Carrie Vaughn - Kitty Rocks the House

“Don’t worry, he’ll be fine. But he asked me to call you and Ben. You should probably get down here.” It couldn’t have been too bad. She sounded almost amused, not at all like someone delivering bad news. In fact she may have been enjoying this. That still could have meant bad news, knowing how she felt about Cormac …

“What happened?” I squeaked.

“He said he’ll explain it when you get here.”

“Right. Okay. We’re on the way.” I clicked the phone off. I stared at it for a moment.

“Go,” Ben said, pushing at me to let him out of the booth. “I’ll drive.”

“What is it?” Trey said. He hadn’t been close enough to hear Hardin over the phone. “You’ve gone completely white.”

“Ben’s cousin’s in the emergency room,” I said starkly. I looked at him despairing. “Can we pick this up later? I’m sorry—” Wolf, curled up deep in my gut, growled a little. We were alpha, we shouldn’t be apologizing. But I was human, and Trey had asked for help.

I couldn’t do everything.

“Yeah, sure, of course,” Trey said. Ben had the presence of mind to slap a twenty on the table as we were leaving. At least we didn’t stick him with the check.

Ben took my arm and pulled me toward the door. Shaken out of my shock by his urging, I hurried to keep up.

Once outside, we ran to the car and drove to the downtown hospital in silence.

FINDING PARKING took forever. Of course it did, we were in a hurry. I suggested just parking right outside the big sliding doors with the red EMERGENCY sign posted over it, but Ben indicated that that would be a bad idea when the next ambulance plowed into his sedan. Never argue potential traffic violations with a lawyer.

Walking to the emergency room after finding a parking spot also seemed to take forever, as if the space between us and the doors kept expanding.

“What did she say?” Ben asked for the millionth time. “Did she say what happened?”

“You heard as much as I did. She said he’d be fine, but that was it. Said that Cormac wanted to explain it himself.”

“God, if he’s broken parole…” he muttered.

Detective Hardin’s involvement did seem to suggest Cormac had done something illegal. He’d been doing so well, and he only had a couple more months on his parole. Surely this couldn’t be that bad.

“We should have more faith in him,” I said, as much to myself as to Ben.

“You haven’t known him as long as I have. Him and trouble, they’re like magnets.”

“Like somebody else you know?” I said, my grin lopsided.

He huffed at that, and we were inside.

The lighting was oppressively artificial, and the mood in the waiting room was dour. A dozen people slouched in plastic chairs watching a talking heads news show with the sound off on a TV hung in the corner. A kid sleeping in his mom’s lap coughed. The place smelled like illness, and bodily fluids covered over with antiseptic. My nose wrinkled.

Ben marched straight to the reception desk. “You’ve got a patient, Cormac Bennett? We’re his family.”

The nurse, a tired-looking woman whose brown hair was coming out of its clip, checked a sheet of paper and nodded. “Yes, let me take you back.”

She led us around the corner to a series of exam spaces separated by curtains. Halfway down the row, she held back a curtain and gestured us in.

Cormac was sitting on the side of the bed, his legs hanging over, slouching and looking annoyed. At first glance he didn’t look different; he was dressed in his usual jeans and T-shirt. His leather jacket lay over a nearby chair. But he smelled of sweat and adrenaline—of pain. His left arm was resting on a rollaway table that fit over the bed, wrapped in a bandage and covered with blue cold packs. Hardin stood a few paces away, arms crossed. She regarded us with amusement, eyes crinkled, smirking.

“What happened?” I burst. I had an urge to rush over and hug Cormac and make protective cooing noises over him, but I didn’t. He wouldn’t have appreciated it. I was just so relieved to see him alive, conscious, sitting up, and being himself.

Cormac’s moustache curved with the strength of his frown. “I fell.”

“We’re waiting for the X-rays to come back,” Hardin said. She was definitely smiling now. So, it wasn’t parole he’d broken.

“Is he in trouble?” Ben said. “He’s not under arrest or anything?”

“Nope,” she said. “Just feeling kind of dumb, I bet.”

Cormac made a noise like a growl.

“Okay, there’s a story here,” I said. “Who’s going to spill?”

“She’s been tailing me,” Cormac said, jutting his chin at Hardin and scowling. “Can we sue her?”

“Probable cause,” she said. “I’m tracking down the same vampire you are. You’re a possible witness. That vampire, he’s there, isn’t he?”

“I’m doing your work for you,” he said.

She merely shrugged in assent. “It’s a good thing I was following you, so I could drive you here.” I tried to imagine that car ride, Cormac in the passenger seat next to Hardin, cradling a hurt arm, both of them snarling at each other. It was almost cute.

“I ought to charge you consulting fees,” Cormac said.

“Not a bad idea,” Ben added.

The detective brushed them off. “We can discuss that later.”

“Right,” Ben said, with a sigh that indicated impatience. “But what happened?”

“I fell,” he repeated.

“Something knocked him down,” Hardin said. “Outside St. Cajetan at Auraria. What exactly is going on over there?”

I turned to Cormac, glaring. He’d been staking out the church, Columban’s hideout. I couldn’t yell at him for it without revealing to Hardin that Columban was there. I couldn’t say anything with her standing there. So, he’d found something. Something had happened. Something had attacked?

“At least you weren’t staking us out last night,” I muttered.

“Last night was the full moon, right?” Hardin said. “Were you expecting trouble? Anything I need to know about?”

I didn’t even want to go there. “No. Nothing at all.” Back to Cormac. “You found something?”

“I fell and landed wrong. That’s it.” So he didn’t want to talk about it in front of Hardin, either.

A woman wearing a lab coat and a professional air came around the curtain holding an oversized manila envelope. “It’s definitely broken,” she said, and Cormac blew out a breath.

I’d spent the last couple of years being so worried that Cormac would get himself killed or thrown back in jail or a million other things, a broken arm was almost anticlimactic. Cormac seemed embarrassed more than anything. He wouldn’t look up.

A doctor and nurse bustled in, making ready with needles and bandages to set the arm. They politely herded us out. This time, I had to pull on Ben’s arm. He didn’t want to leave his cousin alone, but Cormac himself told us to leave. Didn’t need the moral support—or didn’t want witnesses to his vulnerability? Almost wolflike, not wanting to show weakness.

Hardin walked with us to the waiting room. “I know cops aren’t your favorite people in the world,” she said. “But we’re on the same side here. I’m not out to get anyone. I just want to keep the bad guys out of Denver, same as you.”

Everything she said was true. We’d worked together often enough in the past, sharing information, chasing down supernatural villains, pooling our experiences when neither one of us had enough on our own to go on. But this time, she didn’t even know who the bad guys were. How far this went. She’d met Roman once, sure, when he came to Denver before to size us up and test our weaknesses. She’d had brushes with the Long Game and had been there when Rick killed his predecessor. But she didn’t know anything about the Long Game. The details, the alliances. How it was closing in on us …