Lukas grimaced. “Feeling guilty. You need to have a chat with him and let him know he didn’t do anything wrong.”
He probably means that literally , she thought. What would have happened to Teufel if she had crossed the Pale? In the heat of the moment, she hadn’t given it a moment’s thought. Her San Diego mount, Mesa, was a great quarter horse, and Meg felt affection for her, but she belonged to the Border Patrol and as such, was ridden by other agents. Meg had worked hard not to develop too close an attachment to her.
Here, things were different. Each rider was assigned his or her own horse, and no one else rode it. It was expected that some sort of magickal bonding would take place. Meg had been riding Teufel since she arrived, and if that was happening, she didn’t have the Gift to know it.
Moving stiffly, she elbowed herself to a sitting position, giving her head a quick shake when Lukas moved to help her. At the same time, Heath reached over to the left and showed Meg a thermos.
“Tea?” he offered.
When she didn’t move, Lukas took it and unscrewed the black matte plastic cap. He poured steaming brown tea into the cap and held it out to her. She wasn’t going to drink any of it, but she opened her mouth and the scalding, astringent liquid dribbled onto her tongue.
“It wasn’t a good time for any of us,” Heath said to her. “But at least we know it’s real. The Hunt.” His voice reeked with awe.
“Yeah, swell,” she retorted, to hide her freak-out. This was all a little too real for her comfort. “ You didn’t get shot.”
Eddie turned around, looked down at Meg, and grimaced.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It was just a little…” He waggled his fingers. He had a special little Gift in addition to Second Sight—he could hurl blasts of debilitating energy from his hands. Sort of like hitting someone with just a little bit of lightning.
“I’m okay,” she told him, remembering her euphoria, wondering if that was why she was crashing so hard now. Nothing else would have stopped her. She’d been seized by madness, designed to lure her across the Pale, so she would die.
“We weren’t fast enough. We’ll get better,” Heath put in.
I was fast enough , Meg thought.
The van fell into another silence. Heath said, “We debriefed while you were out.” He smiled faintly. “Lukas told Eddie it was quite common to wet your pants the first few times.”
“ Guete ou. Lucky for you,” Eddie shot back, but Heath didn’t even acknowledge his salvo.
It was very different back home, even after deaths and murders and some moron’s intestines exploding because they were filled with bags of heroin. Her compadres at the Border Patrol pulled crazy practical jokes on each other, drank together. That was why Jack had been so shaky when she had broken down crying over the baby.
Six months’ leave of absence. That left all kinds of doors open. Jack would probably be in the middle of his first rebound.
“We’re home,” Lukas announced, almost as if he could read her mind, and she needed reminding that Germany was home now.