I don’t have to be told twice. I cup both hands together, knowing I’ll need two hands for one of Hightower’s. Abe’s brother tilts his palm and lets the silver fall like shimmering rain into my hands, piling up and filling them to overflowing, and yet still they fall, clattering to the floor, scattering.
“Thank you,” I say, misty-eyed, but I’m talking to Abe’s back, because he’s already at the door.
“Hope the kid gets better,” he says, opening the door and stepping outside.
“I’m sorry about your wife,” I say, but I don’t know if he hears me.
Hightower lingers for a moment, staring off at Jolie. Then he starts to lumber over to her. “Whoa there, Tower,” I say, springing in front of him. Luckily he stops, because if he didn’t I’d be human paste under his feet. “The door’s that way,” I say, motioning to where Abe’s waiting outside.
Tower grunts, points to Jolie. I look up, way up, into his eyes, which are crystal-blue, and ogre-sized, like everything else on him. I never realized his eyes were blue, and for some reason it surprises me. “You want to see her?” I say, replacing see with eat in my head.
He nods. I hope he means see and not the word I was thinking.
I chew on my mouth for a second. Hightower, despite his somewhat scary and threatening appearance, has been nothing but good to me, other than when he held Buff back so Abe could beat the living shivballs out of me. But I probably deserved it then, and he did save my life on at least two occasions. If nothing else, he’s earned my trust.
I step aside to let him pass, watching his every move like a hawk.
He approaches Jolie, kneels down—which means he’s still almost as tall as me—reaches toward her. My spine stiffens, but I don’t stop him. His movements are slow, almost gentle, if gentleness is possible from such a large person.
He touches a single finger to Jolie’s forehead, runs it along her skin, pushes a few strands of loose hair away from her eyes. And if all that’s not surprising enough, his next move is so shocking I swear a lightning bolt hits me in the head. He kisses the same finger, and then places it on her forehead, as if kissing her with his lips would be inappropriate coming from such a gargantuan.
He stands, grunts something, I think a farewell, and then ducks through the door and is gone.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Three days later Jolie still hasn’t moved.
With only two days before Skye and her gang leave to find the Stormers, Feve’s been teaching the healers what they’ll need to do for Jolie after he’s gone.
Skye insists I’m not coming with her, but I am. At least that’s what I’m telling Buff.
“I’m going,” I say.
“You sure you want to leave Jolie?” he asks for the third time.
I shake my head. “I don’t want to, Buff, ice it! By the Heart of the Mountain you know that’s true. But I have to. You know I do. I owe Skye, Siena, all the others. I owe it to Jolie to find out the truth.”
“But isn’t Skye telling you not to come?”
“Yah, but I’m freezin’ going anyway, okay?”
“Okay, okay. I’ll watch out for her while you’re gone.”
“Nay. Clint and Looza already said they’ll do it. You’ve got to come with us.”
Buff’s face falls. “Dazz, you know I want to, more than anything, but I can’t. Father, he’s not getting back on his feet anytime soon and I have to get a job—a real job—or Darce and the others are gonna starve.”
I smile. Not at the thought of Buff’s bed-ridden father or of his brothers and sisters starving, but because I have a solution. Compliments of Abe and Hightower. Buff takes my smile the completely wrong way. “Something funny?” he says, his fists coiled at his side.
Things must be really bad at home if his temper’s gotten as bad as mine. I speak quickly. “What if I pay you in advance to help us find Skye’s sister?” I say.
His eyebrows shoot up and he stares at me like I’ve been punched in the head one too many times, which I probably have. “Pay me? I don’t want to come as part of a job. I want to come because you’re my friend.”
I feel a bit of foolish warmth in my heart so I smack a fist in my hand to compensate. “Not like a job,” I say. “Like a donation. To your family. So you can come.”
“You’ve barely got more silver than me, and you’ll need to give it all to Clint to take care of Jolie and your mother while you’re gone.”
I keep smiling as I tell him about Abe’s little visit. He doesn’t believe me until I show him the pouch of silver coins. “Holy mother of all shivballs!” he exclaims. “You’re rich, Dazz!”
I nod because I am, and because sickles solve problems. “So you’ll do it?”
“Chill yah, I’ll do it,” he says, all smiles and taut muscles.
~~~
“Sear it, I’m gonna miss you when we leave,” Skye says, running a finger along my hand.
I laugh. “You know, I really love your honesty, Skye, but I’m coming with you.”
“You ain’t.”
“Think what you want to,” I say.
“My fists say you ain’t,” she says, and I laugh again.
“You can’t fight me,” I say. “Remember what happened last time? We might as well skip the fighting part and go straight to the other part.”
“You want to?” Skye says, her eyes bold and sharp as they cut into mine.
This time I really hope Jolie can’t hear us.
Skye leans into me and I scoop a hand around the back of her neck, slip it under her coat, feel the warmth of her smooth skin, pull her even closer. Her forehead touches mine and we look at each other, all the way in, closer than close, her brown chestnut eyes bearing her soul to me, and I can see—nay, feel—how much she wants me, how when she looks at me she feels the same way I do when I look at her.
I touch her jaw with my other hand, just below her ear, running my thumb along her brown skin. And then we kiss, more tenderly and slowly than the last time, when it was all adrenaline and urgency and—
I pull back, glancing sharply at Jolie, who I thought I saw move.
“What?” she says, following my gaze.
Jolie continues sleeping as still as a stone, just like she’s been the whole time.
Feeling foolish, I say, “Sorry, Skye, I thought—I just thought I saw…”
“It’s okay,” Skye says with that raspy voice of hers that makes me shake with desire. She touches a gentle hand to my face, brushing the scruff of my beard. “Time’ll heal everythin’,” she says.
~~~
One day till Skye leaves. (And me with her?)
I know, I know, I’ve been saying all along how I’m going, how Buff’s going with me, how I owe them and have to help Skye and Siena find her sister…but…but…
Jolie.
How can I leave my sleeping angel sister alone in her bed, maybe to wake up one day without me there by her side? After all she’s been through, how could I ever do that? The warmth of the fire is making me sweat.
I’m brooding over my thoughts, changing my mind again and again, when there’s a knock on the door. Usually Skye and Buff and the others just come right in, so it surprises me. Abe again maybe?
I wipe my sleeve on the frosted glass so I can take a peek. My breath hitches. What am I seeing?
I rush to the door, thrust it open, slamming it off the wall, but not caring, not caring, because—
—standing before me is my mother, practically withered away to nothing, all skin and bones and as pale as the Glassies, but that doesn’t matter, because she’s standing on her own two feet.
“Dazz,” she says, her voice as whispery as it always is, like when she’s murmuring nonsense at the fire. But there’s no nonsense in it, because it’s her—it’s really her. Not drugged-out Mother, but the real one, the one who was always there, always around when father was working in the mines, who only left us when he did.