Thom woke to the sound of Nora stuffing her face with a Big Mac.
He propped himself up just enough to watch her eat the entire thing in a matter of half a minute.
Impressive.
“Hope you brought enough for the class,” he choked out, then lay back down on his pillow, exhausted.
“Phm?” she said through her full mouth, then ran to his side and cupped his face in her hands that smelled of burger and fries.
“Hey, darling.” He gave her what he hoped was a smile. Why did it hurt to talk? And think? And breathe?
He didn’t expect the frantic kisses Nora planted all over his face, didn’t think them necessary. But he wasn’t about to complain.
“Did you make the sparks fly?” he asked. “Considering you’re alive, and I’m…” He checked his arm, noted the IV catheter stuck in his inner elbow. “I guess I’m alive, too. Please tell me you whooped that demon’s ass.”
Nora laughed and kissed him. “Shit,” she said, and brought her McDonald’s cup to him and tilted the straw. “Drink. It’s been a while.”
He did. He loved lemonade. He sipped again, then noticed Nora was crying.
“Was the fight that bad?” He tried to sit up, but his chest hurt. A lot. He looked down, pulled his hospital gown to the side—the center of his chest was yellow-brown with old bruising, and parts of his chest and abdomen were covered in gauze.
When he looked up again, Nora was folded in on herself, sobbing, and Kizzy was running into the room alongside a doctor.
There were dreams Thom recalled, flashes of false memories, like photographs. But having been in a coma for six days, it was likely he had many, many such dreams, probably influenced by those talking near him. Most of the dreams he remembered involved him hammering nails into wood with a regular hammer.
“I don’t remember it,” he said to Nora and Kizzy. “Dying. I just remember dreams. Or, maybe…” He didn’t want to say it was a glimpse of heaven, but for all he knew, it was.
“You were gone for a few minutes,” Kizzy said. “Doctor said any longer and you’d’ve been toast. And they couldn’t even figure out why you were in a coma.” They playfully smacked his shin. “Coulda just said you needed a nap.”
“Hey. Be nice. I died.”
He hadn’t intended for those words to be upsetting, but Nora started crying again.
He gently rubbed his chest. “Guess I’m lucky I didn’t leave the party early. If ghosts came after me and you two hadn’t been around…”
Nora sobbed harder, then secluded herself in the bathroom, turning on the exhaust fan, camouflaging any other sound.
“If you’re indebting your life to me,” Kizzy said, “I can ask for you to be tacked on to my contract as my bodyguard.” They smirked.
He huffed a laugh. “Actually…I think I’m done. No more contracts, no more academies.”
“Not more of this cheesemongering nonsense.”
“No, no. I’m thinking more like…general contractor. Landscaping? Something I can slip into with a bit of training. Maybe start up my own biz.”
“And when the demons and spirits and ghosts show up while you’re building someone’s deck?”
He shrugged. “Keep a dagger in my toolbox.”
Disappointment was written across Kizzy’s thinned lips, but he could also tell that they understood he was serious.
“Fuck,” they said. “Well, when you inevitably get bored, call me. And if you fall out of touch I will hunt you down.”
“I would expect nothing less.”
Nora emerged from the bathroom, red-faced but quiet.
“Hey, Kiz,” he said, “can you—”
“Already gone.” They kissed his forehead before leaving.
Nora sat on a chair by the side of his bed, arms folded over her waist, silently distressed, her gaze set on that disquieting middle space where worry and fear lingered.
“Lady Elianora…” He hoped that annoying her would help her smile. She looked up at him, at least. “Wouldst thou…do me the honor of, uh, sitting by mine—ah, hell, that’s terrible. Nevermind.” He sighed and, ignoring the aches in his body, sat up, slipped on his slippers, and walked all of two steps before Nora stopped him and made him sit back down.
“Not without the nurse,” she said. “Baby steps, remember?”
“Yeah, yeah.” He groaned as he reclined against the angled bed. “Forget about me for a second. Are you okay?”
“Fuck off,” she sputtered as she began to cry again, this time crawling into the bed to lay beside him.
“I’ll take that as a not yet.” And though it hurt a bit, he welcomed her head on his shoulder. “I don’t remember everything from the fight. I remember the party, thankfully. And I remember thinking how so fucking in love with you I am.”
“Shut up,” she said through a mess of sobs and laughter.
“Nope. Can’t shut me up, not about this.”
When Nora stopped crying, he asked her about the fight. He wanted to hear it from her what had happened, and how he died. She held his hand as she spoke.
“This is all my fault,” she said, voice quiet. “I killed Vern. I killed him with that lightning. It’s why I came here in the first place. My handler covered it up. I’m literally a murderer and that demon knew it.”
“Was this Vern fellow the reason you came here with a black eye?”
She sniffled. “Yeah.”
“And I’ll wager it wasn’t the first time he gave one to you.”
“Definitely not the first.”
“Then fuck Vern. And fuck that demon for ruining Kizzy’s party.”
Nora sputtered out a laugh, then groaned. “Vern and I had been together since high school. When we were sixteen, we considered ourselves married. Then at the academy we lived together, and after that, too. It was like, common-law by then, married without the paperwork. I looked past it all during our time together, all the shit he pulled, the others he fucked, because I fucked other people too, did shit he wouldn’t have liked, too. But stealing from me, hitting me, all the insults—I’d had enough, had to get out of there. He caught me packing my suitcase.” She wiped her nose against the back of her hand. “He didn’t want me leaving. Thought he owned me, or…was owed me.”
“I hate that the demon used you to get to me.”
“Yeah. Well. No good thing comes free.”
Thom wanted to remind her that he wasn’t any good, that he was dangerous, a demon magnet, and left nothing but death in his wake. But she would have just told him to shut up about it already.
Instead, he asked, “If you weren’t a hunter, what would you be doing with your life?”
“Huh? I-I don’t know.”
“Well, you went to an academy. What did you get your degree in?”
“Human resource management.”
His lips quirked up. “You wanted to be a handler?”
“Yeah? Shut up. So what.”
“I’m not teasing. I think you’d be a good handler. No nonsense, keeping delinquent hunters on their toes…”
“Or maybe I’d just get a cozy office job.”
“Or that.”
“What was your degree in?”
“Engineering. Both mechanical and computers.”
“Double-majoring computer geek? Never would have guessed.” Sarcasm dripped from her tongue.
“Right. Well, my point is, I wanted to ask if, when I’m discharged, and if you’re free to leave, if maybe you’d want to—and you don’t have to—maybe come with me? If I just…left?”
She sat up and looked at him. Thankfully, her muted expression shifted into a small smile. “You asking me to run away with you?”
He grinned. “I might be asking that, yeah.”
Her smile diminished. “Simeon wants me to train, thinks it’s important, and maybe it is. Make sure I don’t electrocute people by accident when I get pissed off, I guess. Find a way to control it, or suppress it. So I might need some time, here or elsewhere, if they find anyone else out there who can manipulate energy in this way. Or if not an energy elementalist, then a fire elementalist…”
“So…you might be leaving anyway.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“And…would you need to be alone during this training?”
She shook her head. “Nope.”
In all seriousness, Thom said, “Marry me.”
Nora scoffed. “We’ve known each other for like a month, and for a week of that you were asleep.”
“Hm, true. Marry me someday?”
Her lips quirked up in an unavoidable smile as she brushed her fingers through his hair. “Yeah. Okay. Someday.”