The memory of being shot the first time, by Peter, was still very vivid and real. The memory of being shot the second time, by Margaret, was already fading like a bad dream. “Dammit, Sarah,” I muttered, and twisted in the bed enough to look around.
It was a small room, with walls painted a cheery shade of eggshell blue and trimmed in even cheerier yellow. Various machines beeped quietly to themselves, monitoring my vital signs. I followed one of the tubes in my arm up to an IV stand, where a bag of clear liquid was presumably responsible for keeping me hydrated. That also explained the weird pinching sensation at my groin; I’d been out for long enough that they’d needed to catheterize me to keep me from wetting the bed. Always the sort of thing a girl wants to wake up to.
On the plus side, nothing hurt. Maybe that meant that I was flying on morphine, but at the moment, I’d take it. It was better than the alternative. Better still would be having some vague idea of where I was. I started looking around for something that looked like a call button.
I was still looking when I heard footsteps. I turned to see Dominic standing in the room’s doorway, white as a sheet and holding onto the lintel for balance. “You are an insufferablewoman,” he said, barely above a whisper. “You slept for three days, and then you simply had to wake up during the five minutes that I was out of the room, didn’t you?”
My heart leaped, even as my lungs gave up working to pull air into my body. “Hi,” I managed, forcing the word out despite my lack of oxygen. That was enough to get my lungs working again, at least. “You’re okay. Are you okay? You’re okay.” I was babbling. I didn’t care. Just seeing him, alive and standing on his own two feet, was more than enough. I half-remembered him dying, bleeding out on the warehouse floor, and—
—and—
—and that had never happened. The memory was shredding like a cobweb even as I tried to look at it. I shuddered all over, trying to wipe the false events out of my mind. “Whoa,” I said. My voice quavered. I hated it for that. “I thought I was protected by that anti-telepathy charm.”
“It turns out that when your cousin really, ah, ‘turns on the juice,’ she punches rather harder than any of us suspected she was capable of,” said Dominic, as he came to stand by the side of my bed. “Even Istas—who claims to possess a natural resistance to Sarah’s manipulations—got somewhat confused about what had actually happened, which could have been rather unpleasant, as it seems that she dislikes zombies. Strongly. And when she saw me up and moving about, despite having seen me ‘die,’ she was sure I was a zombie. I very nearly found myself put down as a menace to the public health.”
I laughed at that. I couldn’t help myself. It was a small, strained thing, but it still made Dominic smile.
“I didn’t think the irony would be lost on you,” he said. “The former cryptid hunter, killed by a cryptid, asa cryptid. You would doubtless have been disappointed that you’d missed it.”
My laughter died. “No, I wouldn’t have been disappointed,” I said. “I already saw you die once today.”
“Ah, yes. I was spared the strain of seeing you shot down; I fell first, after all.” Dominic walked over to the bed, where he sat down gingerly on the very edge of the mattress. “Your Uncle Mike informs me that Sarah put together a thoroughly rational and believable scenario.”
“Peter?” I asked.
“According to the memories she gave them, I killed him myself, when I broke in looking for my false ‘Price girl.’ You were a cocktail waitress that I was cultivating to look like an enemy of the Covenant, so that I could rally the cryptids of Manhattan to my side.” He leaned over and pressed a kiss against my forehead. “Even when you’re not allowed to be a true representative of your family, you’re dangerous.”
“Yeah, well.” I sniffled. It was getting hard to keep from crying. “I guess some things never change.”
“No, I guess they don’t.”
“But why would you—?”
“Turn traitor? It’s happened before, Verity, and it will happen again. Bogeymen and dragons offering wealth and knowledge, succubi and Oceanids offering love . . . it happens. Most traitors simply die quickly. Few are as successful as your family at thwarting us.” He paused, grimacing. “Thwarting the Covenant. I suppose I need to adjust my thinking.”
There was nothing I could say to that. Leaving the only place he’d ever called his own was still a raw wound in his voice; any words of comfort would have just been salt rubbed into it.
Dominic sighed, and continued, “I killed Peter, and Margaret killed us both, while Robert took out our allies. As for the bodies, there was an unfortunate collision between a stray bullet and a gas pipe, and the warehouse was lost. All remains were destroyed.”
I closed my eyes. “That’s convenient.”
“True. But they both believe it with all their hearts.” I felt his fingers on my forehead, brushing back my hair. “They’ll return to England and give their report to the Covenant. By the time another team can be dispatched, the cryptids of the city will be ready to disappear as if they’d never existed.”
“The dragons can’t move.”
“The Covenant still believes dragons to be extinct, and dragon princesses are on the books as too difficult to tell from humans to be worth hunting. They’re to be killed if encountered, but a waste of resources to search for unless the coffers are getting low.” Dominic stroked my hair back again. “Manhattan will be safe. Margaret and Robert uncovered a conspiracy by one of their own. All the trainees and journeymen will be kept under closer attention for a while; I doubt they’ll be sending anyone any time soon.”
“Wait.” I opened my eyes, staring up at him. “They really believe you’re dead.”
“Yes. And as they were the target of your fair cousin’s ‘whammy,’ they’re going to keep believing it.” Dominic grimaced. “Remind me never to make her angry.”
“Smart man.” I looked around the room again. “Where am I?”
“In the recovery ward of St. Giles’ Hospital,” said a familiar, if unexpected, female voice. “Welcome back to the land of the living, Very-Very.”
“Grandma?” Eyes wide, I turned toward the voice. “Grandma!”
The black-haired, blue-eyed woman standing in the doorway smiled. “Hello, sweetheart. How are you feeling?”
“Surprisingly good, given the whole ‘shot in the gut and lost consciousness’ thing and— Grandma! What are you doing here?” I glanced to Dominic. “Have you met my grandmother?”
“Yes.” Dominic stood, offering a nod to my grandmother. “Ma’am.”
“Dominic,” she said.
He looked back to me. “I’m going to let Mike and Ryan know that you’re awake. Please. I know you’re a madwoman, but try to stay still and take it easy.” He pressed a kiss to my forehead before turning and leaving the room before I could react. Grandma Angela stepped aside to let him pass.
Once he was gone, she stepped fully into the room, pausing to close the door behind herself, and started walking toward my bed. “I’m glad you’re awake.”
“So am I.”
Angela Baker is my mother’s mother, and we’re not related by blood: Mom was adopted, since Grandma wasn’t willing to spend enough time with a member of her own species to have a biological child. She looks more like Sarah than anyone else in the family, with pale skin, black hair, and improbably blue eyes that sometimes go white around the edges. She’s old enough to be my mother’s mother by birth, not just adoption, but she looks like she’s barely Mom’s age. I have long since resigned myself to the fact that I won’t look nearly as good as either of my grandmothers when I’m their age, since Grandma Alice spends most of her time in dimensions where time runs differently, and Grandma Angela isn’t human.
She adopted Mom because cuckoos can only have children with other cuckoos, and—like all sane individuals—Grandma hates pretty much every cuckoo she’s ever met. She adopted Sarah because Sarah was just a little girl who needed a home, and she wanted to find out whether cuckoos were really innately sociopathic.