18
I tried to get off the couch in the back room, but as soon as I put my leg down, the throbbing got worse, like my heart was pumping pain into it instead of blood. Maybe I’d been a little too quick to send Hawk away. It was taking longer than normal to bounce back without him, and could I really afford to be out of commission like this for long?
He might’ve had something with that “stubborn and stupid” comment, at least this time. I wasn’t feeling particularly sharp at the moment, but that might also be because of the blows to the head. At least he’d fixed my ribs before it got ugly.
Either way, Bertha’s food might be on the menu, but Hawk’s offer to help seemed to be off the board. He’d walked through here several times and hadn’t said a word.
After an hour of sitting in bed, I’d hobbled downstairs to sit at my desk and do about as much as I’d accomplished in my bedroom. I’d then hobbled to the back room, where I could elevate my ankle with company.
Zab brought me a plate of cookies. Bertha put another throw blanket on my legs.
Oscar dropped down onto the couch opposite me. “You really know how to take a beating, that’s for sure. Hawk couldn’t fix you up a little?”
Hawk had left again, thankfully, because there was way too much awkwardness in this conversation already.
“He helped as much as I wanted.”
Oscar smiled, finding humor in the darkest of places as usual. “Ah, I get it. I could try to do something, but I might make you worse than when you started. Most of us have gotten pretty lazy and let Hawk handle the hard stuff.”
“Don’t you touch her, Oscar. I saw what happened to the last person you tried to fix,” Bertha said from the other side of the room. “Her splinter turned into a stab wound.”
He waved a hand in the air. “See? Not a good idea.”
Bibbi dropped down beside me, some knitting in her hands, and shook the entire couch. I grimaced as I resettled my leg.
“Oh, sorry,” she said, as she glanced at my leg propped up on pillows.
“It’s okay. How’s the knitting going?” From the look of the bumps, bulges, and a few holes, not well.
She held it up. “Eh. I thought this would be easier for some reason. Lots of people do it in Rest, you know, so I figured how hard could it be?”
Gillian walked in the back room. “Sorry I missed dinner.”
She shouldn’t have been. The majority of her roommates were happy she’d given us a few more minutes of peace before she showed up.
“Hawk was late to come and get me,” she said. “Now that I’m back to work, it’s safer for me to be escorted.”
Bibbi gripped the knitting needle, looking like she was getting ready to stab someone.
“Safer, you say?” Oscar asked.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear any more about it. With Bibbi sitting here with her needle ready to go, it might not be wise. Of course, we were all going to hear it anyway, because that was Gillian.
“You know, just in case I’m being targeted by the grouslies.” She was picking at a plate of Bertha’s food that had been left out for her, making faces that said it all. “Bertha, amazing as always, but maybe a touch too long in the oven this time?” She leaned back, putting a hand on her chest. “Hope you don’t mind me saying that.”
“Of course not. We all need a little constructive criticism, right?” Bertha looked about the room. “Oh, dear me, I think I left my glasses in my room.”
One gone.
Oscar squinted as he continued to rub his chin. “Gillian, I thought that attack was a coincidence. Why would you be targeted by the grouslies?”
Bibbi was near vibrating next to me, and there was no way Oscar didn’t know it.
“Oh, well, since I own one of the most frequented shops in Xest and I’m a figurehead in this community, it only makes sense that I’d be a target of value.”
Oscar hummed. “No, that doesn’t really make sense to me.”
Gillian laughed. “Oh, stop it, Oscar. You’re such a teaser. How have you girls put up with him for so long?”
“I don’t know. He’s a real rascal,” Bibbi said.
Gillian kept going, not missing a beat. “I had a chat with Hawk about how I really didn’t feel safe being out and about without protection, and he clearly agreed, because he’s walking me back and forth every day. That’s why I’m late. He was a bit tardy.”
He’d tried to run me out of Xest to “protect me,” but with her he made himself personally available. Hawk was escorting her everywhere.
