by Layla Nash
“Hush,” she said. She didn’t even bother to open her fucking eyes.
And she hushed him. Hushed him. Like he was a fucking toddler and wouldn’t go down for a nap.
He tried to sit up, ready to chew her ass out with his last few seconds on earth, but her hands pressed down just slightly in the air and he was pinned to the mattress as completely as if a boulder sat on his chest. She hadn’t touched him, hadn’t even gotten close, but he couldn’t move. “Let me go, you’re fucking—”
“Hush,” she repeated, her eyebrows drawing together. “This is hard enough to do without you distracting me.”
He fumed but shut up, mostly because whatever it was she did made it easier for him to breathe. He’d wait until he felt completely better to yell at her. Pain stabbed through his brain and he grunted; he almost missed her flinch, but the wolf noticed. The wolf side caught it. She must have felt it, too, the sharp pain. She just hid it better than he’d hidden how much her burns hurt him.
What the fuck had Smith done to them?
Chapter 18
Deirdre
I could hardly see for the pain and it didn’t help much that Evershaw wouldn’t shut up. There were more growls and snarls and cursing from outside the room, until I finally couldn’t take it anymore and stormed out to yell at the assembled pack to shut the hell up before I hexed them all into a permanent silence.
I couldn’t really do it, but it sure was gratifying to see their faces and the pin-drop stillness that followed. Henry smiled like he wanted to laugh, but Mercy watched me with big eyes, not whispering a peep until I told her she could talk if she had a question. I hadn’t been a big scary witch in a while, and it did my ego some good to see a whole room full of ridiculously intimidating men and women walking on tiptoes to avoid my ire.
But then I was left with trying to save Evershaw and myself from whoever managed to poison him a second time. I concentrated enough to get the healing spell working, the magic sliding into his blood and vital organs to clean out the poison before it affected his heart and lungs and brain, and kept half my attention on that as I glanced at the tall man who’d brought him in. “Did he ingest it or was it through contact?”
“I don’t know.” The big guy paced at the foot of the bed, clearly unused to being helpless in the face of danger, and ran his hands through his hair until it stood out in great spikes. It made him look more like a wild man than any sasquatch reenactments I’d seen on television. “We ate lunch here; Mercy cooked everything, and all three of us ate the same food, and since we’re both fine, it had to come later. We worked in the office and then drove to the Council building to meet with the coyotes.”
Coyotes. Council building. All things he mentioned as if I would already understand them. I didn’t want to disabuse him of that notion, in case those were things a witch wasn’t supposed to know. “Are you thinking the coyotes are responsible?”
“They might have been,” Evershaw gurgled. He scowled at me but could hardly form words. “Stop running your mouth and heal me.”
I rolled my eyes and patted his head. “Be quiet. Think about breathing or you’ll forget to do it.”
Henry’s smile spread out like molasses in the sun.
Todd kept up his pacing, though, and almost ran Mercy down as she hot-footed into the room with the boiling water and herbs. I gestured for her to put two of the herb bundles into the boiling water but kept most of my mind on running the magic through Evershaw’s irritated, irritating body.
I wondered if there were a spell to make him more cooperative. That came dangerously close to affecting free will, which was a line I wasn’t about to cross, but maybe there was a way to give him a little shock every time he said something mean.
Todd didn’t notice my musing or anything but the enemies slowly surrounding his alpha. “It could have been. But the coyote alpha didn’t touch any of our stuff and we didn’t even shake her hand. Edgar Chase would have told us if she’d messed around with the table or anything else.”
Interesting. A female alpha. I knew tangentially that there was a female alpha of the wolves who’d been at Smith’s house when I freed him from the Betwixt, but that was a brother and sister pair. I wondered how they went about deciding who wanted to do what. The poison slowly dissipated, since I knew what I was looking for, and Evershaw’s labored breathing eventually smoothed a touch.
