The plodding pace I set couldn’t have been the cause of the breathy quaver in her voice. She was scared.
Tough.
“Do you really think that’s going to happen?” Summer asked.
“I don’t plan on finding out. He needs to be stopped. Now.”
Wrong answer. Clenching my fists, I vowed not to let Pamela near Jamie. Which meant before I rescued him, I needed to get away from the inspector without raising her suspicions.
“But he saved Madison. You saw his lux lucis net—and what he did to her soul.”
“This time. He saved her this time. We need to capture him while he’s weak and we stand a chance of holding him.”
Her use of we grated. I wanted to stop listening, but I couldn’t tune them out. It made me sick that I’d put my trust in Pamela, believing her superior rank and experience gave her a better understanding of how to coach Jamie. I should have trusted myself. If I had, maybe Jamie would have trusted me to help him rather than fleeing. Maybe he wouldn’t be dying in the first place.
“Can you tell where he went?” Summer asked.
My steps faltered and my heart kicked against my rib cage as I waited for Pamela’s answer.
The inspector hesitated. “No. But we can follow the trail.”
“Not through the swamp. Even if we drive up and down the banks, we could search all night and not find him,” Summer argued.
Morosely, I agreed with her, but that wouldn’t stop me from trying.
“What about the tyv? Can you sense her?”
Pamela huffed out a breath. “Of course, but the pooka is our first priority. She’s gained too much strength from him, and even with the little we weakened her tonight, she’s more than a match for the three of us. We need to cut off her access to the pooka. Our smartest move is to confine him before he regains his strength.”
It was all I could do to keep my expression passive and not snarl at her.
“I’m going home,” I announced when we reached our cars.
Pamela assessed my face, then my soul, and I tried to let her see my exhaustion without revealing the growing jitter inside me, urging me after Jamie.
“If I see Jamie again, I’ll do everything I can to hold him.” Truth. I wanted him back more than ever, but it didn’t mean I’d be using Pamela’s suggested method of force. “Right now, I can barely stand. I’m not up for any more confrontations.”
“You’re abandoning the hunt for your pooka?” Pamela asked.
Her words sliced razor blades through my heart. Never! I wanted to shout. I’ll never abandon him! Instead, I ground my teeth and forced out words she’d accept. “Summer was right. He’s got too much of a head start. Unless he wants to be found, we could search all night and not encounter him.” I didn’t have to fake my despair.
“Fine. I’ll let Brad know. Make sure you eat before you fall asleep.”
“Do you need an ME for that wound?” Summer asked, pointing to my leg where I’d skewered myself with the soul breaker.
“It’s not as bad as it looks.” In Primordium, the gray of my pants and my blood blended together. The lack of any traces of lux lucis in the stain meant the wound had stopped bleeding. I didn’t have time to waste on a medical enforcer. My leg functioned, and thanks to the frigid temperatures, the exposed wound and flesh around it had lost all sensation. Even if the cuts had been more serious, finding and healing Jamie took precedence.
I sank into the Civic and tugged my seat belt in place. I didn’t turn on the heater; warmth would bring pain, and I was barely functioning as it was. I shoved into gear as Summer shut her door beside me, and I backed out before she’d turned on her car. Still viewing the world in Primordium, I drove down the middle of the winding streets. The marshes flowed on either side of the complex, and Jamie could circle back virtually anywhere. If he did, I didn’t want to miss him.
Summer followed, Pamela in the passenger seat. I hadn’t really expected Pamela to take me at my word and trust I’d sit idly at home, but it grated that she made Summer tail me back to my apartment. She had the damn tracker—
The tracker. The moment I left the complex in search of Jamie, Pamela would know. I’d have to chance that she was too busy looking for my pooka to remember to spy on me. Nevertheless, I pulled into my assigned parking spot and turned off my car. To maintain the farce, I climbed out of the Civic and tossed the two women a lethargic wave when Summer slowed to take in my performance. When she didn’t immediately drive away, I ground my teeth and trudged toward my apartment. In case Pamela was watching, I didn’t turn when her engine revved and she drove off.
