Bone Walker (32 page)

Maybe now, I thought, everybody would leave me alone and let me sleep. No such luck. While everybody else vanished out of my immediate awareness, both of the boys lingered in earshot. And while both of them kept their voices down, nonetheless they kept right on bitterly arguing.

“What part of ‘get out of Kenna's face' are you not getting?”

“Mr. MacSimidh, for a man who professes to love this woman, you're doing an excellent job of obstructing the one person under this roof who can help her put herself back in one piece.”

“Christ, b'y, none o' this would've happened to start with except for you! She's shot because o' you!”

“I'm acutely aware of that. Are you going to let me help her, or would you rather just take this outside?”

Right about then I wanted to tell them both to bugger off and leave me be—but uttering the words, not to mention opening my eyes, seemed like far too much effort. But I must have made some sort of disgruntled noise, for Christopher swore and then growled, “You better make it good. She's been through enough.”

The Unseelie gave no reply that I could hear. There should have been one, surely, but there was no drawl, no snark. There was only Elessir's hand brushing my brow, unexpectedly cool and soothing. No hum of magic was in his touch, and even his voice was exhausted as he murmured to me, “I know you can hear me, Miss Thompson. So you might as well look at me.”

“Go away,” I muttered.

“I will as soon as I'm convinced you'll be able to heal yourself.”

He'd said that before, I realized. It made no more sense the second time than it had the first. Thinking to scowl at him, I cracked open one eye and then squeezed it shut again, not prepared to handle even the gentle illumination of the candle burning on the low table beside my bed. That was enough, though, to give me a glimpse of the bard sitting on the edge of the bed, just beside me. Looming just behind him was Christopher, such unhappiness etched into his face that you'd have thought I was on death's door. I could stand looking at that even less than the candle, so I tried to press my face into my pillow. Or the cat, whichever one was closest. “Don't know how,” I groused at Elessir.

“That's what I'm here for. Listen to me, darlin'. It's important. Your body already knows how to heal, but you're going to have to feed power into it to speed it up. It's either that or we have to get you to the hospital, and nobody wants to explain why Millicent had to shoot you.”

Later on I'd remember that entirely logical argument. Right then and there, all I wanted Elessir to do was shut up—by which I actually meant, keep up petting my head. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't shake the thought that his fingertips against my skin felt far nicer than they had any right to feel. “My head hurts,” I complained.
Outside voice
, I scolded myself. But I was too worn out and too in pain to care.

“We know, Kenna-lass.” Christopher again. His hand took up mine, and his thumb traced patterns against my palm. That contact was warmth itself, soaking into me slowly, as if my man feared to bathe me too deeply in his own power. “You had too many people in there.” He paused, and then added grudgingly, “If the bard knows what he's talking about, listen to him.”

That surprised me enough that I forced both eyes open, just so that I could peer up at the two of them. Christopher looked about as shocked by his own words as I'd been to hear them, but if Elessir shared that astonishment, he showed no sign of it. He simply moved his hand to my wounded shoulder, touching without the slightest pressure, just to direct my attention there. “You can feel where you're hurt,” he told me. “You know what it feels like to not be hurt. All it takes is as much power as you can stand to channel there.”

“I'm so tired.”

Elessir's impassivity cracked, just a little, giving me a glimpse of that same openness he'd shown me when I'd thrown open the portal. “I… we know that, too. But you need to do this. Just send your magic right beneath my hand until I tell you to stop. I'll feel it when you do.” He paused, and then added quietly, “Then I'll let you sleep, Miss Thompson. I promise.”

The word of a Sidhe is binding,
I thought in giddy exhaustion. Sleep. He might as well have crooned that word with all the thrall at his usual command, given how it resounded through me. I wondered, too, exactly how our positions had gotten reversed. Hadn't I been the one comforting him before?

“Okay,” I mumbled. My eyes drifted shut, but I still felt both the boys' hands, and without thinking I sent a sluggish pulse of power to each point of contact. Christopher instantly picked up on it. His power flowed a little more strongly into mine, nudging it in the direction Elessir had asked for.

