Rose refused to rush her shower. Her head pounded; her body ached; her numerous scrapes stung. The hot water sluiced away the blood, but it took her adrenaline with it and left her exhausted.
She rubbed a towel across the steamy mirror and frowned at her streaky reflection. Already she could see a dark circle spreading under her hair; it sent lavender tendrils reaching towards her cheek. Half her face was going to be black and blue by morning. She’d never in her life been beaten up, although she’d been around plenty of those who had. The pain she’d felt from those people had been nothing like this. Filtered through secondhand senses, it wasn’t the same. She’d been able to escape it, put distance between herself and the reality of it. When the pain was her own, it sucked.
Nazeem had said he’d gather the others in Mike’s room. He’d said it just like that. If she couldn’t read his face or decipher his emotions, at least she could listen to the way he talked. Pick up hints from the words he used and the way he used them. His speech was as elegant as the rest of him. His accent betrayed his foreign roots, but English wasn’t a new language to him.
Rose pulled on the skirt and sweater she’d worn to dinner, but they weren’t enough. Even after her hot shower, she felt cold. She added another layer of skirt and her one pair of heavy socks. And for good measure, she wrapped the fluffy, hotel-provided bathrobe over everything.
Mike answered her knock on his door. His gaze immediately went to her face, and he frowned. “What is this?”
Rose rolled her eyes and pushed past him into the room. Nazeem stood against the near wall; he’d also cleaned up and changed. Ian wasn’t around. Mike closed the door behind her and then took Rose’s chin in his hand, tilting her head so he could look at the bruise.
“If we were back home, I’d send you to the emergency room,” he said, frowning.
Rose jerked her head away. “I’m fine.”
Another knock, with Ian’s intensity radiating through the door. “I got your message,” he said when Mike let him in. “What’s going on?” Care and worry swirled in her head as Ian got a good look at her head. “Are you all right?”
“Tell them what happened,” Nazeem bid in his soft, even voice.
Rose sat down on a velvet-cushioned chair and recounted the dream with as much detail as she could remember, from the victim’s fear to the shining man’s assault. She talked about waking up outside in the cold, of the voiders who had attacked her. Of Nazeem’s rescue. Mike listened, his face impassive. Ian wore a similar—albeit prettier—poker face, but Rose could feel the mix of excitement and fury that pounded through him.
“Bastards,” Ian muttered when she had finished.
“Has this happened to you before?” Nazeem asked.
“True dreams, yes, although I’ve never lost control of one. The sleepwalking—never.”
Mike turned to Nazeem. “And how did you get involved?” He didn’t hide his suspicion well.
“I was…out. I heard her scream.”
Curiosity from Ian. “The man in your dreams—he really glowed?”
Rose shrugged. “Yes. Maybe. Sometimes things I see aren’t real—more symbolic. Dream logic and all that crap. It’s possible I saw him that way just because he was a voider.” Which would have been easier to believe if the victim whose head she’d been inside hadn’t also seen the same burning light. “Either way, he’s a guy with power. No question about that.”
Everyone fell silent, lost in their own suspicions. Mike went to sit at the window, his gaze locked on the looming cathedral across the square. Ian fidgeted in his chair, fiddling with the cross around his neck, his face resolute and his insides volatile. Nazeem’s head angled up towards the ceiling, his eyes focused inward, his energy a jangling, impenetrable mess.
Father Mike broke the quiet. “What do you think, Irish?” he asked, looking over at Ian.
Ian’s insides rippled with pleasure and pride. Like a kid who got called on first by the teacher. “I think we don’t know enough. If the victim was a voider, like Rose said, it makes sense the killer would be too. Not like there’s ever much cross-pollination in the supernatural communities. On the other hand, if the killer was actually, literally glowing, that’s the kind of flash that makes me think faelock.”
“Or demon,” Mike countered. “Although a faelock in the city would certainly answer the question of what you’re doing here.”
Rose raised a hand. “Time out. You’re going to have to slow down and explain things to the new girl.”
“No.” Mike shook his head. “I’m sorry, Rose, but I think you should say no to Rutledge and go home.”
“What?” Rose hadn’t been expecting that.
“I agree with Michael.” Rose whipped her head around and glared at Nazeem. “It’s dangerous for you here.”
“Screw you,” Rose said. “I can make decisions for myself. I’m not a child.”
Mike pressed his forehead against the window glass, muttering what sounded like obscenities in Latin under his breath. “This isn’t about you being a child,” he said louder, in English. “It’s about you being a civilian. We don’t put sensitives on the front lines, and there’s a reason for that. Your little psychic powers are very cute, but after only one night, your brain’s been hijacked and those men who grabbed you—I’m pretty sure they weren’t dragging you off to a slumber party.”
He looked up, glaring at Rose. “You have no idea how deadly things can get. You have no idea what’s going on in this city.”
Rose’s anger, for the moment, dulled her body’s aches. She’d just gotten here. Of course, she didn’t know yet what was going on in the city. “Do you?”
Mike’s tone held no room for compromise. “I’ve been fighting this war for over thirty years. I know a bad situation when I see one. This business is way beyond tarot cards and séances. I can’t afford to look after you.”
Rose’s cheeks flushed at the implication her gift was useless. “They’re offering me this job for a reason. Alec thinks I should be here. And besides, I’m not afraid.” A lie. Of course, she was afraid. Terrified. But not just of the men who had assaulted her. Rose feared the future that started with her returning to Arizona, locked away from the people who knew about and understood her gift. A future where she ended up like all those other sad voices on the internet. Broken by the constant weight of the world and just sitting around, waiting to die.
“So brave.” Mike’s tone was mocking. He raised his hand and from across the room, Rose felt a push of invisible energy, painful against her bruised head. “It’s not about afraid, kiddo. At this level of the game, it’s pretty much a matter of alive or dead.”
“Fucking priests.” Rose stood up, planted her hands on her hips. “You think you know what’s best for me.”
“Rose—” Nazeem’s voice was level, reasonable, but Rose spun on him.
“What? If I leave, is one of you going to give me a million dollars? Because I don’t know about you, but I do need the money.” She needed more than the money, but she wasn’t about to admit it in front of Mike.
Ian chimed in, surprisingly, on Rose’s side. “You’re not in charge here,” he said to Mike. “You can’t make any of us leave. And you can’t assume we don’t understand the danger.”
“It’s for her own good,” Mike argued.
“No,” Ian countered. “You don’t know that. You don’t know Rose. You don’t know any of us.”
The dulcet tones of Ian’s sincerity bolstered Rose’s own confidence. “Ian’s right.”
Mike looked back and forth between them, then glanced imploringly up to Heaven and reached into his pocket for another cigarette. “Fine. Just don’t come crying to me when this blows up in your face.”
Rose continued to glare at him until a yawn forced its way past her lips.
“Go to bed, get some sleep,” Mike said, his narrowed eyes daring her to argue.
Rose hated that he was right, and hated even more the shiver she couldn’t repress. “I don’t know if I can get back to sleep.”
“Or if you should,” Nazeem said softly. And then everyone was staring at the growing bruise on her head.
Ian said, “I may be able to help.”
Rose arched her eyebrows at him. “Oh?”
He grinned. “A warding circle—around your bed. It’s got a bit of healing to it and should also keep anything from touching your dreams.”
Rose didn’t miss Mike’s surprised, then speculative, expression. Did Ian have some tricks the padre didn’t? Old man didn’t know everything, after all.
“Sure. That sounds great.”
“Just let me get some stuff from my room.”
Rose followed Ian. Screw Mike and Nazeem both. They could think what they wanted—Rose would just have to learn to look after herself.
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