I made it as far as the sidewalk lamppost before I abandoned my act. Bracing a hand against the metal pole, I counted backward from one hundred, giving Summer time to clear the complex before I returned to my car. I wracked my brain for where Jamie might have gone to recover but came up blank. He didn’t have anyone. He should have had me, but I’d ruined—
A single drone careened across the sky, skimmed the barren canopy of the enormous oaks, and crashed onto the third-floor landing.
My feet started running before my brain caught up.
26
I Want to Be the Person My Dog Thinks I Am
Hang on, Jamie. I’m coming.
When my foot hit the first stair, I remembered the trap across the door. Dread flipped my stomach, and I took the steps two at a time, rattling the concrete-and-metal frame.
Jamie, pale, naked, and human, curled against my door, his soul sluggish inside his body. A puddle of atrum and lux lucis leaked onto the welcome mat beneath him.
“Jamie!”
The pooka lifted his head and my heart skipped a beat when I saw the slow spin of his dull black-and-white irises. He hasn’t come home to die. I won’t let him. Stripping off my coat, I barreled up the last three steps and wrapped his folded frame, far less concerned with modesty than his warmth. He didn’t quite track my motions, as if I were moving too fast for his eyes to keep up with.
“Let’s get you inside.” I crouched close to him, unlocked the door, and deactivated the trap. I thought I felt the weight of his disappointed gaze, but when I checked his face, his eyes were closed. He might not have even noticed the trap, but that didn’t lessen my guilt.
“Come on. A few more steps, and you’re home. Safe.” I tucked an arm around his rib cage and helped him stagger across the threshold. Heat blasted me, stifling but welcome. We made it a step beyond the postage-stamp laminate foyer before he collapsed, curling on his side into a fetal position. I went down on my knees with him, shutting the door with my foot and shooing the cats away when they trotted over to investigate.
Jamie’s soul fluctuated and sputtered, bits flaking from him to drift to the carpet like metaphysical snow and soot, but I was more concerned that despite no visible wound to blame, he continued to bleed atrum laced with lux lucis. I switched to normal sight, leaving his side long enough to flip on the light. A vicious purple bruise marred the pale skin of his stomach, and blackened patches crisscrossed his knees. Dirt streaked his body, but a careful examination revealed no blood. I sat back on my heels with conflicted disappointment. A physical wound I could treat, but this . . . ?
“How can I help? Should I call the ME?” Was he breathing? “Jamie? Jamie!” I shook him, frantic. He dragged in a ragged breath but didn’t open his eyes.
“Hol—” His voice cracked. When was the last time he’d had water? “Hold me.”
A shiver rattled his body, and he moaned. Cursing my helplessness, I snatched a blanket off the recliner and wrapped Jamie, then hugged him tight. Dark circles underscored his eyes, his cheeks gaunt above chapped lips. With every passing second, he grew more fragile, his soul bleeding out on the carpet.
“Don’t give up, Jamie. Your prophecy was wrong. I won’t let you die.” I squeezed him, but not too tight, afraid of hurting him. “There must be something more I can do.”
“Use your soul,” Jamie rasped.
“How?�
��
“Net me.”
He wasn’t a pure lux lucis creature—wouldn’t being held in a lux lucis net hurt him? I crossed my fingers and flared my soul from my chest, thankful for hours of practice capturing frost moths. Pushing the net into a bubble large enough to encompass a human tested my control, the task made more difficult by the sounds of Jamie’s labored breathing. Once I had him enveloped, I expected the pooka’s atrum to cancel out my lux lucis, depleting my hollow strength. Instead, all his sloughing energy washed up against my net and held, trapped.
This is what he had meant when he had said Hold me.
Jamie released a soft sigh and relaxed.
“This is enough? This will help you heal?”
“Yes.”
Silent, grateful tears rolled down my cheeks. I sat cramped around my pooka until my legs fell asleep. Afraid of resting my weight on Jamie, I stretched out in front of him. Val’s spine jabbed my ribs. I slipped him free of his strap and slid him under the recliner, where the cats couldn’t pester him.
