Everything had a Shadow, even poisons. Hard to detect, almost impossible without training, but she’d spent many hours learning to identify different herbs by their energy signatures. And when she found the harmful Shadows, she could counteract them. That was where she had to start. Anything that resonated as wrong.
She felt forward, delicately, holding her breath. And found what she was looking for. The Shadows led her. And by twisting just so, she could neutralize the toxins.
Slowly, fragment by fragment, she felt the poison in his blood begin to disperse.
James’s eyes fluttered open, and he stared at her groggily. His pupils were blown, the whites of his eyes bloodshot, and, connected as they were, she could feel his nausea and confusion twisting through him.
“You’re so pretty,” he rasped. He lifted a shaking hand to touch her hair where it had come loose in their frantic rush to safety. “I love this dream. I love….” He blinked slowly, eyes glassy. “Why are we flying? Oh God”—his voice was broken and tortured—“are you an angel? Did we die?”
He shuddered uncontrollably in her lap. She’d thought she was making progress, but now he was hallucinating. Somehow, he was still getting worse.
She gripped his chin, trying to force him to look at her. “Who did this, James? What did they give you?”
He groaned miserably. “It was me. It was all me.” His eyes met hers, although she knew he couldn’t really see her. “But if we’re dead, and you’re here…. No. No. I can’t bear it.” He started to thrash, his voice rising hysterically as she poured waves of Healing Shadows over him, frantically trying to soothe him. To help him in any way she could.
Kay twisted in her seat. “What’s happening? James… can you hear me?”
“You’re all here.” James’s face crumpled. He closed his eyes and turned into Riley’s belly. His Shadows swarmed around her, out of control and agitated. “I’m sorry, Kay. Tell Zach. God. And Riley….” He shuddered, his voice dropping to an almost inaudible whisper. “Tell Riley she’s….” He moaned softly. “You can’t tell her. She’s gone.”
She didn’t have time to think of how to reply. His heart rate was climbing dangerously as his distress soared. She followed the worst of the pain to find… hell.
She had cleared his belly, but toxins had already spread through the muscles of his heart, and his pulse was spiking dangerously. Now, as his anxiety climbed, so did the stress on his heart.
She muttered to herself as she worked, hardly noticing that the car had pulled over to the side of the road. The hallucinations wouldn’t kill James, but the tachycardia might.
Riley pressed her free hand against James’s chest, desperately trying to soothe his system and ease the flooding adrenalin and cortisol at the same time as Healing his heart, all while still following the signature of the poison. It was too much. She couldn’t do it all. God.
James was sweating heavily now, his skin pale, his breath coming far too fast. He was going into shock. And she was overextended in every possible way.
Ethan slid into the backseat beside her, and a wave of forest-green Shadows surged over her and James. “Okay,” he said. “Tell me what you need.”
Riley blinked back at him for a second. She was so used to working alone, and never under this kind of terrifying pressure. But now, God, for the first time, she had a team. She took a breath. Made herself think before replying, “You handle the shock. I’ll take the heart.”
Ethan nodded and got to work immediately. In the corner of her awareness, she could sense him soothing James’s adrenals and gently nurturing his vagus nerve, bringing him down from the rampant, toxic fight or flight his body had succumbed to.
Meanwhile, she drew on everything she had—all her belief and skill and hope—and gently soothed the stuttering organ in James’s chest, wrapping it in careful Healing. She soothed the failing muscle, encouraging a smooth, rhythmic beat.
Moments passed—long, terrifying moments—but then, finally, his system started to settle. His breathing evened out, and his heart rate began to fall, lowering to a steady pulse. Still too high, but nowhere near the dangerous levels it had been.
As soon as he was stable, Riley and Ethan turned to the poison in his blood, filtering and straining it out, neutralizing the toxins, and calming the raging inflammation.
Slowly, James’s Shadows settled too. They slowed to a gentle wave, weaving around his heart, protecting him in charcoal and vivid sky-blue. And if tendrils still wrapped tight aroundherShadows, she pretended not to see them.
James groaned, but then he took in a shuddering breath, and a faint pink crept back into his cheeks as he drifted into a genuine sleep. They slowed down, working more thoroughly now, cleaning his blood, clearing his stomach, siphoning out the poison. Checking their work again and again until Riley was absolutely certain his body was clear.
“He’ll be fine,” Ethan murmured eventually, drawing away and pulling his Shadows back.
Riley nodded, unable to speak through the tightness in her throat.
James would survive his poisoning. Whether he would actually be fine was a different question entirely.
And whether any of them would live through the battle they’d just ramped up another level… that was just one more thing she didn’t know.
ChapterFour
James openedhis eyes and then immediately shut them again. Everything was moving. Tipping and sliding as his stomach clenched around nothing.
He took a slow breath, swallowing the acid that flooded his mouth as he clung to the edge of the bed he was lying on and tried to calm himself. He focused on breathing in, counting to four, and breathing out. Again and again until he slid back into a dark and nightmare-filled sleep once more.
