Chapter 5
Chapter
Five
Four interminable hours and several more healing spells later, Alice finally stirred.
Her skin was pink, as if she’d gotten a bad sunburn, and she still smelled distinctly of pain, but she was in much better condition than when I’d arrived.
My wolf raised his head, his ears tipped forward and gaze bright gold.
I leaned forward slightly to try to see whether Alice had opened her eyes. She whimpered and flinched at even that little movement. Damn it. I stilled.
“Alice?” I asked, keeping my voice low.
She didn’t reply, but I sensed she was awake, or at least semi-conscious.
I wanted so much to hear her voice, and not just because it was reassurance that she was recuperating. It might take her a few minutes to be able to understand what was going on or speak. She definitely needed more rest to recover.
“Alice?” Malcolm prompted from near the bed.
“Let her sleep,” I said, my tone far more rough than I’d intended.
“She’s been unconscious for five hours,” he said, very calmly. “I need to know what to do to help her.”
Alice’s eyes fluttered open. A little of the tension evaporated from my shoulders seeing those beautiful brown eyes as she blinked rapidly, struggling to focus.
Instead of looking up at me, though, she looked directly ahead as if she could actually see the ghost.
“Hey,” she said. To Malcolm. Not to me. Her voice was rough.
The chill of Malcolm’s presence came closer. “How do you feel?” he asked.
She took a deep, shaky breath. At least it wasn’t a wheeze. “Hurts.” She coughed.
“I know,” Malcolm said, his tone somber. “Natalie nulled you, and your binding spell failed.”
“I remember fire.” Alice coughed again.
She still hadn’t looked at me. She hadn’t moved away, and I didn’t sense animosity, but I couldn’t tell how she felt about my presence. Maybe she was still struggling to process everything.
“Water?” she asked, her voice hopeful. So she knew I was here at least.
I didn’t want to leave her side, but now that she was awake, she needed liquids desperately.
Slowly and gently, so I didn’t brush against her skin or jostle her too much, I slid from the bed and headed down the hall.
In the kitchen, I found a plastic cup in the back of a cupboard and a package of drinking straws in a drawer. Over the soft sound of the faucet filling the cup with room-temperature water, my werewolf ears listened to the conversation going on in the back bedroom.
Malcolm told Alice what had happened between when Natalie had nulled her and my arrival. His tone was surprisingly matter-of-fact considering how close Alice had come to dying, but maybe he thought that would make it easier for her to hear the details.
The long silence that stretched out after he finishing talking made my wolf start pacing again. I finished filling the cup and hurried back to the bedroom.
When I returned, Alice’s eyes were closed. My stomach clenched. Had she passed out again?
No, she wasn’t unconscious, but she was in terrible pain and distraught.
Malcolm’s chilly presence moved aside when I approached the bed. “Alice, here’s some water,” I said.
Tears escaped from under her lids. They must have hurt because she flinched.
I bent and very gently tried to wipe away the tears. Her jaw clenched to hold in a whimper, she rolled over, put her back to me, and pulled the blankets up almost to her nose. And she was trembling again.
“Damn it,” I swore at myself under my breath. I circled the bed. “Alice, you have to drink some water.”
“Leave me alone,” she said, her voice unsteady and full of pain and…shame? Why would she feel ashamed? Did she blame herself for the accident? For needing help?
Very possibly both.
How could I get her to drink the water she desperately needed? A plea wasn’t likely to work right now.
I lifted the covers and slid into the bed. I took a deep breath, drew on my alpha magic, and added authority to my tone when I said, “Drink the water, Alice.”
Her eyes snapped open, full of anger instead of grief and pain. “Don’t order me around,” she said.
I immediately softened my expression. “I’m sorry. I know you’re hurting.” I held out the cup and moved the straw so it was close to her lips. “Will you please drink some water?”
She took a few tentative sips, and then began drinking in earnest. I worried the water would come back up if she drank too much too fast.
“Easy,” I cautioned her. “Don’t make yourself sick.”
She finished the entire cup of water slowly as Malcolm waited quietly. When she was done, I set the cup aside, settled in facing her, and drew her close with her forehead against my chest so I could warm her and ease her shivering.
She didn’t resist, but she felt tense and didn’t snuggle against me. “How did you find me?” she asked, her tone accusatory.
