We were just a couple blocks from the hospital.
“No. I want to see Violet.” And if she was awake, I planned to ask her a few questions. Like if she had been making a move on the Authority, trying to strong-arm them into something and holding the disks as collateral. She was smart and she was strong. It would not surprise me to find out the business associates who were angry with her over releasing the data on the disks were actually members of the Authority, maybe even Sedra herself.
And the way Kevin felt for Violet, the love he would not admit to, might just be enough to make him take her side. Might be enough to make him fight Sedra’s bodyguard for her.
Love did strange things to people. Left them weak, made them stronger than ever before, or destroyed them.
Shame drove into the parking structure and wound his way up the concrete ramps until he found an open space.
“You coming in with me?” I asked.
He lit the cigarette and sucked down the smoke. “I’m not letting you go in alone.”
I stopped, my hand on the door handle. “Why?”
“That’s the way it is.”
“Talk, Flynn.” I wanted to know whom he was working for, or spying for. His mother? Jingo Jingo?
“I owe Zay. For letting you down. For letting him down. I should have known. Seen it coming. Chase is such a bitch.” He opened the door and blew the smoke out in a thin stream.
Oh.
“Yeah, well, we all could have done something differently. But we didn’t. Now we go forward,” I said, “ ’ cause looking back won’t fix anything. Stay here—it won’t take me long to check on Violet.”
“Wrong. Chase and Greyson are still loose. Still on the hunt. Still looking for you.”
“They got Zay. They don’t want me.” But as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew it was not true. Greyson wanted my dad, the rest of him that was still inside me. What they did to Zay just got him out of the way so they could do what they really wanted.
“Holy shit,” I said. “They attacked Zay because they want to get to me.”
“I swear, you are denser than lead,” Shame muttered. “Of course they wanted him out of the way to get to you. And they wanted him out of the way because he is the guardian of the gates. The one and only magic user who can use light and dark magic to break the barrier between life and death. Knocking him out means that when the gates blow open—and I’d bet my left ball they’re going to—he won’t be able to close them.”
“There are other Closers,” I said. “Terric, Victor, Nikolai, and Romero, more of the Seattle crew.”
“None of them use magic like Zayvion Jones. No one does. Not even Victor. Or Terric.”
An image, a flash of Chase and Greyson casting magic together, using magic in ways I had never seen, making it go against its own laws, rolled through my mind.
“Soul Complements,” I whispered.
“What about it?”
“Chase and Greyson. That’s why they could use magic like that. That was the only thing that could hurt Zayvion.”
“Part right. Soul Complements let them screw with the laws of magic. But they threw around light and dark magic. And they could do that because Greyson is a Necromorph—half alive, half dead. Whatever he did to Chase so she could do it too—his own Soul Complement . . .” He blew out smoke again. “It makes me wonder how much that bloodsucker would burn in sunlight. He’s using a hell of a lot of dark magic.”
“No. Greyson didn’t use magic. He had to use Tomi to cast Blood magic for him.”
“And now he has Chase to act as his hands. Happily ever after, evil-style, in their evil little hovel with the evil little picket fence around the evil little garden of poisonous weeds and dead bugs. Evil cookies, evil nooky—not that I have anything against those last two.” He got out of the car and I did too.
“Don’t you take anything seriously?”
“No,” he lied. “It makes me interesting.” He started off toward the elevator that would take us to ground level.
Elevator. Great.
But before I closed the door, I leaned back in the car. “You be a good boy, Stone,” I said. “Sleep. Okay?”
Stone cooed but didn’t move one granite muscle.
I shut the door. And strode across the parking structure of gray, gray, gray, my boots cuffing a loud rhythm against the concrete ceiling.
Shame waited by the elevator, hood up, his shoulders hunched, his hands in his pockets, the discarded cigarette sending up a tendril of smoke at his feet. He didn’t face the elevator doors. He faced me. Good to know he was keeping an eye out for trouble.
