by Martha Carr
“I’m good with that. Thanks.” As she crossed Professor Bergmann’s office again, the halfling felt a little weird about getting ready to leave less than an hour after arriving. Guess that means I get to level up with the magic training. Just maybe not with Mattie.
When she felt Cheyenne standing there behind her, Mattie slowly turned away from her desk and raised her eyebrows. “I’ll send you an email if I hear back from him.”
“No problem.” They stared at each other again.
“Is there something else you want to say, or…” The professor spread her arms, looking at the drow halfling like Cheyenne had just revealed a troll side, too.
“Yeah. Know anything about surprise magic?”
Mattie’s gaze fell to her student’s shoulder and the not-quite-oozing holes in it. “Did you surprise your shoulder?”
“No, someone else had an issue with my shoulder. And I’m pretty sure that falls into the category of things you told me not to tell you.” Cheyenne turned toward the door to get those two holes out from under her professor’s scrutiny. “I’m talking about magic you didn’t know you had but can somehow use at random times.”
“Huh. No, I can’t say I know a whole lot about that. Or even a little.” Mattie’s frown as she cocked her head made the half-drow feel like an idiot for even asking. “What can you do?”
“Who knows? Some kinda shield, I think. I hardly remember it and have no idea how to pull it back up when I want. Not that important, I guess.”
“Well, it probably is.” The professor let out a dry laugh. “And I wish I could help. Maybe if you had another drow who could walk you through the process, those answers wouldn’t be so hard to find.”
Cheyenne took a deep breath. “You know any other drow?”
“Nope.”
“Okay. Worth a shot.” Clapping her hands, the halfling nodded and headed toward the door. “Email me that Raug’s info. Don’t forget.”
“Top of my list, kid.”
“Right.” As she opened the office door, Cheyenne looked over her shoulder and added, “Good luck not leaking any more magic, huh?”
Mattie shot her a sarcastic glare and folded her arms. “I think I got the hang of it. Thanks for the well-wishes.”
“Yep. Just me in my infinite wisdom.” With a thumbs-up, Cheyenne opened the door and stepped out into the empty hallway. Mattie didn’t ask her to close the door again, so she didn’t. She headed back down the hall, wondering what the hell kind of messages a Nightstalker graduate professor would be getting from the other side of the Border that had Mattie so confused about what the half-drow had been up to.
If Mattie’s her real name. Either she’s got an imaginary friend named Maleshi, or she was talking to herself and let more than a little magic slip out. You think you know a person…
Before she reached the doors out of the Computer Sciences building, her cell phone rang in the front pocket of her backpack. She shrugged off her pack and dropped into a squat to get to the thing on time. The sight of that stupid FRoE burner phone next to her personal smartphone made her grimace.
But seeing Ember’s name on her screen made all that crap disappear. Cheyenne accepted the call. “Hey, Em. What’s up?”
A sharp, strained breath came over the line, followed by a long, shuddering sigh. “Hey. You busy?”
Ember had definitely been crying. She probably still was, based on the three words she’d gotten out.
“I’m not doing anything,” Cheyenne replied. “What’s going on?”
“Can you…” A gross, wet sniff filled the halfling’s ear. “Oh, man. Can you come by the hospital? I just really… Uh, I need somebody to hang out with me for a while.”
“What happened?”
“I’m fine, Cheyenne. I mean, no, I’m not fine. Can I just—” Ember blew her nose with a long, grating honk. “Can we talk about it when you get here?”
“Definitely. I’ll leave right now.”
“Thanks.”
The line went dead, and Cheyenne frowned at her phone. She hadn’t heard Ember cry like that since freshman year, and that time, the girl hadn’t been lying in a hospital bed with a spinal injury from a gunshot wound.
Chapter Five
Cheyenne almost ran down the hallway of the surgical recovery ward at VCU Medical Center toward Room 317. She couldn’t even begin to guess why Ember was so upset—not because her friend didn’t have a good reason for it but because she almost had too many.