I explained that I’d gotten her call at work and that I’d asked someone to track the location of her phone. Then I filled in the rest of what I’d done, from changing her clothes to letting Malcolm use my energy and magic for healing spells.
Alice went quiet, as if processing that information took some time. “You came in through the house wards?” she asked, sounding confused and grudgingly impressed in equal amounts.
Malcolm spoke up before I could reply. “Yeah, he got a good zap. He was bleeding from the nose and ears for a while.”
She raised her head. Her gaze went to my collar, as well as my ears and neck, where blood had dried on my shirt and skin. She grimaced.
Damn it, I should have taken a minute to clean myself up so she didn’t feel guilty for what I’d done to help her.
I didn’t want her to think she owed me anything.
She struck me very much as someone who didn’t like to be in anyone’s debt.
And if her life before now had been half as hard as I suspected, she probably thought all acts of kindness were traps, or at the very least came with expectations of a quid pro quo.
The very thought of her believing that of me made me sick to my stomach.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry I got you mixed up in this.”
She probably had no idea how much I’d begun to care about her. But if she was a mage, she must know alpha werewolves were hard-wired to be defenders and protectors. I would have gone through those wards without a second thought to help a stranger. For Alice, I’d have done much more.
“Don’t be sorry,” I said, my voice gentle but firm. “I’m glad you’re alive. When I saw you, I thought you were dead. I wanted to take you to a hospital, but I guess you can’t go to one.” And I very much wanted to know why.
Her eyes narrowed. “No hospital,” she stated flatly.
Malcolm spoke. “Alice, I gotta be honest with you…if Sean hadn’t gotten here when he did, I’m not sure I would have been able to save you.
As it was, we used so many healing spells back-to-back that your blood pressure was through the roof.
We were worried you’d stroke out if I did any more.
If you hadn’t stopped seizing, I don’t know what else we could have done. ”
It was my turn to flinch. I hadn’t planned to tell Alice about the seizures she’d had about an hour ago until she’d recovered more.
The news didn’t seem to faze her in the least, though, which told me a lot about how used she was to being seriously hurt.
“I told you—” she began, her fiery gaze fixed on Malcolm.
“I know,” he snapped. “I know, no hospital, no doctors. But damn it, you were dying.”
As quickly as her ire had risen, it seemed to evaporate at his outburst.
With a sigh, she rested her head back on her pillow and closed her eyes. “Where’s Natalie?” she asked.
“She’s asleep in her room,” Malcolm said. “I used some of Sean’s energy to replace the binding spell on her and he put her in bed. She’ll probably be asleep until the morning.”
She exhaled, clearly relieved. “What time is it?”
I checked the clock on the nightstand. “Almost midnight.”
Her eyes flew open again and she raised her head. “Charles!”
It took me a beat to realize who and what she was referring to: that damned meeting with that damned vampire.
The meeting she’d gone to Hawthorne’s hoping to get, and met me instead. Did I owe the vampire a strange kind of thanks for being too busy to meet with Alice last night?
I tried to imagine a version of last night where he’d invited her upstairs to his office instead of asking her to wait in the bar, and I’d sat at my table watching her walk away, having no idea who she was, and eventually going home to my own bed.
That would have led to a version of today where my phone never rang. Where she didn’t have a wolf’s number. Where she might have called Vaughan’s people for help instead. The thought made my skin prickle.
“Don’t worry about that,” I said. “I’ll call and tell them you can’t make it.”
“I can do it,” she countered. “Can you get me my phone? I think it’s over by the library door.”
I started to argue, then realized she probably didn’t want Vaughan to know I was with her. He might already know, but if not, there was no reason for him to find out now.
I slid out of bed and went to get the phone.
“What’s your assessment of Natalie’s magic?” Alice asked Malcolm as I cleaned the phone’s bloody screen with my shirt.
“Mid-level fire, low-to-mid-level air,” Malcolm said. “The nulling thing is rare, though. I’ve known mages who could null, but not as fast as she does. It takes time to drain someone, usually. She can null instantly and break circles with a touch.”
“Tell me about it,” Alice said wryly. That little flash of her signature dry humor helped me breathe a little easier.
I returned to the bed and handed her the phone. She tried to sit up but didn’t have the strength—and she brushed my hands aside when I tried to help. Finally, she sighed, unlocked the phone, and made the call lying down.
After a few rings, a man answered. “Hawthorne’s,” he said briskly. I recognized the voice as belonging to the bartender from last night.