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Puck pulls me to him and nuzzles the top of my head. “Go home.”
I nod and then look at the ghosts. “Thank you.”
All around me, the dead smile as they fade into a light only I can see. The ghost girl is the last to leave. She waves to me like a little kid as she fades away, her voice so happy as she says, “Bye-bye.”
Phineas and Puck are watching me when I look back at them. I don’t know quite what to say, and now doesn’t feel like the time. Not when we’re still standing in the middle of a trader facility with dozens of their crew’s corpses around us.
Strong shudders roll through Ghastly, and then he shifts back to Zeb’s form. The Jekyll’s face is haggard with pain and exhaustion, but he still manages a weak smile at me. “Hey, beautiful.”
A sob catches in my throat, driven by relief and pain and fear, but I smile back while my eyes sting. “Hey.”
He glances around at the destruction. “You all have a party without me?”
I choke on a laugh. “Not exactly.”
“We’ll explain later,” Phineas says with a pointed look at me that definitely means I’m going to be the one doing the explaining. “We need to get out of here before any more of these bastards arrive.”
That sobers Zeb up quickly. With Puck’s arm around me and Phineas helping Zeb, we head for the door.
Chapter 17
Mabel
It takes almost two weeks before Zeb has recovered enough from his wounds and the blood loss to get around the guys’ new apartment on his own, though it only took a few hours before he was tired of Huck and Phineas “hovering around him like mother birds.”
Me, he never complains about. Well, never except to protest the fact I won’t have sex with him while he’s recovering.
I’m sitting next to Zeb in the bed, my back propped up on pillows, when the bedroom door opens and Phineas comes in. I’ve taken to sleeping in here ever since we arrived, usually with Huck spooned behind me and Phineas asleep on a cot near Zeb, just in case he needs help in the night. Creepy loves having all the men around us. She wouldn’t have it any other way.
It hurts how much I like it too.
But soon, the time will come to move into my own place, even if that won’t be my house. Though everything our contacts have found proves that when we broke out of the traders’ facility we eliminated the last of the crew responsible for destroying my home, leaving no one who could know about us or about La Fleur’s location, I still haven’t been back to my house since that first day it burned. The insurance company has called a few times, and there’s a chance they’ll pay my claim if the arson investigator concludes the fire wasn’t my fault. But given the amount of destruction, I’m not sure if what they give me will ever be enough to repair my home.
The reality of that is too painful to focus on, and until Zeb’s better, there’s only so much damage to the things I care about that I can stand at one time.
“Good morning,” Phineas says.
Huck comes in behind him, a tray of food in his hands, and I can tell from the moment he sets it down that the Jekyll put it together himself. The pieces of toast are mildly burnt and the jam is melting off one side. The glasses of juice are so full, they’ve sloshed a bit onto the tray while he carried it. It’s a far cry from the delicacies Zeb would whip up, but I love him for trying.
As I take a bite of the toast, Huck sinks down at my side, his fingers straying up and down my leg beneath the blankets, while Phineas takes a seat on the chair near the bed.
“If you’re feeling up to it,” Phineas says. “There’s something we would like to ask you.”
I think for a moment he’s talking to Zeb, but then I realize he’s looking at me. “Ask me what?”
Phineas glances at the others. “You said you didn’t think this would work out. That our lives and yours weren’t compatible.”
I tense.
“The guys and I have been talking,” Zeb says. “And we wondered if you wouldn’t mind testing that theory.”
I eye them warily. “What do you mean?”
“We travel,” Phineas acknowledges. “Quite a bit, in all honesty. We go from one job to the next, day in and day out. And given the good that we can do, it doesn’t seem advisable to us to stop.”
I make myself nod, even if it hurts to hear everything I already know confirmed by him.
“But we’ve never had a home, either,” Huck chimes in. “I mean, they used to. I didn’t. But now none of us do.”
