8:2
Kim shifted her gaze between Siobhan and the coyote. Siobhan. Coyote. She tried to lift her head to give some real drama to the shifting but her head had to weight eight pounds and her neck was just not up to holding it upright. So, she plopped her head back on the pillow and centered her attention on the coyote.
“You can see it?”
Siobhan seemed to get Kim was asking her this. “Big scary dog thing burning the sheets?”
Keeping an eye on the coyote Kim made a real effort and managed to roll her head on the pillow so her forehead was pointing in a vaguely Siobhan-facing direction. “Not burning the sheets, but, sure.”
“Yes.”
“Scary?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.” Kim shifted her attention fully to the coyote. She opened her well, letting her Magick wash over it, imbuing the flow with gratitude and love. “Your scaring the straights.”
The coyote lifted its head enough it could roll its heart of fire eyes at her or, well, make something vaguely like a roll happen there. Then it chuffed another laugh which released a spray of sparks, rose up on all fours, and slunk off the side of the bed. With one last look her way, it dashed straight through the wall of the cottage, leaving just the memory of heat behind. And a few sparks, which Kim quickly quashed.
She let her head flop to the side so she could look at Siobhan who’d pressed her back to the door frame and was holding her hand against her breastbone.
“Is that normal?” At Kim’s look of confusion, Siobhan swept her hand towards the wall and repeated, “Is that normal?”
“Yes?”
Siobhan visibly shook herself, smoothing her expression into its usual one of quiet efficiency. “Sorry. Just caught me unaware.”
“It won’t hurt you.”
“Sure?”
“Yeah.”
Siobhan tilted her head back to call outside the room. “She’s awake.”
A few seconds later Prairie and Gwen came in the room, Gwen bustling, Prairie moving quietly with her crocs making no noise on the field stones of the floor. Gwen’s hair was a bush around her head, like she’d run her hands through it about twenty times and there was something dark smudging her cheek. She had an apple to her mouth and was making some serious headway around it. When she saw Kim her eyes widened. She lowered the apple, letting it hang from slack fingertips before falling to the ground.
As Gwen stooped to grab the core Kim had a sudden flash of Gwen lying in a crumbled heap on a stone floor, her arm outreached, her fingers slack, darkness all around her. Someone just in front of her was another body, obscured by the darkness or the haze of memory. The image was gone almost as quickly as it came, leaving behind it a clawing feeling of fear and heartache.
Before she could push a question through her dry throat, Prairie moved around Siobhan to approach the bed, positioning the ear tips of a stethoscope against her ears. Taking Kim’s arm, she pressed the chest piece to her wrist. Kim surveyed Prairie’s features, noting dark circles under the eyes and a slight tightness to her usually relaxed mouth. Her light brown hair had pulled out of the ponytail she’d pulled it into, loose tendrils forming a halo around her face.
“How bad is it?”
Prairie looked up from her ministrations at Kim’s words, meeting Kim’s query with a soft smile that didn’t make it all the way to her eyes. “Better.”
“Better? Than what?”
“Dead?” Prairie pitched the answer low so only Kim could hear it.
Kim started to chuckle, only to think better of it as her entire chest twinged. “Don’t make me laugh.” She wet her dry lips enough the next question didn’t make her taste blood. “Diagnosis?”
“Anemia. Abnormal heart rate, though I was able to get that under control. Low blood pressure. Low blood potassium, sodium, and chloride. Dehydration. If I didn’t know how long you were missing I’d say you were showing signs of being starved.” Concern clouded her pale blue gaze. She shook it off, giving a soft smile that might fool those who didn’t know her but didn’t do much to reassure Kim.
“So, basically fucked up?”
This time the smile was true. “Basically.”
Kim lifted the hand with the iv line, fingering her bangs. “My hair grew.”
Gwen plunked herself down on the foot of the bed. “Huh?”
“My hair grew. About,” Kim shifted her attention to the bangs, “a half inch. How long have I been like this?” She waved her hand, vaguely encompassing the room, the iv, the iv stand next to the bed.
“Hold still,” Prairie said, an unexpected snap to her voice immediately making Kim relax the arm Prairie still held while proclaiming in a whisper, “I’m scared.”
“Welcome to the club,” Prairie muttered before lowering Kim’s arm to the bed and moving her fingers up along her collarbone, probing gently as she went. “Does this hurt?”
Kim flinched. “I think everything hurts.” She shifted her attention to Siobhan still hovering in the doorway, figuring her to be the most likely source of information. “How long?”
“A week.” Siobhan folded the piece of paper she was holding and tucked it away in her bag. Then she drew a deep breath, pressed her hand to her chest and closed her eyes for a moment before opening them and making her way over to the bed. “How do you feel?”
“Like crap.” Kim frowned and looked around again, shifting her attention from the room to each of her friends. They were looking a little ragged. She wondered if maybe she was the cause of that. “How?”
“How what?” Siobhan indicated the mattress next to Gwen who nodded and moved over to make room for Siobhan to lower herself gingerly to sit. Kim waited until she was situated before asking, “How am I here?”
“We brought you here.”
Kim waited. When Siobhan didn’t expand she lifted her brows and tried for a scowl. Almost immediately she second guessed that choice as the movement yanked the incision at her neck. Who knew all those muscles were connected?
She did. Now.
She swallowed hard, twitching as Prairie’s gentle touch slid over her neck, tapping her jaw to make her turn to the side.
“Does this hurt?”
“Yesh,” Kim said half into the pillow.
