by Sharon Shinn
“Yeah, I think it’ll be great to have them here for a while. Give me more freedom.” I swig down half a glass of orange juice, then remember something. “Weren’t you supposed to be working at Arabesque last night?”
It’s probably my imagination that he hesitates a second before replying. “Marcus wanted the hours, so I gave him my shift.”
This doesn’t seem to require an answer, so I just nod and take another bite.
Joe continues to fill me in on the events of the past couple of days. “Let’s see, Alonzo put in a full day at his new job on Saturday—delivered about fifteen prescriptions. So far he seems to be really pleased with how it’s going, Bonnie said.”
I laugh. “So now you’re checking in with Bonnie every week? That’s funny.”
“Well, we had stuff to talk about,” he says.
I finish the bowl of oatmeal and the last of an apple, then look around, trying to decide if I want another piece of toast. Or more cheese. A glance at the clock shows me that it’s about ten-thirty. I can probably hold out until lunch and then get back on a normal schedule.
“That was good,” I say, relaxing enough to lean back in my chair. I put my hand down and Jinx edges forward to lick my fingers. “How did you know exactly what I’d want to eat?”
“I told you. I talked to Bonnie.”
“Listen. It was sweet of you to want to be here waiting for me, but—I have to tell you, I’m not sure I’m ready for this. I need some time to get back to myself, you know what I mean? It feels a little—a little pushy for you to be here without an invitation.” It sounds awfully mean, but I try to harden my heart. I have to set boundaries and I have to make him respect them. As I would respect his.
He nods soberly. “I know. I’m sorry. But something’s happened and I wanted to be able to tell you in person and I didn’t know when you’d change back.”
The oatmeal turns to iron in my stomach, and every muscle in my body cords with fear. I sit up straight and stop paying attention to the dogs. “What happened? To who?” I demand. If he was just talking about them so casually, it can’t be Bonnie, it can’t be Alonzo . . . “Celeste?”
“She’ll be okay,” he says quickly. “But yeah. She was assaulted last night and she—”
“Assaulted?” I interrupt. “What? What happened?”
He starts speaking in precise words and sentences; I suppose this is how policemen communicate. “She was getting out of her car in the parking lot by her apartment. It was about seven in the evening—dark. Two men jumped her. One held her from behind, the other started hitting her in the head with PVC pipe. She thinks he was trying to render her unconscious so she couldn’t change shapes.”
“Oh my God,” I whisper. My hand is at my throat. I think I’m going to throw up. But he’s quoting her observations; he’s already said she’ll be okay. So surely this doesn’t have the very worst ending.
“Naturally, she was struggling and screaming,” Joe continues. “The man holding her started dragging her toward another vehicle—a van, she believes—while his accomplice continued to strike her head with the piping. He also swung at her ribs and her knees a few times, but mostly her head. She believes she was very close to going unconscious—”
“Jesus!” I exclaim. My body is prickling with adrenaline; I’m practically jumping out of my chair. “Why didn’t she change? She can do it whenever she wants!”
“She says she wasn’t thinking clearly. She also says she could smell something her abductor was holding—she thinks it might have been chloroform—and she thinks that might have been causing her some confusion.”
“So how did she—what did they—”
“Luckily, your friend Ryan arrived on the scene,” Joe says, and there is no inflection at all when he says Ryan’s name. “Apparently he and Celeste had dinner plans. He was able to wrestle the pipe away from the one man and turn it against both of them. They released Celeste and ran for their vehicle. Ryan chose to stay with Celeste rather than chase after them.”
My hands are in the air, my fingers spread as wide as they will go, and my mouth is hanging open. The word dumbstruck circles through my brain. “Then she’s—but she’s—how badly is she hurt?”
“Ryan took her to Bonnie and Aurelia’s house,” Joe continues. “She was conscious enough to say she did not want to be taken to the ER. Bonnie thinks she has a concussion and a couple of broken ribs, but, of course, she’s not a doctor. Celeste made it through the night without getting worse, which everyone seems to think is a good sign, but—” He shakes his head. “I know that concussions are tricky. Even a couple of days later—” He shakes his head again.