Some of the nurses gave the drow halfling fleeting glances as she passed them in the hall. One of them recognized her and smiled. One of them looked like she wanted to make it illegal for anyone in all black with dangling chains and piercings to even step foot inside the hospital.
And that’s why I don’t do hospitals.
The door to Room 317 was cracked open, but Cheyenne knocked politely anyway before stepping inside. Fortunately, Ember was alone in the room, so at least it wasn’t an awkward “knock without waiting for a response” situation. She sat propped up against the elevated hospital bed, pillows and tissues strewn around her. Her cell phone was beside a faded-yellow plastic cup of water and a pitcher on the rolling bedside table, and her damp hair was clinging to Ember’s wet cheeks, forehead, and neck.
“Hey.” Cheyenne slipped off her backpack and set it gently against the wall below the window.
“Hi.” Ember blew her nose again and thumped her head against the pillow behind her. The tissue toppled from her hand to join the others scattered across the thin sheets over her legs and the floor.
Without a word, Cheyenne grabbed the tiny trashcan a hospital staffer thought it was a good idea to stick by the desk no one ever used instead of near the bed with the patient in it. She brought it with her to the highly uncomfortable armchair beside Ember’s bed, set it down, and gave her friend a sympathetic frown. “Want a hug or something?”
Ember’s laugh lasted only a second before wilting into not quite a sob. The half-drow didn’t need any more of a reply than that, so she leaned forward and wrapped Ember in a quick, careful hug. “Thanks for dropping everything to come watch me drown myself in tears and snot.”
They both laughed, and as Cheyenne pulled away to take a seat in the armchair, Ember smoothed her matted blonde hair away from her face, tore more tissues out of the box, and made a completely unnecessary and almost useless attempt to clean herself up. This time, though, she noticed the trashcan by the bed and used it.
“I didn’t actually have to drop anything.” The halfling pulled her legs up under her to cross them on the chair. “I mean, even if I did, I’d still be here right now.”
“I know. I’m glad you weren’t busy, then.” Ember frowned at the wadded, tear-stained hospital sheet in her lap, pulling at it weakly. “Makes me feel like less of a parasite.”
“Woah!” Cheyenne waited for her friend to explain what the hell that was supposed to mean, but Ember just swallowed and shook her head. “What happened, Em?”
“I bet you can guess.”
Although she bit back a laugh at that, it came out in a strangled choke. Ember shot her a confused look, and the halfling shrugged before counting it out on her fingers. “I mean, let’s see. You got shot at a skatepark by an orc asshole before all your other asshole friends left you for dead. Back surgery. Spinal injury. You’re third-generation fae on this side of the Border who can’t actually do magic. Your parents are dicks. Your best friend’s a drow halfling. And some asshat put that trashcan all the way on the other side of the room. It could be anything.”
For several seconds, Ember’s wide, glistening eyes studied Cheyenne’s face in shock. Then she burst out laughing and grabbed another tissue. “Fair enough.”
“Let me know if I left something out. I’m keeping a running list.”
Ember shook her head, looked at the ceiling with a long sigh, and seemed to come out of her funk. “You covered everything. I just got off the phone with my dad.”
“Oh, yeah?” Ch
eyenne leaned forward over her crossed legs and clasped her hands. “Normally, I’d just assume it went like every other call with him. But you don’t usually get this upset about it.”
“Yeah, well, things have changed a little. For me, anyway.” Ember gestured around the hospital room. “And nothing’s changed for him at all.”
“He just keeps winning that blue ribbon for stability, huh?”
“Stability. Stupidity. They’re the same thing with him.” After downing the rest of the water in the cup and setting it back on the table, Ember went right back to fiddling with the sheets. “Don’t get me wrong, he sounded like a concerned parent when I was finally able to call him.”
“But he’s not coming down to see you.”
“I don’t think it even crossed his mind. And I wouldn’t have asked, anyway. I mean, I haven’t gone back to Chicago once since I moved out here for freshman year. And I’m pretty sure we’re both better off because of it.”
