Thin Ice

by Renée Jaggér

  By the time the shoot was half over, I was more exhausted than I’d been at the New York photoshoot. At least there, people had left me alone. In Los Angeles, everyone I talked to was friendly but draining to interact with. There was an air of competition, of needing to be noticed and validated I hadn’t felt elsewhere. Maybe this studio and the photographer were facing stiff competition. It left me wanting to go straight to the hotel and pass out, but I still had at least two hours to kill while they finished up the photos.

  It didn’t help that my stomach was upset after that disgusting smoothie. It’d started with heartburn that morphed into terrible stomach cramps. I couldn’t take anything that would interfere with my ability to protect Ronan. I got through it, but it wasn’t easy.

  I couldn’t take it anymore. While everyone was distracted by trying to set up for the second half, I snuck into a corner and went through Ronan’s planner, looking at his daily schedule. Whoever had tried to shoot him knew he would be in New York. While he hadn’t kept it a secret, he hadn’t posted it all over social media either. The people who knew were limited to his staff and anyone involved with the New York photoshoot.

  His schedule was pretty consistent. On days he didn’t have to fly somewhere for work, he started his day with a trip to the gym, where he met with his personal trainer. On weekends, however, the personal trainer came to him. I hesitated, staring at the name in his appointment book. It couldn’t be the same guy. He’d said he was going out of town.

  Yet there was his name, written in every Saturday morning for the past six weeks—my friend, James Xavier. Jax was Ronan’s personal trainer. Ronan would’ve told him he was going to New York because he’d have to miss hitting the gym that day. Jax also had the training necessary to make a shot like the one that had nearly taken Ronan’s head off in the pizzeria.

  A cold chill went through me. It’s Jax, I realized, and I thought I might even know why.

  “I’m starving.” Ronan’s voice made me jump hard enough that I dropped my phone. It clattered to the floor, landing at his feet. He picked it up and held it back out to me. “You okay? You look pale.”

  “Ronan, I—”

  “I know what you need.” He helped me to my feet. “That smoothie wasn’t exactly jam-packed with calories and nutrients. You need a proper meal. Do you want steak or lobster?”

  “I really think—”

  “You’re right. Why not both? I know just the place.” He turned to walk away but paused when he realized I wasn’t following.

  I wanted to get it out then and there, tell Ronan it was Jax who was behind the attempts on his life, but maybe it would go down a little easier over steak and lobster. My stomach groaned, reminding me of my mostly empty stomach. Eating something light might help. “We need to talk about who’s trying to kill you,” was all I said.

  “Over dinner,” Ronan promised.

  Since I knew I would be sitting with him rather than guarding him, who was I to argue if he was offering steak and lobster?

  Every steak restaurant I’d been to was part of one of those national chains, but that wasn’t the sort of place Ronan frequented. He took me to a place named after a celebrity chef. I felt horribly underdressed compared to all the other women in there, but no one stared. Besides, it wasn’t like we were on a date. He was getting a meal, and I was there to make sure no one killed him while he ate.

  Still, I had to ask when he pulled the chair out for me, “Did you take Walter out like this?”

  Ronan laughed. “Walter’s idea of high-end cuisine was anyplace that didn’t have a drive-thru, although his bagged lunch often consisted of reheated cheeseburgers. He wasn’t much for good food and not very good company. He also didn’t save my life twice in one week.”

  “I don’t want you or anyone else to get the wrong idea, is all.” I thought back to his comment on the plane. It had seemed like harmless banter at first, but I had to remember that Ronan was my boss. These trips, the fancy hotel, the expensive dinners—they couldn’t be the norm. We couldn’t be too comfortable with each other.

  He sat across from me, frowning. “I crossed a line earlier with my kissing comment, huh?”

  “Maybe a little.”

  “Sorry. Won’t happen again,” he murmured and opened the menu, maybe to hide behind it.