“On a scale of one to ten?”
“Above a paper cut. Below Anne Boleyn.”
Prairie grabbed Kim’s jaw and turned her head back so she was facing the ceiling. “You’ll live.”
“Swell.” Kim barely winced this time as her heavy swallow pulled at the incision in her throat. “Still wondering how I got here. Last I remember.”
Prairie stopped her by pressing a straw, sticking out of a glass, to her lips. “Drink. It will help with the dry throat.”
Kim gave a thumbs up and sucked hard on the straw, drawing what seemed to be warm sports beverage into her mouth. It tasted somewhere in between what she imagined formaldehyde would taste like with a distinctive flat saltiness that was just a delight. Despite this it was like nectar of the damned gods hitting her parched throat. When she stopped pulling at the straw Prairie leveled her with a look that had her right back at that thing, eventually sucking down half the contents of the glass. Only after she made a gag face at Prairie, and Prairie gave her a professional ‘wow, I’m impressed’ look did Prairie lower the glass and let Kim continue. Which she did after wetting her cracked lips with her tongue.
“Last I remember I was in the dark. And then you were the-” she cut off as the image of Gwen crumbled on the ground in the dark superimposed itself over her vision again. She focused hard, pushing through the image to look at Gwen at the bottom of the bed.
“I drained you.”
She said this with absolute certainty because, in that moment, she was absolutely certain. She might not be remembering things all that clear but that, yeah, she remembered feeling like a parched desert, desperate for a drop of morning dew, then seeing Gwen, feeling the cool rush of sustenance, watching Gwen collapse like a marionette with its strings cut-
A marionette. Why did that feel- Gwen’s voice broke in on her musings, drawing her mind from the thought tickling the periphery of her memory.
“I got better.” Gwen’s joviality didn’t sound forced. It rarely did. You had to know her to tell when she was applying her favorite mechanic of a wink and a laugh to cover a well of emotion. And she was applying that shit like a domestic violence victim applied foundation over a black eye.
Something else to deal with. After. Kim figured she was going to have a lot of “something else to deal with after” coming her way. Prolly in waves.
Still, she honored Gwen’s attempt to cover by heaving a dramatic sigh. “You make me tired.”
“You make me,” Gwen leaned on the word, “tired.”
“Yep.” Shifting her attention to Siobhan and then Prairie she lifted the hand free of the iv to finger the incision in her throat. Siobhan looked pointedly at the cut. You had to look close to see the wince she supressed.
“I seem to be pretty beat up. But,” Kim shifted her attention to Prairie, echoing what she’d said earlier, “Not dead. Kind of figured I would be. Last thing I remember I was telling you to kill me.”
“We aren’t so good at listening.”
“Tell me about it. No, really, tell me about it.”
Prairie grasped Kim’s hand, pressing it back to the bed. “Stop touching that.”
Kim dropped her head back against the pillows and sighed. But she left her hand where Prairie put it. “Okay.” Looking at the ceiling she gathered her thoughts then shifted her attention back to Siobhan. “What happened?”
Siobhan dug in her bag, pulled out a potion then rose to hand it to Prairie. Prairie warmed it in her hand then slipped her free hand behind Kim’s neck to prop her head up and held the potion to her mouth. “Drink this.”
Like a baby bird Kim obediently opened her mouth and swallowed the potion. Prairie withdrew from the bed to place the empty vial on the bedside table then lowered herself to sit in an armchair they must have pulled from the living area to place beside the bed. Settling into the seat, she closed her eyes.
Kim noted the near sub-voced sigh Prairie released. “You look tired.”
Prairie shrugged. Taking advantage of Prairie’s closed eyes, Kim ran her finger lightly over the incision in her neck. “I’m no doctor but this feels like a bad place for a cut.”
“You were eating anything we threw at you,” Siobhan answered. “We had to take you down without Magick.”
Kim shifted her attention to the ceiling as she absorbed that. “So, you slit my throat.”
“Prairie did.”
“Cool. Cool.” Another survey of the ceiling, another delicate tracing of what should have been a mortal wound. “Why am I not dead?”
“Prairie.”
“Expand?” Again she spoke to the ceiling. It was just easier than reading her friend’s face. Whatever she read there, regret or resignation, it was going to be like a punch to the sternum. Better to just count the boards in the ceiling, trace the patterns made by wood grain and sap leaks.
“Prairie went into the Spiritus and dragged your spirit back. And back into your body. Something about the tether not being severed. She can explain better. Prairie?”
“Hmmm?”
Kim felt bad when Prairie opened her eyes at Siobhan’s question. Whether it was physical exhaustion or emotional Prairie’s shoulders sagged with the weight of it. She hesitated to ask but at this point Prairie was focusing bleary eyes on her, so, “Why am I not dead?”
Prairie wrinkled her nose. “Technically you were. It was the only way we could stop the effect you were doing. When you died I was able to use my Magick without you draining me and I went into the Spiritus and retrieved your spirit.”
“That’s not a thing.”
“It is now.” Prairie’s shrug said ‘no big thing’, though, of course it kind of was.
“Am I undead?”
“I don’t think so,” Prairie drew out the ‘think’.
“Well, that inspires confidence.”
“Do you have an unquenchable hunger for brains?” Gwen asked with a grin.
The look Kim pinned Gwen with should have been deadly. “Not funny.”
Gwen scratched her neck. “Yeah. When I think about it, not.”
Prairie reached over to pull the sheet up below Kim’s collarbone, smoothing it before answering. “You aren’t undead.”
