Chapter 30 The Trap #2
“I got stapled.” She turned rigidly around to show him.
“Oh, Hailey,” he breathed. “Come in here.” He led her to the community room opposite the stairs. “Wait here a sec,” he told her. “I’ll go get the tweezers.”
Hailey stood like a statue until he returned.
“Oh, man,” he said as he looked at her back again.
“How bad is it?”
“There’s several…hundred,” he estimated, and when she pivoted to look at him, he gave her a half-frown. “Surprised you didn’t run to Asher.”
“I did,” she grunted as she sat on top of a table. “He wasn’t home.”
Fin’s face tightened, and he curled his tongue as he yanked the first staple out of her neck.
“Ouch! They’re all over me,” she breathed, remembering to count to eight before she exhaled.
“…lucky staples…” Fin muttered softly, as he removed another one from her back.
“Ouch!”
“What are you doing?” Giselle demanded, appearing in the doorway.
“Removing staples…?” He jerked a big one out of Hailey’s arm.
“Ouch!”
“You know what I mean,” Giselle spat.
“Shouldn’t you be in the lab getting your bolts tightened?” he jeered.
Huh. Giselle actually did bear a striking resemblance to Frankenstein’s bride. Really. She was only a couple of black hair streaks and some stitches away from moaning, “Fire—Bad.”
Giselle glared at him for a beat before spinning on her heel and gliding out of the room. “I’m bringing the first aid kit,” she grumbled over her shoulder.
“Why are you so mean to her?” Hailey asked him.
“Because,” he said as he drew one from her scalp, “she deserves it.”
“I wish you’d be a little—ouch!—nicer. I think it hurts her feelings that everyone’s so mean.”
“Clearly you don’t know your roommate.” He made a third attempt at a staple that’d embedded itself near Hailey’s underarm. “Come ‘ere,” he said under his breath as he tried to grab it again.
Hailey looked over her shoulder to see how things were going, and that was a mistake. Among the sea of bloodied staples strewn across the table, one still had a chunk of flesh attached.
“Uh-oh,” Hailey said, woozy. Darkness crept into her periphery and her ears felt like they were full of water. The whole room tipped like a canoe, and she fell forward.
“Whoa!” Fin lunged to catch her before she hit the floor. The tweezers clanged against the table, and Fin grabbed her by the shirt, ripping at least twenty staples out at once.
That was enough to put her the rest of the way out.
When Hailey came to, she was sprawled, belly-down, shirtless, braless, and mostly skinless on Fin’s bed— she recognized the cologne. A soft and peaceful Moonlight Sonata vibrated through Fin’s guitar. His humming joined it in perfect pitch as she stirred.
“Giselle dressed your wounds. Your clothes were ruined, but on a brighter note, I found you a new roommate.” He tossed her one of his t-shirts.
“What?” She groaned as even the slightest movement stretched the raw skin on her back. “I don’t want a new roommate.”
“You’re still out of it.”
“No, I’m not. I like my roommate.” Hailey turned away from him as she sat, painfully lifting the t-shirt over her head.
“Nobody likes your roommate,” he told her. “She’s a raging bitch.”
“She’s not…” Hailey heaved an aggravated sigh. “She’s not…raging.”
“Yeah, she is.”
“Well, I like her,” she said decisively, and Fin cocked his head, studying her for a moment.
“How come you came here instead of waiting for Asher?”
“I would have waited—I did wait…long enough anyway, outside the observatory,” she told him, and he looked away.
“It was weird,” she continued. “I called his name, and he never showed. I mean, the other day, I tripped going up the stairs in the Trinity Center, and he caught me before I fell—he got to me instantly, coming all the way from Olde Main,” she told him forlornly.
“Guess he must be pretty busy tonight, huh.”
“Maybe he’s bored with you,” Fin said with an edge. “…or maybe he’s dead,” he added in a way too hopeful tone.
Hailey rolled her eyes, but inside she worried. She’d just lost half her skin in his lab. She’d cried out for him, and he’d ignored her. Maybe Fin was right. Maybe Asher changed his mind again and now wanted her dead. She felt guilty for thinking it, but maybe he was off conspiring with Cobon.
“Can I just sleep here?” she sighed, falling forward onto Fin’s pillow.
“Sure,” he said. When she turned her head to him he was smiling. He pulled a blanket from his cupboard, curled up on his recliner, and stared lovingly at her until she fell asleep.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?” Cobon asked rather anxiously as Asher appeared in his home uninvited.