I found Henry watching me a little too closely, though I couldn’t figure out what he was watching for—maybe that I’d hurt Evershaw, or because he wanted to see magic done as much as Mercy? I couldn’t figure it out, so I dismissed it and figured it would come out when it was meant to come out. “Okay, Mercy. Take that and put it back on the stove over high heat until it boils down to about a cup of liquid. Then bring it back.”
She took the steamy, herby water back to the kitchen at a run, shouting at people to get out of her way, and I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling. Bless her heart, as my granny used to say.
Todd gripped the heavy wood of the footboard on the bed. “What caused this? How could they have poisoned him? We didn’t go anywhere. He didn’t touch anything.”
“Sure he did,” I said under my breath. I shifted my feet, my legs aching, and moved my hands in a new pattern over Evershaw to try and draw out more of the poison. He was already difficult to be around when he was feeling completely fine, so there was no telling how insufferable he’d be if he had a stomachache and headache and a fever. They all looked at me, even Evershaw, and his whole face got red. “You want to share something, witch?”
“I told you to concentrate on breathing, you fool,” I said, and put my hand over his mouth so he wouldn’t interrupt me again as I turned my attention back to Todd and Henry, who’d started grinning like a complete idiot. “He touched any manner of things in this room and that room and the kitchen, and presumably he walked around barefoot. He sat in a vehicle, right? He got out of the vehicle to go into the Council building, then went back to the vehicle. Is it possible someone put something on the door handle or the seat or in the air vents?”
The color drained from Todd’s face, then he whipped out a cell phone. “They have video on the Council building and the parking lots. We can find out. We can find out if anyone put—“
“Have someone quarantine the car,” I said in my deliberately soft, singsongy voice. I patted Evershaw on the head once more, since he hadn’t tried to bite me or yell around where I’d covered his mouth, and nodded at Henry. “So we can look at it without anyone cleaning it. Put it somewhere out of the weather and don’t let anyone else get in it until someone can get swabs of all the surfaces he touched.”
Evershaw gripped the sheets and scowled at me so fiercely that my heart skipped a beat. “Do not. Do that. Again.”
I ignored him and spoke to Todd instead. “Have Smith and his colleagues investigate. There is likely a great deal to be learned from the vehicle, though it may not be immediately apparent.”
The wolf nodded and ducked out to the main living room, giving orders, and Evershaw managed to catch my wrist in his grip. He squeezed until I had to clench my jaw against a pained cry. “Witch.”
“Wolf,” I said. I set my nails against his skin and debated how much I could hex him without killing him. That would have defeated all the effort I’d put into saving his damn life. “Release me.”
His eyes narrowed and he started to speak, then his whole body went stiff and his face lost all its color.
Shit.
I called for help and managed to pry myself free from his hold, fighting to center myself and search for another issue. Maybe it wasn’t just the nightshade poisoning. If it hadn’t worked the first time, there was no reason for the guilty to think it would work the second time. Perhaps they’d added something.
When I swayed, the pain in my legs almost overwhelming, someone moved next to me and then something bumped into the backs of my knees. I glanced away from Evershaw for a second to find that Henry brou
ght a chair over for me. I tried to smile my thanks as I sank into it, sighing in relief, and redoubled my efforts to strip the toxins from Evershaw’s blood.
They’d definitely gone beyond nightshade. It felt like a natural toxin but not plant-based. It had memories of life, a connection to the earth. A soft sibilance that hissed in my ears and through my veins, and I sucked in a breath. A wholly different kind of poison—a venom.
“Some kind of rattlesnake,” I murmured. The toxin was much stronger than nightshade and attacked nerves throughout the body. How the hell had they gotten the toxin in him? I searched Evershaw’s still body for a hint of a bite, but there was nothing to indicate he’d recently had a run-in with a rattler.
Mercy reappeared with the bowl of herby sludge, and set it on the bedside table as she stared at the motionless alpha. “What happened?”