“Or so you think.”
“Yes. Your tether wasn’t severed so you were still connected to your body. Therefore, not dead.”
Kim fingered the incision on her neck. “This?”
“I did that.”
“And my head hurting?”
“That was Dempsey. And Patti,” Siobhan said, her tone even and giving away none of what she was feeling.
“And the bruises on my ribs?”
“Me.”
“Sounds like everyone took a whack at the pinata.” Raising her brows hurt. She settled for projecting dry humor in her tone, “Did you at least get candy out of it?”
Prairie shook her head but couldn’t quite hide her snort. Siobhan gave Kim a narrowed-eyed look full of censure.
“Nips?” Crunching her abdominals – ouch – she lifted her upper back so Siobhan could see the waggle of her brows. “Was I one of those booze pinatas?” Her conviction proved stronger than her abs. She was only able to keep her head up long enough for that one brow waggle, then she had to drop her head back to the pillows and direct the last of her awesome wit to the ceiling, “Say I was a booze pinata.”
“Funny,” Siobhan dug another vial out of her bag then scooted up to hold it near Kim’s mouth. “Drink this.”
“Is it a nip?”
Gwen snorted. Eyes still closed, Prairie snorted. The corner of Siobhan’s mouth quirked. “You are impossible. Drink. We couldn’t heal you until you stopped pulling Magick from us. We’ve had you in the equivalent of a medical coma for seven days with just iv fluids to keep you alive.”
“Well, no wonder my ass hurts.” The iv pulled as Kim reached to take the potion from Siobhan.
“Here,” Siobhan put her hand under Kim’s neck and lifted her head. When Prairie looked like she was going to get up to help, Gwen jumped up from the end of the bed and grabbed several pillows to shove behind Kim’s head so it was elevated when Siobhan lowered it. Once she was a in position that she was less likely to choke on the potion, Siobhan tipped it into Kim’s mouth.
She grimaced at the taste. “Slight grassy notes combined with a whole lot of dirt. Delightful.”
Siobhan rolled her eyes. “It is what I was going for.”
“Success.” Kim ran an assessing eye over her friends. “You said you couldn’t heal me until I stopped pulling Magick.”
“Yes.”
“Did I hurt someone besides Gwen?” When Siobhan appeared to hesitate Kim pinned her with a gimlet stare. “I need to know.”
“None of us was one hundred percent by the time we got you back here, but the only other one you hit hard was Ben.”
“Of course I did.” The iv pulled as Kim scrubbed her face with her hands. She welcomed the small pain. Not because it was penance or it said she was alive or whatever. Just… Yeah. She fanned her hands away from her face to ask, “Is he okay?”
“He’s fine.” Gwen pushed back from the bed, made her way back to the foot, and plunked down on it. “I’m okay. We’re all okay. What’s a little energy vampire action between friends?”
There were, oh, a hundred replies to that. Too many to pick from. So she didn’t. Instead she drew a long steady breath through her nostrils, held it for a count of thirty, then slowly released it through her parted lips, willing herself to relax into the exhale. Another inhale, hold, exhale and she was able to get her thoughts to stop running around like scared chipmunks. Finally she felt ready to move on, only to get distracted by a sensation “below the belt”.
Yeah, welcome to her brain. Were your seat belts fastened and your trays in the upright position?
“What’s that?” She shifted slightly testing the sensation. Her face screwed up. She rolled her eyes ceiling ways then shifted her mouth in the other direction.
“What’s what?”
Kim’s eyes widened. “Do I have a catheter in?”
“Yes.” Prairie opened her eyes to focus on Kim. “You were in a coma for a week. How do you think you evacuated?”
“Ew! Get it out!”
When Prairie didn’t immediately comply, Kim squirmed. “Seriously. Out. I’d do it myself but I’m afraid of what I’ll rip out!”
Prairie gave a very delicate eye roll. “You are being a real Princess. You’d think there was a pea under your mattress.”
“A pea? Ha! I’ve got a tube shoved up my urethra.” Kim returned Prairie’s look with interest. “I can feel it. It’s way bigger than a pea,” she made a clench face. “What did you use? A boba straw?”
“Yes.” Prairie turned her eyes heavenward, “I used a boba straw.”
Slowly, Prairie braced her hands on the arms of the chairs and pushed herself up to a stand. She made little shoo gestures with her hands at Gwen, indicating she wanted to get to the foot of the bed. Gwen stepped back a discrete distance while Siobhan moved to take the chair Prairie had vacated.
When Prairie shifted the sheet covering Kim’s legs Kim’s eyes grew wide. She slapped a hand down on the sheet over her groin.
“A little warning!”
Prairie dropped back. The look she gave Kim was equal parts exasperation and humor. “Do you want the boba straw gone?”
Kim lifted her hand and let Prairie raise the sheet above her waist. “Feels weird, you all up in my business.”
“I’m a doctor.”
“No, you aren’t.”
Prairie’s cheeks plumped on a mischievous smile. “I am a medical professional. I’ve seen it before.”
Another eye roll from Kim. “You haven’t seen mine.”
“Who do you think put the catheter in?”
“The catheter fairy?” Kim’s shoulders slumped. She pressed the back of her head against the pillow and relaxed, allowing Prairie to go about the process of removing the catheter. It involved a syringe and some other stuff that Kim didn’t want to think about and took way less time than she’d expected, but long enough to make her twitchy.
Tube in urethra. Ew.
