Babysitting
I did wake.
With a motherfucking headache of epic proportions.
“Too bright,” I was mumbling as I awoke, twisting and flinging a hand over my eyes. “Too bright.”
Quick steps padded on the floor. Click. The light pushing around my hand darkened. My brain felt like it was sloshing in my skull every time I moved my head, like the bloated dead worm in a tequila bottle. I let my sore arm drop back from my face, hand slumping beside me. Blinked, or tried to, but even my fucking eyelashes hurt. The room sharpened for a moment before growing blurry again, vague shapes moving around, and it just seemed easier to shut my eyes once more.
“Can you hear me?” Voice soft. French. A bit lilting. Nicolette. “Peri?”
I waved in what I thought was her direction. “Yeah. Loud and clear.” I swallowed dryly, throat like sandpaper, and just pushing air through to speak hurt.
Weight hovered in the atmosphere, pushed, tense and expectant, nearly trembling. “Are you okay?”
What a question. I’d moved my arms. That was a good sign. I wiggled my toes—yep, still had those. “Peachy.” Yeah, except I had an uncomfortable feeling below my waist. “Except I really have to pee.”
“I’m not surprised.” She shifted again, steps whispering on the hardwood, and I thought she crouched near the bed. “It’s three p.m. on Wednesday.”
That meant nothing to me. “That means nothing to me.”
“Ryann brought you home around ten a.m. Tuesday.”
Well, fuck. No wonder it felt like my bladder was going to explode. I forced my eyes open again and just went with the blurriness. Holding it was painful and might be worse than randomly running into walls in search of the bathroom.
Nic took my arm, deceptively firm fingers warm on my bare skin, and pointed me in the right direction. I hobbled on cold feet and sore legs, my brain swimming and lightheaded.
Minutes later I was in the dark bathroom with the door closed, pants around my ankles and feeling much, much better.
The dim glow under the door was basically all I had, but it was enough while I scrubbed my face a few times. My vision came back, the blurry lines of the room sharpening minute by minute. I was in my thermal underthings, boots and weapons gone. And I was pretty sure it wasn’t hell, so it looked like I survived. Go me.
I was clutching my head as I stepped back into the bedroom, the pounding getting worse by the second. I opened my mouth to make a request and Nic pointed to the bedside table.
“Painkillers, water, and breakfast is on its way.”
Handy little vampire.
I perched on the edge of the bed gingerly and popped open the bottle. Percocet. Nice. I popped two and drank half a bottle of water before swinging my legs back onto the bed and flopping down. “That sucked.”
“All those people lived.”
That hadn’t been my intent but I’d let her think it was.
“Ryann said you...you pulled the demons out of them? And they disappeared?”
Maybe. Whole episode was kinda fuzzy. “Something like that.”
“How did you know you could exorcise them?”
I rubbed at my eyes and sighed. “It seemed like a good idea at the time? I don’t know. Can I eat now?”
She crossed the room in silence, arms wrapped around her torso. A strange, wiggly sort of feeling starting up in my stomach and I didn’t think it was starvation. More like I’d missed something and offended her.
Whatever. I tried to mentally shrug it off.
“I just...” She paused across the room, back to me. “Worried.” A shrug. Glance over her shoulder. Wan smile. The only light burned from the hall outside the closed door, cutting a sharp line across the floor and a faint glow to the room. Light flashed briefly as she opened the door and slipped out, then I was left in dark silence.
Worried. Weird. I shut my eyes and took a few deep breaths, waiting for the drugs to kick in.
However-long-later, Zara entered the room with a bowl stacked high with stuff—ramen noodles in broth and vegetables and all sorts of high calorie sauce stuff that made my stomach growl. I took the still-warm bowl, grabbed the fork, and started shoveling it in my mouth. It was heavenly. Or would be if I tasted it. I barely chewed, gulping it down, and my stomach gave a happy rumble. Even my headache eased, but that might’ve been the drugs.
Zara stood staring down at me. Through a third of the bowl, I glanced up as I realized she wasn’t leaving.
Fuck, I felt like even more of a wreck staring at her. She was polished and put together, from the gloss in her hair to the red tint to her lips to the designer jeans, and I was sitting in black long underwear, my hair stuck up all over, and noodles dripping down my chin.
Class, thy name is Peri.
“Nic made that for you.”
I swallowed, wiped the back of my hand over my chin. Also the height of sophistication. “Uh, that’s nice of her.”
“She also sat here for the past twenty-nine hours. Even stayed when I had a nurse acquaintance come in and check you over.”
I flicked my tongue over something stuck between my teeth. “Huh.” When the vamp said nothing, I felt like there was some point I was supposed to get that flew right over my empty head. Same with the reason why the heat in my face was kicking up, cheeks burning like I’d been caught doing something wrong. “Why?”
