Returning with the cool washcloth, Dee tossed it to the floor. “What am I thinking? She’s soaked now and it’s not helping.”
Kat turned her head slowly, pressing against my palm, and my heart freaking fluttered. My fingers splayed across her too-warm cheek. She murmured something too low for me to understand, so I leaned closer. “Kat?”
Her body shuddered. “Daemon…”
“I’m here.”
She shuddered again, turning her head away. Her face pinched, and she called out for me again, and the sound of my name was like being hit by an Arum. These tiny, pitiful sounds escaped her parted lips.
“We need to get her into something dry. Maybe that will help?” my sister offered.
She didn’t sound convinced, but I nodded. Moving as fast as lightning, Dee grabbed a dry nightgown out of one of the dressers. It was some kind of sleep jersey, with the number eleven on the back.
Even though I didn’t want to leave her side, I pushed away from the bed and turned my back, giving Kat privacy as Dee changed her out of the soaked shirt.
It didn’t help.
Nothing did, and when she started shivering uncontrollably, I was about to lose my freaking mind. I wrapped her in a blanket, but her body was shaking so hard the bed trembled.
I couldn’t take it anymore. “We need to take her to the hospital.”
Dee agreed, not that it mattered. One way or another, I was taking her there. Gathering her in my arms, I started down the stairs. I was outside, letting my human skin shed away when my sister stopped me.
“Daemon, we have to drive there.”
“Too slow.”
She grabbed my arm, her eyes meeting mine. “I know you’re worried, but we can’t show up there with no car. There’s no way we can explain that. We need to take the car. I’ll drive.”
I exhaled harshly.
“I’ll drive really fast and break every speed limit there is, but we need to do this like normal people would.”
Dammit, she was right, and I hated that.
Climbing into the back of Dee’s Jetta, I held Kat close. I didn’t know what to do. So I spoke to her in my native language, then realized she probably couldn’t hear it since it wasn’t something we spoke out loud.
But the strangest thing happened.
Kat stilled, and her breathing deepened.
Gathering her against my chest, I bent over, pressing my forehead to her flushed one, and kept talking to her, telling her about this stupid TV show I’d seen the other day, knowing she couldn’t hear me, but it was something and that’s all I had. And after I recapped the show, I closed my eyes and told her in my own language the truth.
I don’t know how to make you better. I wish I did, but please stay with me. I need you, and I can’t lose you. Not now. Not ever.
Chapter 4
Running my hands through my hair, I paced around the uncomfortable plastic chairs in the hospital waiting room. Dee was sitting in one, her knees tucked against her chest and her cheek resting against her knees. An older couple sat on the other side, and I was confident that I was probably going to see someone die before anyone came out and checked on the man.
A nurse had immediately taken Kat when we arrived, forcing me to place her down on one of those rolling beds with a thin mattress. I hadn’t wanted to let her go, let some human guy who looked a few years older than me wheel her off behind doors I wasn’t allowed to pass.
Her mother had been there. She’d stepped out into the waiting room long enough to thank us and to tell us she would let us know what was happening once she knew.
That was three hours ago.
“She’s going to be okay,” Dee said when I passed her on my ten-hundredth lap. “She has to be.”
No. That wasn’t correct. There was no “has to be” anything in life, especially when it came to humans. Their fragility was the only thing constant. Humans were here one second, caught a fever, and could be gone in the next hour.
Closing my eyes, I stopped pacing and reached up, rubbing the back of my neck. There was no warm tingling. She was either too far away in the hospital or…
God, if something had happened to her, I didn’t know what I would do. I couldn’t even wrap my head around it, couldn’t fathom it.
“Daemon,” Dee said quietly, urgently.
Opening my eyes, I turned around to see Kat’s mom coming out of the double doors. Dee was already standing, but I beat her to it. “Is Kat okay?”
Eyes shadowed, she motioned us back toward the hall as she held the door open. My heart pounded erratically as we wasted no time crossing the distance. Once inside, I saw a man waiting for us. I was struck by the odd sense of familiarity as I stared at the dark-haired doctor. It took me a second to realize he was the same doctor who’d treated Kat the night she was attacked at the library.
Ms. Swartz smiled tiredly as she nodded and ran a hand over her polka-dot scrubs. “Katy is…she’s okay.”
My knees felt weak as I stepped back, leaning against the wall.
“Oh, thank God.” Dee placed her hand over her mouth.