“Okay.” Prairie exited the room. There was the sound of pumping water and then Prairie came back in, wiping her hand on a towel. “All set.”
As soon as Prairie came back in Siobhan popped up from the seat, indicating Prairie should sit. It was a measure of how tired Prairie had to be that she didn’t demure but instead dropped to perch on the edge of the seat with her hands clasped in her lap.
Siobhan sat down on the side of the bed near Kim’s legs and tapped the folded piece of paper she’d been carrying when she first entered the room against the sheet. Kim followed the movement.
“Anything good?”
Siobhan looked at the paper like she’d forgotten she was holding it. “Ben sent a note. He wanted to meet. I suggested he come here.”
“Oh.”
Gwen lay across the foot of the bed, propping her head on her hand. “We’ve all been here more than anywhere else since you-” she swept the fingers of her free hand from face-level down to the mattress, making a crashing airplane sound that ended with a dramatic “crash!” as her fingertips hit the sheet.
Kim frowned. “Work?”
“Except for work. We’ve been taking shifts. Prairie’s been pretty much working two, one at the hospital and one here.”
Kim shifted her attention to Prairie, mouthing, ‘thank you’. To which Prairie replied with a gentle smile. Like she did.
“How about mine?”
“The Guard, courtesy of Ivan, has a report of your being assaulted on the way home from work.” Siobhan said. “Your firm has given you leave to recover. They sent a fruit basket.”
“I ate the fruit,” Gwen offered. “It was good.”
Kim started to shrug. Thought better of it. “I wasn’t eating it.”
Siobhan shifted, putting the paper in her bag, then folded her hands. She took a big breath, like she was steeling herself for something, then asked, “Can you remember anything?”
Deep in her eyes were the ghosts of her own abduction. They called to the ones making Kim’s mind their playground. And suddenly she wasn’t breathing. Not panic breathing or hyperventilating or whatever. Just not breathing. Suspended between the moment of exhale and inhale.
It wasn’t that she was actually suspended, like time stood still. She could hear slash feel her heart beating, feel the pulse of blood in her throat subtly testing the strength of the stitches there. Hear the rustle of cloth as Gwen shifted at the bottom of the bed and a slight creak of Prairie’s chair as she leaned forward. It was just she wasn’t breathing. Her eyes darted left, right, up, right, left until the muscles at the back of the sockets ached.
She could feel each thread of her sheets against her sore skin. Could feel the spread of her back against the mattress. Could feel the way the fourth toe on her left foot bent to the left, catching against the sheet. She could feel all these things that ground her in this moment, in this room, with her friends, yet for that suspended moment between exhale and inhale she was back in that place, in the dark, with whisper-thin strands of something jamming into her skin waiting to be yanked around by the puppet master in the shadows.
Her temples went numb. Then her cheekbones followed. Her fingertips. Her lips. Her teeth. And then she slip-stepped that half-step back into herself, detaching that which was her from the body that housed it to form a safe buffer between herself and the threat her mind sensed.
The space between what was her and the shell of what people saw as her she filled with a field of static that pulsed a song. Cornflake Girl by Tori Amos. The song swelled, like the foam in a fire suppression system, to fill the space between and form a protective barrier to drift behind, safe from the words that came out of her mouth with robotic precision.
“There were three of them. Gender undefined. There was the sense of one being female but I cannot confirm that as I never saw any of them. One appears to have the ability to manipulate people’s bodies. Possibly with the strings we’ve seen. One may be a bard or have the ability to compel others. The third showed no use of abilities except possibly healing. Although that is a guess. They would drain me, I believe, then jolt me with energy. Perhaps that was the third one doing that. I do not know to what purpose. They called me Rapunzel and used what may have been a comb on me, but I did not see this comb, only felt it.”
She paused. Frowned. Dug deep into her memory. “My memory of exactly what was said is hazy but I recall a reference to the word paradigm. I do not know what that means but they said it a few times so it feels important. Something about picking people outside the paradigm.”
Another pause. Another frown. Then she continued in the same inflection-less tone. “Additionally one of the three, the one potentially with compulsion abilities with a gender I read as male based on voice tone, inflection, and vocabulary seems to not be on the same page as the other two. But it is possible this was subterfuge. A means to gain my cooperation through sympathy or empathy.”
“While there are three of them, that I can be certain of, it felt to me that two of them were a unit, the type of unit as undefined, and the third one was on the outside of that. I found I had a measure of sympathy for the third one, but my feelings in this situation cannot be trusted as I suspect they were manipulating me to some end.”
She came to a stop and focused intently on the ceiling. It was off-white. There was a stain in the corner to the left. The stain looked like a bird, its wings spread. Maybe a moose, viewed from above. Lighter colored ripples radiated from the stain, like the mass of it was a stone dropped into a pool of water. Air flitted across it, faces forming in the substance slash not substance filtered through her Magick. An arm formed, flowing from nothing, fingers waved in greeting. Air darted down, tangling those fingers in Gwen’s hair. Gave a tug.
“Hey!” Gwen’s indignant gasp drew Kim from the haze, focusing her attention as Gwen slapped a head down on her head and frowned into nothing. She blinked and jerked her head towards the corner where the stain resided, nudging Air in that direction. The features in the air sharpened, came fully to focus, as the element quirked its sharp brows and blew Kim a kiss which carried across the room as a gentle breeze.
