14. Chapter 14
Evie
The exam table paper doesn’t stand a chance against my current mental state, and the pile beside me keeps growing. Little white pieces that used to be a perfectly functional crinkly sheet, before I decided to channel my existential crisis into arts and crafts.
I should stop. The responsible adult who lives inside my head and keeps everything running smoothly, and definitely doesn’t believe in the supernatural, is begging me to leave it alone.
But my thumb finds another perforation, and the paper separates with a faint tearing sound that echoes in the sterile silence of the room.
Because stopping means thinking. Thinking leads to processing. And processing ends with me confronting the fact that a man revealed actual horns on his head in front of me fifteen minutes ago.
I pinch myself, thumbnail digging into my wrist. The skin blooms red, and nothing about this room or this day dissolves into the comfortable haze of a nightmare.
I’m still here with a throbbing ankle, in a doctor’s office that smells of rubbing alcohol, industrial floor cleaner, and the faint ghost of someone’s lavender hand cream.
Not a dream, then.
Two hours ago, I was blissfully in denial.
I’d placed Milo in the category of odd but harmless, right between the woman who reads tarot to her cats, and the man at the hardware store who insists he was abducted in ninety-eight.
Milo was a strange guy with a peculiar story, and I was handling it with the appropriate amount of polite disbelief.
That was a nice place to be. I’d like to go back there.
I’ve been going through every rational explanation I can think of: body modification, prosthetic, some kind of extreme cosplay commitment. But none of them hold. Not when I picture the bases of those horns, the skin gathered around each curve with no seam, adhesive line, or visible trick.
My first thought was . . . oh.
Just that. A small, quiet recognition. As though some back room of my brain had already done the math and was waiting for the rest of me to catch up.
The correct reaction to horns is screaming.
Possibly fainting. At minimum, a full-body recoil.
Not a calm, settled oh that felt less alarming than finding out the dairy supplier raised prices.
I’ve been trying to manufacture the appropriate horror ever since, but it won’t come. I keep reaching for it and finding that weird, inexplicable stillness instead, sitting right where the fear should be.
But I refuse to be the person who sees one unexplained thing and throws out her entire understanding of reality.
That’s not how I work. I need evidence, logic, and probably a peer-reviewed study before I’ll even consider changing toothpaste brands, let alone accepting the existence of the underworld.
I tear off another strip of paper and add it to the pile.
Milo hovers near the window, no horns in sight.
He hasn’t stopped fidgeting since he carried me through the door, scanning the counters, testing drawer handles, and reading a laminated poster about cholesterol like he’s preparing for finals.
The overhead fluorescents catch his glasses whenever he tilts his head.
I keep track of where he is without meaning to, and I don’t know when that started. When he wanders toward the far wall, tension winds through me until I’m almost compelled to call him back. When he drifts within reach again, it loosens.
I don’t understand it.
I don’t like it.
And I can’t make it stop.
He picks up an instrument from the tray now, turning it over in his long fingers.
“What is this?” He stares at me, eyebrows furrowed. “Because I’ve seen torture equipment, and this looks worse.”
“It’s a speculum.”
“A what?”
“You don’t want to know.”
He inspects it, his entire face scrunching. “This looks medieval.”
“It’s for . . . actually, you’re not wrong.”
He sets it down carefully. “Doctors actually use these?”
“Regularly.”
“Voluntarily?”
“More or less.”
Milo stares at it, then shakes his head and backs away from the counter.
Then he spots the wall-mounted hand sanitizer dispenser and pumps it once. Then again. By the fourth pump, enough foam has gathered in his palms to sanitize a small village, and he stands there rubbing his hands together with increasing concern.
“That’s enough,” I say.
He looks at his hands, still coated in foam. “Are you sure? I handled the medieval device.”
“You picked it up. You didn’t perform a procedure.”
“But it touched someone’s skin and—”
“Milo, it was clean.”
He rubs harder, foam squelching. “What if it wasn’t?”
“It was autoclave sterilized. That means—”
“I know what an autoclave is.” He pauses. “Actually, no. What is it?”
A laugh escapes, short and startled, pulled from somewhere I didn’t give permission to access. His whole face changes when he hears it. A flicker of surprise, followed by a slow, crooked grin that transforms him. His loose, lanky frame straightens.
“There it is.” Milo stares at me like he’s hearing a word he’s been mispronouncing his whole life spoken correctly for the first time.
My cheeks heat. “There’s what?”
“You’ve been shredding that paper since we got here. That’s the first full breath I’ve seen from you.”
“I’ve been breathing the entire time. It’s a basic requirement for being alive.” And now I can’t stop noticing my own inhales, which is his fault entirely.
Verdict officially in—I’ve gone insane. Or, I’m living in an alternative reality.
The door swings open with a soft creak and Milo goes rigid.
I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t spent most of the wait inadvertently studying his every move, but the change is immediate: his spine straightens, his weight shifts forward, and the hands that had been restlessly testing drawer handles and counter edges go dead still.
Doctor Damien Devereaux strides in with a tablet tucked under one arm, already scanning the chart as the door swings shut behind him.
His white coat pulls crisp over dark slacks and a pale blue button-down as he moves, and he pushes black, artfully tousled hair off his forehead.
He’s thirty-two. Allegedly. I’ve never managed to pry out his skincare routine, but I suspect it involves either superior genetics or some form of witchcraft.
“Evie.” His familiar smile puts me slightly more at ease. “What happened?”
“Twisted my ankle in a parking lot.”
“Let me guess. You tried to walk it off?”
“I was carried here, actually.”
His eyebrows lift and his attention shifts to Milo. Devereaux’s expression doesn’t change, but something sharpens behind the pleasantness.
“Friend of yours?” He pulls on latex gloves with a snap, rolling his stool over.