I blocked out the rest of the conversation. There was no need to hear any more. Xazier had implied it. The horde of people beating me had probably been gossiping about it, along with the rest of Xest. I was an idiot.
Gillian’s skinny little legs appeared in front of me. I’d never realized how scrawny she was until right now. I glanced around. Besides Bibbi and me, there was no one left in the room. She’d driven them all out, as usual.
“Do you mind?” Gillian pointed to the free spot on the end of the couch, a cup of cocoa in her hand.
“Of course not.” I shifted slightly closer to Bibbi, who was rolling her eyes and still gripping the knitting needle with dubious intentions.
Hawk walked into the back room and nodded at Bibbi and Gillian, ignoring me. He grabbed a drink from the corner and then left again, all the while giving me silent rage vibes. It was quite something, considering he wouldn’t look at me.
When Gillian was attacked, he felt bad for her. Me? I was a jerk somehow.
Gillian couldn’t seem to break her stare from the door Hawk had left from. “Is he mad at you?” she asked. “Is everything okay?”
She tried to act concerned, but there was a hopeful undertone that made me want to gag.
“I don’t know. That’s Hawk for you.”
Bibbi’s knitting needle was pointed in her direction. It wouldn’t have been bad if I wasn’t sitting in between them. I used my finger to steer the point away from me.
Bibbi dragged in a deep sigh and slowly went back to her knitting, in between glares to the other side of the couch.
“This was an excellent batch,” Gillian said, then sipped her cocoa. “Neither of you want some? I really outdid myself.”
“No, thank you.” Bibbi’s jaw barely moved.
Gillian looked Bibbi’s way and closed her eyes just slightly, as if she were finally picking up on a potential problem.
“I’m good too. Thanks,” I said, drawing the attention back my way. Gillian was driving us all nuts. Was she annoying? Yes. Was she a bad person? No. I’d have to have a talk with Bibbi. She was not allowed to kill Gillian just for being alive, no matter how much everyone might enjoy missing her.
Gillian stayed quiet for all of two seconds, seemingly back to oblivion, before she started right back up. “You know, I kind of thought you and Hawk were a thing,” she said.
“We’re work partners…of a sort.”
Bibbi looked back up, this time with narrowed eyes in my direction, as if she were going to use her needle on me instead.
She could think whatever she wanted. A couple of kisses didn’t make Hawk and me an item. If you weighed them against all the fights, the scale was near hitting the floor on the enemy’s side. I’d called us partners—of a sort. That was about as accurate as it got.
“I don’t know. I picked up on this strange vibe, but I guess I was wrong,” Gillian said, failing to hold back the happiness in her voice.
“Yep. You were wrong. Nothing going on.”
Bibbi kept looking up at me, as if the words coming out of my mouth were the most shocking things she’d heard in a year. She flashed a look at Gillian and then shook her head, going back to her knitting.
“I guess that makes sense. You’re new here, after all. It only makes sense that he’d want someone born and bred in Xest. You know, just how you’d be better off with someone from Rest? You just understand each other better.”
“Uh huh.”
That was all I had left in me.
Gillian, oblivious to the fact no one was interested in what she had to say, continued, “I always thought Hawk was a bit, I don’t know, scary, I guess. Since I’ve come to live here and gotten to know him better, I find myself drawn to him. You wouldn’t mind if I, you know, pursued him, would you? I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes.” The sugary sweetness in her voice did nothing to disguise the steel in her gaze. She’d have no problems stomping on toes to get her way.
Bibbi cleared her throat as she continued to knit. It was the loudest “I told you so” I’d ever heard. Now what did I do? Hawk and I might be nothing, but that didn’t mean I wanted Gillian to touch him. I’d just gotten rid of one, and now I had another? Although, to be fair, Gillian was a far cry from the evil depths of Belinda.
“There’s nothing between us.”
Bibbi made a choking sound so loud that Gillian leaned forward to look at her. “Are you okay?”
