Banishing the Dark (Arcadia Bell #4)(3)

He ran his fingers over the damp hair near my ear, sending pleasant shivers racing across my skin. “Three days since that first night you woke up. Do you remember that now?”

Barely. It was all so . . . confusing. “I remember dreaming you were some crazy mountain man coming to kill me. What’s all this?” I raked my fingers through his beard.

“Laziness.”

“Hides the tic in your jaw,” I teased. “How will I know when you’re mad now?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll shave it.”

“It’s sort of sexy.”

“You won’t say that when it’s scraping sensitive skin.”

“Don’t tease me when I’m feeble and debilitated. What’s the date?”

“February fifth.”

February . . . I’d been in the hospital an entire month?

“Are you in pain?” he asked.

“Everything aches. My ribs hurt when I bend a certain way.”

“Then don’t bend that way.”

I smiled. “What did you give me?”

“Ginkgo biloba and the detox medicinal you gave Bob when he quit drinking. They had you on morphine after you woke, because Mick wasn’t there to tell them no. You were pretty out of it.”

“Mick. Your Earthbound doctor friend?” One of the best surgeons in La Sirena, Lon had bragged, thanks to a crazy-strong healing knack.

“He did most of your work. Do you remember?”

The faces of several doctors and nurses blurred in my mind.

“Do you remember Mick telling you anything before he put you under for healing?”

“Like what?”

“Something very important. Think, Cady.”

Whatever he wanted me to remember, he was super-intense about it, so I tried harder. Something finally came into focus inside my head. Yes, that’s right. I remembered Mick in the hospital. Remembered his bright blue halo and his handsome smile. But he wasn’t smiling when I was hurt, was he? No. I was remembering meeting him before I got hurt. The night before—

“I killed Dare,” I said, suddenly sobering. Not just Dare but also his thugs, the ones who beat and punched and kicked my body until I nearly died myself. “They trapped me, Lon. Dare knew I could be trapped in a binding triangle. He knew, and he . . .” I inhaled a shaky breath.

Lon’s eyes narrowed to angry slits. “Don’t you even think about being sorry.”

Never. I steadied my emotions and concentrated on the here and now. “Do the police know?”

He reached over to the tray and uncovered a bowl of soup. An intoxicating scent wafted from the steam. “Chicken stock. Ginger. Seaweed. Vegetables.”

“You made it?”

“Same thing I make when Jupe’s sick. Plus a few other things.” When I began to ask what those “things” were, he cut me off with a stern look. “Just eat it.”

“Yes, sir.” Thank God for Lon’s cooking skills. It tasted a thousand times better than the hospital’s canned soup. Between spoonfuls, I said, “See, I’m eating. Now, tell me. Am I going to jail?”

He shook his head. “I paid someone to collect the ash and bone from Tambuku before anyone else showed up.”

“Who?”

His eye twitched. “Someone Hajo works with when he’s death dowsing.”

“Oh, God.”

“No one knows what happened but you and me.” He squinted one eye closed. “And Jupe. And Priya—your guardian appeared to Jupe to tell us what happened. That’s how we found you.”

“I sent him to get help,” I said, remembering. “But what about Tambuku? The bodies?”

“I took the bones to Dare’s wife, Sarah. Told her a version of the truth, that he was looking for the person who’d leaked his bionic knack drug. Do you remember all that?”

“The red liquid that amped up demonic knacks. Tambuku was robbed . . .”

“And Dare used a magician to manufacture the drug until he realized someone had stolen it and leaked it to the general public. So I told Sarah that Dare had traced the leak to the magician, and some Earthbound’s juiced-up knack went haywire and burned them all. It wasn’t that far from the truth, and it kept the whole thing out of the papers. She announced that he’d had a heart attack; their money and influence prevented any further investigation. The funeral was two weeks ago.”

It was overwhelming, how much I’d missed. And my foggy memories made everything feel surreal. My brain felt broken. “I hate that you had to lie for me.” He never lied. Loathed lying, in fact. I was the professional liar; he was a walking lie detector.

“I’d do it again in a heartbeat,” he said very seriously.

“What about Kar Yee?”

“What about her?”

Good question. Why was I so worried about her? “We had a fight,” I said, reaching for the details. “I told her who I really was. Who my parents were. She got angry with me for keeping it from her all these years. I tried to go after her . . . that’s why I went to the bar. To find her. She hates me.”

“She had Bob drive her to the hospital several times a week to see you, and that doesn’t seem much like hate to me.”

No, it really didn’t.