“There was more than just belladonna,” I said quietly. The effort of keeping him alive stole the feeling from my fingers and toes. Or maybe it was the venom itself. “They need to get Smith here immediately.”
She disappeared again and then it was only Evershaw and me in that big ugly room. I closed my eyes and exhaled, and for some reason, I hesitated before I rested my palm on his forehead and my other hand on his chest, sliding under his shirt to the hairy skin underneath.
Magic took a long time to speak, especially when I wanted to make it undo the work done by other natural things. The magic didn’t want to ferret out all the little specks of rattlesnake venom, nor to cleanse the molecules of belladonna that still sifted through his body. Someone really wanted him dead. And what an awful way to go.
As the fight continued and slowly drained every bit of energy I still possessed, I tried to find the bright spot in the whole miserable mess. At least my legs didn’t hurt anymore. I couldn’t even feel them.
Chapter 19
Evershaw
The last thing he remembered was the witch hushing him yet again, and the warm weight of her hand on his face, and then a whole lot of pain burning through him like white lightning. He groaned and tried to lift his head, opening his eyes as wide as possible even though everything stayed dark.
“Wait,” said a familiar voice, and Evershaw flinched as a dim light filled the gloom. Todd crouched next to the bed, his expression haggard and exhausted. “Thank God. You’re back.”
“What the fuck happened?” Nothing seemed to work right, and he had strange pins and needles tingling all through him. “Did that witch try to kill me? Did she do something?”
Todd shook his head, though he gestured for Evershaw to be quiet. “No, she saved your ass, probably three times over. She knew you were sick before we even got back here, and dealt with the nightshade or belladonna or whatever the poison was. She also told us to bring Smith as backup, and it’s a good thing she did—she almost killed herself keeping you alive when the toxins kicked in.”
“Toxins?” Evershaw held his head and squeezed his eyes shut. “You’re fucking kidding me.”
“Apparently you’ve really pissed someone off.” Todd shifted to sit in one of the kitchen chairs that had been dragged in next to the bed, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “They managed to get rattlesnake venom into you. Smith couldn’t account for it, but his people are still looking over the car. We think that must have been the way they got to you. When we parked outside the Council building, someone got into the SUV and managed to mess with the interior.”
Evershaw tested his hands and feet, moving his arms and legs, and attempted to sit up just to make sure he could. “And you didn’t get sick, you lucky bastard.”
Todd gave him a dark look. “We’re canceling everything until we can figure out who the fuck is behind this.”
“No, we’re not.” Evershaw shook his head and talked right over Todd’s objections. “The best way to draw these assholes out is to give them another target. Now we know what we’re looking for, right? If it’s the RedCloud sons of bitches, then we give them an easy kill. Just like we will if it was actually the coyotes, or someone else entirely. When will Smith be done with the SUV?”
Todd frowned, but at least he didn’t bother to argue. “He wanted the witch to look at it before he made any judgments on who was responsible.”
“What the fuck is the witch doing that she couldn’t look at the car?” Evershaw’s lip curled in irritation. Imagine. He was housing and feeding the witch and she couldn’t bother herself to even evaluate the place he’d been poisoned.
“She’s sleeping off saving your ass,” Todd said, and nodded at the far side of the room.
Evershaw had to push up on his elbows to squint at the dark corner of the room and the cushy armchair he’d bought because it was perfect for dozing in on a lazy afternoon. And curled up on the chair was the witch, the skin under her eyes bruised and dark. It took far too long to see her chest rise and fall in a breath, and something tightened in his chest. She looked closer to death than he felt, which was bad news for them both.
Evershaw cleared his throat and turned his attention back to Todd. “Why the fuck isn’t she in the guest quarters?”
Todd’s expression soured, and Evershaw knew he deserved to be called an asshole that time. Todd pushed to his feet, muttering, “Because she thought she should stay close in case you took a turn for the worse. Go back to sleep and we’ll deal with the rest of it in the morning,” and he walked out without another word.