“Oh, yeah, fine. Jabbed my finger with my knitting needle.” Bibbi held up her middle finger. “See?” She went back to knitting as if she hadn’t given Gillian the bird on purpose. Did they even do that in Xest, or had Bibbi seen me do it?
Gillian looked at Bibbi’s tangle of knitting in her lap, assuming she was just incompetent.
“You’re good with my interest, then?” Gillian asked.
Had there been a couple of moments between me and Hawk? Yes. But a couple of kisses weren’t exactly a marriage contract, and no one deserved to know what kind of past or not past we had.
“Sure.” Now I was ready to choke, and for no good reason. Hawk and I weren’t even on speaking terms. How could I not be good with her pursuing him?
Bibbi leaned forward, so she could see past me to Gillian. “You think he’s interested in you?”
“I don’t know. He did offer to have me live here.” Gillian sat a little straighter, letting a dreamy smile tease her lips.
“Yeah, I mean, I guess that makes sense. He let me stay here too, but I work here. He let Oscar stay here, but he’s friends with him. Bertha, I guess she’s married to Musso. I heard him inviting a few other people, but I can still see how you’d imagine that was something special. It’s not like he’s invited all of Xest to stay here, after all. Just ten or twenty of us.”
Gillian’s eyes dropped to her cocoa.
“Oh, I hope I didn’t discourage you. I’m sure he likes you. I mean, he likes a lot of people, but it might be different with you.” Bibbi’s tone was every bit as sweet as Gillian’s had been. We were all in danger of diabetes if they didn’t cut it out.
“Yeah, well, I think I’m going to head to bed,” Gillian said. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow. Wish I could stay up with you, but I have to get up early to run my business, after all.”
We watched her walk from the room.
Bibbi let out a disgusted sigh. “It’s bad enough she’s going after him. Can’t she at least chill out and be real about it? Even when I was scared of you, I didn’t act that fake.”
“By the way, you had no reason to be scared of me. I just want to clear that up.” The image of her sitting at my table might’ve soured my mood slightly, but I’d held back pretty well.
“I wasn’t scared because I thought you were mean. I was scared because you could do things and I could tell I’d stepped on your toes. I was aware that you weren’t always in control of what you did. What if you turned me into a toad by accident and no one ever figured it out and I had to live the rest of my life in a swamp?”
“There are no swamps in Xest that I’m aware of.”
“That’s clearly not the point of this conversation.” She was back to using her knitting needles to knit.
“I wouldn’t have left you as a toad. I would’ve gotten help. I was never that out of control.”
“Not what I’ve heard, but my point is, things might’ve gone bad and I still didn’t act as fake as that one does. This night has just wiped me out.” She stood, her chewed-up knitting in her hand. “Are you going up or staying downstairs? I can help you upstairs.”
“I’m good. I can walk when I try.” It might’ve hurt like someone was stabbing me repeatedly in the leg, but I could. I’d hobble up later of my own volition when no one would witness it.
“All right. If you’re sure.” Bibbi looked at my leg a few times before finally leaving.
I waited until the place got quiet before I tried to stand. I sat right back down again, pulling a throw blanket over me. In the morning, I’d pretend I’d fallen asleep by accident.
There was a tickling feeling of something with a sharp edge lightly running along my leg, up and down, around it and again. A whispered voice that sounded something like Hawk but not.
I opened my eyes a sliver to see black claws grazing my skin. I looked up further to see a familiar monster.
“What are you—”
One clawed hand moved in a hovering motion over my body. He kept speaking words I didn’t understand as the weight of relaxation made me feel like I was sinking deeper into the couch, my eyelids getting heavier.
19
I woke in the back room right as the sky became tinged with light, feeling like I’d slept for a week. I sat up, stretching. Maybe a month.
The room was cozy and warm, too. Someone must’ve come in and refueled the fire.
I stood up, and then immediately lifted my bad leg so I didn’t put more weight on it. But I already had and it hadn’t hurt. I cautiously lowered my foot back to the floor, leaning hard into it. Still good. I made it halfway across the room and still no pain.
