“Sir, we’re going to need you to let go of her hand long enough to get you both into the ambulance. We brought the extended one since dispatch said this was a magical incident, but safety regulations only allow us to load you in one at a time.”
“No!” I heard Luther say in an uncharacteristically uncertain voice. “I don’t want to let go! I can’t let you out of my sight, not yet!”
I hurried over to him, but the woman who so clearly cared for him already had it handled.
“It’s okay, I promise. It’ll only be for a moment so they can get me to the doctor. You want me to be looked at, right?”
“Of course I do, my sapphire. When I think of what they?—”
“Shhh, none of that for now. You’re here, and I’m here, and we can both heal together as long as you let them get us to a doctor. Think you can do that for me?”
“Yeah, I can.”
It warmed my heart just as much as it made it ache. The expression on the woman’s face utterly besotted despite the fact that her countenance looked like a cheese grater had been takento it, and then she’d been hit one too many times with a baseball bat. In fact, the only person who looked worse than her was Cherry.
God, I had been so relieved to see her crouching on that windowsill like a gargoyle that I hadn’t even noticed her nose was far thicker than it usually was and had a sharp turn to the right. One of her eyes was also swollen like a golf ball sticking out of her face with a barely visible slit for her to look out from, and the other looked like someone had poured a whole bunch of melted crayons under her skin, then went at her with a paper cutter.
I never would have known she was in pain with how she acted, like some superhero who couldn’t be stopped. I was eternally grateful for everything she had done for us. She was largely a human with special abilities, thrown into a fight between shifters, magic users, and deals with eldritch horrors from beyond our dimension—and not to mention a dryad and all her minions—but Cherry had held her own.
No, more than held her own. She had saved the day.
I looked for her, desperate to see that battered face of hers and hold it in my hands. We’d been separated almost immediately after the medical professionals and cops arrived, and last I knew, the detectives were asking her questions.
As loath as I was to let her out of my sight, I knew she could really benefit from medical attention, so the paramedics worked on her while the detectives were getting her story. I’d busied myself with checking in with the rest of my siblings, which was how I had ended up swaddled in an emergency blanket next to Jackie.
But now, Luther and his lover were being trundled into an ambulance, with Penelope sitting in the scant bit of extra space for additional reassurance. Without communicating it to each other, I knew we’d all agreed not to let Luther out of our sightsfor a good long while. No one was ever going to take him away from us again.
When the ambulance was halfway down the Parracidas’ modest drive, a flash of light nearly blinded me. I flinched and bared my teeth, my subconscious telling me that I was under attack, but then I realized it wasn’t a spell hurtling in my direction, but rather the flash of a camera on the other side of the fence.
Oh great. The journalists are here.
I had somewhat expected their arrival, but I’d thought it would take a lot longer. Unless more time had passed than I’d realized.
“Look, I know this is a lot, but we’re going to have to wrap this up. It feels like my face is about to crack in two, and I just want to lie down.”
Cherry’s exhausted voice caught my attention, and I forgot all about the press hounds trying to get their story. Whipping my head around, I spotted her pale pink hair on the other side of Detective Righty’s car and hurried toward her.
“Here’s our card. We’d like to touch base with you to have this whole thing mapped out properly.”
“Righty-o. Just?—”
“Cherry?” I interrupted as I rounded the side of the car, and goodness, she was a sight for sore eyes. The paramedics had cleaned her face of the dried blood and bandaged the worst of the splits in her soft skin. Sure, she looked beat up, but to me, she looked like a fuckingrevelation.
“Thereyou are,” she said, grinning as broadly as her injured mouth would allow. I had the temptation to run toward her, arms open, and sweep her up in a hug so I could spin her around, but I resisted. Although the empath was an incredibly strong woman with a streak of luck a mile wide, she could use a little delicate handling right now. Not that I would ever say that to herface, of course. If I did, she might hop on a skateboard and do some sort of triple 5000 ollie lux or whatever it was called just to prove me wrong.
“Here I am,” I said instead, opening my arms and slowly walking toward her. When we met, instead of a collision, it was a soft connection of our bodies, her head resting against my chest. “Thank you,” I murmured, gently stroking her head, mindful of any cuts that she might have in her scalp.
I felt her jaw move against my front a couple of times, as if she was about to say something but couldn’t decide what to verbalize, but she didn’t get the time to figure it out before those damn flashing lights were back in our face again.
“For fuck’s sake,” I growled. Not only had more journalists showed up, but they were now congregated at the front entrance. They weren’t the worst that I’d seen in my life—they were keeping their distance, lined up against the barrier like fans at a concert—but they certainly weren’t the greatest because they were shouting questions and taking enough pictures with flash to make it feel like there was a giant strobe light in front of me.
“Can you tell us what exactly happened here tonight?”
“Are the events that took place here connected in any way to the death of your father and brother?”
“Chris! Now that you are the alpha-heir of your pack, what do you have to say to those who find the sudden passing of those before you in succession highly suspicious?”
“His name isPaul!”Cherry snapped so loudly and virulently. I was surprised she had that much energy left in her after everything that we’ve been through. “And you’d do well to remember that!”