Chapter 33
Chapter
Thirty-Three
Thomas opened his eyes slowly to a light gray room. It took him a second to realize he was on a hospital bed, with the railing up. Then he saw the gray cupboards.
He glanced around. Everything looked out-of-the-package new. Not a hospital, he realized. The medical floor that Yagi had suggested he install at the condos in The Havens.
“Even if all goes well,” Yagi had said at the time, with his usual aplomb, “there are going to be injuries you won’t want to explain to the authorities.”
So there were injuries. His head pounded. The last time he’d felt this logy and vicious was after a three-day tequila drunk, back when he’d given college a go. “What happened?” he croaked.
As if to answer his question, memories tumbled back in a rush. Tracking Kate. Saving Kate.
Signing Kate.
He sat up abruptly, almost immediately regretting it as his stomach did a quick, sickly spin. “Where’s Kate?”
“Relax, Galahad,” Yagi’s voice said, his slightly British-tinged English sounding even more clipped than usual. “She’s in the next bed. As you hoped, you managed to save her life. You even managed to heal her almost completely—which is why you probably feel like a truck ran you over.”
Thomas grimaced. “That’s about right.”
He focused on Yagi’s face. Yagi’s expression was…well, “purely pissed” didn’t even begin to cover it.
“Of course, if you’d been open to discussing the practical possibility of signing souls earlier,” Yagi continued, his voice almost gentle despite the ferocity of his expression, “I could have explained to you that when you sign a soul, there’s a certain…
exchange of energy that takes place. And we could have discussed how you can both draw power from and share power with your signatory deliberately, with training. ”
“I sense a lecture here,” Thomas said, wishing like hell his tongue didn’t feel like it was covered with sand.
“Well, it really didn’t seem the right time to teach the finer points of soul contracts as I watched my client drop like a stone after creating a half-assed signing while the object of our mission slipped out the back and disappeared.” Yagi glowered.
Thomas winced. “Victor escaped?”
“Yes, damn it!” Yagi snapped. “I told you. I warned you—there isn’t time for sentiment, not if you’re going to get your soul back.”
“What was I supposed to do? Let her die?”
“YES!” Yagi roared.
Thomas lowered the safety railing, swinging his legs off the side of the bed despite the screaming protest in his head. “Well, excuse the hell out of me,” he muttered. “There’s bound to be a learning curve.”
“There is no learning curve here,” Yagi said, each word slicing like a razor.
“Not with what you’re up against. Failure is worse than death and there is no room for error.
I have told you this, but apparently I’ve been talking to myself.
Either that, or yet again, I’ve got a client who refuses to listen to my advice! ”
Yet again? Thomas filed that one away for future questioning, instead focusing on how he could try and salvage the situation. “We were in the same room with Victor. You saw him. We can find him again, right? Can’t your magic work with that?”
If possible, Yagi’s expression turned even more bitter. “I shouldn’t have to use my magic, Thomas. He should be dead. And so should Kate.”
Despite his lack of equilibrium, Thomas stood up and staggered toward Yagi.
“You wouldn’t be so goddamned bent if you were able to find the guy,” he said, with an icy fury of his own. “I’m paying you to locate him for me, not to tell me it’s my fault you fucked up.”
Yagi bared his teeth, which came to unnatural, predatory points. “You pay me to advise you,” he shot back. “You pay me to reclaim your soul, or so you claim. But I don’t care how rich you are. No amount of money is worth letting you set me up to fail as the price for your ego and foolishness.”
With that, he stalked off.
Thomas leaned against a nearby wall, grimacing with pain. Only to see Kate, in the other hospital bed, staring at him.
“The upshot of his whole rant seems to be I’m not dead,” she said, her green eyes wide and wild. “So there’s that.”
Thomas felt some of the anger ebb out, only to have the space filled with guilt and concern. “I’m so sorry, Kate.”
