agony I couldn’t acknowledge. I needed to breathe.
The footsteps moved past me. I let out a shaky breath, then inhaled slowly. My burning lungs wanted to cough. The cramp intensified; tears sparked in my eyes.
Something beeped. Fabric rustled. A man’s voice said, “Yeah?”
Over the phone, someone replied, “You find her yet?”
From the corner of my eye, I saw Tully standing by the sedan with a phone pressed to his ear.
“No. Whoever she is, she’s fast,” James Wormer said.
“Bring it in, then. We need to get back. I want to be there when they question that asshole.”
Wormer snickered, and the sound sent shivers up my spine. “I’m on my way. After what he did to Rufus, I want to hear that crazy fucker scream.”
I closed my eyes, concentrating on the exquisite agony in my leg—using it to stay grounded and ignore my urge to leap out of the bushes and pound Wormer’s face into the pavement. Seconds ticked away. Car engines rumbled. Horns honked. Two doors slammed. I looked again. The sedan was driving toward the parking lot exit.
Briefly, I considered chasing it, but once the car made it to the road, I’d have no chance of following. Handlers and Triads didn’t have one specific meeting place—no clubhouse or police barracks or underground vault. Except for Boot Camp, which enjoyed a quiet corner of the forest south of the city, secured facilities for questioning and detaining Dregs changed on a monthly basis. They could question Wyatt anywhere in the city.
I had no Handler, no car, and no clue as to my next move. I climbed out of the bushes and stretched my aching leg. Long hours before dusk stretched out in front of me, but I couldn’t wait. I had to do something. Just not alone.
Evangeline Stone had no remaining allies. Chalice Frost had one person in her life who just might drop everything and help—if I could convince him I wasn’t nuts.
Chapter 12
53:25
Hitching a ride across town is not recommended, unless you know you can fight off a potential attacker. Confident in my knowledge of fighting skills—although not so confident in my ability to get Chalice’s body to do what I needed—I accepted the first ride I received and made it back to Parkside East in less than thirty minutes.
No little girls followed me into the elevator. The entire building seemed deserted in the middle of the day. As I fished Chalice’s keys out of my borrowed pants, my hands began to shake. I had no particular reason for nerves, but I also had no reason to think Alex Forrester was even home. This could very well turn into a gigantic waste of time.
I turned the key, but the dead bolt was not secured. I wrapped tentative fingers around the doorknob, but it was yanked out of my hand. I took a startled step backward. Alex stood in the open doorway, his wide blue eyes drilling holes into me. I squirmed under the intensity of his stare as relief, anger, and confusion—all meant for someone else—flashed across his face.
His lips twitched, but he seemed incapable of speaking, so I helped him out. “I said I’d come back.”
He nodded, his attention dropping to my bandaged arm, and then lower to my blood-soaked shoe. He frowned. “You’re hurt, Chal.”
“It’s just a flesh wound,” I said, shrugging one shoulder. “Can I come in?”
“Of course.”
I stepped around him, pausing in the entry long enough to take off the dirty sneakers. No sense in tracking blood and gunk all over the carpet. He closed the door and walked across the living room, right into the bathroom. For the briefest moment, I thought of Wyatt, of sending him stalking into the bathroom that morning after a careless comment.
Alex returned a moment later with a white first aid kit. “Sit down and let me take a look at that.”
I perched on the very edge of the sofa. It wasn’t my home, not really. I didn’t know this place, even though evidence of Chalice was all over the room, in the dé-cor and the photographs and the titles of the romantic comedies that lined one shelf near the television.
Alex sat down on the coffee table, directly across from me, and opened up the kit. He removed several bottles, a package of gauze, and a roll of white medical tape—precise movements that betrayed practice. I presented my ankle to him. His hands were cool, almost cold, the fingertips gently callused. He turned my foot to get a better view.
Lips pursed, he stared at the wound. “Weird,” he muttered.
Don’t let him know it’s from a gunshot. “What’s weird?”
“The blood on your shoe is fresh, but the wound’s already healing.” He reached for a cotton ball and soaked it in alcohol. “What’s going on, Chalice?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?”
“You’re lucky it didn’t get infected.” He cleaned the dried blood from my skin. The alcohol was cold; my leg tingled. He tossed the cotton and took out a bottle of antibiotic ointment. With a second cotton ball, he spread some over the cleaned area. “Where have you been?”
“Taking care of things that needed attention.”
“When you didn’t come home last night, I thought I’d imagined you. So I called the morgue, and they said one of their lab techs was under sedation after she almost autopsied a living person.” He exhaled sharply and reached for a gauze pad. “How could I have missed that? Some med student I am.”
I felt an odd instinct to protect him from the truth, but to also give him the benefit of knowing he hadn’t missed anything. He was second-guessing his medical skills, but not because he’d missed anything; because of magic. “If it helps,” I said, pretty certain it wouldn’t, “a handful of E.R. doctors and a coroner all missed it, too.”
He paused in pressing a length of medical tape against the gauze pad. “Not that, Chal.” He met my gaze, and I almost fell into the depth of anguish I saw in them. “I meant your suicide attempt. How depressed you’d been about finals, and your stress at work. I was so busy with classes that I didn’t take the time to notice. You’re my best friend in the world, and half the time I couldn’t even see you.”
Oh great. Now I get to crush his spirit and tell him, “No, sorry, you did let your friend die.” I get to break him all over again.
He applied the tape, then reached for my left arm. I flinched and pulled away. More hurt flared in his eyes. I didn’t know how to explain why a healing dog bite resided where a knife gash should have been.
“Say something,” he demanded.
I blinked. “What would you like me to say, Alex?”
He stilled. Wrong answer, apparently. With careful, calculated movements, he stood up. Backed around the coffee table, toward an upholstered chair, unwilling to startle.
“Chalice, what was the last thing we did together the night before you cut your wrist?” His voice was hollow, almost afraid. He knew something was wrong. Instinct contradicted his senses, and he was smart enough to trust the former.
Now or never. I just hoped he took it well.
“I don’t know, Alex,” I said, still sitting, making no move to approach. “This is really hard to explain, but try to keep an open mind.” I took a deep breath. Exhaled. “I’m not Chalice.”
His lips puckered like he’d eaten a lemon. Hands braced on his hips, he said, “Sorry. What?”
“Look, you seem like a terrific guy and a very loyal friend, so I hate doing this to you. But Alex, Chalice did die. You found her and called an ambulance. She was pronounced dead and sent to the morgue. None of it was imagined, nothing was a mistake. Well, except the whole suicide thing, in my opinion, but who am I to judge her?”
He backed up a few more steps. The backs of his knees hit the chair. He sat down hard, never breaking eye contact. Something else began to cloud his expression. Something angry, almost sinister. “This isn’t funny,” he snapped.
