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Oh, god.
Breath whooshed out of her when she saw blood on her sleeve. She wasbleeding. Bright, crimson drops of confusion. She was bleeding?
When that asshole shoved past her, they must have nicked her. But this was too clean a cut to be done with fingernails. This was a knife’s doing. Joy stared at the shallow cut on her forearm, about five centimetres long, and struggled to process it. She’d beencut.
Disinfectant, a calm voice advised.And a bandage.Both of which were kept in the first aid box under the little counter in the front room of the reserve—which had been converted into a little gift shop to generate money.
Biting back a groan, Joy pushed inside and—
Froze.
There was alotof blood. So much that Joy’s breathing quickened even more, her hands starting to shake.
Blood had splashed across the floor she’d polished clean yesterday, and splattered across the display of leaflets, and over the educational boards she’d been improving these past few months.
And over the figure slumped on the floor.
Oh God.
“Mr Ivers?” she gasped, rushing through the blood to kneel beside the bloody form of her neighbour—and her mum’s best friend. She bit the inside of her cheek and ignored the pain flashing from her own arm. It was growing worse with every minute, burning fiercer.
Joy had almost always known Neil for his kind smiles and gentle personality. And somehow, he was here in the reserve, with dark liquid soaked into his checked shirt, his jeans, and his face—
Gods, there was a cut on his cheek, just like—
Joy shut that thought down. His chest was cut, and he was bleeding heavily; that was more pressing. Her hands shook harder.
What would Gabi do?What would Gabi do?
“Neil?”
Her neighbour, her friend, was bleeding on the floor, his shirt and coat ripped open, his skin cut apart. She reached out to touch him, her fingers searching for a pulse in his neck. Alive. He wasalive.
It was only then that she realised his jumping chest meant he was breathing, too.
Get it together, Joy!
Gabi would phone the police. But Gabiwasthe police. Shit.Shit.
Joy let out a shuddering breath and stumbled over to the rack of nature-themed items available for purchase. She grabbed a tea-towel with rare birds on it, ripped off the tag, then pushed it hard against the bleeding wound on Mr. Ivers’s chest. He didn’t so much as grunt, even though it must have caused him excruciating pain.
Leaning all her weight on one hand, Joy fumbled for her phone with her other and scrolled through her contacts until she found Victoriya’s number.
“What now, Mackenzie?” she barked, answering.
“I need your mum,” Joy gasped, panicking as the towel soaked through too quickly. It was only a small wound, but it was bleeding fast. And if the cut on his face—just a line, not a word,but still—meant he’d been hurt by the same person who’d killed Freya, witchcraft could be involved. Blood thinners, anti-healing hexes,curses. Gods,curses…
“Now,Victoriya! Put her on the phone or give me her number and I’ll call her myself.” Joy sounded nothing like herself. It was an eerie, out of body experience to hear her own voice.
“What’s happened?” Victoriya demanded. “Where are you?Mum!”
“I’m at work—the reserve. Someone must have broken-in. When I got here, they knocked me over and ran, but then I found my neighbour inside. He’s bleeding and I—I don’t know what to do.”
“Which neighbour?” Something had changed in Victoriya’s voice, but Joy didn’t have the energy to place the tone.
“Mr. Ivers, the man in the green house beside me,” Joy replied, struggling for air as panic raged. “Long dark hair, early forties. He’s a professor.” Joy gritted her teeth against a sudden throb of pain in her forearm but with her eyes on Neil, her own pain was nothing.
The phone clicked off.