Despite the trauma numbness clinging to her senses, telling her to remain still, to give away nothing, a very slight smile lifted the corners of her mouth. Delight dancing in the shifting clouds of its eyes, Air moved to hover in the area Kim had indicated where ceiling met wall, then crossed its gossamer arms signaling it would go no further.
Air always had a mind of its own. It had been her first companion, coming uncalled while she wept in the woods behind her family’s house. Or perhaps it had been called by her tears. No matter, it had come through no expended effort on her part. She’d been sitting, dejected, on a cushion of fallen pine needles, fresh from the humiliation of a bus ride full of middle school aged neighbors that seemed to hate her if the way they laughed, jeered, pulled her hair, called her names, stole her books, and put things on the seats for her to sit on were any indication. She hadn’t understood what it was about her that drew their ire, but she’d for sure known it was something.
It was just those thoughts, of ‘maybe if I was different’, that had driven her into the woods that day. She’d had those thoughts many times. Had retreated to the woods many times. So she couldn’t say what it was about that day, that trip to the woods, that dejected sense of failure in being ‘normal’ that drew Air. It had never shared. It often didn’t.
Whether because it just expected her to know or it didn’t think it was relevant or a million other things because that was the thing with Air – it was a million things at once, everywhere and nowhere, full of nonsense and all the knowledge of the world it drifted through unseen. Regardless, something about that day, that dejection, that huddled form sitting arms locked around raised knees that cushioned tear-glazed cheeks, drew Air. It flitted around her. Lifted her hair. Snatched at her clothes. Whispered in her ear. Drew her mind from the despair.
She’d been young enough to believe in whimsy. To not immediately assume she was insane. If it had happened now, well she probably also wouldn’t have thought she was insane because Magick existed in the world and her adult brain understood that. Well, she might have initially thought she was insane…
A hand touched her arm, bare skin to bare skin, and her mind stepped off the wandering path it had followed, abandoning the secondary defense mechanism of distraction. Her eyes focused on Gwen who leaned in, her face scant inches from her own.
Gwen smiled. “Well, there you are.”
Kim gave a half-disparaging quirk of a laugh. “I went away?”
“For a minute. But, you’re back.” Gwen shifted to sit on the side of the bed, keeping her hand in contact with Kim’s arm. “You okay?”
The rest of the room, Siobhan and Prairie and the stain on the ceiling and Air twining around it, went away and all Kim saw was Gwen.
“No.” The corner of her mouth came up on a wry smile. “Definitely no.”
She felt Gwen’s power, like a hug from inside, blooming to engulf her. Tension and fear and numbness and suppressed screams and logic trails that lead nowhere fell away. Her shoulders relaxed against the pillows and she drew a deep breath.
“I’m glad you’re here.”
“Me too.”
“I could have killed you.” Kim’s voice was barely a whisper.
Gwen shrugged. “But, you didn’t.”
“But, I could have.”
“But, you didn’t.” Gwen lifted her brows, adding punch to her words. “Could have. Should have. Might have. Didn’t.”
“But-”
“Shhh.” Gwen pointed the index finger of her free-hand at Kim, waggling it within an inch of Kim’s nose. She kept the other resting gently on Kim’s arm, continuing to send her Magick to soothe. When Kim parted her lips to say something, anything, Gwen poked her gently on the tip of her nose. Another part of lips. Another poke. Part. Poke. Part. Poke.
In the face of that what could Kim do but shush? Slumping her shoulders against the mattress she turned her head to look at Siobhan.
“How are you holding up?”
“Seriously?” Siobhan brushed her hand over her forehead, shoving her hair back and dislodging her flower wreath.
Kim gave a delicate shrug. “We’ve established I tapped the crap out of Prairie and I nearly killed Gwen. So, yeah.”
“I’m fine.” Siobhan said it so fast there was no way Kim was believing it.
“Right.”
Sighing, Siobhan lowered her hand to play with the strap of her bag. “I punched you.”
“Okay.”
“And kicked you.”
“Okay.” Kim lifted her brows. The movement was getting easier. That was good. Brow lifts were kind of her go-to response to so many things. “I asked you to kill me. I don’t remember things so well, but that I remember.”
“I should have found a better solution.”
Another brow lift. Yep, that was so her go-to. “Uh huh. Climb off that pyre. Someone else needs the wood.”
“Screw you.” There was a level of vehemence in Siobhan’s tone that should have set Kim back, only, yeah, circumstances being what they were with Kim basically making a joke of what was probably a pretty traumatic situation it wasn’t unwarranted.
If there was one thing Kim was good at, it was provoking a response. Sometimes, like now, she even meant to poke the bear. It didn’t take a rocket surgeon to read Siobhan’s tension and while Kim was severely lacking in social skills and graces even she got that Siobhan needed the release. “You do not get to absolve me. I can feel guilty if I want to.”
“Yep. You can also acknowledge that you are human and you made the best choice at the time.” Kim nodded, all sage like. “Am I bruised? Yes. Was I bleeding?” A quick look to Prairie, a quick nod in response. “Yes. But, I survived. I didn’t think I would. Far as I’m concerned you made a good choice. We’re good. Now that we’ve processed that and have some kind of closure-”
Gwen lifted her hand and poked her in the nose again. “Stop with the joking.”
Kim brushed Gwen’s hand aside with the iv-free hand. “Its my default.” She turned her attention back to Siobhan as Air drifted from the ceiling and wove around Gwen to whisper in Kim’s ear. She tilted her head, listening for what Air had heard, then said, “You going to open the door?”
Siobhan turned to look towards the front of the cottage. “Huh?”
