“Do what you feel is right when reacquainting yourself with your mother’s family,” Setsuna told him after she let him go.
“I will,” Patrick promised.
Setsuna patted his knee and rose to her feet. “You don’t want to miss your flight home.”
Patrick nodded, leaving the remnants of his whiskey on the table as he stood. Jono pushed himself away from the wall, never taking his eyes off Patrick. “Ready?”
He met Jono’s gaze and nodded. “Yeah. Let’s go home.”
“I’ll see you out,” Setsuna said, ushering them to the door.
She removed her house slippers in favor of a pair of shoes from the shoe rack by the door, following them outside into the cold to stand on the porch to see them off. Jono was already at the car when Patrick made it to the sidewalk, pausing to turn back to Setsuna, lips parting on words he would never speak.
A threshold lived in the framework of a home, guarding the space a person lived in. Where Setsuna stood was beyond its reach, but she wasn’t out of reach of the high-caliber spelled bullet that cut through the air—so close to Patrick he felt its passing—and slammed into her chest, finding its mark, or maybe missing it altogether.
He would never know for sure because he’d turned, shifted out of the line of sight, and if he’d stayed put, his own personal shields still in place, maybe things would’ve been different.
“Setsuna!” Patrick screamed.
He slammed his shields outward, covering the area against the sniper staring through a scope somewhere in the dark.
Too little, too late.
Patrick saw Setsuna crumple to the ground, and he couldn’t catch her, no matter how fast he moved. When he slammed to his knees beside her on the porch, the growing pool of blood beneath her looked black in the glow of the soft light situated by the door.
“No, no,no,” Patrick gasped out, pressing shaking hands to the gaping wound in her chest. “Please no!”
Her eyes wouldn’t look at him, staring far away at something only she could see.
In the cold, beneath a cloudy night sky, Setsuna’s blood slipped between Patrick’s fingers, impossible to stop.
9
Patrick saton a leather chair in a private waiting room at George Washington University Hospital, staring at the blood beneath his fingernails.
He couldn’t get them clean.
At some point after their arrival, Jono had pulled him into a bathroom and washed his hands for him because Patrick hadn’t been clearheaded since Setsuna was shot. The water hadn’t washed away all of it, nor his failure.
Fingers trembling, he clenched his hands into fists, fingernails biting into his skin. The sounds of the hospital was dull noise beyond the waiting room where the emergency nurses had ushered them after taking one look at Jono’s eyes. The privacy was welcome, considering Patrick had been the one to start notifying people in charge of what had happened.
When EMS had arrived at Setsuna’s home, she’d barely been breathing. They’d gotten her in their bus for transport almost immediately, and Patrick hadn’t been able to follow because her home was a crime scene and he was a witness to the attack on a federal director’s life. He’d managed a bare-bones statement to the police before walking away, pulling the fed card to get to the hospital because that’s where he needed to be.
He’d been a combat mage for almost a decade. Patrick knew the damage a fifty-caliber bullet, spelled or otherwise, could do.
Patrick closed his eyes, letting his head fall forward, chin nearly touching his chest. Jono’s hand settled on the nape of his neck before sliding down his spine to rub his back. Patrick wasn’t comforted by the gesture, not when he had Setsuna’s blood on his hands.
“They were aiming for me,” Patrick said in a quiet, bitter voice.
“You don’t know that,” Jono said.
“If I hadn’t looked back, the bullet would’ve hit my shields. I’d have survived.” He swallowed hard, opening his eyes to stare at the floor beneath his feet, the light in the waiting room almost too bright. “Setsuna never would’ve taken the bullet.”
“You didn’t know this would happen, Pat.”
“Ishouldhave. We’re almost to Samhain. We know Ethan is willing to do anything to turn himself into a god. We should have anticipated this.”
“You’ve said it yourself before that plans go out the bloody window all the time. You can’t cover every possibility.”
