Sometimes it truly isn’t worth getting out of bed.

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When I opened my eyes, I wasn’t at home.

I moved to sit up, slipped, landed hard on the concrete behind me and only after my head cleared from the impact did I realize I’d put my hand in a puddle. Which wasn’t a puddle. Once again, Hollywood has it wrong: blood doesn’t make a nice, neat puddle on the floor. Trust me. And don’t even ask how it smells.

I sat up again, careful this time to use a somewhat cleaner spot of floor to support my weight. I was back in the warehouse on Charlotte, it looked like a horror film, and my lightweight pants, along with the rest of me were covered in blood. Reflex licked my lips. I sat, spitting for a few seconds, trying to figure out how the hell I’d gotten back here.

My head was throbbing, and I wandered my hand along my scalp. I’d hit my head twice, and I only remembered the once. I stood and discovered that was a huge mistake. Between being dizzy from the head injury and my natural queasiness at the smell of blood, I didn’t stay on my feet for long. The third time my head hit the concrete was the proverbial charm, and I surrendered to the darkness once again.

Sometimes I have really good days. You know, those days where everything goes perfectly and nothing in the world could knock you down off the natural high derived from a series of successes. I’ve had two or three absolutely spectacular days like that. This wasn’t one to be added to the list.

This was one of those days in which the gentle comfort of unconsciousness was abruptly shoved aside by a sharp return to awareness. I was cold, though whatever I was lying on was more comfortable than the floor of the warehouse that I dimly recalled rising to greet me. Here was a sharp tang in the air like astringent combined with chemicals, and a dull needling ache in my arm that I couldn’t send away with my magic.

Reluctantly, I opened my eyes and found that there was a cushion beneath me, a pillow under my head, and the ceiling over my head was a painfully brilliant white. Even in my muddled state, I managed to figure out that I was in hospital. I tried to lift my arm to shield my eyes, but it was tied to the bed, and the source of the irritation in my arm was a needle that was hooked up to an intravenous bag above me.

Lifting my head only allowed me to get a different view of much of what I had already surmised. I was in a hospital room, and no longer in my blood-soaked shorts. My head wasn’t quite pounding anymore, and I figured that it had something to do with the drugs that were being fed into me. I wanted to get that needle out of my arm, but it was blindingly difficult to concentrate my magic. Most mages don’t function well under the influence of modern mortal medicine. Add a medical narcotic to the mix, and while I’m not high, I’d be perfectly useless in a mage fight. It’s the same effect as the nicotine in my cigarettes, only mainlined, and therefore absolute. Anything more than a Tylenol, and I’m as mundane as it gets, and this was decidedly more than that.

I dropped my head back onto the pillow, and lay there, dazed and disoriented, foggy from the drugs. Voices filtered through the hallway, and I closed my eyes, trying to use them to center my thoughts. Whatever they’d given me for pain was doping me beyond my ability to focus my wits, let alone my magic, and I’d have to wait until someone noticed that I was awake. The door opened, and for a moment, the voices were clearer, but then they faded as the door was closed, and I could hear that someone was in the room.

I opened my eyes and turned my head, staring at the person who had entered the room, and I was positive that I had started hallucinating. It looked like Xelander was standing there in a white lab coat, his silver hair pulled back with the intensity of his gaze moderated by glasses. I blinked several times, but the apparition didn’t change except to smirk at me faintly, and then I closed my eyes again. Great… not only was I concussed and drugged to the point of stupidity, but I was also hallucinating that my childhood companion was my doctor. It was going to be a long day.

I hadn’t seen Xelander for a long time, but I knew why my brain had chosen him to be my drug-induced hallucination; he’d been on my mind because of the grant program. I opened my eyes to see if the apparition was still there, and he was, though now he was turned away from me, writing in what was probably my chart. I watched him warily, trying to convince myself that my clever hallucination would fade and that those weren’t the slight mannerisms that I had seen growing up.

Eventually I moved too much, and the grunt of frustration at being trapped in the bed couldn’t be held back. The man turned to look to me, and damned if the expression on his face wasn’t the exact image of my brother back when I’d fallen out of the upper window in the castle ruin while trying to learn how to catch my fall with air magic. All right; to be honest, he’d pushed me out the window because I’d been too much a coward to do it myself.

“Good afternoon, Mister Shestin. Do excuse the medications; the emergency staff didn’t realize that you were magekind. Our main concern was getting you comfortable.” It seemed as if he was speaking entirely too loudly, as if for someone else’s benefit. He reached across, turned the shunt on the IV, and then rested his hand on my shoulder, speaking quieter as I felt my head clear almost instantly. Was he using magic? “It is good to see you again Teimhean, though perhaps this is not the best of situations.”

Christ. He’d used my Irish name. It was Xelander. Emotions flared through me, adrenaline once more rising to the call, drawing power out of hiding and sending the phoenixfire burning through the remaining medication and injury as I stared at him in disbelief. He drew his hand away, nodding slowly, and offered me that faint little smile of his before he lifted the medical tape and pulled the needle out of my arm. That healed too in the wake of my magic, and I struggled to sit up and free my arm.

