I touched my chest, and found a great deal of it numb.
When Mrs. Lewis had suggested they were reviving me, two ugly possibilities had sprung to mind as far as how they might do it. Both had come true.
Ty and Tiff had given blood, for lack of better terminology, to revive me. The same way I’d given blood to revive Rose.
But reviving wasn’t enough, was it? You could fill a broken glass all you wanted, the liquid would still flow out.
My shirt had been removed, and I had a heavy pile of blankets on top of me. I removed them to verify what I was touching. I’d been plugged up with wax. It was a pale beige-brown, out of contrast with my skin, the skin around the injury still red and angry, though not necessarily infected.
It matched the contour of my chest and ribs, soft enough to expand as I breathed. A little cooler than the rest of me. I could scrape off wax with my fingernail, so it peeled away in a curl.
On second thought, maybe it was better not to do that.
I moved my hand to get the wax out from under my fingernail, and I found another patch of wax there. The damage from wielding the Hyena. It had mostly healed.
“Healing?” I asked.
“Maggie’s been using a trick she learned to patch you together, do away with the wax and smooth over the skin.”
I experimentally raised myself up, and accidentally shifted Evan from where he was snuggled up against my neck.
“Unh,” he said. His eyes were closed.
“He’s asleep?” I asked.
“My recommendation,” Rose said. “He can’t go all that far from you without wanting to return, I’m not sure if it’s familiarhood or sentimentality. He was frankly driving us up the wall, wanting to be entertained or involved. I told him that you might rest better if he rested too. He doesn’t have to sleep, but it seems he can do it if he wants.”
“Sorry about this, little man,” I said. “Keep sleeping for a little bit.”
“Buh,” he mumbled, incoherent, tiny eyes still closed.
I checked I was wearing pants, then swung my legs over the side of the cot.
“It’s been slow work, giving you new flesh, undoing the damage. Apparently Maggie could do it fast and give you gnarly scars, but she wanted to do it slow and leave you looking normal. I thought you’d want normal – you’re already fighting to keep your identity from slipping away, with everything else that’s going on.”
“You thought right,” I said. “Thanks.”
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Eerily good,” I replied. I extended my arm. My left arm’s movements felt a little more limited. One of the scratches extended from my right nipple to my left shoulder. There was wax there, not matching the skin. Numb. “But definitely not perfect.”
“Perfect would be expecting too much,” Rose said. “We had to knock two people out to get you up to par.”
I glanced at her, trying to ignore Corvidae. He disturbed me on a number of levels, one being his appearance, the other being the fact that he was here.
At the same time, I didn’t want to do what Rose had done to me earlier, now that our roles were reversed. Maybe there was an explanation.
“Two people bled out to bring me back?” I asked.
“Yes. We talked it over, they don’t want to fight, but things are getting uglier, time’s run out, and you weren’t waking up. We need you active and able to fight, especially since we lost Fell.”
I shut my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose.
“Sorry,” she said.
Fell wasn’t someone I loved, and even my ability to like him had been strained, but I’d respected him, he’d been competent, he’d even gone out of his way to help.
But I’d gotten him caught up in this, and now he was dead.
“The Shepherd collected his soul,” Rose said. “Not just the echo, but the soul. He got in touch with us yesterday, offering a trade. Laird for Fell.”
“He made this offer on the Lord’s behalf?”
“Not explicitly,” Rose said. She paused. “I said no.”
“What?”
“I thought about it for a while, and we talked it over. Maybe in another situation, we’d be able to stick him somewhere, put the soul in a vessel, bring back Fell in some capacity. But they wouldn’t give us Fell if we could still use him. By getting Laird back, he kind of counteracts your victory earlier, and it’s maybe the last hold we have on them.”
“If we’re counting points, then any points I got for getting Laird are probably matched by points they got for collecting Fell,” I said.
“Exactly,” Rose said. “And if we give up Laird, along with any points we earned there, the Shepherd releases Fell, and then Fell’s soul moves on…”
“They have more points in the end,” I said. “Fuck, no, you’re right. That might have been the right decision.”
“It wasn’t a hard one to make. They’ve been making a number of plays, trying to subvert the advantage we had.”
“He’s been busy, then,” I said.
“He has been very, very quiet, actually,” Rose said. “He’s staying out of the way, giving you your three days.”
“You said things were getting uglier?”
“He’s staying out of the way, but he’s doing that whole thing where he’s technically following the rules, but he’s not forcing others to do it,” Rose said.
I nodded. “How bad is it?”
“Pretty bad. He’s ‘protecting’ the city by maintaining the snowstorm, keeping people out of harm’s way by keeping them indoors. His people have been telling local Others that there may be a change in the way the city operates, and this is the time to get in good with the lord of the city, be in his good graces when he moves up. The ones that aren’t smart enough to understand are still happy there are no people around, so they’re roaming, looking for trouble. If I’m being open about what’s happening, then I’d have to tell you that people are getting hurt.”
I hadn’t thought it would get this bad.
She continued, “The news is saying it’s a bunch of kids and thugs capitalizing on the snowstorm. The last big fight at the police station? The cars got totaled?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Well, the real cars caught up to their spirit world equivalents. The damage is being blamed on vandals. Arson, looting, beatings with very little information about the alleged attackers, speculation about a new drug on the streets…”
“Okay,” I said. “Stop. This isn’t helping my conscience. This was a dumb idea.”
“It was a good idea,” Rose said. “It got us out, it gave you the upper hand… it just went badly.”
“If a plan turns out badly, can it really be called a good one?”
“I think so.”
“Because when I think of things backfiring and schemes with horrific collateral damage, I think of family.”
“I do too.”
“The stuff that mom pulled? The dormitory thing?”
“The dormitory thing,” Rose said. “Yeah. Most definitely remember that. One of her… less human moments.”
“Yeah. That. I don’t know how many students were left without a place in the middle of the semester, but it was a thoroughly shitty thing to do, and it was a whole lot of wrong just to inconvenience a potential heir.”