Chapter 19 #4
Chase chucked a blanket at him. “Dude.”
“Oh. Right.” The were covered himself up.
Chase sighed as he sat, pulling another blanket over his shoulders. Damn, his legs were shredded. He glanced down the hallway towards Aggie’s room, not rushing in there to see Jena was killing him.
“Is there anything to eat?” If he had to wait, getting something in his stomach would go a long way toward helping his healing ability along.
“Yeah,” Matilda said, her eyes on the wounds like she was thinking the same thing. “About a gallon of macaroni salad. Hey, Sweets,” she called over her shoulder, “I think we’re gonna need that potion after all.”
Kelsey came back into the room and bounced onto the other end of the couch next to her brother. She sucked in a breath. “Oh, yuck. Yeah. You need to eat.”
Chase ran a hand over his jaw. Macaroni salad wasn’t his favorite, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. “There tuna in it?”
“Nope,” Kelsey said. “Chicken. The canned kind.”
That didn’t make it sound anymore appetizing. “Can I have a bowl?” he asked.
“I dunno, can you?” Matilda shot back.
“Oh, enough of you,” Sweets said, bustling out with a heaping portion and handed it to him along with a glass of something foul.
“Can’t you see the poor man’s been through enough.
Kelsey, go hang those wet things over the tub.
I’ve got a cantrip that will dry them out in no time.
” She turned to Chase, her hands on her wide hips.
“Well, don’t sit there screwing up your face—drink it. ”
“What is it?” he asked, frowning as he tipped the glass. The viscous brown goo made a slow slide to the opposite rim.
Sweets huffed, crossing her arms. “A restorative brew. I made it for Aggie, but after she got hit with that jolt from the node, I was leery of giving it to her. It should fix you right up.”
Chase’s throat bobbed, everyone’s gaze on him as he put it to his lips, trying not to gag at the smell…he held his breath and started chugging. The way it tingled going down his throat didn’t help to settle his stomach. Neither did the urge to chew it.
But about halfway through, he had to admit he was feeling better.
A whump came from above their heads as he finished the glass, and Chase looked up as he set it on the coffee table. Shit. Was that the roof?
“So, where’d Malcom have you hidden away, and does he know you’re out?” Sweets asked, taking a seat in one of the overstuffed chairs by the window, one eye on Kelsey hauling the wet clothes from the room.
“Ah…I don’t know, but he had me at the bottom of one of those turbine foundations,” Chase said around forkfuls of macaroni salad. “You’re right about them messing with the leyline. They didn’t use the composite fiber rebar the mayor said they were going to. It’s all iron—”
“Ah! I knew it!” Matilda crowed, her expression pure, malevolent glee. She rubbed her hands together. “And I know just the spell to even his scales…”
“Oh no.” Ms. Pao bolted upright like she’d been goosed. “Not after what happened the last time we let you turn someone into a frog.”
“What? No one told him to hop into traffic.”
“No, but you didn’t do anything to stop it either,” Ms. Pao scolded. “Poor Otis had to deliver that man’s flattened remains to his family in a manilla envelope. Can you imagine? Saddest funeral I’ve ever been to.” She sniffed.
Chase tuned the witches’ banter out as another whump came from above.
His eyes flicked to the ceiling again. Not the roof, though all this rain couldn’t be doing the building any favors.
Someone was up there. He frowned, finishing what was in his bowl and considering a second. The whump came again. Was that Jena?
He stood, his legs protesting as newly formed scabs stretched. “I’m gonna go see what that is—”
“Hey, you’re back!” Felix said, coming into the room, freshly shaven, in a short-sleeved powder blue jumpsuit straight out of the seventies.
“I—yeah.” Wasn’t the craziest thing Chase had seen Felix in, but damn. “Where the hell did you get that?”
“Oh, this?” Felix asked, plucking at the ridiculously wide collar with a self-satisfied smile. “Jena’s closet. She owed me, and this suit has been calling my name since she bought it.”
Chase’s eyebrow quirked. “That was Jena’s?”
“Mmm. Yes, was. I left a pair of sweats on her bed that will probably fit you.” Felix glanced over at Liam’s growl of protest and rolled his eyes with a dismissive huff. “She’s upstairs, getting something for Aggie.”
Okay then. Chase glanced between the two and shuffled past the slim warlock, going into Jena’s room.
He glowered at the vanity’s mirror. That was gonna have to go, or Jena was gonna have to get some window treatments in here.
He considered moving it for all of a breath, then tossed his towel over the glass, covering it up.
Damn. He sat on the bed. Long swaths of scabbed-over skin bled down his legs from where the seams of his jeans had rubbed, and around them it was puffy and red.
He winced, his palms in the same condition.
Sweets’s brew had helped, but he was far from healed.
Sitting in all that water for so long had fucked him up royal, and marinating in a leyline couldn’t have helped.
Chase snagged the sweats Felix had left, that term not giving him warm fuzzies.
He pulled on the tee and zipped up the hoodie, smelling Liam.
Were those mating pheromones? Chase sniffed the collar.
Yeah, they were faint, but they were there.
His brow furrowed, vaguely recalling Felix and Liam dating at one point, but Felix didn’t seem very into Liam now…
Whatever, Chase was more concerned his wolf didn’t seem to care that he was wearing another were’s scent.
You okay, buddy? He got a distant sense of reassurance, like that part of him had been weakened somehow.
Which wasn’t reassuring at all.
What the hell had Malcom throwing him in that foundation done to him? Chase stretched out his shoulders, the fabric protesting—
Another thump came from above.
Jena. She might know.
He just had to climb another set of stairs to get to her.
Fuck.