Unimpeded, I curled my body around Jamie, facing him so I could monitor his breathing, flexing and adjusting my net until it fit snug against him. All of his soul pulsed within the confines of mine, leaking good and evil energy, yet it made my heart sing with how right it felt. How different from Pamela’s purity tests! I settled an arm over Jamie’s blanketed back, hugging him close.
Dame Zilla crept up to sniff Jamie’s hair, her muzzle pushing through my lux lucis. Neither my net nor the pooka’s leaking soul seemed to concern her, and after satisfying herself with Jamie’s scent, the kitten pranced behind him to my hand, bracing her front paws on his back so she could rub on my fingers. I started to shoo her away, but the faint smile curving Jamie’s lips stopped me. After a few minutes, Dame Zilla lost interest in my uncooperative petting and curled up on the cushion of the recliner. Mr. Bond flopped across my feet, uncaring that he ground my ankle bone against the tracker. His purr rumbled to fill the quiet apartment.
I lay there, unmoving, at first listening to the heater kick on and off, then to the sleepy sounds of neighbors waking and heading for work. My soul ached like a muscle held tense for too long, but it was a good pain. Jamie slept or lost consciousness, lying so still it would have alarmed me if not for the assurance of his breath across my face and the rise and fall of his chest beneath my arm. Gradually, his soul ceased to flake, the fluctuations settling beneath the press of my net. I checked his stomach wound frequently, cautiously hopeful when it looked as if the seepage slowed, but I wasn’t convinced it wasn’t wishful thinking until it stopped leaking altogether. Eventually the mixed energies pooling beneath Jamie shrank, absorbing back into his body.
“Did you mean it?”
Jamie’s timid, rasping voice startled me. Vulnerability pinched his mouth, and a bleak hope swirled in his eyes when he opened them.
“Every word of it,” I said. “I love you, and I’m so, so sorry.”
“You didn’t say that just to get me here?” Jamie peered over my shoulder at the active trap on the sliding glass door, then at the inactive trap around the front door. Niko had turned my apartment into a glorified cage, and fear had prevented me from doing anything about it. I wished I could go back in time and tear down the traps before Jamie saw them.
“Everything I said was in the hopes you’d come back here, but only because this is where you belong—with me. You’re free to go.” I choked on the words. “But I hope you won’t.”
Jamie closed his eyes. “I love you, too.”
His soft smile cut through the knots of guilt corseting me. My chest expanded, and I took my first full breath in days. Swiping tears from my eyes, I said, “You really scared me with your prophecy. I can’t tell you how glad I am that you were wrong.”
Jamie’s eyes opened. “My prophecies are never wrong.”
My stomach gave an anxious lurch, and I pushed up to an elbow. “We met again, and we’re both alive. That means—”
“You died,” he said.
“No, I didn’t.”
“The tyv separated your soul from your body. Your heart stopped beating.”
“How do you know?”
“Drones and tyver can hear heartbeats.”
Okay. Val had failed to include that tidbit of information in his tyv description. But more important: “If I died, then how . . . ?”
“I stole your soul back from the tyv and I held it to your body, sort of like what you just did for me.” Jamie’s smile contained timid pride. “Except I had to bond with you again to get it to stick.”
“You took my soul back,” I said with all the intelligence of a recording. “How?”
“We’re connected: I have a bond with your soul. Retrieving it was like gathering scattered pieces of my own. Only it was yours.” Jamie shrugged.
I opened and closed my mouth. I understood our connection had been forged on a deep level, soul to soul. What I didn’t understand was his ability to collect disconnected pieces of his soul, or mine, for that matter. When I expended my soul’s energy, I could no more draw it back than I could reattach cut hair or pat skin cells back in place after being scratched. Once let go—or stolen—my lux lucis became inert and unmalleable.
I shook my head. I’d ponder the mechanics of it later.
“You bonded with me again?”
“It seemed the best way to save you.”
“Did it change anything between us?”
Jamie lost his pleased smile. “The bond might be stronger than before.”
