Chapter 13 #2
The protest outside had gotten both bigger and louder. Someone with a bullhorn was yelling things, although they were muffled by the glass. I wasn’t interested in trying to listen too hard to what they were saying—I knew it would just make me angry and sad all at once.
I wished Raj was there.
I knew he would fuss and worry, and I knew that would probably annoy me, because I didn’t need him to be there, but that didn’t change the fact that I wanted him with me.
I felt safe with him. Protected. But, more than that, I felt like when he was there, all the things that my parents had muttered when they didn’t think Violette was listening about my corrupt magic, all the stares and wrinkled noses and sneers directed at me for reasons I didn’t understand, all the chants and shouts and waved protest signs proclaiming that I wasn’t worthy—none of it mattered when he was there.
Or, rather, I didn’t care about it when he was with me, even though it did matter in the grand scheme of things. I knew that.
I sighed, turning my back to the window.
“Rayn, don’t you want some?” Vi asked me, holding up the brownie pan.
I shook my head. “No, th—”
Pain exploded across my temple, and I staggered, feet crunching on the floor, although that didn’t make sense—
“Get down!” Ward barked, and I almost objected that if I got down, I was going to cut my hands and knees on the glass.
Glass.
Stupidly, I reached up and touched my fingers to the side of my head, hissing as they make contact with some sort of wound. I stared at them, trying to figure out why they were bright red.
More pain, this time in my shoulder, but it moved me away from the gaping hole where the window had been, the glass still in the frame making a jagged maw of teeth shimmering against the confusion of swirling lights and darkness and shouting, milling people.
A hand grabbed my wrist and pulled, and I lacked the ability to resist as Vi dragged me deeper into the room. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.” Her voice shook, and when I managed to focus on her, there were tears on her face.
“Rayn,” Ward commanded, his voice sharp. “Look at me.”
Confused, I turned to try to find his face, then had to look down.
“Why’s he moving like that?” Vi asked.
I wanted to ask like what, but it was hard to make my mouth make the words.
“Because he’s probably concussed,” Ward replied.
I wasn’t sure what, exactly that meant.
“Oh, God,” Vi half-sobbed.
“Violette.” Ward’s voice was firm and steady. “I need you to focus for me, okay?”
She nodded, although her fingers still gripped my wrist.
“I need you to—”
But whatever he needed her to do got cut off when several police burst through the door to the room.
“Oh, shit,” somebody said. A voice I didn’t recognize.
“Rayn?”
I turned to find the source of the familiar voice. Detective Maza.
He was frowning, his brows pulled together over dark brown eyes. “I need to look at your head, okay?” he said.
I stared.
“Rayn?” His frown got deeper.
I needed to answer him. I swallowed. Tried to nod, then winced, my hand going back to my head.
Maza’s hand caught my wrist. “Don’t touch it,” he said. “I need a yes or no, though. Can I look at your head?”
I swallowed again a few more times before my lips and tongue remembered how to move. “Y-yes.”
Strong, calloused hands touched my face. Something flickered over Maza’s expression, but I didn’t know him well enough to read what it was and I definitely wasn’t with it enough to interpret what it might mean.
Maza let out a grunt. “Shit,” he breathed. “That’s gonna need stitches.”
Raj was going to be mad.
So was Mason.
I looked over at Ward. At least he was safe. I hadn’t let him get hurt.
“We’re getting all of you out of here,” Maza said to me. “In fact,” he said, gesturing to one of the uniformed police who had come in with him.. “We’re shutting down the whole party. Get everyone out of here—the party and the damn protest.”
“Detective…” The woman sounded uncertain.
“Backup will be here soon,” he replied sharply.
All the faces in the room—the police and Ward and Vi—were grim.
Of course they were.
We had to get out of here, and the building’s main entrance was surrounded by the people who had—
My mind was clearing a little, and I looked around, then located a few bricks in the midst of the shattered glass.
They’d thrown bricks through the glass. I knew that the windows were mirrored on the outside, that they couldn’t have seen me on the other side. The fact that I’d been there was nothing more than a really unfortunate—for me—coincidence.
The protestors had probably been hoping this was the séance room, or maybe the main party room. They’d wanted to make a statement.
Instead, they’d only hit me.
Despite the fact that this, yet again, meant I’d been a disappointment, I didn’t feel at all bad about it. Except for the headache that was starting to throb its way out of the injury on my temple. That did feel bad.
I was sitting in an alcove in the Emergency Department behind a yellow curtain with little chicks printed on it, my eyes closed against the light leaking in around the curtain.
The nurses had shut off the lights on my side of the loosely divided room out of deference for the pounding headache that didn’t seem likely to abate any time soon.
I was waiting for someone to show up to stitch it closed, then they were going to send me home. They wanted Vi to come with me, to make sure I didn’t lose consciousness and be unable to wake up.
I hadn’t called Raj yet. I wanted to wait until I was home safe before bothering him.