Feverborn (Fever #8) - Karen Marie Moning Page 0,127
was?” she whispered back.
“How do you know its purpose is to fix things?”
“Pretty obvious from the images, Mac,” she said dryly.
“How did you know I was here?” I hadn’t known she was. I hadn’t bothered looking to my left. There hadn’t been any sounds over there. Perhaps our would-be surgeon had already set up her instruments before I’d regained consciousness.
“Superhearing. You’ve been sighing. Occasionally, a snort. Can you reach your cellphone?”
“No,” I said.
“Me either.”
How had she gotten here? Had the wraiths broken out a window in BB&B, swooped in and plucked her unconscious body from the bed? Had they always possessed the power to defeat Barrons’s wards and just been pretending? And why? As far as I knew, my ghouls hadn’t been stalking her. Had the Sweeper simply tucked her into its cart like a grocery store customer indulging in a buy-one-get-one-free deal because she’d been handy and according to its nebulous and highly suspect criteria was “broken,” too?
“How did it get you?” I asked woodenly.
“I looked out the window and saw you walking down the alley.”
“I thought you were unconscious.” Damn it, she should have been unconscious! Then she wouldn’t be here.
“I was waiting for everyone to finally leave. Ryodan finished my tattoo today. I had someplace to go. But I looked out the window and saw you following what looked like a walking trash heap.”
“Following it?” I’d never even seen it. Apparently the noisy, rattling heap could cast a glamour.
“It was about twenty feet ahead of you. Then I heard Barrons’s voice coming from it and knew something was wrong. The minute I stepped outside, the ZEWS were on me. I didn’t even have time to access the slipstream.”
They’d straitjacketed her, too, I realized. Smothered her and knocked her out, and like me, she’d awakened restrained from head to toe.
“Slipstream?”
“Used to call it freeze-frame.”
“Got any superhero ideas?” I said. I wasn’t hopeful. Restrained, even her extraordinary gifts were useless.
“Everything I learned Silverside requires use of my hands. Can you move at all?”
“Only my head and only a little.”
“Ditto,” she said.
I searched for something reassuring to say but could find nothing. Barrons would have no reason to look for us beyond the eight-block circumference of the storm, and I doubted we were in that part of the Dark Zone that was inside it. I’d underestimated my ghoulish stalkers. I wasn’t making that mistake again. I had to assume anything that put so much premeditation into its “work” would put an equal amount of thought into choosing a place where it would not be interrupted.
We couldn’t count on Barrons for a rescue. And certainly not Ryodan.
It was just the two of us.
“I’ve been in worse situations,” Jada whispered.
I winced and closed my eyes. I really hadn’t wanted to hear that. “Jada—”
“If you’re going to tell me you’re sorry again, stow it. It was my feet that took me where I went. That night and tonight. We make our own choices.”
“And there’s your responsibility dysmorphia showing again,” I said coolly.
“Responsibility dysmorphia is you being so arrogant you think your actions are the only ones that count. You chased me. I ran. That’s two people doing two things. We can split it fifty/fifty if you want. I planned on going Fae-side anyway. I was hungry for adventure. I never thought ahead. I lived in the moment. You weren’t responsible for that.”
I remembered her laughing as she’d leapt into the mirror, deep from the belly, no fear. “I should have come after you.”
“I would have darted into the nearest mirror in the hall. You know what those were? They showed pretty, happy places, sunny islands with white castles on sand. It took me a while to figure out what was on the other side wasn’t what they showed. Barrons was right. You following me would have killed me.”
“You know about that?”
“Lor told me. And once I’d gone through that first Silver, you had no chance of finding me. There are billions of portals in that hall, Mac. That’s not a needle in a haystack—that’s a billion needles in a gazillion haystacks.”
“But you lost so many years,” I whispered.
“There you go again. I didn’t lose them. I lived them. I wouldn’t undo a bit of it. It made me who I am. I like who I am.”
That hadn’t been how it looked at the abbey, and I told her that.
“It’s hard to be alone,” she said. “You do what makes survival possible. Otherwise you don’t make it.”