I looked at Molly, who was curled into a fetal position and shaking, still breathing hard.

“Get out,” I said.

“How will you—”

“Thomas,” I said, and my voice was slightly stronger, hot with anger. “You could have hurt Molly. You could have killed her. My only defense is down here babysitting you instead of standing guard. Get out. You’re no good to me like this.”

Mouse let out another warning growl.

“I’m sorry,” Thomas said again. “I’m sorry.”

Then he eased around Mouse and departed, his feet making little sound as he went up the stairs.

I sat there for a moment, hurting in practically every sense. My entire body tingled with unpleasant pinpricks, as though it had gone to sleep and was only now feeling the return of circulation. The soulfire. I must have pushed too much of it through me. Terror- adrenaline must have kept me rolling for a little while, but after that, I’d collapsed into pure passivity.

Terror on behalf of my brother and Molly had given me back my voice, my will, but it might not last. It hurt to sit upright. It hurt to breathe. Moving anything hurt, and not moving anything hurt.

So, I supposed, I might as well be moving.

I tried to get up, but my left leg wasn’t having any of it, and I was lucky not to end up on the floor. Without being told, Mouse got up and hurried into my room. I heard some heavy thumping as he rustled around under my bed, which had required him to lift it onto his massive shoulders. He came out a moment later, carrying one of my crutches, left over from injuries past, in his teeth.

“Who’s a good dog?” I said.

He wagged his tail at me and went back for the other one. Once I had them both, I was able to get up and gimp my way over to the kitchen. Tylenol 3 is good stuff, but it is also illegal stuff to have without a prescription if you aren’t Canadian, so it was currently buried in my godmother’s insane garden. I took a big dose of Tylenol the original, since I didn’t have my Tylenol 3 or its lesser-known, short-lived cousin, Tylenol Two: The Pain Strikes Back.

I realized that I was telling Mouse all of this out loud as I thought it, which had the potential to become awkward if it should become a habit. Once that was done, and I’d drunk a third glass of water, I moved over to Molly and checked her pulse. It was steady. Her breathing had slowed. Her eyes were slightly open and unfocused.

I muttered under my breath. The damned girl was going to get herself killed. This was the second time she’d come very close to being fed upon by a vampire, though admittedly the first had been in a vicarious fashion. Still, it couldn’t be good for her to be hit with it again. And if Thomas had actually begun to feed on her, there was no telling what it might do to her.

“Molly,” I said. Then louder, “Molly!”

She drew in a sudden little breath and blinked up at me.

“You’re smearing paint all over my rug,” I said wearily.

She sat up, looking down at herself and at the green paint smeared all over her. She looked up at me again, dazed. “What just happened?”

“You soulgazed Thomas. You both lost perspective. He nearly ate you.” I poked her with a crutch. “Mouse saved you. Get up.”

“Right,” she said. “Right.” She stood up very slowly, wincing and rubbing at one wrist. “Um. Is . . . is Thomas all right?”

“Mouse nearly killed him,” I said. “He’s scared, ashamed, half out of his mind with hunger, and gone.” I thumped her leg lightly with my crutch. “What were you thinking?”

Molly shook her head. “If you’d seen . . . I mean, if you’d seen him. Seen how lonely he was. Felt how much pain he was in, how empty he feels, Harry . . .” She teared up again. “I’ve never felt anything so horrible in my life. Or seen anyone braver.”

“Apparently, you figured you’d help him out by letting him rip the life out of you.”

She faced me for a moment, then flushed and looked away. “He . . . It doesn’t get ripped out. It gets . . .” She blushed. “I think the only phrase that works is ‘licked away.’ Like licking the frosting off of a cake. Or . . . or the candy coating off of one of those lollipops.”

“Except that as soon as you find out how many licks it takes him to get to your creamy center, you’re dead,” I said. “Or insane. Which is somewhat chilling to consider, given the things you can do. So I repeat.” I thumped her leg with the tip of my crutch on each word. “What. Were. You. Thinking.”

“It won’t happen again,” she said, but I saw her shiver as she said it.

I grunted skeptically, staring down at her.

Molly wasn’t ready. Not for something like we were about to do. She had too much confidence and not nearly enough sound judgment.

It was frustrating. By the time I had been her age, I had finished my apprenticeship in private investigation and was opening my own business. And I had been living under the Doom of Damocles for the better part of a decade.

Of course, I had an experience advantage on Molly. I had made my first dark compact, with my old master Justin DuMorne, when I was ten or eleven, though I hadn’t known what I was getting into at the time. I’d made a second one with the Leanansidhe when I was sixteen. And I’d wound up under round-the-clock observation from the paranoid Warden Morgan.

It had been a brief lifetime for me, at that point, but absolutely chock-full of lessons in the school of hard knocks. I had made plenty of dumb decisions of my own by then, and somehow managed to survive them.

But I also hadn’t been dallying around in situations as hot as this one was. A troll under a bridge or an upset spirit or two was as bad as it got. It had prepared me for what I faced today.

Molly was facing it cold. She’d been burned once before, but it had taken me more than one attempt to learn that lesson.

She might not survive her next test.

She looked up at me and asked, “What?”

“We need to move,” I said. “I met the Eebs while you three were playing with the Ik’k’ . . . with the Ik’koo-koo-kachoo . . .” I scrunched up my nose, trying to remember the name of the creature, and couldn’t. “With the Ick,” I said, “and they were charming in an entirely amoral, murderous sort of way. Thomas was right: They’ll be after me, looking for an opening. We’re going.”

“Where?”

“St. Mary’s,” I said. “The Red Court can’t walk on holy ground, and Susan knows I’ve used it as a fallback position before. She and Martin can catch up to me there. And I’ve got to get some rest.”

She rose, nodding. “Okay. Okay, I’ll get you a change of clothes, all right?”

“Call a cab first,” I said. “And pack the Tylenol. And some of Mouse’s food.”

“Right. Okay.”

I leaned on my crutches and stayed standing while she bustled around the room. I didn’t want to risk sitting down again. The Tylenol had taken the worst edge off the pain, and my thoughts, though tired and sluggish, seemed to be firmly connected to my body again. I didn’t want to risk relaxing into lassitude.

“Say that five times fast,” I murmured, and tried. It was something to do that I couldn’t screw up too badly.

A while later, Mouse made a whuffing sound from the top of the stairs outside, and Molly plodded up them wearily. “Cab’s here, Harry,” she called.

I got myself moving. Stairs on crutches isn’t fun, but I’d done it before. I took my time, moving slowly and steadily.

“Look out!” she yelled.

A bottle smashed against the top interior wall of the stairwell, and its contents splashed all over the place, fire spreading over them as they did. Ye olde Molotov cocktail, still a formidable weapon even after a century of use. There’s more to one of those things than simple burning fuel. Fire that hot sucks the oxygen out of the air around it, especially when it has a nice, dank stairway to use as a chimney. And you needn’t get splattered by the spilling fuel to get burned. When a fire is hot enough, it’ll burn exposed flesh from inches or feet away, turning the atmosphere around it into an oven.