Once he’d washed his hands and helped me settle, he stuck his head out to let them know we were done, then resumed his seat.
“Sorry,” I whispered, face still burning.
“Don’t be.” He stroked my hair back from my face, as gentle as always. “You’d do the same for me, right?”
I couldn’t help a little smile, and I nodded. “Any day.”
Lelo bustled into the room a moment later and I heard a rustle as she immediately threw the bowl in a trashcan. I didn’t blame her.
“You may feel some tingling when I apply the poultice, but it shouldn’t hurt. Tell me if anything feels odd.”
True to her word, there was no pain this time. Her gentle fingers spread something cool on my upper thigh. The smell hit me a moment later and I shuddered. It reminded me of the Chicago River after a long, hot day, when the smell of pollution and sewage was worst.
“I know. You get used to it,” Alex murmured. He wrinkled his nose at the smell, too, though.
Lelo made quick work of it, and almost immediately, the throbbing pain eased a little.
“I’d like that to remain on for an hour or two, then we can do one last examination and likely get you on your way.”
“Thank you. Both of you,” I added with a nod to Ori, who still stood in the doorway observing us.
“Rest. I’ll be back to check on you,” she said. Something warm draped across my legs from the knees down, then the two of them departed.
“Okay. What happened?” Getting comfortable on the hard table was impossible and I hated laying on my stomach, but I did the best I could. The small pillow helped, allowing me to rest my chin on it so I could look at Alex straight-on.
“The short version is that we found Landon, then we got attacked by a chimera on the way back to the car. It cut your leg and got its venom into you, so Ori brought us here. They gave you some antivenin, and Lelo used that nasty-smelling poultice to draw out the poison.”
A flicker of memory surfaced and I shuddered. The creature that attacked us had been something straight out of a nightmare. I still wasn’t quite alert enough to deal withthatyet, so I focused on the more immediate problems. “What about Camille and Raina? Are they okay? How long have I been unconscious?”
“They’re fine,” he assured me. “Ori gave them a ride home a few hours ago. You’ve been out all day. It’s just after midnight now. Will came and went earlier, too. He made sure the search was called off and everyone made it home safely before the storm hit.”
Something in the way he said that last part caught my attention. “But?”
“But what?”
“Did something happen with Will or the search? You sounded odd when you said his name.”
Alex’s fingers found the edge of the pillow, worrying at the seam with his fingernails. “Will might be a little pissed off at us,” he finally admitted quietly.
“What? Why?”
“Well, in all the chaos and everything going on, we all kind of left him out of the loop about… everything.”
“I told him you were working on expanding your abilities, but I didn’t give details because it wasn’t my place to tell. He gets that, right?” I hated that I couldn’t sit up for this, or even really move.
“I told Raina and Camille, so he was the only one who didn’t know. I think he might’ve understood that, but then the four of us went out together and left him to deal with the search. Then he was the last person to find out about the shapeshifting thing. I think all of that combined, plus, you know, finding out about shapeshifters and chimeras, kind of threw him for a loop. He was pretty upset when he left earlier.”
I had a sudden, vivid memory of two coyotes bursting out of the trees and attacking the creature and put the pieces together from there. “I remember that, I think. So the family are all coyotes? That was Landon’s aunt and uncle?”
Alex nodded. “I guess you don’t remember them changing back after the chimera ran away. Raina and Camille saw them and it’s not like they could unsee it, so…” He shrugged, but the edge of the pillow was getting a little ragged. Risking agitating my wound, I shifted just enough to free up my hand and put it over his, stilling his anxious picking.
“Once I get home, I’ll talk to Will. He’ll understand,” I assured him. “I’ll need to talk to him anyway to find out what he told Cornell. At this rate, I’ll be lucky if I have a job by the end of the month.” The lies were piling up, and Bev Cornell wasn’t a stupid woman.
“About that…”
“Don’t tell me I’m already fired?”
“No, not last I heard.” I felt him start to fidget with the pillow again, but this time he stopped himself, wrapping both his hands around mine to keep from destroying it. “I’ve had a lot of time to think while you’ve been sleeping and I think you’re right.”
