four teacups, a heaping plate of cookies, and a first-aid kit. She set it down on the coffee table. “I thought you might be hungry. If you don’t mind my saying so, you all look a little worse for wear, so I brought bandages, rubbing alcohol, and a needle and thread if anyone needs stitching up. I’m not a doctor, but I know a thing or two about fixing people up after they get into scrapes.”
“Thanks,” Bethany said. “I think we can use a little of everything.”
The cookies on the table made my mouth water. I took one off the plate and bit into it, tasting oatmeal and cinnamon. It was good, really good. I finished it quickly, grabbed a handful more, and began stuffing them in my mouth.
Thornton stared at me. “My God, were you raised by wolves? Because I was, and even they didn’t eat like that.”
I looked up at him, crumbs dropping from my lips, my mouth too full to answer.
Ingrid laughed. “Leave him be, he’s hungry.” She picked up the first-aid kit and opened the lid. “So, which one of you poor, battered souls wants to be first?”
Thornton needed her attention the most. Even if he wasn’t in danger of dying from his wounds, being dead already, his shirt could only do so much to hold his insides in place. He needed to be stitched up. Thornton struggled to remove his shirt. His arms worked stiffly, especially the broken one he’d hastily reset at the bar, but he refused Bethany’s help. Once his shirt was off, he lay back on the couch and put his hands over his wounds as if he were ashamed of them. His skin had turned a sickly gray all over. An angry purple bruise painted his side where the blood had first settled when he died. Bethany got up from the couch to give him room to stretch out.
“Let me see,” Ingrid said, gently taking Thornton’s wrists. He resisted for a moment, then allowed her to move his arms away from his wounds. They resembled deep black chasms in his torso, rimmed with a coppery crust where the blood had dried, and tinged with green along their edges. The Breath of Itzamna remained spiked into the center of his chest, pulsing with its artificial heartbeat.
Ingrid touched the amulet gingerly with her white-gloved hand. Thornton explained, “It’s what brought me back. After I died.”
She nodded as if it were no more unusual than a scar or tattoo. Thornton’s eyes filled with gratitude that she wasn’t making a big deal out of it. She took a set of reading glasses from the coffee table, put them on, and took a closer look at his wounds. “This isn’t so bad,” she lied. “Nothing a little needle and thread can’t fix. I’ll have you right as rain in no time.”
Thornton beamed at her. “I think I love you, Ingrid Bannion.”
“Handsomer men than you have told me that. You’ll have to try harder.” She retrieved a needle and a spool of black thread from the first-aid kit.
Thornton looked at her white glove. “What happened to your hand?”
Ingrid blanched. “It’s nothing. Don’t worry, I can still stitch with the best of them.”
Thornton sat up a little. “I’m sure you can, but unless the single-glove look is suddenly all the rage, I’m guessing it’s not nothing.”
Ingrid sighed. She put the needle and thread down, her face reddening with embarrassment. “It was a long time ago. I was young and brash. I thought I could just take in a little magic and it wouldn’t affect me. I was wrong.”
“Is that how you’re able to read auras?” Bethany asked.
“No,” Ingrid said. “That’s something I was born with. What I took into me, and still carry inside me, is the fire magic you saw outside. It was a mistake I’ll have to live with for the rest of my life. Like I said, I was young. I thought it would be different for me. I thought I was invulnerable, the way the young always think they’re invulnerable.” She looked at the glove. “Turns out I wasn’t anything but a fool.”
“May I see it?” Thornton asked.
She shook her head vehemently. “Trust me, it’s better if you don’t.”
“Ingrid,” he said, flashing a charming smile. “I’m sure you’ve played this game before with lots of lucky guys. I showed you mine. Now you show me yours.”
“Thornton, please, just leave it alone,” she said.
“You’re worried I’ll judge you,” Thornton said. “I won’t. You can trust me on that.”
Ingrid looked at him a long time, then finally nodded. “Just remember, it’s not as bad as it looks, and it doesn’t hurt. It’s under control.”
She unrolled the white glove slowly, grimacing as she pulled it up from her elbow to her fingers. Finally, she pulled it free. The extent of what the infection had done to her hand and forearm was astonishing. Aside from the five fingerlike appendages at the end, the misshapen, squamous limb didn’t look like anything human.
Twelve
“It doesn’t look so bad,” Thornton said.
Ingrid smiled warmly. She pulled the long white glove back over her arm. “You’re a bad liar, Thornton, but a good man. I bet your aura was a beautiful color. Probably a bright royal blue.” She put her hand in her lap, as if to hide it. “You know how it is when you carry magic inside you. This is what it did to me. Morbius managed to contain the infection before it got worse, and before it could corrupt my mind, but the damage had already been done.”
“Who is Morbius?” Bethany asked. “The name sounds familiar.”
“A powerful mage, and a dear friend,” Ingrid said. “He’s the one who put the ward around this house. He’s no longer with us.” For a moment she was quiet, lost in her own memories. I got the sense that she’d seen more and experienced more than anyone I knew, and not all of it was good.
“I want to show you something, Ingrid,” Thornton said. He began unbuckling his leather bracelet. His stiff fingers made it difficult.
“Do you need help?” Ingrid asked. She reached for the bracelet.
Just as he’d done with me, Thornton jerked his arm away from her. “Don’t. Sorry, I don’t mean any offense, but I don’t let anyone touch this bracelet.”
“It must be very important to you,” Ingrid said.
Thornton managed to unbuckle the clasp and remove the bracelet. There, on the inside of his wrist, was a patch of skin that was marbled and glassy like an opal. He tapped it with a fingernail. It made the same sound as tapping a stone. “Once upon a time, I was young and foolish, too. Back then I had trouble accepting what I was, and like a fool I thought magic could cure me. It didn’t. It didn’t do anything but infect me, though it was several years before any symptoms manifested. Isaac contained it before it spread, but it left me with this souvenir.” He buckled the bracelet around his wrist again. “See, Ingrid? If I judged you, I’d only be judging myself, too.”
Ingrid looked at him a long moment. “I think I love you back, Thornton Redler.”
She stitched him up as best she could, a job made easier by the fact that he couldn’t feel any pain. While she worked, Bethany took a handful of bandages from the first-aid kit and came over to me. “Take off your shirt,” she said.
“Excuse me?” I said.
“That gargoyle got your back pretty good,” she said. “We should take care of it before it gets worse.”
“I’m fine. Really.” I gestured at her injured leg. “You should probably tend to that knee instead.”
“It can wait,” she insisted. “I’m serious, Trent. Between getting mauled by a gargoyle and being in a car crash, you’re not fine. That’s the adrenaline talking. After everything that’s happened, your wounds might be a lot worse than you think they are. So, the shirt.”
She was determined, which meant nothing I said was going to change her mind. I knew that much about her already. There was no way to explain to her that no matter how bad my wounds were they weren’t life threatening, not to me; no way to explain that the thing inside me always brought me back from the dead fully healed, which included wounds both old and new. I wondered sometimes what would happen if I lost an eye or a hand, if they would grow back too, but it wasn’t something I ever hoped to put to the test.
“Have it your way,” I said, “but I’m telling you I’m okay.” I unbuttoned my shirt, pulled it off, and tossed it on
