The water hit my stomach with a hollow, cold splash. I grimaced. How long had I been feverish, without food? I spotted a sports drink on the coffee-table and figured that was all I'd put in my stomach since the broth Jaesung had given me.
I stretched again for the cup of water but it slipped through weak fingers and splashed in a rolling arc across the rug. I groaned, draping myself over the side of the mattress to reach for it.
Someone was on the stairs and I recognized Sanadzi's footfalls before she appeared.
"Thank Jesus," she cried. "I thought we'd have to take you to the hospital." Then she was at my side, ignoring the spilled water in favor of pushing me upright again. Several pillows later, I sat up on the air mattress, fingers trembling around a cup of tomato soup as she checked the wound under the discolored gauze.
Today, she wore a long-sleeved, mustard yellow shirt under a puffy brown vest, and wooden earrings shaped like fish-bones. Green eyeshadow sparkled from her upper lids. I was overwhelmed with relief at the sight of her.
"There's someone downstairs for you," she said, peeling up the back edge. I winced and looked down. My shoulder was a mess of green and yellow and red, spots of black showing where the flesh had already been too long without circulation. I shuddered, stomach clenching. "Krista said he's come by every day to talk to you. Some officer from Miami—said he's in charge of your case."
I stiffened. She must have seen the panic in my face because she pressed the gauze back down over the wound. "We can tell him you're still sick. You don't have to talk to him yet." She reached for the electric blanket and drew it higher over my legs, as if that might stop the shivering.
Someone else was on the stairs now, someone heavier than Sanadzi. I clenched my fingers around the cup of soup, prepared to hurl it at Isaac if he'd dared shove his way upstairs. But it wasn't Isaac. It was Jaesung, sweat on his jaw, and breathing hard. He'd pulled the longish part of his hair back into a tiny stub of a ponytail, exposing wide, bright eyes.
"Jesus Christ," he breathed when he saw me. He didn't rush over, instead bracing his arms on the back of the couch, head hanging in apparent relief. "Jesus Christ," he repeated.
"I texted him," Sanadzi said. "Kris is out getting lunch, but-"
"You were out for three fucking days," Jaesung said. "Your shoulder was infected, you had a fever of one-oh-three, and there's some DEA guy downstairs who says he needs to talk to you and—Jesus Christ, Hel. You're going to kill me."
He looked up then, and I noticed something strange about his face. Of everything I could have said to him then, the four words I croaked out had zero relevance.
"Where are your glasses?"
He blinked at me. Then he looked at Sanadzi, as if hoping she would tell him I wasn't serious. When she didn't, he shook his head. "Contacts. I can't wear glasses in Martial Arts."
That's where he'd been. Why he was sweating. Probably why he'd run home. And that was not a response I deserved. But it made my chest hurt in a way that didn’t involve cuts and cracked ribs.
Sanadzi stood, wiping her knee where she'd knelt in the spilled water. "I'm telling ginger to take a hike," she said.
"No."
Maybe it was the fever that made me say it, or the conflict on Jaesung's face, but I didn't want to leave this to question any longer. Somewhere in my delirium, I'd realized what I would have to do. Not for the family I'd lost, but for the family I wanted to keep.
"I'll talk to him," I said, aware that Jaesung was still watching me from the couch, but unable to look at him. "Just... give me a minute and I'll talk."
Sanadzi folded in her lips, giving me a skeptical look. "You've still got a fever, baby."
"Yeah," I said. "Better take advantage of it before I get back in my right mind."
She looked at Jaesung, who lifted one hand from the couch to divest himself of responsibility. "Okay,” she said. “I’ll give you a few minutes to finish your soup."
I knew that wasn’t what she was giving me a few minutes for, but I didn’t argue. I watched the flexing of Jaesung’s throat as he swallowed.
After she left, it took him a long moment to cross the space between us. I tried to think of something to say, but my mind dragged. My heart rammed into my sternum.
One wide palm covered my forehead, frigid from the air outside. It moved to my cheek, then behind my neck. "You're still warm," he said. He lifted his other hand and laced his fingers over my nape.
"You're not," I murmured back. "For once." I sighed, the chill of his fingers against my feverish skin was a shock of relief.
