Grim Haven (Devilborn Book 1) (20 page)

Cooper didn’t speak, but he cried out plenty as I tugged and dragged him inside. I had no choice; he was much too heavy for me to lift. I didn’t even consider calling for help. If he’d wanted a hospital, he would have gone to one.

I yanked open the sofa bed and got him onto it as gently as I could. Then I lay beside him and tried to share my vitality, the way I had when Kestrel Wick attacked him. But he didn’t respond, only mumbled something that sounded like
crawfish
. He said it over and over again.
Crawfish. Crawfish
. While no energy flowed between us, and I could feel him getting weaker.

His blood was everywhere. So much of it. A gash in his head. One side of his neck looked like ground meat. And I’d seen his belly. His intestines were on the wrong side of his
skin
.

What if even a vital could be injured too badly to heal?

I bit back a sob and doubled my efforts, concentrating with all my might on pushing my own vitality into him. Willing him to get better.

Nothing.

Dammit, Cooper why didn’t you stay here, where you could be safe?

But that wasn’t my real question, and I knew it. I let the voice in my head loose to vent its frustration on its real target.

Damn you, Verity, why did you let him go? Alone? He asked you for help. More than once. Why didn’t you give it to him? You have no right to cry over him now, when you refused to help him when you had the chance.

I was on the verge of giving in to panic and despair when I saw it: a wound in his face slowly closing.

I gently moved his hand aside and pushed up the tattered remains of his shirt, then braved a closer look. His entire abdomen was cut open—
blown
open, maybe—and it was all I could do not to retch or faint at the sight (and, I’m sorry to say, the smell) of it.

But was it as bad as it had been when he came in? Was it getting better?

I couldn’t be sure. But he was breathing less raggedly now. That much wasn’t my imagination.

I watched that cut in his face close, and prayed.

My prayers were answered. These weren’t supernatural injuries, like Kestrel had given him. No matter how nasty they were, they were only physical. He could heal them on his own. And he didn’t need my vitality to do it, because nobody had stolen his this time.

Which meant that whatever had happened to him, it probably wasn’t at the hands of the Wicks.

Thanks to his healing superpower, Cooper was physically fine by midday. His mental state was something else entirely. He stayed in bed, curled tightly into himself, and didn’t speak. I brought him a sandwich and some coffee, which both sat untouched on the end table, and tiptoed around, trying to decide whether it was cowardly or considerate to leave him alone until he was ready to talk.

I spent a good part of the day writing spells, distributing them around my suite as well as the hotel. I had no idea whether or not he was followed, but even if he wasn’t, surely it was only a matter of time before his enemies came looking for him at the Mount Phearson. They certainly had last time.

Lance came knocking that afternoon. “I thought I’d come check for myself, since I haven’t heard from you. I hear you have a guest.”

I didn’t invite him in. “Not that it’s any of your business, but how did you know that?”

“Rosalie was on her break this morning and saw him sneaking up the staff stairs.” His face was calm, but his voice was low and tinged with alarm. “She says he was hunched over and bloody. Barely recognizable. Luckily there weren’t guests around at that hour.”

“Or in the staff stairwell, where guests would have no reason to be,” I pointed out.

Lance ignored the jab. “It was very upsetting for her.”

“Well, sorry to upset Rosalie. And thank you for your concern. Cooper is fine.”

“Can I see him?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Can you
see
him? Are you accusing me of something, Lance?”

“You’ve been acting strangely,” Lance said. “Even for you. I just want to verify everything is okay.”

“We’re fine.”

“What happens in this hotel is my concern, you know. That is what you pay me for.”

“But I do not pay you to babysit me,” I said. “Now for the third time, we’re fine.”

“Who did you say saw me?” Cooper was standing behind me, still in his bloody clothes, but upright, at least.

Lance looked shocked by the sight of him. I couldn’t say I blamed him for that. Cooper was so thin and pale he might have passed for a wraith, if not for all the dirt and blood he was caked in. Had it really only been ten days since I’d last seen him? How could he have lost so much weight, in so short a time?

His voice was thin, too, as he said, “Who else knows I’m here?”

“Rosalie,” Lance said. “She told me, and Agatha. I don’t know if—”

Cooper let out a string of foul words, his voice seeming to gain strength with each one, while Lance and I stared. Finally he asked, “Can you contain it?”

When Lance finally recovered his powers of speech he said, “I can try. I’ll find out who else she’s told, and see that it’s kept quiet. Hotel staff generally know better than to violate the privacy of guests.”

“Do that.” Without a word of thanks, or any of his usual charm, Cooper walked away again. I watched him for long enough to see him get back into bed, then turned back to Lance.

“
Fine
?” was all Lance said.

“Sorry. He, um, needs rest.”

I got rid of Lance as quickly as I could, but when I came back inside, Cooper still wasn’t talking. He’d resumed his fetal position on the couch, and there he stayed until the next morning.

Rather than cooking him breakfast in my meager kitchenette, I decided to try to tempt him with something from The Witch’s Brew. Superhealer or not, it couldn’t be good for him to have gone so long without food. I walked over to the shop and asked Wendy for half a dozen assorted croissants.