Even a couple of days later, the internal bleeding can continue and your brain can swell and you can die. He doesn’t need to say it.
“She needs a CT scan,” I say as calmly as I can. “And someone needs to call the sheriff.”
“Even this morning, she was refusing medical treatment,” he tells me. “And she doesn’t want the cops involved.”
“They should be involved!”
“They should,” he agrees in a quiet voice. “But I can understand why she wants to keep off the radar. Why all of you want to keep off the radar. And if she goes to any medical facility looking like this—”
“Was it the Foucaults?” I demand.
“Neither Ryan nor Celeste could see their faces—the attackers were wearing ski masks—but that’s what we all assume. Ryan told me he saw a van on their property the other day, when the three of you apparently did a drive-by.”
That time it’s easy to read his opinion in the tone of his voice. “Yeah, it was stupid. They shot at us.”
“So I hear.”
I push myself up from my chair. “Let’s go. I need to see her. Since I’m the closest thing to a doctor we’ve got.”
He comes to his feet as well. “That’s what we all figured. Pack an overnight bag. Now that you have caretakers living here, you can stay in town a couple of days.”
“Almost makes you believe there’s a divine plan,” I say.
I take a step toward the door, then turn back, dive around the table, and throw my arms around Joe. The world feels bigger and meaner and scarier than it ever did, and I was telling the truth the other day when I told him I want someone to make me feel safe.
His arms come around me and he hugs me so tightly that all the wolf is squeezed right out of my body. I do feel safe; I feel at home; I feel like I’ve found the place where I belong.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Juliet is not thrilled to learn that she’ll be feeding the animals for another couple of days, but her dark eyes get big when I tell her the reason I’m abandoning her again so soon.
“Sure, yeah, I’ll take care of everything,” she says. I believe her. I believe, like me, she’s been responsible for so much for so long that it wouldn’t occur to her to shirk even the most unpleasant duty.
Joe and I have a brief disagreement when it comes time to climb in our cars and go.
“Ride with me,” he says. “You’re going to stay in Quinville a couple of days anyway.”
“But then you’ll have to bring me back.”
“Well, I’m going to bring you back anyway. Or follow you out here.”
“What? Don’t be ridiculous.”
He just looks at me over the roof of the truck. “These two crazy backwoods yahoos are out to get revenge on Celeste any way they can, and they already know you’re a friend of hers. They were willing to attack her right in the middle of town on a public parking lot. What’s to stop them from coming out here, where there’s not a soul around for miles, and beating up on you? I’m not leaving you alone for a while.”
“Well, unless someone is willing to talk to the cops, I bet they’ll be hanging around for longer than a while,” I reply with some heat. “You think you can just follow me bac
k and forth forever?”
His grin is lopsided. “Maybe. We’ll talk about it. But for the next few days I’m making sure you’re never alone. So drive your own car if you want, but I’ll be right behind you.”
I heave a dramatic sigh, but, truth be told, I kind of like the protective attitude. I like the notion that someone thinks I’m precious. But. “What about Helena and the girls?”
“They’re not you,” Joe says. “Bobby and his brother don’t have an argument with them.”
Does that keep them safe? Maybe yes, maybe no. I don’t have time to think it through; I have to get to Celeste as quickly as I can. It doesn’t feel worth the energy to keep arguing with Joe, so I climb into his truck without another word.
He covers the distance even more quickly than I usually do, and I tend to ignore speed limits, so we’re at Bonnie and Aurelia’s in record time. I note Ryan’s convertible parked in front of the house, Alonzo’s bike on the porch, Bonnie’s station wagon and Aurelia’s BMW both in the driveway. Everyone’s still here, then.
