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“Who are you?” I ask. “Where am I?” I look around, my eyes bouncing from doorway to wall to bed, not able to land on anything for more than a second. Not sure where the biggest threat lies. “Where’s my bag?” That bag is the only thing I own in the whole world; I can’t lose it.
There’s a beat of silence. Caleb shifts into the room, takes a step closer to the bed. “You mean Mark’s bag?” he asks.
My heart leaps sideways in my chest, and I’m instantly alert. Anyone who knows Mark, who speaks of him with such familiarity, is a potential threat to me. I have to be careful. “I found that bag,” I say. “It’s mine now.” I try to hold Caleb’s gaze, but my eyes slide away before his do.
“We can worry about Mark and the stupid bag later,” the girl says. “Right now we need to get your shoulder fixed.”
Ever since Mark dislocated my shoulder, getting it back in the socket has been all I can think about. But now, faced with the prospect of these strangers touching me, I shrink back, bring my knees up protectively. I notice for the first time that my cut fingers are freshly bandaged.
“We cleaned those up,” the girl tells me, following my gaze. “You should have had stitches, but it’s too late now. You may have some scars, but they should heal up fine.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“No problem. But now we have to take care of your shoulder. It’s going to hurt,” she says. “But we have to do it. The longer it stays like that, the less likely it’s ever going to be right.” She looks at Caleb. “Come on.”
Caleb has to be close to a decade older than the girl, but he listens to her like she’s the boss. He crosses the room, stopping next to the bed so that he’s on my injured side. He has a length of faded cloth stretched between his hands like a cradle. Or a noose. I look up at him. His face is impassive, waiting for the girl.
“Lie down,” she tells me. “On your back.”
I uncurl my legs slowly. I feel like prey, exposing my delicate underbelly as I flatten out on the bed, the two of them looming above me.
“Are you good with pain?” the girl asks.
That surprises a hoarse little laugh out of me. “Getting better all the time,” I say.
The girl smiles, revealing a slight gap between her front teeth. She tucks her hair behind both ears and nods to Caleb, who bends down and loops the cloth under my armpit, pulling it taut. I clench my teeth to keep from crying out. I try to keep my breathing even, tell myself if they were going to hurt me there’d be no point in healing me first. Unless they’re sadists, a little voice in my head whispers, but I tell it to shut up.
The girl nods at Caleb again, and then reaches forward and takes hold of my injured arm, pulling steadily downward, while he keeps tension in the cloth. My shoulder, already filled with broken glass, explodes, pain rippling up into my jaw and shooting sparks from my fingertips. The girl pulls harder and I can’t keep quiet any longer, screaming into the humid air as she gives a final yank and my shoulder shifts back into place with a pop that sends me pinwheeling down into darkness.
I jerk awake, gasping out the last of another horrible dream. No talons this time, but something equally as horrifying, involving Bishop and blood and my own guilty hands. I can hear my shuddering breath and I count backward from one hundred until it evens out, slow and steady. My head aches, a dull, insistent throb. It takes me a few seconds to realize I’m in the same room as earlier, still in the narrow bed, although the daylight is fading fast, purple-tinged light edging in around the cracked and dusty shutters. I lift my injured shoulder off the bed, just an inch, testing.
“Better not,” a man’s voice says from the gloomy corner to my right. “Likely to pop it back out. Gonna be a while before it’s ready for normal movement.”
My eyes swing wildly, landing on Caleb, who is sitting on the far side of the room, his body slouched on a wooden chair. His relaxed stance is deceptive; he has the lean, hungry look of a predator. One false move from me and he’d be up and out of that chair before I could blink.
“You scared me,” I say, fingers twisting in the worn quilt someone has thrown on top of me.
Caleb shrugs, doesn’t apologize. His eyes pulse with a quick, clever intelligence that warns me to be careful. “Ash is always looking for someone to save,” he says after a tense beat of silence.
I have no idea what he’s talking about. The smoky early-evening light shades the whole room with the foggy, underwater quality of a dream, making me wonder if I’m still asleep an
d my nightmare has simply taken an unexpected detour. I blink fast, pinch the back of my hand. “What… I don’t know what you mean?” I say eventually. “Who’s Ash?”
“Ashley, the girl who was here earlier.”
He sounds impatient, but only half of me is really listening. Now that I’m sure I’m awake, I’m wondering if we’re alone in this house, whether he’s dangerous, calculating whether I can beat him to the doorway. And where to go from there if I do.
“Hey,” he says, loud and sharp. “Pay attention to what I’m saying.”
I try to focus on him. I don’t want to make him angry, or any angrier than he already seems. But I can feel my own irritation rising, too. “I am paying attention,” I snap back.
“She’s looking for someone to save,” he repeats. As he speaks he points in my direction. It has the ease of a gesture he’s done a thousand times, probably so much a part of him he doesn’t notice it anymore. “Even if they’re not worth saving.”
I shift upward in the bed, scooting up to sitting. Caleb doesn’t try to help me, just watches. “So what are you saying?” I ask, once I’m upright. “I’m not worth it?”
Caleb shrugs again, apparently his default reaction. “Too early to know.” He kicks at something on the floor, and for the first time I notice my bag lying there. Well, Mark’s bag, if we’re being truthful. “I’d be interested to hear how you got this bag.”
“I already told you. I found it.”
