Chapter 11
“My dick is going to fall off if I don’t get laid soon,” Dare sighed, slumping dramatically onto the bench chair in the waiting area, flexing his cramped hand. He’d been working for hours straight, and I felt like his mother, reminding him to take breaks all day.
“If it were anyone else, I’d say you’re exaggerating,” I chuckled, shutting down the laptop at the front desk. Even that movement felt hard. Everything was sore and tired again from being away from Grace. “But given your lineage…”
“Shut up, it’s not actually going to fall off. I don’t think,” he added, frowning a little at his lap like he was checking it was still there. Ha, sucker.
My phone vibrated in my pocket and I pulled it out unenthusiastically, not expecting a call from anyone worth hearing from since Dare was already here. Maybe Bullet, but only if he was willing to be more helpful than he had been last time we’d talked.
“Who put that look on your face?” Dare asked, sounding amused.
“Rogue is calling me. That’s weird,” I muttered, staring at the screen. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d actually spoken to her.
“Maybe she thinks you’re still selling?”
“She just had a kid,” I scoffed.
“You know firsthand that moms can get high,” Dare pointed out casually. I rolled my eyes as I swiped to answer the call.
“Riot?” Rogue asked, her usually flat, unaffected voice sounding a smidgen more emotive today.
“What’s up?” I asked, already standing from the desk, eager to get out of here and see Grace. I was glad I’d had the full day to calm down after she’d pinned me to the fridge this morning, but now I was more than ready to see her again.
“I don’t suppose you’re friendly with a sweet-as-pie little agathos, are you?” Rogue drawled, stopping me in my tracks.
“What are you talking about?” I growled, even as my stomach flipped nervously. Surely she couldn’t be talking about Grace?
Fuck . She had to be talking about Grace.
“No judgment, but this chick just passed out and she looked at my eyes and said I’m not Riot, sooooo…”
“Where are you? Where is she?”
I forced my feet to move, rushing past Dare and letting myself onto the street, already jogging towards Grace’s apartment. Every step felt like an ordeal as I pushed through the lethargy, and I could hear Dare behind me, calling my name, but panic had me singly focused in my attention.
I needed to get to Grace.
“The mini market on Springdale. She’s still out cold.”
Fuck . Why was she unconscious? My chest felt so tight I thought I might be having a heart attack, and I forced myself to focus. To keep my feet moving. To formulate words.
Springdale. Mini market. That was right by her apartment, it’d take me thirty minutes to get there on foot.
“What happened?” I managed to ask, the words feeling like they’d been ripped out of my chest.
“She’s fine,” Rogue said as tonelessly as usual. “She just needs to recuperate . I’ll wait with her, but hurry the fuck up, I have shit to do.”
The call cut off and I cursed Rogue’s name to every deity that might be listening.
“Hey!” Dare yelled out the window of his truck, crawling up the street beside me. “Get in, you fucking madman. Where do you need to go?”
I jogged into the street, climbing into the passenger side and gave Dare instructions before I’d even closed the door.
She’d be fine. She just needed to recuperate, that’s what Rogue said.
Maybe she’d worked too hard today, or hadn’t eaten enough for lunch.
People fainted when they didn’t eat, right? It was probably that.
Fuck, I was the wrong person on every level to be relied on for help. I had no idea how to handle this.
“What is going on?” Dare asked, stepping on the gas and looking at me out of the corner of his eye like I’d lost my mind.
I opened my mouth to answer, to confess what was going on and hope that Dare would have a better idea of what to do than me, but my phone buzzed as we turned a corner, distracting me. I glanced down in case it was Rogue, finding a message from Bullet instead.
Bullet:
Don’t let anyone else find out about her. It isn’t time.
What the fuck?
Why couldn’t he have used his psychic bullshit to tell me before she fainted? Weasly little fucker.
“A… friend of mine is in trouble,” I replied hesitantly.
“The girl you’ve been fucking?” Dare asked, raising an eyebrow at me.
That would be the obvious answer. I could say yes, and he wouldn’t question it. We may not be built for monogamy, but we were possessive of shiny new things, including bedmates.
I opened my mouth to agree, but all I could see in my mind was Grace’s soft smile, her multicolored eyes that looked at me like I wasn’t a fucking monster, the gentle way she touched me until lust clouded her mind and those soft touches turned greedy and desperate.
Even if we had been having sex, I could never reduce her to just a girl I’d been fucking. She was so much more than that.