Cheyenne waited for her friend to get to the point. If she was talking around the problem like this, it must be pretty bad.
“So no, I wasn’t expecting some over-the-top reunion phone call. I wasn’t even planning on calling him again anyway, but I guess I thought…” Ember scrunched her eyes, rubbed them, and blinked. “I don’t even know what I was thinking. It was a dumb idea.”
“What did he say?”
“The usual.”
The halfling snorted and stood from the armchair just so she could drag it with one hand as close as it would get to the hospital bed. “Okay.”
“What?” Ember’s small, weak laugh sounded both exhausted and hopeful.
Cheyenne sat again and crossed her legs beneath her. “Just say it already, Em. I didn’t come here to judge you, but you’re talking about everything else except what actually happened, and it’s kinda making me dizzy.”
“Dizzy, huh?”
“I’m gonna try not to fall out of this chair. So spit it out.” Holding back a laugh, the half-drow scanned the hospital room. “What could you possibly have to hide from me right now?”
Ember wrinkled her nose. “Probably not as much as you’re hiding. Like, what the hell happened to your shoulder?”
The smile disappeared from Cheyenne’s face, and she shot her friend a deadpan stare. “Nice try. You first.”
“Fine.” Ember searched the ceiling for whatever was so hard to say. “Dr. Andrews was in here with me for a long time this morning to talk about how the surgery went, what they’re seeing in my recovery, blah, blah, blah. And then he laid out some really great treatment plans. You know, like recovery at home when I get out of here. Rehab. There’s some new program that I guess already has a really good track record for getting people with the same issues back on their feet.”
Both of them realized the double meaning at the same time and shared a wry laugh.
“Yeah, and literally, too,” Ember added. “I mean, I don’t have any delusions about running a 5K or anything. And by ‘pretty good track record,’ we’re talking like a twenty percent chance or something, the way Dr. Andrews described it. So it’s a really big maybe, but I’d at least have a chance of being able to mostly move around on my own again. Like with a cane or something.”
“Hey, you would rock a cane.” Cheyenne’s grin seemed to spill over onto Ember too until the other woman huffed in defeat and let out an overwhelmed groan. “You totally would. I’ll get you a badass top hat to go with it.”
“Oh, awesome. Thanks.” Ember playfully rolled her eyes, but the joking obviously wasn’t helping enough. “It’s kinda pointless to start planning for all that right now, though.”
“Why? Because you’re still in this super-comfy bed?”
“No, because it’s not gonna happen.” Ember shrugged. “Hope’s great and everything, having a positive attitude, or whatever. But there’s hope, and then there’s straight-up denial.”
Cheyenne scoffed. “You’ve never let your dad’s total lack of faith in you stop you from doing anything. Not that I know of.”
“No, I know. I don’t give a shit about what he thinks I can do, but he doesn’t even—” The fae without magic grunted and thumped her hand on the sheets. “Now that I’m talking to someone else about it, it sounds so ridiculous. I’m lucky to even be alive right now, and that’s only because you were there that night to bring me here.”
“Well, we already called it good with that one.”
“Doesn’t mean I’m not grateful.” Ember gave her another small, strained smile.
Do I seriously have to claw information out of everybody today?
“And you’re welcome.” Cheyenne scratched her head and looked away from the tears barely forming in her friend’s eyes again. “Still, I missed the part where you wanting to go with this rehab program to help you walk again is ridiculous. Because it’s not. It makes more sense than anything else you’ve said.”
Ember closed her eyes and muttered, “My insurance doesn’t cover it, Cheyenne.”
“Oh. Shit.”
“Yeah. It barely covers me being here right now, and I’m pretty sure I have to be out of here tomorrow if I don’t want to start racking up a bill for a thousand dollars an hour just to sit in this bed. So I tried to get some help.”
“Oh.” The halfling nodded. “That’s why you called him.”
