“You want my baby?” Mia mocked. “Fine. Take her.”
She was holding Holly out to me, and thinking she was starting to understand, I reached out. Holly gurgled happily. I felt the unfamiliar weight of an entirely new person fill my arms. Mia backed up a step, a harsh gleam in her eye as she glanced at the open lot behind me. A car was coming, and its lights shined into the dead end, making it bright.
“Thank you, Mia,” I said, reaching to take Holly’s hand before she hit my face. “I’ll do what I can to keep Holly with you.”
Holly’s cold, sticky little fingers met mine, and my hand closed reflexively around them.
Pain came from nowhere. My heart jumped, and I gasped, unable to cry out. Fire blazed across my skin, and I found my voice.
A harsh guttural scream ripped through the icy night, and I sank to my knees. My skin was on fire, and my soul was burning. It was burning from my chest outward.
I couldn’t take a new breath, it hurt that much. People were shouting, but they were too far away. My pulse was firing madly, and every beat pushed the fire through my pores. It was being stripped from me-my aura was being ripped away, and my fear was feeding it.
Holly gurgled happily, but I couldn’t think to move. She was killing me. Mia was letting Holly kill me, and I couldn’t stop it!
I managed a harsh gasp, and then, as suddenly as it had come, the pain vanished. I felt an icy wash of black flow through me, in time with my fading pulse. Holly cooed, and I felt her being lifted from me. Her lack of weight unbalanced me, and I slowly collapsed to the pavement. But still, the wash of black flowed through me, and it was as if I could feel the frightening nothing within me, growing larger. I couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t even think how.
Mia helped me down, and grateful for small favors, I stared at her exquisite boots. God, they must have cost more than my last three months of rent combined. I could feel the night air raw on my unprotected soul. And finally Holly stripped the last from me, the flood of black slowing to a trickle and stopping to leave only a fading, empty warmth.
I tried to breathe, but it wasn’t enough. The snow hurt where it hit my skin, and I whimpered.
“I will not let them take Holly,” Mia said as she stood over me. “You’re filthy animals, and you’d kill her, even if only by accident. I worked too hard for her. She’s mine.”
My fingers twitched, accidentally rolling a gray pebble between my cold skin and the pavement. Mia stepped away and vanished, her footsteps fading quickly. I heard the slamming of a car door and then the car’s idling away. All that was left was the falling snow, each flake making a soft tap as it landed on my eyelashes and cheeks.
I couldn’t close my eyes, but it didn’t seem to matter as my fingers quit moving and the heavy blackness finally smothered me.
Twelve
There was a faint scent of orange antiseptic, and the one-sided come and go of a distant, professional conversation. Closer, the sound of a TV murmured, only the low parts audible, as if through thick walls. I dozed in a pleasant muffled state, comfortable and somnolent. I’d been cold and in pain. Now I was warm and feeling pretty damn good, perfectly content to slip further into a dreamless state.
But the distinctive smell of the sheets tucked up to my chin tickled my memory, winding insidiously through my brain looking for a conscious thought. Then it found one.
“Shit!” I barked, adrenaline slamming through me. I bolted upright, eyes wide and an unreasonable fear jerking me from my drugged haze. I was in the hospital.
“Rache?”
Panicked, I turned to the sound of pixy wings, sweat beading up on me. Jenks was inches from my nose. His tiny features were pinched and afraid, scaring me. “Rache, it’s okay,” he said as an orange haze drifted from him to color my drawn-up knees. “You’re okay. Look at me! You’re okay!”
Lips parted, I focused on him and forced my breathing to slow. I was okay, and as soon as I realized that, I bobbed my head. Stringy, nasty curls shifted to block my eyes, and I pushed them back with a shaky hand. Just that effort seemed to tax me, and I let myself fall back into the slightly raised bed. “Sorry,” I said softly, and he landed on my blanket-covered knee. “I thought I was in the hospital.”
