by Emery Belle
The man behind me didn’t take the hint, and I squeezed my eyes shut briefly as footsteps pounded down the pavement toward me. When he caught up, he fell into step with me, and we walked in silence for a time, shoulder to shoulder. Finally, I said, “What do you want, Sebastian.”
“You know what I want.” He looked hurt.
Other than a brief conversation to tell him that I needed space to think things over, I hadn’t spoken to Sebastian since finding out that, once upon a not-so-distant time, he’d left his bride standing at the alter—in the middle of the wedding, no less. Finding out the truth from Sebastian’s ex-fiancée-slash-almost-wife, Remy, had been a punch to the gut. Sure, I knew about his reputation as a major playboy, but he had assured me that was all in the past… and, as far as I knew, it was. Sebastian had been nothing but a perfect gentleman to me since we’d started dating, but finding out what he’d done to Remy was like discovering he had bodies hidden under his floorboards.
Was that fair? I wasn’t sure, and Sebastian certainly didn’t seem to think so. But right now, when I was already running half an hour late, definitely wasn’t the time to figure that out. So, shooting him a not now look, I continued hurrying down the sidewalk, stopping only to shrink against a building to avoid being run over by a plump, red-faced dwarf who seemed to have lost control of his unicycle. He wobbled past me, and then crashed into the knees of a giant strolling down the road, slurping an equally giant ice cream cone. The giant roared and swatted at the dwarf, sending him tumbling directly into the path of a herd of visiting centaurs enjoying a goblin-guided tour of the town square.
“Wren!” Sebastian called again over the hubbub, sliding his fingers around my wrist to stop my forward motion. “Please, just listen to me.”
I turned to him, looking at him properly for the first time in several weeks, and my heart softened a fraction when I saw the purple half-moons under his eyes. I sighed, then glanced at my watch, which he took as an invitation to press on.
“I know you’re upset with me.” He raked a nervous hand through his hair. “And you have every right to be. What I did was… awful.” His honey-brown eyes burned with shame. “After talking to you, I did a lot of thinking, and while there’s no excuse for my behavior and nothing I can do to make it right with the people I’ve hurt, I can at least tell them I’m sorry.”
He took a deep breath and gave me an imploring look. “And so I have. To Remy, to Cynthia”—Cynthia? Who on earth was that?—“and to everyone else I treated like dirt.” His fingers slid up to interlace with mine. “It’s not much, I know that, but I can’t turn back time and change my behavior. I can only go forward. And I’m a changed man, Wren, I swear it. I might not deserve it, but…”
His voice faltered as he stared so earnestly into my eyes that I felt compelled to look away. “But I’d really like a second chance,” he finished, then added, more quietly, “Doesn’t everyone deserve one?”
Did they? Perhaps I had to look no further than my own mother to find the answer. Didn’t she deserve a chance at life, even though she defied the laws of the magical world that forbade her to form a relationship with a human? What would my life have been like if she had lived? Would I have been loved? The decision to execute her had rippling effects, and a vulnerable little girl had suffered the consequences. If anyone should be willing to overlook past sins, real and perceived, it was me. My entire life had been shaped by them, after all.
Sebastian gave my hand a squeeze, drawing me from my thoughts, and after several long moments, I returned the gesture. He blew out a breath and offered me a shaky smile. “So can I take you out to dinner tomorrow night? There’s a new underwater seafood place that just opened up—The Islander Gazette food critic is giving it five forks up.”
“Fine,” I said after the briefest of hesitations, “but it’s just dinner, okay? And then we’ll see where things go from there.”
Then I continued walking, and Sebastian joined me, uninvited, keeping up a steady stream of chatter as we neared the hospital. We stopped only to gawk at an ogre in a black cape performing a Houdini-escape act for a group of vampires wearing Hawaiian shirts, smears of sunblock on their noses, and cameras around their necks. The island boasted a healthy tourism industry, which wasn’t surprising, I thought as I gazed up at the crystalline sky and watched a golden-scaled dragon dipping in and out of the clouds.