"I woke up," he said. "It was maybe four A.M. and I woke up because I was too hot and you were…." He swallowed, gaze dropping to my stomach. "You wouldn't wake up. It scared the shit out of me. I got Krista, and we took your temperature and called Sanadzi and explained everything. Gene wanted to call the police and an ambulance, but she wouldn't let him. They got into it."
I clenched my eyes shut, guilt shuddering in my chest. "God, I didn't want-"
"Don't worry about it. Your buddy showed up, and that was enough for Gene. Wedding's not off or anything. Actually, they're doing the rehearsal in a few days. Which,” He let go with one hand and checked his watch. "I've got to, uh…. I’m doing something for their reception that's kind of a secret and I've left the people helping me waiting, so I should probably get back. Unless,” and his fingers moved back to my neck, thumb brushing along the base of my ear. "Do you want me to stay while you talk to him?"
Yes. Yes, I wanted him to stay. I could think of nothing I wanted more than a reminder of why I was giving in to the people who had shot my mother, failed to kill Gwydian as promised, and hunted me for months.
"I'll be okay," I said. He didn't believe me. This close, without glasses to obscure his face, it was easy to see things I hadn't noticed before. The freckle under his left eye, the little scar below his lip. The length of his lashes and the way his nose joined with his brow and made the corners of his eyes look so much deeper than mine. I'd always thought of them as dark, but in the light, they looked more gold than brown.
He shifted forward onto his knees and pulled me into a hug. I breathed against his collarbone, taking in the comforting scent of him as he pressed his mouth to my temple. "Be careful, okay?" I nodded. His fingers tightened on the back of my neck. I didn't quite expect the kiss. It was soft, but warm against my hairline, and over before I could appreciate it. Then he was shifting back, standing up, and rummaging in his pocket.
"Here," he said, holding out his phone. "If anything happens, call Maria. She's the—the owner of the place where I'm doing the thing."
I took the phone. "You could just tell me what your martial art is."
"You'll find out at the reception. Maria. She should be fairly recent in the contacts." The stairs creaked, and he glanced back over his shoulder. "Be careful. I mean it."
He reached the stairs just as Isaac stepped through the door. For a moment, they were face to face. Or, really, face to neck, because Jaesung was obscenely tall and Isaac closer to my height. There was something of a canine standoff in the way they glared at each other.
"May I?" Isaac said, his voice loaded with sarcasm.
Jaesung didn't make the threat someone in my pack might have. He just looked down for several more seconds, taking stock of Isaac's height, his emaciated frame, and made a soft snort. He stepped back to let Isaac through. Jaesung gave me one last look before disappearing down the stairs.
Isaac wasted no time kicking an ottoman from in front of the couch and guiding it to my bedside with a foot.
"Soccer?"
"Junior league."
"Must have been nice."
He snorted and dropped onto it. When he put his hand in his pocket, I tensed, ready to roll out of the way. He smirked. "Don't worry, sweetheart. I checked my gun at the door. Brought a present for you."
"A get-well card?"
"Better," he said, extracting a plastic green bottle. "Your very own magical-anaemia p
revention program." He tossed them into my lap. "Now that pleasantries are over, let's get to business. What lie did you tell them? I'm not gonna blow your cover, but I have to know what to say."
"I didn't lie," I said. He snorted, his face breaking into a grin that only seemed to get wider when he realized I was serious.
"But you didn't tell them everything."
"Obviously."
He shook his head, still chuckling, as if this were the best joke he'd heard in a while. "How the hell did you swindle them into keeping you around?"
"I thought you said we were getting down to business," I growled. "If not, you can get the hell out."
He held up both hands with an unrepentant grin. "Whatever you want, Martin. I come bearing greetings from the higher-ups. Boss-lady wants you to come in."
Well, I'd asked for blunt. I swallowed, wondering what to say now that the moment had arrived. "I have conditions," I said.
"Oh, sweetheart. You don't make the-"
"Stop calling me that."
"Fine, Martin. But you don't make the conditions."
"Because your track record of forcing me to do what I don't want to is so great?"
He snorted. "We haven't been trying all that hard, kid."
