My outburst defused him. He got himself under control with a visible effort, his blades sliding back into his skin.
Kneeling down, Rohan examined the gogota slime again. Maybe he thought things would turn out differently this time. When that failed to happen, he pulled out his phone, clenching his hand around it. "We can't even call any other Rasha in."
"No."
"Not even Drio? You still don't trust him?"
"With my life? I do. With Ari's?" I shook my head.
Rohan paced in a tight circle. "You really think the Brotherhood is behind this?"
"If you have another explanation, then please, lay it on me."
"You don't leave my side. I'm serious."
I set an overturned table back to rights. "For how long? The rest of my life? That's not realistic and we both know it. Look, I'm still alive."
"Barely."
"But I am. Whoever sent the first gogota after me, obviously sent this one after Gelman afterwards. She was still unharmed early yesterday. There's been plenty of time to grab me or kill me since then. Maybe they want me alive and behaving for now." I pushed the chair I'd sat in when I'd visited back up to the table, picked up Dr. Gelman's sweater that had fallen, and carefully hung it over the back. "Meantime, I'm going to hope she's still alive, she'll phone me like she's supposed to, and that we'll know more then."
Dr. Gelman was a powerful witch and I wanted to believe she'd escaped this and was hiding out. Safe. I added this to the growing list of things I couldn't think too closely about. Not until Samson was dead. Maybe not even then.
"I need to call Ari." There was nothing more to see here. Housekeeping would find the mess and report a missing guest to the police but this wasn't something Rohan could cover up.
I used a hotel phone in the atrium to phone my brother. "Ari?"
"Nee, what's wrong? Why do you sound like that?"
I took a shaky breath.
Rohan placed his hand on the small of my back. A tiny touch but enough to draw strength from. He wasn't even watching me as he did it, intent on scanning the lobby for anything suspicious.
I closed my eyes against the sucky knowledge that him being with Lily was going to change everything. He'd be faithful to her, careful with his affections to any other woman. Especially an ex-lover. Touches like this, even in a comrade-in-arms moment would be history. Well, he'd be going back to Los Angeles soon and we'd never see each other again.
I clung to that uplifting thought.
"Thistleton, Ace." Mrs. Thistleton had been a neighbor of ours when we were kids. If we disagreed with anything she said, even a difference of opinion on the weather, her face fell like we'd driven a knife through her heart. Plus, she'd always had a million "requests." Help her with the groceries. Walk her dog. It was impossible to refuse her without feeling like the worst person in the world.
Ari and I had appropriated her name, turning it into a joke password between us. Whenever one of us wanted the other to do something, no questions asked, we said "Thistleton," and the other had to obey or endure guilt galore. I'd used it most, usually to get my brother's help in sneaking me in or out of the house.
"Fuck that. You sound terrible."
"Thistleton," I repeated. This time in a steely voice.
He sighed. "Thistleton."
"Remember when you wrecked the Beamer? Go."
When Ari was sixteen, he'd fallen in love for the first time. The boy in question didn't deserve it. To be fair, he wasn't ready to come out. He'd humiliated my brother. Hurt beyond measure, Ari had run away in my mom's car, a freshly waxed BMW 328i with buttery leather seats and a finely tuned engine. There had been an accident. He was fine and not the driver at fault, but Mom's brand new birthday present, the car she'd been not-so-subtly dropping hints about for years, had been totaled. Ari had fled to our older cousin Yael's place. Third cousin actually and the perfect hideout now. Distant enough that no one would look for him there, close enough to the two of us that he'd be welcome in her fancy, security-heavy apartment building without question.
He was quiet for a moment. "Is someone watching your back?"
I glanced at Rohan, standing guard over me. "Yeah."
"I'm gone," he said and disconnected.
Now Rohan's phone rang. "Drio?" He listened for a moment, his expression hardening. I hovered anxiously, but didn't get to find out what had happened because my own phone rang.
"Hello?"
"Hello, Nava."
Chills ran up my spine. "Samson."