Текст книги "Ill Wind"

Автор книги: Rachel Caine

Соавторы: Rachel Caine
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"You're serious?" he asked.

"As a heart attack."

He finally nodded and said, "Okay."

Well, what had I expected? Argument? Heroic measures? Declarations of undying love and loyalty? Hell, he was a road dude, just a guy who'd asked for a ride and gotten in over his head. Cute, but not playing at my power level.

Still. I hadn't expected him to just say okay and walk away. Not really. Not without even another word. It was a little bit ego-bruising.

Well, as a matter of fact, that wasn't what he was doing. He had my plastic tray with the empty disposable plates and tableware. He opened a trash receptacle and dumped stuff, slid the tray into a stacker, and ambled back with hishands stuck in his coat pockets.

"I meant to tell you, you look incredibly good in that," he said. "Purple really likes you."

He was still waiting. I raised my eyebrows. "Anything else?"

"My backpack," he said, perfectly reasonably. "It's in the car."

"Oh." I shoved a shopping bag at him. "Make yourself useful."

He had a truly wicked smile. "I often do."

We hiked a Yellowstone distance to the car, and even though the sky was clear except for some high cirrus wisps, I kept an eye on it. Lightning had been known to form chains hundreds of miles from a storm center—been known to strike people dead from clear skies. In my case, it wouldn't be an accident.

Poor Delilah waited where I'd left her, scorched door and all. I unlocked the back and got out David's backpack. It was surprisingly heavy. He rescued it from me when I almost dropped it.

"What the hell's in there?" I asked. "Did you rob Fort Knox?"

"Yeah, this is my idea of a quick getaway," he said, and shrugged into the thing like he'd been doing it all his life. "Tent, portable stove, cookware, clothes, extra boots, and a few dozen books."

"Books?"

He gave me a pitying look. "You don't read?"

"I don't carry the New York Public Library on my back. Hell, I don't even carry it in the trunk."

"Your loss." Now that he had his belongings, he seemed to still be waiting for something. "You going to be okay?"

"Me? Sure."

"You want to explain what happened back there?" he asked.

"The whole curry thing? Really, I just like Indian food."

"Funny." He waited. I waited, too. "You're not going to explain."

"That's the general idea," I agreed. "You don't want to know. It's better that you don't. Safer."

He shook his head. Before I could stop him—or figure out if I wanted to stop him—he leaned forward and kissed me lightly on the cheek. I stepped back, raised a hand to touch burning skin, and was surprised by how high my heart rate spiked.

"Take care," he said. "And take care of Delilah."

"Yeah." I wanted to say something profound, but I could barely manage the one word. He turned and walked away, heading back for the mall. Ten steps away, he turned with a dramatic flare of his coat.

"Hey!" he called as he kept walking backwards.

"Yeah?"

"You look like you shopped at Prince's garage sale," he said, and smiled—a real, full, beautiful smile.

"Hot, aren't I?"

"You're a regular fire hazard." He waved and turned again, a perfect balletic turn, and kept walking.

I watched him all the way until he disappeared inside. I had opened the driver's side door, but I didn't really remember doing it. Warm metal under my hand. I got in and smelled a ghost of his aftershave– something cinnamon, exotic, warm. Turned the ignition key. Delilah started up and purred.

"Just the two of us, baby," I said. I didn't like the sound of it nearly as much as I'd thought I would.

When I was ten, I went on vacation with my mom to Disney World, just the two of us. Dad was gone by then, vanished into the sunset like Roy Rogers, only instead of riding Trigger, he was riding his secretary, Eileen Napolitano… not that I knew that when I was ten, I knew only that he was gone and Mom was pissed, and anytime I whined about wanting to paint my toenails orange, she told me she didn't want me to end up a secretary.