  I opened my menu but paused when a particularly bad cramp wracked my gut. I doubled over in my seat, clenching my teeth to get through the pain. I’ve been through worse, I told myself. But the cramping pain didn’t subside. I closed my fingers around the tablecloth, gathering it in a fist. It’d pass, just like the others. No matter how long I tried to wait it out, however, the pain didn’t fade. I couldn’t keep it together.

  I stood up and nearly knocked over my chair in the process.

  Ronan lowered his menu. “Callie? What’s wrong?”

  I staggered two feet away from the table before I dropped to my knees and vomited blood, then I collapsed to the side, too weak to move.

  Ronan’s chair crashed to the floor and he was at my side in an instant, lifting me off the floor and onto his lap. “We need a doctor! Someone call an ambulance!”

  Chapter Nineteen

  I remember the trip in the ambulance in flashes. There was lots of noise. Faces I didn’t recognize hovered, speaking over me instead of to me. No one would tell me what was going on or why my insides felt like they were on fire. With the lights flashing and the sirens wailing, they stuck an IV in my arm and injected me with something that made my head fuzzy. My stomach surged and I tried to vomit, but nothing came up. It felt like everything inside me was trying to claw its way out through my stomach.

  I fell asleep, but it wasn’t a restful sleep full of nice dreams. My mind took me through a nonsensical maze of doors and hallways. Some rooms were filled with sand or cobwebs in the corners, while others had a foreboding, ominous presence I couldn’t explain. Lights flickered and doors opened on their own, beckoning me to go through them. There was a room made of candy and another where I had to wade through water up to my knees. I was fully aware that I was dreaming and kept trying to wake myself up, but I couldn’t force myself into consciousness, no matter how much I screamed in the dream.

  When I wasn’t dreaming, I hovered at the edge of waking, aware of pressure on my arms and legs and something on my face. There were voices that belonged to people I’d never met, talking about schedules and dosages. The smell of antiseptic scorched the inside of my nose. More than anything, my stomach and throat burned like I’d swallowed hot coals.

  My eyes snapped open suddenly, and I found myself staring at a paneled ceiling bathed in dim blue light. For a minute, I couldn’t move. I lay there, awake, staring at the ceiling in a silent panic because my limbs wouldn’t respond. Whatever sedative they’d given me must’ve still been wearing off. A few moments later, I was back in control of my own body. I let out a deep breath and blinked away tears from the pain of air passing over my raw throat.

  Jax, I thought. Jensen, Gormand. The names of my former squadmates passed through my mind like water through a filter. I couldn’t grab them; couldn’t work out why I was thinking of them. Then it came back to me—the memory of the attack in Iraq. My head throbbed.

  I reached up to touch my forehead with shaky hands, expecting to find it bandaged, but there was nothing but my own skin. That can’t be right. That thing attacked me and slammed my head into a rock. I remembered the crunch of my helmet against stone, the sound of it cracking under the force. That shouldn’t have been possible either.

  I turned my head, looking around the room. It didn’t look like a VA hospital room. The little chair off to my right was upholstered and looked new. A plastic fold-out sofa was tucked against large windows, where the drapes had been pulled closed. From my bed, I could see the door to my room, shadows waiting on the other side. There was only one bed in the room. A private room? Definitely not the VA hospital, then.

  I sat up, and the IV line in my arm tugged tight. I loo
ked down and noted yellow bruising around where it went into my arm. How long had I been in the hospital?

  The door slid open and Ronan backed into the room, holding a coffee cup. He stopped when he turned around and found me staring at him. “Callie! You’re awake!” He immediately set the coffee cup aside and went to hug me, which felt more than a little awkward. I was still trying to remember how I’d gotten there, and I’d never been hugged by my boss before.

  “I don’t understand,” I said as he stepped back. “What happened? Where am I?”

  “Private hospital in Beverly Hills. The best in the area. I had the ambulance bring you here rather than one of the public hospitals. The care is better.” He retrieved his coffee from where he’d left it near the door. “I’ll get one of the nurses and let them know you’re up.”

  “No, wait.”

  He hesitated by the door.