"I want the people that work here kept safe. The Guild won't harm civilians, but Gwydian's hunters have already hurt one of them. Promise that, and I'll give you at least one thing you want."
His eyebrow twitched up. "What's that?"
"My copy of the spells in that book."
"Done."
I pointed at the coffee table. "The sketchbook up there."
He leaned back on the ottoman and snatched it from the table, skimming through the pages with increasingly consternated brows. "The hell," he said, looking at me. "This doesn't have the drawing order."
"You think I'd give you that? Anyway, you agreed pretty fast to protecting this place, which either means you were lying, or they're already under Guild protection and you just suck at your job."
His jaw twitched. "If you knew how many hunters we've turned away—"
"You missed a few!" I snarled. "If Krista hadn't maced that guy in the face, he could have killed her! He could have brought her to Gwydian and gotten her turned into-" I cut myself off, biting back my anger.
Isaac tossed the sketchbook to the floor beside him. "What did you expect? It's not like we have unlimited manpower and resources to devote to your merry little chase. Your parents were reasonable people—how the hell did they pop out such a difficult-"
"Parents?" I interrupted. Despite the fever, a chill slid down my spine. "What would you know about my dad?"
Isaac snorted, a laugh playing around his thin lips again. "For one, I don't remember him being this fucking hard to recruit."
Nothing moved. For several seconds, nothing existed. "My dad wasn't part of the Guild," I breathed. "He was never-"
"Well, no. Your master found out about our last plan to kill him and decided your dad wasn't worth the magic boost. After all, you were there, all young and defenseless."
Tomato soup splashed onto my stomach, warm and red as blood. Mechanically, I set the cup on the bedside table, spilling more as my hand shook with the violent emotions swelling inside me.
"Seriously?" Isaac said. "She never told you? Oh, now that's too good." He leaned back, enjoying that he'd just ripped the rug out from under me. "Yeah, your dad was gonna work with us after. That was part of the deal—big magic family, your dad. Almost all of them gone now, except you. He was a rogue before Gwydian got to him. We'd been trying to bring him in for years."
I was shaking my head, anger and hurt stoking the fire behind my sternum. "You knew it wouldn't work," I said.
"Yeah, well, we thought we'd at least get you out of it. And the book."
"You knew it wouldn't work and you let us throw ourselves into the line of fire?" My voice echoed off the brick, rising in pitch and volume. Magic surged in my veins, lighting up my vision with webbed color. "Of course you did. Because what would be better than sacrificing us to Gwydian, letting us die so you could take out your biggest threat? And on top of that, get the book? I suppose you thought I'd be happy to join you when it was over? Grateful?"
“Listen, it’s-”
"I’m done listening!" I surged from the bed, sending Isaac stumbling back off the ottoman. I was in little more than a tank top and underwear, and the air rushed cold around my bare skin. I didn't care. Rage gave me strength. "Where were you when Gwydian’s guys snatched Mom and me off the boat? Where were you when he put a gun to my head and forced my dad to traffic human beings? Or when he turned my best friend into a demon?"
I kicked the ottoman at his legs and he leapt out of the way, green eyes wide in shock as I staggered toward him. Frantic footsteps pounded the stairs. "I should have gone to school! I should have had a mom who taught me how to write lab reports, not conceal a gun! I should have crawled in bed with my dad because I had a nightmare, not because some fucking gang member decided he'd try to rape a nine-year-old! My dad would be alive! I'd be on my way to college! I would have had that if you had been doing your fucking job and helped us before he turned us into criminals."
"Get out!" It was Sanadzi, at the top of the stairs. She grabbed Isaac by the back of his jacket and heaved him toward the door. He was either shocked enough or light enough to let her. "You need to leave. Don't come back without a warrant and representative from local law-enforcement."
Krista was breathing hard, her fingers already typing out a message on her phone, even while she stood at Sanadzi's shoulder for backup.
"There's only so many times we ask nice, Martin!" Isaac called.
"That goes for me, too!" Sanadzi said. Her hands were in fists as she and Krista stood in the doorway, blocking him from coming back inside. He must have believed them, because a moment later, I heard him leave.
We all waited until the office door slammed downstairs.
