"No, it's cool. You should take the extra spot."
"I honestly don't mind," Curran said.
"I don't mind either. You're giving me Aunt B. I probably owe you a spot for that."
"Damn it," Jim said, his face disgusted. "You're like an old married couple who found twenty bucks in a parking lot. 'You take it.' 'No, you take it.' I can't stand it." He put the coffee down and shook his head.
"Fine," Curran said. "If you want Derek, he's yours. That fills the list."
"That means we're axing Paola from the list. The rats will be pissed," Jim said.
"I'll handle the rats," Curran said.
Chapter 4
I stood on the grassy hill. In front of me a garish sunset burned with violent intensity, the scarlet and crimson clouds floating like bandages in the open wound of the sanguine sky. Against the sunset, on the plain below, people were building a tower. Magic churned and roiled around them as the roughly hewn stone blocks rose in the air, held up by power and human will. Far in the distance, another tower stretched to the sky.
I wanted to stop it. Every instinct I had screamed that this was wrong. It was dangerous and wrong, and we would all suffer at the end of it. Something terrible would happen if it was completed. I wanted to go down there and scatter the stones.
I couldn't move.
Cold sweat drenched me. I couldn't look away. I just watched as the tower rose block by block, a monument to my father's growing power and ambition. It kept going up, unstoppable, like an ancient legion, like a tank crushing all that stood before it.
Someone moved to the right of me. I strained, trying to tear myself from the scene, turned, and saw Julie. Wind stirred her blond hair. She looked back at me, her eyes terrified. Tears ran down her cheeks.
"Julie!"
I sat upright in my bed. Darkness reigned, diluted but not conquered by moonlight coming through the open window. My face felt damp. I brushed my fingers at my hairline. They came away wet. Sweat. Great. I used to have nightmares about Roland and being found, but they stopped when Curran started holding me at night. They were never this vivid.
Maybe Roland was trying to find me. I had a vision of him sitting several states away, broadcasting screwed-up dreams like a TV tower. I needed to have my head examined, except anybody who actually tried would run away screaming.
The covers next to me were rumpled. Curran must've slipped out of our bed in the middle of the night. Well, that explained it. He was gone, and watching Maddie going loup had rattled me. It was stress. Eventually my dear dad would find me, but not today.
I had to check on Julie. I wouldn't be able to sleep if I didn't. I slipped out of bed, pulled my sweatpants on, and went out, down the stairs. Julie's door stood slightly ajar. Odd. I rapped my knuckles on a skull-and-crossbones DO NOT ENTER sign that took up most of the door. No answer.
Janice, a shapeshifter in her late thirties, stuck her blond head out of the guardroom to my right. "She took her blanket and a pillow and went downstairs."
"When?"
"About two hours ago."
That would be one o'clock in the morning. There was only one place Julie could've gone.
Five minutes later I walked into the dim room, moving quietly on my toes. The only illumination came from the glass coffin in front of me. In it, submerged in the green liquid of Doolittle's healing solution, floated Maddie. Several IV tubes ran from her arms to the metal stand with fluid bags. Julie sat next to her on the floor, slumped over on her blanket, her elbows propped on her knees, her face hidden in her hands.
Oh, Julie. I crossed the room and sat next to her. She gave no indication she heard me.
Maddie's bones protruded at odd angles, the flesh stretched over the distorted skeleton like half-melted rubber. Here and there patches of fur dappled her, melting back into human skin. The left side of her jaw bulged, the lips too short to hide the bone, and through the gap I could see her human teeth. Her right arm, almost completely human, seemed so thin, so fragile, little more than bone sheathed in skin.
When I sat there and watched her, my heart squeezed itself into a hard painful rock. It wasn't just Maddie. It was the haunted desperation in her mother and sister. It was the panic in Jennifer's face. It was the masked fear in Andrea, who had come to see Maddie last night. I'd watched my best friend as she crossed her arms on her chest trying to convince herself that this wasn't her future. She loved Raphael. She wanted children and a family, and both of Raphael's brothers went loup at puberty and had to be killed. When Aunt B said they would need panacea, she meant it.
It was the icy nagging dread inside me that said, This could be your child.
Maddie, the cute funny girl, whom we all knew and took for granted. We had to save her. I had to save her. If there was one thing I could accomplish, it would be giving her life back to her.
Julie straightened. Her eyes were red, the skin around them puffy. I wished I could do something.
"She isn't hurting."
"I know." Julie sniffed.
"I read to her. Her mom does too, and Doolittle's nurses. She isn't alone."
"It's not that."
"Then what is it?"
"I'm trying to understand why." Her voice broke. "Why?" She turned and looked at me, tear-filled eyes bright and brimming with hurt. "She was my best friend. I only have one. Why did it have to be her?"
The million-dollar question. "Would you rather it be Margo?"
"No." Julie shook her head. "No. She feels horrible, because she's okay and Maddie isn't. I hugged her and I told her that I was so glad that she made it."
"I'm proud of you."
"It's not Margo's fault that the medicine didn't work. I just don't want it to be Maddie. I want her to be okay. It's like this is the cost."
"The cost of what?"
"Of magic. Of being a shapeshifter. Like they're strong and fast and somebody has to pay the price for that. But why her?"
I wish I knew. I'd asked myself the exact same question when I found Voron dead, when I saw the ruin of Greg Feldman's body, and when Julie lay in a hospital bed, so sedated her heart was barely beating. I wanted so much to spare Julie from that. It killed me that I couldn't. I didn't know why some people had tragedy after tragedy thrown at them, as if life were testing them, and others lived blissfully, untouched by grief.
I told her the truth. "I don't know. I think it's because a child is the most precious thing we have. There is a price for everything, and it's never something you can afford to give up. It's always someone you love."