Just as I stopped next to him, the doors opened with a horror-sweet ding.
“After you,” he said.
Okay, I could do this. I’d done it plenty times before. “Are there stairs?”
“Fuck stairs,” he said. “Too slow. And too damn much work.”
I gritted my teeth. Couldn’t get my feet to move.
“Need a push?” he asked.
“No.”
A hand slammed into my shoulder and a body followed it. I stumbled into the elevator. “What the hell?”
“Your phobia was saying no, no, but your feet were saying yes.”
He stabbed the button and stood in the corner nearest the doors, facing me.
“If you ever listen to my feet again, I will end you, Flynn.”
He glanced at me, grinned. “Ooh. You’re kinda hot when you’re angry. I suddenly see why Jones likes to make you mad and then tumble you on the mats.”
“Don’t. Just don’t. Or they’ll have to scrape you up off this floor with a dustpan.”
He opened his mouth, thought better of it, and instead stood there and whistled.
Whistled. Using up all the air in the tiny, tiny room, filling it up with sound so that there wasn’t even room for me to hear my own thoughts. There wasn’t enough room for me to breathe. I closed my eyes and tried to picture open fields, blue skies, oceans, deserts. Big horizons, big space, big air.
A hand grabbed my upper arm and tugged, hard, propelling me toward the open doors.
I didn’t stumble this time. We were at the street level on a sidewalk covered by the overhang of the parking structure.
Shame made a tsk sound. “And you were going to do this alone.”
“Alone I would have taken the stairs. You are seriously pissing me off.”
“You’re welcome.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
He started off toward the doors. “Good thing about anger. It keeps you going when nothing else will.”
He’d done it on purpose. Shoved me when I didn’t even want to be touched, irritated me. My heartbeat was up, but other than that, I was thinking clearly. And not at all freaked-out from the elevator ride, though I should be. Usually it took me a couple minutes to shake off the panic from the phobia.
“You’re a real jerk, you know?”
He smiled and it looked like it hurt. “I am whatever it takes to get the job done.”
We stepped into the hospital and checked with reception to see where Violet and Kevin had been taken. Both had been admitted. Violet was in the prenatal ward three floors up. Kevin was in the intensive care unit, and visitors were not allowed. They were doing what they could to tend his magic-induced injuries with what little magic they had left.
Shit. We wouldn’t be able to get in to see him unless we wanted to storm the place. I weighed my options. Sneak in and somehow be lucky enough to see if Kevin was okay, or check on Violet.
Dad pushed at the backs of my eyes. Yeah, well, I knew what his vote would be.
“Think Kevin will be okay?” I asked Shame. We were standing shoulder to shoulder so the receptionist couldn’t hear us.
He tipped his head, thinking it over. “If he made it this far, there’s a good chance he’ll recover. Several of the Authority doctors work here. They’d know him, and know what to do with severe magical injuries.”
&
nbsp; I nodded. That would have to be good enough for now. I didn’t know a lot about Kevin’s personal life, like if he had family in the area. I pulled my book out of my pocket and made a note to check on him tomorrow, if I could. I walked back over to the receptionist’s desk.
“Where are the stairs?” I asked. She pointed down the hall and I started off in that direction.
“You’re kidding, right?” Shame asked. “There’s a perfectly good elevator right over there.”
“Take the elevator. I don’t care.”
Shame scowled. “How about I just make you angry again? That coat makes you look fat.”
“Even more reason to take the stairs.”
“Fucking hell.” He sighed dramatically. “I hate you, Beckstrom.”
“Hold on to that,” I said. “You know, because anger will get you there.”
Shame rolled his shoulders and I heard more bone grind than I should. Like a fricking walking corpse, he still had his hood of his coat up, the shadows catching moss green against his sallow skin.
Maybe I should make him check into the hospital. Maybe he was sicker than I thought. Maybe the magic Chase had used on him, and the magic he had used to help me save Zayvion, had done something more permanent than he wanted to admit.
