out into the yard with the others.
“Damage?” Anders’s voice made Drina leave her self-pitying thoughts and tune in to their conversation.
“Surprisingly little,” Teddy said, and did sound surprised. “Apparently the house is double-walled brick, and that helped prevent the fire from spreading from the porch to the rest of the house. Both the upper porch and the one below it are write-offs, of course, and the hallway between the porch and Elvi and Victor’s room took some damage before the firemen arrived. There was a good bit of smoke damage, though,” he added with a grimace. “And the fire chief said no one can stay there for a bit due to the possibility of hot ashes starting the fire up again and something about toxic air and residue through the house.”
She saw Anders nod acknowledgment.
“Did you call Lucian?” Teddy asked.
“No. He likes full reports, so I waited for your return,” Anders said, and then punched more keys and Drina heard a sound she recognized as a computer printer kicking to life.
“What’s this?” Teddy asked, and his blurry figure moved over to peer down at whatever printed. “Hmm. Carbolic soap, vinegar, and tomato juice.”
She saw his head swing her way and sat up a little straighter. “Is that how to get rid of this damned smell?”
Drina had already removed her clothes and now sat there in the kitchen in the rattiest old sheet Anders could find in Teddy’s linen closet. It was almost gauze thin and frayed on the edges, wrapped around her twice or three times and tucked into itself above her breasts. She still smelled horrendous, though. Along with her clothes, the skunk-or smelly cat as Alessandro called it-had gotten her in the face, neck, hair, and hands when he’d sprayed.
“Yes,” Teddy murmured, and then shifted. “I have some vinegar, but she’ll need more than I have, and I don’t have any tomato juice at all. I can get both at the twenty-four-hour grocery store, but it says here you have to get the carbolic soap at a drugstore and they just recently reduced the hours on what used to be our twenty-four-hour drugstore. It closes at 10 p.m. now.”
Drina turned to peer at the clock on the kitchen wall and squinted to read the time. When she saw that it was 10:03, she could have wept. Did she have some rotten luck or what?
“We’ll have to wait till it reopens in the morning,” Teddy said unhappily.
Drina turned to take in the men’s expressions. Neither Teddy nor Anders looked happy at this news, but she was so miserable about it herself, she had little energy left to care about how they were feeling. It wasn’t just that she was tired of stinking to high heaven, but Anders insisted, and rightly so, that she should stay in the kitchen and not spread her smell through the rest of Teddy’s house. This meant she was stuck right where she was, on the hard vinyl barstool in the kitchen. There would be no creeping upstairs to watch over Harper, no checking on Stephanie, no looking in to see how Tiny’s turn was going. She supposed she’d even be sleeping there on the kitchen floor, like the family dog, if she slept at all.
It was not being able to go up to Harper that bothered her the most, though. Drina wanted to be at his side, nursing him back to health as he’d done for her when she’d woken after the accident.
“Well. .” Her gaze slid back to Teddy at that muttered word to see that he was shuffling sideways toward the doorway to the hall. Avoiding her gaze, he mumbled something about checking on the others, and ducked quickly out of the room.
“Calling Lucian,” Anders announced, following quickly.
Drina watched them go, suspecting it would be the last she’d see of them until the drugstore opened in. . oh, ten or twelve hours was her guess. . it seemed like a lifetime at that point.
“I don’t know what the hell Drina thought she was doing playing with the damned thing.”
Those gruff words drifted through Harper’s consciousness, the sound of Drina’s name, stirring him from sleep.
“She probably didn’t know what it was, Teddy,” Leonora Cipriano’s calm tones said soothingly. “There aren’t any in Europe.”
“That is because we no would suffer the smelly cat,” Alessandro announced firmly.
“No, you’d most likely transport them somewhere else.” Teddy sounded irritated. “That’s probably how we got the little beasts ourselves. You guys put them all on a boat and sent them over here to North America a couple of hundred years ago.”
“The English maybe would do such a thing. Is what they did with the criminals, so maybe they would send you the smelly cats. But no the Italians. We would no be so cruel.”
“Well, I don’t know what the hell it was doing out this time of year anyway,” Teddy said. “I thought they hibernated.”
“They go into a torpor, not a true hibernation,” Leonora explained quietly. “And it was probably hungry. They will sometimes wake up and come out in search of food if it warms a bit, and it did warm up quite a bit last night.” There was a pause, and then Leonora said, “I just feel sorry for the poor little thing having to sit down there in the kitchen all by herself like some sort of outcast. She looked so miserable when I went down to ask Anders if he’d managed to reach Lucian yet.”
“Had he?” Teddy asked sharply.
“No, I’m afraid not. He said he’s left several messages, though. I’m sure Lucian will call soon.”
There was a gusty sigh, and Teddy said, “Well, he’d better. You’re all welcome to stay here, of course. But this is a small house. I only have the two bedrooms. You’ll all be sleeping in shifts until he calls and gives some sort of instruction.”
Harper was having trouble following the conversation. What the hell was a smelly cat and who had been playing with it? For that matter, what was wrong with playing with a cat? And what was that about Lucian and instructions?
Harper forced his eyes open and turned his head to peer toward the voices and found he was in bed in a room he didn’t recognize and that Alessandro, Teddy, and Leonora were having their rather strange little discussion by the door.
Movement beside him in the bed drew his attention, and Harper turned his head the other way to find Stephanie lying beside him. Her eyes were open, and she looked much less confused than he felt.
“Drina was sprayed by a skunk,” Stephanie explained quietly, apparently reading his confusion. “Alessandro calls them smelly cats.”
“Ah.” Harper sighed and supposed he should have recalled as much. He had a vague recollection of hearing the name “smelly cat” before from the man, but it had been sometime ago.
“You’re awake,” Teddy said grimly.
Harper turned his head to watch the trio approach the bed.
“How do you feel?” Leonora asked, bending to smooth his hair back from his forehead and check his eyes for he knew not what.
“Better than I did earlier,” he said dryly, recalling the “earlier” in question. Roaring flames, bubbling skin, the stench of burnt meat, and knowing it was his flesh. Being engulfed by fire was a most unpleasant and terrifying experience. It wasn’t something he’d soon forget.
Leonora moved around the bed to Stephanie now and repeated the same question and actions; feeling her forehead he realized now, not just brushing hair back, and checking her eyes, perhaps to see if they were clear or how much silver there was in them. It could be a good gage of many things, including passion levels and blood levels.
Harper heard Stephanie murmur that she was fine. He didn’t believe her for a minute. He had no doubt the poor kid was traumatized. Hell, he was traumatized, and he wasn’t a teenager who until just recently had been mortal. Fire was one of the few things that could kill their kind. If they hadn’t gotten out of that room and found help to douse the flames, they could have died there.
The thought disturbed him and made him shift unhappily. “Where’s Drina?”
“Er. . She was sprayed by a skunk,” Teddy said with a grimace.
“Yes, Stephanie said so, but where is she?” What he really wanted to know was why the hell she wasn’t there with him. He’d nearly died, dammit. He wanted her with him.
“Well, she’s down in the kitchen at the moment.”
