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I rolled back onto my heels and took her offered hand. “Thanks.”
She tipped her head back a little as she pulled me up. Over the last three weeks, I’d come to learn that was her way of saying I was welcome.
* * *
I paced a line across the living room. Hours had passed since we’d made it back to the apartment, but Leo and Hook were still nowhere to be seen.
“What if they got caught?” I asked.
Lily shot me a look before shaking her head. “Leo wouldn’t let that happen.”
Not intentionally, but even he could only fight off so many people alone. Add in the guns police officers carried, and the odds weren’t exactly in his favor.
Why the hell did it have to be like this? Nothing I tried to do went right. No matter what I did, I couldn’t even get close enough to my brother to have any hope of saving him. Hook was here, that was something, but helping me had gotten him blown out a window.
“I’m cursed,” I muttered, not realizing I’d said it out loud.
“So?” Lily asked, raising an eyebrow.
“So, everything I touch turns to shit. Maybe you three should just, I don’t know.” Leave. Go home. That was what I meant to say, but I couldn’t bring myself to give voice to the words.
“Being cursed isn’t the end of the world.”
I shot her a sardonic look. “Right, and how did my great-grandma’s curse work out for you?”
Low blow, Never.Why couldn’t I just keep my damned mouth shut?
To my surprise, Lily laughed. “I’m still here. I reunited with my cousin, and I’m still hanging out with my favorite human, even if she has become a little more neurotic over the past few weeks.”
“Your favorite? Really?” She might have meant it as a joke, but it tugged at my heart strings.
Lily’s expression melted from sarcastic to genuine as she twisted on the couch, throwing her arm over the back of it to get a better look at me. “You heard me.”
Huh. “I always assumed Matty was your favorite.” The two had certainly spent more time together than she and I had over the last few years.
Her fingers drummed slowly against the worn upholstery, running from pinky to index and back again. “He always needed more companionship than you did.”
Meaning he was lonely. I winced. “I know I was gone a lot.” But I had bills to pay. Food to buy. It took two jobs to keep us above water.
She shifted to her knees, resting her elbows on the back of the couch. “He knew why. The kid might make some questionable teenage choices, but he’s no dummy.”
The handle to the front door rattled, and just like that, I was ten kinds of tense again. Lily got up off the couch quietly, coming to my side. Leo and Hook could be out there, but it could just as easily be the shadow trying to find its way in. If it succeeded in overpowering my brother for good, our apartment would be that thing’s first stop.
The handle rattled again before a loud knock just about made me jump out of my skin. “A little help?”
My heart twisted and soared as I tripped over myself to get to the door and let Leo in. When it swung open, I was greeted with the sight of a very tired looking Leo supporting a barely conscious Hook. The second they were through the door, I snuck under Hook’s other arm and helped move him to the couch.
We set him down as gently as we could, but when he started to fall back, his head lolling, Leo caught him gently by the back of the neck and guided him down onto his side.
“His head is still healing,” he said quietly.
I glanced at the clock, then at Hook, dread bleeding through my initial sense of relief. “It’s been four hours. When he was injured on his ship, he was considerably better in just two or three.”
Leo took the oversized chair next to the couch, letting out an exhausted sigh as he sank into its softness. “That was there. This is here. Besides, he’ll heal faster with rest.” He laid his head back, then rolled it to look at Hook. “And now that he’s closer to you.”
“What does that mean?” I had no magical abilities. Unless sarcasm, snark, and cussing like a sailor counted.
“I tried to get him to rest longer before we came here, but once he was conscious, getting to you was all that mattered.”
