Lucas drew in a breath, quelling his embarrassment. He forced himself to speak about things that he never spoke aloud. He had called Asher here, he reminded himself. “Dad’s working...or he’s too sick to work. Darwin was here all night, but the nurse that came on this morning kicked him out because he’s not family. He said he was going to go to his office at the library, lock the door and sleep. I don’t have his office number. Mom, well, I don’t know if she would even understand the call from the hospital, if she took it. It would depend on...on...how many....” He couldn’t finish the rest and just looked at Asher, hating his uselessness.
Asher must have sensed some of what he felt, for his pulled his hands out of his pockets and came closer. “You did the right thing, calling me,” he said. “It might not look like it right now, but I can and will take care of this.”
Lucas believed him. The air of doubt had evaporated from around him. The vitality that he remembered from before could be glimpsed in his worn features. “Charlee might not want you to,” he told him.
Asher nodded, as if this wasn’t a surprise to him. “Do you?” he asked.
The fury swelled up again. “Yes,” Lucas muttered, his teeth clenched.
Asher gripped his arm reassuringly. “Sleep. You look like hell.”
“So do you.”
“I’ll look a lot better in a few hours.” He headed for the door.
“Asher!” Lucas called.
He looked back.
“I didn’t call you for Charlee’s sake.”
His fingers tapped along the steel strip protecting the corner of the doorway, as he considered his answer. “It’ll all work out the same way for Sergio,” he replied and left.
Lucas would never tell anyone how truly satisfying Asher’s reply was.
Chapter Thirteen
Whatever industrial strength painkiller they had given her last night was still in her system. She had fallen asleep barely ten minutes after the shot last night, crashing like she hadn’t slept for a week, and she had barely been able to keep her eyes open since, but it had stopped the pain like a dam wall.
Now she sat in the big chair, waiting for someone to come pick her up, while the duty nurse kept a careful eye on her. Maybe she’s afraid I’ll fall right out of this chair.
In truth, she did feel like a boneless pile of goo. The temptation to slide into sleep (and slide off the chair) was strong. But she knew she had to think. Lucas was stuck in a bed. She had been allowed to speak to him for a few minutes before they had wheeled her out to the waiting room and put her in this chair, right in front of the nurses’ desk. Darwin had gone to the library to hide out and sleep. Her parents were not involved in this and she wouldn’t speak of it to them. Her mother thought it was simply a random act of violence, that the gang had picked on her because she was passing by and Lucas had tried to help (and he had!).
Charlee hadn’t seen any police officers guarding their doors when she had left with Dad around six this morning. Dad had to go to work. It was an unspoken understanding that he had to take as many shifts as he could physically withstand. The drugs he used now were more expensive than ever, and there was her mother’s drug of choice, too.
“Charlee.” Asher dropped down to a crouch in front of her chair and flipped her hair out of her eyes. “Oh, Charlee.”
She took in the lines around his eyes, his unshaved cheeks. He looked like he had been wearing himself out. And his clothes....
Bright, hot hardness gripped her throat and burned in her eyes. “You haven’t been careful,” she said, and burst into tears.
* * * * *
Asher held her against him, her unwounded cheek resting on his shoulder, as Charlee cried and hiccupped her way through her tears, wetting his neck and the band of his T-shirt. She hadn’t screamed at him to go away and obtusely, that made him feel worse. If she had turned away from him, or even yelled at him, it would have been right. It was what he deserved.
You haven’t been careful. Her first thought, her very first thought when she saw him was about him. Their stupid deal. Deals. She was holding to the deals. Jesus Christ and Odin himself...how relentless (loyal) could a person be?
He felt small. Tiny. Completely inadequate and unworthy of her friendship. He knew, just from her reaction, that she had spent the last few months checking in to see if he was there, every single day, just like she had promised. It would have troubled her, his non-appearance, but she wouldn’t have told anyone because that was the deal. He’d left her to carry her troubles all alone.
