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“If she dies and I have no second vampire master, then I will begin to age.”
“Like age from where you are in what, your thirties, or do you mean age all at once like centuries?” I asked.
“I will age from where I am now, but as a human.”
“Okay, plenty of time to hunt up a vampire that does jackals again,” I said.
“Or a chance for me to finish living an ordinary life,” he said.
“If that’s what you want.”
“If I survive her death, then I think yes, I would like a chance to see if there is any ordinary left for me in this world.”
“A discussion for another night,” Echo said. “We must decide, and then we must get Anita back to the Circus to be with Jean-Claude before dawn.”
I decided that if Queenie could go under guard, so could Kaazim until we figured out if she was a traitor or just out of practice with her magic. Either way, I wanted him to have a chance. No one else argued with me, so Echo called in the security that she trusted to watch him and told them to find a storage room to put him in until they were relieved of the duty. We waited until Kaazim was gone with his new watchdogs. Then Fortune went to find the doctor so we could get the hell out of here. I wanted to see Jean-Claude as soon as possible, because accident or plot, we needed the vampire marks healed between us before dawn.
31
Dr. Boden triedone more time to convince us to let him use his experimental treatment on Wicked and Truth, and then they told him they were leaving the hospital today. Boden was not happy. He started bandaging and doing standard stuff for their injuries while he tried to persuade them to reconsider. Because they were still saying they were leaving as soon as he got the bandaging done, he offered for them to put the clothes they wore to the ER back on, but they had to refuse, not because the hospital staff had cut them off, but because if there was even the slightest chance that there was holy water still on the clothes, they couldn’t even come near touching Wicked’s and Truth’s skin. So they got to keep the hospital gowns on for shirts. Dr. Boden said they’d loaned us quite enough scrubs for one night. When he’d bandaged Wicked’s face and put Truth’s arm in a sling with more wrapping to keep it close to his body and they still wanted to leave early, he got the paperwork for them to sign. The legalese was more involved, but it basically said, signing this meant you couldn’t sue the doctor or the hospital no matter what happened later. He also conceded that maybe they could find them some scrub pants once the nurse damn near ran into a wall when she saw Wicked from behind. Happily, I knew they were both equally distracting from behind.
In fact, I was suddenly finding them more distracting in general. I wasn’t sure if I’d worked through my guilt feelings super fast, or maybe the grilled cheese and Coke had been used up so I was looking for other food. Had theardeurfinally come back? Were the vampire marks up and running again?
The layers of gauze and tape and the sling on Truth, it wasn’t that they hid the injuries, it was that without my sight to distract me I could feel their bodies, their injuries, almost in the same way I could feel putting a zombie back together in the grave.
“I think I could try and heal you now,” I said.
They looked at me. “They are fearsome wounds, it would turn any lady’s heart to stone,” Truth said.
“If I have to cover my face for you to heal it, then so be it,” Wicked said.
I shook my head. “No, that’s not what I mean.”
“Then please explain,” Truth said, but the words were cold and not happy.
“When I’ve healed knife or gunshot wounds, the part deep in the body that I can’t see with my eyes heals almost without me thinking about it. Same with zombies putting themselves back together in the grave. Your wounds were right there on the surface, and I had no idea how to put them back together. I stared at Truth’s hand and thought, I have no idea how the ligaments attach to the bones or muscle. Wicked, your face was…Looking at the pieces I didn’t know how to fix them, but now that I can’t see them it’s like my necromancy, or whatever I use to heal, can sense how to put everything back together again.”
“You can call theardeuragain?” Truth asked.
“I’m not sure, but I can feel how to fix your injuries now.”
They looked hopeful, but Echo said, “If you know how to heal them now, you will know how to heal them tomorrow night, but this night the priority must be to heal the vampire marks between you and Jean-Claude.”
“She is right, brother,” Truth said.
“Thank you, Echo, for reminding me of my duty,” Wicked said.
“So we’re not doing this right now,” I said.
“We need to get you to Jean-Claude,” Nicky said.
“Before sunrise,” Ethan said.
“That must be our priority tonight,” Truth said.
“My vanity will wait until tomorrow,” Wicked said.
“Okay, then, let’s go.”
