left molars should have been, and my left eye didn’t want to open all the way. No wonder I reminded her of ‘Roadkill.’
“So this really is your girlfriend?” Philip said, a half smile on his face.
“Ex-girlfriend,” Savannah and I said simultaneously.
“Your ex here used a little social engineering to waltz straight through our police barricade.”
“I didn’t lie,” Savannah said, scowling but embarrassed. “I said I was here as her girlfriend. There’s no statute of limitations on girlfriendiness, is there?”
“I’m not going to give you shit,” Philip said, chuckling, smiling at me. “I completely understand your desire to be beside Dakota—”
“Not for the reasons you think,” Savannah said coldly. “She was under my protection. Kotie, I’m so sorry—”
“Don’t blame yourselves. I fucked up,” I said. I felt so ashamed. “I provoked him. It’s all my fault—”
“Do not talk like that,” Philip said calmly. “No one had the right to do this to you.”
I shook my head. “I-I know that,” I said, struggling for words. “I’d like to kick the little fucker’s teeth in. It’s just—earlier, at the werehouse—”
At which I trailed off. Davidson was a Fed, an X-Files-grade Fed with his own spooky black helicopter, and here I was spilling the guts on an Edgeworld werehouse. What was wrong with me—did they have me on some kind of painkillers?
“Werehouse?” Davidson said, arching an eyebrow. I kept looking out the window, and he asked, “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Kotie,” Savannah said. “Talk to us. What happened at the werehouse?”
I glared at her, but she was just scowling, red bangs and goggles hiding her eyes. But if she didn’t seem worried talking to Davidson.
“Transomnia was on guard,” I said, looking at Davidson briefly before staring back at Savannah. “He called you a dirty name, and I… I punched him in the face, knocked him down in front of Lord Buckhead. During the attack on me he said he was… punishing me.”
“You decked a vampire?” Davidson said, astonished.
“Transomnia,” Savannah said icily. “I’ll remember that.”
“Now, now,” Davidson cautioned. “Don’t go trying to be a vigilante—”
“I’ll do as I please,” Savannah replied. “I am a daywalker.”
Davidson scowled. “Daywalker or no, you don’t know what you’re getting into—”
“If you two are going to fight, could you do it outside?” I said.
Davidson raised his hands, and Savannah looked away, embarrassed.
“Look, I know you just came to,” Davidson said. “But I want to warn you. Doctors are going to appear and hover over you. The police will want to take a statement. We’ve got a police detail on you—all off-duty volunteers right now —”
“Volunteer?” Savannah asked, putting a hand on her hip. “She just had an attempt on her life, and you have to use volunteers?”
“Welcome to policing,” Philip said. “Many storm the gates, but few man the walls. We’re lucky Dakota has family on the force; it was easy to find volunteers—”
As if on cue the door opened, held by Horscht, one of the officers who had picked me up earlier. He winked at me, then stepped back to admit a group of doctors and nurses. There was an older man who looked like he might be in charge, but he deferred to an impossibly young doctor with a broad smile and parted black hair.
Davidson and Savannah stepped back to give the doctors room, but the youngish man looked at them sharply. “We need to speak to Miss Frost about her medical condition,” he said, clearly about to give my visitors their walking papers. “Are you with the family?”
“I’m here as her girlfriend,” Savannah said.
“I’m here on behalf of her father,” Davidson said, “and the police detail is my doing. If I’m not here, someone from the detail needs to be with her at all times.”
The doctor twitched a little, and I said, “Let them stay. I’m half out of it anyway. Someone with memory needs to be here.”
The doctor laughed. “Very well. Do you prefer Dakota or Miss Frost?”
“Dakota,” I said.
“Dakota, your leg has some of the most wonderful tattoos I’ve ever seen,” he said, smiling, sitting in the chair that Davidson had just been in, patting the bed in a friendly way that made me feel like he was touching my leg, without ever actually touching it. “I saw them when I was patching up your knee this morning. I’ve never seen colors so alive, so vibrant. Maybe I caught a whiff of the anesthetic, but it almost looked like one of them moved out of the way while I was working.”