Archer sighed. "Sorry about him. He's just…Grady."
That explained nothing. "Who's Faust?"
He took a breath like he was about to answer, but in came Grady with his thud-drag-step strides. Something slapped hard next to me on the bed, tinged with the smell of blood and sweat, and the overwhelming smell of moonshine. The package was leaking. I roamed my hand over the furry blanket, feeling the wet splashes, and unwrapped the bottle from the soaked cloth. The cork had come loose, but after a little shake, it didn’t sound like that much was gone.
Silence had fallen, more than a few heartbeats' length, thick with an unnerving sense that something was very, very wrong. Uneven footsteps echoed backward, away from me, followed by a sharp growl too deep to belong to the pup.
"Why thefuckwere you delivering wolfsbane?” Grady demanded. “You do work for Faust, don't you?"
"Wolfsbane? No, this is moonshine mixed with aconitum," I insisted.
"Aconitumiswolfsbane," Archer muttered.
"Okay," I said, drawing the word out. "My baba makes monthly deliveries of it to a man named Gabriel, not Faust. This month, he was…held up, so I volunteered to take it."
"Gabriel is Faust's second-in-command,” Grady ground out, his voice rough and sharp and heavy with accusation. “Wolfsbane is the reason we're—"
"Okay, just hold on.” Archer turned and raised his hand at Grady then set my eyes back down on the other side of the room. They flicked back and forth between the men and me, and the pup whimpered. “Why does your pa—baba—make these deliveries?"
I shrugged because the reason seemed so obvious. "For money so we don't starve. Once I'm able, I'm going to Gabriel to deliver it."
"The hell you are." Grady started for the bed, but Archer held him back.
"I am," I fired back. "Too many people are depending on me to put food on the table. What’s the big deal anyway? Who cares what I deliver to Gabriel? How does that affect you?"
Archer glanced toward my other eyes. "We have a long history with Gabriel and Faust."
"Fucking really, Archer?” Grady hissed. “You're going to tell her everything?"
"She doesn'tknowanything, dipshit. She's still healing. She's not going anywhere."
I hated that Archer was right. My little crash-landing with the floor had awakened the pain and sharpened its teeth. I wasn’t going anywhere, but as soon as I could, I would, and then try to explain why I was late with the delivery. On the few occasions I’d gone with Baba, Gabriel had seemed like an understanding guy. And if Grady tried to stop me from going? I’d put an arrow through his eye. If not his eye, then his balls. I'd call it a calculated miss.
"I'll leave as soon as I'm able." Sooner, if I could manage it.
"You think we're going to actually let you leave with that shit?" Grady asked.
"You're damn right you will," I snapped, and shoved the bottle behind my back.
"Cut it out, Grady,” Archer said. “Enough threats. If she doesn't deliver it, someone else will next month like her pa."
Or like the man who’d shot Baba. He’d wanted the package, enough to try and kill for it. But why? It was just moonshine mixed with dried aconitum, or wolfsbane, and a few more of Ama’s—my mom’s—herbs. None of these things were rare.
Grady stepped closer, his presence looming over me like a threat. "We'll have to burn that blanket outside so Sasha doesn't step on it."
"Burn it?" That was going a little overboard. "No, all it needs is a good wash. Aconitum is only poisonous if you eat it.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not taking any chances,” Grady growled.
“Agreed.” Archer crossed toward my other eyes again and picked up the wolf pup, his expression tight with concern, that mischievous glint in his dark eyes gone. "I'll take Sasha to another room."
"I guess I'll get another blanket for the ungrateful wolfsbane dealer." Grady limped after Asher out of the room.
I shook my head. I was hardly a dealer, and I didn't like the implication that I wasn’t grateful. I owed them my life, but I wasn't about to fawn all over them every other second to stroke their fragile, manly egos.Was that what they wanted? Because they'd saved the wrong girl.
Through the wolf pup’s eyes, I spied a hallway and a bedroom opposite mine. Then, like a switch turning off, my vision faded back to what I was used to—like I was staring down a long tunnel filled with murky soup and strange shapes bobbing underneath.
My other eyes had to have been a hallucination. That was the only explanation. I was glad it was gone because it had been too distracting.
