I shook my head, breaking his stare. He said, “It will.” And he left the bath, wet footprints trailing him, his clothes molded to his body.
I shut the door and removed my shorts, tossing them and the now bloody towel both into the stall on top of my T-shirt. I held a folded washcloth to the wound in my knee and another to my collarbone. The bleeding soaked through the washcloths and I added another, pressing to stop the flow, knowing that the terrycloth would give the blood plenty of surface to clot on.
I could shift to heal the wounds, and shift back, but there was no way to explain it to my visitors. Ten minutes later, the flow had stopped. And my heartbeat had slowed and steadied. In the bedroom, I pulled on a pair of shorts, a tee, and my robe. Tightened the belt ruthlessly.
Embarrassed but not willing to show it, I marched to the kitchen and plopped onto a chair at the table, one hand holding each cloth. It was an ungainly march but it was all the pride I had left at the moment.
Bruiser was nowhere to be seen. Evangelina didn’t look up when I entered, as if allowing me the privacy I needed, though I’d never thought her capable of such delicacy of feeling. She pushed away the cloth on my knee, murmuring, “Let me see.” She prodded and pushed at the wound, which welled with blood. She replaced the cloth and worked my leg, as if checking the joint and tendons. “Does this hurt? This? How about this?” I said no to each query and she opened a sterile packet to remove a long metallic probe. Which she inserted into the wound.
I hissed and gripped the chair seat with my free hand to keep myself from slapping her, holding my chest wound tight enough to hurt myself. “Do you have the faintest idea what you’re doing?” I asked.
“Not really,” she lied with a small smile. “I just like hurting you. It’s deep, but it feels like it missed bone and tendon. It needs some stitches.”
“No,” I said, ungraciously. “Put some of that antibiotic stuff on it and tape it.” I didn’t want to worry about stitches when I shifted next. And it was starting to really hurt. And I was mortified about the shower with Bruiser. Could I be any more lewd? Or stupid? I had a bad feeling I could. “No stitches. No doctor.” I pulled the robe open and removed the pad.
Evangelina shrugged and said, “Let me see the ribs.”
Evangelina hissed and said something under her breath. I thought it was a witch curse, a bad one I’d heard Molly use once. I tended to bring out the foul language in my friends. At the thought of friend, I looked up to see Evangelina staring at the parallel, slashing tears on my chest. There were two above the collarbone and two below, angling up, as if Leo had tried to reposition his hand midstrike to take out my throat. He’d come mighty close.
“Don’t bite my head off,” she said gently, “but you’ve got a lot of scars here. And no signs of surgical or medical intervention.”
The scars of previous vamp attacks were fine lines, the scaring all that was left of what would have been fatal attacks. The nonmortal ones hadn’t scarred at all. I pressed the pad back over the wound. “I heal fast. I’ve got extra large sterile bandages in my own first-aid kit.” I pointed to a drawer. “If you’ll get me a large one and smear antibiotic on the cuts, I’ll be fine.”
“I won’t,” she blew out a frustrated breath. “But you are a stubborn ... woman.”
The pause said that Evangelina knew I wasn’t human, but wasn’t certain what form of supernat I was. When she didn’t pursue the get-thee-to-a-doctor-y comment or the you-are-not-human train of thought, and went instead to find my bandages, I relaxed. “You’re okay,” I said, “for a ballsy witch.”
“And you’re okay too, for an ornery whatever-you-are.” She peeled the backing from an adhesive bandage and squirted antibiotic ointment onto my wounds. Carefully, she laid the bandage over them, pressing the edges to seal against my skin. “It’s still bleeding,” she said, and lifted my hand, placing it over the wound, applying pressure. When she took her hand away, I continued the pressure so she could bandage my foot. When she was done, Evangelina washed her hands at the sink, her back to me. “I used to worry about Molly being friends with you. I still do. But more because of the lifestyle and the danger you seem to attract than because of who you are, intrinsically.” She turned back to me, surveying me in the kitchen chair, in my borrowed white robe that came with the house. “Yes. You’ll do.”
I warmed from the comments and smiled at her, a small, uncertain smile.
“Shall we see what the envelope holds?” When I nodded once, she asked, “Why didn’t you want us to touch it?”
“Explosives. Poisons. Anthrax.” I stood. “Let me get dressed.”
Evangelina’s eyebrows went up. “Explosives. Poisons. Anthrax,” she quoted. “My, my. I’ll look it over for signs of magical tampering. From a distance, of course.”
“Good idea,” I said, though I hadn’t smelled any magic either. When I was dressed in jeans, a sweatshirt, and a bra— protective clothing—I met Evangelina at the door. Bruiser, dressed in jeans and a loose tee was squatting before the envelope, studying it. Not looking at him, I knelt beside him and bent as if to see it up close, but I was scent-searching. I breathed in, through mouth and nose. And was surprised when I smelled Girrard DiMercy.