I found the door to the stairs and pushed it open. It was only three flights up, and I did that every day at home. But I was a little worried about Shame.
An elevator probably would be his best choice. “You know I won’t get killed between here and the third floor,” I said.
“Yep. Because I’m gonna be there to protect you. Walk.”
I shook my head and started up the stairs. I did not need his protection. There was no magic, so it wasn’t like someone would magically attack me. Which meant I could get killed only the old-fashioned way—with guns, knives, strangling, beating. Okay, maybe it was nice to have Shame with me. I could handle myself just fine physically—even better now that I’d been training—but it never hurt to have an ally in a fight.
We didn’t say anything as we climbed. Shame walked behind me, and I listened for his breathing, which remained good, strong, and his footsteps, equal to my pace.
He didn’t sound like someone who hovered one breath away from the shambling dead. Shame knew how to handle pain.
“So which doctors are a part of the Authority?” I asked on the second floor.
“Not saying.”
“Why? Is it that big of a secret?”
“Enough that I don’t want to talk about it in a stairwell with this much echo. Would have told you in a nice quiet elevator, though.”
I grinned. “Bitch, bitch, bitch.”
We made it to the top of the stairwell and I opened the door, then followed the signs to the reception area.
Shame wasn’t breathing hard, didn’t even seem like he’d broken a sweat. He did, however, shove his hands in the pockets of his coat and hunch up his shoulders like he was enduring a hailstorm.
I gave him a questioning look.
“It’s just . . . babies.” He said it like most people say snakes or spiders or tax collectors.
I had no idea what his problem was. “You’re afraid of babies?”
“Shut up.” He strode past me to the reception desk and, I noted, stayed far enough away that the light wouldn’t quite clear the shadows beneath his hood. “Violet Beckstrom,” he said. “Could we see her?”
The woman at the counter looked sixteen, the tight curls of her black hair pulled back in a flowered headband that make her deep brown skin burnish gold.
“She’s resting. There isn’t a restriction on visitors, though. Are you family?”
“I am.” I stepped ahead of Shame. “And he’s a friend.”
“She’s been given some painkillers, so she might be sleeping. We’d like her to get as much rest as possible, so if she is asleep, you could come back later.” She pointed down one of the halls that branched off from the main hall. “Down there. Room 3243.”
“Thank you,” I said.
We headed down the hall and I noted Shame walked closer to me, almost brushing my shoulder with his.
“Don’t worry,” I whispered. “I won’t let the scary babies hurt you.”
He didn’t say anything. Which was weird. I had no idea what had gotten into him.
And then we passed the huge glass window beyond which was the nursery. Shame’s body language changed. He went from stiff-shouldered and tense, to relaxed, loose, like a runner who was warmed up and ready for the road.
The emotion that rolled off him was hunger.
Holy shit.
“You aren’t afraid of the babies. You want to . . . eat them? What the hell?” I was still whispering, but that did not lessen the horror in my voice.
“It’s not that I want to eat them—well, okay, maybe a little.” He grinned at me. “Oh, put the Bible down, Beckstrom. I’m not going to hurt babies. It’s . . . it’s just so much life around here. Life, get it?” He tipped his head down so the shadows cleared his eyes, and I was relieved to see Shamus behind those eyes. Sane, clear. “I’m on some short supply of that right now. And babies are full of fresh, beautiful life energy.”
“Tell me you wouldn’t.”
“I wouldn’t. Not in a million years. Not if my life depended on it. Not for anyone. Not for anything. Not ever.”
And I knew he meant it. Which was good. I did not want to have to fight him. Again. But I would for babies.
We were still walking. I put my hand on his arm, and could feel the bunch of muscle against bone. He might promise to never take the life energy from the babies, but it wasn’t an easy thing to resist.
“Is this because of the fight?” I asked. “What you and Terric did to help me keep Zay alive? Is it a part of dark magic?”