  “Just give me a second to get my bearings. Why am I here? The last thing I remember is…” Images flashed through my memory, out of order. We were in Los Angeles for a photoshoot. After the photoshoot, Ronan had insisted we go to dinner, but there was something I needed to tell him. Something important. It was on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t remember what it was.

  Ronan sighed and abandoned his position near the door to sit next to me. “That health smoothie of mine you drank on the plane was laced with iron. Not enough to kill a human, but it would’ve been fatal to me. Callie, you saved my life. Again. If you keep this up, I’m going to have to pay you more.”

  I put my hands to my swimming head, trying to calm the spinning images so I could process what he’d just told me. “Iron? But…”

  My mother had died of iron poisoning. The magic, the strange portals, surviving the attack in Iraq—everything came back to me. All the pieces I’d put together before flooded my brain, making me glad I was sitting down instead of standing up.

  My mouth was suddenly dry. I leaned over, took Ronan’s coffee from him, and gulped a mouthful of the hot liquid.

  He frowned. “Are you sure that’s wise? The last time you took a drink from me—”

  “Ronan, I think I might be fae.” I watched his face, trying to gauge his reaction, but he remained unmoved. “You’re not surprised. You already knew. That was what your mother meant when she said to win me for her.”

  “I’m pretty sure you’re only half-fae, or we would’ve found you a long time ago,” he clarified, taking his coffee back. “Still, for a half-fae to be able to match a fae queen’s magic is very rare. In fact, it’s unheard of. Whoever your parents were, they must’ve been particularly powerful, but for the life of me, I can’t think of any fae who are unaccounted for whose magic is so strong. You say your mother passed away. Someone should’ve noticed if such a powerful fae died.”

  “I think I need something stronger than coffee.”

  “I don’t think the nurses will let you have that, not even in a private hospital.”

  I rolled my head to the side to frown at Ronan. “Get me out of here.”

  “Have to wait for you to be medically cleared. You’ve just been through quite an ordeal. I was worried for a while you wouldn’t pull through.”

  I wanted to say it would take more than a little iron in a kale smoothie to kill me, but that wasn’t true if I were half-fae. My fingers curled around the hem of the thermal blanket covering me. “How long have you known?”

  “That you were half-fae?” Ronan shrugged. “Since that night at the factory. You have… It’s difficult to explain, but when you’re in your element, you have a glow that gives you away.”

  “In my element?” I wrinkled my nose. “What’s that mean?”

  “You know, when you’re doing what you love. There’s a part of you that likes the danger and risking yourself for other people. I saw it at the factory that night, and I’ve seen it several times since. When you drop your guard and let yourself enjoy things, it’s obvious to anyone who looks at you that you’re more than human.”

  I grunted. “Great, now I can glow in the dark when I take a bullet for you.”

  Ronan laughed and patted my arm. “I’ll get the nurse to come in and look you over. Maybe we can get you discharged sometime tomorrow and finally go home.”

  “Tomorrow?” I groaned and leaned back against the pillow. “Fine, I guess. As long as I don’t have to eat any of that gross green Jell-O while I’m here.”

  Ronan fetched the nurse, who took all my vitals. She brought me water without any ice. I had to drink it and keep it down for two hours before they let me try semi-solid food, which of course meant I got to choose between sugar-free pudding and the dreaded Jell-O. Ronan was kind enough to smuggle in a Coke from one of the vending machines.

  He’d flown out Ben, the other part-time security guy, and stationed him outside my door. It felt weird to be guarded when I was supposed to be the one doing the guarding, but Ronan had a point. I was in no shape to look after him. He said Ben was there for him and not me, but whenever Ronan slipped out to the cafeteria, he left Ben behind. I saw right through his scam. However, it gave me a chance to apologize to Ben for shooting him at the factory.

  Rather than go back to the hotel, Ronan crashed on the uncomfortable sofa against the wall for the night. He said he felt safer there, and I wasn’t in the mood to argue. My insides were still sore enough that even the pudding was too difficult to eat. The carbonated Coke was much easier, surprisingly, even if I did wind up with indigestion from it.