Sebastian gave me a soft, tentative kiss on the cheek before we parted ways at the hospital entrance, and I headed for the housekeeping department to don my hazmat suit—since starting the job a few weeks ago, I’d been working exclusively on the twelfth floor, the ward for highly infectious diseases. It wasn’t pleasant work, but it paid the bills.
As I was sliding into my suit, the door opened and Gerald, the squat gnome with ruddy cheeks and thick bottle-lens glasses who headed up the housekeeping department, strode in carrying a clipboard and muttering to himself. His forearm was sporting a nasty wound that was tinged green and bubbling slightly at the edges, but instead of a bandage, the wound was covered with a pair of tiny, bug-like creatures with twitching antennas and bright red feet who seemed to be feeding off it. When he glanced up and saw my look of disgust, he frowned, then followed my gaze to his arm.
“Ah, yes!” he said with a grin. “My latest invention-in-progress.” He plucked one of the bugs off his arm with a suctioning sound and held it up, wriggling, in front of my face. I took a hasty two steps backward. “Want to know how it works?”
“Not if you paid me a million gold coins,” I said, but the gnome didn’t seem to hear me. He was too busy examining the wound with a look of concern; it was now making an alarming fizzing sound.
“That’s not supposed to be one of the normal side effects,” he muttered, prodding at his arm and letting out a small yelp of pain. He removed a pencil from behind his ear, dug a small pad of paper out of the pocket of his scrubs, and flipped it open before jotting down a note. Then he gave me a cheery grin.
“I guess this one’s not ready yet! But can you keep a secret?” He lowered his voice to a whisper and glanced toward the door. “I’m working on a new project, and this one’s going to blow the roof off everything I’ve ever invented.”
I didn’t want to point out how little that meant, given that, by his own admission, Gerald had yet to secure a patent for any of his so-called inventions. But I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, and besides, the longer I listened to him, the fewer bedpans I’d have to scrub out on ward twelve. So I plastered an expression of mild interest on my face, which was all the encouragement he needed.
He thumbed the glasses up the bridge of his nose. “I call it the MH-3000.”
As he puffed out his chest with pride, I tried to look suitably impressed. Then he raised his eyebrows at me expectantly, which I took as my cue to ask, “And what does the MH-3000 do, Gerald?”
The gnome grinned. “I thought you’d never ask.” He produced a photo of a chihuahua from his pocket, along with a thin laser light, and waved them under my nose. “I develop the photograph in a mixture of engorgement solution and bamboozlement brew, let it bake in the sun for three days, and then”—he flicked on the laser and aimed it at the photo—“voilà!”
We both stared at the photograph. Other than a hole from the laser scorched through the chihuahua’s forehead, nothing had happened.
Gerald scratched his balding head. “Dagnabbit. I must not have used enough bamboozlement brew—my supply was getting a little low, and I didn’t have time to make more.” He slid the photo back into his pocket, then frowned down at my hazmat suit as though seeing it for the first time.
“What are you wearing that for? Didn’t anyone tell you that you’ve been moved to ward three? Delilah got a nasty bite from a kelpie when she was out surfing yesterday morning, and she’s on bedrest for a few weeks.” He ran his finger down the list of names on his clipboard, stopping at mine. “You’ll be reporting to Andrei, the vampire who runs the ward.” He hesitated, pursing his l
ips and eyeing me up and down. “I do want to warn you, though. Andrei has a reputation for being a bit… amorous. And you’re just his type.”
But I had more pressing problems to concern myself with than lovesick vampires. “What kind of patients are on ward three?” It couldn’t possibly be worse than dealing with highly infectious diseases… could it?
“Magical injuries,” Gerald said.
“That doesn’t sound so bad.” I frowned as I watched the gnome mark a big red X next to my name on his clipboard, hoping it wasn’t an omen of things to come. Especially since I’d recently been the almost-victim of a murderer who took the life of a centaur named Orion, one of the magical community’s most renowned seers. I’d also helped crack the case, and was as shocked as anyone to discover that Orion’s own daughter was the culprit.
