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My headache is back, doubling, tripling, and my vision starts to blur.

Lazarus hangs up and flashes me a wide, hungry smile that makes me shiver.

I’m not sure which one of us is really hiding our true selves, but I know if I blow my cover, I’m dead.

And I’m wondering just how alive I am on the inside, anyway.

Chapter Six: Lazarus

I have the oven somewhat salvaged, and the house isn’t engulfed in flames or even smoke-damaged. A few hours of fresh air, fans, and maybe a few shots of Febreze ought to fix things.

“Okay, I think we’re going to have to punt on the side dish, but Rhea told me—oh. Oh, shit! Lady, come on. Come on, now don’t do that.” I look up from the less-charred oven interior in time to see Victoria, now chalky white, sliding down to the ground.

Fainting from the fumes. Or maybe she was more seriously injured than I thought.

If she dies on me, I’m going to blame myself. Manny and Rhea will probably blame me, too.

“Migraine,” she whispers through white lips, her face a mask of pain.

“Ohhhh.” No, not “ohhhh.” No noise of understanding, dipshit. You don’t know how to take care of a migraine. You don’t know how to take care of lots of things.

But I do. The brain I’ve got, bolstered by hours and hours of shows and audiobooks, and life with Manny and Rhea, has filled me with some kind of knowledge, even if it gets tangled sometimes. “What do you need?”

“Cold on the back of my neck. Something to eat. I haven’t eaten. Extra-strength painkillers. Something with caffeine in it,” Victoria mumbles, eyes squeezing shut. She tries to lift her hand to her head, and she can’t.

Fuck, I think she’s hurt worse than I imagined.

It’s Thanksgiving. No doctor’s offices are open, even if I knew one, which I don’t. I could take her to the ER. I could try to treat her here...

I could do what she asks. I know what those things are.

“I got this,” I say, mostly to myself, and start yanking things out of kitchen cupboards and the fridge. “Here, cheese. Coke. Pretzels. Ice pack. They don’t have any painkillers... I mean, maybe they do.”

I know I don’t. Yes, sometimes things hurt. It’s weird to know that I’ve been shot, cut, and stabbed, and it hurt, but I lived. Like if you just keep living, you don’t need to make the pain stop, because it all fades eventually. Everything gets gray and dulls, then empties out.

Like me. Gray, faded, and hollow. Full of pains that you aren’t supposed to acknowledge, or that you know better than to show.

“They have some at the store, and I gotta go back and get twenty pounds of yams. Or something,” I grumble, watching Victoria drain a can of soda while stuffing pretzels into her mouth with a shaking hand.

Right now, she’s almost as white as Rhea. With that dark, dark hair...

I don’t have a thing for Rhea, but maybe I have a thing for women who look something like her. “The Bride of ‘the Monster.’ You know, the original mate, the one made for me? I mean, someone like me. A loving wife, a wonderful mother.

Giver of a wonderful life, even if it’s make-believe.

Lonely wounds don’t show. They aren’t even supposed to exist. How can that stuff exist when I’m only meat and magic?

With a sudden lunge, I grab Victoria, and she struggles, but doesn’t scream. I didn’t mean to do that. To move like that. “I’m putting you in the truck with me. We’re gonna get you what you need at the store, okay?” I say in the gentlest voice I have, which feels weird.

And nice.

“I don’t usually pick up people, and I don’t talk to a lot of people,” I mutter.

“You’d never know it,” she whispers, face clutched up tight, a mask of pain.

I bend to get the ice pack that she dropped.

“Um. They have lots of food at that place. White Pines. You want to come with? I could stay and have a plate. Not just drop things off and run.”