Alert bars popped up at the top of the screen. Facebook messages from someone named Reece wanting to know whether Joel was on his way back to Atlanta. I winced.
I didn't like thinking of the sanguimancers as having names, or a past, or anyone waiting for them to go home. It dredged up the salt in my eyes and made the conspicuous stickiness of my fingers feel like an accusation.
Facebook, though. That was an idea. Jaesung had the app on his phone. I didn't have an account. Before coming to Minnesota, I hadn't had friends to share it with.
I made it to the back side of the grain elevator and tucked myself into the shadows. Pulling up the app, I ran a search on Jaesung's name.
There were a few in South Korea, more scattered out across the US. I scanned the pictures, the cities, the Universities, and found him about six people down. His profile picture was Poo-Stank in a snap back and sunglasses, tongue lolling out. I tapped it, finding nothing more than profile picture changes. Everything else was locked down.
A noise near the front of the farmhouse had me scrambling to turn off the phone.
"-don't know, hun. I don't see it," a man's voice said. "Want me to go look? Jeepers. What's going on at the Fergusson's?"
I could have cursed. Clumsy. I'd thought it too late, too dark to see me. But the light from the cell phone must have been visible around the edge of the silo.
"Think that's what the sirens were all about?"
Shoes crunched on gravel. I breathed out slowly, knowing I looked suspicious. I didn't want anyone to see or connect me with the destruction at the other farm house. I glanced at the ladder. It had been so hard to climb this far. Still. If I could get up on it, I could see anyone coming for miles. And this was a lot of metal to amplify spells.
I shoved the phone in my coat pocket, grasped the ladder, and climbed. Within a few rungs, I knew it would be hell. The movement pulled at all the painful places on my ribs, opened the scabbed fronts of my thighs. My hands stuck to the rungs.
Headlights of a truck started up below. I nearly slipped from the ladder. A truncated gasp, and I caught myself, hugging close to the metal, terror throbbing in my ears. The truck pulled around the grain elevator, onto the long driveway between fields, and trundled off down the road.
They were checking on the neighbors. They hadn't seen me.
I was dizzy, out of breath, and on the verge of vomiting again. I clung to the ladder for several long moments, catching my breath and letting the dizziness ebb. I reached for the next rung, and the next, until I hauled myself onto the cross-hatched metal catwalk and curled, shivering, into a ball.
It took a few minutes to pull the phone back out. It was still on Jaesung's profile. I tapped on the message option.
It's Hel. Grabbed a phone.
I stopped typing, unsure of what to say next. I wasn't okay and I wasn't safe. I was freezing and beaten up and I didn't think I'd be able to get off this grain elevator by myself. If I stayed out here much longer, I wouldn't have the option. My fingertips were clumsy.
A set of ellipses formed at the bottom. Then words.
WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU?
Before I could respond, three more messages appeared in quick succession.
Are you okay?
You disappeared and no one knew where you'd gone or what happened.
Jesus Christ, where are you?
My eyes burned, blurring the touchscreen keyboard as I typed out a shaky reply.
Temp safe.
I'm where we watched the Leonids.
I got away.
I wanted to add that I was cold and battered and tired and that all I wanted was to curl up under his electric blanket and forget anything else existed.
On my way.
My hands shook. Jaesung was coming. I was ashamed at how much I'd hoped to read those words. The relief washing through my chest sent the tears out in full-force, carving hot lines down my frigid skin. My nose ran, and as I sniffed, I tapped out another message.
Don't bring Kris.
She's with Anita.
Ellipses came up again. I watched them, desperate for the words, my lifeline to him.
What's the number on the phone?
Nvmd. Call me.
He typed out his number, which came up underscored in blue.
Can't. Ppl awake.
There's a fire down the road.
Stay there.
I imagined him throwing himself in his pickup, cussing and still in the vestiges of his suit. His hair a wreck, that familiar fusion of anger and worry plastered over his face. Jaesung is coming.
I'm not sure when I fell asleep, or even how I managed it. All I knew was the cold, finally seeping through my skin, reaching down to bone. Chill fingers curled into my brain, sinking into the grooves, and held me under.
Until a hand was on my face. Hot palm, pushing aside my hair, skating over the wounds.
“Hel,” he said. “Come on, baby, wake up. Come on. I can’t carry you down.”
It was like being drunk. I obeyed commands, opening my eyes and pushing myself upright. I swayed, and he was there, arms around me, cradling me to him.
Rough nylon harness scratched against my chest. I sank back into a half-sleep against his chest, ignoring the words in favor of the sound of his voice vibrating against my cheek.
Then he was working straps around my back, under my arms. Clipping me to him. He pulled me toward the edge of the catwalk. Every limb was weak and stupid, refusing to follow my commands. Somehow, I turned myself around, clung to the ladder as Jaesung held on behind me. He guided us down rung by rung.
I slipped four times, jerking Jaesung off the ladder twice. We swung, at the mercy of the safety line he repositioned every three rungs. When we made it to the bottom, I slumped into the wall of the grain elevator.