Gerald shrugged. “I guess. If you’ve seen one wand-blast wound, you’ve seen them all.” Then he headed for the vending machine in the corner of the room and began rattling the glass vigorously, trying to score a unicorn-flavored chocolate bar.
As I watched him aim a kick at the machine, I fingered my own wand nervously—ever since receiving it, I’d been unable to use it without my magic going completely haywire. Although I suspected it had something to do with my unstable mix of human and magical genes, there was no one I could confide in about it. And so my poor wand remained a prisoner wrapped in duct tape and stowed safely in my pocket, where I could keep my eye on it at all times.
I slid out of my hazmat suit and tossed it aside, then headed toward the network of glass ceiling tubes that whisked employees and visitors between floors. Sliding into one, I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to control my breathing as the tube whirred to life and whipped me up, down, left, and right with stomach-swooping speed. The hatch opened on the third floor and I tumbled out, catching my balance to avoid falling into a very tall, very tan, and very good-looking man with jet-black hair and a pair of sharp fangs that he made no attempt to hide.
“You must be Wren Winters.” He roamed his eyes over my body in a slow once-over, then snapped them up to my face. “You’re late. I was just heading down to housekeeping to see what was keeping you.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled, straightening the collar of my shirt and feeling self-conscious. “Gerald was telling me about—”
“Ah, yes.” The vampire’s snort was derisive. “The inventor. May the goddess help anyone unfortunate enough to cross his path. The man is an imbecile.” His gaze slid to me again, intense, probing, as though he was determining whether I was one too. He must have made his decision one way or the other, for he swung around abruptly on his heel and began walking down the hallway of ward three in long strides, leaving me scurrying to catch up.
As I considered his handsome profile out of the corner of my eye, I remembered Gerald’s warning. But if this man was Andrei—and I presumed it was, because how many vampire managers could one hospital ward hold?—he seemed anything but amorous.
Then he stopped walking without warning and turned to me, and I could feel my cheeks reddening with embarrassment. Had he noticed me staring?
“I’ve heard good things about your work, Miss Winters, from my colleagues on the twelfth floor.” His lips curled into a smirk. “I’ve also heard that your magic is useless, and even though you are a witch, you spend your days with a mop and a bucket of cleaning potion.”
I stared at him, dumbfounded. Who did this guy think he was?
I opened my mouth to retort, but I only managed to splutter out a few nonsensical syllables before he smirked again and continued walking, this time at a faster pace, his polished shoes squeaking against the hospital-white linoleum.
“Many of the patients in this ward are in critical—and oftentimes life-threatening—condition,” he said briskly as we approached the double doors leading into the ward. “Gerald assures me that you are up to the task of caring for their rooms, but I must warn you that squeamishness will not be tolerated.”
Andrei fixed me with a cold stare, and fear washed over me at the sight of his red-rimmed irises. How much blood did someone have to drink for it to bleed into their actual eyeballs? I shuddered at the thought.
“Most of us would rather choose a different job than the one we have, Miss Winters,” he said, incorrectly interpreting my expression of distaste. Then he smiled at me, and this time, the expression in his eyes bordered on kind. “You and I are no different in that regard.”
Andrei tilted his head, considering me. “But in addition to being a useless magic-wielder, you also have a reputation for bravery, and intelligence, and tenacity—qualities that will make you an excellent addition to our ward.”
Feeling slightly mollified, I followed him through the doors to the ward just in time to nearly get bowled over by a stretcher careening through the air toward a surgical room. The stretcher was occupied by an unconscious merman with a trident speared through his chest, and the wound was seeping some kind of bright blue liquid that splattered on the floor at our feet as he sailed past.
“Merpeople blood,” Andrei said, answering my unasked question and licking his lips. His fangs gleamed in the stark overhead lighting. “Tangy, briny… trust me when I say you’ll never taste anything more delicious in your life.” He then eyed my exposed neck, as if reconsidering.
