“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 the carpet. I turned my chair around and leaned forward with my back exposed. “You should save the bandages for yourself. You’ll just be wasting them on me.”
“You don’t have a very high opinion of yourself, do you?” Bethany asked. She circled around behind me, and a moment later I felt her unusually warm hands on my back as she inspected my wounds. Her touch on my bare skin made me uneasy. I felt vulnerable, like I’d left myself open to a knife between the ribs. I was pretty sure Bethany wasn’t the knifing type, but after a year among the criminals of Brooklyn, old habits were hard to shake.
Her hands felt good on me. Too good. I didn’t like that, either.
“You’re tense,” she said.
I grunted in reply, which only proved her right.
“Looks like the gargoyle didn’t cut you too deep. The bleeding’s not too bad,” Bethany said. “You got lucky. One good swipe from a gargoyle can cut clean through bone. About an inch to the right and an ounce more force and it would have severed your spinal column.”
“Told you I was fine,” I said.
“You’ve been mauled by a gargoyle,” she said. “I think we have different definitions of fine.”
“I’ve had worse.”
“Funny, you don’t have any scars to show for it.”