And much more precious.
FIFTEEN minutes later, the only light in the farmhouse living room came from the television, and it cast a flickering blue glow on razor-sharp spines of flexing hair and scaled, muscular chests. Raw and Aaz lounged on the floor in front of me, chewing on coils of barbed wire. The spikes jutting from their backs quivered with each breath.
Aaz reached over his shoulder, yanked one free with a wet crunch, and used it to pick between his jagged teeth. Bits of barbed wire hit the rug. Dek—coiled against his leg, gnawing a teddy bear—gave him a disapproving look and licked up the scraps with his long black tongue.
Grant lay on the couch, a cool wet rag on his forehead. A bucket was on the floor beside him. He hadn’t puked again, but he had this sour, grim twist to his mouth that made me think he was fighting hard not to hurl. Zee crouched on the back of the couch, leaning down to sniff at him.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Grant muttered between clenched teeth.
“I feel fine,” I said, even though I didn’t, really. I’d never been sick a day in my life, but something in my body felt . . . off. The skin along my legs hurt, like the fibers of my jeans had suddenly contracted some spiky substance that was pricking me. My muscles ached. I felt warm.
Zee gave me a quick, concerned look when I told Grant I was fine—but he didn’t blow my cover. Instead, he leapt over us to the floor, prowling around Jack and Mary. The old woman was pacing. My grandfather stood against the wall, arms folded over his chest. He was wearing Grant’s clothes, and they looked odd on him. Grant dressed like one of the models from an Eddie Bauer catalogue: rough-hewn, an upscale lumberjack. Jack still looked like he’d be more comfortable in his old dirty sweatpants and T-shirt filled with holes.
He wasn’t even looking at us. Instead, he seemed engrossed in a rerun of Magnum P.I. that Raw and Aaz were watching, sound on mute. The little demons had been skipping off to Hawaii some nights, bringing home tropical shirts and surfboards, and fragrant leis that they always dropped over my head.
My husband was dying while Tom Selleck flirted with a girl in a string bikini. Life could be horrible sometimes.
Zee pointed his long black claw at Mary. “Sick.”
She didn’t stop pacing. Zee looked at Jack. “You sick, too.”
He didn’t look away from the show. “I know. I felt the virus begin to work on me before I entered my bath.”
“You sure were quiet about that,” I snapped.
My grandfather finally tore his gaze from the television. “And what would I have accomplished with hysterics, or even a warning?” Fury blasted through his expression, a terrible desperate rage that made me feel, for a moment, afraid. I’d never seen him so angry, and it reminded me again that he was not human, no matter what he looked like—because no human, nothing mortal, was capable of the luminous, godlike savagery that lit his eyes.
“You said humans wouldn’t be affected. You were sure.”
“I was wrong.” Jack closed his eyes. “The virus had been modified. I didn’t see it.”
“You see everything else.”
“I made a mistake.”
“You won’t die from that mistake,” I said simply. “But we will.”
“Not you,” Grant said, so quietly I barely heard him. But that had to be wishful thinking on his part. I hadn’t said a word about not feeling well, but Grant had to know, just from looking at me. Jack, too. When he turned away from me, jaw tense, I had no doubt at all.
I’m sick, I thought, filled with dread. All I could think about was that Mahati who had died in the snow; and Grant, puking in the sink. I’m sick, too.
But for how long, really? Had the thing that lived inside me saved my daughter just to let me die, too? That wasn’t part of the bargain.
I could make other bargains.
You have nothing left, whispered that sibilant voice, floating through me like a flake of drifting ash. And a Queen does not beggar herself for nothing.
I closed my eyes. Grant’s hand found mine and squeezed.
“How long do I have?” he asked Jack.
My grandfather tugged hard on his beard; I heard a muffled squeak from inside that tangle of hair. “I don’t know, lad. It works fast on demons, we’ve seen that. But you’re still alive. Mary is still strong. Maybe it will burn itself out.”
“I infected a demon-possessed waitress in Texas,” I told them, glancing at my phone, which was on the couch beside me. “Another of her possessed friends texted me five minutes ago. Her host was just taken to the hospital. The parasite itself already fled.”
I hadn’t wanted to share that information. The room got very quiet. Grant said, “It doesn’t benefit the Aetar to make something that destroys humans. You need their bodies, too.”