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Because they’d have turned tail and run at the first glimpse of the destruction they’d brought down on us.
Seth’s head tipped to the side. For an instant, I thought it was just with the motion of the car, but then his eyelids twitched.
“Seth!” I said with a twinge of hope. I stroked his forehead, soothing, mending, as well as I could. His body was still mottled with the marks of battle, but at least I’d stopped any bleeding. As for what was in his head…
His eyelids fluttered again and opened. He gazed up at me, his gray-green eyes hazy.
“Rose,” he croaked, and my heart leapt.
“Right here with you,” I said. “Do you remember what happened?”
He blinked slowly, his face going slack and then tensing again. “The demon. It was coming at all of you. It killed people. Did we—where are we?”
“In a minivan headed away from it as fast as we can get,” I said. There wasn’t any point in worrying him with the question of what we’d do when we couldn’t run anymore. “How do you feel? You blanked out for a while there. Does anything still hurt? I tried to help every way I could…”
He wet his lips and shifted his body a little as if testing it. “My head aches. Well, really, every part of me aches. But it’s kind of a dull pain, not like I’m, I don’t know, fatally wounded or anything.”
A jolt of frustration shot through my relief. “Youcouldhave been. It could have killed you. What were you thinking, coming at it like that?” If it had been Damon, or Gabriel—Spark help me, I’d have expected that kind of brash charge from any of the other guys before Seth.
His brow furrowed. He gazed at the ceiling of the van distantly, lost in his thoughts for a several seconds.
“It was going to destroy the cars,” he said. “And then it was going to destroy all of us. I couldn’t think of anything else to do.” His shoulders tensed as if he were about to try to sit up, but I clamped my hand down on his chest to hold him in place. “Did it work—did the other witches—”
“I think most of them got away,” I said. The scene on the field had been too frenzied for me to keep track of much as we’d been peeling out of there ourselves. “You did distract it and keep it occupied for a few minutes longer than we’d have had otherwise. So I guess it was a good thing, even if it was also an incredibly reckless move and I hope I never have to see you do anything like that ever again.”
Seth managed to chuckle, followed by a wince. “Sorry. If I could have done it without scaring you, I absolutely would have.”
“I know.” I leaned over him, pressing a kiss to his forehead. The van swayed as we took a corner too fast. We’d be back at the Assembly building soon—I’d have to leave him in the care of the medics. I couldn’t play healer once there were real healers around and so many other people I had to try to save.
“Jin?” he said, that single syllable enough to convey an entire agonizing question.
“He has to be okay,” I said. “I’d know if he wasn’t.”
“He was probably cheering me on,” Seth said in a wry tone. “He said we needed to push outside our comfort zone. There was definitely nothing comfortable about jumping into that truck.”
Jin had said that? When I wasn’t around, I guessed. I might have asked more if Seth hadn’t still looked so fragile despite his bulk—and then the van screeched to a halt. We’d reached the Assembly building.
Medics were already pouring into the underground parking garage with stretchers and salves to tend to the wounded we’d been able to collect. It occurred to me with a lurch of my gut that we’d probably left at least a few witches behind who’d been alive but too injured to run or even call for help. Maybe we couldn’t have saved them anyway, but…
Oh, Spark help us all, how many had the demon already killed since then as it rampaged into the city?
Two of the women eased Seth away from me, offering reassuring murmurs. I let him go with a tearing sensation in my chest. An arm came around me, Jin’s faintly smoky scent reaching me, and I couldn’t contain a sob.
“He’s awake?” Jin said, turning me and wrapping me in his embrace. “He’s okay?”
“I think so,” I said. I wanted to stay there enveloped in his warmth until the rest of the world was right again—but it might not ever be right again unless I helped. I squeezed my consort hard and forced myself to step back. “I’d better get upstairs and find out what the hell we’re going to do now.”
He followed me inside. The whole building was full of bedlam. The enforcers returning from our confrontation with the demon mixed with officials demanding answers and other panicked employees scurrying without much sense of direction. Voices echoed through the hall in a barely decipherable cacophony.
I couldn’t see any of the officials I knew. I didn’t see a single familiar face. Where was Naomi, or Thalia, or—
I spun around, jostled in the crowd, and found myself staring into a face that was both familiar and totally unexpected.
“Rose!” Imogen said, and threw her arms around me.
I hugged the younger witch back instinctively, my chin coming to rest on her mussed red curls. Imogen had come to my estate seeking shelter weeks ago—her aunt and uncle had been mixed up with the Frankfords and had tried to draw her into their clutches after she’d lost her parents and she and her younger sister had moved in with them.
It’d been a while since I’d seen her, though. After one of the Frankfords’ surreptitious attacks—and my inability to fully explain what was going on—she’d packed up and headed back to her relatives. I’d known they’d been arrested along with the rest of the faction’s witches, but I’d wondered how she was holding up.
