"Shouldn't I go to the hospital?" I asked muzzily when I woke up for the third time. I was back in bed, in my borrowed bedroom at Barrons Books and Baubles. I must have been out for a while. "I think things are broken."

"Your left arm, two ribs, and a few fingers. You're bruised all over. You were lucky." He pressed a cold compress to my cheek and I inhaled sharply with pain. "At least your cheekbone didn't get shattered when he struck you. I was afraid it had. You look a little worse for the wear, Ms. Lane."

"Hospital?" I tried again.

"They can't do anything for you that I haven't already done and would only ask you questions you can't answer. They'll blame me if I bring you in looking like this and you won't talk. I already set your arm and fingers," he said. "Your ribs will heal. Your face is going to look… well… yeah. You'll be fine in time, Ms. Lane."

That sounded ominous. "Mirror?" I managed weakly.

"Sorry," he said. "Don't have one handy."

I tried to move my left arm, wondering when and where Barrons had added casting to his seemingly endless resume. He hadn't. My arm was in a splint, as were several fingers on that hand. "Shouldn't I have casts?"

"Fingers do well with splints. The break in your arm isn't acute and if I cast you, it will only cause your muscles to atrophy. You must recover quickly. In case you haven't noticed, Ms. Lane, we've got a few problems on our hands."

I peered blearily up at him through my one good eye. My right one was swollen completely shut from the contusion on my cheek. He'd called me Mac back there in the warehouse, when Mallucé had hit me. Despite my doubts about Barrons, and my worries over whatever arrangement he had going on with the Shades, he'd been there for me when it mattered. He'd come after me. He'd saved my life. He'd patched me up and tucked me into bed and I knew he would watch over me until I was whole again. Under such circumstances, it seemed absurd to continue calling me Ms. Lane and I told him so. Perhaps it was time I did better than 'Barrons' myself. "You can call me Mac, er… Jericho. And thanks for saving me."

One dark brow rose and he looked amused. "Stick with Barrons, Ms. Lane," he said dryly. "You need rest. Sleep."

My eyes fluttered closed as if he'd spoken a spell over me and I drifted into a happy place, a hallway papered with smiling pictures of my sister. I knew who her killer was now, and I was going to avenge her. I was halfway home. I wouldn't call him Jericho if he didn't like it. But I wanted him to call me Mac, I insisted sleepily. I was tired of being four thousand miles away from home and feeling so alone. It would be nice to be on a first-name basis with somebody here. Anybody would do, even Barrons.

"Mac." He said my name and laughed. "What a name for something like you. Mac." He laughed again.

I wanted to know what he meant by that, but didn't have the strength to ask.

Then his fingers were light as butterflies on my battered cheek and he was speaking softly, but it wasn't in English. It sounded like one of those dead languages they use in the kind of movies I used to channel-surf through quickly—and now regret not having watched at least one or two of because I probably would have been a whole lot better prepared for all of this if I had.

I think he kissed me then. It wasn't like any kiss I'd ever felt before.

And then it was dark. And I dreamed.

CHAPTER 25

"No, not like that. You're gooping it on. The first coat's supposed to be light," I told him. "This isn't a cake you're icing. It's a fingernail."

We were sitting on top of Barrons Books and Baubles in a lush rooftop conservatory I hadn't even known was there until Fiona, who'd shown more distress over my injuries than I'd expected, had told me about it. I spent the late-afternoon hours sprawled in a chaise, pretending to be reading but not really doing much of anything. When blazing floodlights, mounted on all sides of the roof, had come on shortly before dark, illuminating the garden, I'd taken a good hard look at my ragged nails, gone down for my manicure kit, come back up, and spread my tools on a pretty glass-topped wrought-iron table above the facade of the bookstore, right under one of the brightest floodlights, and given it my best shot. But no matter how hard I'd tried, I'd not been able to paint the nails on my right hand with my splinted left arm. Then Barrons had arrived and I'd wasted no time putting him to work.

A muscle leapt in his jaw. "Tell me again why I'm doing this, Ms. Lane?"

"Duh," I said. "Because my arm's broken." I waved my splint at him, in case he'd forgotten.

"I don't think you tried hard enough," he said. "I think you need to try again. I think if you angle your splint out like this" — he demonstrated, in the process tipping fingernail polish onto the tiled patio—"then twist your arm around like this." He nodded. "Give it a try. I think it'll work."

I gave him a cool look. "You drag me all over the place, making me hunt for OOPs, but do I complain the whole time? No. Suck it up, Barrons. The least you can do is paint my nails while my arm's broken. It's not like I'm asking you to do both hands. And I'm not asking you to do my toes at all." Although I really could have used some help with my pedicure. A proper foot grooming was a two-handed job.

He glowered at the prospect of having to gloss my toes a matching shimmery, gold-frosted Ice Princess Blush, which, by the way, had always seemed oxymoronish to me, like jumbo shrimp. None of the ice princesses I'd known in high school and college had been the blushing types.

"Some guys," I informed him loftily, "would jump at the chance to paint my toenails."

Barrons bent his head over my hand, applying pale pink polish to my ring finger with exacting care. He looked big and muscular and male and silly painting my fingernails, like a Roman centurion decked out in a frilly chef's apron. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.

"I'm sure they would, Ms. Lane," he said dryly.

He was still calling me Ms. Lane.

After all we'd been through. As if he'd not found my map with the pink dot I'd stabbed on it, followed me into the Dark Zone, rescued, splinted, iced, bandaged, and, I think, even kissed me.

I narrowed my eyes, studying his dark, bent head. I knew how he'd found me. Fiona had told me she'd called him right after she'd seen me go walking into the abandoned neighborhood. From her guilt-tinged distress over my injuries, however, I was pretty sure she hadn't called him immediately after, if you know what I mean.

But that was about all I knew. I'd spent most of the three days since I'd gone to 1247 LaRuhe in a deep, drugged sleep, surfacing only long enough for Barrens to feed me something before ordering me to sleep again.

My back and hips were bruised, various parts of me were bound and immobilized, my ribs were wrapped and it hurt to breathe, but on the brighter side of things, my eye was almost completely open again. I hadn't been brave enough to look in a mirror yet, nor had I showered in four days, but I had other things on my mind right now, like some of those questions that had been burning holes in my gut all day.

"Okay, Barrons, it's time."

"I am not helping you shave your legs," he said instantly.

"Oh please. As if I'd let you. I meant for questions."

"Oh."

"What are you?" I dumped the question on him like a bucket of ice water.

"I don't follow," he said with one those elegant Gallic shrugs.

"You dropped thirty feet in that warehouse. You should have broken something. You should have broken two somethings—like legs. What are you?"

There was another of those shrugs. "A man with a rope?"

"Ha-ha. I didn't see one."