“Karadel. Thank God!” is Bonnie’s greeting when she answers the door, which—I can tell by the clicks and rattles—has been triple locked. Seems like a wise move when there’s an injured shape-shifter inside and crazy assholes roaming the streets.
“How is she?”
“No worse. Maybe better. Hello, Joseph.”
“Hey. Listen, I have my dogs with me. Should I leave them in the truck, or can I put them in your backyard?”
“Oh, by all means, in the yard. There are water bowls out there already.”
I don’t stay to watch Bonnie help him settle the animals, I just head to the spare bedroom. It also functions as the overflow space for the roughly ten million books that are in the house, so it kind of looks like a library with a bed in the middle of it. Noon sunlight is pouring in through the lacy curtains, which gilds the room in optimism, but I still feel punched in the gut when I get a good look at Celeste’s face.
The café au lait skin is covered with welts and bruises; there’s a lump the size of a golf ball on her forehead. She’s sitting up in bed, but the covers are pulled to her waist and she’s wearing a bright pink bathrobe, so I can’t see much below her collarbone. Her throat, though, is a mass of marks and bruises. Even her hands, curled around a mug of tea, are purple and red with defensive wounds.
But damn if she isn’t smiling. Throw her into the scalding pit of hell, and Celeste would laugh in your face.
“Look who’s back from Alternate World,” she says. Her voice is a little hoarse. I can’t tell if it’s emotion rasping her voice, or pressure from trauma to her throat. “Good to see you.”
The small room is overfilled with people. Aurelia’s sitting in a chair right beside the bed; Ryan and Alonzo are leaning against bookshelves on opposite walls. That doesn’t keep me from marching right in and dropping onto the mattress next to Celeste.
My hand goes instantly to her forehead, since, of course, I’m worried about fever, but when I speak, my voice is as light as hers. “I never saw a girl who got into trouble as often as you do,” I say. “Could you maybe, just for one week, try to lead a calm and sane existence?”
“It would be too boring,” she replies. She leans back against the pillows that are propped up against the headboard. I think I can see dried blood matted into the flyaway curls. “Though this hasn’t exactly been fun.”
“You don’t seem to have a fever,” I say. “Does anybody have a flashlight?”
“I checked her pupils last night,” Bonnie says from the doorway, where she and Joe have just arrived. But Alonzo stirs and hands me a flashlight that’s been conveniently stored on the bookshelf on his side of the room.
“I want to check again. Ryan, could you close the curtains? Bonnie, the light?”
We darken the room as much as we can, and I shine the beam in Celeste’s eyes. She doesn’t have any difficulty following the light, and her pupils react as they should, so that’s encouraging.
“Does your head hurt?” I ask.
“Fuck, yes, it hurts, what do you think? But it’s not unbearable. It’s no worse than my average falling-estrogen headache every month.”
That actually makes me grin. “Are you nauseated? Have you thrown up?”
“No. In fact, I’m getting hungry but Bonnie will only let me have gruel.”
“I don’t even know how to make gruel,” Bonnie says. “I gave her chicken broth.”
“Are you drowsy? Having a hard time staying awake?”
“Again, Bonnie wouldn’t let me sleep last night, so yeah, I’m tired.”
“I let you sleep after midnight,” Bonnie says a little defensively. “But you know lethargy is a sign of concussion, and I wanted to be sure.”
“And then you kept waking me up!”
“I woke you up,” Aurelia says. She glances over at me. “She never had any problem coming to consciousness.”
“These are all good signs,” I tell the room.
“Hallelujah,” Ryan mutters.
“But I want to check on the rest of her injuries. So all of you get out.”
Alonzo doesn’t need to be told twice. He’s the first one out the door, and Joe follows, talking to him in a low voice. Ryan more slowly straightens up and stares down at Celeste.
“She wouldn’t let me take her to a doctor,” he says. “I didn’t know what I should do.”
Aurelia comes to her feet and puts her hand on his arm. Her glorious red hair is tied up in a messy knot, and I see signs of exhaustion on her porcelain skin. My deduction is that she and Bonnie split the watch last night, and Aurelia’s only had a couple hours of sleep out of the last twenty-four.