“There’s someone at the door.” Prairie stirred in her seat. Siobhan patted the air in her direction, indicating she should remain seated.
Kim continued, “I’d get it but,” she made a vague wave at her supine form, “ya know. Someone beat me up and left me for dead.”
Gwen face palmed. The glimmer in Prairie’s eyes hamstrung the look of censure she shot Kim. And Siobhan sighed, shook her head, and rose from the bed.
“Prairie? Can I remove this iv?”
“Can you?” Prairie shrugged. “Yes. Should you?”
“No?”
Prairie’s response was cut off as Siobhan came into the room trailed by Patti and Dempsey. Whether they came together or met at the door, who knew.
Before they were fully in the room there was a loud knock on the door. “Who is it?” Siobhan turned to call back.
“The big bad wolf,” Ivan’s deep timbers came clearly through the door. “Let me in.”
“I’m in my underwear!” Kim tried to call back, only her voice broke when she rose it to pitch across the cottage. So, Gwen, being the helpful person she was picked up the gambit and tossed it the rest of the way. “We’re in our underwear!”
“Really?” Ben sauntered into the room, hands in pockets, a big-assed grin on his face, drawing out the word like it was taffy. He took in the room, Prairie in her seat, Gwen perched on the side of the bed, Kim doing her best to look like anything but a convalescent and failing pretty much completely and his smile deepened. “Lies.”
Prairie met his gaze, nodding slightly at his visual assessment of Kim’s condition, then responded with a dimpled smile. “We are, in fact, liars.”
Ivan strode in, wedging his large form around Ben to move over to the bed. The room, small at the best of times, was starting to get claustrophobic even with Siobhan and Patti opting to hover in the doorway to converse in quiet tones.
“You’re alive!” Ivan closed his hands around Kim’s shoulders in a grip just shy of hurting and lifted her from the bed to drag her into a bear hug.
“Ugh!” she batted weakly at his arm, “Iv!”
“At least the catheter’s gone.” Gwen muttered.
When Ivan didn’t put her down, instead leaning back only enough that he could get a really good look at her, Kim gave a soft smile that reached all the way from her eyes to her heart. “I’m okay. Are you okay?”
“I’m okay. I’m not the one that’s been unconscious for a week.” Ivan lowered her carefully back to the pillows and Kim made a big show of rubbing her cheek with her hand. “Unconscious for a week. Guess I know how Ben feels on most of our adventures now.”
“Hurtful,” Ben said, hopping up to sit on the foot of the bed. Ivan moved down to sit next to Ben with a leg folded under him and the other dangling off the side of the bed.
“Hey, Kim,” Patti called from the door.
“Hey, Patti.”
“You’re not dead.”
“That’s the report I heard too.”
Sass gave a “Peep” and waved from Patti’s cleavage.
“You have a mouse in your boobs,” Kim stated the obvious to which Patti nodded, “I do. Did you forget Sass? Are you brain damaged?”
“Wow. Thanks for asking. No. I am not, in fact, brain damaged. Am I?” Kim directed the question to Prairie who shook her head slowly. “No more so than before.”
Kim pressed her hand to her chest “The love. I feel it. So hard.” She eyed the rapidly filling bed. “Could we move this party to the living area?”
“No.” Despite being as soft as ever Prairie’s voice rang with authority. “No moving the patient.”
“The patient is feeling better. The patient is feeling like she would like to be fully dressed and upright.”
“No.”
Kim’s lower lip pouted out. “Fine. Whatever. Let’s get some cake and streamers in here while we’re at it.”
The look Prairie slanted at Kim was fully of humor. “No.”
Another knock. Siobhan excused herself to respond. From the other room came Dan’s voice, “Abe was with me when the messenger found me.”
A light voice that somehow still carried over the general hum in Kim’s bedroom said, “I can stay in here. Or go home?”
“You were part of this. If you want to hear what Ben has I’d be okay with it, but let me just check.”
“Okay.”
Siobhan came to the door. “Kim, Dempsey’s friend Abe was with us when we got you out. They came with him today. Is it okay if they come in?”
Kim shifted her gaze around the packed room. “Would I even notice?” She sighed and straightened the sheet over her chest. “Introduce us?”
Patti stepped into the room to clear the doorway. A moment later a blonde in a priest cassock stepped tentatively into the room. Their hair was a kinetic thing, like a dandelion head gone to seed, its seeds moving on an unseen wind. Well, not so unseen.
Kim gave Air an arch look to which it gave a visible shrug and left off playing its fingers through the admittedly tempting puffball of hair which was about all Kim could see of the new arrival as they had their head lowered, their gaze on their feet, and their shoulders rounded to thrust the top of that head into the greatest position of prominence n their slight frame.
“Hey,” Kim said. A great conversational gambit. The new entries head lifted, the fluff of hair parting to reveal eyes dark as a crow’s. The gaze darted to take in the room, the occupants, the bed, Kim, and probably even the moose-antler-shaped stain on the ceiling while the face remained tipped up towards Kim. The distraction of the room and all its shinies – yes, let’s further the impression of a crow, huh? – gave Kim time to take in the features of… was it Dempsey’s friend? Dan’s?
Their cheeks were rounded, the softness of youth only partially melted to reveal cheekbones beneath, and Kim suspected if the mouth, now set to the side with bottom lip caught between teeth in concentration, smiled those cheeks would swallow the dark eyes so they appeared raisins in rising yeast dough. There was something about the set of the mouth or some glint in those dark eyes that said this was a face that smiled a lot. Kim thought she might like this person, given a chance.
