He’d brought up a solid question. I’ll give him that much. How had I appeared in his apartment during my struggle with the Automaton? Had Hephaestus teleported me here? That was a ridiculous notion. I had somehow escaped a Nephil’s mist—which should have bordered on the impossible.
“I don’t know how I came to be here,” I mumbled, moving around the couch to plop down beside him.
He leaped to his feet and grabbed my shoulders. I grimaced as my wounds stretched. “I don’t think so,” he said, damn near carrying me down the hallway toward the bathroom. He left me at the sink and turned on the shower.
I studied my bloodied mug in the mirror. Nothing looked broken, which surprised me since my entire face felt shattered. “Sorry about the robe,” I said. I slid the red-stained fabric off my shoulders and unsound the wet, red bandages, exposing my inked arms and torso—a series of inscriptions and runes in the Nephilim language that had once, when I still had my power from Hephaestus, enhanced my speed, endurance, and strength.
Xander’s gaze rose above my head as he averted his eyes from my frank and beans, fixing his attention to the wall above his pinned mirror. He was such a prude sometimes. I didn’t understand how he wouldn’t bat an eye when enforcing violence on another living creature, but he couldn’t look at the same anatomy that dangled—or so I’d always assumed—between his own legs.
Don’t get me started on America’s unhealthy infatuation with the human body. Why was a naked woman or a dick or the natural, evolutionary (or God-given, for you religious people) act of sex such a crime, but showing graphic violence was A-OK? Priorities were a real thing, and there were too many people who didn’t have them in order. Rant over… for now.
“Can you heal?” I asked, grunting as I stepped over the rim and into the tub. I reached for the shower handle and rotated it so the water went cold, practicing my slow-breathing technique. The cool water streamed over my body like a revitalizing agent.
“What?” Xander asked, closing the curtain.
“I don’t know.” I closed my eyes and weathered a current of pain rushing through my head. “Jesus healed people, right? Doesn’t your magic reflect some of His?”
“I don’t have magic. Like Jesus, I have radiant abilities gifted from an Archangel that are meant to drive away the darkness in this world. It’s not for the benefit of me or my friends, but to defend the world from darkness.”
“Wow. I’m sorry I even asked.”
“Water is extremely healing, as I’m sure you know. We’ll start with that. I also have some painkillers in the medicine cabinet. I’ll be in the living room when you’re done.” The bathroom door shut, and he left me alone.
I rested my screaming head against the cool tiled wall and allowed the water to rush over my body. After standing like that for a while, I scrubbed the blood from my skin and climbed out of the shower. I found a towel hanging on the rack and used it to dry off. Xander had set some of his clothes on the sink counter, along with bandages for my wounds.
When I was dressed, I found Xander sitting on the living room couch, scrolling through his company phone.
“You turned off my movie,” I said, collapsing onto the cushion beside him.
“I used my lunch break to come check on you.”
“That was very sweet of you,” I said, closing my eyes to rest a little.
Xander was silent for a moment, probably saving his more aggressive thoughts. Cars honked on the street below us. A tenant from down the hall slammed a door. My heart thudded in my head. Finally, he said, “I know it’s only been a day, Joey, and you need your time to grieve. But I can’t harbor you like this—drunk before noon and putting yourself in danger for no apparent reason. If you want to get yourself killed, that’s fine, but don’t do it on my watch.”
“Message received loud and clear,” I said. “Let me push through this debilitating headache, then I’ll be out of your hair—no, sorry, that was rude… I’ll be out of your skin.”
“That’s not what I mean, and you know that. I know you pretty well, man, and I know that sitting here alone, wallowing in your own grief, won’t get you to your destination. I think you need to do something. Find a job to keep you busy. Look for new evidence that points us to Hecate. I’m not blaming you when I say this, because there was no other option—but you murdered our only lead to the Nephil when you killed Medea. We’re back to square one, and I don’t know where to go or what to do. But I do know that you can use your grief and anger productively.”
Keeping my eyes closed, I practiced breathing and resisting the urge to unleash a current of fury at my best friend. I carefully shook my head, so as not to entice anymore pain. “You have those painkillers?”
“I do.”
Opening my eyes, I saw the pills resting on the coffee table, along with a glass of water. I almost made a joke about washing my medicine down with alcohol, but I decided against it. There was no need to further Xander’s disappointment or lengthen his lecture.
“Thanks,” I said, taking my medicine and washing it down with the water. I leaned against the sofa’s backrest and closed my eyes again. “Hephaestus’s Automaton found me.”
“Found you? Does he know you live here?” Xander asked, jumping to his feet. The couch shifted as his weight abandoned it.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “He has, I don’t know, an unlimited amount of those Automatons. I’m sure he just positioned them around Sacramento as a twenty-four-hour surveillance to capture me. Maybe he’s narrowed his search to J Street,
