Chapter 7
Chapter
Seven
My wolf’s nudge pulled me from sleep just before dawn.
When I opened my eyes, Alice was looking back at me. Even with her hair in a tangled mass and her skin still showing signs of burns, she was so beautiful that my heart leapt.
“Did I wake you up?” I asked. She should still be sleeping. I hoped I hadn’t accidentally touched one of her burns or snored too loudly. I’d been tired enough to snore.
“No,” she said. Her voice wobbled.
I touched her jaw in a spot that hadn’t been burned. “What’s wrong?”
Her chin quivered almost imperceptibly. I wouldn’t have noticed it if I hadn’t been touching her.
“I don’t want you to go,” she said.
I hadn’t said a word about leaving. The thought hadn’t crossed my mind. And yet she feared I might leave.
She was awake. She wasn’t delirious. She wasn’t hallucinating or in shock anymore. She knew what she was saying, and she wanted me to stay.
I leaned in and gave her a gentle kiss that she returned.
“I don’t want to go either,” I said. “So that’s fine. Just rest.”
I tried to cradle her right hand. She sucked in a breath and flinched. I let go instantly. Her fingers were still puffy and red from the burns.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Is there anything I can do to help you? Can Malcolm—”
She shook her head. “Malcolm’s drained to nothing. Can you get my healing spells for me? There’s a wooden box in my second drawer in the bathroom. Don’t open it; just bring it to me.”
She sounded much stronger now. Her cheeks had some color. And she’d asked me to get her box of spells instead of trying to get up and get it herself. On the one hand, that seemed like such a small thing, but it wasn’t.
For the first time since my phone rang at work and I’d realized it was her calling for help, I took a full, deep breath.
“Okay.” Very carefully, I unwrapped myself from around her and slid out from under the covers. I missed having her beside me immediately.
I hurried to the bathroom and found the box. It was made of wood, about ten inches square, with a thick lid and a surprisingly heavy clasp. The magic on the box and the lock snapped at my fingers, but the stings were minimal.
When I returned, she was lying on her back with her head on a pillow. Moving carefully so I didn’t jostle the bed too much, I knelt next to her.
“It’s beautiful,” I said, indicating the box. “What are these carvings?”
“Runes to keep anyone from sensing the spells inside.” She took the box and drew three symbols on its lid with her fingertip before opening it.
The box was filled with crystals in a dozen shapes, sizes, and colors. With its lid open, magic rolled out of the box, all of it Alice’s. I wanted to bask in those warm sensations.
That little bit of euphoria didn’t last long.
“This is a powerful healing spell,” she said, holding up a purple crystal in her swollen fingers.
Both her tone and her gaze turned steely.
“I’m pretty sure it will be enough to heal the burns and the rest of the damage, but it’s going to be painful.
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen one used, so I just wanted you to know what to expect so you’re not surprised.
Don’t touch me until the spell is done.”
I had both yearned for this moment and dreaded it since Malcolm had mentioned Alice’s strong healing spells yesterday.
I hadn’t seen anyone use a strong healing spell, but I’d witnessed numerous werewolves experiencing their first shifts. I’d gone through my own first shift, though the memory of that indescribable agony was dulled by twenty years and all the times I’d shifted since.
I didn’t know how that level of pain compared to whatever Alice would go through to use this healing spell, but I suspected it might be close.
My wolf stared at me, bright-eyed. Find another way.
I set my jaw. There was no other way. There was only a healing spell, drinking vampire blood, or letting the burns heal on their own. Alice had to know the dangers of consuming vampire blood as well as I did. And while letting the burns heal on their own was an option, it wasn’t a good one.
“Will it be worse than the ones Malcolm used earlier?” I asked, though I already knew the answer. I might have been stalling while I wracked my brain for some other option that didn’t exist.
She tilted her head. “Probably. Those were earth magic. Blood magic is more intense. Maybe you should go downstairs while I do this.”
No way in hell would I leave her to face this alone. “If you can stand it, so can I.”
Only then did it occur to me that she could have asked—or told—me to leave the room, or even leave the house, but she hadn’t. She’d only suggested I go to another room, and not very insistently.
Maybe, just maybe, she wanted me to stay.
“Okay,” she said, and let out a breath. “Give me some space, then, and get the trash can for me in case I need it.”
I wanted to hold her, to try and take some of her pain if I could, but she’d said I couldn’t touch her until the spell was finished. What it might to do me, I didn’t know. I doubted it could be worse than what it would do to Alice, or worse than the feeling of being relegated to spectator.
I was in the room, but I still felt like I was leaving her to face this spell alone. My belly filled with rage at myself until my hands shook.
I sat on the edge of the bed and moved the trash can close enough for me to grab it at a moment’s notice if she got sick.
Alice pulled up one side of her nightgown, baring her hip and side, and grabbed one of her pillows—the one I’d used to sleep on—with her other hand. What was the pillow for?
Without hesitation, she slid her hand under the nightgown, pressed the purple crystal to her bare abdomen, and spoke a single word: “Helios.”
Red magic erupted from the crystal with a force that ruffled my hair. It pulsed into Alice’s body and crackled on her skin.
She crushed the pillow to her face and screamed into it. The sound was guttural and so full of agony that it made me want to rip that crystal out of her hand and throw it out the window.
My wolf wrenched at me so violently that I fell off the bed and landed on my hands and knees on the hardwood floor. My back arched, my bones cracked, and a dagger of pain shot through my jaw as my wolf tried to force me to shift.