If they were an element it would be air. There was just something about them that spoke of that. Some quickness of the mind behind watchful eyes or maybe it was the dandelion puff hair or possibly it was the way they stood, weight forward so their body kind of teetered on the precipice of movement. Something. It was little wonder Kim saw Air creeping back in to wind itself around the cassock clad figure.
Kim was just about to make some kind of obvious harrumph noise or something when the newcomer stopped their visual inventory and lifted their chin to fully meet Kim’s eyes.
“Hi.” They lifted their hand, a tentative gesture, and gestured with fingers that were black as pitch. Kim strained to see. Was that a tattoo? “I’m Abe.”
Kim adjusted herself against the stack of pillows, hitching her shoulders up on the pile to elevate her head. “Hi Abe. I’m Kim. Are you a musician?”
Abe didn’t even blink. “Artist.” A head wobble, then they qualified. “Tattoo artist.”
“Yep.” Kim didn’t explain. Abe didn’t ask. They just went up two notches in her book.
Air wound around Abe, sinuous as a cat. Kim watched the movement with an assessing eye.
“Say paradigm. No,” she corrected herself, “say,” she dug into her memory, prodding at the cotton-batting wrapping it, drawing out a phrase, “They really need to learn to control their anger.”
The way Abe cocked their head to look at Kim over the side of their nose like a raptor eyed prey along its beak furthered the whole bird vibe. “They really need to learn to control their anger.’
Air grabbed the words. Tossed them about. Sifted them through translucent fingers. Lifted those fingers to its mouth and licked them. Kim had less facility to filter the words so she had to use her ears and her brain and neither of those things was sending off any alarm bells.
She poked a finger into memory, hooked her mental fingers around a slippery thread of thought, and pulled it to the front of her mind. Wiggly fucker! Frowning as memory pulled the thought back like it was on a bungee, Kim quickly asked, “Say,we need you to break. And we’re very good at breaking things.”
The room went silent. Silence. It’s a term that’s used often but in fact is a concept that is hard to embrace when it comes to sentient creatures. People – and animals but for the sake of this ramble people – make noise. Even when they aren’t talking. They shift. They breath. They cross their legs. They scuff their foot subtly against the carpet or the hardwood. It is very rare that a person, let alone a group of people, is silent. Yet the group attained that in that moment as Kim’s words fell on the still air. Like they all keyed to the words, caught their significance, needed to follow the thread of the clue those words provided to the experience Kim had endured.
Siobhan’s breath caught, loud in the silent room. Kim’s gaze went to her and they shared a look full of ghosts. Abe drew both their attention when they said, “We need you to break. And we’re good at breaking things.”
Air practically snatched the words from Abe’s lips. Scooping them up in both hands it drew them to its face and then into itself. Kim watched, not moving, barely breathing. She considered if she could lunge from the bed and grab Abe if Air indicated they were one of the “They” – and, damn, they really needed to come up with a name to call the fuckers.
Air tilted its face to the ceiling, the expression on its exquisite features contemplative. Then it floated to Abe, wrapped itself around them twice and came to a stop with its face on Abe’s shoulder, its expression serene.
In Kim’s mind an image formed of Abe lunging at Kim followed by one of Abe falling, gasping, face blue . Kim interpreted this as Air would watch the newbie. Good enough.
Well, that settled that. “You can stay.”
The bird eyes widened. “That’s it?”
“Did you help get me out of the Pit of Pain?”
“That’s what its called?”
“In my head. Yes.”
“Then,” despite the nod they gave being small it set the swirl of hair around Abe’s head, well, swirling. “Yes.”
Kim nodded right back. Her hair did not swirl. Her hair. Thought stopped. Static rushed in. She stared sightless passed Gwen, past Ben, past Ivan and at the wall at the foot of the bed, giving it the attention one might give a great work or art or a bomb about to explode. There was a rushing sensation as darkness came flying up from the back of her head and threatened to swamp her. Her sight, locked on the wall, grew dim.
And then a hand touched her arm and she was able to breathe.
“There you are.” Gwen said as Kim sucked a huge breath in through her parted lips, more a gasp than an actual breath if you were to place some value on it.
Kim fingered the strand of hair lying over her breast. “I need scissors.”
It was Siobhan that responded to this, taking a big step to clear the space from the doorway to the bed. She pushed her face in close, demanding Kim’s attention. “No, you don’t.”
Kim narrowed her eyes, trying to project her utter and complete certainty into the gaze she bore into Siobhan’s. “Yes, I do.”
“No, you do not.”
“Arrrrgghh!” Kim screamed. She snatched the pillow out from under her head and flung it. Siobhan barely moved back in time to not get wailed by it. And only through a swift tilt to the left did Ben avoid taking a face full of cushion and rage.
Ivan stood from the bed and stooped to retrieve the pillow. He gripped it, to put it kindly, like it owed him money. The stress on his knuckles must have alerted him to this fact because he looked down, took a breath, and loosened his grip from ‘you owe me blood’ to ‘my dude, you drunk’. A slight improvement that the pillow was probably grateful for.
Very carefully Ivan smoothed the surface of the pillow then moved to slip it back under Kim’s head. She gave him a narrow-eyed glower but didn’t fight when he gently lifted her head and slipped the pillow under it.
“You are not a damsel,” he muttered.
She rolled her eyes. “I might be a damsel.”
“Yeah,” he stepped back, a big grin showcased to effect by the frame of his goatee, “No.”
