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I slipped in and out of sleep while we waited. In the snippets of dreams, I could hear babies crying, mothers wailing, and then silence. It was frustrating, having so many pieces of the puzzle, but no real clue how they fit together.
Lucy’s treatment took less than an hour, and I owed the detectives an apology for giving them crap, since they expedited the process.
She slipped in beside Jacob, eyes puffy, but smiling. “We’re going to feed her, right?” She didn’t even look in the backseat.
Fine. Whatever. I lay down and passed out, until Jacob woke me up at the house.
My stomach rumbled. “Food? We didn’t stop for food.”
He kissed my forehead. “I bought a couple of porterhouse steaks, romantic date night and all that jazz. Why don’t you go upstairs and see Lucy?”
A pinch of guilt tugged at me. “She’s okay, right?”
He nodded. “She’s concerned. We’re all concerned.”
I sighed. “Fine.”
I found her in the master bath, attempting to rewrap her ribs. “Hey.”
“Hey.” She didn’t even look up.
“Want some help?”
She shrugged. “I guess.”
I tended to her, furious over the damage she’d sustained for being such a good friend to me. Bruises and cuts covered her torso.
“Oh, Lucy... I shouldn’t have let you get involved.”
“You know me. Do you think that would’ve worked?” She gingerly touched one of the bigger bruises on her ribs. “They kicked me, the bastards, when they took Sera. One of them punched me in the face and two of them kicked me until I passed out. I woke up in that chair, couldn’t feel Sera, and knew I had to signal you.”
I handed her a glass of water and some good pain pills from all my fun trips to the ER last year. Sure, sharing prescribed medications was bad. So sue me for helping a friend in need.
She exhaled slowly. “The adrenaline’s wearing off. I feel like I got hit by a Mack truck.”
“The pills will kick in soon,” I promised. “Then you won’t feel much of anything, okay? Tell me more about the guys who took Sera.”
She closed her eyes for a second. “They felt empty, like.... What are those things called? Old Jewish thing? All mud and magick?”
“Golems. You can’t mean golems.”
“I think so. Why else would they feel like shells?” She rubbed her temples. “They spoke in clipped language, like Kitt from Knight Rider, and moved with a fluidity that was inhuman, Zo. They just walked into the house, straight through the wards I’d put up. We didn’t even hear them coming until they were outside the door to the nursery, and then boom!”
She threw her hands up in the universal sign for explosion. “I can’t....” She shook her head with a shuddering sigh. “Dammit, I can’t do this, Zoë. I know you need to know, and I thought I was okay, but I’m not. I’m really not okay with all this. How do you deal with shit like this all the time?”
I ignored her question and instead gave her a big, gentle hug. “You don’t have to do this. I can do this for you. You just have to let me in.”
“You’re so tired.”
I pulled out of the hug, looked into those blue eyes filling with tears, and almost lost that last thread of sanity I was so clinging to. “We have to find Sera and Esther. I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of most, you know,” Lucy whispered.
“What? That I’m going to die? We’re all going to die eventually, Luce.” I offered my best smile.
She wasn’t buying it. “I’m serious. Remember what I said the other day about you burning out? I can see it. You’re not sleeping, or eating. The usually quaint snarky has a mean streak, and Daniel....”
I stepped back and crossed my arms. “Gods, Lucy, I don’t want to talk about him right now.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Well, too fucking bad. Don’t want to choose? Fine. Make him break up with you? Fine. Could you be a little less of a heartless bitch about it? Yes, he got whiny there at the end, but Daniel loves you. Really loves you.”
“What, Jacob doesn’t?”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on! This isn’t a competition, Zoë. I’m not telling you to pick Daniel over Jacob. I get why you two connect. I see how much he loves you, too but I see you giving just enough so he doesn’t leave you, and holding everything else back. How long do you think he’ll wait for you? Another year? Two? Five? Till the end of time? The world doesn’t revolve around you, Zoë. You need to quit acting like it should.”
