She helped me to the bathroom and got me there in time for me to hurl my guts out.
I collapsed to the tile floor shaking when I was done, my throat burning.
I felt weak.
I felt sad.
I felt lost.
I felt hollow.
I felt like tomorrow had stopped existing.
There was only a constant now, a single ongoing, endless hour of pain.
Of loss.
“Dresden,” Bear said gently. “Hey.”
I opened my eyes.
She towered over me like some kind of vast sailing ship.
Her hand was held out. Her broad face was gentle.
“Come on,seidrmadr,” she said gently. “You can take my hand.”
My arm felt unbearably heavy. But I did it.
Bear hauled me up. I wasn’t able to give her any more help. There just wasn’t the will inside me. But she took me to the bed. She was careful with me. She took a cold rag to my face and neck. She made me sip some water that had the fizzy sensation of some kind of effervescent antacid. My head pounded abominably. She got me settled into bed about the same time I started shivering. She covered me and started singing.
Her voice was astoundingly melodic, gentle, and precise. I didn’t know the language, and the rhythms were strange. It sounded old, old. A song from a world that had been all but forgotten. It sounded steady. Reassuring. Patient. As if she could continue it all night if she needed to.
I thought I was going to cry but I was just too damned tired.
And that was the first time since Murphy died that I slept until dawn.
Chapter
Fourteen
I spent the day hungover, and we went out to hunt ghouls at sundown.
“For the record,” Bear said, as we settled down in the shadows of the alley, “you shouldn’t be out tonight.”
“Your Valkyrie sense is tingling?” I asked grumpily.
Bear squinted at me. I could barely see her face in the darkness of the trash can fires in the encampment across the street. “Dresden,” she asked, “have you ever fought an angel of death?”
“No,” I said carefully.
“I have,” she said. “And here I am. Could be I know a couple things you don’t.”
I snorted quietly through my nose. “Could be you know everything I don’t. Doesn’t change that we need to make some ghouls go away.”
Bear grunted a reluctant affirmative. “You’re hungover. Your head is a mess. Don’t try to pretend you’re in shape for a fight. You need more time.”
“What I need is a good costume for Halloween.”
