“How do you feel?” A stupid question, I know, but it was all I could come up with.
“Like I got blown up.”
“Sounds about right.”
Her eyes slitted open at that. “Are you okay?”
I wondered how much she remembered from the restaurant, but we’d have plenty of opportunity later to talk about that. “Yes,” I said. “I’m fine. Are you in a lot of pain?”
“No. Drugs, I think. Where are we? Wha’ hospital?”
“You’re in intensive care at Banner Desert Medical Center. You have a concussion, a broken arm, a couple of broken ribs, and you even had a collapsed lung.”
“Holy crap,” she mumbled.
“No kidding. You’ve been out for a while. But the doctor says you’re going to be okay.”
“Guess it’s a good thing I have insurance.”
I laughed. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Where did you say we are?”
I glanced at the nurse.
“That’s normal,” she mouthed.
“Banner Desert.”
“Tha’s right.”
That was how our conversation went for the next several minutes. We talked about nothing at all. She asked me to list her injuries again, and she wanted to know how long she had been unconscious. The more we talked, the more lucid she grew. Her eyes opened wider, her speech cleared. She sipped more water but told the nurse in no uncertain terms that wanted nothing to do with food, at least not yet.
The nurse still eyed the instrumentation by her bed, which monitored her blood pressure, heart rate, temperature, and a host of other things I didn’t pretend to understand. She didn’t seem too alarmed by anything she saw, but after a time she told me, “She needs some quiet time. I don’t want her getting too tired.”
“I understand. I have . . . a few places I have to go.”
“We’ll take good care of her. Oh, and Mister Castle, don’t worry if her bed is empty when you get back here. We need to test her lung capacity, and also do some further scans: neurological-we want to see how she’s doing with the concussion.”
“Of course.” To Billie I said, “I have to leave for a little while. I have things to do. As soon as they let me come back, I will. All right?”
“I’ll be here.”
I smiled, stood.
“Fearsson?”
“Yeah.”
She made a little motion with her hand, beckoning to me. I bent closer to her.
“Did she just call you Mister Castle?” she asked, her voice as soft as a spring breeze.
I nodded, my cheeks burning. “Yeah. That’s a long story.”
“Okay. Then tell me this: How is it possible that you’re not hurt at all?”
I looked her in the eye, not wanting to scare her, but also unwilling to lie to her. I’d had to keep things from her early on-stuff about magic and the phasings and Namid-and that had almost ended our relationship before it got started.
“You already know the answer,” I whispered.
“Magic?”
“Magic.”
“But-”
“That’s all I know right now. But I’m going to find out. I promise.” I kissed an unbandaged spot on her forehead. “I’ll see you soon.”
CHAPTER 12
I swept out of the ICU and took the stairs down to the ground floor, unwilling to wait for an elevator. Billie’s questions had set my thoughts churning again. I still had questions of my own, of course, but I wasn’t thinking about them now. I was unhurt because someone had decided to protect me. Billie was lying in a hospital bed looking like she had been run over by a truck because that same someone wanted to send me a message. My dad was suffering in ways he never had before, and though I couldn’t prove it yet, and didn’t understand what was being done to him, I no longer had any doubt that he was a victim in all of this, too.
Some goddamned sorcerer was screwing with me and the people I loved. I was scared and pissed off, and I’d had enough.
Nothing else could explain the decision I made in that moment. Because it was pretty stupid.
I drove back into North Scottsdale, to Ocotillo Winds Estates. When the guy at the guardhouse asked me who I was and who I was there to see, I told him. He called ahead to the mansion and after a brief delay raised the barrier that blocked the gate and waved me through. I hadn’t been paying as much attention as I should have to the route we followed the previous night, but after taking a few wrong turns, I made it to Amaya’s place.
The guys with the MP5s were waiting for me, their expressions far less welcoming than they had been when I showed up with Luis, Paco, and Rolon. They surrounded the Z-ster, weapons held ready, faces like stone.
“Get out,” one of them said. “And keep your hands where we can see them.”
I unlatched the door, pushed it open with my foot, and climbed out, my hands raised.
“I have a Glock in the shoulder holster under my left arm,” I said.
“What else?”
“That’s it.”
The man gestured in my direction with his head. “Revísenle.” Search him.
One of his friends strode toward me, grabbed me by the arm, spun me around, and shoved me against my car. Pressing the muzzle of his submachine gun against the back of my neck, he pulled the Glock from my holster and frisked me. He was thorough and none too gentle; it was probably a good thing I hadn’t lied about having a second weapon. When he was finished, he gave me one last shove and backed away.
“Turn around,” the other man said.
When I faced him again, he pointed toward the front door of the mansion. Two more guards waited for me there, both of them also holding MP5s. I almost asked if they’d bought the family pack, but decided I’d be better off keeping my mouth shut.
“Go on. Jacinto is waiting for you.”
“Thanks.”
I walked to the door, my hands lowered but plainly visible. The guards let me pass, saying not a word, but eyeing me in a way that made the back of my head itch. I could almost feel the sight beams tickling my scalp.
Amaya was in the living room, sitting in one of those plush chairs, one arm resting casually over the back of it, the other hand holding a tumbler filled with ice and what might have been tequila.
“Hello, Jay.”
I glanced around the room. It was empty except for Amaya and me. It really did seem that he had been expecting me, even before the call from the guardhouse.
“I saw you on television today. Tough words. I guess you’re going into battle with me after all, eh?”
“What happened today? What was that?”
His eyebrows went up, an expression of innocence I wasn’t sure I trusted. “You were there, not me. Why don’t you tell me what you think it was?”
“It was magic.”
“The media is calling it a bombing, though they don’t seem to know what kind of bomb could do that kind of damage without burning the place to the ground.”
“It was a spell, and it came with a warning.”
He sat forward, interested now. “Someone spoke to you.”
“Yeah. A woman. She said not to push to hard, whatever that means.”
“Fascinating. I suppose it means you’re already making progress.”
“Maybe. But a friend of mine is in the hospital, and I want to know what the hell is going on.”
“I told you last night-”
“You told me shit last night! You gave me Regina Witcombe, but I’ve since learned that I could have gotten her name from any number of people.”
“And yet you didn’t,” Amaya said, ice in his tone. “You knew nothing about her except that she was rich. So don’t tell me that I gave you nothing.”
“How do I know it’s not you?” I said. Probably not the smartest road to go down, but I wasn’t thinking all that clearly. “You send me out to find dark sorcerers, talking like you’re trying to make the world safe for the rest of us. But how do I know this isn’t anything more than a turf war, an attempt by one dark myste to get the jump on another?”
He glared back at me, his eyes as black and hard as obsidian. “Did you see the magic?”