“You brought her here. That was the right thing to do,” Aurelia says. “Come on. Give Kara some privacy.”
Bonnie looks like she might want to stay, but Aurelia tugs both Bonnie and Ryan out of the room and shuts the door behind them.
“Get naked,” I tell Celeste.
She sets down her mug of tea. “Oooh, and here I thought you weren’t interested in me. After all these years—”
“Get naked, comma, bitch,” I say, and she laughs.
The rest of her body doesn’t look quite as awful as her face, but the injuries are bad enough. Lots of bruising on the arms and chest, one big ugly spot over her left hip, a long scrape down her right leg. I poke around a little on her ribs, and she curses in pain as I touch one particularly tender spot.
“I’m guessing it hurts to take a deep breath?” I ask.
“Oh, it does.”
“Are you short of breath? Have you been coughing up blood?”
In answer, she takes a couple of long inhalations and shakes her head.
“Any blood when you pee?”
“Not that I’ve noticed. Can’t believe Bonnie didn’t make me piss in a bedpan so she could check it herself.”
There’s a tube of Neosporin on the nearby table and I’m guessing someone already spread some on the worst injuries, but I smooth on a little more. Then I gesture at her to pull the robe back on.
“Well, if you have a concussion, it’s probably a mild one, and there is literally nothing I can do about it. If you start to get worse—if the headaches are crippling, if you’re dizzy, if you fall unconscious, if you start throwing up—you really really really need to go to a hospital. Because I can’t do brain surgery, and that’s what you’d need.”
“Great. Glad we called you out here. You’ve been so helpful,” she says as she slips her arms back in the sleeves of the robe and pulls the covers up over her legs again.
“You also appear to have a broken rib,” I go on. “Can’t do anything about that, either. The real danger is that you won’t breathe deeply enough to clear the crap out of your lungs, so you could get pneumonia. So even though it hurts, try to take deep breaths as often as
you can. Also, get up and move around a couple of times a day.”
“Can you tell Bonnie that? Because she wants to chain me to the bed.”
“Hey. Bonnie’s kept all of us alive plenty of times before this. Show a little appreciation.”
“I will, I swear, but can you at least make her let me take a shower?”
I hesitate. “I don’t want you to get dizzy and fall over.”
“I’ll sit on the floor of the tub! You can get in the shower with me! I just want to get clean! I want to get this blood off—I want to wash away the feel of their hands—I want to—I want to—”
Her voice gets more ragged and then chokes off. She drops her face in her hands and starts sobbing—Celeste, whom I have never seen cry. I loose an exclamation of dismay and wrap my arms around her, pulling her against my shoulder and patting her back.
“It’s going to be okay. You’re going to be okay,” I tell her.
She fights the tears as valiantly as she can. “Goddamn it, I already look like shit, and now I’m crying on top of it,” she says, straightening up and wiping her hand across her eyes. “This day couldn’t get any worse.”
I hand her a Kleenex from the bedside table. “That’s right, it can’t, so it’s going to get better,” I agree. “Think how good a shower will feel! And then lunch! Think how happy that will make you!”
“All right. I’m getting out of bed. Let’s see how shaky I am.”
But she stands without assistance and looks pretty steady on her feet. I’m already feeling hopeful about her chances of total recovery, when she stops at the door and gives me a naughty smile.
“So I’m liking your new boyfriend more and more,” she says. “Sleep with him yet?”
“That’s it,” I say, opening the door and almost shoving her into the hall. “You’re obviously going to be fine.”
* * *
Lunch is a pretty festive affair. There’s something about remembering how closely we are all stalked by death that makes people want to party. Bonnie’s still restricting Celeste’s intake, but the rest of us feast on baked chicken and homemade bread and all sorts of side dishes. Aurelia has a glass of wine and, after a moment’s debate, so do I.