He was starting to understand how the rabid Christian extremists thought flaying themselves was such a good idea. Skewering himself right now, twisting the knife around in his gut...yeah, that would help wipe out his sins. Charlee wasn’t going to accuse him, or blame him, or say anything (we’re alike. We both have secrets we don’t tell each other), and that made it worse. He couldn’t skewer himself, but he would go a long, long way to make up for what he had put her through.
He picked her up, scooping her out of the chair and up into his arms. “I’m going to take you somewhere safe and warm. Then I’m going to take care of something else.”
Charlee’s arms tightened around his neck. “Thank you.” It was soft, and heart-felt.
And that burned in his conscience, too.
* * * * *
Charlee slept on the way to wherever Asher was taking her, her head against his shoulder in the back of the cab. Sleep had claimed her, a truly deep and restful sleep. She could let down her guard and sleep properly, now he was here. Later, there would be questions, but for now, everything was as it should be.
He shook her awake some time later, and she blinked, looking around. Why, that was Central Park, she thought, looking out the driver’s side. This had to be Fifth Avenue, or else they had turned around somewhere, or else the sun was all wrong, which was just stupid, so this was Fifth Avenue. Wow.
She looked around curiously as Asher paid the driver, then he slid out and turned around to reach for her.
“I think I can walk,” she told him.
“Let’s not risk it.” He picked her up like she weighed nothing at all and carried her up the steps of the house they had stopped in front of. Charlee had always considered herself a sophisticated New Yorker, just because she had grown up here, but she had never been on this side of the park before.
She had known such houses existed in Manhattan, but the idea of gaining access to one had never occurred to her. The type of people who could afford to live in that type of housing not only didn’t mix with Charlee, they weren’t even her customers. Their grooms and secretaries, bellboys and doormen brought their pets to the clinic, and their secretaries and assistants chose pets for their children, after consulting with Carole, while Charlee helped ordinary people off the street.
Even the front entrance of the house was grand, with sweeping stone steps and a thick stone balustrade that curved in on itself to hug the steps and the big double doors of lead-lined glass that made up the entrance. Potted miniature fir trees stood like sentries on either side of the doors.
The house, Charlee estimated, rose for at least three floors, but she couldn’t see any more of it without craning past Asher’s chin and she was suddenly shy.
Asher didn’t get a chance to press the doorbell. The door was suddenly flung open. “Oh my great heavens! Charlee! What happened?”
It was Ylva.
Charlee didn’t realize she was crying again until Ylva wiped first her own cheeks and then Charlee’s as she drew them inside and shut the door.
Ylva took them up a long flight of stone steps, then into a thickly carpeted corridor and a room that opened off that. Charlee was overwhelmed by the lush opulence. There were too many details to take in all at once and too many questions crowding in for her to concentrate on her surroundings.
“Put her down there,” Ylva said softly, but firmly.
Asher lowered her onto a bed that she sank in to. There was something incredib
ly soft under her back, and the pillow was even softer.
“I’m going to take the pillow away and then look at your wound,” Ylva said. “May I, Charlee?”
Charlee struggled to find a coherent answer among the many that occurred to her. If Ylva wanted to, of course she could look, although Charlee wasn’t sure why she wanted to. But she was also aware of Asher standing at the foot of the bed, watching her and shyness touched her again. It was a different shyness this time. She didn’t want Ylva to take the covering off her face. She didn’t want Asher to see the wound.
Her gaze flickered in his direction. Oh, he looked so tired!
Ylva stepped back. “Asher, would you leave us?” she asked, her voice the same gentle but firm tone.
Asher drew in a breath, making his shoulders lift. “I have something to do, anyway.” He glanced at Charlee.
Sergio. She licked her lips.
“I’ll be back around sunset,” he told Ylva. “I’ll have to take her home then.”
“Sunset?” Ylva seemed horrified. “That’s not nearly long enough.”
“That’s all the time I can give you,” Asher said. “I don’t want her parents to wonder or worry.”
