All my muscles tensed, like I might somehow teleport myself to her if I tried hard enough. Quinn was suddenly by my side. “Charlie, baby, what happened? Where’s your daddy?”
“He’s downstairs with—with—with—” I couldn’t see her face, but the tears were obvious in her voice.
“It’s okay, baby. Take a real deep breath for me and try again.”
She sucked in a breath, pushed it out hard. “With Clara,” she finished. “There was fighting.”
I struggled to keep my face calm. “Daddy and Clara were fighting?”
“No! Bad guys hurt Clara!” Her voice had risen to a wail.
“Hang on, baby.” I looked at Quinn, who nodded grimly, pointing toward the Jeep. I ran around to the passenger side and climbed in. Juggling the phone while I buckled my seat belt, I said very softly, “Charlie, Quinn and I are coming right now. Are you hiding?”
The outline of her head moved in a nod. “In the basket,” she whispered. “In my room.”
I knew exactly what she was talking about—the wicker hamper was a favorite choice during hide-and-seek. “Okay, baby, that’s a great spot. And you’re doing exactly the right thing. That’s just what your daddy would want you to be doing.”
“Will you be here soon?”
The pleading in her voice wrenched at my heart. “Of course I will. I’m going to be there in—” I looked stupidly at Quinn, as though I hadn’t made the drive between Magic Beans and John’s house a hundred times. He mouthed less than five. “Five minutes. Just five short minutes, okay? And I’m going to stay right here on your screen until I get there . . . but let’s be real quiet so nobody knows where you’re hiding.”
A sniffle. “’Kay.”
And so I sat there staring at the nearly dark screen, trying to look reassuring instead of terrified and guilt stricken. I had told John they would be safe until the morning. I’d known Morgan would move on to another plan, but since she couldn’t come into Colorado it hadn’t occurred to me that John and Charlie were at risk. Stupid—I’d been so stupid.
I braced my arm for when Quinn made wild, sharp turns with the Jeep, but I didn’t put the phone down or look away from the screen until the tires screeched and we lurched to a stop. “I’m coming, baby,” I promised.
Chapter 30
I bolted out of the car, but Quinn was already out and around the hood before I made it to the sidewalk. “Don’t wait for me,” I told him, and he blurred away without another word. I’d never seen him move that fast.
I ran up the sidewalk to the house, revolver in one hand. I had no idea what to expect, but even after all this time, the sidearm felt more comfortable to me than the shredder, so I went with it.
The foyer was dark, but before I could pick a direction, I heard Quinn’s voice calling urgently from the living room. “Lex, in here.”
I ran into the room—and into a horror movie. Huge splotches of bright red blood had been sprayed on every surface, and three dead bodies lay discarded on the carpet: two men and a woman, none of whom I recognized.
But I barely glanced at any of that. Clara and John were both lying spread-eagled on the floor, and John’s eyes were closed. They were covered in blood, and bloody footsteps led out of the room.
Ripping off my winter coat, I dropped to my knees beside John, half-afraid to touch him. “Is he—”
“He’s alive,” Quinn reported. “But his pulse is fading quickly.”
There was so much blood that I couldn’t find the wound. My fingers danced over his blood-soaked T-shirt, looking for a tear, until I found the gouge on his right forearm, a long, deep gash made by something sharp. It was still pumping blood. I hissed and clamped my hands on it, sealing the wound as best I could. “Clara?” I said to Quinn.
“She’s not decaying,” he pointed out, which I should have thought of. Her face was pale and waxy, and she wasn’t even blinking as far as I could tell, but if she were truly dead, her body would be reverting. There was a heavy iron poker on the floor next to her, blood spreading out on the carpet around it.
“Charlie!” I shouted toward the ceiling. “Are you okay?”
Her voice came back after a moment, but I had to strain to hear her. “I’m fine. Can I get out now?” She was still in the hamper.
There was no way I could let her see this carnage. I looked at Quinn. “Anyone else in the house?”
He shook his head. To Charlie, I called, “Yes, but stay in your room ’til I’m sure it’s safe!”
