boyfriend’s team tried to humiliate him, he’d show them.
What? No, of course I didn’t do that when Bobby Hu’s friends made fun of me for not liking sports.
But seriously, baseball is boring.
I sighed and lay there for a while, staring at the ceiling. At least Fluke was still there, snuggled up against my side. He was a good friend. When he finally lifted his head and nudged my cheek with his cold nose, I nodded. “Yeah, I know. Time to get up.”
He rubbed his whole face along my side, like a cat marking its human, then slowly stood, stretching his legs, back then front. I sat up and followed suit.
He led me out toward the kitchen, and I had the momentary guilt of realizing I hadn’t fed him last night. Dammit. I hoped Beez had, because the second she’d gotten me into the house from her car, I’d been asleep, no sleeping drugs necessary.
I glanced at the two pill bottles that she’d left sitting on the kitchen counter; one for pain, and one for sleeping. I ached everywhere, but I wasn’t sure it was really enough to justify taking pain pills. The doctor had said migraines were a possibility, so I thought I’d save the drugs for that.
“What do you want for breakfast, bud?” I asked Fluke, and my voice was flatter than usual. Gideon wasn’t waiting in the living room or kitchen, either.
Fluke whined and rubbed against my legs. Then he went to stand in front of his bag of dog food, as though offering the path of least resistance.
“You know, it’s mornings like this I wish humans had something that simple.” Cereal was as close as it got, and I had gotten some at the grocery store.
Cereal and dog food it was.
We were about half done crunching our way through bowls of our food when Gideon sat down at his spot. I glanced at our bowls to make sure I’d given Fluke his food and not my bland, soulless cereal. I wouldn’t wish that on him.
“You okay?” Gideon asked. He was leaning toward me, his brown eyes filled with worry.
“Someone tried to kill me,” I answered. It was creepy, listening to my own voice so flat and emotionless. I didn’t think I was without feelings about what had happened. I was just . . . numb.
Someone had tried to kill me, and—
“What? Who? When?” He leaned toward me, eyes wide and wild, darting all over my face, my arms, my hands—every part of me he could see. I would never admit it aloud, but that and the strain in his voice were sort of . . . gratifying.
“Where and why?” I finished for him, and he scowled.
“This isn’t a joke, Sage. What happened?”
I laughed, a single, dry cough of a laugh, and it made my head hurt. “Believe me, I know it’s not a joke. What with the almost dying. Someone tried to, I don’t know, eat my magic? Suck it out? If it weren’t for Fluke, they’d have done it.”
The look on Gideon’s face was absolutely shattered, like the usually even-tempered man had been told his whole family was dead. He couldn’t even meet my eye, just stared at the table, eyes squeezed closed and head hung low.
“It’s fine. I’m fine. Everything is—”
“Don’t you dare minimize this. It’s not fine. My gods, Sage, you almost died.” He stood and started to pace. “But stealing magic? That doesn’t fit. The people killing convergence links don’t take their magic.”
No, they killed them with knives. Every single one, stabbed, throats cut, wrists slit . . . the shadows in my cereal bowl made the milk look pink, and I shoved it away, my already thin appetite gone. “No. It’s a great, wonderful, magical day. Everyone wants to kill me, and you abandoned me.”
“Sage—”
“You left, Gideon. You just walked away. I didn’t know if you were even coming back. Why would you—” I clapped a hand over my mouth to stop the words. I was damn well not going to cry. I was not a teenager sobbing over how the love of my childhood didn’t love me back.
I was a damned adult.
And no one ever stayed. No one ever loved me back. I should be used to it by now.
“I needed some time,” Gideon started to explain, but sighed and shook his head. “You gotta get used to it anyway, because I’m gonna be gone for good, and I don’t get to decide when that happens.”