Mom and I went to Disney World together—my sister, Sarah, older than me, had opted snobbishly for two weeks of band camp instead. We arrived in Orlando in the middle of a clear and sunny March afternoon, and by seven o'clock, the weather guys were saying hurricane season was coming early. Nobody believed them. We rode the monorail to our hotel, and I splashed in the pool and squealed over the cartoons on TV as though I hadn't already seen them twenty times. And Mom looked out the window a lot at the cool velvet sky, the hurricane moon floating in specks of stars.

The following morning we arrived at the Magic Kingdom with clouds boiling from the east—a big black storm wall riding the tide. My mom was never one to let a little rain get her down. We rode the Mine Train and Space Mountain and Haunted Mansion. We rode every ride I was tall enough for, even the ones that made Mom queasy. We bought souvenirs for Sarah, even though I didn't think she deserved it, after rolling her eyes and being a fourteen-year-old superior little drama queen.

When we were taking pictures with Mickey and Minnie, the rain started. It was like somebody had turned a lake upside down, and the Magic Kingdom turned into the Kingdom of the Sea. If you wanted your picture taken with Charlie the Tuna, it was perfect. By four o'clock, the hardiest Mouseketeers had taken shelter in the hotels, away from the windows and the lightning. Even Pluto got in out of the rain.

Not me and Mom. We were already soaked stupid, so it didn't really matter much anymore. We whooped and hollered and splashed down Main Street USA, played shark attack in Tomorrowland, and pretended that we'd rented out the whole Disney empire for ourselves, just for one day.

It was the best time we ever had together. And yeah, the rain could have been a coincidence. But when I look back on it now, that was the beginning. Every major moment in my life has been accompanied by dramatic weather, and for a long time, I didn't know why.

Even after I knew, even after I accepted it was all true, my mom couldn't. Parents almost never did, apparently; she never really had a chance to come to terms with it. Heart attack at the age of forty-nine. There one minute, gone the next, a shock like a bolt of lightning from a clear blue sky.

It had occurred to me to wonder, much later, if that had been arranged. I tried not to think about it too much, because it made me consider the path that I'd chosen, or had been chosen for me.

I didn't get close to people. Not anymore.

Which perfectly explained why I'd had to leave David behind, the way I'd left every part of normal life behind me when I'd taken the oath and joined the Wardens. I was risking my life every time I reached for power. I didn't have the right to risk anyone else's along with it.

Too bad. He was really, really cute.

Just outside of town, two miles over the state border, Delilah sputtered. It was just a tiny hitch, but I felt it like a spike driven between my ribs. Oh, God. Not now.Nothing menacing on the weather front, but that didn't mean opportunity couldn't knock. Or smash me flat.

Maybe it was nothing, I told myself. Just a ping, just a coincidence, a one-time-only—

Fuck.She chugged again. And again. The engine sputtered and roared back to life.

"Oh, baby, no, don't do this, don't—" Delilah wasn't listening. She gulped air, coughed gas, choked.

We coasted to a halt on the gravel shoulder, next to a road sign proclaiming the wonders of a McDonald's just five miles ahead on the right. Under Ronald's cheery leer, I got out and resisted the urge to kick tires. I could fix her. I always fixed her.

But not wearing the new purple velvet. Dammit.I'd bought some more practical clothes, but they were still in the plastic shopping bags in the trunk, and there wasn't a changing room in sight. Ah well, the road wasn't that busy, and I was desperate. I grabbed jeans and a button-front shirt and climbed into the backseat.

Getting out of velvet pants is not as easy as it sounds, at least not in the backseat of a Mustang. Not that I hadn't had practice, but still, there was the embarrassment factor; every time I heard a car, I had to duck down and hold my breath. Finally, I was down to the purple satin panties and lace shirt—no bra, because I'd wanted to make a good impression on David. Which apparently I hadn't, because he wasn't here to appreciate it.

I was completely naked except for the panties when I heard a tap on the window behind me, screamed, and threw my velvet jacket over as much of myself as it would cover.

Of course. Why had I ever doubted who it would be?