I turned my attention back to my brother-in-law, feeling his blood seeping out through my fingers. Quinn was bent over him too, and I could see his nostrils flaring, his jaw clamped shut. Shit. Being around this much blood would be hard for him, and I couldn’t deal with that right now. “Call an ambulance, then follow the blood trail,” I barked at him. “I’ll handle this.”
“Fine.” Quinn disappeared, and it felt like most of my calm went with him. This wasn’t enough; I wasn’t doing enough.
“Sam, I could really use an idea right now,” I muttered, looking at John’s terrifying pallor.
For once, her reply was immediate. I can’t help you with this. Her voice was anguished and worried, and it made me want to cry, because now there was nobody left to help and I still didn’t know what to do.
Then, without really thinking about it, I fell into my magic.
Like all humans’, John’s living essence usually looked to me like a warm blue glow in thermal-imaging goggles—but tonight was different. The blue was giving way to a dull yellow-gold that I recognized as death-essence. Soon it would start to seep out between my fingers, just like the blood; then John would die.
Panic clawed at me, but I fought to stay calm, to think. What did I have? What could I do? In that moment I would have given anything for thaumaturge magic, or even a trades witch spell that could close the wound or get help here faster. All I had was my stupid useless boundary magic, made for death. I was made for death.
“Think, you idiot,” I mumbled. Magic. I’d used boundary magic to save Simon . . . but it had worked only because I’d pushed another man’s life essence into him. This was a totally different situation.
Still in my mindset, I tried to focus on the part of his life essence that corresponded with the wound—which meant I was watching when it ruptured and began to leak yellow death-essence in earnest.
“No no no no . . .” I pressed down even harder with my hands, hoping to close the fissure, but magic didn’t work that way. I couldn’t use my real hands to interact with what I could see only in my boundary mindset.
Real hands. That gave me an idea, and I visualized ghostly blue hands coming from my griffin tattoos; the same way I usually performed boundary magic. I’d spent so many months using my magic only to lay ghosts that I felt rusty, but I had done this sort of thing before, hadn’t I?
Not for fine motor work, though. When I tried to pinch off the leak, my ghost-fingers were too big and thick for such a delicate maneuver. And John was losing blood quickly.
Blood.
My blood was filled with boundary magic; boundary magic wouldn’t allow death. Would that work? It was the only idea I had, so I released my mindset, my regular vision returning. I reached for the metal poker, but then I spotted the handle of a small penknife under John’s right arm and grabbed that instead. It was already covered in blood, and my fingers were slippery, but I managed to cut the base of my right hand, dragging the blade through the meat harder than I’d intended. Then I pressed it to John’s injury.
After a few seconds, I dropped into my boundary mindset again to look at John’s death-essence. It wasn’t leaking anymore, but it didn’t look any better either. I held my hand to the wound, praying as hard as I could, pressing that prayer into John. Live, live, live, live.
I don’t know how much time passed like this, but the next thing I was aware of was Quinn’s voice at my ear. “That’s enough. Lex, that’s enough.”
I felt him pulling my hand away fr
om John, then tying the wound up tight with a ripped piece of fabric. I had no idea where he’d gotten it. I was light-headed, but I managed to focus on his face. There was a tiny spatter of blood near his chin, and his skin was a little flushed. He must have fed—vampires could get sustenance from witch or werewolf blood, although they couldn’t press them—because the sight and smell of my blood didn’t seem to bother him. “Did you find more of them?”
He nodded, grim. “Two werewolves and a witch. There were six total. Clara took out three of them.”
So the dead bodies on the floor had probably been werewolves too. Vampires would have decayed, and witches or humans would have been easy for Clara to dispatch. “Did you kill them?” I asked, my voice distant.
“Only the werewolves. The witch is still alive, for now.” He cocked his head. “The ambulance is almost here.”
A second later, I heard the siren too. “The EMTs—” I began.
“I’ll press them,” Quinn said firmly. “You should go check on Charlie.”
“Right . . . right.”
