by Chloe Neill
They exchanged greetings, and we rose so the Landreaus could move closer to the bed. Stella stood at the bedside, wept as she touched Gunnar’s arm. Cantrell moved beside her, taking her hand in his and putting his other one on the rail.
Tears threatened again, and I looked at the ceiling, blinking them back. No more tears today. We’d gotten Gunnar where he needed to go, and I had to trust him, trust Lizzie, to come out of it.
Liam moved in behind me, put a hand on my back, leaned his head against mine. I felt better just for the contact. For having him there.
Lizzie stepped into the doorway, and we shifted positions to let her through.
“You’re the parents?” she asked, and gave them a moment to look over the woman who was caring for their son, and the fire that moved beneath her skin.
“We are,” Cantrell said. “I’m a surgeon. Was a surgeon—I’m retired.”
She nodded briskly, glanced back at the rest of us. “Excellent. I’m Lizzie. I’ve been coordinating your son’s care. Let’s discuss his treatment.”
We left them to talk.
* * *
• • •
Lizzie came into the waiting room a few minutes later, chewing on the end of an energy bar.
“They’d like to talk to you,” she said, looking at me.
Shit, I thought, and knew they were going to relieve their stress and fear by dumping it on me. Blaming me and Paranormals everywhere for more harm befalling their family.
I’d have liked to send them directly to Camael to give that feedback.
“Okay,” I said, and rose.
“I can go with you.” Liam’s voice was firm and tinged with anger. He didn’t want them blaming me any more than I did. But I shook my head.
“He’s my friend. I have to handle it.”
He looked at me for a moment, then nodded. “Okay.”
“If you need some ass kicking,” Gavin said, not looking up from the ancient copy of Highlights he’d taken from the rack by the door, “I’m here for you. Soon as I finish this article.”
* * *
• • •
I found the Landreaus in chairs they’d pulled beside the bed. They stood up when I came in.
“Claire,” Cantrell said, “we wanted to talk with you. If we could have a moment?”
“Sure,” I said as the door closed behind me with a click that echoed off the walls.
“It’s been several months,” Stella said.
“Yes, it has. How is the family?”
“Good. Zach is in Atlanta, where we stayed for several months. Emme is in New York now. After the . . . incident, she needed a new start.”
The incident had been the wraith attack that had seemed to turn them against me in the first place.
“And that’s what we wanted to talk to you about,” Cantrell said. They looked at each other, clasped hands. “We wanted to apologize.”
I stared at them, and it took a good minute before I could process what they’d said. “Excuse me?”
“I’m sorry,” Cantrell said. “The last time we saw you and your friends, we were harsh. We spread around a lot of blame for Emme’s attack. That was before we understood you were a Sensitive, but even after we knew . . . even then, it took time for me to admit I’d been unfair. Longer than it should have,” he added. “So I’m sorry.”
“You’re forgiven,” I said, and he looked at me for a long moment.
“So easily.”
“The Zone is hard enough with the enemies we’ve got. We don’t need to make more.” I put a hand atop his, squeezed. “And Gunnar doesn’t need fighting right now.”
He put his other hand atop mine, squeezed again. “I think you’re right about that.”
* * *
• • •
The hours passed in a haze of nurses, beeps, friends coming and going, passing along their best wishes. And the rain growing steadier, the wind louder. We sent Tadji back to the store with Gavin so they could get some sleep.
The Containment chaplain, the only remaining priest in New Orleans as far as I was aware, prayed with the family, words aloud and whispered, requests to keep him safe, to heal him, to bring him back, to bring him peace.
Sobs nearly choked me at that, and I had to walk out of the room to keep from breaking down. I moved through the clinic, ignoring everyone I passed, until I reached the front door and the long porch that wrapped the front of the building.
There was a worn wooden swing, white paint peeling, chain rusting, just close enough to the wall to keep the rain from reaching it.
I sat down . . . and just breathed. Air in, air out, until the worry subsided, until my hands stopped shaking. Until I stopped imagining life without my best friend.
“He’ll be fine,” I murmured, as if the words alone were enough to push health back into him. “He’ll be fine.”
Because I couldn’t lose anything else.
The swing wobbled, and I opened my eyes, found Lizzie beside me. Her legs were stretched out, ankles crossed above those thick-soled shoes nurses seemed to prefer, arms folded over her chest. Her eyes were closed, giving me a moment to watch the flames that danced beneath her skin as if to music I couldn’t hear.
“It’s fine to look,” she said, and I nearly jumped from the sound. She opened one eye, looked at me. “Barely holding it together?”
“That’s pretty much it.”
She nodded. “Gets that way for everyone, whether you work here or not. Sometimes you have to take a minute.” She used the tips of her toes to push the swing back, then forth, then back again. “They painted.”
“What?”
She pointed at the porch, which was a shade of unnaturally bright green I hadn’t even noticed when we’d come in, or when I’d sat down.
“Oh. Yeah.”
“Green is supposed to be calming.” She pushed the swing again, the chains creaking. “Although I’m not sure that applies to this particular shade. Anyway, they painted it because they wanted the clinic to feel cheerier after it was consolidated with Memorial.” She glanced at me. “Do you feel cheerier?”
