of his bicep as he held me. My head was pounding and my body was shaking in a way I'd have been embarrassed about if I hadn't been so busy trying not to give a repeat performance.
I got a hand on the floor, trying to get enough leverage to push myself upright, but Pritkin merely pulled me in a little closer. "Give it a moment." His voice dripped fury, but his fingers were warm and gentle against my skin. That was good, because I felt really odd, cold and light, like a frozen bubble.
Blood speckled him from where the window had torn his flesh, tracing winding trails from his forearm to his elbow, and his eyes looked like they were having as much trouble focusing as mine. I had no idea why he wasn't a smear on the parking lot, but then, it seemed I'd been underestimating him all along. I stared at him, speechless, but Billy Joe knew just what to say.
"So the Circle's best-known demon hunter is half demon himself," he commented, floating over from beside the closet. "I have to tell you, I didn't see that one coming."
I had to admit, neither had I.
Chapter 15
I spent the rest of the day in bed, hurting so much that even relaxing my muscles made them ache. It was hard to believe I could be this sore and live. I wasn't sure if it was because of the attack or the whole stopping-time thing. My predecessor had died shortly after pulling that trick for the last time, which maybe should have told me something. For whatever reason, my whole body felt like one big bruise.
My mental state wasn't much better. When I finally managed to sleep, my dreams were full of Pritkin's face, wearing a brilliant and unguarded grin, which alone was enough to weird me out, since it wasn't an expression I'd ever seen in real life. Then it began to sag, with waxlike rivulets of flesh running down his cheekbones to drip off his chin, eyes rolling in their sockets, the sunny grin fading to a skeletal grimace. I woke up in a cold sweat.
I stared at the patterns the bedside light made on my ceiling, consciously slowing my runaway heartbeat. This isn't me, I told myself furiously. My breath doesn't catch unless I tell it to. I don't think about things I don't want to. And I don't scream like a little girl over a freaking nightmare. I breathed in and out for a few minutes, nice and steady, until my breath was calm without my having to work for it.
Then the door opened and Pritkin was there, staring at me. There was a sudden rumbling, rushing noise and a soft rustle of air. I screamed like a little girl.
He leapt into the room, snatched me off the bed and threw me to the floor, covering my body with his own and tucking his head down. I waited for the sickening lethargy to settle in, for the horrible sucking sensation on my power to start, but nothing happened. After a minute, the whirring noise shut off. I started to feel my face burn, despite being pressed against the cold concrete floor.
"Not that I'm not grateful for being protected from the air conditioner," I mumbled, "but can I get up now?"
Pritkin released me, helped me back to bed, and vanished. Which was just as well. I still didn't have the faintest idea what to say to him.
I went back to sleep like a person falling off a cliff, and didn't dream. But by midnight, I'd slept as much as I was going to and had hit the point where boredom had overtaken aches and pains. I sat up, feeling thirsty, sweaty, and groggy. The mirror showed me a pale, washed-out version of myself, with an impression of the blanket's weave on the left side of my face. But after a very hot shower, food and four aspirin, I went to find some answers.
Pritkin wasn't at the scene of the crime. The glass had been swept up, though, and the opening had been covered with a sheet of heavy plastic printed to look like the once beautiful window. I assumed it was there as a placeholder, so that at least from the outside, everything looked semi-normal despite the chaos within. I could kind of relate.
I'd have liked a different perspective on things, but Billy was off duty, crashing in my necklace to soak up whatever energy it had managed