Page 90 of Death's Daughter
It’s like running as fast as possible face-first into an invisible wall.
There’s no polite tingling or warning numbness this time. Just whole-body rejection—the sense ofwrongnessand then soaring through the air as I’m ripped away from the ground and Devon’s hand.
Then… nothing.
23
Urgent voices cut in and out of the soothing darkness in which I’m floating. Pieces drift toward me, but I can’t seem to grasp them before they move past me.
“… told you it was a bad idea.”
“Just help me with…”
“… the door, I can’t get the…”
“They’re coming this way. Either you do something or…”
Eventually the voices fade out altogether, leaving me alone, and I lose track of everything, sinking back into the darkness.
Some unknown amount of time later, I open my sticky, gritty eyes.
I’m staring up at an unfamiliar ceiling. No ancient acoustical tiles with cutouts for the wood beams. So not my room in Branwick. But it’s too quiet to be the hospital, the surface beneath me too soft. A glimpse of overstuffed blue cushion triggers a vague memory, but I can’t place it.
I try to sit up, realizing a cool, damp washcloth is resting on my forehead only when it slips down over my eyes.
“Wait,” Carter says from somewhere behind me. “Just slow down.” A moment later, the washcloth vanishes and Carter is next to me, frowning down at me. “How is your head?” His gaze searches my face as he sits on the wooden coffee table opposite me. I’m on a massively oversized couch. “Any double vision?”
“No. I don’t know,” I answer. My body feels like one big jangled painful nerve stuffed in one of those battered and grimacing self-defense dummies on wheels that we used freshman year. I hurt. Everywhere.
But now, at least, I know where I am. Carter’s apartment. On the big cozy blue sofa. My shoes are off, and his coat is missing.
With a hand under my arm, Carter helps me sit up. A nauseating wave of dizziness rolls over me, and I clutch at his hand for support, too weak to care what it might signal.
“Here.” Carter holds a metal tumbler with a straw poking out the top to my mouth. “Water.”
I take it, giving myself a moment to get my bearings. My gaze falls on the neatly organized entertainment center to my left, beneath the large flatscreen on the wall. The shelves hold a variety of books and a few DVDs. Including my… our favorite sports movies. That makes my heart hurt, and I have to look away.
I turn my attention to the water and draw in a sip, coughing when it hits the back of my dry throat. “What happened?” I ask when I can breathe again. I take the tumbler from him to hold it myself. My hand shakes a little, and the metal straw jangles with the movement.
Carter eyes it for a long second, and I’m pretty sure he’s weighing whether to take it back and hold it for me. So I tighten my grip to steady it.
“Whatever you and Devon were trying didn’t work. You triedto tell him no, but he insisted.” Carter looks as though he’s about to grind his back teeth to bits. “Next thing I knew, you were screaming and…”
He glances away, his jaw working. “You flew backward until you hit the trunk of one of the pine trees.”
Ah. That explains the pain radiating from my back.
So Devon tried to help me claim Beecher, and rather than the additional strength working in our favor, the denial came through that much harder. If Beecher was an iPhone then we’d have just been locked out for the next nine hundred years.
“The police officers heard you screaming, so we had to get out of there,” Carter says. “He did… whatever he does to them, so they wouldn’t stop us, and I got my car to bring you back here.”
I hand Carter back the tumbler. “Where is Devon now?”
“He went to the union to check out the historical display you mentioned.” Carter sets the water down on the coffee table with a firmthunk, one that sounds more like a gavel strike. Judgment rendered. He is pissed at Devon, that’s for sure. So I wonder if Devon went or if Carter sent him.
“All right.” I scoot forward to the edge of the couch gingerly. “Where are my shoes?”
His blue eyes widen in disbelief, then narrow in anger. “Are you kidding me? Jocasta, that?” He points in the general direction of the cemetery. “That could have killed you. A few inches to the left or right and it might have snapped your neck.” He shakes his head, exhaling sharply. “I don’t care who or what you are, that’s fatal.”