“Not even a little bit. My whole mood about New Orleans right now is—” I held out my hand, thumb down, in the international symbol for dislike.
I didn’t want to live in Elysium. The visit had made that clear. But in the twenty-four hours I’d spent there, I’d been ruined for power outages, stale food, heat, dirt. We lived in a place where everything was hard. Aeryth had made it her mission to make things harder.
Lizzie nodded. “Sometimes I wonder why I stayed here. In Devil’s Isle, I mean.”
I looked at her. “Why did you?”
She was quiet for a moment, and she scratched a particularly bright flicker of flame on her forearm. “Because I’m already here. Because there’s work to be done. Because I’m not sure where else I’d belong after all this time.”
“The Devil’s Isle you know versus the devil you don’t?”
She frowned. “Your language is very strange. But I suppose, yes, that’s part of it. There was war in the Beyond, too. But I understand it’s over now?”
She wanted confirmation, although I wasn’t sure of what.
“We didn’t see any fighting. Everything we saw was—well, beautiful. It was, I guess, manicured. To the nth degree. Uniform. Similar. And kind of plastic. We didn’t like it.”
“We?”
“Everyone who went. Malachi included.”
She nodded, sighed deeply, as if letting go of something she’d been holding in for a long time. “I think that’s part of what happens after fighting, after chaos. When the Consularis initially worked to unify us, I mean. But they went too far. And apparently they didn’t learn a thing from the Court’s rebellion.”
I tried to nod, but instead yawned hugely.
“
You should get some sleep.”
“The chairs in the waiting room aren’t exactly comfortable.”
“No, they aren’t. Keeps people from staying too long.” She smiled. “We’ve got a sleeping room for visitors. We’ve had more humans in since the fighting started, and their loved ones—who don’t live here—want to stay close. Couple of old patient beds in there. I’m not saying it will be comfortable, but it will be dark and quiet.”
That sounded like absolute heaven.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Dawn broke to a slate gray sky and hard rain. I left Liam sleeping and walked to the porch to get some air.
It wasn’t entirely fresh; the city smelled wet in the way New Orleans always did during rainstorms. And the water had already started to puddle, collecting in the street and outside the sandbags that ringed the building.
“Attention,” called a voice on a loudspeaker that echoed across the neighborhood. “The final caravan will leave New Orleans in two hours. If you intend to remain, please make your way to your designated shelter. Attention . . .” The message began again, and repeated three times before the world went silent again.
I went back in, washed my face in the small guest bathroom, then finger-combed and braided my hair to hide the fact it had been through a battle and a rainstorm since I’d washed it last. There were dark circles under my eyes, which made me look even paler than usual. But I couldn’t do anything about that. And I was procrastinating by thinking about it. Trying not to think about Gunnar.
I gave myself one last deep breath, made myself step into the corridor and walk down the hall again. And found it eerily quiet. The same nurse who’d been here last night, this time with bags beneath her eyes, tabbed through color-coded files on a tall shelf behind the counter. She glanced up at the sound of my footsteps, nodded with recognition.
The rest of the rooms were empty; either everyone had been healed or they’d sought shelter elsewhere.
I opened the door, and found Cameron and Cantrell in chairs on either side of the bed, legs stretched and arms folded over their chests as they slept.
The door squeaked as it closed, and Gunnar’s father batted his eyes open, squinted to focus on me. Then slipped his gaze to Gunnar, whose chest rose and fell as he slept.
“Nothing yet,” Cantrell whispered, and sat up, scrubbed his hands over his face. Then he yawned, shifted his gaze to Cameron, to the window.
“What time is it?”
“About five thirty. I’m sorry I woke you.”
“It’s fine. I just dropped off. Felt like I needed to be here.”
“Did Stella go home?”
“I sent her home yesterday. Back to Atlanta.”
Out of the Zone, he meant. Away from New Orleans and Seelies and the storm.
I didn’t know how I felt about that. Was I angry that he’d given up? That someone else was running away? Or jealous that they’d finally managed to break the bonds that kept us here? The memories that tied us to this dying place.
Maybe a bit of both.
The misery in his eyes said enough. “She didn’t want to go. She didn’t want to leave Gunnar or me or the house. The city. But I had to keep her safe. We shouldn’t have come back.”
I nodded, reached out, and squeezed his hand. “Life here gets harder every day. Some of us can stay. Some of us can’t. And that’s okay. That’s why the rest of us are here. Because we know that not everyone can stay.”
His eyes filled, and my heart broke a little. “Thank you for that.” His voice was rough as he worked to hold back the emotion.
“You’re welcome.”
Cameron stirred, blinked, pushed himself upright. “I didn’t know I was out,” he said, looking from me to Cantrell to Gunnar.
“Nothing?” he quietly asked.
“Not yet,” Cantrell said. He stood up, stretched side to side from the waist.
“Why don’t you guys go grab some coffee?” I offered. “I’ll stay here with him.”