Speechless, I just stood there. My head whirled with thoughts I couldn’t sort out, punctuated with her words, like a teacher bleeding all over the thesis of my life. “Sometimes, I really don’t like you.”
She shrugged. “The feeling’s mutual, but I will always love you. I will always have your back, but you’re losing your shit on the wrong people.”
“I—” Somewhere in that craziness, my inner voice said she was right. A bit of honesty meant acknowledging how little control I had left, and that scared me. Incredibly bad things had happened the last time because I’d lost control of my gifts, and I wasn’t interested in a repeat performance. Pretty sure the blonde across from me wasn’t interested either, having survived it by some crazy miracle herself. After all, there were things worse than death.
“I’ll do better. That’s the best I can do right now, Luce.”
She reached out and grabbed my hand. “That’s all I’m asking. Take care of yourself first. I know you’ve got bad guys to catch, but after this case....”
“Yeah, hiatus. I promise.”
She squeezed my hand. “Have you changed since the last full moon?”
Her question caught me off-guard. “No, why?”
She shrugged. “I just thought that since it has healing abilities and it helps you center, maybe you could just be a wolf for a day. Until you can take a real break.”
“Hm, I don’t know. I haven’t changed on command since that mess last year. Maybe we can figure out how I can do it again?”
“How about we do that later?” Jacob asked, his head peeking in through the door. “Right now, why don’t we get some steak in you?”
I smiled. “That sounds awesome. Let’s go.”
***
The food was great, and it hit the spot for me like only a good meal could. Although slightly embarrassed that I could finish a sixteen-ounce porterhouse all by myself, it helped that we joked about saving the bones for my ‘puppy’ time.
We were sitting in the living room now, dinner over and dishes cleared. Jacob poured us a wonderful Reisling in tall flutes, and watched us from the recliner.
“You sure you want to do this now?” he asked.
I nodded. “Yeah, I do. I mean, I know you’re both concerned, but there might be something in this memory that helps us. Afterwards, Lucy can crash in the guest bedroom, and you can tuck me into bed. Does that work?”
Practical in the face of adversity—that was me.
They both nodded, and I held out my hands to my best friend. “Ready?”
She shook her head just for a second, then nodded and slid her hands into mine.
The connection was instant, our energies so familiar with each other, and I could feel the soft pulse of her heartbeat in the ocean of her power.
Lucy inhaled sharply. “It’s a good thing you’re one of the good guys, you know. You’ve gotten stronger. Your powers are crazy epic. The nefarious things you could do if you wanted to, wandering inside someone’s head....”
“Good thing my hat is white.” I smiled. “I would never hurt you, Luce.”
“Oh, I don’t worry about me.” She returned the smile. “Those bad guys don’t stand a chance once you get your paws on them.”
Here’s hoping. “Let’s get started.”
“I remember how. Let’s just do this, so we can all go to sleep already.”
I closed my eyes and exhaled slowly. “Here we go.”
Lucy’s energy always reminded me of pink champagne bubbles, always happy and sparkly. If you made her mad, she’d turn into a torrent against you. Tonight, she was a calm, bubbling creak, and I found my way in easily.
The inside of a human’s head was not like the vision I’d had with Mike and the scale. No, the human mind was like a hoarder’s attic—if hoarders collected palm-sized glass baubles covered in goo and filled with memories. The deeper in you went, the farther in their past you’d find yourself, and if you were gifted like me, you could pluck a single memory from the bunch and jump into it.
Granted, this memory was only a short ways in. The baubles hung like clusters of grapes. There was one budding for our dinner and a larger one for our fight. Strung higher and almost hidden in that vine was a pulsing red bauble. Tragedy almost always begat a red one, and they tended to be covered in the most cerebral jelly, like the mind knew it hurt and was trying to heal it.
I reached up and sank my fingers into the goo until I touched the fragile surface. Lucy’s energy pulsed faster around me as I closed my eyes and slipped inside.