  In the morning, they took blood to make sure my iron levels were back to normal and said if everything came back fine, I could go home.

  Ronan stirred, stretched, and sat up. He looked like a mess for once, clothes wrinkled and hair sticking up all over the place.

  I grabbed my phone from the bedside table and snapped a picture. “Now, there’s one worth sharing to your Instagram.”

  He stared at me, still bleary-eyed from sleep. “If I see that photo online, you’re fired.”

  “I’ve saved your life three times. You’re not going to fire me over a candid photo.”

  His answer was an irritated grunt as he rose for another stretch. “Do me a favor and don’t get hurt anymore. These hospital sofas make for rough sleeping.”

  I laughed, then winced because it hurt my stomach muscles. “You want to sleep rough, you should try a military cot. Hell, they made us sleep on the ground sometimes. There were days I would’ve killed to have that sofa.”

  “You’ve got more tolerance for the hard life than me, I think. I’ll be the first to admit my spine has been spoiled by expensive pillowtop mattresses, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.” He got up and went into the bathroom.

  While he was gone, the nurse brought me a carton of milk and told me I had to drink the whole thing. Apparently, the proteins in milk bind to iron and help remove it from the body. At least, that was the explanation she gave me. I would’ve preferred another Coke, but that would have to wait.

  “You still owe me a steak dinner,” I said to Ronan once he got out of the bathroom.

  “As long as it’s not pizza. I don’t think I can watch you eat that abomination you called a pizza ever again.”

  I was about to point out to him that after eating MREs, just about anything was palatable when I remembered what I needed to tell him. I pushed the milk carton away. “Ronan! I know who’s trying to kill you!”

  He frowned and gestured to the carton. “Was the answer at the bottom of your milk carton?”

  “What? No.” I shook my head. “I’d just figured it out before I got sick. I meant to tell you, but everything else happened so fast, and it must’ve slipped my mind with all the drugs in my system. It just came back to me. Remember where you got that shake mix?”

  He opened and closed his mouth, thinking about it for an extra minute. “But my personal trainer has nothing against me. He’s a good guy.”

  “He’s also a vampire.”

  Ronan stared at me. “No, impossible. I would’ve n
oticed.”

  “Not if he’s hiding it from you.” I pulled out my phone and opened the scheduling app. “His name is James Xavier, right?”

  Ronan nodded.

  “I know him as Jax, and he was the only other survivor in my unit after we were attacked by vampires.”

  “That’s impossible,” Ronan repeated, shaking his head. “What reason would he have to want to kill me?”

  “I don’t know yet, but it’s the only explanation that makes sense.” I counted the reasons on my fingers as I continued. “Jax has military training, which means he’d know how to shoot a long-range target. Not only that, but he’d be damn good at it. I also know he’s been in town recently. Well, in Columbus, at least. I met him at a bar the other night.”

  “Wait.” Ronan made a face and held up his hands. “My bodyguard and my personal trainer are hanging out in bars together?”

  “It’s not like that. Jax was in my unit, Ronan. I knew him from before. We were attacked by vampires in Iraq. You saw it in the report. I was not bitten, but Jax… That thing tore into him. No one thought he would survive, but what if he not only survived but became one of them?”

  He crossed his arms and leaned back against the sofa, considering. “It is possible, I suppose, but I should’ve known.”

  “Can you identify a vampire on sight if he doesn’t tell you he’s a vampire?”

  “Well, no, but—”

  “You can’t just look at people and know what they’re capable of,” I snapped. It came out a little harsher than I meant it to, but it was a lesson he needed to learn. Ronan saw the good in people and only the good. He was too trusting and carefree, and that was the reason he’d gotten into so much trouble.

  Ronan lowered his head.

  I sighed and rubbed the bridge of my nose, trying to ward off the oncoming headache. “I don’t think Jax is a bad person, even if he is a vampire, but he’s fallen on hard times. The world hasn’t been kind to him since he came home. If he is a vampire, maybe it’s the closest thing he’s had to family in a long time. He wouldn’t be after you for no reason, Ronan.”