Enigma (29 page)

Come back to what? To watching other people live their lives and grow close to one another, while she drifted aimlessly among them, defeated and alone?

“You did the right thing,” Sera continued, squeezing Anna’s shoulders. “You kept Patrick alive with the charms. Now they have a chance to save him, and these doctors are good. Carmen is good.”

No, things weren’t supposed to end like this—with Patrick on an operating table and Jorge Ochoa’s parlor splattered with blood. They’d had all the pieces, said everything they could, and things had still gone so, so wrong.

Now, here they were, in some fancy-ass private shapeshifter clinic that had probably never let a spell caster through its doors before. Patrick had to die in a place like this, a place that catered exclusively to the Southwest council, surrounded by people who didn’t give a damn about him.

“Julio’s with him,” Sera said, as if answering her thought. “The minute he has news, he’ll come tell us. But they’re fighting for Patrick, Anna. He gave Jorge Ochoa back his son. They’re going to save him.”

“They’re going to try.” As if she hadn’t heard Carmen and the other doctors talking about blood loss and poor oxygenation and brain damage. “For Jorge’s sake.”

Sera knelt in front of Anna, and her face swam into focus. “It doesn’t matter why. They’re doing everything they can.”

The door opened, and Julio walked in. “He made it through the surgery.”

Sera said something, but Anna couldn’t make out the words over the sudden, crippling surge of relief. “He’s awake?” she asked.

“Not yet. But they had a healer in there, helping out.” Julio hesitated, then nodded firmly. “He’s got a really good chance, Anna, and he’s a tough son of a bitch. Don’t count him out yet.”

Sera tightened her arms around Anna. “Can she see him?”

She couldn’t handle it, not right now. “Oscar and his father—they said they’d come. Are they here yet?”

Julio crossed his arms over his chest. “Yes, why?”

“I have to talk to him. Oscar.” She unwrapped Sera’s arms from around her neck as gently as possible and rose. “We need to be sure the witch was acting alone. There are enough crazy-ass cults running around to make me wonder.”

“Alec and Julio can question Oscar. You don’t need to work just to—” Sera bit off the words and twisted her hands together. “You need food and rest—or at least to let someone look at your injuries. Please?”

Her friend’s concern felt fucking odd when Anna herself was so numb, so emotionally scattered that she couldn’t respond like a normal person would, even to assuage Sera’s fears. “I’ve got this,” she mumbled instead, and edged through the door.

She followed her memory to the lobby, and her ears the rest of the way to Oscar’s dismayed voice. “She must have been watching me,” he was saying. “She knew exactly where I’d be and when. I think she knew my trip was a secret, and that no one would miss me for a while.”

“Sir, if you’ll just let me…”

Anna turned the corner and found Jorge’s hired spell caster bent over Oscar’s arm while Alec and Jorge watched. Alec’s gaze swept over her, and he nodded to the spot beside him before returning his attention to Oscar.

“Makes sense, I guess,” he said to Jorge. “If you’re going for shapeshifter power, what else could you do? Try to snatch Luciano or Nicole out from under the Seer’s nose? Or deal with the fact that Andrew and I live with empaths and work with wizards?”

Jorge sighed. “I’m aware that you think I’m narrow-minded on this topic. I could counter with an argument that this episode means we should be more diligent in purging disloyal spell casters from our territory, but today I’m simply grateful that your associate was able to restore my son.”

Oscar ignored them. He was still staring at the tattoos on his arms—glyphs, marching in straight lines up the insides of both forearms. “She must have done this to herself after—” The words cut off with a shudder.

The spell caster brushed a finger across one rune and recoiled. “Holy shit, that’s—” He controlled his expression with obvious effort and backed away. “The spell should hold,” he said, each word too carefully precise. “Everything that made you a shapeshifter is in this body. She bound your power to this new flesh…”

When he didn’t finish, Alec raised an eyebrow. “With?”

He swallowed. “The skin,” he said faintly. “I can’t be sure, I don’t know if anyone can, but the ink… It
resonates
.”

