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Closing his coat around him, Roman glanced over us one last time, then strode to the doorway at the end of the hall, leading to the emergency stairs. He went through, and the door thudded closed behind him.
I smiled an apology to the woman, who ducked back into her room, shaking her head, muttering.
Shivering, I squeezed shut my eyes and hugged myself. I’d been holding myself up by sheer force of will, and now I turned into a puddle of melted nerves. Ben put a hand on my arm and drew me into an embrace, which I slumped into. Cormac was staring at the door, after Roman. He still held the stake ready.
“Why doesn’t he just kill us all?” Cormac muttered finally.
For the same reason we couldn’t stake him in the middle of a hotel hallway, I was guessing. Roman wasn’t used to stepping into the light.
We went back to our rooms long enough to pack and clear out, then checked out of the hotel. We were more than happy to pay for the night we would not be spending there, just for the chance to leave.
* * *
WE HAD to track down the car we’d left parked near Chinatown, which had been towed because that was what happened when you left a car in a pay lot for thirty-plus hours. As problems went, this one was slight and easily mended. Not like battling gods and demons. But when all you wanted to do was go home, every obstacle felt like a great, thick wall with a firmly bolted door. Which was why it seemed to take forever to bail the car out, pile in it, and head east as quickly as possible.
Once we’d left San Francisco, we all breathed easy again.
Dawn arrived while we were somewhere in Nevada. Cormac was the one who broke the thoughtful, tired silence we’d been driving through. “I’m trying to figure out—did we win or not?”
Ben was at the wheel. I’d been dozing off in the front passenger seat. I’d assumed Cormac had been doing the same in back. Apparently, he’d been thinking instead. Funny, I’d been trying to avoid thinking.
“Define win,” Ben said.
“We’re all alive, we won,” I said curtly. That was all the argument that mattered—the pack was safe. Right?
“I guess so,” Cormac said. “Then why does it feel like we got handed a booby prize?”
Because for all that we’d done what we came to do—help Anastasia protect the Dragon’s Pearl, turn back Roman’s force
s—and learned a few things in the process, the future seemed incredibly hazy. Because I was still thinking that Roman was right and I should stay home. Not get involved.
Not raise an army to fight him, like Anastasia wanted me to do. That was the booby prize.
“What do we do about it?” Ben said. We answered with more silence, until he glanced over at me. “You’re being quiet.”
“So?”
“That’s not like you.”
I said, “I like how we’re talking about this as ‘we.’ What are ‘we’ going to do about it. Thanks for that.” I smiled at Ben and craned my head to smile at Cormac over the seat. I wasn’t surprised that he wouldn’t look at me.
“Somebody’s got to look after you crazy kids,” Cormac said, gazing out the window to the gold-tinged landscape, plains gilded by a brand-new sunrise, scrolling by.
Epilogue
BACK HOME, BEN made me go to the doctor. I didn’t want to—my hip was fine now, I could walk, run, shape-shift, no problem. Since becoming a werewolf I hadn’t ever bothered with health insurance, because, why? I never got sick, I never got hurt. At least not permanently. But Ben wanted to know. So I went, roughly explained the situation (“I fell and hurt my hip awhile back,” I said, using as few details as possible), and the doctor ordered X rays.
The doctor got the films back, and Ben and I waited in the exam room while he studied the image of my pelvis. Before too long, he nodded and made noises of affirmation.
“Right there,” he said, pointing to a couple of denser lines of white on the edges of the bone above my right hip joint. I never would have noticed them looking on my own. “The injury was actually to your pelvis rather than the femur, a couple of hairline fractures consistent with the impact from a bad fall. It’s completely healed—I’m guessing this happened at least a year ago? And you never went to the hospital for it? I’m amazed you could even function with a break like this. It’s usually quite painful.”
Ben and I glanced at each other. How much to explain, how much to leave out?
“She’s stubborn,” Ben said finally. “Likes to tough things out.”
“Well,” the doctor said, tsking me. “Next time, go to the emergency room. If there’d been any bleeding or infection associated with the break, you could have been in real trouble. We also might want to test for osteoporosis. This may be a symptom of weakened bone structure…”
I thanked him for his concern, and we left.