“No, it’s just a part of Death magic. Energy transference, life transference, carried on the magic. And the side effect that comes with giving too much energy before you draw on magic again, or reclaim that energy.”
“Eating babies is a side effect of Death magic?”
“Like dry mouth.”
“Is a disgusting sense of humor a side effect too?”
“No, that’s all me.”
“Shame.” I stopped. Pulled on his arm.
He pivoted toward me, his head down again, slanting me a gaze though the shadows. “Yes, Beckstrom?”
“Do you need energy? Life energy?”
“Not need. Want.” He pulled his arm away. “I couldn’t take it anyway. No magic to carry it on. Can we keep walking?”
We could and we did, passing the babies, and stopping about midway down the hall at Violet’s room. “You coming in here?” I asked.
“Afraid I’ll gnaw on your stepmother?”
I made a face at him and opened the door as quietly as I could. Violet was in the bed. Someone had brushed her hair back, revealing a bruise that covered her forehead and spread palm-wide down the left side of her face. She was in a hospital gown, an extra blanket tucked across her rounded figure, monitors and an IV hooked up to her.
Something inside me twisted, hurt. I felt, more than heard, my dad’s moan, his sorrow. It was good enough to know she was alive. Probably better if I didn’t go in to see her. Better for me. For my control over my dad. And maybe for Shame too.
Violet stirred, opened her eyes, squinted, without her glasses, over at us. “Allie,” she said softly, and a little slurred. “Come in, please.”
So much for walking away. I stepped in. “Hi,” I said.
“I won’t stay long. This is Shamus Flynn. He drove me here.”
Shame held up one hand. “Hello, Mrs. Beckstrom. I could step out if you two want some privacy.”
What did you know? Flynn had manners.
“It’s fine,” she said. Violet pursed her lips, as if trying to feel her teeth. “I’m numb.”
“Something to help you sleep, I think. Has the doctor talked to you?”
“She said I should sleep.” She clo
sed her eyes, and the green lines on the monitor jumped before it settled again. I wasn’t sure what the doctors were monitoring, but I knew it had something to do with magic as well as her physical injuries.
“I’ll let you rest. I just wanted to make sure you’re okay, that the baby’s okay.”
Violet frowned. “Baby?” She pressed her fingers against her eyes. “They said I might go into early labor.” She pulled her hands away from her eyes and cradled her stomach. Her eyes opened and the whites were red and glossy from more than just rubbing. She’d been crying. “Poor little thing. There was so much magic in the room. I can still feel it in me. In the baby.” The tremor in her voice gave away her fear. She sounded small. Frightened.
I put my hand on her hand.
Dizziness washed over me. Dad pressed against the backs of my eyes, against the edges of my mind, pushing forward.
I couldn’t let him. Couldn’t trust what he would say to her. It never went well when he tried to run my life, or my body.
Stop it, I thought to him. You’re dead. Stay dead. It’s not going to help her if she thinks anything else right now. Don’t mess with her.
He did not stop pushing.
“I know you’re going to be fine,” I said to Violet.
“Both of you are going to be fine. The doctors are looking after you. Good doctors.” I glanced at Shame, and he nodded.
She looked down at her stomach. “I don’t want to lose the baby. It’s all I have left. Of him. Of Daniel.” The last word came out with a longing. “He’d be so angry I hurt our baby.” She made a sound that was half sob.
Dad shoved. Hard.
Like falling off a curb, I stumbled and landed in the back of my head. I could still see Violet. Could still hear her, but I could not feel my hand on hers. Which wasn’t a big surprise, since I couldn’t feel any of the rest of my body either.
“I—,” Dad said through me.
No, no no. Don’t. Dad, don’t, I thought.
“I know,” he said, getting the hang of my mouth far too quickly for my comfort, “that I—that he—married you because he saw your strength. You know how much he loves—loved you. You know he would be proud of you. And he regrets—would regret not being here for you, to see the baby, to hold you both.”