“The princess wakes,” Orin said as he entered, in an unusually soft tone.
“She has indeed,” I said. “Barely. How is my dashing knight?”
“Better, now that you’re awake.” Orin sat on the side of my bed, which dipped noticeably under his weight. “How are you feeling?”
I replied in a raspy voice, “Thirsty, my throat hurts, I still have a headache. But it doesn’t hurt so bad anymore.” I shifted over a little, making space for Orin. “What happened? Catch me up from when I passed out till now.”
“Mmm, well...” Orin’s gaze wavered. I could tell he was mulling something over. Editing what he’d say.
“No secrets,” I grumbled. “I have a right to know.”
Orin’s usual steely façade started to disintegrate. Just when he was about to come clean, Brann came in. Orin got off the bed and pulled up a chair. Brann took his place on the bed, reached for my hand, and gripped it tightly.
“Let’s start with what you remember. Then we can fill in. Okay?”
“All I remember is passing out... no, wait...” I flashed back to the dance floor. “Wasn’t there some creepy scuz trying to hit on me?”
“That’s right. He gave you something.”
“A bottle of water. Right?”
“It was a water bottle, yes. But it had some bad shyte in it, too.”
“That’s why I passed out.” I felt a shiver about what happened, or almost happened. But I wasn’t sure. “That sick scumbag. Did he try to get all... ‘handsy’ with me?”
Orin barked an indignant “No!” His fists clenched. “I’d rip him to shreds!”
“Well... Did anyone? I keep feeling this date-rapey vibe.”
“Nobody touched you. Not like that. Really.”
I nodded, but I honestly had no idea. “I’ll just have to trust you on that. I don’t remember anything else, until...” I looked into Brann’s eyes, and felt some kind of physical body trust. I couldn’t exactly explain it, I just knew he had taken good care of me. Then, a fragment of memory dripped into place. I flashed back to the stabbing pain. I’m naked. Plunged into ice water. “It hurt so bad,” I whispered. But Brann made it okay. He was there with me. “You put magic sparklies in my bath, and helped me go to sleep.”
“You did what?!” Orin turned on Brann, suspicion in his eyes.
“I simply mitigated her pain. A tiny spell—”
“You can’t just throw that shit around! I thought you’d know better than that by now!”
Brann cut him a cold stare. “It was minimal. It was under control. She took it quite well, actually.”
“Orin, chill,” I said. “The black cat is out of the bag.”
“What bag? What’s she mean?”
“Magic,” Brann said. “We had an enlightened discussion about the state of magic in this world.”
Orin swiveled to face me. “And... did you believe him?”
“After all the weird shit that’s happened to me? Visions, nightmares? At first I thought okay, no big deal. But when a nightmare boogeyman actually bleeds? When I leak black fucking smoke? And the Morrigan.”
Brann perked up. “What about her?”
“I saw her. Visited her. She rapped all this hocus pocus vision stuff, about Evil.” I shook my head. “I’d be crazy not to believe in magic!”
And there’s more, I thought. I can feel my little flame app humming away. That was either magic, or I needed Thorazine and a straight jacket. I looked at Orin, dead serious. “No question. It’s real, all right.”
“I know. Just didn’t think you’d—” Orin stopped, turned to Brann. “Just take it easy with her. She’s been through enough.” He got up and left the room.
“I know what you went through was awful,” Brann said. “You were pretty sick for a while there.”
I looked at the early morning sun, slanting through the window. “What the hell time is it, anyway?”
“Quarter past eight.”
“Shit. Oh, well. Not the first time I slept through a Saturday.”
“And Sunday. And now, it’s Monday.”
“Wait, what?!” Holy shit, I’ve been asleep that long?
“You’ve been asleep for three days.”
“You need to tell me what I missed! Did anything happen?”
Brann gave me another reassuring smile. “Don’t worry. Nothing much going on around here. Unless you count a few crows.” Brann nodded at the window. “Yep. There’s one. Shitting on Keegan’s car as we speak.”
“Well, thanks. To all of you.” Never a paragon of modesty, I gave my pits an evaluating sniff. Ohhh, not good.
Brann snickered. “After three days of grunge, what do you expect?” I told him. “Help get me into the shower would ya?” I hooked my arm around his neck. His hand slid around my back, and I leaned against his rock hard body. As shaky as I was, it felt really, really good.
He managed to get me into the bathroom. I leaned against the sink cabinet for support, while Brann got a nice hot shower running for me.
“Need any more help to... uh...”
He turned around. Saw me standing next to him, naked. Did his best not to react. Blushing, he hustled out the door, honoring a modesty I didn’t feel around him. Anything but. Part of me was dying to call him back in. “Don’t be a prude. Nothing you didn’t already see in the bath, right?”
Brann huffed. “I’ll be just outside the door. Listening. In case you need any help. Careful in there. Don’t slip.”
He might have had even more helpful tips for household safety, but I didn’t wait long enough to find out. By this time, my head was under the roaring stream of hot water.
I stood under the deliciously hot water, a little shaky still, letting the steam fill my lungs. I scrubbed and rinsed and scraped three days’ worth of funk off my body, and didn’t even need a cold steel chisel.
I took inventory in my mind,
