“I don’t—” I stopped and blew at a strand of hair that had worked its way loose from the fighting queue I had braided this morning. It wanted to dangle in my face and tickle my nose. “I don’t think I can.”
Eli pulled something from a pocket, and I heard a click the same moment that a bright light landed on my hand, pressed against my waist. Eli said nothing, just studied the hand, all blistered and juicy and weeping flesh. “Second-degree burns. How far up does it go?”
“My shoulder? Maybe?”
Eli said, “Alex. If Edmund is still on premises, get him into a private room, with some human females to act as duennas. Send one of them down here to get Jane and escort her up as soon as everyone is assembled. It’s daylight, so she can’t shift into her cat and then shift back. She’d be stuck in Beast form until sunset. And Jane’s waited a little too long to get the sleeve off. It’s got to be cut off and it’s going to be bad.” He looked at me, his face lit from below. “You are an idiot.”
“Um. Yeah. Okay.” He was right. What could I say? Except, “My Beast is supposed to ease the pain. She hasn’t. So maybe there’s something wrong with her too.”
He shook his head, confused. “Your Beast? Your skinwalker magic?”
Right. I hadn’t told him everything about Beast, the other soul now twined with mine. I’d have to add a total soul-baring to my social calendar. A strange sound, like the first note of a shattered laugh, escaped my mouth before I pressed my lips together to hold it in. When the sound was under control and shoved down deep, I said, “For all intents and purposes, yeah.”
“The spell that hurt your arm, you’re saying it also hurt your magic?”
“Maybe. I don’t know yet.”
Eli tapped his mic. “Bro, I’m sure you’re on top of it already, but if not, start a search of all the security cameras to see what the dead vamps brought down to the basement.”
“Done it. Every single security camera they passed shows the same thing. Two vamps and ten humans walking into security, where they killed Martini. Then taking the stairs to the basements. They met another vamp on sub-four, female, wearing a scarlet cloak with a hood.” And we didn’t have sufficient cameras in sub-five yet. Of course. Dang it.
“A human female, blood-servant to Leo, named Zelda, is on the way down,” Alex said. “Red hair, green eyes, freckles, five-five, one-sixty, all muscle and boobs.”
As he finished the description, the elevator opened, and I realized that there had been no ding, no tone to tell us it was there. Curious. Useless, but curious. A woman stepped through the doors and paused, one hand holding the doors open. Eli looked from his tablet and the photo the Kid had sent. “Verified,” he said into the mic. “Other female for the healing? Vamp?”
“A woman named Gretchen, who Janie calls Titan Two. And Edmund, because they liiike each other.”
I narrowed my eyes at the insinuation and then remembered that there were security cameras in most rooms. The Kid may have seen a healing session with Edmund not so long ago, one in a small room off the locker room. Great. Just freaking ducky.
To me, Eli said, “Go,” and pointed to the elevator.
Rather than deal with the problems in sub-five, I went.
Every step jarred my gut and my arm, as if knowing what was about to happen made everything infinitely worse. And since getting the leathers off was going to be way worse than Eli expected—because I would refuse to let them cut off my leathers—maybe my arm was indeed putting out caution alarms.
The elevator doors closed, leaving me in the tiny mobile room with Zelda. I turned off my headset and cleared my throat; she slanted a look up at me. “I only have two sets of fighting leathers, the fancy ones for when I officially act as Enforcer, and this set that I keep in the back of the SUV.” She didn’t reply, a look of polite inquiry on her face her only reaction. “I need more than one pair,” I explained. “They’re expensive and it takes time to get them made, time I may not have if I have to go after the thing from sub-five.” When she looked confused, I said, “I’m trying to say that I don’t want you to cut the sleeve. I can be healed of a wounded arm, but I can’t do without the fighting leathers.”
Persistently polite and reasonable sounding, she said, “Leathers are part of your expense account as part-time Enforcer and acting head of security. Why not order four or five sets?”
“Yeeeeah . . . ,” I drew out the word. “About that. Allowing Leo to provide them for me is binding me to the MOC a little more closely than I want.”
Puzzlement in her tone, she said, “It’s common knowledge that you can’t be bound. Our master tried and was not successful.”
“That’s not—” I stopped and looked up at the camera in the corner. There was a mic hidden in it, so whoever was on coms would hear, meaning Alex and a stranger, neither of whom I wanted in on my business. Zelda seemed to catch my discretionary look up and went silent. The elevator stopped and, without responding to her comment, I followed Zelda off the elevator to a floor and hallway I didn’t go to often—the living quarters of the permanent staff.
One of the rooms was Del’s, and I didn’t so much remember which room that was as pick up her scent as we passed it. A scent of heartbreak clung to the air. Del was suffering as Leo’s primo, and I had no idea how to help her through it. It was girly stuff, like love and blood-servant stuff. Binding stuff. Sex-with-vampire—ick—stuff.
Zelda paused outside a door and, her voice pitched low so only I would hear, said, “There is job-bound, there is emotion-bound, and there is blood-bound—all kinds of binding. Then there is stupid-bound. In this case, I think you’re stupid-bound. Even I can smell your blood.” She opened the door and entered the room, leaving me standing in the hallway with a frown pulling down on my face.
Stupid-bound? I looked at my hand. It was worse. It was gonna hurt like crazy to pull the sleeve off. And there was gonna be blood and that clear wound fluid—serous fluid, that was it—all over the inside silk. I’d never get the blood-scent out, and every vamp around would be able to smell me coming. She was right. I wasn’t thinking clearly. Stupid-bound.
I stepped into the room and closed the door behind me. There were three people waiting in the room: Zelda, another human female whom I recognized as Titan Two . . . and the vamp I was expecting, Edmund Hartley. He was slight, quiet, watchful, and nondescript. A vamp no one would notice in a crowded room. But his history and personal experience said that he was much more than that.