“Yes,” the Unseelie murmured, “exactly like that. Keep it coming. Make a little ball of light. Your body will know what to do with it.”

I could do that, couldn't I? Sending light into the place where I was hurt sounded much simpler than flinging my spirit out of my body and fighting to put it back again, or battling pissed-off
nogitsune
. Or, for that matter, pissed-off
alokhiu
in dragon form. In fact, it sounded relaxing beyond belief. And so I turned my face towards my wounded shoulder while I shifted the hand Christopher wasn't holding to the same spot, just enough to get it around the furry bulk of my cat.

Elessir's fingers found mine. Though I sensed no answering magic in his touch, his grip was warm and sure as he squeezed my hand and then laid it, quite carefully, right over my shoulder. With that one small gesture, I felt the circumference of the light I was making expand.

How long I kept it up, I have no idea. I don't remember Elessir ever telling me to stop. All I recall is that gentle flow of power, smoothing away the edges of my pain until it began to dissolve. Well, that—and I'm pretty sure as well that I heard him offering me something in the place of the magic he was still unable to summon. Soft syllables in the tongue of Faerie, words I still couldn't understand, but I could and did respond to rhythm and cadence and pitch. Stripped of all artifice and seduction, his voice was still a thing of quicksilver and crystal.

I fell at last into deep, replenishing slumber, listening to Elessir sing.

When I woke up again, the candle by my bed had almost burned down. Fort had splayed his entire twenty-five-pound length across my belly and was letting out tiny, rattling kitty snores in his sleep. My shoulder still hurt, but the pain of it had dwindled down to a dull, bearable ache, no worse than if I'd just badly wrenched it. The rest of me was languid with weariness, though my head was clearer now. I wasn't back up to speed yet, but now at least speed was in sight and possibly reachable after a couple of gallons of coffee and another week or two of sleep.

One other sound met my ears: Christopher's bouzouki, quietly chiming against the silence as he plucked out a slow air. I lay there listening for a moment while his fingers slid like water along the strings and wove layers of chords every bit as comforting as my blankets and my cat. Then I murmured drowsily, “Hey there, beautiful.”

His hands froze on the instrument as his head snapped up. “Hey there, handsome,” he said, starting to smile, though the smile was as exhausted as his eyes. He was slouched in a chair someone must have brought in from the kitchen, since I didn't keep chairs in my bedroom. The slouching didn't look comfortable. In fact, it looked a minute or two away from ‘falling off the chair'.

“How long have I been out?” I couldn't tell how many hours had passed since I'd been brought home. Turning my head to find out whether my bedside clock had power again, and therefore the ability to give me the time, smacked of effort. Regardless, I didn't want to look at anything in the room but him. “Have you slept?”

Christopher pulled his phone from his jeans pocket, glanced at it, and reported, “You've been down about five hours. How're you feeling, then?”

Producing a verdict on that took more concentration than it should have, which was an answer all by itself. “Limp,” I finally offered. I thought about it further, and then added, “Shoulder's not so bad now.”

With care, Christopher leaned over to lay his bouzouki down out of my range of vision—presumably, his case was on the floor, though I wasn't about to try to stir to look. Once his hands were free, he settled on the edge of the bed just beside me and laid a hand over my wounded shoulder. Much as Elessir had done, though I wasn't about to note that out loud either. Unlike Elessir's, his touch was warm with power. “It feels better,” he told me. “I wish I could fix it for you, Kenna.”

I lifted a hand to his cheek, and then higher, to his hair. “I know you'd fix everything for me in the world if you could.” Warders were like that, especially this one. “But you haven't answered my second question.”

His mouth curled, tiredly wry. “That'd be because I'm not to agitate you. Jake's orders, also Millicent's.”

Which was pretty much what I'd expected. In my current state I couldn't manage much of a punch, but I gave him a token tap to his chest nonetheless. And then I kept my hand there, just resting my palm against him, so I could feel the pulse of his heart. “I'll be okay. So you should rest.” I paused. Then I finished, my voice small, “And I'm kind of lonely all by myself in this bed.”

