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My eyes opened, and I found myself looking at something that might have been a knee. I blinked, and it came more into focus. Yes, it was a knee. A very dirty, denim-covered knee that also appeared to have been drooled on.
I raised myself up slightly. And realized why my pillow had been so damned hard. My head had been resting on someone’s thigh, and whoever it was hadn’t skipped leg day.
I turned my head the other way and saw a stomach. I frowned at it, which wasn’t fair, because it was a nice stomach. Flat and hard, and with the beginnings of the deep V of muscles sometimes called an Adonis belt above the loose top of the jeans.
But there was something wrong with it anyway. And that included the sculpted, lightly furred chest above. And the rocklike shoulders above that. And the face—
My body came upright abruptly. Maybe a little too abruptly, since the room did a lazy spin around me. But I didn’t care, because I’d finally realized the problem: the body was right, but the skin was wrong. Instead of Caleb’s rich mocha, it was pale and sun kissed and—
I grabbed one of those oversized shoulders and shook it as hard as I could, which meant I maybe jiggled it a little. “They released you?”
An eyebrow rose. And damn it! Everybody could do that but me.
“No,” Pritkin told me. “They’re in deliberations. They didn’t seem to feel they needed me for that.”
“Oh.” I sat back, waking the rest of the way up. And checking him over.
He looked okay. Well, actually that was a lie. “Okay” was a relative term considering where we were, and encompassed a lot of things. But he didn’t look any more beat up.
Unfortunately, that was about the only plus.
He hadn’t found any extra clothes to go with the dirty jeans, which were now also cut in several places, and scorched down one side, probably the result of the near miss on the rooftop. His hair, always terrible, was now extra Pritkin-y, meaning it would have put any self-respecting stylist on suicide watch. Although it matched his face, which was a stubbly mess, and his left eye, which was black and swollen, and his right arm, which was in a sling, and his ribs—
“You wouldn’t even get in the door at Rosier’s looking like that,” I told him, after a minute.
His lips pursed. “Should I worry that you sound pleased?”
“I do not!” That was ridiculous. “And I meant you look terrible.”
“Would you like a mirror?” he asked sweetly.
“No.”
I glanced around. We were still on the sofa, only someone had added a rattan privacy screen on one side, shielding us from the view of the rest of the lobby. That seemed to happen to me a lot.
I guess even hell has some standards.
Although Caleb, at least, was doing earth proud. He was standing by a pillar, arms crossed, eyes watchful, face back to its usual fuck-with-me-and-die expression, maybe kicked up an extra notch or two because of where we were. His knee-length leather duster was likewise looking sharp. Of course, it was war mage issue, meaning that it was less a coat than self-healing armor, knitting up any little boo-boos almost as soon as they happened. I suspected it might be self-cleaning, too, because he was suspiciously lacking in dirt.
Casanova, on the other, other hand, was bringing our average back down again, although less because of looks than attitude. He was still sprawled on the couch on my other side, and he must have finished off the bottle he was still clutching. Because his handsome face was pasty and crumpled, like his once-nice suit. And his eyes kept darting around the lobby blearily, as if trying to see through the bland beige glamourie.
Altogether, we were a sorry lot, and then my stomach growled plaintively. “Have I been out long?” I asked, tucking a limp strand of hair behind my ear. And wincing, because even that hurt.
“A few hours,” Pritkin told me. “You weren’t unconscious, just exhausted. We thought it best to let you sleep. It’ll likely be hours yet before we hear anything.”
I digested that. And, unfortunately, nothing else. My stomach spoke up again, more forcefully.
“Does this place have a coffee shop?”
“No,” he said, getting up, and grimacing. I guess I wasn’t the only stiff one. “But there’s a food cart next door. If I remember right, it’s one of the safe ones.”
“Safe?” Caleb frowned, like that word didn’t compute around here. “Am I misremembering the bunch of guys who just tried to kill us?”
“That was before we reached the council,” Pritkin said, and stretched, cracking his back. I tried that, too, because it sounded like it would feel awesome, but I was too bendy. I just flopped over. So I pretended to be touching my toes since I was already down there.
And, God, my toes. And the rest of my poor feet. Filthy, pedicure gone, cut and bruised and traces of hell gunk between the toes.
And after everything, the running and the fighting and the almost dying . . . that was what did it.
