Page 23 of Shatter

Her eyes have gone heavy and half-closed from whatever Gwen gave her, but her lips move, soundless, like she's repeating the word to herself.

I open my mouth.

Nothing comes out.

Heavy footsteps sound on the stairs.

Tor comes down them slowly, barefoot, in jeans and a black T-shirt pulled on inside out, and the room gets smaller with every step.

He stops at the bottom.

He looks at the blood on the concrete leading in from the doors, then at the girl on the couch wrapped in my cut.

Then at me, kneeling on the floor beside her, bare-chested, with her blood drying on my hands and her fingers still locked around mine.

His jaw works once.

"Kirkja." He turns and starts back up the stairs. "Now."

CHAPTER THREE

Anni

Leather hits me first.

Leather and oil, stale coffee, good whiskey, and under all of it a man's soap, something plain and green, like cut grass after rain.

My eyes won't open right.

The right one does, slowly, crusted at the lashes, but the left one only makes it halfway before the swollen skin stops it, and the left side of my face throbs with my pulse.

A ceiling.

White paint with a brown water stain in one corner like a thumbprint, and a ceiling fan turning slow enough to count the blades.

Not my ceiling.

My ceiling has a crack running from the light fixture to the closet, and a smoke detector chirping every forty seconds because I've never bought a new battery.

This ceiling doesn't chirp.

I try to sit up.

Pain rips through my side, bright and white, like somebody's jammed a crowbar between two of my ribs and leaned on it.

A sound comes out of me, thin and high, and I fall back against the pillow with my good hand clamped over my side.

Something stiff is wrapped around my chest.

Tape.

I'm wearing a T-shirt I don't own, gray and soft, big enough the hem bunches around my hips.

"Easy, honey." A woman's voice, low and warm, from somewhere to my left. "Easy. Don't try to move yet."

I turn my head toward it.

It takes a long time.