“But, this doesn’t make sense. Meredith shot Soleil to stop her from stealing the heart. It had nothing to do with Alex.” He sighed. “We need to find out if that book is still in her room at the bordello.”
Grateful frowned. “Soleil alone can access her hiding place.”
Silas sighed heavily, the pain creeping up on him like a bad cold. He closed his eyes. “Then we wait until she’s awake and we ask her.”
Chapter Nineteen
Nightmares plagued Silas that night. He dreamed he was holding the heart, its red pulse beating between his fingers. Soleil was on her knees in front of him. “You stole my heart, Silas Flynn!” Everything burst into flames. As the world around them burned, Soleil looked him in the eye and said, “She’s not what she seems.” Then the dream shifted to Meredith’s face as she pulled the trigger. Once, twice, three times. Iron bullets. When had she loaded iron bullets?
She’s not what she seems.
“Hey, sleepyhead.” Silas woke to Meredith hovering over him. “It’s almost noon. Is the balm working? How do you feel?” She kissed him on the forehead.
He rubbed his bandaged hands together, grabbed a loose edge and started unraveling. His skin was pink but whole. He bent and straightened his fingers, testing the new skin. “Doesn’t hurt anymore.”
“Good.”
Silas stared at her for a moment, still shaken by his nightmare. “Can I ask you something?” he said softly.
“Sure. What’s on your mind?”
“Why did you shoot her?”
Her eyebrows dipped in confusion. “Soleil? She was trying to steal the heart and was about to burn you alive. Why do you think? I was saving your life.”
“But you shot her with iron bullets. Three times, even though the first seemed pretty effective. When did you load iron bullets? We’ve been using silver.”
“I heard her talking to you, and I had a bad feeling.” She tapped his bed rail with her pinky. “I’m a supernatural detective, same as you. I loaded the iron bullets because I thought I might need them. And as for shooting her three times—you were a burned, bloody mess. I got a little overexcited to save your life.” She stroked her fingers through the side of his hair.
“Why have I never met you before? I mean, I knew your father. You say you’ve been to Rivergate, but I can’t remember ever seeing you or your mother.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. We never ran into each other. And I never shifted there because I’m a fox, not a wolf. It’s only my mother and me, and she’s been in a depression since my dad was murdered. She’s traveling now, which is why I didn’t introduce you. By the goddess, what is this about?”
“I feel like you’re hiding something from me. Like I don’t really know you.”
She huffed. “Don’t know me? We’ve stayed up talking every night since we met. You know me better than my therapist.”
“What are you keeping from me?”
A shadow crossed her features, gone as swiftly as it came. If he hadn’t been a detective, he doubted he’d have noticed it at all. But hewasa detective, and Meredith was hiding something.
Meredith parted her lips to respond when an alarm blared. The lights in the hall began to flash, and a crowd of doctors and nurses stomped past the open door.Code blue. Code blue.Room 213, blared a voice over the loudspeaker.
“That’s Soleil’s room.” Meredith rushed into the hall.
“Wait!” Still sore, Silas pushed his aching body out of bed, hobbling into the throng of doctors and nurses. It wasn’t hard to find the room. A crowd had gathered outside the door. A curtain of blue and green uniforms worn by equally colorful fae blocked the wall of windows along 213.
By the time Silas reached the hubbub, it was clear something had gone terribly wrong. A uniformed officer he recognized from the CCPD, Brighton was his name, hovered near the door as a tiny blue man stood on a stool and pressed an octagonal panel to Soleil’s chest. There was a flash of light. The heart-rate monitor pinged, a jagged peak forming on the display. The doctors turned their faces toward the machine, frowning when the peak flattened once again.
“More fire lily, doctor?” a green nurse with gossamer wings asked.
“It won’t help. The iron levels in her blood are too far advanced.” He placed two tapered fingers below her right collarbone, where Silas understood her second heart to be. And then he waited.
Soleil’s normally sunny complexion was ashen, her blond hair turned black at the roots, her eyes sunken into her skull in a way that looked fake as if she was wearing Halloween makeup.
The blue doctor wiped tears from his eyes. “I must ask everyone to evacuate the room.” The staff scattered, their arms laden with equipment. They seemed to be stripping the area of everything that wasn’t nailed down.
“What’s going on?” Silas pushed through the crowd, a salmon swimming upstream, and forced his way into the glass chamber that was room 213.
