The third consecutive night of this. Her stepped-down pain medication let in dreams, violent and disturbing. Crawford and Shaw dying repeatedly. Kincaid gathering everyone she loved into the Inferno to kill them one by one.
This time, he’d come for her in the hospital. Now that she was awake, her lungs, heart and stomach were all of the opinion that someone really was in the room with her, and they refused to return to normal working order.
She remembered only too well the sight of Hartgrave’s cell-phone screen covered with red dots, each representing an Organization wizard. Easily dozens.What if even one of them wanted an eye for an eye? What if that one tracked her down and was here now, waiting for her to drop off again?
She hadn’t worried about reprisals because the Organization’s most dangerous members were dead. Now it occurred to her that “somewhat less dangerous” was somewhat less than reassuring.
One long moment passed. Try as she might, she couldn’t make out anything but her own loud heartbeat and respiration as she stared at the various shapes in the dark room. The television. The empty chair. The potted ficus, looking surprisingly sinister.
The chair sneezed.
With speed borne of fear and fury, she slammed her good arm into the invisible body sitting six inches to her right.
A yelp. Unseen hands caught her elbow before she could connect a second time, and the air shifted, resolving itself into a wholly unexpected person. Hartgrave.
Fear gave way to a zip of adrenaline fueled by another emotion, not quite happiness but more the anticipation of it. He’d come, he’d finally come!
And then anger set in.
He’d finally,finallycome, and it was the middle of the night.
She glared at him. “What are you doing?”
He crossed his arms, eyes on the ficus instead of her. “Keeping watch.”
“Against the Organization?” More adrenaline, so much that she felt ill. “But my parents—what about myparents?”
“No, no, they’re perfectly safe,” Hartgrave put in quickly. “What’s left of the Organization are the technicians. They didn’t have anything to do with the witch hunting and weren’t even aware it was happening.”
“Oh,” she said, greatly relieved, and waited for the actual reason he was standing guard over her.
He said nothing.
It was like reversing time three months, when the only information she got out of him was via guessing. “So ... ?”
“I’m ensuring you’re all right.”
“Now?”But she saw in his expression an embarrassment that seemed to reach beyond simple shame for bad behavior, and she took a stab at the cause: “Have you been here every night?”
He sighed. “Yes.”
“I’m amazed I have to explain this,” she said, “but I’d rather you spend time with me while I’m conscious.”
“Would you?” He had never sounded so cutting, which was saying something. “Spending time with me is the reason you’re hospitalized.”
She’d had this argument with Willi, and she was sick of it. “If you’re warming up to a grand declaration along the lines of, ‘My darling, our love cannot be, I’m simply too dangerous for such a fragile and delicate flower,’ I may be forced to hit you again.”
“That isn’t precisely how I would have put it,” he muttered, “but it is true. You must see it.”
“In the five months you’ve known me, have I struck you as a complete idiot? About anything other than adventures,” she hastened to add.
“No.”
“And have I ever seemed unable to make up my own mind and communicate the results?”
A smile flickered on his face, then died. “No.”
“Then why,” she said, poking him in the chest, “are you treating me as if I am?”