“I want to cut my hair,” Kim said to no one in particular but potentially to the ceiling.
Despite the comment not being directed her way, Siobhan answered. “No.”
“It’s my hair,” Kim told the stubborn ceiling.
“If you want to cut your hair in a week we can discuss it.”
“It’s my fucking hair!” There was very little heat in the words and whether it was for the ceiling, which was still giving him a big bunch of blank nothing back, or Siobhan it was Patti that responded, rushing over to the bed and leaning over to stare right into Kim’s face, effectively breaking the stare off with the ceiling.
“Don’t be a bitch! She’s worried. We’re all worried.”
“So,” Kim said, neatly redirecting her attention around Patti with the skill of someone who’d had a lot of practice avoiding the stare and scream of someone leaning into her face and speaking once more to the non-confrontational ceiling. “Siobhan punched and kicked me. Prairie apparently slit my throat. What did you do?”
Patti drew a harsh breath through her nostrils. The air ruffled Kim’s face but she remained unmoved.
“Cudgel. To the head.”
Kim poked her tongue into her cheek. “Good call. So, Sass hit me too?”
Patti chuffed a laugh that kind of sounded a little like a sob. Not that Kim was shifting her gaze to confirm. “No. And I think Sass is confused by all this. They’ve been spending a lot of time sitting on the bed looking at you.”
“Quality. Always wanted a cute stalker.”
“Seriously,” Patti said, exhaustion riding her words. She shifted back so she wasn’t in Kim’s face and smoothed the sheet along the edge of the bed. “Don’t do that again.”
Kim finally shifted her attention from the ceiling to Patti. “Get kidnapped? Real high on my list of Nope.”
Patti’s gaze was steady and it dripped with frustration. “You joke.”
“Can’t do anything else. Crying gives me a headache. And it already hurts. Kind of,” she raised a hand to prod near her temple, “here. Like someone hit me with a cudgel.”
“Ha! I hit you on the top of the head.” Patti lowered her gaze, shook her head. “It kind of sucked.”
“For me too.” Kim lifted her brows, threw a shrug. “I’m guessing.”
A loud knock came on the door. Kim had to say the acoustics in this cottage straight up rocked.
“We’re in here!” Ben hollered without getting up from the foot of the bed. Guessed if the imminent threat of a pillow to the face couldn’t move him a knock didn’t stand a chance of doing so.
Dan stepped over to the bed and looked down at Kim. “Glad you aren’t dead.”
“Me too. Did you shoot me? I have a tally. Siobhan punched and or kicked me. Patti bashed my head in with a bat-”
“Cudgel,” Patti injected, tone wry, as she moved to stand against the wall near the foot of the bed.
Kim continued like she hadn’t been interrupted. “Prairie slashed my throat.” She slanted a glance at Prairie to confirm. Prairie gave a delicate shrug and nod. “So, did you shoot me?”
“Nope.”
“Stab, bash, kick, or punch?”
“Nope.”
“Spell me?”
“You were eating Magick.”
“So, that’s a nope too. Why didn’t you get in on the beatdown?”
“Doing something else.”
Before Kim could press further, not that she really needed to but it was kinda fun to needle Dan – the man did not flinch, Dempsey came to the door. He looked around the room, his attention alighting on Ben. “You sent a messenger?” Seeing Abe tucked up against the wall near the door in a position that got them out of the worst of the crush, he acknowledged them with a lift of the chin. “Abe.”
Abe hitched the strap of their bag up. “Dempsey.”
“Didn’t expect to see you here.”
“I was with Dan when the message came. He told me to come.”
Dempsey looked over at Kim, giving her a quick visual once over, then looked back at Abe. “You need an intro?”
“We’re good,” Kim said in an even tone.
“You sure?”
Kim gave him a steady stare, trying to read his intentions. Dude was a closed book, a locked box, pick your euphemism for he was real hard to read. Honestly, she still had her concerns about the guy, even though he’d been around a while. It was that whole hard-to-read thing. Made her uneasy. Not that she was good at reading people, but she was good at setting a base of expectations based upon their actions and words and this guy, yeah, she hadn’t been able to develop that for him yet. Played his cards too close to his chest.
“Why are you asking?”
Dempsey shrugged. “It’s polite.” His voice rose slightly on the word ‘polite’, making it a question.
“I’m not so good at polite.”
“I’m starting to catch that.” Dempsey propped his shield in the doorway and stepped into the room. It instantly felt twenty percent smaller. And harder to breathe. Like the oxygen was eaten up. Kim’s breath caught in her throat. Her heart picked up about, oh, sixty percent. And her eyes darted, looking for an exit. It wasn’t rational. She knew it wasn’t rational. But he just… loomed.
Gwen reached over and lay her hand on Kim’s leg above the sheet. And she could inhale. Damn it. This panic shit sucked eggs through a straw.
Kim shifted to give Gwen a look of thanks. Gwen just quirked her brows.
“Have you been doing that a lot?”
Gwen shrugged. “Define a lot?”
“You gonna lose your shit?” Dempsey asked, proving he rivaled Kim’s exceptional social skills. Rather than being offended by the blunt question she found herself warming a little bit to him. A very little bit.
Kim shifted her attention back to Dempsey. “Probably.”
Dempsey scratched his jaw. “Okay. You a threat if you do?”
“Probably.”
“Okay.” And like that, Dempsey shifted his attention back to Ben. “You’re message said you had something?”
Enter The Woods 