She was wearing a muted gray hospital gown. They must have needed to take off her torn and blood-crusted clothes. She looked surprisingly fragile, something he’d never considered, given her general demeanor and everything she’d faced. “He almost killed me, didn’t he? The old guy.”
“But he didn’t,” Thomas emphasized, dragging himself to her side.
“I felt things breaking…bleeding…” She swallowed convulsively, and his chest ached. “How badly am I hurt?”
“You’re healing fast. Yagi says you should be a hundred percent by midnight.”
She let out a little snort of disbelief, sounding much more Kate-like. “Bullshit. My mom’s a nurse. Even if that guy just smacked me around, it felt like a hammer. I wouldn’t be a hundred percent.” She paused. “What did you do, Thomas?”
Another wave of guilt rolled through him. “You’re going to find this hard to believe, so bear with me,” he said slowly. “I, ah, signed your soul.”
“That’s what I agreed to?”
He nodded, feeling like crap. “Your blood and the thumbprint make it binding. Right now, it allows me to…well, use some of my powers to help you.” He really, really needed to research this more; Yagi was right on that one.
He’d never intended on having signatories, and now he needed to figure out what signing Kate entailed.
“If I get this right, I think you don’t have any powers unless you actually sign your real name. Or something.”
Yagi was right. He really needed to read a frickin’ book about all this.
“And…that means I’m going to Hell, right?” she asked. “When I die. It’s like a nonstop ticket.”
He winced. He hadn’t wanted to think about it, but of course—if he was damned, then so was she, by extension.
“I’m going to do everything I can to prevent that from happening,” he said instead. “It sounds bad, but it’ll get better.”
She sat there, absorbing it, and he wondered for a second if she was going into shock. Then she leveled those killer green eyes on him, and she looked surprisingly calm.
“I’m in too deep now,” she said, determined. “What’s really going on here? And I mean everything.”
For a brief, seductive second, he thought about sitting on the bed and spilling to her the whole ugly shebang. The sheer relief of unloading all this crap on another soul was overwhelming.
But what good would it do? Haven’t I screwed her up enough?
He forced a smile. “Trust me, the less you know, the better.”
“No, you trust me,” she said, not smiling back. “I need to know this stuff. I’m already signed. The less I know, the more dangerous it is for everyone.”
“You’re barely handling the idea of soul contracts,” he said firmly. “You might think you’re strong, but you have no idea just how complicated and just how harsh all this is about to get.”
She sighed. “I know that you’re looking for a power base of twelve people,” she said in a monotone, shutting him up.
“I know those twelve signatories protect a thirteenth, and I’m guessing number thirteen ‘done you wrong’ or something, so you’re gunning for him.
I figure you could’ve killed me at any time, but apparently I’m useful, probably because I could work with the contracts without dying or going on a murder spree.
Now, I get the sense that you signed me by accident, but that I can still be useful.
There are a few gaps, but tell me how I’m doing. ”
He stared at her slack jawed for a moment. Then he loomed over her, his previous anger at Yagi and at himself and his shock at the knowledge spilling out of her. “How did you know all that? Who do you work for? Who sent you?”
“Who sent me?” She sat up quickly, then groaned, closing her eyes and pressing her fingertips to her temple. “Nobody sent me but a temp agency, you ass!”
“Then how do you know all that?” he demanded.
She screwed open one eye to glare at him.
“For future reference,” she said, “never underestimate my ability to find shit out.”
He collapsed against the bed, putting his own head in his hands. “You are gonna be the death of me, Kate O’Hara.”
He felt her touch, soft and insistent, on his arm, and he glanced at her.
“Seriously. Tell me,” she murmured. “How bad is this? Exactly what scale of trouble am I in?”
He put his hand on top of hers. Then he squeezed her fingers very gently.
“I’ll take care of it, Kate,” he said with a steely determination. “I swear it.”
Oh, really? his subconscious mocked.
Like you took care of Elizabeth?