Tangled Threads

19

“Gin!” the hoarse, worried whisper roused me out of the liquid blackness I’d been so peacefully drifting along in. “Gin! Are you out here?”

The sound of my own name startled me the rest of the way awake, and my eyes snapped open. At least, I thought that they opened. I certainly wanted them to. But since the world still remained pitch-black, I wasn’t quite sure about that.

After a moment, the events of the night filled my mind, vague flickers and flashes of images that should have made more sense to me than they did. McAllister and LaFleur eating at the Pork Pit. Me sneaking into the rail yard. Finding Natasha. Torching the old depot to create a distraction. LaFleur’s eerie green lightning racing along the metal rails toward me. That last one made me shudder. Her power had hurt so much—

“Gin!” the voice called again.

And now someone was out here looking for me in the dark — but was it friend or foe?

“We’ve looked everywhere,” a second voice said. “She’s not here, and she’s not answering her cell.”

A woman. That was a woman talking.

My mind wasn’t working quite the way it should, but I knew I didn’t want a woman to find me. Didn’t want Elektra LaFleur to find me. I shuddered and curled into an even tighter ball, barely daring to breathe. If the other assassin discovered me now, she’d finish me off with her lightning. Then LaFleur would go after Bria, Finn, and everyone else I cared about, and there would be no one to stop her. I wouldn’t be around to stop her—

“Let me concentrate,” the first person rumbled again. A man, given the deep pitch of his voice.

Some small part of my mind frowned. That voice sounded … familiar. Why? Why did it sound so familiar? Why did I like the deep, rumbling sound of it so much? Why did I want to call out and answer it?

I felt a bit of magic surge to life somewhere nearby. But it wasn’t LaFleur’s crackling electrical power or Mab Monroe’s red-hot Fire magic. Surprisingly, this magic felt similar to my own Stone power — cold, still, calm, comforting. Not exactly the same, but it wasn’t the complete wrongness of another element either.

“This way.”

Something rustled over my head, and I heard heavy footsteps. Someone’s boots squished in the mud, getting closer and closer with every step. I tried to bring my hand up to my vest to grab one of the silverstone knives hidden in the zippered pockets, but my hand just wouldn’t work. Wouldn’t move, wouldn’t grasp, wouldn’t do anything but lie by my side like a dead fish. No part of my body worked. It dimly occurred to me once more that I couldn’t feel anything — not my fingers, not my toes, and especially not anything else in between.

“There! There she is!”

Someone rustled through the cattails I was lying in, sending clumps of dirt raining down on my face, but I didn’t even have the strength to reach up and brush them away. I got the sense that someone was standing over me, though, looking down at my cold body.

“Why — why are her hands glowing like that? With that silver light?” the woman whispered in an awed tone.

“I don’t know,” the man rumbled. “Go start the car and turn the heat on full blast. Now.”

Another pair of footsteps scurried away, hurrying back up the muddy bank. Again I tried to summon up the strength to move, to protect myself, or even to just open up my eyes and see exactly what this new threat was. But I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do anything right now.

Strong arms lifted my body up out of the frozen mud. I breathed in, and a rich, earthy scent filled my nose. His aroma, the one that always made me think of metal, if metal could ever have any real smell to it.

“Owen?” I mumbled.

At least, I thought that I mumbled his name. My lips were so cold and stiff that I didn’t actually feel them move. I tried to open my eyes again but found I couldn’t. Something had glued my eyelids together. Ice probably, frozen in my lashes, from my foolhardy swim in the Aneirin River.

Silence.

Then a warm hand smoothed down my cold, wet hair. “Hang on, Gin. Just hang on—”

The world went black once more.

I don’t really know what happened after that. I was dimly aware of riding in a car, someone’s hands yanking at my heavy, wet, ice-crusted clothes. Every once in a while, I woke up long enough to hear people talking. Odd bits of conversation I probably should have understood but that just made no real sense to me.

“I’m driving as fast as I can.”

“Use that cloud knocker.”

“Put her in the tub.”

“She’s so cold.”

Sometimes I thought that I heard Owen’s voice. Other times I could have sworn it was Eva Grayson talking. But what would the brother and sister be doing at the train yard? I’d gone there to meet Finn, not them. I just couldn’t make sense of anything.

Slowly, the cold receded from my body, an inch at a time, and warmth enveloped me once more. My fingers and toes and everything in between started to tingle as my circulation was slowly restored. I gritted my teeth as the fiery needles stabbed me one after another in an unrelenting wave.