“I have no idea. But you remember that discussion we had about you not telling anyone about the vampire I was keeping upstairs or I’d no longer help you? Same thing extends if anything happens to Nicolette. For some reason, she likes you beyond normal professional interest and was worried.”
Worried? No one worried about me. Drew worried I might off myself but for all I damn well knew, it could be because he needed my genes for something.
Nic worried. So, so weird, and I didn’t know what else to say. “Why?”
“No fucking clue. But you—like me—have a knack for almost getting everyone around you killed. Something happens to Nic, you can wander around the city by yourself in the cold.”
Having said her piece, she turned and left the room, leaving me to gape after her, and not feeling much like eating.
****
Nic came back and it was weird so I mumbled incoherently then grabbed my stuff and took a bath in the silent, less-awkward bathroom. It was amazing how doing something as silly girly as shaving my legs made me feel a little more like I was back in my own skin. Like I was okay. Like I was still a person, still Peri after all that. I shaved, I washed my hair—I even fucking exfoliated the demon stink off of me before dressing in clean clothes and emerging from the bathroom. I shoved my feet into running shoes, not wanting to traipse around in my boots but still liking the feeling of stability when I walked. I glanced fleetingly at my untouched, makeshift kamidana across the room, and decided I’d pick up some offerings later.
Or maybe I just didn’t want to face them, like usual.
I found the others in the living room. Well, Sellie, Zara, and Nic.
“Where’s Ryann?” I asked. I ambled to the kitchen and made myself some coffee because as strange as it is to make yourself at home in someone else’s place like that, it would be worse to ask one of them to make it for me instead and I needed the caffeine.
“Work,” Zara said. “Nic’s exhausted and I have to sleep as well, which means you’re on babysitting duty.”
“Huh?”
“Someone has to watch me,” Sellie said with feigned disinterest. “I don’t sleep unless drugged and the nun objected to them feeding this body sedatives anymore. So did I, but of course I don’t get a say.”
“Are you up for it?” Zara was staring at me, eyes expressionless but icy.
I suppressed a shiver. “Sure.”
She issued no threat, just gave me a levelled look that said it all. She nodded Nic’s way and the blonde sent me a quick glance before retreating to her room.
Just me and the bastard who killed my family then. Good times.
My hackles rose, nerves getting jittery. I leaned a hip on the counter and knocked my blunt nails against the smooth black surface, watching as the coffee machine sputtered the last few drops into the pot. I filled a large white mug to the brim and left the rest of the pot warming on the machine. Four-thirty in the afternoon—maybe there’d be something on TV I padded for the living room, not looking at Sellie. I wondered if the exorcism thing would work on him and leave the psychic kid’s soul alone. I also wondered if when all was said and done, I’d really care.
Probably not.
I sat in front of the TV, grabbed the remote, and flipped it on to see what Canadian television had to offer. Oooh, she has satellite.
“This must be odd for you,” he said. I couldn’t see him but I felt him there, just behind me—maybe three or four feet. Definitely not six. Striking distance; I had a hell of an arm on me and I could knock him out with the mug before he knew what hit him.
“Don’t talk to me.” I took another sip of coffee.
His steps thumped on the hardwood.
My skin crawled.
Sellie sat on the other end of the couch and I felt his gaze on me. I levelled a look his way, just daring him to piss me off. He leaned back, a calm smile on his lips. I’d forgotten, actually, what the poor psychic kid was even like—I couldn’t imagine him now looking back at me through those eyes, could barely remember when his hair was shaggy and messy. Sean had combed the red hair back, slicked in place with gel. His clothes were crisper and newer, white pants and a blue button down shirt that looked like it hadn’t ever been worn.
He’d taken over this body completely and utterly, stamping out what used to be there. I didn’t think him likely to give it back.
“You wonder if he’s still in here,” Sellie said coolly.
I looked back at the TV. “Nope.”
“He is. He sees everything. Hears everything. Feels everything. Not just here and now but everything before. Everything I’ve done. Lives I took. People and creatures I tortured. And I don’t sleep because that would give him relief.”
Sick, sick fuck. I turned up the volume on some “Who’s My Baby’s Daddy?” talk show drama to drown him out. The shrill girl on screen burst into tears at something and the audience roared.
“Much longer and he’ll go insane.”
I struck the mute button and glared at him. “Is there a point?”
“My point is that as awful as you think I am, there are those who are infinitely worse. People who wanted you dead. Who supplied me and allowed me the resources to kill your family.”
“Names,” I said immediately.
“This isn’t an interrogation, Persephone.” He leaned closer. “It’s a negotiation.”
“What do you want?”
“My brother’s body.”