The Unkindest Tide (October Daye #13) - Seanan McGuire Page 0,173
you there.”
That painted a picture of the incident that made a dismaying amount of sense. The driver, upon hitting me, must have gotten out to see whether I was still alive—and upon finding I was, had loaded me into their car and driven to the nearest twenty-four-hour veterinary hospital. Cal wouldn’t have been able to keep up. I wouldn’t have been able to keep up, and my magic made me both faster and more durable than they were.
My magic was probably the only reason I had survived the impact. That was a daunting thought.
“How did you find me?” I asked, breaking my own determination to stay quiet until Helen could understand me.
Cal looked infinitely relieved. They must have been afraid I was intending never to speak to them again. That was silly. They were going to be one of my subjects. I had to be willing to speak to them, even if it was only so I could give them orders.
“He wants to know how we found him,” said Cal, translating for Helen before looking back to me. “I know you didn’t want me to talk to your girlfriend, but it was an emergency. I knocked until her father let me in, and then I told him what had happened, and he started making calls. It took a while for anyone to recognize his description of you.”
I must have been a mess when they brought me in, and intake and initial treatment would have taken time. Still, I didn’t care for the delay. I nestled deeper into Helen’s lap, grumbling at the pain beginning to radiate through my body. The medication was passing through my system. I’d listened as the vet explained the realities of my situation to Willis—how could I have done anything else, when I was in a cardboard carrier right next to their conversation? The second woman turned out to have been my doctor. That was fine. She had good hands.
According to her, I was likely to ache for several days, and would need to be checked again in a week or so. I was sorry for the regret she’d probably feel when Willis and Helen failed to reappear with me, but the people in that building were far too interested in the state of my testicles, and I didn’t want to give them any opportunities to threaten them. I liked my testicles. I liked them exactly where they were, either between my legs or beneath my tail, depending on the form I was in, and a part of me I had no interest in losing either way.
Willis pulled up in the driveway of the small house he shared with Helen. “All right. Helen, you need to hold onto your boyfriend like you’re concerned about losing him; Raj, please don’t run away. I know you’re a smart boy who generally makes good decisions, or I wouldn’t trust you in my house, but you’re probably still a little stoned, and I have no interest in going through the last twenty-four hours again.”
My heart sank. I knew I’d been gone longer than I’d promised Ginevra, but I hadn’t realized it had been a full day. She was going to kill me when I finally made it back to the Court of Cats. I meowed plaintively.
Cal shot me a sympathetic look. “It’s worse than that,” they said. “Don’t worry, though, it’ll all be over soon.”
“Be nice,” scolded Helen.
“I am being nice! You would never have found him if not for me!”
Helen huffed as she got out of the car. I didn’t make a sound, wrapped as I was in contemplation of Cal’s words. They were right. If they hadn’t been there—if they had run a little faster when I’d knocked them out of the way, or if they hadn’t woken up when I slipped by them, or if they’d gotten tired of waiting for me and decided to go home—I could have been lost forever, or at least for a very long time. And yes, there was every chance I wouldn’t have been hit if I hadn’t been trying to rescue Cal, but that wasn’t the only time I’d had a close call with a car, was it? Cars were everywhere, and while most humans tried to avoid hitting supposedly stray cats, not all of them were that kind. Some might even steer toward a stray, seeing it as an opportunity to avenge a fallen songbird.
I could have died. I could have died, and no one would ever have known