"You bastard!" I yelped. David looked puzzled and far too innocent to really beinnocent. "Jeez! Turn around, would you?"

"Sure." He did. I scrambled around, pulling on blue jeans first, then making sure I had my eyes boring into his back while I put on the denim button-down. I had a bra somewhere in the shopping bag, but I didn't want to take the time.

I knocked on the window and slid across the seat, opened the passenger door, and got out to face him.

"It's a funny story," he said. "I was just walking along—"

"As if I want to hear it," I snapped. "Jesus, you scared the crap out of me!"

"Sorry." He didn't look sorry, but there was a little color in his cheeks that hadn't been there last time we'd said good-bye. A little glitter in his eyes that probably wasn't regret. "I thought you were in trouble."

"Genius! I am in trouble." I stomped around, popped Delilah's hood, and set the prop in place. "The engine folded."

"Yeah?" He looked over my shoulder. "What is it?"

"Hell if I know." I started examining hoses. He didn't bother me, which was odd—how many guys do you know who wouldn't stand over you and offer advice even if they don't know a radiator from a radish? After a few minutes, I looked back and saw he'd taken off his pack and was sitting quietly on it, leafing through a paperback. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Reading, what does it look like I'm doing?" He turned down a page at the sound of a car approaching, stood up, and held out a thumb. The truck blew past in a smear of wind and chrome.

"You're hitching?"

"Beats walking."

He held out his thumb again. I checked more hoses. They all looked good. The clamps were intact. Dammit. I didn't think it was a valve problem, but with vintage Mustangs, you never knew. I'd already had Delilah's engine rebuilt twice.

I spun away from the car, put greasy hands on my hips, and stared at him. "Okay. I may be slow, but eventually I get it. You're following me."

He concentrated on trying to flag down a bright yellow Volkswagen bug the exact color of a lemon drop, but it didn't even slow down.

"It's the main road out of town," he said. "And I'm heading for Phoenix, remember?"

"You are following me!"I resisted the urge to kick Delilah's tire; there was no reason to take it out on the baby. "And you know something."

"Like what?" He didn't look concerned. In fact, he didn't even look interested.

"Like who's doing this to me."

"Well, I know it's not me. Does that help?" He gave up on the road and went back to the easy-chair comfort of his backpack. I gave him a glare and went back to checking hoses, but Delilah didn't give me any hints.

"Try it again," David suggested. He was back sitting down, reading. I checked the oil and ignored him. Nope, it was full and grime-free. Double dammit. I couldn't see anything blown, no telltale sprays of oil or fluid. The block looked good.

No sense in delaying the inevitable. I dropped to the gravel, rolled over, and squirmed under the car.

"Need any help?"

"No," I yelled. "Go away!"

"Okay." I heard David get up and walk over to the road as another car approached. It slowed down, then sped up a squeal of tires. "Jerk."

"Not everybody's as nice as I am," I agreed. "Shit. Shit shit shit." The engine looked good from down here, too. I was getting oil-smeared and gravel-gouged for nothing. "This is just great. Come on, baby, give me a break here."

I slid back out, cleaned gravel out of the palms of my hands and brushed off my blue jeans, shook dust out of my dark hair, and announced, "I'll try it again." David remained unimpressed. He had taken his pack and moved about twenty feet farther down the road and was sitting with his back against the pole of the McDonald's billboard, reading.

I slid into the driver's seat and turned the key.

Delilah hummed to life, smooth and even as ever. I idled her for a while, gave her gas, revved her, closed my eyes, and listened for any hitches.

Nothing. I let it fall back to idle and felt the vibration in my skin.

David was reading The Merchant of Venice.He was kicked back, relaxed, feet up. His brown hair gleamed red highlights in the sun, and overhead the sky was blue, blue, merciless blue.

I popped the clutch and rolled past him, accelerating. He never looked up.