Evershaw scowled and lay back against his pillow, irritated a bit with Todd but more with himself. There wasn’t any reason to be so pissed off at the witch, especially since she’d figured out what was trying to kill him, but something about the witch got under his skin. And she’d been in his room before he returned, and she’d spent enough time there that the whole place would carry her scent for a while. She’d be in the air, in the drapes, in his favorite chair. There’d be no getting rid of her.
Which was precisely why he didn’t let anyone else in his quarters.
He found himself watching her breathe in a sliver of moonlight. Someone had pulled back the drapes on the windows and let in the soft glow of streetlights across the way as well as the moon. She looked very small and young and afraid, sleeping there in a chair like a defenseless refugee, and he felt even more like a dick for asking why she hadn’t gone back to the guest quarters across the building.
His legs didn’t hurt, though, so maybe her burns weren’t bothering her anymore. He sat up again, clenching his jaw against a groan as his insides threatened to make an appearance. He didn’t know what the fuck rattlesnake venom did to a person, but it hurt worse than the nightshade. Evershaw staggered to his feet and over to the bathroom, and on his way back to bed, he hesitated as he caught sight of the witch. She’d curled into a smaller ball in the chair, her brow furrowed, and he held his breath. She looked cold. Cold and miserable. And it was his fault.
Evershaw sighed and retrieved a heavy blanket from the top shelf in the closet, and limped around the bed to pause next to the armchair. He didn’t want to be nice. He didn’t want to be the guy who was thoughtful and considerate. That just invited disaster.
But he didn’t want her to be cold.
Cursing himself as a fool the whole time, Evershaw carefully draped the blanket over her and made sure her feet and hands were covered before he made his way back to the other side of the bed. He sat on the edge of the mattress and stared down at the floor, scrubbing his hands over his face. What the fuck was he doing? Did it really matter if he stayed in the city? He could have just picked up the pack and moved somewhere else, somewhere they weren’t trying to kill him, and everyone would have been better off.
Instead he insisted on staying and challenging the guilty to kill him in worse and worse ways. He’d potentially exposed Todd to the toxins and poison, maybe others as well. For his pride. He got up to pace, desperate to move his muscles and expend some of the nervous energy that gripped him, and made a few circuits through the room before the witch stirred. He felt her eyes on him
before he turned to face her.
They looked at each other in silence for a long time before she maneuvered her arm free of the blanket to brush the hair out of her face. “You’re up and moving. That’s good.”
Her voice rasped with fatigue and something else, and guilt struck him. It was his fault she looked so exhausted. He folded his arms over his chest. “Yeah.”
“Thanks for the blanket,” she said, playing with the hem.
“Todd did it, not me.” He couldn’t have said why he didn’t want her to know he’d done something nice, and pushed away whatever the wolf thought they should have said. The witch would leave as soon as he was cured of the poison and they could figure out who wanted to kill him. There wasn’t any reason to care about whether she’d stay in touch.
Her expression shuttered against him. “Oh. Well, I’ll thank him when I see him. Are there any remaining symptoms from the poison or the venom?”
“Pins and needles,” he said. “Stiffness, a bit of clumsiness.”
“You should drink that,” and she pointed at the glass of sludge on the nightstand.
He picked it up and sniffed in, then made a face and looked at her. “You’ve got to be kidding me. What the fuck is it?”
“Some herbs, boiled down to their essence.”
She kept watching him, not blinking, so Evershaw sighed and steeled himself to drink the nasty mix. He pinched his nose and gulped it down as fast as he could. He shuddered and put the glass down, wanting to claw the surface of his tongue off, and got a drink from the bathroom before he eyed her and the very tiny hint of a smile on her face. “So what’s that supposed to do for me? It tasted like ass.”
“I thought it might adjust your attitude, but clearly not.”
Evershaw stared at her, his thoughts still a little too muddled to figure out what the fuck she meant, and it took way too long to put the pieces together. “What was the medicinal purpose of making me drink that?”