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“What is it, Camille?”
“Henry—”
I didn’t get a chance to finish my thought. A loud explosion of some sort echoed in my ear, and Henry cried out. The line went dead.
“Motherfucking son of a bitch!” I tossed the receiver on the table.
Delilah and Iris stared at me.
I grabbed my purse and keys. “Something’s going on at the shop. I heard something that sounded like an explosion and the line went dead. Henry already called Chase—but, Iris, you get him on the phone and tell him what I said and to hurry the hell up. Let’s get our asses down there now.”
Iris snatched up the phone. “You want me to come with you? I can put Maggie in Menolly’s lair.”
“Yeah, but we’re heading out now. Have Morio drive you down after you’ve taken care of Maggie. And tell Vanzir, if he’s still here, to come with you. I have a feeling we’re going to need everybody we can get. Leave a note for Roz, and Trillian, too, and tell them to stay put in the house, and watch over things.” I paused. “On second thought, call them and tell them to get back home. Now.”
As Delilah and I raced for my car, I wondered what the hell had happened. Mostly, though, I worried about Henry. Because whatever that noise was, I knew in my gut that it wasn’t going to end well.
As we headed down the street toward the Indigo Crescent, my bookstore, I saw the rising smoke pluming from a half-block away. Fire engines crowded the street, and barricades stopped traffic. I screeched to a halt right behind the barricades and Delilah and I jumped out of the car, heading for the store at a dead run.
As we got within the sight line, a police officer stopped us. The rest of the street was roped off with crime tape and uniformed FH-CSI officers. Shamas was there, and he gave me a brusque nod. He was all-duty when he was working, a fact that had endeared him to Chase.
“I own that shop,” I told the officer trying to keep us out. “My friend was in there working behind the counter and I’m worried about him. I was on the phone with him when I heard an explosion and the line went dead.”
Just then, Chase came jogging over, the look on his face grim.
“What happened? Is Henry okay?” I took another look at his face and my heart sank. Whatever it was, was bad.
Chase put his finger to his lips and nodded us through the barricade. “They’re with me, Glass.” The officer nodded and waved us on.
“Henry’s been taken to the hospital with third-degree burns over sixty percent of his body. It doesn’t look good,” Chase said, his voice soft. He put his hand on my arm. “Camille, he may not make it.”
He might as well have hit me in the gut. Delilah let out a small mew, but thank the gods, she didn’t transform.
“What happened?” The smoke around us was so thick it was making me sick. Of course, Delilah and I were more sensitive to smoke than most FBHs, but by Chase’s expression I could tell it was bad even for them. Firemen were running in and out of the shop, their masks on, and I smelled something besides the smoke in the air. Not gunpowder, but some residue that I knew I’d smelled before.
“Someone exploded some sort of device in your shop. We aren’t sure what. I’ve got my men working on it with the firemen, because I have a feeling the bomb may not have been of human manufacture.”
My thoughts were on Henry, but I had to ask. “How much of the shop was affected?”
“The explosion was relatively localized—about a third of the shop is in ruins. The flames weren’t actually the problem. It’s whatever crap the bomb was made out of. Henry’s burns are chemical in nature.” He paused to answer his cell phone. “Hey, what have you got for me? . . . Really? . . . Okay, they’re here right now. You want me to put Camille on?” He handed me the phone.
Sharah, the chief medic at the FH-CSI headquarters, was on the line. She was Queen Asteria’s niece, but her ties to the Elfin Queen didn’t seem terribly strong. “We’ve got your friend Henry here.” Before I could ask how he was, she continued. “He’s in bad shape. Chase told you his injuries?”
“Third-degree burns over sixty percent of his body, right?” My voice was flat. If I let myself feel anything but numb, I’d be useless.
“Right. I figured out what caused the burns, so the good news is we can try to treat him.”
I didn’t want to hear, but had to ask. “What’s the bad news?”
“My prognosis for him isn’t good. I give him a twenty percent chance—at best—to make it through the next forty-eight hours. If he makes it through two days, then I’ll up it to forty percent. He took a lot of the burns on his face, chest, and stomach areas. His internal organs are damaged, and he’s on a ventilator in order to keep him breathing.”
Crap. I wanted to smash the phone on the ground, but it wasn’t Sharah’s fault. If Henry did pull through, we’d have her to thank.
“What caused the burns?”
“Alostar compound mixed with myocian powder.”
Double crap. The last person I’d seen use that mixture was Rozurial. Since I knew he hadn’t been the one to plant the bomb, then I had to assume that our attackers were from Otherworld. Or that they had hooked up with someone from Otherworld.