I tugged up my pants leg; the swelling was gone. It must not have been that bad. Who needed Hawk? All I’d needed was a solid night of sleep.
I made my way to the stash of cocoa supplies brought over from Gillian’s shop. Beside it sat one of the tea blends that was okay. It had somehow tasted much better before the cocoa had taken up residence beside it. Now it seemed to have a bitterness it hadn’t before, an acidic opening note with a lingering blandness that didn’t quite satiate.
So would it be tea with no strings? Or the most amazing cocoa I’d ever tasted but feeling beholden to the she-demon with every sip, the woman who wanted my—boss. Business associate. Whatever.
I was listening to Bibbi too much. This was ridiculous. Had I gotten so much in my head that I couldn’t enjoy cocoa without getting crazy?
I had the unfortunate timing of reaching for the cocoa as Bibbi walked over. She looked at my hand on the cocoa, as if I were holding a container of gasoline that would light this place on fire.
“It’s cocoa.” I wrapped my hands around it firmly.
Don’t put it down. This is insanity.
“Sure. You can tell yourself that, but we both know better. That’s blood cocoa.” She crossed her arms and tilted her head back, giving me a look of superiority never seen before on Bibbi. She wore it pretty well.
“You mean like blood money? Because I don’t think there’s blood cocoa. I think there’s plain old cocoa that no one died for.”
“As far as no one dying for it? If you regard your standards in a rotting pile as no damage done, then sure, I guess that’s true.” She continued to stare, watching me with that look of judgment.
“You’re getting crazy. You do know that, right?” And so was I, because I’d had the same debate internally minutes before she walked in. I’d decided I was crazy, but that was before she’d stared at me, making me wonder if she was right. I didn’t want my standards to be in a rotten pile. That sounded absolutely horrible.
Don’t put the cocoa down. You want the cocoa. You want it bad.
I couldn’t hold out against her looks. They were too damning, and it was too early for this kind of heavy choice. I put the cocoa down and reached for the tea.
“Well done. I knew you had it in you,” she said as if we were running a combat mission together.
“We’re going to have to get better tea if this continues.” It tasted like suck
ing on an old penny.
“Agreed.” She smiled and raised a mug to me, letting her gaze go all the way down to the two feet I was standing on. “You look much better. The way your leg was puffed up last night, I didn’t think you’d be up on it for a week.”
“Yeah, I guess I needed a good sleep, is all.”
I took a seat at the table, propping my bad leg up on to the other chair, feeling like it shouldn’t be this good yet even if it was. Had I taken something last night to help it? There was this nagging feeling in my head that something important had happened. Trying to pin it down felt like roaming around in a pea-soup fog trying to find a cloud.
Bertha and Musso strolled in, with Zab after them and Oscar a minute or so later. The smell of Bertha’s cooking began to permeate the air as Zab remarked on how warm the back room was for this early. I’d assumed he’d come down and warmed it, but apparently not.
I leaned closer to Bibbi, who’d taken the chair next to me and was working on her knitting again.
“You ever have an idea or a dream and it’s like”—I raised my hand to my head, as if I could pluck something out—“right there? You know it is but you can’t quite get to it?”
“Only every day,” Bibbi said. “Stop trying to think about it. That helps me sometimes. Then it’ll hit you out of the blue. Or it won’t, and you’ll have forgotten you cared in the first place. Either way, you’re good.” She went back to her knitting.
I was still sipping my bland, acidic tea. “Bertha, do you have any good tea blends?”
The woman could cook like she was born with a spoon in her hand. She must have some finesse in other areas.
“Oh, yes!” She nearly jumped up and down in her eagerness to prove her skills in the beverage arena. She was putting a mug down in front of me not two minutes later, waiting for me to try it.
Musso was standing behind her, looking at me with fear in his eyes. Nothing scared that man. I took a sip and understood. Suddenly I longed for the bland bitterness of the old stuff.
Then I lied like my life depended upon it.
The Most Wanted Witch: Tales of Xest Page 11