“Something like that.”
Devereaux’s attention lingers on Milo before returning to me, the corners of his mouth twitching. “Well, let’s have a look at that ankle.”
He unlaces my sneaker and works it off my foot. His fingers are cool even through the gloves. The sock comes off, and the swelling is worse than I expected. My ankle is puffy and flushed, the skin around the outer bone a deep, angry pink that’s already threatening to turn purple.
He stabilizes my heel with his hand. “I’m going to press along the bone and the ligament. Tell me where it hurts and how much. One is fine, ten is you want to punch me.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t get to that.”
He presses along the outer ankle. “Here?”
I wince. “Five.”
“Here?” His thumb moves lower, tracing the tender line toward my foot.
“Three.”
“Good.” He shifts to the inside. “And here?”
“Two.”
Damien presses just below the outside ankle bone, into the soft tissue.
I suck air through my teeth. “Seven.”
“Sorry.” He lightens the pressure immediately. “The good news is I’m not feeling anything that suggests a fracture along the malleolus. The pain is concentrated in the soft tissue, which points more toward a ligament sprain than a break.”
“You can tell that from pressing on it?”
“I’ve been doing this for a very long time.” He chuckles. “I’m checking whether the pain is coming from the ligament or the harder structures around it. If it were directly on the bone, or if you couldn’t bear any weight at all, I’d send you for an X-ray in Millfield.”
Milo has drifted closer, standing at my right shoulder now with his body angled toward Damien. His eyes haven’t left the doctor’s hands. “So, not broken?”
Damien stands and grabs an elastic bandage from the supply cabinet. “Not broken,” he confirms, sitting back down and starting to wrap.
Thank God. A sprain I can work with. Milo’s hand settles at the small of my back, and I accept the contact without the instinctive recoil I should probably have toward someone still functionally a stranger.
“Here’s what I need you to do.” Damien leans back on his stool, ticking off points on his fingers.
“Rest. Stay off it as much as humanly possible for the next three days. Ice for twenty minutes every few hours while awake. Keep it elevated above your heart when sitting or lying down. And a compression bandage will help with the swelling.”
“How long until I’m walking normally?”
“Two weeks minimum. You can start gentle range-of-motion exercises after the first few days, but nothing weight-bearing until the pain lets up.”
I nod, already calculating how to work around that. There’s no world in which I rest for two weeks. The Foxglove doesn’t run itself.
“Evie.” He fixes me with a look. “That face says you’re already planning how to ignore everything I just said.”
“I’m not.”
“You know exactly how this goes. Push it and you’ll make it significantly worse. A sprain doesn’t stay minor if you ignore it. That’s how you end up dealing with it for months instead of weeks. The ligament needs time.”
“She’ll rest,” Milo says from beside me.
“Good. Because someone needs to drive her home and make sure she actually sits down.” Devereaux rises, looking between us. “I’m guessing you’re volunteering.”
“Yes,” Milo says.
“I can drive myself.”
“You could.” Damien inclines his head. “But your right ankle is the one that works the gas and brake. So unless you’ve got a left-foot driving technique I don’t know about, I’d rather someone else handle it.”
I sigh. “Fine.”
Milo’s thumb traces an absentminded circle against the fabric on my lower back. I don’t think he even realizes he’s doing it. I adjust my position on the table before he can do it again.
“I’ll wrap up a cold pack for you. Keep rotating ice on and off tonight. And call me if the pain gets worse, or you notice any numbness or tingling.” Damien gathers the tablet and the used gloves wrapper, tossing the latter in the bin. “Take care of that ankle, Evie. I’m serious about the rest.”
“I will.”
I won’t. But I appreciate the concern.
He hesitates at the door and turns back, something flickering behind his blue eyes. “Oh, one more thing. Blood drive next month. You signed up?”
“I hate needles.”
“But you’re O negative, and that’s liquid gold to the blood bank. Just think about it.” He flashes a grin, then pulls the door shut behind him.
The second the latch clicks, Milo’s shoulders drop and his hand leaves my back. I miss the contact straight away.
“Okay.” I look at him. “What was that about?”
“What was what about?”
“You. Looking like you wanted to physically remove him from the room.”
“I didn’t.” His jaw shifts.
“You absolutely did. The whole time he was examining my ankle you were hovering too close.”
He huffs. “I don’t like him.”
“You just met him.”
“Sometimes that’s enough.”
I press my lips together to kill the laugh building in my chest. “You don’t need to protect me from my doctor.”
“I wasn’t protecting you.” He winces. “Okay, I was, a little bit.”
“From what? A blood pressure cuff?”
“From . . .” He exhales, rough and frustrated. “If I tell you, you’ll either freak out, or say I’m crazy.”
“I already think that.”
“Fair point.”
He scrubs a hand over his jaw, clearly dissatisfied with his own answer. I’m pretty sure if I asked him exactly what about Damien set him off, he couldn’t tell me.
I slide off the examination table onto my left foot, keeping my injured ankle off the floor. My sneaker sits unlaced on the floor. Milo picks it up before I can figure out the logistics and holds it out to me without a word.
“Guess you’re driving me home, then,” I say.
“Right. That’ll be a first,” he says under his breath.
My head snaps toward him. “What?”
“Nothing.” He shoves his hands in his pockets. “Let’s go.”
I hand him my keys, and they clink against his palm as his fingers close around them.
For the record, I don’t hand people my keys.
Or anything else that gives them control over where I go and how fast I get there.
I drove myself to prom and home from the emergency room at nineteen with a kidney infection and a hundred-and-three-degree fever, because the alternative was calling someone and admitting I needed help.
Today, a man I met last night carried me across a parking lot, and I’m now voluntarily handing him the keys to my car. The trajectory concerns me.