Oh hell, had I fucking wet myself? That was so embarrassing. My cheeks flushed hot, but a nervous voice grabbed my attention. “Then could you possibly call your familiar off?”
My eyes ached as I looked down to find not a wet spot on my pants, but Fluke planted on my legs, glaring at the man, alternately whining and growling, one of my wrists clutched gently between his teeth. “Fluke?” I asked. “Whatcha doing, buddy?”
He looked up and met my eye, letting out a pitiful whine.
“He got rid of them,” Beez announced, and she was giving the EMT the same evil eye as Fluke. I wondered what the hell the guy had done to deserve that. “Fluke chased off whoever it was who attacked you.”
“Someone attacked me?” I asked, but the question was drowned out by the screech of tires—a small sedan pulling up next to the ambulance they were trying to put me in.
I finally took a real look around. We were right at the mouth of the alley between the bookstore and the office next door, the ambulance pulled up in front of the office.
They had managed to strap my chest to the gurney, but Fluke was keeping them from strapping my legs down with his own body.
The car that had pulled up was black, and for a wild moment, I imagined it was Gideon riding to my rescue. But of course, Gideon was a ghost. He didn’t have a car. He probably didn’t even know anything about driving.
Most importantly, Gideon wasn’t there at all.
It was David.
He jumped out of the car, slamming the door behind him and rushing over to where the four of us sat, stood, and lay. “Sage, are you okay?”
“Of course he’s not okay,” Beez said, her voice tight. She had always seemed to like David before, but tonight she seemed as unimpressed as Gideon. Maybe the whole attitude was just stress talking. “Someone attacked him. As we were heading out for the night, Sage just started . . . glowing. The glow got sucked down the alley, and Sage collapsed. Fluke barked and ran down there, and a second later, the sucking stopped, and the glow snapped back.”
David looked down at Fluke, who was now growling in his direction. “Quite the little protector you have there.”
“He’s the best,” Beez agreed, leaning down to scratch his ears and baby talk him about what a good boy he was. Fluke, not at all bothered by the litany of “who’s a good boy? That’s right, he’s the best boy!” wagged his tail. He didn’t let go of my wrist, though.
“As much as I appreciate the treatment,” I whispered to the EMT, “I’m not sure I can go to the hospital. I bet I can’t afford what you’ve already done.”
He gave me a pained nod—I imagined it was something he heard often.
“The Aureum will pay,” David broke in. “I’m sorry, but we need to at least get a scan to see if you were attacked in the same way as the others. Since we’ll be taking your time, paying the bill is the least we can do.”
The EMT looked up at David, a little dubiously. “I’d need you to sign off on that . . . Dominus?” I almost snorted. It was a logical guess. That blond hair and winning smile was much more suited to a political position than law enforcement. I honestly wondered why a mage with David’s looks and any power hadn’t opted to become a dominus—the real path to power in the Aureum.
“Quaesitor,” he corrected, whipping out his badge in a practiced move. “I’ll have a standard waiver drawn up at the hospital. Just get him there.”
The EMT made a point of writing down David’s badge number and name, and I decided that I liked him. Fluke and Beez were just being overprotective, and besides, Fluke was now entirely ignoring the man in favor of glaring at David. For what, I had no idea.
Surely he wasn’t the attacker. That was too weird. Why would he want a scan if he had attacked me? Plus if he had been the guy, Fluke would have gone for his throat, right? But really, there were only so many times your familiar could growl at a guy before you got a complex about it.
David sidled up to the gurney as the EMT wrote and took my free hand in his. That was . . . odd. The palm stung a little, and I assumed I’d landed on it