Ten feet past the billboard, I hit the brakes and skidded to a gravel-spewing stop. In the rearview mirror, I saw him turn down the page, put the book back in his backpack, and heft the thing like it weighed no more than my purse.

He stowed it in the backseat and got in without a word. As he got in, I grabbed his hand and held it palm up, then passed my hand over it and concentrated.

Nothing. If he was a Warden—Earth Warden, I suspected—he had no glyphs. Maybe a Wildling? They were few and far between, from what I'd ever heard, but it was possible he had some kind of talent. Maybe.

He took his hand back, frowning slightly. "And that was—?"

"Checking to see if you washed your hands."

He looked doubtfully at me—oily, dusty, grimy. I accelerated out onto the open road.

"How'd you find me?" I asked.

"Luck," he said.

"Yeah," I agreed gloomily. "Luck. I'll bet."

Five miles down the road, I spotted a cloud on the horizon ahead of us. Just a little cloud about the size of my hand. Hardly anything, really.

But I could feel the storm coming back. Son of a bitch.

By the time the sun went down, I was exhausted. I planned to have David take the wheel, but there was a hitch in my brilliant plan.

David didn't drive.

"At all?" I asked. "I mean, you can't?"

"I'm from New York," he explained. As if that explained it. To me, it was like meeting somebody with three heads from the planet Bozbarr. It also caused a big sucking hole in my plans—I hadn't wanted to pull over at all on the way to Oklahoma, beyond gas and bathroom stops. But the world looked sparkly and jagged, I was floating about an inch outside my body, and my muscles trembled like soggy rubber bands.

I'd kill us both if I tried to go on much longer.

"We're stopping for the night," I announced. "Ineed some rest."

David nodded. He had a little clip-on light on his book, and he was deep in the perils of one of John Grisham's lawyers. I wished he would get a little more interested in the prospect of spending the night in a hotel with a hot babe who owned a purple velvet suit, but apparently not happening.

I tried a hint. "Any preference? Trashy decor? Adult channels?"

He turned a page. "Indoor plumbing's a plus."

Bigger hint. "Two rooms or one?" I kept looking at the road and the sunset. In my peripheral vision, he still looked relaxed and unfazed, but he marked his place in his book and turned the light off.

"Kind of takes the mystery out of it if you ask," he said.

"Just thinking out loud."

"One's fine."

Well, that was an answer, but I wasn't getting the come-hither vibe. David was just about impossible to read, which was funny, considering how much time he spent with the printed page. Ah, well. Truthfully, I was too wasted to be seductive anyway.

Up ahead, the cool blue glow of a motel sign floated like a UFO above the road. Clean sheets, fluffy pillows, little complimentary soaps. It sounded like heaven. Up close, it looked a lot more like purgatory, but any afterlife in a storm.

I checked us in, getting absolutely no reaction from the walleyed clerk to any of my quips, and paid with my fast-dwindling supply of cash. I signed the slip and got the room key and went back out to the car. The chunky orange tag attached to the key said we were in room 128. It was, naturally, on the other side of the building, the dark side, where half the parking lot lights were dead and the other half terminally ill. I pulled Delilah up in a parking space directly in front of the door.

Well, one benefit to the place: it was quiet. Awesomely quiet. Nothing but the wind whispering through trees and rattling a stray plastic bag across the parking lot.

"Shall we?" I asked, and reached down to grab my duffel. David took out his heavy backpack and camping kit. I doubted he would need all of it, but I supposed living on the road makes you less than trusting about that kind of thing.

Once we were inside, my visions of gleaming chrome bathroom fixtures and deep-pile carpeting were crushed. The carpet was indoor-outdoor, the bathroom had last been upgraded in the 1950s, and the sad-clown prints on the walls could never have been remotely fashionable. But it had clean sheets, reasonably fluffy pillows, and (I saw during a fast reconnaissance) complimentary little soaps. So okay. Next door to heaven.