He gathered me in again. Words still made no sense. His hands closed around my face, cupped it so he could look into my eyes. I saw him take in the wreck, watched as he confirmed the worst. If my heart had not been as frozen as the rest of me, it might have broken.
“Let me take you to a hospital,” he said. His voice was unsteady, like there was something in his throat. Like he was about to cry.
The words took a while to process, and when they did, I shook my head. “They’ll find me,” I tried to say. It didn’t come out right. He didn’t understand the words, but the head-shake was enough.
His hands went gentle on my face again, tracing along the cuts beneath my eye and the sticky mess on my chin. I saw the single heave of his chest before he turned away, scooped me against his side, and half carried me to the truck.
We rolled in silence down the main road, headlights dark. The heat was on full blast. I slumped against Jaesung, shivering and grateful for the solid warmth of another person.
No. Not any other person. Him. I’d wanted him. I couldn’t keep lying to myself, thinking I could keep from loving him by refusing to acknowledge it.
He kept an arm tight around me and said nothing. Another firetruck and a police car passed us as we made our way back toward Henard. Finally, the town emerged from the darkness, street-lights filtering through evergreen.
“Not home,” I said. He must have understood me this time.
“I’m not taking you home. They know where it is, I’m guessing, if they knew where the wedding was.”
I nodded, fresh misery rolling into my head. I reached under his wool coat, desperate to get at something that felt less like padding and more like him. My fingers curled in his shirt.
He tightened his arm, and I pressed my face into his neck, which was hot against my skin. That’s where I stayed, ignoring the stripes of streetlight and stoplight that flicked across my face.
We pulled into a parking lot behind a long two-story building. At Jaesung’s urging, I slid from the car and into the frigid air. The heat had made me feel more human, but my extremities were still numb. There might have been frostbite on one of my feet, but I didn’t have the strength to look just now.
>
I limped around to the back of the building, to a gray steel door, which he unlocked. Why did he have a key to a place like this?
“Where are we?” I asked.
He pulled open the door and helped me in. “Dance studio.”
The place was dark, and smelled like old, dusty fabric. When Jaesung flicked on a light, I saw why: racks of costumes hung all around. Several lightbulb-surrounded mirrors set against the far wall, counters and chairs separated by flimsy dividers. Some of them had mannequin heads with wigs atop them. Others held boxes of makeup and taped pictures or handwritten notes.
I saw myself in one of those mirrors. Blood streaked my face. My hair was dark with all the blood and dirt and grease in it. The brown coat hung open, revealing the wrecked dress.
Jaesung seemed to notice only now it was covered in blood.
“Oh my god,” he whispered. I sank into a chair, and he pushed the coat from my shoulders—a gentler echo of the way I’d undressed him earlier.
The suspenders were still on under his coat. I’d felt them.
“It’s mostly not mine,” I managed, but he seemed not to care. The scents of iron and gasoline and fire clogged my nose.
He kissed me. It was soft, lips barely brushing, but I felt his ragged breath. Long fingers brushed back into my hair, stroked my ears, my jaw, touching me with a restrained desperation he couldn’t unleash.
“Jae,” I whispered, almost afraid to startle him.
He caught my lips more securely. He had to be tasting blood. I had a missing molar.
“Jae,” I said, firmer this time. I leaned back in the chair and he released me. A small streak of red had caught on his lip. He stared at me, brows knitted, face drawn and worried.
“Helena," he whispered. "I don’t—what am I supposed to do?”
I shook my head. He slid his hands down my arms, catching my fingers in his. They were as stained as my face, maybe worse. A fingernail had split. Red seeped from the cracks.
I tried memorizing his face. Maybe Deepti was wrong and the image would stay with me, non-eroding like those memories from my childhood. I wanted this—something good to hang onto if the realization working its way to the surface destroyed us.
I had to tell Jaesung the truth. All of it. Which meant changing everything he knew about the world.
“I still have stuff to tell you,” I said. My teeth were chattering.
“You don’t need to tell me right this second. Let me…. Shit.” He’d just put a hand on my scraped up thigh, eliciting a hiss of air through my teeth. Jerking it back, he grimaced, brushing his fingers over my shoulder instead. “Let me get you cleaned up first.”
He trailed off, staring at my shoulder. For just a moment, I couldn't understand why. Then I saw the Hellhound bite. Horror kicked me in the chest. It was healed. Like I’d gotten it months ago.
Jaesung’s face went gray. He looked from my shoulder to my face, dark eyes transitioning from confused to disturbed. He pulled his hand away.
“Jae,” I tried to catch his hand and missed.
He shook his head, stood up, and stepped back. The room’s air thickened. It was hard to breathe. He stared at me, expression closed, every muscle tensed.
“Jae, don’t—just—I can-”
“What the hell is going on?” The question came out on a ragged rush of breath. His hand shook as he pointed to my scarred-up shoulder. “That was a wreck. Just a few hours ago. How the hell?”
“Sit down.”
“I don’t think…. But I touched it. It wasn’t faked.”
“Jae!” He snapped his eyes up, startled from the panic spiral. “Sit down,” I repeated.