Anna’s jaunt inside the crystal with Oscar had left her with enough of his memories to fill in the blanks. “She burned the skin,” she explained hoarsely. “She kept him alive until it was ash. That’s what’s in the tattoos, isn’t it, Oscar?”

He shuddered again. “It was the last thing I saw,” he whispered. “Her, mixing my ashes with some kind of liquid. I knew it was part of a spell, but not—not this.”

Alec muttered something vicious and obscene before raising his voice. “Are we sure she’s dead? One hundred and ten percent, not a ghost, straight-up
dead
?”

Oscar shook his head. “She’s gone. I could feel her before, but not after—” He looked at Anna again. “What’s his name?”

Even thinking his name tore at her. “Patrick.”

“Patrick. He killed her, I’m sure of it.”

Anna dropped to the seat beside Alec and braced her elbows on her knees. “Did she have partners, or was she working alone?”

“I never saw anyone else,” Oscar answered. “Sometimes she talked like there were other people around, but we were alone.”

Jorge settled a hand on his son’s shoulder. “I’ve already sent a team to the address Oscar remembers. In light of your assistance in this matter, I’m happy to share our findings with your council. But for now, Jacobson, I’d like to take my son home.”

Alec glanced at Anna. “Good enough for you, Lenoir?”

Not nearly. “I want the address too.”

“I don’t think—”

Alec cut Jorge off. “My people bled for yours. They bled
because
of yours. I know this is your territory, but you owe her that much. When your team has what they need, she gets to do what she wants.”

Oscar rose and silenced the rest of his father’s protests with a single word. “Agreed.” The look in his eyes said so much more. Things that Anna knew she would appreciate later, things like
thank you
and
I’m sorry
, and maybe even
I owe you my life
.

Then he and his father left, and Alec shoved his fingers through his hair with a gusty sigh. “You did good.”

He meant well, and Anna swallowed her hysterical laugh. “Thanks.”

“I’m serious, woman. That right there was a changed man. Do you know what that could mean for everyone who lives in this territory?”

“Patrick did it. Not me.”

“You both did it. Together.” He hesitated. “Do you need me to send you somewhere before he wakes up?”

The laughter bubbled free this time. “I don’t need an excuse, Jacobson. I’m fully capable of walking out of here like a heartless asshole under my own steam.”

“You talk big, Lenoir, but you’re not heartless, not even a little. I know your kind. I
am
your kind.”

Alec had spent years as the walking wounded, a big hole where his heart had once been, until Carmen had come along and made him smile again. But that was a whole different love story, the kind with a swelling soundtrack and marriage and babies and a happy ending.

It wasn’t
this
story.

She opened her mouth to tell him so, but footsteps echoed down the hall, and Carmen rounded the corner. She was wearing a scrub shirt spotted with blood, and Anna stared at it, her stomach rolling with nausea.

Alec hopped to his feet. “How is he?”

“Awake.” She smiled encouragingly at Anna. “Hungry. He asked for a cheeseburger.”

Anna said the first thing that popped into her head. “You’d better bring him two.” Hard on the heels of the nonchalant words was panic, clawing its way up out of her chest.

The walls were closing in, and she couldn’t speak. Just standing there was a struggle, with the cloying, medicinal scent of antiseptic assaulting her lungs with every ragged breath, and underneath it all the metallic smell of blood,
Patrick’s
blood—

She turned and walked out. All the way to the exit, into the tree-lined parking lot. Night had fallen, and she had no fucking clue where she was, but she kept walking.

Eventually, she’d be able to breathe again.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Jackson Holt was a shining example of skin-deep good-ole-boy Southern charm, with a drawling
aw, shucks, ma’am
grin that made almost everyone underestimate him.

Patrick wasn’t everyone. He stared at the spell caster standing outside his front door for a moment before shifting his gaze to the bag of takeout Jackson clutched in one hand. “If you’re here to feed me, you can come in. If Kat sent you to make sure I’m resting, you tell her four days of bed rest was three too many.”