“Do I want to know what put you on the floor of that warehouse?” Of course, Xelander knew my powers, knew about my healing… but he didn’t know about my ties to the demonic, nor did he need to. I certainly didn’t have any desire to tell him, either. It wasn’t as if having a demonic boss with a penchant for a good beating was normal.

I shook my head and shrugged as I sat on the edge of the hospital bed, looking at the state of myself in dismay. Little wonder they’d dragged me to the emergency room. “You know, looking at me, it’s not too much of a stretch to say that I don’t really want to remember, is it?” I held up hands that were flecked with dried blood and speckled with something… I grimaced and dropped my hands to my lap.

Xelander doesn’t roll his eyes… it’s more a combination of crossing his eyes while he closes them and sighs at me. It’s hard to describe, but I guarantee you that you’d know it if you saw someone do it. “The sink is over there… do what you can to get clean. I should warn you, however; there is an officer outside your room who is quite adamant that you remain here.”

Hell, it had to have been John Kelly. I was torn between washing the dried blood off my hands and face and going outside to send him away. I knew he was going to try to twist this into something that he could use to destroy me, and to be honest, I couldn’t remember a damned thing. That would complicate matters, but I understood the human psyche all too well. Act like you own the place, and most people don’t question it. All I had to do was act like it was perfectly normal to have been lying on the floor of a warehouse bloodbath in what had likely looked like pajama bottoms without a weapon in sight. Bit of a stretch? I agree, and it was going to be even harder considering that all I was wearing now was a hospital gown that was open in the back.

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My hands were under the running water when I heard Kelly’s voice raised in irritation outside my door. Someone wanted to come into the room, and he was having none of it. Xelander crossed the room, opened the door, and stepped back in surprise as a blonde woman came stalking into the room. Christ. Suzu. I was torn between washing the dried blood off of my hands and face, and fending off the woman who was probably getting ready to chew me out the moment I acknowledged her presence.

Xelander looked as if he’d been poleaxed, and she glanced his way long enough to note his presence before she walked across the room and began to fuss at me. “Jedah, sweetheart, I’ve been worried sick! Are you all right? When you didn’t answer your phone, I knew you’d gotten in trouble. It’s that damned job of yours…” She took a paper towel, dashed it into the water and started wiping at my face as a flash of annoyance hit me. She was acting, and she was better at it than I was.

“Suzu, this is precisely why I don’t call you when there’s trouble… would you kindly stop fussing over me?” I tried to fend off her hands for a moment before I heard a strangled cough from across the room and Xelander excused himself. I wanted to slap my hand to my face, but Suzu was too busy wiping my forehead down with a wet paper towel, and I gave in like a sullen little boy.

The door latched, and she threw the towel at me, the amusement in her eyes flashing bright for a moment. “I take it that the man who was in here is someone that you find unsettling?” Even though she was a thoughtmage and supposedly respected my mental privacy, she had an uncanny knack of knowing what was needed at any given moment, and I had needed him out of the room.

“That was… oh, never mind, you probably already know.” I said, taking the paper towel and scrubbing at my face. “And while I do appreciate the rescue… did you have to be quite so embarrassing about it? And how the hell did you find me anyway?” I threw the paper towel away, pulling another out of the dispenser and wetting it before going after my face again.

She moved across the room to look out of the window in the door before she spoke. “I have contacts virtually everywhere, Jedah. One of mine called when you came in and I’ve been biding my time nearby waiting for you to wake up. What happened to you?” Her voice was softer now, less likely to be heard by Kelly outside… especially as I could hear him yelling at Xelander.

I shrugged, throwing away the now-useless paper towel and moving to wash my hands again, stalling for time as I thought things through. “I’m not sure, in all honesty. I went to sleep in the townhouse and woke up in the warehouse, covered in blood.” The hospital robe drafted around my backside a bit, and I moved slightly, giving a half turn to keep myself from flashing Suzu. “Sorry, I seem to be shy of anything decent to wear… that’s a downside of waking up in a bloodbath with nothing but silk evening pants on.”

She just smiled.

Something ghosted through my memory, an impression of a man standing before me, his face a gruesome bloody rictus of an almost skeletal grin. My body felt very heavy, but my head was light, and the next thing I knew, I was half in Suzu’s arms and half on the floor. “Jedah?” I was queasy suddenly, my stomach awash with that rolling feeling that any more motion will be quite enough, thank you.

“Ravenswing,” I rasped, flailing a hand for the sink. I didn’t know if there was anything in my system to bring up, but if there was, I didn’t want to vomit on her. “I think… I think it was… sink. Need the sink now.” I clung to the edge of the stainless when she got me there, feeling the cold metal bite into my skin. It helped me focus but reassured me that I was going to be sick.