David leaned his backpack against the wall. "One bed," he said.

"Lucky for you, you brought camping gear." I flopped down on the bed and immediately felt gravity increase by a factor of ten. The mattress was old and sagged, but it still felt like a cloud under my aching back. "God, I could sleep for days."

The bed creaked. I hoisted one eyelid and saw that David had perched on the edge, looking down at me. In a perfect world, he would have been all choked up with romantic desire. In my all-too-real reality, he said, "You look terrible."

"Thanks," I murmured, and let my eye drift shut. "You charmer. Sheesh."

The bed creaked again, and I heard him rummaging in his backpack. Footsteps on the carpet. The bathroom door closed, and the shower started up with a stuttering hiss.

Sometime a few minutes later, the sound of running water melted into the steady, stealthy sound of rain. It was raining. That was bad, I could feel it, but I couldn't think why. Rain tapping the windows, polite at first, then beating harder, impatient to be inside. Wind whispered and rose to a roar, and I heard a rumble of thunder and felt the cold hair-raising frisson of electrons aligning.

A flash of lightning, blue-white, outside the window.

It was coming for me—

I pulled awake with a gasp and found David tucking a scratchy blanket around me. I flailed my way out of it and stumbled to the window, ripped aside the curtains, and stared out at the dark.

Quiet. Quiet as the grave. No rain. No thunder. No lightning stabbing at me from above.

"What?" he asked.

It's looking for me,I wanted to say, but there was no way I could explain that sort of thing. I was so tired, I was incoherent, shaking, almost crying. It's out there.

"Did it rain?" I managed to ask.

"Don't think so. Maybe you heard the shower. You haven't been asleep long."

Oh. I remembered now. The shower. He'd been taking a shower.

When I turned around, I realized he was wearing nothing but a towel and some well-placed water drops, and it hit me with a cattle-prod jolt that he was absolutely, unquestionably gorgeous.Skin like burnished gold, and under it the best kind of muscles on a man—long, lean, defined without bulging. A gilded thatch of hair on his chest that narrowed to a line down his stomach, pointing the way under the towel.

"Oh," I blurted. "Wow. You—don't have much on."

"No," he agreed gravely. "I don't usually sleep in footie pajamas."

"Would it be too personal to ask what you do sleep in?"

"Pajama bottoms. Unless that bothers you."

Bothered me? Hell, yes. But in that nice, liquefying, warm-silk way of being bothered, as in "hot and."

"No," I said weakly. A drop of water glided down over his shoulder and melted into his chest hair. I had a fantasy so vivid, it raised my skin into goose bumps.

"Okay. You planning to sleep in that?" he asked me. I was still wearing the gritty, oil-stained denim from my try at fixing Delilah, and looking at him in all his glory, I felt grubby and short and smelly.

"Um, no," I said, grabbed my duffel, and escaped to the bathroom.

Funny how a nice flare of lust can burn off the fog of exhaustion; I stripped off my clothes and kicked them under the sink, stepped into a shower he'd left warm for me. Shampoo and conditioner clustered considerately on the floor near my feet, open bar of soap in the tray… all the comforts of somebody else's home.

I scrubbed myself pink, washed and strangled the water out of my hair, and wrapped myself in one of the motel's thin, stiff towels. Record time. I considered shaving my legs, decided no, reconsidered, and then managed to get depilated in under four minutes, with only one tiny little cut near my left ankle.

When I came out into the bedroom, the bed was empty. No David.

He was zipped into a sleeping bag on the floor.

I stood there, dripping and steaming, and said, "You're kidding."

He didn't open his eyes. "You've said that to me before. Do I really look that funny?"

"Bastard." I flopped down on the bed again, squirmed under the covers, and stripped off the towel beneath. "You made me get up for nothing."

"No," he corrected. "Now you're clean and you'll sleep better."

