“Where are you?”
“In London, Oxford Street, in the back of an ambulance.”
“Feeling confused? Ringing in your ears?”
She looked up at him, amused. “No and no. Seriously, I don’t have a concussion. And I wasn’t talking about that kind of healing.”
He leaned back, skeptical. “What’s your diagnosis then?”
“Those two men in the shelter had Shadows crawling all over them, but they were… wrong somehow. That’s what made me sick.”
She watched his reaction carefully as she spoke—the wrinkle of his forehead as his eyebrows lowered, the way he narrowed his eyes at her—and decided he was genuinely confused as well as highly skeptical. And he was growing concerned, probably for her sanity.
“What shadows?” he asked eventually.
“You really don’t know?” she asked, torn between being horrified that she had just broken the most serious Order commandment by revealing herself, and shock that a Shadow Weaver might exist who had no idea of what they could do. She shook off the worry; he was one of them, whether he knew it or not.
A note of frustration crept into Ethan’s voice. “I don’t know what you want me to say. Honestly, I think you must have hit your head pretty hard.” He didn’t add, “Or maybe you’re completely nuts,” but she could tell he was thinking it.
“I’d like to make sure you’re okay,” he said in a low, concerned voice. “I’ll book you in for an MRI while you’re in the hospital, just to be safe.”
An MRI was of no use whatsoever—Kay knew she didn’t have a concussion—and she would be far better off just going home and asking Riley for help. But there was no way she would be able to convince Ethan to simply let her go if he had never been part of their world.
She picked her words carefully. “If you’ve never been in a Circle, how did you learn to Heal like that?” Having to figure out his abilities alone must have been extraordinarily difficult. He was obviously powerful and extremely controlled.
He shook his head defensively. “I’m a paramedic; that’s what we do.”
No. There was far more to it than that. Far more tohim.
She wanted to know him, know his story. And it wasn’t just because she’d never heard of someone being missed like that before; it was Ethan himself. Something about him called to her and made the Shadows around her flicker uncertainly, almost as if they were reaching out toward him. She wished she could lean over and drown in his warm, clean scent.
Kay stifled a snort at her own dramatics. Clearly, the adrenaline crash was messing with her emotions. This wasn’t like her at all.
She was a Guardian, and it was her duty to help him. That was it. Nothing at all to do with the way his arm muscles flexed as he worked and how desperately she wanted to run her fingers along his tanned skin. Nothing to do with his aura of confidence and self-assurance, how kind he seemed, or the way his brown eyes focused on hers. Nothing. At. All.
She cleared her throat and looked away.
Ethan stood up, frowning, and started packing up. “I’ll just go and get that police officer for you; they’ll want a statement, I imagine.”
Kay’s Shadows fluttered somewhere deep in her chest, and before she’d thought about it, she found herself reaching out to take his hand; to stop him before he could turn away.
Her whole body was instantly filled with warmth and awareness. Like the first step into a hot shower after being outside on a cold winter’s day. The jolt as water hits skin, one minute freezing, the next burning with heat. Or the moment after opening her eyes into bright sunshine after sleeping on the beach, everything too bright and disorienting.
She pulled her hand back in surprise, flexing her fingers slightly as they tingled. Ethan looked just as stunned as she felt, his hand held out slightly away from his body. “What happened?” he asked roughly.
“I don’t know.” She genuinely didn’t. She’d heard of an instant, undeniable connection between two Shadow Weavers, but was this what it felt like? She had no idea. She’d never felt it before. “But I… I’d like to tell you more. I think there are things that you should know. But not here, not right now. Can we meet up maybe?”
He leaned back on the narrow desk built into the ambulance and crossed his arms over his chest, eyes narrowed. “Are you asking me out?”
“Um….” She could feel a tingling flush climbing up her chest and gave herself a mental kick. She usually had no problem speaking to a man she was interested in, but something about this blistering attraction had overwhelmed her. It didn’t feel safe and easy. It felt like something… else. “Maybe?”
His mouth turned up on one side in a polite half-smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I don’t date patients.”
Something about how dismissive he was being after the potent magnetism of their connection—after she had taken the risk of suggesting more, of offering to help him—riled her, and the sarcastic reply was out her mouth before she could stop it. “What, saving yourself for the on-call room?”
He lifted one eyebrow.
She shrugged. “I’ve seenGrey’s Anatomy.”