“You've got the cat.”

He sounded teasing, and I could have replied in kind, but I didn't have the brain for it. So I said instead, simply, “I'd rather have you.”

Did my voice shake on those four small words? Not that it would have been the slightest bit surprising if shock and reaction to everything that had happened since I'd been whisked off into Faerie were finally leaking out of me. But all I could tell was that I sounded hoarse, that I felt needy, and that Christopher's expression abruptly gentled.

Without a word he picked up Fort, rousing the cat into a rumble of discontent, and dropped him lightly off the side of the bed. Then he drew the blanket aside and slid in beside me, pulling me with utmost care into his arms. The motion jarred my shoulder; I didn't care. I burrowed into his embrace as he pulled the blanket back over us, and only after a few moments of losing myself in his warmth and his scent did I realize one of us was shaking. Maybe both.

“Please don't ever do that to me again, Kenna,” Christopher whispered into my hair. “That's two times now I thought I'd lost you. I don't think I could take a third.”

“I swear to God, love, as long as it's in my power, you'll never have to.” My shoulder twinged as I tried to hug him properly. Stupid shoulder. I didn't let it stop me though. “I won't leave you.”

“Are you sure, lass? The bard… Elessir. He cares about you.” When I lifted my head in surprise, I found Christopher studying me moodily, his eyes gone the color of whiskey in the candlelight. “Did you think I hadn't noticed? It was kind of hard to miss.”

Equal parts love, worry and hurt chased themselves through his voice, and here, I thought, was the thing that truly frightened him. My vanishing into Faerie and then getting possessed and shot before his eyes were not to be discounted—all of which had surely scared the hell out of me. But it seemed none of that had quite the same punch as the threat of losing to me to an Unseelie bard.

And so I kissed him, along his brow and each of his cheeks, until I came back at last to breathe against his lips, “I love you, Christopher Michael MacSimidh. I bargained with the Queen of the Unseelie for a shot at a life with you. Don't you dare bail on me now just because okay, yeah, fine, Elessir's a little less annoying than I previously thought.”

At that, Christopher let out a strangled bark of laughter. The worry in his eyes didn't quite fade, though. “Lass, when… when
she
was in you, she made it clear you… have feelings for him.” He closed his eyes for a moment, set his jaw, and then looked at me again. “I'm not a big enough man not to be jealous. But I'm not a big enough asshole to force you to keep from choosing him if he's what you want.”

Well. If this was going to be a question of reassurance, tired as I was, I was all at once sure of my ability to handle that. “May I call your attention to the number of individuals in this bed? Two. Maximum capacity has now been reached, and I'm not about to shift anybody around when I'm finally getting comfortable. Besides…” My confidence faltered, but only a little, just enough to let my need come back into my voice. “That life with you I was talking about? I'd really like for it to start by you giving me tonight.”

His breath caught, and now at last, his face began to brighten. “Kenna, are you saying what I think you're saying?”

I cracked an unsteady grin. “Do I really need to spell it out for you? I, ah, I'd gotten the feeling you wanted to take your time, but—”

Right over me, even before I'd finished speaking, Christopher blurted, “I had, but even before you disappeared I was dreaming o' you and me—and then you were gone—” He cut himself off then, by way of laying a trail of kisses all around my face. Both his hands, his big lean musician's hands, pressed in and slid intriguingly up and down my back and hips. When he came back up for air, he said, “Oh Jesus, girl, are you sure?”

For a single dismaying moment, even as I quivered at his contact, all I could think about was Jude—and what she'd told me of how it'd been for her when Melorite had claimed her body for her own. I'd already had a good idea of what she'd gone through then. I had an even better one now. Even with Christopher's warmth surrounding me, even with the blanket cocooning us both, I felt unaccountably chilled. My muscles still remembered the
alokhiu
's numbing cold soaking through me, not to mention the rowan dream that might have become my fate if I'd succumbed to Luciriel in Faerie. And which might, for all I knew, now wait for me some number of years down the road.