“I could use a stretch,” Cantrell said. “Maybe a walk around the block.” He glanced out the window. “Or I could have, if it wasn’t pouring.” He looked back at me. “Frieda?”
I nodded. “Landfall tonight. Here.”
“Oh, good,” he said dryly. “Another gift from the heavens.”
* * *
• • •
I curled up in the chair still warm from the vigil. Rain beat hard against the window, like every drop was trying to find its way in.
“You look like crap.”
I froze at the hoarse voice, thought for a moment a Peskie had come through the door to insult me. Because that seemed like the kind of thing a Peskie would do.
And then I looked at Gunnar, and saw the smile lifting the corner of his mouth.
Tears began to fall. “You look like crap.” I leaned over, pressed a kiss to his forehead. “About time you woke up. It’s not like a hurricane isn’t bearing down on us.”
“That hurricane is presently in my head.” He looked around the room. “No flowers? No balloons?”
“No florists,” I said dryly. “But there is a gorgeous redhead—other than me—who sat by your bed all night.”
Both eyes popped wide, just like his smile. “Cameron was here?”
“Is here. He’s with your dad. Getting coffee.” I leaned forward. “And Cantrell apologized to me for being a jerk after Emme was hurt.”
Gunnar opened his mouth, closed it again. “Did hell actually freeze over? Because that’s the typical threshold for Cantrell to apologize for anything.”
“You’re in a very wet New Orleans.” I took his hand, squeezed gently. “And I’m really, really, really glad to see you awake.”
“I’m glad to be awake.” He tried to sit up, to look down, and winced. “Everybody else okay?”
“Everybody else is fine. Except possibly Scarlet. Liam drove like a bat out of hell, and she will never be the same.”
“Add it to my tab,” he said, and lay back again.
“Bet your ass.”
“Well, it’s not good coffee,” Cantrell said, stepping into the doorway, “but it is—” He stopped short when he saw Gunnar, realized his son was awake, then swallowed hard.
“Gun,” he said, then moved to the bed, set the coffee on the side table. “You’re awake.”
“I am, Pop. Sorry for scaring you.”
“Probably just hanging out in bed for the fun of it. Lazy,” Cantrell said, wiping with the back of his hand at the tear he hadn’t managed to control. “Always said that about you.”
He curled around his son, kissed his forehead.
Gunnar smiled weakly. “Yeah, you did. But you didn’t see my heroic acts.” He glanced at me. “They were heroic, right?”
“Oh, utterly. Incredibly. Stories will be written. Odes and poems and ballads, even. You were always too brave for your own good.”
Gunnar gestured to his body with his unbandaged arm. “Case in point.”
“I’m going to go get Lizzie,” Cantrell said, and passed Cameron on the way out.
He stepped into the doorway, was obviously working to keep the smile off his face. Working to stay calm. I knew that face, because I’d made the same one when I’d realized Liam was back.
“I’ll help your father get Lizzie,” I said, and stood up. “Because that’s totally a thing that’s not made-up.” I kissed his cheek, then went for the door, gave Cameron a thumbs-up Gunnar couldn’t see.
“Hey,” I heard Cameron say.
“Hey,” Gunnar said back, and I closed the door.
Even though I really didn’t want to.
* * *
• • •
There was a literal hurricane outside, but our spirits were up. Rachel had gone back to the Cabildo, and we still hadn’t seen Malachi.
“I hope
he’s okay,” I said, and pushed back the ancient blinds to look outside. Not that there was anything to see. Gray sky and water.
“He may have stayed with Darby,” Liam said. “He knows Gunnar is in good hands with Lizzie—and you—and he’s got the Devil’s Snare to think about.”
“There’s a lot to do,” I said. “I need to update Tadji, check on the store, find out where Darby is with the weapon. And I guess we should talk about the last caravan. Whether we’re going to try to get a spot.”
Liam’s brow arched, his jaw twitched, and I could all but see him itching for a fight. “We’ve already decided whether to stay or go: We’re still here.”
I looked up at him.
“You aren’t leaving,” he said. “Even if you wanted to leave New Orleans, you couldn’t leave him, because that’s not the kind of person you are. And I’m not leaving without you.”
I just stared at him, trying to process what he’d said. To understand it. And realized that on some level I’d been expecting him to leave again. Waiting for him to say good-bye and join Eleanor outside the Zone, to send a note back explaining how happy he was outside the Zone.
I couldn’t imagine myself with anyone else. But I hadn’t believed he felt the same way about me.
I hadn’t believed in us.
Liam had, so much that he was willing to accept living here, with magic, in order to be with me. He loved me enough to sacrifice. And that was everything.
Since I didn’t have the words, I moved into his arms. It surprised him, enough that it took a moment for him to embrace me, to pull me closer. I gave myself that moment, the chance to be loved, to be wanted before the world interrupted us again.
“Thank you,” I said quietly. I wasn’t sure if I’d said it loudly enough for him to hear—or if I wanted him to hear—but he stroked my hair.
“You don’t have to thank me for love. It’s mine to give, Claire. Without strings or conditions.”
Now I leaned back, narrowed my eyes. “Are you trying to win a Boyfriend of the Year award?”