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“Love you, brother,” I told him finally. My mouth struggled to form the words. The fact that he’d shoot me rather than let me hurt them was enough to make me tear up a little from relief and pride.
I looked at Christy and Sera. “You, too.”
My muscles looked like they were moving on their own. Twitches and ripples. It made me wince as it grew more intense. I could see the darkening green everywhere I could see my skin. I lifted my shirt and looked at the injection site there. Vibrant emerald glittered inside me so brightly that I reached down to touch my skin. It was icy, making me feel more like a corpse than living person.
I swallowed and said as calmly as I could, “My body is processing the venom faster now. It was a hard bump, like you’d frozen it, but it’s not staying there.”
Then I leaned over and vomited into the industrial paint can they were using as a makeshift trashbin. I was starting to shake violently, and my magic was not content to stay quiet as my body resisted the toxins. I felt my magic reach out, seeking the dead. I tried to keep it, find another way to release the energy because I didn’t need corpses crawling through the windows right now.
My magic wanted to release itself, to roll out and find the dead, to be utilized. I wasn’t sure I could keep it in check. I closed my eyes and whispered, “Salt the sills and along the walls. Everywhere. Do it now.”
My three closest friends went to the vats of salt I kept around the house. They all knew the dead came toward my magic, and no one here wanted that. I wasn’t up to standing, much less swinging a sword. I’d developed great control over my grave magic since childhood, but today wasn’t a great day for controlling much of anything.
I concentrated on trying to stay focused on my magic behaving properly as my friends poured salt lines for me.
My home was the entire floor of the building, and it was the ground floor, so there was an odd risk that the dead would try to rise through the ground. Concrete was impervious, fortunately, but a good solid salt line should keep the dead from trying to crawl through windows or throw themselves at the door. That had happened once in my childhood. An old man, clad in his burial suit and loafers, kept battering himself against my bedroom window. I woke to bloody, broken glass and an injured dead man reaching into my room.
Such things had taught me to have better control, because even with my mother’s faery bargain in place, I had sometimes struggled. Now that I was unbound, I’d struggled more than I had in fifteen years. And, tonight, after the injection, I wasn’t sure I was going to find control.
There were too many ways my friends could be in danger, so they needed to get out of here. The most likely case was that the dead would start clustering in the parking lot. I might be able to stop them from coming into my home, but I wasn’t swearing to that.
I felt all of them:draugr,corpses properly interred, and lost bodies hidden in places the dead ought not be buried. My magic wanted to claim them, animate them, gather them.
“Phone.”
With a shaking hand, Christy gave it to me. “Please don’t die on us. Please.”
“Hoping.”
I pressed a button or several. I couldn’t actually say, but in a few moments, I heard his voice. “Geneviève,” Eli answered. “What a pleasant—"
“I need you.” I took a shuddering breath, forcing my heart to stay calm to not spread the toxin throughout my body even faster. “Right now, Eli. I think I might be dying.”
And then the convulsions made my whole body feel as if a drunk stranger had me on marionette strings.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I woke coveredin ice again.
Somewhere near me, Sera said, “We’re going to run out. Then what?”
Between the convulsions and the puking, my attempts to stay calm were not working as well as I’d like. I’d convinced my small group of determined nursemaids that they could only stay until Eli arrived. I couldn’t decide if I was more irritated or awed by their steadfastness. They weren’t asking me why the venom hadn’t killed me. They weren’t worried that I was going to wake up dead and eat their faces.
“I’m not safe for you to be around,” I said for the fourth time. I tried to sound rational, even though I felt like screaming at them that they were being irresponsible. Carefully, I explained, “Injected. Could re-awake asdraugr.”
“So what? You’ll have a fewdraugrtraits. You’re still our Gen.” Sera folded her arms and glared down at me.
As adventurous as Christy but two hundred times more maternal, Sera was a rock for me. Right now, though, she looked like she was as reasonable as an angry bear.
“I wantyouto besafe,” I stressed. “After all the times you said that to me, you ought to understand.”
“And I want you to have help while you heal.” Sera tapped one foot. “You will heal, Gen. You are not allowed to die, and if that means we stay here while you think you are a threat to us, then—”
“I am a threat.”
Sera waved my words away. “I’m not going anywhere until Eli gets here, at the least. I could stay then, too.” She motioned to her purse. “If I need to, I’ll shoot your knees or something if you change into adraugr.”
“Told you,” Jesse said quietly. He kissed the top of my head and helped me to stand. “Come on. You wanted to be in your own bed, so let’s get you there.”
