Seanan McGuire - Ashes of Honor

“Would you rather I knocked you out? Because I could do that. And I will, if it looks like you’re going to interfere.” She took her hand away, leaving tingles of chemical peace dancing over my skin. “Etienne, Quentin, get over here. I’m going to need the two of you to help me lift him onto the table. I need him higher.”

“Sure,” said Quentin, moving to join her. Etienne didn’t say anything. He just went.

Li Qin was abruptly at my side, taking my elbow and turning me away from the sight of Jin and her makeshift assistants descending on Tybalt’s unmoving form. “Let’s make some coffee,” she said, soothingly. “Wouldn’t you enjoy that? You like coffee.”

“Yes, I do,” I agreed. My voice sounded distant. I was aware, in an almost academic fashion, that I should be more upset than I was—that I should be doing something to help, not going to fix myself a cup of coffee. Now that Jin wasn’t adding to the calm, I could feel the shape of it in my blood, smooth and foreign. I could remove it if I wanted to. I might not have seen that if I hadn’t been so relaxed, but I was too calm to get in my own way. If I wanted it to stop, it would.

And that was why I couldn’t want it to stop. The only thing I could do to help Tybalt was stay out of the way and let Jin do the job I’d begged her to come to do. If he was going to be saved, she was going to be the one who saved him, not me. Not even a hero can do everything.

Li Qin led me to the coffee maker, where my current serenity turned the process of grinding beans and pouring water into something slow and ritualistic. It was like watching my friend Lily, the Lady of the Tea Gardens, setting up a formal tea service. Only this time, the end result wasn’t going to taste like licking the lawnmower.

“You like strong coffee,” observed Li Qin.

“Don’t sleep much,” I said. “Need the caffeine.”

“Jan didn’t sleep much either. She always said she could sleep once she was dead.” Li’s voice didn’t quaver. She kept watching me, smiling just a little. “I suppose that means she’s well-rested by now.”

“Jan was weird,” I said, pouring coffee into my cup. The part of me that was still aware that insulting a dead woman’s memory might not be a good idea cringed. The fact that Li Qin was Jan’s widow just made it worse.

But Li Qin didn’t seem to mind. Her smile didn’t waver as she agreed, “That’s very true. Everyone in Tamed Lightning is weird, one way or another.”

Living flesh being sliced open makes an unmistakable sound. Raw meat being cut is a kissing cousin, but it doesn’t really compare. Living flesh fights back. It resists in a way that dead things can’t, muscle and bone fighting against the invasion of the knife.

The thick, wet sound of someone being cut open hit my nerves like a cattle prod. I didn’t drop my coffee cup—it would take a lot more than shock, fear, and hope, all mixed into a sick cocktail, to make me drop a perfectly good cup of coffee—but I did go stiff, my fingers locking on the handle until I would have sworn I felt the porcelain bend. Jin’s peace fled as quickly as it had come, chased out of my body by adrenaline and my own rising magic.

“That’s gross,” said Quentin.

“Never become a doctor,” said Jin.

“I wasn’t planning on it.”

“Good,” said Jin, and started to sing.

The Ellyllon songs are strange things. They’re unique every time, because they bend to suit the needs of their subject matter. Ellyllon can sing both harm and healing, and what they can’t sing away, they can at least dull down. Jin kept singing long enough for me to raise my shaking hand, drink an entire cup of coffee without tasting a drop of it, and pour myself a refill.

Jin stopped singing. Silence fell…and in the silence, Tybalt coughed.

“And that’s how you perform home surgery,” said Jin.

I forced myself to move slowly as I put my cup down on the counter, barely registering the suddenly silent Li Qin, and turned around to face them.

The first thing I noticed was the blood, which covered the surface of the white plastic table and pooled on the industrial-blue linoleum floor. The second thing, oddly enough, was the glitter. A thick haze of silver and green glitter shimmered in the air around them, making them look like they were having a small, quiet, horror-movie-themed rave. Etienne and Quentin were standing on the far side of the table that Tybalt was lying on. Jin was standing in front of the table, blood coating her arms to the elbows, soaking into her shirt, and even covering the bottom half of her face.

And Tybalt, for all that he still looked pale and unwell, was struggling to sit up, eyes open, and looking back at me.

“Massive internal bleeding,” said Jin, tilting her chin up so that she was talking to no one in particular. “Damage to the liver and spleen. Three broken ribs, one of which managed to puncture a lung, which, let me tell you, takes talent. Also a cracked femur—shouldn’t have been walking on that—and a pretty severe concussion. Congratulations. It’s a nice, macho death, which nobody gets to die today.”

“For that, I thank you,” said Tybalt, swinging his legs over the edge of the table, gripping it hard for balance as he stood.

Jin glared at him. He was more than a foot taller than she was, but she still managed to look imposing as she gestured for him to sit back down. “No walking! No standing, no bending, no moving, no accessing the Shadow Roads, nothing . You don’t swim for an hour after eating, you don’t swan around like an idiot for an hour after narrowly avoiding death.”

“Toby does,” said Quentin.

“Toby is genetically predisposed to swan around like an idiot,” Jin shot back. “Now sit .”

“Must everyone behave as if I am some sort of hound?” asked Tybalt. Still, he moved to the nearest chair and sat. “I simply wished to reassure October that my condition was improved.”

“She can see you. She has eyes. There is no reason for you to be on your feet.”

“Elliot is going to be furious when he sees the condition of the cafeteria,” supplied April. I didn’t need to look to know that she was behind me. “That is a perfectly valid reason to be on your feet and potentially running away.”

I didn’t say anything. I just kept looking at Tybalt.

Li Qin put a hand on my shoulder, nudging me forward. “You’re not the one who’s not allowed to move,” she said.

It only took me four long steps to cross the stretch of floor between me and the chair where Tybalt was seated. Jin moved out of the way. The blood on the linoleum made it slippery, and when my feet started to go out from underneath me, I let them, hitting the floor on my knees. Somehow, in the course of the motion, I managed to get my arms around him. Jin had objected to him standing, but she didn’t object to this. He closed his arms around me in turn. I buried my face against his blood-soaked shoulder, struggling to keep my breath steady.

“Thank you,” he whispered. “If you hadn’t called them here…thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” I whispered back.

My jeans had almost dried while I waited for Jin to finish working on Tybalt. Now, they were getting soaked again, becoming heavy with blood. The feeling of it congealing against my skin was what made me let go and climb to my feet. I rested one hand on Tybalt’s shoulder, like I was afraid he’d disappear if I let go for too long. And maybe I was.

“Chelsea was here,” I said, turning to Etienne. His eyes widened. There was a smear of blood on his forehead, spoiling his normally immaculate appearance. Oddly, that just made him look more like his daughter. Blood will tell. “She’s the reason Tybalt and I survived long enough to get here. We were attacked in Berkeley. We were just about done for when she teleported in, and we managed to get her to bring us back here.”