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“We can't stay.” He glanced over his shoulder as if expecting August to darken our horizon.
When I faltered again, Caelan opted to carry me to his truck. It took some work to figure out the least painful position, but we managed to arrive at the truck without my passing out. There, he set me on my feet, propped open the door and helped me climb inside. I'd perched on the edge of the seat when he looked toward the overgrown, quiet brush and dilapidated signage.
“Something out there?” I asked in a hushed tone, clutching his arm.
“No,” he said. “Just don't want to be thrown off your case.”
Before I could ask what he meant, he took my chin and pressed his lips on mine. It was a kiss of blood and salt, short as a heartbeat and as undeniable as breathing— necessary, sustaining, essential—and beneath that rushed an undercurrent of unexplored meaning.
“So much for being all business.”
“My mistake,” he agreed, palm gentle on my cheek. Soot darkened his nose. “Would you like me to do it again?”
I coughed through a small chuckle. “Well, yeah.”
But someone came up the path. Caelan almost threw me into the center console in his rush to separate. He slammed the door and walked around the front of the vehicle with his head down to hide a grin. I rested my head against the cool window pane and pretended, for one blissful moment, that I was just a girl and he was just a boy and love was all that mattered.
chapter 31
RUN WITH ME
The trip to the hospital was a blurry, unpleasant memory. I didn't remember the car ride or the initial flurry of activity after we'd pulled in: a whirlwind of vitals, IVs and emergency room doctors.
After I'd been stabilized and presented with a graphic summary of the damage August's teeth had rendered and the details of the upcoming surgery required to stitch me back together, Caelan called the head nurse over to inform him I was a survivor of Ingram Hayes and required a guard outside my room.
The first was Lieutenant Mishra-Anderson. She poked her head in to ask after me while Caelan was visiting between shifts. We exchanged pleasantries, but she sounded disappointed, more so in her boss than me. From his stunted replies, I had a feeling they’d had a fight.
At the end of his visit, he passed a folded page of his notepad into my hand, a warning that cameras were in the room, lest whatever beast lay within, or beside me waiting, chose to emerge.
He didn't come by again, though he did check on my progress over the phone. After surgery to repair the immediate damage, the drugs kicked in. I slept, always dreaming of a kingdom woven in thread, and a cold jade throne sat upon by a man with haunting green eyes.
The times I woke, half of them I spent laying in sweat-soaked sheets convinced lions were hunting sheep around a painting across from my bed. As my discharge approached and the dosages waned, the artwork quieted to a plain, watercolor seascape.
In the end, I emerged from the hospital like a mummy from a sarcophagus: unaware of the world’s present state, sporting my arm in a cast, my shoulder stabilized and enough painkillers to walk on clouds for a few days. I called for a taxi and headed for home.
“You don't have anyone to get you?” a nurse asked at my check out. She'd been one of the more attentive staff members. “A relative, a friend?”
“I'm fine.” I sank into a chair to wait for the cab. “Happy to go home.”
“Home's where the heart is,” she hummed.
???
Being a righty, having that arm rendered useless was a major inconvenience. I dropped my keys twice trying to get into my house. When I wrenched the door open and saw the upturned kitchen table and scattered cat food, I stormed back onto the porch, wiping my eyes.
I couldn't walk inside, couldn't go in there and pick up the pieces. So I sat on the steps in baggy clothes donated by the head nurse's wife, looking out at my neighborhood. Strange cars lined the street, filled every driveway and corner. Mourners for families, other lives Zakar had ... Rhetta and I had ruined. I sat watching rusted stains bake on the sidewalk and cried.
Once the tears ran dry, I forced my gaze from the trampled plants and chunks of black fur. I had to get inside and get planning. Samson and Igor were dead. Rhetta had exchanged my freedom for her own, and I was chained to a demon.
Blessed with a familiar. A cold wind touched my cheek, an icy caress along my spine.
And there he was, that long-bodied feline, strolling along the white porch rail. Zakar's fur shone rich mahogany in the sunlight. A dead mouse hung from his jaw. He padded alongside me and deposited the fly-covered creature in my lap.
I know you miss them, he purred, wrapping his tail around his paws. I would never have killed them, dearest Mirele. Your predecessor was in charge of logistics.
Lifting the rat by its tail, I flung it into the bushes. “Where are they?”
Innocent green eyes turned on mine. Who?
