill the alpha dragon, Jack’s cell phone buzzed in his pocket. He frowned and dug it out, confused as to who was texting him at nearly one o’clock in the morning.

  You guys banging yet?

  Jack shut his eyes for a moment, suppressing the urge to growl.

  No. Go to sleep, you pervert.

  I’m bored. Still studying?

  Watching a movie.

  What mov
ie?

  Reign of Fire.

  Kam picked that, didn’t she?

  Yep.

  That’s my girl. Get her home by curfew or I’ll kick your ass.

  He rolled his eyes and stuffed the phone in his pocket without replying. A couple of minutes later and it hummed again. Against his better judgment, he checked it.

  So, what’s your stance on threesomes?

  Jack’s growl vibrated down Kamala’s shoulder, enough to make her glance at him. “Problem?”