“I cannot help but imagine your interest in my girl,” he answered coldly. “Do you wish to kill her?”
“Straight to the point, as usual,” Cobon observed as he gazed out his window at his home near Pittsburgh.
“I should return the favor, but I enjoy your conversation too much to skip the pleasantries. I’ve grown quite fond of this place,” he said, sounding more content than he had in decades.
“See here, Asher,” Cobon said, pointing out a tall window.
“One can hardly see civilization through the autumn leaves. Is it not beautiful here?”
“There is much beauty in this world.”
“How right you are, and yet…” Cobon flicked his hand at the breathtaking landscape. “It is not this beauty that interests you—and certainly not the beauty of our home in the Aether. It’s that girl, isn’t it?” Cobon sneered. “But she must die. And you know this as well as I do.”
“She will die. When her time comes. But that time is not tonight at the hands of the poltergeists.”
“Time…” Cobon repeated with a far-off gaze, “a mortal creature’s enemy, but what do we care of time until the absurdity of love grips us, eh brother?”
Cobon turned a knowing eye to Asher and wiggled his finger at him in time with the pendulum of a grandfather clock in the room. “How is your little romance with that skinny Irish cow going—a hopeless endeavor, if you ask me. Borders on desperate, does it not?”
“You cannot understand it, Cobon.”
“I understand more than you think,” he spat, but then he smiled brightly. “If I were you, I would disembarrass myself from such a bauble. A human cannot love an Envoy—we are…” Cobon drew a great breath. “…too powerful, too wise.”
“I will protect her from any that would harm her, brother, even to my own demise.”
Cobon pursed his lips. “I admit, I’ve tried to hasten her death—the ghosts in the lab—that’s why you’re here, isn’t it?
There was the fall from the Luftzeug, a deadly in-between, a splinter, a poisoned quill—none of it worked,” he shrugged, laughing.
“She is resilient—and of course you keep rescuing her, though you haven’t given her the gift…
yet.” Cobon narrowed his eyes. “—a good thing, and I’ll tell you why, but first you must know I have protected the Sullivan line for centuries.
In the end, her energy belongs to me. But you can keep her body and soul—I have no use for them.
” Cobon paced the room, his brow furrowed.
“You keep her at your zoo in Bear Towne, but I cannot figure out how you hold her there—I saw no cage, no chains, no rope…? Will you tell me?”
“She is free to leave.”
“And yet she stays. Why hasn’t she run from you? Is it because she fears the others?”
“She stays not from fear.”
Cobon grimaced. “Really? You believe she stays because she loves you, but does she know you stood by while her dear sister perished… No?” he taunted. “I thought not. And what of your challenger, that mutt Pádraig? How did you win her away from him?”
Asher ignored him.
Cobon paced with long strides across the room.
“You are a fool, Asher. You mistake your girl’s fear for love, but what does it matter? As long as the others are here on Earth, you will never be free to love her. The others would destroy you and the girl if they knew.” He faced the great clock, staring hatefully at it. “There is a way, though.”
Cobon turned to Asher, almost hesitantly. “You could complete the black rock with her energy without killing her completely—send the others home but remain here on Earth…with her…”
Asher shifted his gaze, and Cobon grinned. “You are intrigued by the idea—why else would you ignore her now, as she cries for you. Even I can hear her.”
“It’s not possible,” said Asher.
“Oh, but it is! Simply remove her soul—gently, of course—separate it from her body, but keep hold of it,” he told him raising an instructive finger.
“Let her energy out, and then rebind her to her body—it’s a simple energy swap.
Be sure to fling the rock away, far away—the others will follow it.
Open the Aether, and send them home. You’d be free to love her… ”
Asher straightened ever so slightly, and Cobon smiled gleefully. If his brother weren’t insane, Asher would have found Cobon’s sudden good humor suspicious.
“Bring the girl here, Asher, she needn’t fear this. We’ll talk…the three of us. Over dinner—she’ll like that,” he rambled. “And I’ll try not to kill her in the meantime—she’ll like that even more, I suspect.”
“I will choose the time, Cobon,” Asher commanded. “And you will not touch her.”
“I promise you nothing, brother, you know my impatience. Make it soon,” Cobon stressed, “and she’ll be safe.”
With that, Cobon bowed, and Asher reappeared in The Middle of Nowhere in time to watch his girl fall asleep in another man’s bed.