“Maybe take off your flannel shirt?”
I looked down at myself and saw the blood that coated my sleeves and the front of my shirt. “Right.”
I tried to unbutton my shirt, but my hands were clumsy with the bandage, and eventually Quinn reached over and did it for me. “Thanks,” I mumbled, checking the rest of me. My T-shirt looked okay, and the few smears on my jeans could have been any number of things. Good enough. I staggered to my feet and headed for the stairs. There were no bloody footprints on the wooden steps, and I realized with remote satisfaction that no one had come close to Charlie.
I traipsed up the steps and down the hallway toward Charlie’s room, my head spinning. Morgan had sent people after Charlie. Morgan had sent people after Charlie. Now that the danger was more or less stalled, I felt the anger building inside me, and my steps quickened. I would kill Morgan for this.
Then I reached Charlie’s doorway, and the dark cloud of rage and fear began to lift. Charlie had that effect on me—or perhaps Charlie being a null had that effect on my boundary magic.
Either way, I pushed open the door and saw my niece, fast asleep on her stomach, on the rug in front of the hamper. Her arm was wrapped around her favorite stuffy, the teddy bear that Sam had given her when she was born. I felt my whole body go slack with relief.
Since Charlie was all right, I took a moment in the hall bathroom to scrub my hands and forearms free of John’s blood, working carefully around the makeshift bandage.
When I went back into Charlie’s room, the ambulance had parked outside, and red and white lights were pounding through her windows and reflecting off the ceiling. As I got close to her, I saw that the short, hard-foam sword that she used to play pirates was lying next to her other arm. My breath caught in my throat.
She was four, goddammit.
Her eyelids fluttered open. “Hi, Charlie-bug,” I whispered, not sure if she was really awake. I went and sat down next to her.
“Aunt Lex.” Abandoning the sword, she got a firm grip on her bear and crawled into my lap. The siren cut off, though I could still see the flashes of red light playing on Charlie’s ceiling. “Is Daddy okay?”
“He got hurt, baby, but I think he’ll be okay,” I told her, praying I wasn’t lying. I pulled her into a hug with my heart against hers, the same way I carried her to bed sometimes. “He’s going to go to the hospital. We’ll visit him tomorrow.”
She smiled and nestled her head on my shoulder. “’Kay.” Her eyes closed again.
I’m not sure how long we sat there, with Charlie fast asleep and me vacillating between agonizing over John’s status and marveling at my niece’s perfection. It had been such a close call. If Charlie hadn’t called me . . .
From downstairs, I could make out the sound of urgent voices and some running around, but in my cowardice, I didn’t go check on my brother-in-law. Some stupid, superstitious part of me imagined going down the stairs just in time to see the life leave his body. Eventually the lights began moving away from the house, and the siren started up again, which I took as a good sign—lights and sirens weren’t necessary for dead people.
A moment later, Quinn appeared in the doorway, holding a small backpack. He looked at us for a moment and smiled. “She’s getting so big.”
Relief blossomed in me. He wouldn’t look at me like that if John were dead. Still, I said, “He’s alive?”
Quinn nodded. “The paramedics don’t really know how. They said his heart should have stopped, with that much blood loss. They’re doing a transfusion right away.”
“Is he—” My voice caught, but Quinn understood.
“I don’t know, sweetheart,” he said softly. “The EMTs couldn’t believe he made it this far. Whatever you did to him . . . he’s got a chance.”
I nodded, feeling numb. Quinn came over and sat down next to me, dropping the backpack so he could smooth Charlie’s hair. If John died, I would become her legal guardian, and I wasn’t ready for that. There was no way I could take care of her and still work for Maven, which meant . . . what? Maven could start using Charlie for Old World stuff? No. I’d have to give her to my parents or to one of my cousins to raise, and I wouldn’t be able to tell them about what Charlie was. My family would get pulled further into all this, and they wouldn’t be able to defend themselves.
I should never have agreed to guardianship, but I’d always assumed John would outlive me.