“Yeah, and he was a total dick about it. He said he’s barely keeping his business above water right now, and he’s expecting that to change with some big new deal or whatever. Then he told me I must be on too many pain meds if I thought he had enough to spend on rehab when he couldn’t even afford a plane ticket to come see me.”
“He actually said that to you?”
“Yeah. And trust me, that’s like number five on the list of Wesley Gaderow’s worst lines actually said out loud to his daughter.” With a bitter laugh, Ember rubbed the back of her neck and stared at the long lines of her legs stretching out in front of her beneath the hospital sheet. “So now I’m the idiot for thinking he even had it in him to at least pretend to care. And the therapy and rehab are off the table. So is the whole list of stuff Dr. Andrews laid out that would help me get back to life again, even just in my apartment. I’ve missed a week of classes, and they don’t call it kicking me out, but if my insurance won’t pay, one of those nurses is gonna wheel me out of this place any day now and just leave me out front.”
Another laugh of disbelief burst out of the fae, but at least she didn’t start crying again. “I don’t know how the hell I’m gonna make this work, Cheyenne.”
The halfling settled her hand on Ember’s wrist, which now lay limp and defeated on the mattress. “You shouldn’t be worrying about that right now.”
“I know that. You think I don’t know how nice it would be to not have to think about it at all?” Ember closed her eyes and shook her head. “Sorry. I’m not trying to drag you into anything—”
“I’d like to see you try to drag me anywhere.” The halfling snorted. “Don’t apologize for this.”
“Still. I feel like an idiot for making such a big deal out of it. You obviously have other stuff going on. Crazy shoulder stories. I really don’t wanna bother you with my ‘fae who can’t do magic or walk’ issues.”
They shared another wry chuckle because that was the best way to handle any of this.
But what she really means is she feels stupid for talking about money issues with me.
“You’re not bothering me.” The halfling gave her friend’s wrist a gentle squeeze. Ember tilted her head and didn’t look up from the sheets, but at least she pulled her hand back to give Cheyenne’s fingers a squeeze in return. “And don’t let all this crap bother you either, okay?”
“Way easier said than done.”
“Yeah, I know. You’ll have plenty of time to freak out about it later. So let’s make a deal.”
“A deal.” Ember chuckled. “Okay, let’s hear it.”
“You need to focus on getting better. Maybe ask that do
ctor if you need to worry about how many tissues you used today. Seriously.”
Puffing out a breath, the non-magical fae leaned her head back against the pillows with a smirk.
“For real, though. It’s a little concerning. And then just keep focusing on getting better, and by the time you’re outta here, I’ll have the most badass cane waiting for you when you get home.”
“Oh, jeeze. I won’t even be able to use it.”
“Nah.” Cheyenne grinned and slapped the side of the bed. “You will. However it works out. Just think about that instead, okay? Badass cane.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“Yep. And you’re gonna look so cool.”
“Ha. Not as cool as you think you look, running around with all the flesh wounds.” Ember nodded at the halfling’s shoulder. “What the hell did that to you, anyway? A giant vampire?”
“Weirder.” After a quick glance at the two holes still surrounded by bright-red, raw, swollen skin, Cheyenne shrugged. “Kind of a cool story. At least the part about what happened to the guy who did this to me.”
After staring at Cheyenne, Ember jerked her hands up. “Seriously, you can’t give me all that crap about ‘just spit it out already’ and then sit there and not tell me what happened. Go.”
“You sure you wanna hear it?”
“Don’t be dumb.”
Hissing out a laugh, the halfling cocked her head in realization. “You know what? You might be the only person I can talk to about all this who won’t either lose their shit or try to use it against me.”
Ember grinned and spread her arms. “Major points for the fae best friend, huh? Even if I can’t use magic.”
“Okay, fair warning, though.” Cheyenne wiggled her eyebrows. “This is top-secret stuff. I think.”
“Yeah, sounds real professional when you put it that way.”
“Very funny. Seriously, though. The FRoE and Border reservations and other messed-up stuff you won’t be able to forget after you hear it.”
