Chapter Thirty-three
Thirty-three
“This isn’t healing,” Colin gasped out between his gritted teeth. “Not as quickly as it should.”
He lay on the drawing room sofa, his head flung back and his eyes closed. The fingers of his good arm were clenched at his side. Stephen and Mina were splinting the other arm, which was all any of them could do until the surgeon arrived.
“It is broken,” said Mina, eyes on the roll of gauze she was winding around Colin’s wrist. “That’s got to be more than a few minutes’ work, even for you lot.”
“It is,” said Colin. “But I’ve broken bones before. I know the feel of it. This is different.”
Stephen gave a moment of attention to his own wounds.
None of them were particularly severe. Mostly, they were cold places where the manes had hit him, and one long cut along his chest where a tentacle had taken hold hard enough and for enough time to freeze the flesh until it cracked.
None of them were healing as quickly as injuries he’d had in his past, either.
“It is,” he said and looked to Colin. “Because they’re not of this world?”
“It’s as good a reason as any.”
The thing Colin had pulled away from the pantry door at least had been physical, a hulking beast that had combined the shadowy facelessness of a manes with something like a human form, though a horribly distorted one.
Dead, it had dissolved like its less substantial brethren, and the magical side had clearly been prominent enough to break Colin’s arm in a way that wouldn’t heal as most injuries did.
“How did they get in, anyhow?” Mina asked. “Weren’t the wards supposed to keep them out?”
“They were,” said Stephen. “Colin? I thought they were solid enough, but a fresh pair of eyes might help—and you’ve always been better at magic,” he admitted, feeling that he owed his brother something.
Mina frowned at him. “Now? The man’s got a broken arm.”
“I’ve done more under worse circumstances, and it is important. Though it’s kind of you to worry,” Colin added, smiling up at Mina in an obvious attempt at charm.
“You’ll be no good to anyone if you make yourself worse,” said Mina, but she did smile back. “Go on, then.”
Colin took a breath, straightened his back, and spoke the invocation. His eyes became unfocused, glowing faintly silver, and then focused again, first on Stephen and then on Mina.
“Ah,” he said and shook his head. “That would be the trouble, wouldn’t it?”
“What would be the trouble?” Stephen asked.
“The two of you.”
Mina coughed. “I beg your pardon?”
“Oh, I’m not implying anything,” Colin said.
With an absently muttered word, he withdrew his sight back to the mortal side of the Veil.
“The wards themselves are quite solid. Looking at them, it’s hard to believe you were new to magic,” he added to Mina, which wiped the should-I-be-offended look off her face.
She practically beamed, in fact.
“Right,” said Stephen, reminding himself that his brother was injured and thus not growling about how information, not flirting, was wanted here. “Then what happened?”
“Well—”
“Doctor Banks, sir,” said Baldwin.
As was almost second nature by now, Stephen left the alibi to Mina, who made up something simple about Colin falling down the stairs.
Colin, Stephen was pleased to note, bridled at this clear implication that he was less than perfectly graceful, but had no chance to contradict Mina.
He settled for saying that it was dark, he’d been ill, and he wasn’t used to this house.
“Yes, I’m quite sure,” said Dr. Banks, clearly not giving a damn. “Hold this sponge, please, miss. And don’t breathe deeply.”
As Mina held the sponge out with steady hands, he very carefully poured some of the contents of an unmarked bottle over it. A sickly sweet smell rose up: chloroform. Dr. Banks took the sponge back and thrust it under Colin’s nose. “You take a deep breath, sir. Good.”
The title was clearly perfunctory. Neither bloodline nor wealth carried much weight with Banks. Stephen wasn’t sure even the true nature of the MacAlasdairs would make much difference to the tall, gray-haired man, not if either of them was a patient.
Obediently, Colin took a long breath in, then, on Dr. Banks’s command, another, until his eyes rolled back in his head and he sagged onto the couch, boneless with unconsciousness.
Lucky Colin: the last time Stephen had broken a bone, he’d had a quart of whiskey to see him through the setting and had bitten most of the way through a leather belt despite that.
As Banks applied the cast, Stephen took Mina aside for a moment. Trusting to the doctor’s presence to guarantee his self-control, he took both her hands in his. “Are you well?” He looked into her face as he asked the question, trying to see the truth beneath whatever brave mask she might put on.
“I—” Mina caught her breath when she met his eyes. “I will be. No harm done, right?”
“Right.” The hands Stephen held didn’t shake, but they were cold. He used that excuse to keep them in his a few moments longer. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have known something was wrong.”
“I don’t see how,” Mina said. “Colin said everything looked fine.”
“Except for us. I should have looked.”
“It might not have been obvious. We won’t know what’s going on until he wakes up—or until the doctor leaves and you can have a look yourself.” She glanced over at the doctor, and although he was still working on Colin’s cast, she blushed and let go of Stephen’s hands.
Stephen let her go without protesting—without protesting aloud, at least.
As Dr. Banks patted the final remnants of the cast into place, Colin’s eyelids fluttered and he muttered some sleepy words, a woman’s name among them.
“Ellie” or “Lilly” or something similar was Stephen’s guess.
He wasn’t sure if Mina had heard it, and her face showed no reaction, for what little that was worth.
“Quite a constitution your brother has,” said the doctor.
“You don’t know the half of it. Will it do any harm for him to wake up now?” Stephen asked.
“It shouldn’t. Just don’t let him move around too much, and have a basin ready if he tries. I’ll come back in a week. You know how to reach me if anything urgent transpires.” Dr. Banks clicked his bag shut and took his leave.
“Actually,” said Mina, after the good doctor was several minutes away, “it’s lucky his arm will be slower than is usual for your lot. It’d be a bit chancy trying to explain why the bone had healed so quickly, next time the doctor comes back.”
“Ah, no,” said Stephen. “We’d just pack him off to France for a month or so, and say he’d healed over there. It’s not a bad idea even now.”
“Ha,” Colin slurred. His eyes focused on Stephen, as much as they could focus on anything just then. “I know why you really want me gone. An’ I’m not a—ammand—abandoning you now. I can think even if I can’ fiiight.”
“Can you, now?” Stephen asked, amused.
“Can once this stuff wears off. Stop grinnin’ like that. Unbecomin’ to a man of your years.”
“I’ll take that under advisement,” said Stephen. “And if you think that your mind is valuable, perhaps you can continue to tell us why the wards failed. What’s wrong with me and Mina?”
“Oh, that.” Colin tried to wave his broken arm dismissively, swore, and shook his head. “What?”
“The wards?”
“Maybe we should wait,” Mina said. “He’s not thinking clearly right now.”
“I’m thinkin’ very clear, thankyouverymush. The wards are ver’ simple, really. You two are linked to ’em. And to each other. When you’re both here or you’re both out, ’sallright. You’re both…one thing. Coherent.”
“More than I could say for you at the moment,” said Stephen.
“Hush. When one of you is in the house and one’s outside, the wards get confused. Stretched. Things get in through the stretched bit. Is that all? I’ve things to do.”
“Sleep being first on the list, I’d think,” said Mina, shaking her head. “We’ll think about the rest of this later—and we’ll need to decide what to tell everyone else,” she added, looking to Stephen. “Meanwhile, I think I can take his feet if you can keep his shoulders fairly still.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Stephen said. “I’ll ring for Baldwin.”
“Baldwin’s got quite enough to cope with right now,” said Mina. “So do the rest. I promise I won’t let him drop, if that’s what you’re concerned about.”
“It’s not,” said Stephen, moving to take hold of his brother’s shoulders. He couldn’t have said what really was bothering him, though—or perhaps he just didn’t want to.