Quinn reached for the backpack and I realized dimly that it was the heavy-duty first aid kit we kept in the Jeep. He gently took my wounded hand, peeling back the bloodied scrap of cloth still wrapped around it. “This needs stitches,” he said quietly.
I shook my head. “Just do the glue.”
Our first aid kid was serious; it included some of the skin adhesive ER docs used on small wounds, similar to Super Glue. Quinn uncapped the bottle and began sealing my wound.
Hot tears started to slide down my face. “I told John they could wait until tomorrow to leave,” I whispered. “I said it was safe.”
Quinn didn’t tell me it wasn’t my fault. He knew me too well, and he’d been a soldier once too. You made your best call in the moment, and you took responsibility if it fell apart. He just finished gluing the wound and kissed my forehead. “Don’t worry,” he said, very calmly. “We’re going to destroy her for this.”
See? He did know me.
While Quinn rebandaged my hand, I leaned back against the wall and looked down at the sleeping little girl cuddled against my chest. I would have to take her somewhere safe—my first thought, of course, was my family. I tried to remember if John had introduced anyone else in my family to Morgan when they’d dated. Could she know where the others lived? Could I take that risk?
“Katia,” I said, my brain finally beginning to work again. Charlie knew Katia; they’d spent time together before my aunt moved south. “Katia can take Charlie to a hotel tonight. I won’t let her tell me where they’re going. But John . . .” My voice faltered. Half of me wanted to be at his hospital bed, waiting to be there when he woke up. After all, he’d done it for me.
The other half was ready to tear out Morgan’s insides.
“You’ll need to call your family,” Quinn said. “We’ll come up with a story. I can arrange to have the house cleaned—” His voice broke off for a second, and I remembered that his usual cleaning team was a bunch of Hazel’s witches. Maven paid them—very well—to get rid of bloodstains when necessary, but I doubted they’d be working for him tonight.
He shrugged. “We’ll figure it out. Right now, we need to get Charlie safe and to get this witch talking.”
“Right.” I perked up a little. Nothing lifts your spirits quite like remembering you have a hostage. I figured Quinn had come up with a way to restrain her, but I didn’t need the details just yet.
There was so much to do. I rested my cheek lightly on Charlie’s head, wishing I could just stay right there with her.
My injured hand ached, but I didn’t want to move. “She fell asleep with her sword,” I told Quinn.
“Well, of course she did.” He grinned, wide and sweet. “She’s yours, isn’t she?”
Then I began to cry in earnest.
Chapter 31
When I was sure I could talk without sobbing, I called my parents, who still kept a landline next to the bed in case there was an emergency in the night.
Unfortunately, my mother, the eternal worrier, answered first. I briefly ran through the story Quinn and I had concocted and asked if she and my father would go to the hospital to be with John. She agreed, of course—I could already hear them hurrying around in the background—and even offered to call John’s mother, Blossom. My mother knew I was intimidated by the old woman, and wanted to spare me the conversation. That small gesture almost made me cry again.
After I hung up, Quinn offered to carry Charlie downstairs for me, but I declined—less because I wanted to prove I was strong enough to do it myself, and more because I wanted the simple reassurance of her weight in my arms as long as I could have it.
So Quinn carried the teddy bear down the stairs ahead of us, and I followed slowly, checking each step for toys before I put my foot down. I felt like I was carrying delicate china.
We rounded the corner into the living room, and I stopped short. A young woman stood near Clara, surveying the carnage. She faced away from us, wearing black pants and a bland gray coat, her hands tucked into the coat pockets. I instantly shifted Charlie so I could reach for the revolver. I had it halfway up before the woman turned, and I realized with a shock that it was Maven. Maven with brown hair and conservative horn-rimmed glasses with a slight yellowish tint.
“Whoa,” I mumbled, replacing the revolver in its holster. “Uh . . . hi,” I added, hearing how dumb it sounded. I’d seen Maven away from Magic Beans only a handful of times, and although I knew she wore different clothes when she went hunting, I’d never seen her change her look so completely. She wasn’t even wearing any costume jewelry.
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