“Don’t start again, Sash. I may have been half off last night, but I remember enough. This isn’t on you.”
“I need to get it out.” Sasha eased onto the side of the bed. “Do me a favor, okay? Let me.”
“Okay, but if you wander off into stupidville, I’m cutting you off.”
“I know it could have been anyone who walked out of the house alone—that it was random and opportunistic.”
“So far, you’re in the right lane.”
“But it was you. I know any one of us could have been used as a false face to draw you away from the house, into the woods. But it was me. It horrifies me, and it enrages me to know you have an image of me attacking you, hurting you, almost killing you. Switch places for a minute, and tell me it wouldn’t do the same to you.”
Grateful her mind was clear, Riley took a moment to organize her thoughts—and feelings with them. “I thought it was you. When you called me, when I went with you. I thought it was you when you knocked me like a sledgehammer into what felt like a concrete wall. I thought it was you,” she repeated even as Sasha’s lips trembled. “And you’d been possessed, taken over by Nerezza. My bell had been rung, and hard, and right then, lying there, looking at you, I thought she’d gotten into you somehow. I tried for my gun—I remember that—I remember if my arm hadn’t been useless and I could have, I’d have shot you. I’d have tried to hit you in the leg, but I’d have shot you, thinking it was you.”
“Defending yourself against—”
“It horrifies me, and it enrages me to know I’d have shot you. We’re both going to have to get over the horror and the rage, Sash. That’s it. Move it away, or they’ve won this round.”
“I want the rage.” And it burned in the blue of Sasha’s eyes. “I want to give her pain, and misery, and horror for making you think, even for an instant, I’d hurt you. For making you have to choose, even for an instant, to hurt me.”
“Okay.” Riley nodded. “Rage is good. We’ll keep it. But we’re square, you and me.”
“We’re square.”
“Excellent. I have to get up.”
“You still need rest.”
“I really have to pee. I mean seriously pee.”
“I’ll help you.”
“Let me just try to get up on my own. I feel reasonably okay.”
She managed it. A little wobbly maybe, Riley considered, but the room stayed steady and her vision didn’t waver. “So far, so good. It’s not about modesty—I don’t have that much at the best of times— but I’m going to try to empty my now desperate bladder by myself. Stand by.”
She didn’t bolt to the adjoining bathroom, but moved briskly, and felt grateful she could. But no amount of gratitude could match what she felt when that desperate bladder emptied.
“Success! Could a hot shower be next?” She stepped out first, held out her bandaged hand. “How about taking this off first?”
“Let me get Bran or Brigid.”
“Why?”
“They’re so much more experienced.”
Riley just lifted her eyebrows. “I’m on my feet. I’m lucid. I pick my own healer. Take it off for me, check it out.”
Understanding—the creature with her face had mangled the hand; the woman, the friend, would judge its health—Sasha unwound the treated bandage.
“Hold it still,” Sasha soothed as she cupped Riley’s hand between hers. “It feels . . . clean. Sore, stiff, but clean. You can wiggle your fingers.”
Feeling them, watching them move brought Riley such intense relief she nearly couldn’t speak. When she did, her voice shook. “I was afraid I’d lose use of it, or at least some use of it.”
She made a fist, opened it, closed it. “Sore, yeah. Maybe one and a half on a scale of ten.” Emboldened, she rolled her right shoulder, flexed her biceps, tested range of motion. “Maybe two on the scale, but that’ll ease up with use.”
For the major test, she walked to the cheval glass. Hollow-eyed, gaunt, she thought. Weak. “Jesus, I look puny.”
“Other than the soup last night, you haven’t had a solid meal in nearly a week.”
“I’ll make up for that. Any of it left? The soup?”
“Yes.”
“I want that—after a shower, real clothes.”
“I’ll stand by.”
The shower ranked as miraculous, as did being able to use her hands, her arms with minimal discomfort. As she dressed, she noticed Sasha’s easel on the balcony, and the painting in progress of the forest.
“I was angry with the forest, too,” Sasha told her. “Ridiculous really, but that’s how I felt. I thought painting it would exorcise that, and it’s helped. Seeing you on your feet finishes it.”
“Wait until you see me eat. While I do maybe you can fill me in on what’s been happening while I was out of it.”
“Bran’s made real progress on the shield he’s creating. Doyle’s been cracking the whip when he hasn’t been at the books.”
The idea of Doyle researching without prodding had Riley stopping short. “At the books?”
“Translating mostly. Some passages in Greek, others in Irish or Latin on the stars, and the island. No definitive answers yet there.”
As they came down the back steps, Sawyer walked in from the mudroom. “Hey! I was just going to head up to check. Look at you!”