“You have it in you, after all,” I said.
“That I do.” She gave me a private nod. “So be it, Shadows,” she said louder. “Hurry this process. Dawn comes.”
I walked over to check on Rachel and Gideon. Gina came over to us.
“I’ve never seen so many weres,” Rachel said in awe.
“I’m glad Charles isn’t here. He’d be having a fit,” Gina said, crossing her arms. “I miss him.”
“Me too.” I looked over at Gideon. “Are you okay? You’ll need a new hat.”
Gideon held up his hand with his one missing antenna finger, and then gave me a thumbs-up.
* * *
Nearer the hospital, the weres were queuing. Where they’d once been intoxicated by werewolf water and controlled by House Grey, the Shadows took them over, setting them in orderly lines to deal with them one at a time. A wave of black washed over them one by one—weres with malformed hands and muzzled faces went in, and mere humans came out the other side. The survivors milled about, confused to find themselves suddenly in a hospital parking lot on a cold winter night, before dispersing.
Some that went in didn’t come out at all, and others lost the strength to move on the far side—with the were-strength leaving them, some of them couldn’t move at all. One fell like a stone, and a second later a woman’s voice cried out.
“Don’t worry,” said one of the horrible Shadow-things, feeling my gaze. “We can hide the dead.”
“That’s awful—” I said.
“Javier!” a woman screamed.
“Shit.” I started hobbling over.
* * *
Luz held Javier as he gasped for air like a dying fish. She looked wildly around. “Where are we? How did we get here? What’s happening to Javier?”
Oh, God. He was going to die out here in the cold. We were too far from the hospital to try to carry him in. The Luna Lobos that Luz had given him without me knowing had given him his legs back and healed his spine—but only for a time.
“Luz—” I began.
I didn’t know if she recognized me or just my bearing. “You! Help him!” She rocked him in her lap while he turned blue.
“I can’t.” All the emergency services here were gone. All the technicians gone home. Four nurses, one of them incapacitated by merging with blinding judgmental light, were not going to cut it.
“He’s going to die!” she protested. “Do something!”
“Shadows?” I knelt down and hit a fist on the ground. In the shadow made by the ridge of a cement curb, I was answered.
“His time has passed. We set things right, we do not change them.”
Luz kept crying and rocking him. “Do something! Fast! I would give my life for his!”
“Do you mean that?” Anna said as she arrived.
Luz looked at Anna with fury in her eyes. “Of course I do.”
“All right then.” Anna crouched and bit her own hand savagely. She shoved her bloody fingers into Javier’s lips, and he inhaled. Then she looked to Luz and held her hand out.
“He’ll be fine now. Come with me.”
Luz looked at Anna’s bloody hand.
“You said your life for his. Are you honorable or not?” Anna shook her hand, blood dripping off it.
Luz grabbed it. And when Anna let go, she reached out and stroked a line of blood on Luz’s forehead with her thumb.
“Good. Stay with him for now. I will return for you.” She stood and began walking away. I hurried after her, and she spoke before I could. “I need a sister, not a child. I’ll turn her tomorrow night.”
“Anna—Sike’s not a pet that can be replaced.”
Anna drew up short. “I feel her loss more than you. You merely feel guilt,” she said, and I knew what it felt like to be stabbed by a vampire again. Her face softened as she looked up at me. “It is my right now to build my House. I saved his life, and the girl is willing. It’s the price of blood.”
A group of vampires I vaguely recognized arrived. They were all the ones that’d been serving Anna-blood cocktails at the ascension earlier tonight.
Anna gestured to include them in our conversation. “Normally the loss of so much precious blood would be an offense punishable by death. But you have already been at trial once before, and we both know how that turned out. There is only one suitable punishment left.”
“What’s that?” Gina asked, taking my side, ready to fight.
Anna smiled at her approvingly, then looked to me. “We will shun you, Edie. No one will contact you, on pain of death. This world will be closed to you now.”
“Wait—what?” It was what I had wanted, to get away from all this. But I was still surprised.
She stepped nearer and raised her hand to touch my cheek. “I swore not to hurt you, remember?”
I nodded silently.