Somewhere around the third heave, Xelander returned to the room. Suzu was still holding me upright, and I felt his presence immediately. My vision spun, and my stomach ran a rollercoaster ride, all at once, the world upending itself when his hand rested on my shoulder. The moment he did, I realized what was happening: The drugs were completely out of my system, and I’d not had a cigarette for a while. Without the nicotine to contain my magic, I was rapidly losing the tenuous hold that kept it from going wild and turning on me if I didn’t release it. It wasn’t as if I could smoke in the hospital, so I needed to get out of here, and Kelly was in the way.

“Here, put him on the bed; get the pillow under his feet...”

“Jedah, talk to me. What’s wrong?”

Nausea rushed through my awareness as I was moved, voices spinning together, a heavy hand on my shoulder, and the door of the world slammed shut once more.

There were voices to the side of me. A patient woman’s voice, gentle and yet firm. A man’s irate voice lifted against her placid calm. Another woman’s voice, soft and sweet. I couldn’t make out the words, but the tones in the voices told me enough. I opened my eyes, the world swimming into blurry appearance before clearing, sharpening into a different hospital room from the one I remembered.

I was in a private room this time with yet another needle stuck in my arm. My mouth was dry, and I moved to see if anyone had thought far enough ahead to put a glass of water next to the bed. That would have been a no. I fell back into the bed with a noise of disappointment, and as expected, the two females came into the room proper. The nurse started fussing over me, and I ignored her in favor of my erstwhile blonde companion. “This is not my day.” My voice cracked, and she had to work to hide her smile. “Damn… could you get me some water, Suzu?”

“That would be a side effect of the medication, Mister Shestin; it will pass. I’ll let Doctor Wexforth know that you’re awake.” the cheerful little nurse said and nodded to Suzu. I gritted my teeth as the happy little brunette patted my shoulder and moved out of the room once more. Cheerful nurses are the last thing I want nearby. It’s just so… grating on already stressed nerves.

Suzu reappeared with a small paper cup in her hand, and I sat up, taking it and sipping from it slowly. It had that hollow metallic taste of overprocessed tap water, but it was wonderfully, magnificently wet. I reveled in the pleasure of the moisture on my tongue, ignoring Suzu’s snort of amusement. Until your mouth has been dryer than a cotton wad, you just can’t understand.

Two more sips, and I ventured to talk again. “Thank you.” With the immediate need of thirst resolved, I looked to Suzu, and repeated the sentiment. “Thank you. For coming. I mean… for being here for me. You always turn up when I need you, even when we’re on the outs.” She had, after all, moved out. I truly hadn’t expected her to come running back to my aid.

Fingers threaded gently through my hair, and I tried not to remember that it needed a good washing. “We aren’t on the ‘outs,’ Jedah. We simply need our own space. I was…” Her voice trailed off when the door opened and Xelander entered the room. Suzu stepped away, her touch fading with the weight of the moment, and for an instant, I was mad at Xelander for his ill-timed appearance, not that he could have known.

“That Officer Kelly is quite the ‘by-the-book’ type,” Xelander offered as he closed the door behind him. “He doesn’t want us to release you until he has had a chance to,” he cleared his throat, “ask you a few questions.” By which, I knew that we all understood he wanted an interrogation. “I doubt that he’ll take putting off much longer.” And that would mean I’d be alone in a hospital room with John Kelly and no memory of what transpired to put me here, let alone in the warehouse.

Except for that one fragment of a memory that was my boss looking like a badly painted Halloween horror, and from that I could extrapolate any number of things. Too bad none of them were anything I could take as truth or tell John Kelly. I nodded slowly, savoring the last bit of water from the cup before I answered. “Fine, let him in so I can get it over with.”

Suzu stepped off to the side, and as Kelly walked in, she smiled to him. “Oh, don’t mind me; I’ll be on my way.” The perfect actress, she turned and blew me a kiss. “Darling, send someone for me; I’ll be in the waiting lounge.” Anyone who didn’t know would be dead positive she was mine. And by the look on his face, Kelly bought it. So, for that matter, did Xelander. Only I knew that she wasn’t, and I’d never know what she’d almost said earlier.

“As his physician, I will remain in the room during this… discourse. If I deem it necessary, the interview will end.” Ah yes, I knew exactly what Kelly thought of that, but Xelander was within his rights to be present. I was his patient after all. If I’d not been… I’d probably object to the babysitting.

Kelly came to the foot of the bed, fixed me with that condescending smile of his, and opened his mouth. “Guess your little clean up job went wrong. The lab is working on the details now, but you and I both know how it’s going to go. Just tell me how it went and make it easy.” His tone wanted to intimidate me, and his words were a not-so-subtle way of affirming my guilt. And for all I knew, I was guilty… but I didn’t want him to know that. I frowned, thinking back, trying to remember, trying to understand that horror of a face that had looked at me.

And then I remembered. And I threw up.