At his gesture, she looked at the statue of the god overlooking the ice rink. Where the war and black magicks had turned it into a fanged demon, coated the gold with oily ash, Prometheus shined again.
The gods, Fallon thought, had heard, and answered.
He laid a hand on her shoulder. “You look like you could use a little magick elixir, too.” He went into the mobile, came out with a flask. “Not your mother’s elixir, but it can’t hurt.”
She took it, sipped whiskey, let out a breath.
A golden god, a rink of ice, a pulse in an arm.
Her head hammered with the aftershocks of the spell.
“I need to get word to my father, to Travis that he was hurt, but he’s okay.”
“We’ll do that.” But he sat beside her, put an arm around her shoulders.
Though it didn’t surprise Jonah, it did her when she pressed her face against him and wept.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Colin, being Colin, did get pissy, especially when Fallon refused to let him back into the field of battle. He managed, after two days, to wiggle his fingers, and after a week to make a loose fist.
Colin figured that was good enough. Fallon disagreed.
“It’s not my sword arm anyway,” he argued, stomping around the room so the beads dangling from his warrior’s braid clicked and clacked together. “What’s the BFD?”
Fallon, marking the latest map, nearly regretted that her brother had recovered enough to be on his feet—and hound her.
“You can’t even lift a cup of coffee with your left hand yet.”
“I won’t be drinking coffee. I’m going to die of boredom, and the goddamn war’s going to be over before I’m back in it at this rate.”
“I wish the second part were true.”
He moved, restlessly, wiggling, wiggling, wiggling the leather fingers of his hand. “We’ve taken Queens, Brooklyn, most of lower Manhattan, all of Midtown.”
“We’ve lost fifteen hundred men, and have another three hundred, including you, medically unfit for duty. We’ve yet to be able to advance above what was Fifty-eighth Street on the west side.”
He paced, now working, working, working the fingers of his restored arm into a fist. “We need to take Central Park. It’s their last real stronghold. Once we do, they’re broken here.”
“I’m aware. I’m working on it. Get battle-ready, Colin, because when we’re secure here, I want you to take a thousand troops and root the enemy out of Pennsylvania.”
He stopped pacing, flexing, scowling, turned to stare at her. “The whole state?”
“That’s right. They’re scattered there, but still a presence. Run them to ground. Vivienne’s troops are going into upstate New York, I’m going to have Mick move into Georgia.”
She gestured him over, showing him her plans on the maps—and intrigued him enough he stopped bitching.
She turned when Arlys and Fred came in.
“I didn’t think you were coming until later,” she said to Arlys. “I didn’t know you were coming at all, Fred.”
“I wanted to see. I’ve got friends riding herd on my herd until tomorrow.” Fred slipped a hand into Arlys’s.
“I can’t believe it’s still here. So much of it’s still here. Even after they got word back to us, I didn’t believe it.” Arlys walked to the window, pressed a hand to the glass. “So much gone, but so much here, too.”
“I didn’t want you to come until I felt we’d secured enough, but Mom kept pleading your case. She knows how much it means to you. She knows what both of you did here.”
“Not alone,” Arlys added. “Jim, Carol, Steve. They could have left, but they stayed. God, I wish we knew what happened to them.”
“They got out.” Fred moved up to slip her arm around Arlys’s waist so they stood at the windows, heads tipped toward each other.
“God, I hope so.”
“I just know they did. I just know they found a way.”
Comforted, Arlys drew Fred with her into the newsroom. “When I first started working here, it was a high point of my life. And I was, by God, going to work my way to the anchor desk.”
“You did,” Fred reminded her.
“Not the way I imagined.” She walked to it now, to where she’d sat for that final broadcast.
They’d cleaned it, she thought as she skimmed her fingers over it. But she could still see the blood and gore, still feel the way that blood had rained warm on her face when Bob, poor Bob, had chosen despair and madness and death.
Had that been what had woken her up? she wondered. Had that