He turned over on his side, away from me. I wondered if he was naked inside the sleeping bag, growled in frustration, and put a pillow over my face. Suffocation had no appeal. I took it off and said, "You can bring your sleeping bag up here, you know. Beats sleeping on the floor."

He didn't answer for a few seconds, long enough for me to experience total rejection, and then he turned over and raised himself up on one elbow to look at me.

I expected some quip or some question, but he just looked. And then he flipped open the sleeping bag, slid out, and walked over to the bed.

He hadn't lied. Pajama bottoms. They rode low on his hips.

I folded back the covers. He got in. I lowered my head to rest on the pillow, still watching him, and he rolled up on his left side to face me.

Some sane part of my mind was telling me that this was just some guy I'd picked up on the road, for God's sake, some guy who could be a rapist or a killer, and that part of my mind was completely right and completely wrong. I knew him in places that had nothing to do with my mind.

"Turn on your side," he said. I did, feeling like I was already dreaming. The slide of sheets felt cool and soothing on my overheated body.

I could feel him warm at my back, not quite touching. He put a hand on my hip, slid it gently up.

I couldn't breathe.

He put his fingers at the base of my neck and drew them lightly down the curve of my spine, all the way down. I felt my muscles contract and shiver, and I wanted to stretch like a cat against him; it took all my control not to do it.

If I'd been melting inside before, I was boiling now.

"I'll have to call a penalty," he said. His voice sounded far away. "You're not even wearing a T-shirt. Definitely a violation of the rules."

His fingertips followed the curve of my hip again.

The tacky room had dropped away, and it was just the two of us, suspended in time and silence. There were no rules for this, none that I'd ever known. Just instinct. I started to turn toward him, and his hand spread out, holding me in place. His breath was warm on the back of my neck, his lips barely touching skin.

"You're afraid of me," he whispered. His hand moved into the demilitarized zone of my stomach. "Don't be afraid."

It wasn't him—I was scared of myself. I was tired, vulnerable, frightened, lonely, desperate. I couldn't trust my own senses, much less… whatever this was. Whoever he was.

I hadn't thought about the Mark for hours, but now I could feel it moving inside me, turning restlessly as if it hungered as much as I did. Oh, God, I couldn't concentrate enough to hold it back, not with him so close, so warm.

"Shhh," he whispered, even though I hadn't made a sound out loud. His hand moved again, gently, tracing a line of fire from my stomach up between my breasts. Flattened out over my heart. "Be still."

I felt a lurch inside, a chill, a burst of heat.

The Demon Mark stopped moving.

"How—?" I blurted, and instantly stopped myself from asking. I didn't want to know. There was so much here I didn't want to know, because if I knew, then I would have to move away from him, give up this warmth, this beautiful peace.

"Shhh," he said, and his lips touched the back of my neck. "No questions, no pain, no fear."

I glimpsed something then, just the edges of something vast and powerful, and I almost knew—

His hand moved again, gliding down, drawing my mind away from what it chased in the dark. His fingers brushed gently over my aching nipples, settled back on my stomach.

"You should sleep," he whispered. As if I could. As if I could ever sleep again, after feeling this, knowing this…

But it was all slipping away, water through my fingers, air flowing free through the sky. I was falling, and falling, and falling.

His hand moved slowly down and came to rest over the aching emptiness of my womb. It pressed flat and burned his warmth into my deepest places.

"Dream well," he whispered.

Pleasure came in a wave, drenching me from head to toe, and it went on and on and on. It was the last I knew, except for the dreams.

I dreamed of rain.

* * *

It was raining the night Lewis showed up at my door… the slow, steady, nuturing rain people believe is their birthright on this planet, the kind that had to be squeezed out of Mother Nature with a fist of power. I'd been working at it all damn day, and by the time I got home and sank into a hot bath, I was worn out.

I'd been soaking for about ten minutes when I heard the doorbell ring. Let it ring,part of me sighed. The other part reminded me that I was a responsible adult, a Warden, and besides, the visitor might be either Ed McMahon with a Publishers Clearing House check or—even more unlikely—a gorgeous hunk.