“They don’t know where she is?”
Asher threw another glance in Charlee’s direction and this time she thought she saw an apology in it. “I don’t think they even know she has been discharged from the hospital.” He patted Ylva’s shoulder. “Do the best you can. I’ll be back, Charlee, I promise.”
“Be careful,” she told him.
He smiled the way he used to smile, before. “I will.”
The door shut softly behind him.
Ylva leaned over her again and touched her temple, above the tape that held the dressing against her face. “May I?”
Charlee nodded.
Ylva peeled away the dressing carefully. Her face was quite still while she looked at the wound. “Knife wound,” she said, as if she was cataloguing it. “But I’ve never run across one quite like this. What sort of knife was it, Charlee?”
“I think...butterfly.” She didn’t want to talk. Talking made the wound move, and made her conscious of it. And if it made her conscious of it, then talking would draw Ylva’s eyes toward it. Besides, Charlee really didn’t want it to start hurting again.
“Is there much pain?” Ylva asked, almost like she had read Charlee’s mind.
“A bit. More if I talk.”
Ylva made a silent “oooh,” sound with her mouth. “Then I’ll just have to read your mind, won’t I?” She smiled and straightened up. “I’m going to go and get some things. I’ll be right back. Are you comfortable enough?”
“Very,” Charlee confessed. She had never felt a bed that was so soft before. She was sinking into nothingness. “Are you a doctor, too?” she asked.
Ylva smiled at her. “My family taught me very old ways of healing and caring for wounds. That’s why I know it was a knife that did that. I’ve seen hundreds of them before. You’re quite safe. In fact, it’s possible I can do a better job than the doctors.” Her smile turned into a slow wink.
She walked toward the door. Charlee saw that she was wearing trousers in some soft material that seemed to float around her legs. She had never seen Ylva in pants before. Her hair was longer, too. And was it possible she looked younger? Her face looked the same as before, yet she seemed younger.
Ylva closed the door softly behind her, leaving Charlee alone.
For the first time since she had met her, Charlee wondered who Ylva really was.
* * * * *
Ylva came back about fifteen minutes later, carrying two heavy boxes that looked a lot like a handyman’s toolboxes. There was a young woman with her carrying a pile of white cloth. The cloth turned out to be squares of some soft material that Ylva used instead of the cotton wadding that the hospitals always used.
The boxes also turned out to be toolboxes. The girl, who didn’t look much older than Charlee, put the cloth on the bed by Charlee’s feet, and pulled a low, backless chair over to the side of the bed. Ylva put both toolboxes on the chair and opened them up. They each expanded into two stepped tiers of trays.
Bet there’s no wrenches in there, Charlee thought, almost giggling.
Ylva pulled a glass jar out of the bottom of one of the boxes. “I’m going to get you to breathe in the air over this pot, Charlee. It’s going to make you sleepy. You should sleep if you can. What I’m going to do might be a bit uncomfortable for you.”
Charlee nodded.
The girl climbed onto the bed and smiled at her. “Hi, there. My name’s Mary Sue.” Her accent was pure south. “I’m going to lift you up.”
“I can sit up,” Charlee protested, struggling to rise out of the depths of feathers and mattress.
“You just relax, honey. We’ve got this covered.” Mary Sue lifted her shoulders, propping her up in a sitting position with astonishing strength and dexterity.
Ylva took the lid off the pot, being careful hold it away from herself. “It’s very strong, but it’s a pretty scent,” she told Charlee, bringing the pot under her nose.
Charlee sniffed, then breathed in the aroma.
It is pretty....
* * * * *
Mary Sue handed tools to Ylva as her mentor murmured, asking for them. Ylva bent over the skinny girl on the bed, her brows pushed almost together as she worked on the wound. It was an ugly one. Mary Sue had seen more than a few wounds in the few short weeks she had been in the house, and this one was one of the worst. Not because it was a complicated or jagged wound. The blade had cut clean. But it had cut deep.