“I meant it. I will miss you, Edie.” She stepped back from me, and I could almost feel a wall rising between us. She tossed me keys, and I caught them. “Take Dren’s car. Go home. Be safe.”“I’ll try,” I said, my throat tightening. It was the least I could do, after everything that had happened tonight.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Anna went to hang out with the others of her kind, leaving my co-workers and Jake in the moon’s dwindling light.
I’d save Jake to deal with last. He was being so quiet. He must have been stunned.
Rachel engulfed me in a hug, then patted me roughly. “You did it.”
Gina was crying too hard to talk. She said it all in her hug.
I saved Meaty for last. Meaty squeezed me tight, then grabbed my shoulders. “Don’t look back, Edie. Just go.”
After all this, Jake finally stood. “Can I get a ride home, Sissy?”
“Sure.” I held out my hand to him, and he took it.
* * *
It was good to have a reason to stay composed on our walk to Dren’s car. Otherwise, I would have lost it. The Shadows spoke from the shadow of a lamppost that they made look like a scar on the ground.
“Shall we fix him for you?”
I looked to Jake. He seemed baffled. I shook my head. “No. He and I need to talk.”
“As you like. No one will believe him anyhow.”
The Shadow changed back to a shadow, and I unlocked the doors.
* * *
Dren’s car was nicer than mine. I wondered darkly if I’d get to keep it. Jake and I drove along in silence. I almost hoped he’d speak first—I sure as hell didn’t know how to start this conversation.
“Jake—”
“Turn here.” He pointed at an exit coming up.
“But that’s not—”
I looked at the hand. It wasn’t Jake’s anymore. I gasped, and then realized Jake was transitioning to look like Asher.
“It’s the way to my house. I don’t have cab fare on me. Plus, I doubt we’d see any cabs,” Asher said, in his gentle British accent.
I hauled my car over onto the on-ramp. A fleet of emergency vehicles was sprinting the other way—the Shadows had a lot to fix, before dawn. “You—you! You touched him, didn’t you!”
Asher shrugged, as if it wasn’t worth making the point. “It wasn’t hard. Your brother loves you, deep down inside. I just had to convince him you’d be better off without him, to get him out of town. Four hundred dollars didn’t hurt, either.”
I beat on my steering wheel.
“Why? He’s safe—I saw him before I left tonight,” Asher said.
“It’s not that, dammit—” I sank forward, shoulders slumped. I was glad the Shadows had kept him clean so far, despite his four-vial-a-day habit of paw-print juice. But who knew if the Shadows would keep him clean, now that I’d been shunned? Also, with the demise of his hookup for Luna Lobos, I had no doubt he’d find harder things to sell. He’d never know that all of its purported health benefits had been a placebo for him, entirely in his mind.
I followed Asher’s directions to his house, without saying anything. I pulled up into his driveway, in silence. He turned toward me. “No matter what happens to your brother, she’s right. It’s safer this way.”
“I know. I agree.” I stared at my steering wheel. I couldn’t deny it after tonight. I’d been struggling to play along ever since I’d gotten stabbed. It was lunacy.
“Edie—being shunned—it’s everybody. Shapeshifters too.”
I kind of figured as much, but I hadn’t admitted it to myself. I nodded at the dashboard of my car.
“Edie—”
I turned toward him and stuck out my hand. He looked blankly at it. “Really? Just a handshake?”
I looked at him in the half dark. “No.”
He reached for me, and I leaned into him. Our lips met halfway and I kissed him hard, and he kissed just as hard back. Everything I’d ever screwed up I wanted to let go now, and just think about this, because if I thought about anything else I would cry.
And in thinking too much about not thinking about anything, I missed it. His lips pulled away. He pulled back, studying my face like he was afraid he’d forget it—which I knew, for him, was a lie. He didn’t say anything else, just turned, opened the car door, and walked away. He didn’t look back. I knew because I watched him, hoping he would.
I started my car back up again and pulled out of his driveway.
* * *
It was almost dawn when I reached my apartment’s parking lot. I pulled into the first spot I saw and walked my way in. A person emerged from the shadows and joined me.
“I want my keys,” Dren said, walking alongside me.
“Aren’t you supposed to be shunning me now?” My feet made crisp sounds in the snow.
“Shuns usually go into place at dawn. Gives aggrieved parties a last chance to settle scores.”
“I suppose that’s type of technicality a Husker would know.”