Good As Dead

Chapter Nineteen

It's Tuesday morning and I'm hunched by the nearest window, soaking in sunlight while blinking away the lingering pieces of a nightmare. After Marrow left yesterday, I slept through the rest of the afternoon and all of the night. My bones feel more settled, working together when I breathe, but I'm still dead tired and everything hurts, like my body is one, big bruise. The nightmare is what really makes me flinch, though; I don't remember all of it, just that Laci was there, wounds splitting her open like the skin of rotten fruit. God, it makes me sick to think about what she must have gone through. The things he would have done. My stomach lurches into a dry heave. I better think about something else, and quickly.

I'm in an upstairs room at the front of the house. It's a pretty good view; I can see craggy slopes of earth, trees and shrubs mixing with clusters of rounded rock. No houses, no billboard ads. There aren't even towers to mark leylines. Just wildland bristling around occasional strips of road. This place is so high, I see line after line of mountains in the distance, blue-grey at the horizon level.

I'm just wondering why I don't hear anyone else in the house when there's a knock on the door.

Nohemi sticks her head in. "You are up. Good! Still hurting?"

My grimace is answer enough, and she winces back in sympathy. "A hot bath should help. Maya got the rest of the pack to go out and patrol the land with her, and your boy is busy pouring over something we had in our library about vampires, so don't worry about sharing the bathroom with anyone. I'll get the water ready, and then find you something comfy to put on. That old shirt you're in now is something Maya didn't want, and she saves clothes until they're rags."

The water is hot enough to make my skin prickle, and damn does it feel good. The soap smells sharp and minty, and I scrub myself as hard as I dare over the bruises and bite marks, imagining the outer layer of skin sloughing off everywhere he touched me. Washing my hair is a pain in the ass; I have to bear down hard to comb fingers close to my scalp, some areas still tender from where he yanked my head back.

Before she left to let me wash in privacy, Nohemi showed me where the towels and other toiletries are, and then handed over a jar of cream I vaguely remember Marrow showing me. Salve to help with the bruising. It smells gentler than the soap, and when I rub some on one of the newer bruises on my arm, warmth sinks down past the skin there, taking the edge off the pain. Yeah, I'm going to go through a jar of this a day.

By the time I finish, I feel better than half-dead. As I make my way back, Nohemi approaches from the other end of the hallway, trying to see around the massive pile of clothes in her arms. She smiles brilliantly. "I don't know what styles you like, so I brought a little of everything."

I follow her through the doorway to the room I slept in and then stop, blinking. There are three more piles sprawled on the bed. Shirts, tank tops, skirts, dresses, jeans, and shorts in every color possible.

She holds up a pair of black jeans, studded with metal around the pockets. "We got plenty of spare things. Even after you learn how to change to wolf without shredding your clothes, half the time you lose whatever you leave behind."

Then she wrinkles her nose at the jeans and throws them to the side. "Not that these would do; Odalis has hips smaller than a man's, and her pants prove it. You got an hourglass figure, like me. Hmm. What do you feel like wearing?"

"Just something comfortable," I say, as she goes through the first pile of clothes. She looks so excited about this, which makes my next words the ones I really want to say. "Why are you guys helping me out? Whenever I tried to make contact before, there was never a response."

Her hand freezes over a shirt, and for a moment, she looks ready to cry. Then she comes over to gently settle an arm around my shoulders. "Phoenix, we were looking for you for fifteen years. We couldn't believe it when you called last week, the way it sounded like you knew about us all this time."