Once Ylva had loosened and removed the stitches and they could see better, she sighed. “Almost completely through the cheek,” she said softly. “Her cheekbone saved the eye. But there’s muscle damage...” She pulled at her fingers, cracking the knuckles, and glanced at the clock sitting under the dome on the mantel over the fireplace. “No time to dither,” she added and turned back to the box. “Thread, Mary Sue. We’ll need lots of it. The finest I have. I’ll reconstruct on the way out, and treat at the same time.” She blew out her breath and smiled at Mary Sue. “Layer by layer. Step by step.”
She bent back over Charlee once more.
Mary Sue passed the jar with the poppy smoke back and forth under Charlee’s nose, careful not to breathe it in herself. Then she prepped the thread and the herb mixes Ylva would need.
“If you don’t mind my asking...?” she ventured, handing over the curved needle and the thread. There was no need to wear gloves. Both of them had sterilized their hands and the toolboxes were kept in a sterile state at all times. Sterile by Ylva’s standards was something that doctors could only dream about, as Mary Sue had learned swiftly. Her first weeks in the house had been spent learning what sterile really meant.
“It’s your job to ask,” Ylva said absently.
“Is this girl...is she Amica?” Mary Sue had thought she knew all the Amica, even the newest ones. A new recruit was a rare event, and news about it spread swiftly through the ranks. She had never heard of one being recruited so young. The girl looked maybe fourteen years old, although she was tall.
“No, she’s not Amica.” Ylva reached back for more of the unguent that Mary Sue had learned fought off infection in all but the most dire of cases. One day, she would be trained in the art of preparing all the creams and gels that the toolboxes held. There were concoctions that restricted blood vessels, to stop bleeding. There were others, more than one, for infections. There were creams that increased healing. Then there was the vast pharmacological range of preparations that promoted general health, boosting the metabolism, healing the gut, and more.
There was a whole host of creams and preparations that were purely for vanity: skin care and enhancements that did more for a woman’s beauty that a whole boatload of French fancy stuff could have managed.
It had only taken Mary Sue a week to know she had made the right decision, accepting this apprenticeship.
She had learned more in the last couple of months than twelve years of schooling had ever imparted.
She glanced at the interior of the box, then at the fragile-looking pale skin of the human on the bed. “Do you think...I wonder...that skin-firming gel you made last week. Would it work on the muscles? Keep them tight and firm, so her face doesn’t sag on that side?”
Everything Ylva made was natural. It could be used inside the body and out, although the stink and taste of some of the preparations would ensure that no one ever voluntarily swallowed them.
Ylva considered. “Good idea,” she said softly and stretched sideways and backwards, flexing her spine. She kept her hands in the air, not touching anything. “Could you get the jar for me? Sterilize the outside of it and also your hands, again.”
Mary Sue hurried away to get the jar. So, if the girl was human, who was she? She would have to ask. It was her job to ask. But she would ask later. She already knew that the patient’s needs came first, above and beyond anything else.
* * * * *
Sergio roused from sleep, slowly. He smiled to himself, not sure why he was smiling, except that it was a beautiful night. It was damn near perfect.
He scratched his crotch and rolled over, reaching for the warmth of the girl. He couldn’t remember her name. But she had been small and smelled good, and her flesh had been hot against his.
The bed was empty.
That made him crack his eye open just a little bit. Where was the fucking bitch? Running off in the middle of the night wouldn’t make her any friends, if that was what the cunt had done.
The yellowed sheets, which had started out life a pale green, were rumpled and soiled, but Sergio barely noticed them. He was usually drunk, often stoned and sometimes both when he fell into bed. The state of the sheets was of barely passing interest.
Last night he had celebrated with the gang, once he had caught up with the fuckers. They had hovered a block away from the park, keeping an eye out for the cops and listening to the ambulance sirens. The sirens had sounded like a very personal and particularly poignant music to Sergio. He had laughed and laughed and my, it had felt good.
The Branded Rose Prophecy Page 21