“I’ll have to take your word for it,” I said, shifting away from him and pulling the collar of my shirt up as high as it would go. Then a thought struck me, and I frowned at him. “Is that why you work on this ward? Free access to a constant supply of fresh blood?”
He turned to watch a pretty young fairy in nursing scrubs flutter by, and then gave me a wicked grin. “Among other perks.”
Okay, maybe amorous wasn’t too far off the mark.
Andrei bent down, and I watched, my stomach churning, as he swiped his finger through the merman’s spilled blood and brought it to his lips. He swirled his forked tongue over his finger, then closed his eyes and shuddered with pleasure. When he opened them again, I saw that his dark irises were now rimmed with blue.
When he saw me watching him, he held out his finger, which was still stained with blood. “Care for a taste?”
I shook my head, maybe a little too hastily.
He shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
The vampire licked another slow circle around his finger, then removed a spotless handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his hands clean, and patted delicately at his mouth before motioning for me to follow him. We had just started walking down the hall when the doors to the ward slammed open and the frantic voices of doctors and nurses rose into the air, jumbled and indistinguishable as they shouted orders to one another.
I stood on my tiptoes and craned my neck toward the stretcher being flown in after them, directed by a pale witch whose face was pinched with worry. Her scrubs were splattered with blood—this time a deep crimson—and she was holding the limp wrist of the man lying in the stretcher.
“I can’t feel a pulse!” she shouted as Andrei grabbed me by the arm and forced me against the wall and out of the way.
But the moment the stretcher passed and I caught a glimpse of the man’s face, which was as white as a sheet, I leapt forward, clawing at Andrei’s hand as he attempted to pull me back once more. All the air had drained from the room, and someone was screaming—high-pitched and helpless and familiar. Was it me? I couldn’t be sure. I had no more room for thoughts, for rational behavior, for anything but the man with the bottomless black eyes that were now closed, the chiseled jaw that was now slack, the dark, dangerous features that were now serene.
For there, on the stretcher, lay the lifeless body of the man in black.
Chapter 4
I joined the crowd shouting frantic instructions to the doctors gathered at his side, their wands flying around Cole’s motionless form, poking and prodding, while a plump nurse whose face was red from exertion performed chest compressions. Somehow, I wormed my way in beside them, ignoring Andrei’s demands that I back up
, give them space, allow them room to work on him. To save him.
No. No no no no no. This wasn’t happening.
My cheeks were hot and wet with tears that I didn’t remember crying as my searching hand found his, for only a heartbeat, before Andrei succeeded in yanking me away. I struggled against him, slapping at his arms, his face, anything I could reach, trying to inflict enough pain on him to take away the agony of the dagger in my heart.
“Wren!” he shouted, wrestling me into a vacant hospital room and kicking the door closed. He forced me down on the bed, then fetched a bottle of water from the nightstand, untwisted the cap, and handed it to me. My hands shook as I brought the bottle to my lips, and at the first taste of the lukewarm water, my stomach contorted in pain and nausea.
My fault. This was my fault.
What had I been thinking? Cole had been the first to clue me in on my connection to Lord Macon, letting on that the Chief Justice of the High Court had been the one to hire a gargoyle to protect me when I first arrived on the island. And he had revealed that information at great personal risk. How had I repaid him? With my discretion? No, I repaid him by hinting to Lord Macon that I knew the truth. It couldn’t be a coincidence that only days later Cole turned up half-dead.
If not fully dead. And I may as well have been the one to kill him.
The nausea overwhelmed me, violent and ferocious, and I vomited all over Andrei’s pristine shoes. Instead of shouting at me, or berating me, he knelt down and took my hands in his. They were surprisingly warm and reassuring.
“That man means something to you,” he said quietly, and I took a breath, ready to deny it. But then I exhaled and nodded. A single tear fell from my cheek and soaked into the fabric of his pants.