I’m in a hospital, obviously, in a private room, which means Eddie pulled strings or flashed his badge or dropped panties with just his face. Maybe all three.
A window to my right shows late afternoon light, though that doesn’t help me place the time. How long have I been here?
The TV mounted in the corner is off. A plastic pitcher of water sits on the bedside table next to a foam cup with a bendy straw, and the sight of it makes my throat clench with a thirst so strong that I cough.
Eddie shifts behind me. The arm across my waist tightens fractionally.
"You're awake," he rasps.
"Yeah.” My voice sounds like someone ran it over gravel and then backed up to do it again. "Why am I here? Why am I not home?"
"Because you need to be here. You were severely dehydrated, had cuts on your arms and chest that needed cleaning and closure, and your blood pressure was not good when you firstarrived here." His heavy exhale stirs my matted hair. "I wasn't taking chances with you."
"But…home…"
"Your home is not a hospital, Sera. Besides, right now, it has burst pipes and no windows and…." A pause. "Don’t worry about that part. I'll take you home when the doctor clears you. Not before."
I kind of want to argue, but my body is siding with Eddie on this one. The simple act of lying in a bed that isn't a concrete floor feels so obscenely luxurious that my muscles instantly reject any plan that involves standing up.
"And…Red Hands?" I ask.
"Contained," he says.
"Contained where?"
"Your house. James and Azhrael have him. He's secure. He's not going anywhere."
The things he's not saying fill the room like smoke. “Contained” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.
Red Hands is alive. I told them alive. But alive covers a lot of territory between comfortable and praying for death, and I suspect the current state of him is closer to the latter.
Good.
I picture the hangar, the dark, my daddy’s vast, hungry presence filling every shadow. James's grin and the particular enthusiasm he brings to keeping things that belong to me exactly where I want them.
They’ll keep him alive just for me. I’m sure of it.
"And…Vincent?" I ask.
"Lying low." Eddie's voice flattens on the subject the way it always does, the sound of a man keeping his professional distance from a target he'd rather put a bullet in. "I haven’t heard anything from him, but I’ve heard plenty about him. He’s already guilty in the court of public opinion."
"That’s a brutal court to find yourself in," I say.
I would know. His actions put me in the same court, and it was awful. I’d never heard more vile things said by complete strangers, never been called whore that many times. They told me, “Even if he did do it, you deserved it,” both menandwomen, on the internetandin the halls of the courtroom, and somewhere between the first insult and the last, something in me stopped breaking and started sharpening.
"You don’t have to worry." Eddie’s thumb traces a slow circle on my hip through the hospital gown. "There's a guard outside your door. Officer Palmer. She's solid. I trust her."
"You trust someone?"
He sighs a laugh. "I trust about four people in this city. One of them is currently in my arms, one is Officer Palmer, one is a big brute who is probably terrorizing a serial killer in your basement with a smile, and the fourth is quite possibly the devil."
“All of those sound very trustworthy.”
He presses a kiss to my earlobe. “Well, maybe just keep that list to yourself for now.”
I almost smile. The muscles remember the shape but can't quite commit to it.
I blink down at my hands clenching the sheet around me.
