Part 8 (1/2)

His hand was warm and strong. Her wrist looked very tiny in his grip, and his skin felt strange. She went still, remembering how he had told her not to touch him. Remembering the blood on her hands when she had. Blood on her sweater, in the car. Bullets on the floor.

Lannes let go long enough to turn off the water and pull down a towel. He made her drop the soap in the sink and began drying her hands. She did not resist.

”He let us in,” she whispered suddenly, and Lannes stopped, looking at her. ”He let us in because he knew me. Someone like me. A woman... who was supposed to be dead.”

”That's not your fault,” Lannes murmured, and pulled her back into the bedroom, making her sit on the edge of a dark mauve floral comforter that felt more like plastic than cloth. He walked around her and tugged down the covers. Then he knelt, studying her feet, which were still snug in the floppy socks he had given her. The fabric was grimy now, more gray than white.

He began tugging off her socks-awkwardly, like he was afraid of hurting her. The woman stopped him and kicked them off herself. Her feet throbbed. When she stretched them, the cuts in her arches felt as though they were splitting apart.

She crawled backward, under the covers. The sheets were cold. She curled into a ball.

”Sleep,” Lannes whispered, standing beside the bed. ”Don't be afraid.”

She was afraid, more afraid than she could imagine anyone ever being. But the softness of the pillow felt good, and the room was dark, like a coc.o.o.n. She tried to say something to Lannes, but her throat would not work.

I'm sorry, she thought, exhausted.

Then she fell asleep.

Chapter Eight.

Ten minutes after the woman's breathing slowed, Lannes left the room. He tried to be quiet. She did not seem to wake as he shut the door behind him. The cold afternoon air felt good on his face and wings, as did the freedom of the open sky. Those walls, that dark s.p.a.ce-it all had been too close for comfort.

The Impala was parked just outside the room. He got in, sat in the blood-stiff leather, and took a deep breath as he unbuckled his aching wings. Driving a car meant sitting on them like the ends of a cape, but that was hard on the skin-first abrasive, then numbing. When he was driving alone, he could take frequent breaks, could stretch out his wings as he was doing now.

His chest hurt, but the bleeding had stopped soon after driving out of Chicago, and the holes had nearly closed. Regenerative abilities aside, the difficulties of being wounded while wearing the illusion were not something he had antic.i.p.ated. The damage, close to his body, could not be seen. The blood was another matter once it left the confines of his illusion. As were the bullets that had been rejected from his body.

You should never have hugged her, Lannes chastised himself. He still could not believe how easy it had been to pull her close-but then he remembered her stricken face, her despair as it had rolled through his mind, and he could forgive himself, just a little. Her pain might as well have been his. He could not divorce himself from the link between their minds.

Nothing to be done, he told himself, more concerned by the grief he had caused the woman by telling her not to touch his back. Her eyes, the way she had looked at him- like he thought she was a monster...

Slightly sickened, he turned on his cell phone and dialed. Charlie answered on the third ring. Lannes heard a little girl singing in the background, accompanied by the clinking sounds of dishes being washed. Despite the circ.u.mstances, Lannes smiled. His brother, gargoyle and domestic warrior.

”Emma trying out for American Idol?” he asked.

Charlie grunted. ”She watched The Lion King this morning. You know, it has music.”

Lannes did not know, not about children's movies or lion kings, but Emma was still singing, and she had a good voice.

”Your phone has been off,” Charlie said, a hard note entering his voice. ”I got a bad feeling a couple hours ago. So did Magnus and Arthur.”

”Did you now?” Lannes tried to sound calmer than he felt, especially at the mention of his other brothers. ”And what do you think happened?”

”I think someone died,” said his brother. ”Two of our guys caught a morning flight out of New York and got to Frederick. As soon as they made sure he was all right, they went to Orwell Price's home.”

”Ah,” Lannes said, feeling rather ill. ”Had the police come?”

Charlie was quiet. ”No. And they won't.”

”Sounds like you work for the Mafia instead of a detective agency.”

”I wonder myself sometimes. But I need answers. Like now.”

Lannes needed answers, too. He thought of the woman sleeping less than thirty feet away-a woman he had held in his arms longer than he had ever held anyone-and told the story. Charlie did not interrupt once. It hardly seemed he was on the line.

Lannes tapped his fingers against the steering wheel. ”h.e.l.lo?”

”I'm thinking,” said his brother.

”Think faster. Orwell was not a normal human man. And whatever was inside this woman's brain...” He stopped, unable to put words to what he had felt. The coldness of it.

Charlie said, ”Are you sure it wasn't her? Putting on a good act?”

Lannes hesitated, searching his heart. He remembered her eyes afterwards, his sense of her emotions embedded in his mind, how they fluttered as though her heart were beating itself to death in horror.

”I'm sure,” he said.

”Then we need to find out what connects her to the victim. And what happened in that hotel room. You mentioned smoke, right? I'll look for mentions of fire in the news and see if we can pin down the location.” Charlie hesitated. ”How are you handling this? You know, such close quarters?”

”Fine,” Lannes replied.

”Because you haven't been around anyone but us and Frederick in a year.”

”I'm fine,” Lannes said again.

Charlie hesitated. ”Is she cute?”

Lannes almost hung up. ”She's fine.”

” 'Fine,'” said his brother. ”That could mean a lot of things.”

A lot. A great deal more than Lannes wished to talk about. But he stayed silent too long-too long for someone as perceptive as Charlie-and his brother very softly said, ”Ah.”

”Stop it,” Lannes told him. ”Mind your own business.”

”Fine.” He sounded far too mild. ”Just... be careful.”

”There's nothing to be careful about. I don't know the woman. And she certainly doesn't know me.”

”That can be less of a barrier than you think.”

Lannes gritted his teeth. ”Just say it. You think I'll be played as a fool.”

”If you fall, we all fall,” Charlie said.

Not something he could stand to hear. ”I'm going now. Call when you know something.”