“You don’t have to answer that,” Dare said quietly, looking straight ahead.
“I don’t have an answer for that,” I admitted. “You can’t stick around though. I wish I could explain more…”
Dare sighed heavily, turning the corner onto Springdale. “You sure you’re not in trouble, Riot?”
“Not the kind you’re probably thinking of,” I replied absently, my eyes scanning the street for any signs of, well, anything . Fucking Rogue, she couldn’t have given me a little more to go on? Her and Bullet were both on my shit list now.
“I have no idea what to make of you lately,” Dare muttered. “I guess I just have to trust that you know what you’re doing though. You do know what you’re doing, right?” he asked dubiously when I didn’t respond.
“Sure,” I replied hurriedly, jumping out of the truck the second it slowed near the convenience store.
“Riot!” Dare yelled exasperatedly out the passenger window, but I waved him off and with an irritated rev of his engine, he drove away. He was a good dude. Not just for a daimon, but in general. I should really give him more credit.
I barged into the almost empty store, trying to ignore the assault on my eyes from the fluorescent lighting, and made a beeline for the front.
Grace was lying on the ground off to the side, still as a corpse, Rogue kneeling next to her head.
One of her eyes was swelling up, and a hot rush of anger ran through me at the obvious sign of injury, mingling with the ice cold panic that seemed to have seized my lungs.
She was so still.
“Finally,” Rogue muttered petulantly. “There are people everywhere,” she added, glancing pointedly at the human man pacing behind her. Everywhere was a bit of an overstatement—the only other human here was a terrified looking middle aged woman behind the register.
“What happened?” I demanded. Rogue’s irritation had at least broken the grip that fear had on me. This wasn’t the time for me to freak out. I had to step up to the plate and make this right, even though I was the least qualified person ever to do it.
Could I pick Grace up? What if she had a spinal injury?
“She overdid it,” Rogue said quietly. Okay . Okay, she overused her agathos gifts, probably. “You need to get her out of here, that guy is itching to call an ambulance and I can’t get him to fuck off.”
I scooped my limp girl up in my arms, heart stuttering at the way her head lolled backwards. Come on, Gracie. Wake up for me.
The human guy behind me made a noise of protest, but I shot him a glare that clearly told him to fuck off before I made him fuck off, and he relented.
“Grab her keys from her purse,” I instructed Rogue unnecessarily.
She was already fishing through Grace’s bag.
She followed me out and unlocked the vehicle, and I carefully maneuvered Grace into the back seat, sitting on the edge of the seat, half out the doorway so I could rest Grace’s head in my lap.
Should I take her to the hospital? If she’d just overused her abilities, then rest was probably the best thing for her, but then again, I didn’t know shit about how agathos abilities worked.
I couldn’t just drive off either because fucking Rogue knew about us, and I had to deal with that first. She stood in front of the open door, blocking the view of Grace and I from the street.
“What happened?” I gritted out. “Why was she using her ability?”
“Armed robbery,” Rogue replied, sounding bored. “She went all super agathos on me and I don’t know. Touched his neck and it did something? They both passed out.”
“And her eye?” It didn’t look terrible, but it was definitely swelling.
“He clipped her in the face with his elbow, I think. I couldn’t really see. She held her own,” Rogue added. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was impressed.
“Where is he ?” I asked coolly, entirely ready to work out my anger on his face.
Rogue snorted. “Out back. Dev, the guy who owns the store, called his brothers to come beat the shit out of him. I get the feeling they don’t want cops involved. That was his wife at the counter. Anyway, who’s the girl?”
“None of your fucking business,” I snarled, curling an arm protectively around Grace’s head.
I could have sworn she made the tiniest groan under her breath.
That was a good sign, right? Shit, I knew nothing about taking care of people.
I didn’t even know how to worry about someone. It kind of made me want to puke.
“I think it’s a little my business,” Rogue protested as I pulled out my phone, shooting off a text to Bullet. I still didn’t know what he’d seen about Grace, if he’d seen her at all, but he had said her in his last message.
Me:
Consult your cards.
Bullet:
You get a short answer because you’re a heathen who doesn’t understand the cards anyway. Four of Swords. Rest and recuperation. She will be fine.
“Hello. Still standing here,” Rogue huffed while I set my phone down to stroke Grace’s hair.
“I’m not telling you shit, Rogue,” I sighed, giving a warning look. “And you’re not going to tell anyone else shit.”
“Or?”