Clearly, I’d spoken aloud. “Blood loss talking,” I said. I swiped at the medallion. “Give that back.”
“Tell me what it is,” he said, standing up out of my reach.
“I don’t know.” I gave him a smile to show that hey, I could tell the truth sometimes.
“But you can find out.” That wasn’t even a question. No fair.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe. Not tonight. I’m kind of in heal mode here. Why don’t you go away? I’m rescinding your invitation.”
“I am not a vampire.” He cocked his head, those ice chip eyes of his narrowing as he looked me over. “You can’t order me out.”
“Vampires don’t exist,” I muttered. I blushed and wondered I had the blood left in my body for it. I was lying in a bathtub with half my pants missing and only a scrap of black panties covering my girl bits. I wished I’d worn nicer underwear. Or shaved in the last two days. He was a shifter though, maybe he preferred his women furry.
Ho-kay. That was definitely the blood loss talking.
I looked down at my hip. The wounds were mostly closed, looking a lot more like a bad abrasion than a bunch of stitch-worthy cuts. Time to get out of the bathtub and find if I had any Band-Aids.
“Still here?” I said. “Help me up.”
He pulled me out of the tub as though I were no bigger than a kitten. I lost the scrap of panty but managed to yank a towel over myself as I leaned heavily on the bathroom counter.
“Okay, I need to clean up here, and you really need to leave. Maybe that kid will wake up and tell you what’s going on.”
He caught my chin in his hand and tilted my head toward him, leaning in close. He smelled like vanilla and sun-kissed hay. “I will come back tomorrow. And you will tell the truth, Jade Crow.” All trace of smirk was gone from his face.
“Fuck you,” I said, jerking my head away. Mistake, that. Red and black dots swum over my eyes and the headache vise tightened another notch.
“I thought you had revoked my invitation,” he said, and just like a freakin’ Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, he was smirking again.
“Do they train you to be this annoying at Justice Academy, or does it come naturally?” I said as I turned carefully around, deliberately not looking in the mirror, and pulled open the medicine cabinet. I did have Band-Aids. Score.
“It runs in my family.” He set the medallion down on the counter and pulled open the door. The silvery shield he’d cast on the room dissolved. “I’ll be back,” he said over his shoulder.
Harper lurked near the door and ducked into the bathroom as soon as Alek left.
“He managed not to make that line sound ironic at all, wow,” she said. “What were you guys doing in here?”
“Staring contest,” I said. “And I don’t think he was actually trying to quote The Terminator. You going to sleep over?”
“That okay?” She sounded so young and vulnerable. It was easy to forget sometimes that she was nearly twenty years younger than I was. I might look like I’m in my mid-twenties, but I’m a lot closer to fifty than thirty.
“Of course,” I said. “I don’t really want to be alone, you know?”
Apparently I wasn’t done lying after all.
I didn’t want to get up when my alarm blared to life, but the smell of waffles and bacon summoned me. I’d slept fitfully with weird dreams. The final dream ended with the sound of my alarm and the feel of Samir’s hands around my throat as he whispered he would be here soon.
For a moment I wondered who was making bacon, but remembered that Harper had slept on my couch. At least she was earning her keep. I sat up too quickly and my hip pinged me with a reminder that I’d been shot the night before. I stumbled to the bathroom with a muttered good morning to Harper and peeled up the Band-Aids.#p#分页标题#e#
There was a pretty amazing green, yellow, and purple bruise, but the cuts were all closed. A gaping wound would close within minutes. A bruise? That would stick around for days. Maybe it was my body’s way of telling me I should really avoid taking damage.
I pulled on clothes, shared a somewhat awkward and quiet breakfast with Harper, and then went down to open my shop. Harper took her laptop and said she was going to go over to Dr. Lake’s and sit with her mother, then she planned to go home and talk to her brother Max about what was happening.
After the craziness of the day before, a quiet day in my shop seemed eerie. I kept waiting for something else horrible to happen, but the hours went by without anyone ending up dead or frozen or any other hot strangers with guns barging in.