It was the gorgeous hunk possibility that lured me out of the bath. I wrapped a thick ratty blue robe around myself and made wet footprints to the door.

I swung it open to find… nobody there. And then I looked down.

There was a guy huddled in a sitting position against the wall, soaking wet, his brown hair sticking up like porcupine quills. He was shaking, hugging himself for warmth. It took me a full ten seconds to recognize his face and feel the shock.

"Lewis!" I blurted, and before I could think what I was doing, I got my hands under his arms and tugged. No way I could have lifted him myself, but he cooperated and stumbled over the threshold and into my living room, where he proceeded to drip and shiver uncontrollably. I slammed and locked the door, ran to the hall closet, and came back with the warmest blanket I had—considering it was Florida, not so very warm. When I came back, he was sitting down again, this time on the tile floor of the entryway.

I used a tiny jet of power to suck all the water off him and out of his clothes and directed it down the kitchen sink, where it gurgled and drained away. I warmed the blanket at the same time and threw it around his shoulders.

"Hey," I said, and crouched down. "Not that the floor's not comfy, but I do have a couch."

He opened his eyes, and I was surprised by the fear in them. Lewis, afraid.What could scare the most powerful Warden in the world?

"Can't make it," he admitted. He did look bad– skinny, almost skeletal, with dirty-pale skin as if he'd been someplace dark for a long time. "Thanks."

"I vacuumed you off and gave you a blanket," I said. "Don't thank me yet. Come on, up."

We repeated the grabbing-and-hauling and got him to the couch, where he sprawled and proved that a normal-size couch wasn't designed to accommodate a six-foot-plus guy at full length. I spread the blanket over him. "When's the last time you ate?"

"Don't remember," he murmured. I started to go into the kitchen, but he caught my wrist. "Jo."

The touch, skin-to-skin, started a burn between us. He let go the second he felt it.

"You're in trouble," I said. It wasn't exactly a stretch. "I get it. And no, I won't call anybody."

It was what he wanted. He nodded and closed those warm brown eyes.

When I came back with a microwaved cup of soup, he managed to squirm to a sitting position and sipped it faster than good sense allowed. I pulled up a pale plaid hassock, sat down, and watched him. When he'd sucked the last noodle out of the cup, I took it and laid it aside on the coffee table.

"Good," he murmured. I put a hand on his forehead. He was burning up with fever. "I'm all right."

"Yeah, like hell." I fetched cold medicine from the bathroom and made him swallow two gel capsules with another cup of soup. All nice and domestic. No sound in the apartment except for the steady tick of rain on the roof and windows.

He didn't say anything until the second cup of soup was finished. He rolled the empty ceramic in his hands, watching me with fever-bright eyes, and finally said, "You're not going to ask?"

"Do I have any right?" I took the cup and set it back down. "You're the big boss, Lewis, I'm just a Staffer. You say frog,I jump. You say nurse you back to health—"

He made a rude noise. "Yeah. You're the mothering type, Jo. And the no-questions-asked type."

He had a point. "Okay. What the hell are you doing here, showing up starved and sick on my doorstep? It isn't like we know each other, Lewis. At least, not in any way that matters."

Cruel but true. Lewis's eyes widened, and he looked down. "I know you," he said. "And I trust you."

"Why?" He gave me an off-kilter smile for answer. I felt myself blush hot up around the cheekbones. "Okay, rephrasing the question. What kind of trouble are you in?"

The smile disappeared, and he looked ill and tired. "The worst kind," he said. "Council trouble. I broke out."

I froze, my own mug of soup halfway to my lips. Steam tickled my nose with ghosts of spices. "Broke out?"

"They were keeping me in a hospital, the one where…" He had an inward look, and what flashed across his face didn't look like a pleasant memory. "They were keeping me at the Pound."