If Gollum had gotten drunk and fucked the monster in the original Alien movie, their spawn would be the prettier version of these demons.
I wrung out the sponge, cleaning under Ro’s chin and along each arm, my fingertips lingering over his palpitating pulse.
“Ferdinand was their main target, but we were caught in the crossfire.” Drio’s hands balled into fists. “That betraying Rasha fuck caught Ro right as one of the shedim pinned Ferdinand down. The demon sent his magic into Ferdinand, Ferdinand’s ice flowed into Ro and…” Drio glanced at the bed, then cleared his throat. “Ferdinand is dead, but that attack wasn’t random.”
He tossed a pointed leathery ear onto the bed. A purple pointed leathery ear. Shedim were burnt-orange.
I dropped the sponge in the water, wiped off my hands and reached for the ear. It had been cleanly severed. “You did the signature spell?”
“Being attacked right after learning what we had about Ilya? Ro didn’t think it was a coincidence. He’d sliced the ear off for us to test so I tested it. I want the witch behind this.”
“What will you do to her?”
“If he doesn’t pull through? It’s going to be war.” He glanced at Ro one last time and left.
Rohan was going to pull through, but Tessa had to pay for what she’d done.
I whipped out my phone. “Where is she?”
My eyes were glued to every twitch of Ro’s, constantly checking him for fever, for an improvement in color, for his continued breathing.
“Who?” Gelman said.
“Tessa. Don’t give me any bullshit about her being in Santa Barbara. She’s here. She attacked Rohan.” My voice cracked.
Gelman dragged in a breath. “Tessa’s dead.”
“Impossible.”
“Her burned body was found.”
My hand tightened on my phone. “Murdered?”
“Burned from the inside. Black magic. The Los Angeles coven was trying to keep it a secret.”
“When?”
“Nava.” Gelman sounded wrung out.
“When?” I growled.
“Last week.”
If that was true, then Tessa wouldn’t have been able to bind the shedim. But if it wasn’t Tessa, then every lead we had just came to jack shit. I hurled my burner phone at the wall with a screamed curse.
My attempts to wake Ro up yielded nothing and more nothing. I kept at it until I was lightheaded and my whole body ached. Every breath was energy I resented expending on myself.
Finally, deep inside me, a faint bloom of magic unfurled. That same primal silkiness as when I’d portalled. I caught my breath, barely daring to hope. Eyes screwed tight, I visualized stoking that bloom from a pale pink nub to a deep red bloom, the flower growing and stretching, pushing into every inch of me and flowing out into Rohan.
“Nava.” It was a whisper and his eyes only fluttered open for the briefest millisecond, but my heart soared.
“I’m here.”
It was like a fever breaking. He didn’t wake up, but he became warm to the touch, his color turned normal, and his breathing evened out, deep and steady.
Exhausted, I crawled onto the bed beside him and let myself sleep.
“Nee?”
I rubbed my eyes, but Leo wasn’t a hallucination. “You shouldn’t be here. You’ll get sick.”
“I’ll be okay for a short period.” She already sounded strained from being on this side of the wards. “Rabbi Abrams helped me across.”
“You told him?”
“Old news.” She stood at the edge of the bed. “Ro’s okay?”
Rohan stirred and rolled over, the first movement he’d made.
Tension ebbed out of my body. I motioned for her to follow me out of his room so we didn’t wake him.
“He will be.”
“And you?” she said.
“What about me?”
Leo grabbed my hand and pulled me up the stairs into my room. She planted me in front of my mirror.
Daylight highlighted my every flaw better than HD. My hair was a snarled mess and my eyes were bloodshot with dark circles under them.
“Have you showered?” she said.
“I was busy.”
“You didn’t eat or leave his side for two days. You gave Drio third degree burns. Not to mention how weird you were at breakfast with me. Something’s wrong with you.” Leo shoved me onto the bed, snagging my arm in a death grip.
“Ow!”
“Hold still,” she snapped. She screwed her eyes shut, face scrunched in concentration. “You’ve been poisoned.”
“I had the flu.”
“It’s poison and it’s making you crazy worrying about the people you love. Was it the oshk?”
“Impossible. It was only a drop and it didn’t behave like Sweet Tooth.” I tugged but was held fast. “Naomi and Jake with the drug, Ro touching the oshk, the effects hit them immediately. They got a happy high followed by this intense darker moment when they were denied the object of their desire, and then, well, they either died or came out of it. Mine was more groggy, sleep for a week sickness. It wasn’t the secretion.”
“It most definitely was. You absorbed a drop in its pure form,” Leo said. “You can’t use humans or Rasha as a template for the secretion’s behavior when affecting someone with witch magic. Come to mama, you little bastard,” she muttered, twisting my arm like she was wringing out the poison.
I curled double, panting. Her touch had woken the venomous snakes in my veins, hissing and snapping and not wanting to be pulled out from my skin into the light of day. I let out a low moan.
“The poison is in deep.” Leo’s voice was reedy, sweat dripping off her brows.
“Leonie?” Drio stepped into the room. “What are you doing here?”
My head snapped up and I prayed he wouldn’t understand what he saw. I tried to jerk free but Leo hissed for me to stay still, that she wasn’t done.
“What’s going on?” he said.
“I’m just… I’ll come find you later,” she told him.
He didn’t budge, brows furrowed, his gaze locked on her hands doing their poison-removal.
“She has her industrial first aid,” I said through gritted teeth, racked with tremors from the de-poisoning process.
Leo gave a pained laugh. My forearms, Leonie’s hands, all were slick with black goo.
Drio grabbed one of her hands, forcing it against my iron bedpost.
“Sorry to disappoint you,” she said, returning her hand to my arm. That little amount of iron wouldn’t hurt. She ate salt, too. No, the only thing hunching her head deeper and deeper into her neck and bowing her spine were the wards.
Drio recognized the effects on her. “But you crossed the ward line.”
“I’m a riddle.”
“I’m good now,” I said brightly. “That first aid certification really came in handy.”
“Nava.” Leo sighed. She pulled the poison away from me, stretching it like taffy before condensing it into a small, hard ball and crushing it to dust between her hands.
“No. No.” Drio was a blur, flash stepping up to Leo and away again. He came into focus, ramming his fist into the doorframe on the other side of the room hard enough to splinter the wood.
I flinched.
Leo got to her feet, pale, her still-coated hands planted on her hips. She sneered at him. “You’re a smart man, Drio. Did you really not put it all together before now? Or did you know deep down and not want to admit it?”