Ollie’s scales would have protected his hide, and therefore his skin, from the worst of the flames, but this was still a nasty burn.
“Clothes are by the door,” Mia said.
I turned my head to find her hovering. “Can you bring us some painkillers, gauze, and the ointment from the kitchen cabinet? I can’t remember the name but it’s in a white tube with silver writing.”
“That sounds like an accessibility nightmare,” Ollie muttered, and my heart twisted with love for him. Even with how badly he was hurting, he had to say something to make the rest of us feel better.
He took the painkillers while I bathed his burn and carefully covered it with gauze.
“Do you want to go to hospital and have it checked out?” I asked.
He licked his lips. “Do Ineedto go? I hate hospitals.”
“No, though if that changes at any time, youwillgo.”
My firmness didn’t have its expected result. Instead of agreeing obediently, he smiled at me, such love in his expression that something strange happened to my heart. “You can’t help it, can you? You’ve always got to be in charge.”
Well, it was my job, in case he hadn’t noticed. I helped him out of the bath and drew him to me, able to breathe fully for the first time since hearing him cry out. “I thought—oh, God, Ollie, don’t ever do anything like that again.” My voice was shaking suddenly.
“Believe me, I won’t,” he said, and I choked back an unexpected laugh. “Seriously, it fucking hurts.” He snuggled closer, and added softly, “He was going to kill you. Tear out your throat in front of Mia. Was I supposed to let him?”
“Thank you,” I said hoarsely, feeling the beat of his heart against mine and knowing I would never again take this for granted.
“Why’sMia here?” he asked after a while. “I thought she was away for the night. Just as well we didn’t decide to have sex on the pool table in the hall.”
“It’s not robust enough,” I said, and he grinned. “Good question, though.”
We got dressed, and I was glad to see Mia’s thoughtfulness in bringing one of my shirts for Ollie, which was easy to put on with his injury. I ducked along the landing and retrieved his silver bangle from my room. He usually removed it to sleep, and I thought he would need its comfort after what had happened.
The brightness of his smile as he took it meant I’d been right. I hovered beside him as he descended the stairs, and arranged cushions for him to sit comfortably on the sofa. Once he was safely sitting down, I turned to Mia.
“What thehellare you doing home?” I demanded. “You’re supposed to be at Lacey’s.”
Ignoring me, she knelt beside Ollie and looked up into his face. “Are you okay?” Her voice was trembling.
I’d got it wrong, yet again. I let him reassure her, and then she turned scared eyes on me. “What on earth was happening out there? Was thatUncleChris?”
I sank down into the nearest chair and rubbed my hands over my face. “Yes, and I don’t know. He decided to challenge me, after—You’d better start, Ollie. Why were you in the library at that time of night?”
Once he’d told us what had happened before I found them, I filled Mia in on the rest.
“But I don’t understandwhyhe wanted the bible,” Ollie said. “That must be what June was looking for, don’t you think? And why did he decide to fight you tonight? He can’t have meant to do it all along because otherwise he’d have called you out instead of sneaking into the house. And how did he get in?”
“My fault.” My stupid,stupidfault. “It never occurred to me to take their keys away from them when I threw them out.” I hadn’t dreamed they’d be brazen enough to ignore their banishment. “As for the rest of it, I know as much as you. Less, in fact, because I hadn’t thought about the library angle. I suppose he thought that he couldn’t get the bible the way he’d planned, and if he beat me, he could find it in his own time.”
“Butwhy?”
“If I fetch the bible, it might tell us,” Mia said.
“You know where it is?” I asked. That was more than I did.
She rolled her eyes, evidently recovering from the shock of what she’d witnessed. “Stay there. I’ll be back.”
I sat with Ollie snuggled into my side, everything inside me mixed up—wrath and terror, guilt and love. But we had a mystery to unravel, so I pushed it all down again to concentrate when Mia brought in the family bible, a huge leather-bound book.
She placed it on the coffee table, which she dragged over to us before opening the bible at a random page.
“Huh. Is that Latin?” Ollie asked, after we’d all squinted at it for a moment.
