Grave Dance (Alex Craft, #2)(40)

My grave-sight made his clothing appear worn and moth-eaten, but the remaining fabric was saturated with blood al along one side from the middle of his chest down to his pants.

“Caleb,” I screamed. Please be able to hear me. “Caleb, help me!”

The front door opened and Caleb rushed out, Hol y a few steps behind him. I tried to shift my legs from where they were pinned under Falin’s body without jostling him—which I failed at miserably. His brows scrunched together, his grimace making his sharp features draw in pain, but he didn’t open his eyes.

“What—?” Caleb stopped short, stil several feet away.

Hol y kept running. She dropped to her knees beside me.

“Alex, what happened? What’s wrong?”

“Alex, what happened? What’s wrong?”

What’s wrong? Clearly the unconscious fae sprawled in our driveway. But Hol y wasn’t looking at him. Was he glamoured?

“Hol y, go back inside,” Caleb said, not moving.

She looked between Caleb and me, her indecision clear on her face. “What’s going on?”

“Just do—” Caleb cut himself off, then lowered his voice to a more civil volume and said, “Wait inside.”

I think he would have said “please” if his nature had permitted, but it didn’t. Hol y’s frown etched deeper and she looked at me, her eyes asking me what I wanted her to do.

I wanted help for Falin. Now. I didn’t know what Caleb’s issue was, but Hol y couldn’t see Falin if he was glamoured, so she couldn’t help. Swal owing the sour taste of adrenaline, I nodded. “I’l explain later.”

Hol y scowled, but she pushed herself up and stomped across the front lawn. When the door slammed behind her, I looked at Caleb.

“Help him?”

He shook his head. “It would bring more trouble down on you and on my house.”

“He’s hurt. We have to do something.”

Caleb didn’t move. “Get up, Al. Let’s go. I’l cal someone to deal with him.”

Falin didn’t need “dealing with”—he needed help. And I wasn’t about to leave him until he got it.

“Please, Caleb. Help him. Please.”

At my words, I felt the potential for imbalance between us.

He owed me a favor because I’d listened to Malik—I’d forgotten about that favor—but I’d asked him for help, and he was so against the idea that if he did help, I would be the one indebted to him. I didn’t care.

“Please,” I said again.

He winced. “Alex—” He shook his head and then exhaled a long breath. “For you, Al. Not for him. We should get him inside.”

inside.”

Caleb knelt to lift Falin off of me. Falin was easily sixfive and wel built, but Caleb lifted him without so much as a grunt. He hauled him into a fireman’s carry and I winced.

“I think he has a stomach injury.”

If Caleb heard me, he ignored me as he headed around the side of the house toward the stairs to my loft. PC

pranced at his heels, dragging his leash. My legs tingled with pins and needles as I climbed to my feet, but I forced them to work anyway. After fishing my dagger out of the grass and shoving it back in its boot sheath, I jogged to catch up with Caleb.

I closed my shields when I reached the stairs. In my grave-sight the steps were rotted and pitted, and I didn’t want to fal through the staircase. I hurried up the steps, my knees wobbly from the adrenaline rush as I tried to catch up with Caleb while watching Falin’s disconcertingly limp head lol to the side with Caleb’s swift steps. It wasn’t until I reached my door that I realized, as it was my grave-sight that let me see through glamour and I’d closed my shields to the grave, I shouldn’t have been able to see Falin. Of course, glamours were easier to see through when you knew they existed.

Caleb slung Falin onto my bed, careless of the other man’s injuries. Then he stepped back as I made a hasty job of trying to get Falin’s limbs into positions that looked comfortable—or at least natural. I peeled his shirt away from his chest, wincing in sympathetic pain as the fabric stuck to the tacky blood.

Drying blood caked Falin’s torso, but dark, wet blood stil glistened along a long gash that started just under his ribs and disappeared into the top of his pants. Blood oozed from the deep laceration, and my breath caught in my chest.

“We need to get him to a hospital, or a healer, or . . .” I turned to face Caleb. “Where do fae go when they’re injured?”

injured?”

Caleb didn’t answer. He just stared at the man on my bed. Not moving.

Okay, Caleb was obviously limited help. Very limited. So it’s up to me. “Hospital,” I said. After al , the hospital in the Quarter would be up-to-date, with al the most current healing magics. I reached for my purse and my cel phone, but Caleb grabbed my wrist.

“Leave him. He’l be fine.”

“F i ne ? Fine? Caleb, I’m pretty sure he’s mortal y wounded!”

“Yes. If he were mortal.”

Oh, right. I glanced at the bed. I didn’t know a lot about injuries, but this one looked bad. Definitely hospital bad.

Maybe morgue bad. But I also didn’t know a lot about fae healing abilities.

Was Caleb right? Could he heal from this on his own? Or was Caleb’s personal dislike clouding his judgment?