Her gaze shifted away from him to where he still held her hand in one of his. “Do you feel it too?” Her voice was scratchy from disuse.
“What do you mean?” The moment he spoke, he felt it. A warm, hard nub between their palms. An object that hadn’t existed moments before was suddenly, undeniably, unexplainably there. He yanked away from her. In a fluid motion, she scooped the item out of his palm before he had a chance to see it and clasped it in her fist. “What is it?”
“A bullet.” Tears welled in her eyes. “The bullet that killed Lathan.” She cradled her fist to her heart, wincing when she touched her injured breast.
James sat back in his seat. The past thirty seconds replayed in his mind. One moment there was nothing between their palms; the next there was something. Something she claimed was the bullet that had killed Lathaniel. Impossible. And yet, James had felt it. He opened his hand. A crimson smear of blood.
“I…vvv…dr…” Her speech slurred, her tone disintegrating into a guttural groan. Her eyes darted sideways, seemed to stick there, trembling inside their sockets, eyelids blinking so hard he could actually hear them clicking.
“Evanee? What’s wrong?”
Her head jerked to the side in the same trembling motion as her eyes. Her lips pulled back over her teeth, her entire face contorted in a grimace. Sounds he associated with death came from somewhere inside her—grunts and moans of an agony so great words didn’t matter. Every one of her muscles tensed, held tight, and then quivered. Her face went gray, her lips purple.
Death had been James’s friend, his coach, his advisor, so he recognized Death when he saw it crouching over her. “You are not taking her. She is mine. Not yours.”
He grabbed her shoulders, inserted himself between her and Death. Underneath his hands, he felt unyielding power and instantly recognized what was happening. A seizure. Only a seizure. Death wouldn’t claim her today. He released his hold on her.
Not knowing what else to do, he stroked her face, rubbed her arm, tried to hold her hand, but her fingers were curled in tight. “Evanee. I’m here. You’re not alone. I’m here. I’ve got you. I’m here.” He kept repeating the words until the tension relaxed out of her. It was ending. Her eyes rolled slow and unseeing around their sockets. Her head lolled loose on her shoulders.
He gulped down mouthfuls of air as if he’d been the one to go through it. His heart charged around inside his chest. He sat next to her and held her limp hand tightly in both of his, waiting. Finally, her gaze found his and locked on. Clarity had returned to her eyes.
“How are you feeling?”
She raised her hand, palm up. Somehow, he translated the gesture to mean she wasn’t sure.
“You don’t know? Or you’re confused?” he said. “You just had a seizure. Are you an epileptic?” She didn’t answer, but he could see her taking in his words, processing them, understanding them. “Are you having trouble talking?”
She dipped her chin and squeezed his hand—an acknowledgment.
“Give it a few minutes.”
She swallowed and ran her tongue over her teeth.
“Are you thirsty?”
A squeeze.
He held the glass to her lips and let her drink.
“Bllt. Nd bllt.” Her words were slurred so badly he didn’t understand. She slapped around the bedding awkwardly until she found the bullet. Bullet. Need bullet. Finding the metal soothed her. She fell promptly asleep, but he kept a vigil for any further seizure activity.
Twenty minutes later, she stirred, stretched, opened her eyes.
The questions floating in his mind burst out at her. “Can you talk now? You had a seizure. Are you epileptic? Do you need medication? Or was it an effect of the concussion?”
“I’m all right,” she said, as if she were soothing him, but her voice lacked comfort, seemed stuck in a flat monotone. “It was the dream. My brain short-circuited—I had a seizure—when I woke up with the bullet. It’s this strange thing that sometimes happens to me when I sleep. Dead people give me things.”
Dead people give me things. Her hand lay open, revealing the spent bloody round. A bullet she didn’t have until she awakened. A bullet that somehow materialized out of thin air to suddenly be between their palms.
He never spoke like this, but these were the only words in his mind. “What the hell?”
“I know. It’s hard to wrap your mind around. The look on your face is exactly how I felt the first few times it happened.” Her words were the correct ones, but they lacked animation and emotion. They were words spoken by a robot. Someone so far beyond mere sadness and depression that they skimmed the edge of suicide.
“It’s happened before?” He couldn’t keep the incredulity from his tone. He couldn’t stop staring at the bullet. It felt like reality had just shifted a click or two off the norm and he hadn’t caught up yet.
“The first time was the worst. I woke up with a girl’s eyeball.”
Invisible fingers tightened around James’s neck, choking off the easy flow of air. He stood, turned away from her so nothing on his face would betray his thoughts. A girl’s eyeball, she’d said. Janie Carson’s? Was Evanee getting the evidence of his kills, not Lathaniel? Was she playing some bizarre game with him? Had all this been a setup? Just to trap him?
He inhaled a deep, slow breath, held it for a few seconds, then blew it out in a steady stream. His gut told him she wasn’t playing him, wasn’t setting him up, and certainly wasn’t trying to trap him.
“What happened the other times?” He spoke while he stared at the wall, unwilling to face her while his deeds were under discussion.
“I woke up with a wad of hair and a tooth one time. Another time a ring. And now this.”
He felt upside down, like he was an hourglass and someone had just turned him over. His heart beat inside his brain from the pressure.
“James?” Her voice was small and fragile. It was the first time she’d used his name, and it felt like the sweetest melody to his ears.