I made a sound I’d never made before: part whine, part growl, part very-human “Fuck.”
I couldn’t shift now. I had to stay human. Alice needed me to be human, not wolf.
Stop, I commanded my wolf, and shoved him down into submission with more force than I’d ever used before—not even in my early days of being a shifter, when learning to control my wolf had been so difficult and crucial.
He hunkered to his belly and whined.
Alice’s screaming didn’t stop. Neither did the pulses of magic. This was hellish.
With a groan, I got to my feet.
Her fingers were gripping the pillow so tightly I thought her nails might go through the fabric and her knuckles were white. She screamed and screamed, with ragged gasps for air in between.
I felt rooted in place, like my feet were ankle-deep in cement, but I forced myself to move.
I paced around the room and growled, my hands clenched so I didn’t grab anything—like the upholstered chair in the corner—and rip it in half. My vision was entirely gold, not just around the edges, so my eyes probably blazed like beacons. I didn’t bother trying to rein that in.
It took an eternity for her screams to start to get quieter.
The pulses of magic faded too, taking with them the odor of powerful blood magic that had singed my nose for the past several minutes—or several hours. However the hell long it had been.
When I heard a gasp and no more screams, I looked at the bed. Alice had moved the pillow off her face.
She was looking at me, her chest heaving, eyes red, and face flushed. Beautiful even now, though I shouldn’t have noticed that.
I went to the bed and leaned on it with both hands. “Is it done?” My voice didn’t sound like mine, or even like my wolf. It was ragged and full of pain.
Alice dropped the purple crystal on the bed. “Now it’s done,” she managed to say.
It was my turn to tremble so hard that the bed shook. “Did it work?”
There was so little light in the room that even my werewolf eyes couldn’t tell for sure, but her skin—what wasn’t covered by the gown—looked back to normal. Her heart raced from the exertion and the sharp scent of pain hung heavy in the air, but like the smell of magic, it was fading.
And she hadn’t thrown up. Not that it would have mattered to me, but I was glad she’d been spared that indignity.
She moved her arms and legs, raised her head, and squeezed her hands into fists—something she couldn’t do even minutes ago because her fingers had been so swollen and painful.
“I think it worked,” she said.
With the speed of a wolf, I was in the bed, under the covers, and drawing her to my chest so I could wrap her in warmth and comfort. Her hands tightened on my waist and held on.
“That was just about the worst fucking thing I’ve ever had to stand by and watch,” I said roughly, my lips on her hair. “You don’t know how hard it was not to take that thing away from you.”
“You know you can’t interfere with a spell when it’s working,” she said against my chest. The warmth of her breath above my breastbone took some of the edge off my fury. “It’s over,” she said softly. “Now I’m all better.”
I let out a guttural, disbelieving sound. “A few hours ago, you were close enough to Death to look him in the eye. Then you went through a healing spell that looked like it hurt as much as a werewolf’s first shift, and now you’re ‘all better.’ How can you be so calm about this?”
She went quiet for a long time. It wasn’t an angry quiet or a resentful one, but there was a sadness and resignation about it that made me caress her arms—carefully, though, just in case she was still tender.
“I’ve used healing spells before,” she said.
She’d tried to sound matter-of-fact, but I heard the pain in those words. The memories.
I used to know some bad people.
They’d left her scarred inside and out, but she was still standing. Still fighting. And helping those who needed it.
“I guess you have,” I said.
She found the empty crystal in the bedding and put it on the nightstand, then leaned over and put the box of spells on the floor.
Rather than stay under the covers with me, she moved to the edge of the bed and put her feet on the floor. And then she stood.
She didn’t sway, stagger, or stumble. Instead, she stretched very gingerly, testing the flexibility of her arms, waist, hips, and legs, and rolled her neck and shoulders. I didn’t see her flinch or hear any gasps of pain.
The healing spell had exacted a high price, but it had worked. She was well again.
She had no magic, though. Natalie had nulled her. The healing spell apparently hadn’t helped with that. What would? I didn’t know. Another gap in my knowledge about Alice’s kind of magic.
I watched her go to the dresser and choose a pair of pajamas, looking for some hint of how she felt or if she planned to ask me to leave now that she was healed. I really couldn’t tell what she was thinking about.
I expected my wolf to be agitated. Instead, he settled down in my mind, his head on his paws and eyes half-lidded. What did he sense that I didn’t?
Humming to herself, she took the pajamas to the bathroom and shut the door. The toilet flushed, water ran in the sink, and clothing rustled. What sounded like the lid of a hamper thumped shut.
When she emerged in pajamas, she looked straight at me without a word.
I took a chance and lifted the covers, inviting her to climb in beside me.
And she did, without hesitation.
She turned her back to me, wriggled close, and settled in, her curves fitting perfect against my chest and bent legs.
I wrapped my arms around her and buried my face in her hair.
It still smelled like burned wood, magic, and her own burned flesh, but she also smelled like vanilla and honey and whatever she’d just used to wash her face.
Something with mint. It made me think of my guess about mint chocolate chip ice cream.
She smelled good to me, and had since the moment I’d sat down in the booth across from her at Hawthorne’s.
She rubbed her nose against my forearm, exhaled, and relaxed in my arms. So maybe I smelled good to her too.
“Forest,” she murmured.
What did that mean? I had no idea at all. I’d try to remember to ask when we weren’t so damn tired.
About ten seconds later, she began to snore. It was a tiny snore, and I thought it was perfect.
I closed my eyes and slept too.