Jenks’s expression became concerned and his wings stopped. “Ah, you are.”
“No,” I said as I found the controls and raised the head of the bed farther. “I mean I thought I was-” I hesitated. “Never mind,” I amended, exhaling to get rid of the last of the adrenaline. I couldn’t tell him I thought I was in the children’s wing where I hadn’t been able to cross the room to turn on the TV without going breathless. It was that memory that had shocked me awake, and I arranged the sheets to cover as much of the ugly white-and- blue-diamond gown as possible. Jeez, Robbie visits for the first time in eight years, and I’m hospitalized?
Jenks buzzed to the long bed table, pushed to the side. His wings stilled, and the red haze that had been hovering about one wing turned into a bit of red medical tape. I sort of remembered the ambulance. There was an IV stuck in me, and I vaguely recalled the paramedic putting it in. He had given me something, and after that, nothing. I’d had IVs before, but they usually went with an amulet if the patient was a witch. Maybe I was in worse shape than I thought.
My gaze went to the clock, right where they always put it. Noon. It didn’t feel like I’d been unconscious for longer than a single night. From cold pavement to hospital. I had been there, and now I was here.
There was a stuffed giraffe on the narrow rolling table, probably from my mother. Stuffed animals were her thing. Beside it was a miniature rose sculpted of stone. From Bis, maybe? I took the stuffed animal in my hands, feeling the softness against my fingertips, in a state of melancholy. “Mia?” I asked Jenks.
The pixy’s wings drooped and went a faint blue. “Gone.”
I met his frown with my own. “Remus?”
“Him, too.” He made the short flight to the bars on the bed, slipping slightly. “He sideswiped Ivy with a pipe; otherwise, we’d have him.”
Alarmed, I stiffened, but his lack of reaction told me she was all right.
“She’s madder than a jilted troll,” he said with a wry expression, “but she’s okay. Nothing broken. By the time she got up, he was gone. She tracked them to a busy street, and then…poof. Hot-wired a car and somehow slipped past the FIB roadblocks. Edden’s pissed.”
And baby makes three, I thought as I set the giraffe down. Crap on toast, they could be long gone. I hoped Audrey was right that banshees never left their city, or we’d never find them.
Jenks reached back to fix the red bit of tape on his wing and I flushed, remembering having thrown him at Edden. “Hey, I’m sorry about your wing,” I said, and he brought his gaze to mine, his eyes green under the yellow shock of hair. “I did that, didn’t I?” I added, pointing with my gaze. “I’m sorry.”
“Nahhh, I’m fine,” he drawled as his hand came forward. “It gave Matalina something to do besides yell at the kids. This happened in Edden’s car, chasing Remus.”
I wasn’t sure I believed him.
“How about you?” Jenks asked, sitting cross-legged beside a mug of water bigger than his cat. “You feel okay? Your aura is…really thin.”
I held a hand in front of my face and wished I could see my own aura. The demon mark on my wrist looked ugly, and I let my hand drop. “Holly stripped it from me,” I said. “Took it along with my life’s energy. That’s why I passed out. I think. Has anyone looked at Glenn’s aura? That’s probably what happened to him, too.”
Jenks nodded. “Right after you came in mumbling about your aura being gone. He’s awake now. I saw him. His aura is patchy, but it will thicken. That freaky little baby can’t even talk yet, and she’s a born killer. She should’ve killed you. The doctors don’t know why she didn’t. They don’t know why you woke up three days earlier than Glenn either. They were here staring at you and asking each other all sorts of questions, looking at your demon scars…” His lips pressed tight as a feeling of angst slid through me. “I don’t like it, Rache.”
“Me neither.” Feeling violated, I tugged my blankets up a little. Had my demon marks saved me? Made my aura taste bad? I remembered a sensation of black coursing through me as Holly stripped everything, like she was sucking the last milk from a bottle, bubbles and all. I didn’t like that something evil had saved me. It was bad
