Chapter 5

Hospitals were not fun.

My family and I tended to be completely healthy up until the second we were dead; we went out old as hell and wicked as they came. It was a nice quality; saved on health insurance. So this was my first visit to one of the places, and hopefully it would be the last. I waited four hours to get the dirt and bits of asphalt washed out of the raw stretch that was my back by a nurse who thought “gentle touch” was the slogan for some sort of toilet paper. Leo sat with me the entire time, alternately shaking his head and muttering, “This is what happens,” and eyeing a blond doctor walking by with intriguing shadows in her violet eyes. Secrets. Leo was a sucker for a secret. For that matter so was I, but certainly not now.

“Thanks for the ‘I told you so,’ Grandma. Pain pills. You have the pain pills?” I asked as I slowly slid on the scrub top the nurse had given me to replace my shredded one.

“I have the pain pills.” He shook a paper bag at me, having gone to the hospital pharmacy while they finished salving my back. “And the antibacterial cream. They didn’t have any anti-fuckup pills. Maybe we can check with a Canadian pharmacy online.”

“Ass.” I didn’t put much into the insult. He was right. “And you didn’t even look when I put on the top. I know we’re not going there, but you could at least boost the ego and look.”

His stoic lips twitched. “I looked.”

“Thank you. It’s been a bitch of a night. I lost my strategic skills, almost lost my friends. I’d hate to think I’d lost my sex appeal too.” I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror over the sink in the curtained-off ER cubicle at Desert Springs Hospital. Smeared mascara, absent lipstick, curls stained and coated with demon residue at the ends. And a back that looked like roadkill, but at least that didn’t show now. I smiled breezily at him. “Pucker up and get some of this.”

He snorted. “Tempting, but as you said, that’s not us, and the fact that you smell like demon isn’t helping. That”—he closed the magazine on his knee—“is not a good smell.”

At that moment, before I could take offense—and I would have—my cell phone rang. It was Griffin. “Zeke?” I said immediately. “Is he all right?”

Griffin’s exhausted voice returned. “He’s on a ventilator, but should be off in a few days. He has a chest tube and has gotten two transfusions so far, but they say he’ll be good as new in a few weeks. He’ll be up and taking candy from babies in no time.”

To be fair, that kid had stolen that candy from some other child first. It wasn’t his candy to begin with. Zeke was merely repossessing stolen goods. That he kept it taught a valuable lesson to the victim about being more careful not to leave your candy lying around.

And Zeke, well, Zeke liked his candy.

“Good,” I said, exhaling. “Good. Now go to sleep yourself. And, Griffin, you know you’re the strongest empath the House has. Work on it or it’ll do you more harm than good.” Empaths were rare among humans and the Houses tended to recruit every one of them they could find, but none was close to Griffin’s level.

“I know. I made things worse tonight. If you hadn’t been there . . . shit.” He didn’t want to think about that possibility and neither did I.

“Go to sleep,” I repeated. “I’m going home now and doing the same.”

“Trixa,” he said quietly, slowly, “will there be scars?”

It took me a second to grasp what he was asking. “Oh. On my back?” I laughed, winced as the pain spiked through the cotton wool of the pain pills the nurse had already given me, then laughed again. “Griff, I don’t care about that. If a guy wouldn’t want me because I had scars, why would I want his superficial son of a bitch ass? Now go to bed, all right? And call me in the morning to give me an update on Zeke.”

“I will.” He hesitated. “You’re sure about the scars?”

“Sweetie, I’m not half as vain as you. Sleep,” I ordered, then disconnected.

“Vain enough to want me to sneak a look,” Leo drawled as he discarded the magazine and stood.

“Well, I’m not vain, but I’m not dead either,” I retorted, sliding off the gurney. The shock that ran from my feet to my back was bearable. Yes, pain pills were my friend.

In the car, Leo sat behind the wheel for a few silent seconds and then turned and kissed my temple. “You have to be more careful,” he said soberly. “You have to be on your game.”

“I know. I do. Those were high-level demons out there—but I was cocky too.” I shook my head. “It’s not like me.”

He snorted and started the car. “It’s exactly like you. It always has been. And you’ve always gotten away with it. I hope this time’s no different.”

Back at my apartment I couldn’t shower without removing the medicine from my back; at least that was what grizzly-paw nurse had told me. I turned the taps until the water barely fizzled out and I washed my front, slowly and carefully. I bent forward and washed my hair, then stepped outside of the curtain wrapped around the claw-foot tub into a warm towel held by Leo. He made sure it draped only over the front of me and I held it to my shoulders. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I closed my eyes as he dried my hair with a smaller towel and combed it out, careful with the tangles, and I had a ton. The price you paid for wildly curly hair. That and humidity is never your friend. But soon it was its usual damp cascade of waves and corkscrew curls that followed a bath or shower.

He touched the pale gold skin beside my almond-shaped eye and then touched one of my curls, a deep black one with a streak of red and a hint of bronze, pulled at it lightly, and watched as the spiral sprang back. “How can you be so many things at once and make it all work?”

I leaned forward and kissed him beside his mouth . . . kissed him for his help and a little more. “Why are you asking silly questions?” I tugged at a long strand of his hair before sliding under the covers nude, lying on my stomach with the sheet and coverlet only up to my waist. I wanted nothing but air touching my back tonight.

I watched as Leo went to my closet for one of my many spare shotguns and sat in a chair a little too puffy for his tastes, I was sure, but the reds and golds of the cloth suited him. “Babysitting?” I asked.

“You know Solomon was behind this.” He looked over the Browning, semi-automatic and self-loading. He nodded approvingly. It was new. An impulse buy from a basement with a lot of unpleasant men, one of whom didn’t appreciate me or my favorite copper-colored boots. He was so damn lucky his blood came out of the fine stitching or I might have gone back to that basement to try out my new purchase.

Just to scare him, of course.

Boots were just boots, not worth a human life. Although, technically, without DNA proof, I wasn’t jumping on that guy being on the human bandwagon just yet.

I didn’t need DNA to know Solomon wasn’t human . . . at least not all of the time.

I doubled the pillow with my arm and rested my head against it. “Probably. No matter how interested he is in me, he might be getting tired of our games and I’m sure the other demons tease him about his human pest problem, pyromaniac cockroaches.” My lips curved. “Poor Solomon. No one will do lunch with him anymore or take his calls. I doubt he even makes his soul quota, what with his obsessing over us all the time.”

But it wasn’t just us or just me. Solomon had another obsession, one I thought we shared. A big powerful demon here these past few years, rumblings at Eden House . . . Solomon had come to Vegas for a reason. Hadn’t we all?

The Light of Life.

We all wanted it, only who had it now? Someone had wasted his time torturing that poor old caver. If the demons or the House had it, we’d know about it. I’d know about it. The heavens themselves would know about it. But no one knew. It was still out there. I still had my chance to get it and make things right.