“Nothing, because she is not truly of this world and cannot speak. But she will give you the records I have been keeping for centuries. If you read them carefully enough, using the key you already have, you will find the man you are looking for. Kill him for me.”
I opened my mouth to ask, “What key?”, then remembered the code I’d found in the trinket box. “What do mean, she’s not truly of this?—”
I stopped. Carla’s eyes had closed, and her body seemed to have collapsed in on itself. I reached forward and pressed two fingers against her neck. Her pulse was there—too thready, too fast—but there.
An odd mix of emotions ran through me, but I ignored them all and cast her blade—Bia’s Blade—deep into the heart of the storm and quickly created a convergence that would keep it up there, and safe, until I was ready to deal with it.
Then I sat back and watched the red-and-blue lights draw ever closer. Unsurprisingly, Sgott was the first to arrive, and the first to come striding toward me.
“Lass, you look a goddamn mess—and is all that blood soaking the left side of your shirt yours?”
“Yeah, it is.”
“And are you hurt anywhere else? Where is your shoe and sock?”
“Question of the hour, I’m afraid. As to the first part of that question, my head hurts like a bitch and there’s a thick bandage around my calf, so I think it’s likely gashed.” I waved a hand to the woman in front of me. “Meet Carla Wilson; real name, Brídín, and no longer a shape shifter. My knife killed her inner magic.”
“And did it kill her?” he asked sharply. Worriedly.
“No. She lives, although probably not for long given she’s got what amounts to a kill-switch in her brain.”
“And your knives? Their ability to kill magic doesn’t affect the switch?”
“I honestly don’t know, but if said switch is magic, then it’s likely already dead, because I used the knives to kill her inner ability to shift shape.”
“Ah. Good.”
More cars and several ambulances stopped beside Sgott’s vehicle. He glanced their way, motioned several officers over, then knelt beside me. “Come on, my girl, let’s get you to hospital.”
“I’ll be?—”
“Fine, yeah I know, but humor an old man and just let me take care of you.” He scooped me up in his arms and carefully lifted me, and the memories of him lifting me in the same manner when I was a kid and had fallen over and scraped my knees rose, making me blink back tears.
Making me glad I’d resisted the darkness.
I wanted to be someonehecould be proud of, too.
I rested my head against his big chest, just as I had all those years ago, and felt safe and loved.
The darkness might remain, but I’d at least beaten it for now.
Epilogue
Mathi walked into my hospital room just as Lugh was leaving. The two of them—and Darby—were maintaining what amounted to a twenty-four-hour watch on me, just in case the opposition decided to make another kidnapping attempt. Sgott also had a man positioned out in the corridor.
I loved them all, but they were going a little overboard. Whoever Carla’s boss was, I doubted he’d go down the kidnapping route again. Not now that Carla was dead. Her kill switch had been activated just as her ambulance had reached the hospital, and it had scrambled her brain. Not even the best surgeon or elven healer could repair the mess that remained.
Mathi rolled the tray table into place and placed coffee and chocolate on top of it. “I brought you rations, because apparently they want to keep you in for another twenty-four hours. They said your head wasn’t right. I did claim it was normal, but...”
“Idiot,” I said, swiping at him lazily. “Any news on the Carla front?”
“They’re in the process of tracing all her aliases, using the information we got from Macsen.”
“And the councilors she used the knife on?”
“With the blade out of action?—”
“It’s actually not. I threw it into the storm, where it still roams.”