He was sucking in shallow breaths, shaking like I was back on that grain elevator. He reached for one of the vanity stools and sank into it, not taking his wide, frightened eyes off me. My chest ached, seeing him look at me that way. Then again, I’d killed five people tonight, one of them with a boxcutter to the trachea. Four with magic. He should be afraid. This was so far beyond his world.
“I was healed by magic.”
No need to sugar coat it. It was better to get the truth out as quickly as possible, before he ran.
He didn’t. Elbows to knees, he leaned his mouth against clasped hands and watched me over his fingers. There was no change to the expression in his eyes. Possibly, he was waiting for me to make sense. I took a breath, knowing it would only get weirder.
I told him. Clumsily, with several forays backward to add details I’d forgotten. He didn’t move, didn’t talk, and I could feel his opinions of me changing. He had to think I was crazy. Maybe it would be better to let him think it—a cleaner break. I’d be a dodged bullet. No one worth missing.
But I couldn’t stand the idea of him thinking me crazy. Dangerous? Fine. I was dangerous. But I wasn’t crazy. It was important he understood that.
“I can prove it,” I whispered, when the silence became too much.
He leaned his face into his hands and rubbed it. Voice muffled, he spoke.
“Let’s get you cleaned up. I don’t know what all we have besides lambs wool and tape, but….” He stood, heading for a closet with yet more racks of costumes and supplies.
He didn’t believe me. Of course he didn’t.
“I know this sounds insane, and it’s easier to write it off than change what you know of-"
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. He sounded exhausted.
“It does!” I insisted, forcing myself to stand, despite the pain in my body. “I’ve got to leave. The Guild wants to lock me up and the Lochlys want me dead or enslaved. I’ll be out of your life—don’t worry. But I can’t stand you remembering me as a crazy person. I want you to know the truth, so you know I’m not leaving because I want to.”
He paused, and I watched the tension in his back. He took a deep breath, shook his head, and went back to the boxes of markers and makeup and canvas shoes.
Something in my core cracked, fissuring out like the floor of the auto garage under enemy spells.
Jaesung had wanted the truth for months. I’d known it would be too much, but I couldn’t let him go on without knowing the danger forcing me away.
I let him dig for his lambs wool and tape. There was no graceful way to prove this, so I would have to do it ungracefully. I reached behind me, unzipped the dress to my waist. Had things gone differently tonight, it might have been him doing that instead of me. We might be back at Ruff Patch, under his electric blanket, or warm enough not to need it. Not in the costume room of a dance studio.
I still had power left. I’d used the bounty hunters’ blood, not my store. Not all of it, anyway. I clenched my teeth, and the ruined dress slipped to the floor.
I sent power into the tattoo on my good shoulder and braced for the discomfort of transforming injured. The scabs on my legs cracked, and the ripples of fur shooting from my skin stung like a bitch. I fell forward onto fingers that shrank back and thickened into paws.
When it was over, I shook out of underwear and boots. I could taste Jaesung’s anxiety, and I knew I was only about to make it worse.
When he turned around, he jumped, dropping the box in his hands, and backed up into a shelf.
“What the f-” he looked around, as if I might step out from behind one of the costume racks.
I barked, nudged the dress, and picked it up in my teeth. With a soft whine of pain, I transformed back, clutching the ruined dress to me the second I had hands. That bit was more for Jaesung’s comfort than mine. Considering the transformation itself, I wasn’t sure throwing naked girl into the mix wouldn’t send him over the edge.
I’d been ready for him either to pass out or throw up. Instead, he sat down, right there in the supply closet next to a rack of costumes labeled “Midsummer Night’s Dream”. He covered his face with his hands, breath unsteady.
I took a step forward, but his hand shot out, palm toward me to keep me back.
It hurt, but I understood. Gang member was one thing. Shapesh
ifter, stuck in the middle of a magical game of Cops and Murderers, was different.
I couldn’t make myself put on the dress. Luckily, there were more than just costumes on these racks. I found a pair of leggings and tugged them on, pulling an enormous renaissance-looking shirt overtop and belting it with shaky fingers. No socks, but I found leg warmers and shoved them into the boots with my feet, then pulled the brown wool coat back on.
Jaesung shifted to his knees, then climbed shakily to his feet. I froze, unsure of whether to say anything, or even what to say if I tried. After all that explanation, it seemed I’d lost my command of words.
He still trembled, probably in shock, but when he finally met my eyes, the fear was gone. We looked at each other, for the first time completely aware of who we were looking at. I felt more naked than I had before pulling the clothes on, but I refused to let myself regret telling him.
If he accepted me, it would be with all the facts. If he didn’t, at least I knew why.
Finally, his arm moved. In a halting gesture, he lifted the backs of his fingers to my jaw, brushing over my bruises. I saw him swallow.
“I know where you can go.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The streets were too empty. I settled low in the passenger’s seat of Jaesung’s truck, wincing with every bump and turn. Outside, sallow streetlights bled onto sand and slush, and black pines striped the sides of dark-windowed buildings. Snow still lay thick on the borders of the road, eerie and unblemished.
I didn’t like the quiet. Something about it felt volatile, like there was danger in the shadows, holding its breath. The first familiar landmarks only set me more on edge.
Unleash (Spellhounds Book 1) Page 26