“Fletcher!” Ellis is beside him and Elodie joins them.
“Ellis, help me get him in the kitchen. Up onto the table.”
They drag him through, Fletcher shuffling along a little and hoick him up onto the table. He’s sweating from the pain.
“Will he turn into a wolf now, a shifter?” Ellis is in a panic.
“No,” Elodie says, pressing a compress full of some magical potion against the wound. “It doesn’t work like that. But it’s nasty. Can you grab me the yellow basket from the garage, please, the one with bandages on the top?”
Ellis goes to fetch the basket, and Elodie mutters some magic as she pours some medicine straight into his mouth. He shakes his head, spitting it out. “Disgusting.”
“Tough luck. It works.” She pours another, more liberal, dose into his mouth and glares at him until he swallows it down. Ellis passes her the basket of medical supplies – bandages, suture kit, magical lotions and potions. “What can I do?”
“Nothing lovely. Just pour him some pep, and maybe a wet cloth on his forehead. He’s burning up.”
“Is it poisonous, the bite?”
Elodie shakes her head. “No, he’ll be fine. Luckily, we’re witches, so magic helps. If a human got bit or another shifter, or one of the other supernatural creatures, then yes, it would take much longer to heal, but he’ll be fine in about half an hour.”
“Could they have killed him?”
“Oh, yes, if they’d got him around the throat, or his femoral artery. Or if they’d all got hold of him. Nasty, nasty creatures. This means that the rebels haven’t lost as many as we hoped and that some council members are in cahoots with them.”
“I hate this.”
“Me too. I cannot believe the fairy twins took you; they seemed so convincing. Both Fletcher and I were ready to leave with them.”
Ellis shudders. “I’m sorry I went out.”
“Oh, they would have found another way to take you, another time. At least now we know whose side they’re on. At least we know the shifters – rebels or otherwise – are still after us. Fletcher, you need five minutes for that medicine to kick in before I can stitch you up. I’ll try Ember again.”
While she does, Ellis smooths Fletcher’s hair, kisses his forehead and closes her eyes.
Ellis
I need this entire thing to be over. And the only way for it to be over is for me to tell Fletcher what I agreed to with Sadie, and for him to fix it with some magic.
But now he’s a little busy having the wolf wound in his leg fixed.
And it is nasty.
It’s deep and very bloody, and I feel a little bit sick looking at it. There’s a puncture wound from the teeth that’s deep, and then a tear where he’s kicked the wolf and forced him away, pulling an entire load of the flesh from his leg with it.
Between magic and stitches his mum can fix him, but in the meantime, I can’t spill my secret. He’s pretty sweaty and seems to drift in and out of consciousness, or maybe it’s just the magic kicking in ready for his mum to stitch him up.
That I do not want to see.
I’m not at all squeamish – seeing hundreds of dead bodies a year has cured me of that. I’ve actually got a bit of a fascination with all sorts of medical stuff – not an unhealthy fascination by any means, but I don’t mind a good look at a corpse who’s suffered from burns, or a good chat about a bit of surgery with my cousin Jack, a heart surgeon in the local hospital. A trip to the mortuary can be a good morning out, and I don’t find our dead bodies creepy or scary, I know that they’re dead and I am so kind to them. I always talk to them and make sure they look their best for their ultimate trip to the cemetery.
But looking at the blood congealing around the open wound on Fletcher’s leg is too much. Because of how I feel about him? Maybe. Because a werewolf did it, for crying out loud? Probably. Because it could have been me? Might be. Because it could have been so much worse? Yes.
I keep running my fingers through his lovely hair and try to keep smiling. As soon as he feels better, I’ll tell him. We won’t be performing any magic ceremony until he’s feeling better, so I’ve got time.
It still feels crazy that I’m back by his side. That I escaped from the crazy fairy sisters. That the crazy fairy sisters even kidnapped me. I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if they hadn’t got distracted talking to Fletcher and his mum.
Would they have killed me? Tortured me? Kept me for a pet?
Nothing would surprise me anymore.
I keep getting a panicky, sick feeling, where my stomach turns and my heart hammers and my palms sweat and then I realise I’m safe, beside Fletcher again, his mum in the other room. I came so close to something and I don’t even know what it would have been.
Death really is searching for me at the moment, the little bastard. I won’t let him get to me.
As soon as Fletcher feels better, we’ll fix it.
His mum comes in the room, worry written all over her face. “She’s still not answering. Ellis, can you just do the fire check thing – make sure she’s alive? If she’s alive, then she can look after herself, at least until Fletcher feels better. Then we can fetch her; you’ll know where she is.”
A shiver runs through me. “I don’t need to. She’s alive. She’s not hurt. She’s talking to somebody. A man, but I can’t see who it is. She’s smiling. She’s okay.”
Again, don’t ask me how I know some
