For a few really hellish moments there I’d wanted to go curl up somewhere and quietly die.
But I’d shaken it off. My dying wouldn’t do a thing for Dani. And she was all that mattered.
Lor strode past me and I followed him into Barrons’s study.
I dropped into a chair behind the desk and looked warily at Ryodan. Barrons was draping filmy pieces of fabric drenched in some silvery liquid on his charred body, murmuring softly while he worked.
“He’s awake,” Barrons said.
I hadn’t needed to be told. I was watching him shiver with pain as Barrons laid the barely-there pieces of glowing cloth against his raw flesh. One of the Nine shivering with pain was a terrible thing to see.
“Do you think maybe you should knock him out for his own good?” I said uneasily.
Lor laughed. “I’ve thought that on more than one occasion.”
“He wants to be awake,” Barrons murmured.
“Can he talk?”
“Yes,” Ryodan rasped.
“Can you tell us what happened?”
He made a wet sighing sound. “She flew into that…bloody abbey like…a mother bear obsessed…with her cub. I thought…five and a half years is a long time…maybe she’d had a child…brought it back.”
Oh, God, I thought, appalled, I hadn’t even thought of that! Had the bear belonged to a child? Her child? Just what had Dani gone through in the Silvers?
“I kept circling her, trying to keep…her from…burning, but she acted like…she didn’t even feel the heat. Christ…I could barely breathe. Beams were falling, stone was crumbling.”
“Why the fuck didn’t you change?” Lor growled with a quick look at me.
“I know,” I said to him levelly. “Surely you know I know.”
“Dunno why you’re still alive, though,” he said coolly.
“Not in…front of her.” Ryodan gurgled harshly.
“Precisely,” Lor said, shooting me a look.
I ignored him. “Are you sure he’s okay talking?” I asked Barrons worriedly.
Barrons gave me a look. “If he’s doing it, he wants to be.”
“Go on,” I urged Ryodan.
“Need to tell. You…need to know.”
“He won’t be conscious when I’ve finished,” Barrons told me. “For some time.”
“She kept saying she…had to save…Shazam. That she wouldn’t have…survived without him and she wasn’t…losing him. She wasn’t leaving him. Ever. She fucked up once and…wasn’t fucking up again. She was…ah, fuck. It was…it was like looking at her at fourteen again. All eyes and heart…blazing in her face. And she started to cry.”
Lor said softly, “You never could stand that.”
Ryodan lay shuddering while Barrons worked, then gathered his strength and went on. “She tore the damned room…apart looking for…something. I couldn’t figure out what. The place was a bloody mess…must’ve exploded when the fire started. All kinds of…weapons, ammo…kept trying to push it away from the fire and…keep her from burning. Food everywhere…a filthy pillowcase with ducks on it and…rotting fish all over the place. Fucking fish. I kept thinking what the fuck…was with the fish?”
Rotting fish? I frowned, unable to process it.
“Finally, she…screamed and dove toward the bed and I thought…so, her kid is under there…it’s okay…I’ll get them out.”
He fell silent again and closed his eyes.
“And she pulled out the stuffed animal,” I said miserably.
“Yes,” he whispered.
“How did she end up unconscious?”
“Me.”
“You hit her?” Lor growled, half rising.
“I was a bloody…fucking idiot. Should’ve known better.”
“What did you do?” I exclaimed.
“When I saw…what she was holding…cooing to it like it was…fucking alive, I…” He trailed off. Then after a long moment he hissed, “I took it from her, ripped it open, and showed her it was just a…a stuffed animal.”
“And she snapped,” Barrons said quietly.
“Blank. Her eyes filled with…anguish and…grief then…just empty. Like she wasn’t even…alive anymore.”
“You think it’s like that Tom Hanks movie,” Lor said, “where he got stranded on an island and talked to a goddamn ball for years?”
“Only Jada forgot it wasn’t real,” I said, horrified.
“Don’t know,” Ryodan said. “Maybe it’s…how she survived and…why she came back Jada. She kept saying he was so…emotional. Moody. He needed her to take care of him. Possible she survived by…divvying herself up…creating an imaginary friend with…Dani’s attributes…while becoming Jada.”
I closed my eyes. Tears slipped down my cheeks.
“I made her see…he wasn’t real. Then she…was just…gone. Bloody hell…I did it to her.”
We sat in silence for a time.
Finally, I got up.
Ryodan would survive. He had his brothers.
Dani needed a sister.
—
Lor followed me out. “What the fuck was up at Chester’s, Mac? Why was an Unseelie prince in our club? And where the bloody hell was he hiding?” he demanded.
I stopped walking and turned to face him. When I’d asked him to capture me a sifter to take me to Chester’s, he’d insisted on coming along. I’d demanded he remain in one of the subclubs with the sifter while I went to get Christian. I’d called it due as part of my favor, thereby keeping my oath to Ryodan that his secrets were mine.
I gave him a frosty look. “You asked me a favor and I gave it to the best of my ability in exchange for one from you. We’re even. If you try to push me on this, I’ll fight you with everything I’ve got. And I’ve got more than you think. Like you, Lor, my loyalties are to Ryodan. Give me space on this.”
He measured me a long moment then inclined his head. “I’ll leave it. For now.”
Together, we went upstairs to stand vigil over Jada.
—
Over the next several hours, visitors came to see Jada. I don’t have any idea how they got into the store with the funnel cloud around it. I assumed Lor was bringing them in somehow. Living with the Nine around means accepting endless mysteries. Jo came and sat with me for hours and we talked and tried to figure out what to do to help Jada/Dani heal. Jo told me she’d been to the abbey twice to see her, but Jada had kept herself surrounded by her closest advisors both times, and acknowledged her only to enlist her aid in continuing the modernization of their libraries.