With no target, my anger fizzled. The strength went with it. I heard my own impotent cry, felt the burn of my knees hitting the rug followed by the gentle voices and frantic hands of Krista and Sanadzi as they shepherded me back into bed. I had no tears left for this. The truth was caustic, eating holes into memories I'd long thought safe.
Sanadzi changed my bandages and forced another painkiller on me, and I looked past her to the picture of my parents in the back seat of that car. Dad, with his grin and his hazel eyes, Mom with her cloud of white-blond hair and mischievous grin, like she was getting away with something wicked by having my dad's arm around her. Had she known, when this picture was taken, what he was? Had she thought it dangerous, sexy? Or had he kept it from her the way they'd both kept it from me—until the truth caught up and it was too late to do anything about it?
Maybe I was harder to recruit than they had been, but at least in that way, I was exactly the same. What they'd done to me, I was doing to my friends now.
When Sanadzi and Krista had finished bundling me in heated blankets, I was surprised to find them unwilling to leave. Krista climbed onto the mattress next to me, tears rolling down her cheeks as she stroked my hair, while Sanadzi vanished downstairs to close the rescue for the day.
I swallowed, aware of something cool and plastic against my bare leg. Jaesung's phone. I reached for it and passed it to Krista. "Can you…. He said to text Maria if anything…."
"God," she choked out. "That's why he didn't answer my text." Her fingers flew over the buttons, and I watched her face flinching as more tears slid down it. She sniffed, wiping her eyes on a shoulder before tossing the phone to the blankets. "I'm sorry," she said, her fingers trickling through my hair, brushing it back from my forehead, which had gone damp with sweat. "All that—the things you said. I'm so sorry you had to-"
"It isn't you who should be sorry," I said. She slid an arm around my blanketed shoulders and I let myself tilt into her, head falling to her soft shoulder.
"We won't let anything bad happen," she said. I clench
ed my teeth against the protest and nodded. A tear dripped off her chin and trickled behind my ear. "We're your family now."
Chapter Twenty-Three
My fingers shook working the zipper up Krista’s back. Despite the pain killers, my shoulder was on fire, and I clenched my teeth against the grimace that wanted to follow.
The church’s dressing room wasn’t meant to hold over ten people, but between Sanadzi, her five bridesmaids, family, wedding-planner, photographer, makeup artist, hair-stylist, and tiny flower girl, there was hardly enough room for me to shift onto a corner countertop and try not to pass out. Looking happy was impossible, and I was ninety percent certain my gloom had ruined at least three people’s moods.
Krista exhaled as I pulled the zipper home. “I can’t believe we’re still doing this," she said. Hands flat over her stomach, she turned toward me and leaned against the counter. "I can’t think about it without shaking.”
I glanced back at Sanadzi, who sat in a chair with her white dress frothed around her, surrounded by black-smocked women wielding curling irons and makeup sponges. Her face was relaxed under their ministrations.
“It’s not like they'd change the date,” I murmured back. “Not when they paid for, like, ten people to fly in from Korea.”
“I know.” Krista’s eyes went glassy. “God. It’s just I still keep thinking how close it was. You could have-”
“Don’t,” I said. “Try not to think about it.”
Krista reached past me for a tissue box. "At least everyone thinks I'm just wedding-crying.”
I nodded but guilt trickled into my gut. If it hadn't been for me, Krista wouldn't have to play happy, and Sanadzi wouldn’t be wrinkling her dress with clenched fists.
I scanned the room, with its single exit and its lack of windows, and chewed at the inside of my lip. Sanadzi's three sisters stood in the opposite corner, their bridesmaid's dresses catching the sheen of the lights. They were all tall and beautiful, with the same fawn skin and light hazel eyes, and had exhibited her same propensity to hug everyone they met.
I probed my shoulder beneath the silken orange scarf, almost comforted that the pain remained violent as ever. My dress—a magenta strapless castoff of Sanadzi's—had served only to bring out the purpled bruising, and I hadn’t been able to get my swollen arm into any cardigans. The bright orange scarf, though clashing, at least kept the questions at a minimum.
Unleash (Spellhounds Book 1) Page 21