“No ulterior motives, just po’ boys.” He held up the bag. “You like shrimp or oysters?”

“Shrimp.” Hiding his wince, Patrick pushed the door wide and left Jackson to close it. His shoulder still hurt like hell, and it wasn’t going away this time. No super-healing, no magical advantages. Concentrating on feeling better had only resulted in thinking his way into a migraine, so he’d had to face the truth: he was going to recover like a human. A sad, breakable human.

Well, his body was going to recover, anyway.

“Nobody ever picks the oysters.” Jackson came in and headed straight for the kitchen table to unpack lunch. “You people don’t know how to live.”

In spite of himself, Patrick’s lips twitched. “I’ve had all the adventure I can take for a week. Maybe two.”

“Yeah, I figure almost getting eaten, not to mention an extended walk in the afterlife, will do that to a person.” Jackson eyed him before dropping a wrapped sandwich on the table. “You look pretty good for a dead man, though.”

“Is this where I’m supposed to say I was only mostly dead?” Patrick slid into a chair with a sigh. “It’s bullshit. I felt pretty damn dead. It’s not an experience I’d like to repeat.”

“I don’t blame you.” Jackson settled into the chair opposite him and tucked in to his sandwich with a lusty sigh.

Patrick watched him eat half of it before raising an eyebrow. “Are you really just here to visit me?”

Jackson chewed and swallowed before shaking his head. “Okay, no. Two things.” He held up his fingers to tick them off. “Do you know how impossible it is to eat an entire meal with a shapeshifter kid around? Cody will actually take food off my plate if I don’t eat it fast enough. And secondly…” He trailed off.

“I’m healed up enough for Anna’s friends to start kicking my ass?”

Jackson snorted. “Do I look like a man who’s here to kick your ass? I’m enjoying a sandwich. You got any beer?”

Patrick levered himself out of his seat—just to prove he could—and retrieved two beers from the fridge. “Have you seen her? Anna?”

“Nope.” That was all Jackson said before reaching in the white takeout sack again, this time for two small bags of salt & vinegar potato chips. “Are you thinking about sticking around the city?”

“I haven’t done much thinking,” Patrick admitted, which was only partly the truth. The first few days, he’d been too doped up on all the drugs Carmen had pushed onto him. And once he’d realized Anna hadn’t come—Anna wasn’t coming—

He got it, that was the worst part. Maybe if he’d been surprised, he could have ridden that all the way to outrage, but he knew Anna Lenoir. She didn’t trust herself with anyone breakable, and he’d proven himself too damn easy to shatter.

“Well, where else are you going to go?”

Nowhere. He had nowhere to go, no one left. That had always been the deal—in the messy aftermath of their relationship implosion, Anna was going to get custody of everyone they knew. Even Julio and Kat—the two people who felt like
his
—were inextricably tied to people who loved Anna.

He unwrapped the sandwich Jackson had brought him and stared at it, but his stomach was churning too much for him to take a bite. “I’m a resourceful bastard,” he muttered. “And now I’m a miracle. I bet I can find work.”

Jackson cracked open his beer with a shrug. “I could use some help.”

Patrick stilled. Even the ache of loss in his chest quieted for a moment, long enough for him to study the other man’s face and find not even a hint of teasing. “You want to work with me?”

“Why not? On or off the books, doesn’t really matter to me.” His gaze sharpened, and the corner of his mouth kicked up. “I’m willing to bet your brother kept your prints out of the system, so there’s no reason you can’t make it formal. Get your PI’s license.”

“Did Michelle Peyton put you up to this?”

“No, but her sister might have mentioned it,” Jackson allowed. “I’m short a partner since Alec took his job with the Conclave, you know.”

Jackson was an experienced spell caster, someone who could answer the dozens of questions Patrick already had. Someone who might offer him more concrete direction than
trust yourself
. “The fact that Anna Lenoir doesn’t want to look at my face isn’t going to be a problem?”