Jada’s sidhe-seers took shifts coming, sat grimly with us and kept us updated on conditions at the abbey, which I barely heard, staring at the bed, lost in sadness deep enough to drown.
Barrons intermittently came upstairs, checking with grim dark eyes to see if anything had changed.
Jada lay unmoving in the bed, as if carved from stone, holding on to the charred stuffed animal as though her life depended on it. I was surprised Ryodan hadn’t dropped it. He’d been burned beyond belief but somehow managed to hang on to both Jada and the stuffed bear with which she was obsessed—and keep them both from burning. Any other man would have dropped the thing in the fire.
Finally, I was alone with her, and I moved to sit on the bed. As I pulled the covers up, the glint of Cruce’s cuff caught my eye and I suddenly couldn’t get it off my arm fast enough.
She’d given it to me when she kept my spear. Hadn’t wanted me walking around unprotected, even then. And it had kept me safe from all harm in battle tonight.
It should have been on her arm.
There were so many should-have-beens.
I tried to pick up her arm to put the cuff on her wrist but I couldn’t break her death grip on Shazam. I laid it on the table next to the bed so when she woke up she could have it back.
I touched her hair softly, smoothing scorched auburn tendrils from her face. It was still pulled back in a ponytail but had slipped down to her nape, and I could see the natural curl in it. I smiled faintly, sadly. One day I’d like to see her wearing it curly and wild and free again.
I stroked her cheek, wiping away a smudge of tear-streaked soot, then got a washcloth from the bathroom and gently cleaned her face. I dampened her hair and smoothed it back. The water made it even springier, with little curls forming. She didn’t move at all.
“Dani,” I whispered. “I love you.”
Then I stretched out on the bed behind her, wrapped my arms around her, and held her like she was holding Shazam.
I didn’t know what to do, what else to say. Apologies were pointless. What was, was. Dani had always lived by the motto, “The past is past. The present is now, and that’s why it’s a present. ’Cause you got it, and you can do stuff with it!”
I pressed my cheek to her hair and whispered the same words against her ear that I’d heard her say earlier. Although I had no idea what they meant, they obviously meant something to her.
“I see you, yee-yee,” I said. “Come back. Don’t go away. Please don’t leave me.” I started to cry. “It’s safe here. We love you, Dani. Jada. Whoever you need to be. It’s okay. We don’t care. Just please don’t leave. I’ve got you, honey, I’ve got you.” I cried harder.
—
You never see it coming.
That final, fatal blow.
You think the shit has already hit the fan and exploded all over your face. You think things are so bad they can’t get any worse. You’re walking around tallying all the things that are wrong with your world when you discover you have no clue what’s really going on around you and you’ve only been seeing the tip of the iceberg that sank the Titanic—at the precise moment you hit the iceberg that sank the Titanic.
Hours later I went downstairs, moving woodenly, aching in every limb, head hurting, eyes swollen, nose stuffed solid.
Jada still wasn’t stirring, although twice in the past hour she’d opened her eyes. Both times she’d become aware of me and closed them instantly, either slipping back into unconsciousness or just plain shutting me out.
The bookstore was surprisingly quiet, and I ducked my head into the study to see how Ryodan was doing. He was alone, draped in shimmering cloth etched with glowing symbols, slumbering deeply.
I checked the front of the store, but it was empty so I poked my head out the back to see where everyone was. In the distance, down the alley to the right, I heard voices. I cocked my head, listening.
Barrons talking softly with someone.
I stepped out into the faint bruise of dawn, thinking that in just a few hours I was supposed to meet Alina and I wasn’t sure I was up to it. My heart was pulped. Dani was all I could think about. I was loath to leave her side for an hour or more, for any reason. I certainly couldn’t invite Alina here. Last thing I wanted was Jada being affected in any way by her presence.
I hurried down the alley and turned the corner but no one was there.
I kept walking, absently following the sound of Barrons’s voice, wondering why everyone had left the store. As I turned the next corner, I heard a dry chittering and glanced up.
The sky above me was thick with black-robed wraiths, gliding, soaring, rustling. Thanks to the Hunter, I now knew they were the Sweeper’s minions. And whatever the mysterious entity was, it was right, I was certainly broken. My heart was in pieces.
There were hundreds of them. I tipped back my head. Even more perched on the rooftops on both sides of the street. I glanced back at BB&B, barely able to make out the roof of the building, and was stunned to see that it, too, was completely covered in ghoulish carrion. I’d been so lost in thought that I hadn’t even looked up as I’d stepped out. They must have been perching up there in silence.
They weren’t silent now. Their chittering grew, became a sort of metallic screeching I’d never heard before as they looked from me to one another and back to me again.
“Well, shit,” I muttered as a lightbulb went off in my head. They could see me. And I knew why. “That damned cuff.”
I’d left it on the table near Jada. When he’d tried to sell me on it, V’lane told me the cuff of Cruce afforded protection against Fae and “assorted nasties.” Apparently my wraiths fell into the latter category. It made sense, when I thought about it. Ryodan said my ghouls had once stalked the king. I could see Cruce not wanting any skulking, spying creatures near him, and working to perfect a spell to prevent them from being able to find him. That explained why once I’d become visible again, they hadn’t instantly become my second skin. Jada had given me the cuff while I was cloaked by the Sinsar Dubh.
Now they were back. Great.
And something was still trying to decide if it wanted to “fix me.” Bloody great. Good luck with that.
I started to move forward, hesitated a moment, feeling that odd finger of a chill at my spine again, and glanced back at BB&B.
I decided to wait for Barrons to get back. It made me uneasy how quickly they found me once I’d taken off the cuff. I remembered them flying over the city, searching. Although they’d never appeared to present any real threat to me, had even slept on the same bed with me in Chester’s without ever doing anything to me, who knew when the rules might change in this crazy-ass world?