“I hear Cooper’s back,” she said.

“Balls,” I said. “Keep it to yourself for now, will you? I’m sure there’s no hope of it not getting around, but he got really upset when he heard Rosalie saw him.”

“Rosalie’s the one who told me. She was worried about him.”

I nodded and shrugged at the same time. “He’s had a hard time of it. He needs to rest.”

“Anything I can help with? You need protection herbs, or anything? I can make you a couple of poppets.”

I tried not to let my distaste at that last offer show. A lot of witches swear by poppets for protection, but I’ve always found the little dolls unspeakably creepy.

“No, I think we’ve got it covered,” I said. “But thank you.”

Wendy nodded, but she didn’t look pleased. In fact, she looked almost angry. “Hang on a sec, will you?”

I stepped aside and waited while she dealt with the customer who’d come in behind me. As soon as he was gone, Wendy pulled me behind the counter, near the office door, where she could still keep an eye on things but we wouldn’t be overheard.

“Here’s the thing, okay?” she said. “We don’t know each other well. You have no reason to come to me with your problems.”

“But?”

“But this is
my
town,” Wendy said. “I’ve lived in Bristol my whole life, it’s where my family is, and I love it, warts and all.”

I didn’t know what to say, because I had no idea what
she
was trying to say. Did she think I was infringing on her territory, or something? “I don’t understand,” I said honestly.

“When we were at your pub that day, Cooper gave everyone the short version of what Wick wants, remember?” Wendy asked.

I nodded.

“So, what he wants involves me. It involves all of Bristol. And I have a right to defend my home.”

“Ahh,” I said. “So basically, you’re saying you want me to come to you with my problems.”

“I do when they’re my problems, too.”

I smiled at her. “You and your friend Lydia have a lot in common.”

She laughed. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“I meant it as one.”

Mostly, anyway. I admired both women. And I was genuinely grateful for their help. Without Wendy, things might have gone differently for little Jake Foley.

But I wasn’t used to having help thrust upon me, either. And I was still a bit confounded by their eagerness to put themselves in danger. I’d spent my whole life trying not to get involved in the kinds of things they seemed to run toward without a second thought. Pushing people out of their way to get there, if necessary.

Then again, maybe they were the ones who had it right. Wendy
did
have a right to defend her home.

“Look,” I said, “there are things I just flat-out can’t tell you, at least not yet. But if you’re willing to live with that for now, I could probably use some help. Cooper seemed really, really worried about word he’s here getting out. I have no idea why; I’m sure it’s the first place Wick will look anyway. But if you know of any spells that might—”

But Wendy was already shaking her head. “I can’t make him invisible. If it was that easy to hide somebody, the Bristol devil wouldn’t have had to make his deal, would he?”

“No, I guess not.”

“Still, we can stack some protective spells around him. It’s better when you’ve got energy coming from multiple witches. Like layering against the cold.”

“Really? I didn’t know that.”

She nodded. “I’ll call my Granny, too. I’ll send a few potions and poppets over to the hotel for you later today.”

“Thank you,” I said, and I meant it, despite the fact that I was apparently going to have to accept poppets, after all. I cleared my throat. “I’ll admit I’m not good at…”

Working with people? Doing magic with people? Talking to people?

“… people,” I finished simply.

Wendy grinned at me. “Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it. We’ll leave you no choice.”

I had a moment of panic when I got back to my suite, thinking Cooper had gone, until I heard the shower running. Well, surely that was a good sign for his recovery. And it was good for me either way. Even Cooper Blackwood couldn’t make the combined smell of blood, sweat, and something acrid and burned that had surrounded him for the past twenty-four hours sexy. I laid the croissants and coffee out on my table, then fried some bacon to go with them, because it is a truth universally acknowledged that bacon can improve any situation.

“Smells good.” Cooper came in just as I was taking the pan off my tiny two-burner stove. He wore nothing but a towel, which I pretended not to notice, and sat gingerly, as if he was still sore. His abdomen was riddled with ugly scars, but they looked months rather than hours old.

“You should eat something,” I said, both because I thought it was true, and because I didn’t know what else to say.

He nodded and took a croissant, which he started to pick apart, but made no move to actually eat.

“Cooper, can you tell me what happened? You kept saying something yesterday, when you first got here, but it didn’t make any sense. It…” I trailed off, knowing how odd I would sound.

“It what?” he asked.

“It sounded like you were talking about… crawfish.”

“Craw
ford
,” Cooper said quietly. “Crawford Blackwood. My cousin.”

“Oh?”

“He’s dead.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said reflexively. “Were you close?”

He shook his head slowly, then helped himself to coffee. I waited.

“Didn’t even know him,” Cooper said finally. “Never met. We don’t meet many members of our family. I haven’t even seen my parents’ real faces since I was nineteen.”

“Because you keep yourselves separate and isolated for safety.” When he nodded I said, “I wonder if that’s wise.”

He shot me a glare, and I realized it was a bad time to broach the subject of Blackwood security policies. I mumbled an apology and concentrated on my croissant.

We ate in silence for a few minutes, and I was relieved to see that Cooper was indeed eating, at least. It was a start. We were nearly finished when he said, “So. You asked what happened.”