“Apparently,” Lara said quietly.
Thomas was quiet for a long moment.
The Hunger growled again, louder this time, in my mind. Animated. Alert.
“We could be together,” he whispered. His eyes were distant. His face tight with pain. “Really together. Just us. If my Hunger was gone, we could have all the kids we wanted. Be in love. Be…”
“I know,” Lara said gently.
He turned back to me. “When are you going to do it?”
“Depends on you,” I said quietly. “You want it gone, I can be ready in a week. You want the thing to come with you, I’ll need Lara’s cooperation and another month, maybe six weeks.”
I glanced at Lara. She nodded firmly at me.
My brother’s face turned wistful. His image’s eyes grew misty. Then his face smoothed over into an expression of pain so familiar it had become part of his background.
“Plain human Thomas can’t help Justine,” he said quietly. “Bring my demon out with me.”
Chapter
Thirty-Six
Maggie was riding her bike casually around the castle’s rooftop in circles the next weekend. Bonea was there, too, the little intellect spirit enjoying the sunshine from the safety of her carved wooden skull, glowing eyelights barely visible. It was my rest day, and Bear and Fitz were in the gym, so Major General Toot-Toot Minimus was pulling guard duty for me and Maggie.
The pixie had continued growing over the past several months, since the battle, as he had so many times before, and was hitched up on his elbows so that he could poke his violet dandelion-fluff head of hair over the lip of one of the crenels in the battlements and eye the calm street below with a melodramatically wary expression. We were waiting for the Winter smiths to deliver his new armor, and he wore clothing that had been meant for small children in several vibrant shades of purple, blue, and pink that clashed distinctly with the little sword he wore belted at his side. He kept his dragonfly wings folded against his back and kicked his feet like a bored child.
“No enemies appear to be attacking, my lord!” he chirped, as he had done regularly every five minutes or so.
“Thanks, Toot,” I replied calmly, as I did at every report of my apparent safety.
The day had gotten up to almost fifty degrees, and Maggie had to wear only a light jacket, though the sun was rapidly waning. She idlytested various poses on the bike, standing on one leg, then the other, then holding one leg out behind her.
“We could set up a ramp and then I could try some jumps,” she was saying.
“On the roof?” I asked, grinning. “Maybe that’s not the best idea.”
“From this height to ground level below,” Bonnie chimed in a child’s voice from the little wooden skull, “in excess of eighty-five percent of falls would prove fatal to a human being!”
“Okay, Bonnie. There’s no room anywhere else,” Maggie complained. “It doesn’t have to be a big ramp. I just want to try it out.”
“Ramps are a simple tool known as an inclined plane!” Bonnie burbled. “They are frequently used across the globe!”
“Maybe we can get to a bike park,” I said. “Or when it gets a little warmer and there’s not so much sand and stuff on the streets, maybe you and Harry can set a ramp up outside the Carpenters’ house.”
“Hmmph,” Maggie said. She swung her legs both over to one side, hopped off the seat, ran a few steps, then remounted the bike without stopping. “Can I do fighting practice with you guys sometime?”
I stared at her as she circled around me for a moment. She looked happy, her cheeks reddened by a light wind. My mind provided me with a picture of her with black eyes and a broken nose, then filled in some missing teeth. I felt sick.
But from a practical standpoint, if I was going to be in her life, she had to start learning some practical things. Like how to defend herself. And when to run.
Toot-Toot glanced over his shoulder at us, giving his muppet-level enthusiastic guard duty a break for a moment. He frowned at Maggie.
“I’ll talk to Bear,” I said. “She might have some experience with this kind of thing.”
Her smile widened as she looked over at me, and my heart went all soft. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