“It’s okay now, darling,” a soothing voice whispered. “You can let go of your Ice magic now. You’re safe, Gin. Relax. Just relax.”

So I did and drowned in the darkness once more.

*

The next time I tried to open my eyes, I was actually able to do it, with no problems or struggles of any sort. After a few seconds, the world snapped into focus and I realized I was lying in a bed. Above my head, puffy white clouds drifted across a cerulean blue sky on the fresco on the ceiling. The dreamy clouds comforted me, and I let out a quiet sigh. Safe. I was safe now. Because only one person I knew had her ceilings painted like that — Jo-Jo Deveraux.

Somehow I’d gotten from the muddy bank of the Aneirin River all the way across town to the dwarf’s house. I wasn’t too concerned right now with exactly how that had happened, just the fact that I was safe and warm and could actually feel my arms and legs again. I wiggled my fingers and toes and was pleased when they all responded to my internal command. Looked like I hadn’t lost any digits to frostbite or hypothermia, no doubt thanks to Jo-Jo’s healing Air elemental magic. Good. It would be hard to hold on to my silverstone knives with no thumbs.

A faint scuffle sounded, and I lifted up my head.

Over the mound of blankets that covered me, I spotted Natasha standing at the foot of the bed. The little girl had been cleaned up since the last time I’d seen her in the train yard. Her dark brown hair had been pulled back into a ponytail, and her face was free of the grime and tears that had covered it. The puffy bruise was gone from her cheek, and I didn’t see any other injuries on her. Jo-Jo had probably used her Air magic to get rid of those, as well as heal me.

Now the girl was dressed in what looked like one of Sophia Deveraux’s black Goth sweatshirts, given the fact that it was covered with bloody broken hearts. Matching sweatpants and socks completed the ensemble. Sophia might be a dwarf, but the sweatshirt still reached down to the girl’s knees, looking like a dress on her thin frame. The legs on the sweatpants had been rolled up several times too.

“Hi,” I croaked.

Instead of answering me, Natasha stared at me a second longer, then turned and ran out of the bedroom.

I put my head back down on the pillow and lay there in bed for a few minutes, just letting myself adjust to being alive, awake, and in one piece again. Slowly moving my body, flexing my fingers and toes and making sure that everything was in more or less working order. Jo-Jo had outdone herself again, because I felt almost as good as new, except for the bone-deep weariness that made me want to curl up and sleep for eight more hours. But that was just an aftereffect of being magically healed by the Air elemental, nothing more. Especially since I was pretty sure I’d resembled an ice cube by the time the dwarf had gotten her hands on me last night.

The most important thing was that Elektra LaFleur hadn’t killed me yet. And now that I knew that my baby sister, Bria, was on her hit list, I was even more determined to end the other assassin’s existence.

Which I wouldn’t accomplish by staying in bed all day. So I sat up and threw off the blankets. I really must have been frozen when I’d gotten here because I had on not one, not two, but three sets of flannel pajamas — along with five pairs of wool socks. I looked like a marshmallow with so many heavy, dense layers covering my body. I shook my head and got to my feet.

I took a step, stumbled, and almost did a header into the cherry dresser next to the bed. My feet might still be attached to the rest of me, but apparently they weren’t accepting orders just yet because more needles of pain flared to life deep in my muscles. I gritted my teeth and planted my hands on the wooden dresser, waiting for the sensation to pass. I was damned if I’d collapse back onto the bed. Not while LaFleur was still breathing. Not while the assassin had her sights set on killing Bria.

“You shouldn’t be up yet,” a low voice drawled.

I looked up to find Owen Grayson standing in the doorway, a steaming mug of something clutched in his hand.

Owen looked just as tired as I felt. His blue-black hair was rumpled, stubble covered his face, and shadows darkened his violet eyes, as though he hadn’t gotten much sleep last night. He was dressed casually in a thick, black turtleneck sweater that highlighted his broad shoulders, but mud covered his boots and stained the knees of his jeans.

I frowned. “Why is there mud all over your clothes?”

“Because I’m the one who found you last night,” Owen said. “You called me. Don’t you remember?”

I had a vague recollection of hitting Owen’s number on my speed dial instead of Finn’s but that was all. I concentrated, and more flashes of light and sound swam up in my mind, filling in some of the blanks from last night.

“I called you, and you came looking for me,” I said. “But how did you find me? I didn’t exactly give you directions.”

