Tears ran down his face and she got worried. “Is my mother all right?”

“Why are you worried about her? My goddess, Helena! She’s fine. She’s in another room, resting.” He burst from his chair and started to pace.

“Why are you mad at me?”

“You. Could. Have. Died. I was pinned down and you looked all right. You didn’t even fall, hell, you didn’t even register pain at first or I’d have felt it through the link. And then you were gushing blood and I couldn’t get to you fast enough and fuck fuck fuck, Helena. I can’t even think about how scared I was.”

“I’m sorry.” And she was. She could only imagine if it were him who’d been shot and how that would have made her feel.

“I know you are. But you’d do it again.”

“Well, next time I’d shield myself better. Obviously.”

He muttered something in his language and she caught a few choice words about crazy women.

Lark burst into the room at that moment and threw herself at Helena, who screamed at the feeling of her leg and hip being jostled. Faine lifted Lark up and off and there was some snarling when Simon came in and saw this happening.

Lark barked orders at them both as a nurse rushed in and, undeterred by the two giant men and the blue-haired woman, gave them all a lecture about jostling, alarming, or disturbing Helena in any way that was detrimental to her recovery.

“They attacked four enclaves. They killed kids, Hellie. Little ones.”

“I thought we agreed this could wait?” Simon sighed.

“I told you not to say anything.” Faine inserted himself between the sisters.

“She needs to know. She’d want to know.”

“It’s too late anyway. I do know now. Tell me the rest.”

“There are riots in Seattle, Bakersfield, Miami, Cincinnati, Boston and Chicago. The Others are on the warpath and every time the humans push, we push back harder. It’s a bloody damn mess. The data sticks you brought back were full of stuff. Plans to attack different cities and groups. Information about the purchase of large amounts of explosives. Biological weapons! They had this silver stuff, like from a damned movie, it exploded and sent tiny shards of silver into the air. They tried to use it on some Vampires up in Alaska. But no one ever heard from them again.”

Ha. She bet. Vampires didn’t mess around.

“What’s going on in DC?” Her tongue was thick and felt two sizes too big for her mouth. Whatever substance they had her on really did a number on her. But the horrible pain in her leg and hip when Lark had come in had settled back on a far distant shore so she was all right with that.

“Those plates you sent? On the trucks that attacked the enclave? One was registered to a bigwig in PURITY. PURITY and Humans First have been tied to multiple attacks. Tosh is urging the president to finally make a stand. He and several others on Capitol Hill have demanded an investigation into what part Senator Hayes played in all this. His name is all over that data. Bastard. There’ve been some pings from the spells you laid at his office and at PURITY, but there’s not a lot we can use legally. We did find the location of a few of the turned witches and a mage or two who escaped. The wolves are handling that for us.” Lark’s smile was vicious.

“Good. But what’s wrong with the president? The country is on fire and she hasn’t spoken yet?”

“Her chief of staff did about two hours ago. He announced she’d be issuing a statement later today. The governors of the states involved have spoken out, urging calm. Right now it looks like humans, most of them anyway, are coming down against PURITY for this mess.”

It was hard to stay awake. Faine took her hand and squeezed gently. “Rest. You’re doped up, alamah.”

“I have stuff . . .”

He smiled and kissed her. “You will have stuff when you wake up again. Until then, your sister and her big mouth will have things handled.”

TOSHIO had had enough with waiting. He’d been standing around in an anteroom of the Oval Office for the last hour. And before that, another hour earlier in the day. He’d left and given multiple press conferences demanding an investigation of Marlon Hayes.

He’d been kept apprised of Helena’s condition as well as the status of the thousands of Others and humans who’d been injured in the riots. Insanity, all of it. And the president had remained silent and unreachable behind closed doors with the attorney general and White House staff for most of the day.

But he was totally and completely done with this nonsense. When the door opened and the attorney general came out, Tosh simply swept past the secretary and into the Oval Office.

“Madam President, I’d like a moment of your time.”

Those sharp green eyes of hers landed on him. “Senator Sato, I’m really quite busy.”

“Pardon my bluntness here, Madam President, but you’ve been too busy to meet with me for months as this situation has grown worse and worse.” He tossed multiple newspapers and sheets of paper detailing all the riots onto her desk. “How much longer will you remain silent on this? How many more children will die because you’re afraid to anger PURITY? They didn’t vote for you to begin with, they’ll never be all right with a female leader. But millions of Americans did. You won this office. The nation is starving for leadership right now. Be a leader. Do your job.”

He knew he was going too far, but someone needed to say it.

“Senator Sato, I’ve got this.” She stood. “I wanted the people of this country to work this out. I wanted them to have a national discussion on this so we could move forward without large segments of the population feeling they’d been ignored or steamrolled. I waited too long. I know that. My biggest mistake was in trusting those in the House and Senate to manage this in an appropriate way.”

“Senator Hayes has betrayed his office. He’s got to be dealt with.”

She raised a brow his way. “You’re not unbiased in this matter.”

“I don’t need to be. I didn’t truck with terrorists and aid them in attacking American citizens. He did.”

She shrugged. “You’re right of course. The attorney general has sent people over to have him picked up and brought in for questioning. He’ll be investigated, as will others who worked with PURITY. You know, of course, that a lot of the evidence we’ve been given is inadmissible.”

He did. Damning though it might be, the collection of the data couldn’t have been legal. But there were enough people whose lives were on the line at this point. He’d been a lawyer long enough, he knew how it worked. Someone would roll first and that would lead to more people doing the same.

“People will turn on one another. We’ll get him that way.”

“The attorney general agrees with that assessment.” She grabbed her jacket and put it on. “I’ve got a statement to make to the American people. Come along if you’d like to watch.”

He most certainly did.

FAINE turned the television in her room on and everyone gathered to watch.

The president walked to the podium, looked into the camera and spoke.

My fellow Americans. The last six months have been revolutionary for not only our nation, but for the entire world as we thought we knew it. With the revelation of the Others, we realized our world was far more complicated than we’d imagined.

And the Others, our neighbors and friends, were reeling from the unexpected and horrible deaths of those in their communities. We struggled as a nation to understand this new reality. To find a way to balance our beliefs and social rules with what we now knew.

I have held off speaking during this time because I wanted a national discussion to take place. An honest exchange of ideas. And I want to say how proud I’ve been of most Americans in that department. Most of you, no matter your personal beliefs, have been able to talk about these issues without harming anyone else.