Once Dead Twice Shy Page 0,54
stopped her entirely, but you got in the way. His soul is hanging by a thread. Get out of here. I can't stop a concentrated effort if they attack together. I'm hiding you, but two got a taste of you, and the others sense that. Don't go invisible again. Madison, don't go invisible! You're cracking your amulet a little more every time you do."
I was shaking as I backed the truck up and then put it into forward gear. Josh was slumped against the passenger door. Don't go invisible. Grace had said that before. That it drew the black wings in. But I hadn't had a choice.
"Josh?" I said as we found the pavement and I slowed to an infuriating crawl to avoid the people just now starting to abandon the park. "Josh, talk to me." I looked behind me, but it was as if no one had heard Nakita scream. No one had seen a winged angel arched in pain in a terrible beauty under the trees.
I reached to shake him, and he groaned. "Hospital," he whispered. "Madison, I feel like I'm dying. Get me there. Please."
Fear struck me. I jostled out onto the main road, and then I floored it. Horns blew, and I turned the hazard lights on, for what good they would do.
When my dad found out about this, he was going to kill me. Again.
CHAPTER 10
The smell of rubbing alcohol and adhesive drifted out from the sterile white hallway and into the brown-and-taupe emergency waiting room. It was quiet now but for a woman with a fussy baby on her lap, and I hunched over my knees and rubbed my elbow, remembering what it had felt like when I'd hit Nakita. I was tired, weary of waiting to hear something. The mom had a little boy with her too, who was busy causing trouble and probably mad that his little sister was getting all the attention.
Harried, the woman was giving me dirty looks as she filled out paperwork to get her feverish baby girl looked at. She'd been here when I'd blown in, but an unconscious person gets treatment before a colicky baby. Though some of the rush might have been caused by me yelling at the emergency people. I hadn't shut up until a cop, who had apparently been following me, had come in. I swear, I hadn't seen her in my rearview mirror. Maybe I'd been going too fast, but it had taken only eight minutes to get here.
Eight terrifying minutes in which I thought Josh was going to die.
My feet scuffed the flat carpet, and I slumped into the cushions as I glanced at the officer talking to the nurse in a pink lab coat. The young-looking cop had my license, which meant my dad was probably on his way. I'd tried to call but had been unable to bring myself to leave a message other than that I was okay and that I was at the hospital with Josh.
The sight of the nurse made my gut cramp in worry. Josh had been whisked away after I'd said he'd collapsed at the track. This woman in her pink lab coat was the first medical person I'd seen since, and she wasn't telling me anything. Stupid privacy laws.
At least Grace was with him, though the angel wasn't happy. Actually, she was royally P.O.'ed, and I think they almost checked me in for observation when I'd had a hushed argument with her until she capitulated. He was unconscious and I wasn't, so he needed her. Duh.
The cop's voice rose, and I grew nervous when they looked my way. The two women said something in parting; the nurse went down the hall, and the cop came to me. I couldn't remember the name she had given to me in our first discussion, but her badge said B Levy. B for Betty? Bea? Barbie? Nah. Not with that pistol on her hip.
Officer Levy stopped a shade too close for my comfort, her no-nonsense shoes rocking slightly on the carpet as she halted. My eyes traveled up her pressed pants, belt, weapon secured in a snapped holster, starched shirt, badge, and finally to her face. She didn't look old enough to have been a cop for long, and it irritated me that her expression was trying for parental concern. Right, like she had kids? Don't think so.
She had a nice face, though, with short, sandy-blond hair and hazel eyes, suntanned and showing only worry wrinkles. She wasn't