Owen leaned against the doorway and took a sip from his mug. The smell of sugary-sweet hot chocolate made my mouth water. “No, but I called Finn, and he told me where you were and what the two of you had been doing. When you called me, you said that you’d jumped into the river and were downstream. I told Finn that, and he was able to guess where you might have washed up. So I got in the car and went looking.”

“And Eva was with you too, wasn’t she? I remember hearing her voice.”

Owen nodded. “She wouldn’t let me go without her, and I thought that the two of us searching would be better than just me.”

I shook my head. “But even if you had a general idea of where I was, it would still take hours to search the riverbank, especially in the dark. So how did you find me?”

Owen walked into the room and picked up something from the nightstand on the other side of the bed. Sunlight streaming in through the window glinted off the edge of one of my silverstone knives.

“These,” he said. “I knew that you had to have at least a couple of them left on you, not to mention the metal melted into your hands. So I just concentrated and focused on finding any silverstone in the area. They led me right to you.”

Of course. Owen had what he considered to be a small elemental talent for metal, which was an offshoot of Stone, although I knew that his magic was anything but weak. The bottom line was that Owen could sense, control, and manipulate metal just the way that I could Ice and Stone. Still, it must have taken every bit of magic he had to specifically sense the silverstone in such a big area, especially with all the cans and other metal debris that littered the riverbanks.

“That’s why you look so tired, isn’t it?” I murmured. “You used up all your magic to find me last night.”

Owen shrugged as though it was nothing. But it wasn’t nothing to me. Besides Finn and the Deveraux sisters, I couldn’t even remember the last time someone had cared enough to come looking for me when I was in trouble. I was so used to being on my own for so long, always being the tough, strong, capable one, that I’d forgotten how nice it felt to have someone else look out for me.

To have someone else care about me.

And just like that, the fragile strings of my feelings for Owen joined together, all the tangled threads wrapping around and weaving their way through my heart. Scary and painful in some ways, but necessary in others too.

Ignoring the needles still tingling in my legs, I managed to walk around the bed. Owen put his mug down and opened his arms. I stepped into his embrace. For a moment, I just laid my head against his chest, breathing in his rich, earthy aroma. Then, when I felt steady enough, I stood up and pressed my lips to Owen’s.

Maybe it was my frame of mind or the fact that I’d almost frozen to death last night, but I felt so much in our kiss. Owen’s lips against mine, his body flush with my own, his tongue slowly stroking against mine. The familiar passion sparked to life deep inside me. The feel of Owen, the smell, the taste of him, heated me in a way that all the wool socks in the world just couldn’t.

But it wasn’t just my body he’d affected. As much as I’d tried to fight it, warmth had blossomed in my heart for him too, unfurling one small, fragile petal at a time. And the emotion had only been strengthened by what he’d done for me last night. For coming to my rescue when I needed him the most, for helping me when I couldn’t help myself, for saving me when I couldn’t save myself.

Some time later the kiss ended. We stood there in the middle of the bedroom, our arms wrapped around each other, breathless. For the first time, I didn’t try to ignore what I was feeling or pretend that things were only physical between us. They were much more than that now.

“Well, now,” Owen murmured against my lips. “That makes it all worthwhile.”

I drew back and arched an eyebrow. “Really? I wouldn’t have figured you for a man who could be so easily bought off with a mere kiss. Even if there was a good deal of tongue action involved.”

A wicked grin spread across Owen’s face, softening the scar on his chin and making his violet eyes sparkle with a sly light. “Well, if you have something else in mind, I’m open to suggestions.”

I jerked my thumb over my shoulder. “There is a bed in this room.”

“Yes, I had noticed that,” Owen said. “I also happened to notice that you have on about a closet’s worth of clothes.”

“You don’t like the marshmallow look?” I quipped. “Or perhaps you’re just not up to the challenge of getting through all my many layers of woolen chastity?”

Owen’s eyes narrowed, and his lips quirked up into a sly, sexy smirk. “Oh, baby. You have no idea what I’d do to get through those layers and down to the good stuff.”

I pressed a soft kiss to the side of his mouth then put my lips up against his ear. “Then why don’t you show me?”

Owen’s hands slid down my back before coming around to the front of my body. Our eyes met and held as he undid the top button on the topmost flannel shirt I was wearing—

Someone let out a not-so-discreet cough. I looked over Owen’s shoulder to see Finnegan Lane standing in the doorway, a cup of chicory coffee in his hand and a knowing grin on his handsome face.

“Well, it looks like someone’s feeling better,” Finn drawled.