With clumsy fingers, Daniela grabbed the top of the sheet that covered her, raising it toward her face to blot away the last of her tears. She hated the way they felt, hated how their warmth disappeared almost as soon as they hit the air, leaving her skin chilled.
"You're awake."
She looked up to find the woman staring at her, forest-green eyes appraising Daniela's face, their warmth almost hidden under a fringe of long lashes. She was thin, collarbones protruding from the V-neck of her white T-shirt, and she had long arms, which she now looped around jeans-clad knees as she lifted her feet up onto the seat of the chair. While Daniela watched, the woman made herself smaller, folding up her arms and legs like human origami until she was a neatly wrapped package of exposed feet, head, and torso.
"Neat," Daniela rasped, her throat hoarse and sore from whatever tubes had been stuck down there to keep her alive and breathing.
The woman smiled, but it was slight and fleeting.
"I was asleep," the other woman said, her voice pitched higher than before. "I wasn't supposed to do that. Fall asleep, that is."
Nervous, Daniela thought. I make her nervous.
"S'okay," Daniela said, her own voice cracking. "Won't tell."
"I'm Niamh."
The woman began to rock back and forth in the chair, like a child, eyes downcast.
"Dan . . . iela," Daniela croaked.
"I know."
"Lyse . . ."
"She and Arrabelle and Evan . . . Well, I'm on watch until they get back."
There was a tentative quality to Niamh's voice, a sadness that Daniela remembered from before. This was the voice she hadn't recognized. This was the creature who had opened the well of sadness and almost dropped Daniela into the abyss.
A dark gray shadow coalesced around Niamh, a living aura unlike anything Daniela had ever seen before. It raged around the woman like a maelstrom, sparks of black fire shooting out like tentacles, searching for a hold on Daniela's soul. Fear coursed through Daniela's body, adrenaline snaking like fire in her veins. She tried to sit up, but she was too weak.
"No . . ." she moaned, shaking her head.
Niamh began to unwrap herself, worry creasing her brow.
"You okay?"
"Stay away," Daniela said, flinching as Niamh and her hungry aura climbed out of the chair and moved to the other side of the hospital bed.
"What? Why?" Niamh asked, confused.
Daniela tried to cower away from her, to put as much space between them as she could, but there was only so much real estate.
"Are you all right?" Niamh asked, reaching out a hand.
Daniela squeezed her eyes tight, bracing for the worst, but when nothing happened, she opened them again. She saw that Niamh had retracted her hand, staring down at her fingers as if they were diseased.
"I-I'm sorry." She stumbled over her words . . . and the gray aura began to fade.
Daniela forced herself to un-grit her jaw and relax. Niamh seemed to intuitively understand that she needed to stay as far away from Daniela as possible. Whatever atrocity had befallen the woman had opened up her psyche like a cracked nut, the shell split in two and all the raw meat glistening on display. She was an open wound, a veritable trap for any empath. Touch someone like Niamh, who'd been damaged that badly, and you'd get sucked down into the abyss.
"I . . ." Daniela began, wanting to explain, but at that moment a slender man with horn-rimmed spectacles pushed open the door.
"You're up," he said, setting a coffee cup on the ledge of the nearest window and moving to Daniela's bedside. "And you don't look like death warmed over anymore."
She was used to Arrabelle's blunt honesty, but she didn't appreciate it from someone she didn't know.
"Who are you?" Daniela rasped, her voice shot.
"I'm Arrabelle's friend Evan, and Niamh is my coven mate."
The pieces began to fall into place. Her mind flashed back to Devandra's house, to the Mucho Man Cave and to the last time their coven had all been together . . . might be the last time that they were all together. She remembered that Arrabelle's friend Evan had reached out to warn Arrabelle about the danger from The Flood. That Arrabelle had left her coven mates behind to go and rescue him.
Well, it seemed that Arrabelle had accomplished what she'd set out to do.
The young woman, Niamh, stopped just shy of Daniela, not wanting to get too close.
"Since you've been comatose, a lot of things have changed," she began, turning to look at Evan.
"And not for the better," Evan interrupted, resting his hands on the bed's metal guardrail.