“Good.”
His eyelids, which had fluttered down to conceal his eyes, sprang wide, and he grinned at my emphatic acceptance of him.
“I think you can let go of me now,” he said after the moment passed.
I collapsed my net. My soul swirled within the confines of my body, tingly and languid after its rigorous stretch. I’d lost some of my glow, too.
“Are you hungry?”
“I want to sleep.”
If Jamie was turning down food, he must have been exhausted. I assisted him down the hall. Despite my repeated offers to use my bed, he opted to lie on his giant dog bed. I pulled an extra blanket over him and, unable to let him out of my sight just yet, sat by his head and stroked his hair. Mr. Bond sprawled across the remaining space on the round mattress, kneading the soft blanket, his eyes closed in bliss and his purr a lullaby.
Just when I thought Jamie had fallen asleep, he spoke.
“I stole a car with Sam.”
Well, that explained the state of Sam’s soul the last time I’d seen him.
“I don’t think I should do it again. It really changed him.”
I couldn’t keep my surprise from my face, but Jamie’s eyes were closed and he missed it. “I would prefer if you didn’t, too, but I don’t think you’re responsible for the new atrum on Sam’s soul. Something tells me you didn’t have to push him too hard to convince him to take the car.” I’d caught Sam breaking into cars—mine and other people’s—more than once.
“It was his idea. He’s a much better driver than me.”
My heart fluttered at the frightening image of Jamie behind the wheel. It also clarified how he’d been able to meet me, human and fully clothed, at the mall.
Forcing my fingers to keep a steady rhythm through his hair, I said, “We’ll see about getting you driving lessons, if you’re interested.”
He didn’t respond, and when I lifted my hand to check, his face had gone slack with sleep.
I tiptoed back to the front room, drawn to the sliding glass door. The sun had risen, but the pale, butter-white rays looked as cold as the frost thick on the ground. Clouds built on the horizon, promising another storm.
Lack of sleep, dying, the relief of Jamie returning home, the tightening of our renewed bond—all of it messed with my head and prevented me from succumbing to my body’s exhaustion. I retreated to the shower. The hot, soapy water burned the cuts on my thigh, but once the blood washed away, I was reass
ured I wouldn’t need stitches.
Jamie didn’t stir when I gathered my flannel sleepwear and dressed in the hallway. I found Mr. Bond circling the recliner, stretching his paws as far under it as they’d go. I shooed away the overweight Siamese and retrieved Val, then distracted Mr. Bond with fresh food.
Have you given any thought to declawing that beast? Val asked when I opened him up.
“I think he loves you.”
Love should neither hurt nor leave one disfigured.
“Wise words, Val.”
I grabbed a cleaning rag from the cupboard and sat on the floor, wrapped in a blanket. Holding Val over a large potted plant, I swiped the bulk of the dirt from his cover, then opened him again.
“Sorry about tonight’s rough treatment.”
It’s all part of the job. Val’s text somehow conveyed his pride, the stems of the letters tall and straight.
“You heard everything Jamie said, right? About the second bond?”
Yes.
“What do you think?”
It’s unprecedented. Then again, so is being brought back to life by a pooka.
“Do I look different to you?” I didn’t know if I was asking because of the second bond or because of my second chance at life.
No. Do you feel different?
“I don’t know. Maybe. When I held Jamie in my soul, it felt . . . euphoric. That’s the polar opposite of how it felt with Pamela. Even Niko didn’t feel that . . . that joyous.”
That’s the bond at work. Part of its role is to keep you and Jamie in sync. What better way to do that than to make it feel good. Plus, Pamela and Niko are human. Jamie is a pooka, and pookas bend all the rules.
“So everything is normal?”
With you, I don’t think that quaint word will ever apply.
After making sure he didn’t need anything, I tucked Val safely into the closet. He opted not to listen to any books, claiming he needed quiet time to think, but I suspected he didn’t want to chance waking Jamie, and his pride wouldn’t allow him to acknowledge any softening of his feelings toward the pooka.
A Fistful of Frost Page 37
