had been attempting to hamstring me, but not dangerous, and they did not impede my movement as my legs were nonfunctioning anyway. But it felt strange, not being able to feel my fingers moving over my flesh.
There was no pain, even when I washed the seeping wound in fey wine to disinfect it. Dhampirs do not suffer from infections, but that was on Earth. Who knew how it worked here?
I thought about that, then unwrapped the other wound and disinfected it, too, just to be safe. Again, there was no discomfort. It was almost as if my legs were not there at all, which was . . . disturbing.
I tried telling myself that it would be fine, that I would return to Earth, reunite with Dory, and that our body would be whole again. Only, what if this was our body? I had assumed that the original had stayed with her, simply because I was used to thinking about it as hers more than mine. But what if she had the duplicate?
What if I returned to her, and paralyzed us both?
I pushed that thought away—hard—because it made the cold water beading my skin feel like it reached all the way to my heart. I shivered anyway, probably because my tunic was wet. I pulled it off and laid it in the sun, and even found a small patch of warmth for myself while it dried.
The rocks overhead looked a bit like an open hand, I decided, with four fingers of stone sticking out, and the thumb being the stony protrusion behind me. It showed me the sky in pieces, but provided a little shelter in case it rained. Assuming that it did that here.
I didn’t know because I didn’t know the rules of this place. Not any of them. It made me uneasy, like the thought that I might not be able to fight off an attack if it came.
But there was nothing obviously threatening at the moment, and I had started to relax by the time Ray returned, with four large fish, a crab-like creature, and a sliced-up nose. And a slightly horrified expression when he caught sight of me. “Oh, hey! Hey, yeah. Um—”
“Is something wrong?” I asked, because he’d looked away. And then almost turned his back on me.
“No, no, hell no. Not a thing. It’s just . . . it gets cold here, at night. You, uh, should probably put that tunic back on.”
I reached over and felt of it. And to my surprise, it was dry. The strange material had wicked away the water and the sun had warmed it. I pulled it over my head and Ray was right. I did feel better.
“What is it you have there?” I asked.
He glanced over his shoulder, and looked faintly relieved for some reason. Then he looked down at his catch. “Oh. Crab,” he explained, shaking the obviously dead creature. “I’m gonna enjoy cooking this bitch up. It almost took my nose off.”
“Can we cook?” I asked, as he squatted down by the river to clean his catch. The sun, or what passed for it here, was getting lower. It would be dark soon, and a fire would show our location all too well.
And that was assuming that the trees didn’t get us first.
Ray shrugged. “May as well. We have to have a fire anyway.” He thought about it. “That’s rule number five. Never sleep without a fire, especially not at water’s edge.”
“But if we light one, somebody might see us.”
“And if we don’t, something might eat us.”
“There seems to be a lot of that going on,” I pointed out.
He started to say something, but then looked up and saw my face. Or perhaps he read my mind, and picked up on some of the strange feeling I was having. Not fear exactly, but something approaching it. Anxiety? Was that the word?
“That’s the word,” Ray said. “And if you didn’t have any around here, you’d be either stupid or crazy.”
“All right,” I said.
“In Faerie, you gotta pick your battles,” he added, working on the fish. “Look, I’m not gonna lie to you and promise that we’re going to make it out of here, okay? I’m not gonna do that. But I will promise that tonight, we’ll do the eating.”
I felt my face crack, and then smile. Ray had a way with words. It wasn’t a conventional way, but it was a way.
“I’ll make the fire,” I said.
* * *
The meal was simple but good. Hunger is the