Into the Darkness (Darkness #1)(31)

*****

I blinked my eyes in the bright sunlight. I was positioned directly under a window with the shade up, in direct line with the sun. I blocked the glare with my palm, squinting around the room. One glance told me where I was, and the second told me who I was with. I rolled so my head was on the pillow and groaned.

“Good mid-morning,” Charles said in a tired, gruff voice.

He sat off to the side in a large, vintage chair with velvet arms. He held knitting equipment that he quickly let fall to his lap in anticipation of conversation. Which apparently meant we had to have one.

“Hi.” My voice was just as gruff and tired. “I feel like a drowned rat.”

“That’s because you look like a drowned rat.”

I grunted, rolling to the very edge of the bed so the sun wasn’t beating down on me. I sat up slowly, clutching my head to keep it from exploding. “What happened after I passed out?”

“A few things, mostly concerning bodily fluid. All over my car.”

A humiliated glance told me he wasn’t upset somehow. I mumbled out an extremely embarrassed, “Sorry…”

“Eh,” he shrugged. “Once I threw up all over Jonas when I had too much to drink. Then I got my ass beat. It happens.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

“So anyway…feeling horny? I know I am…”

I couldn’t help but wheeze out a laugh. It was hard to take the guy seriously. “No, I’m not really in the mood.”

He shrugged, unconcerned. “I figured, what with the near death incident, but it never hurts to ask.”

“I nearly died? What do you mean?”

“Too big of a magical release. Who would’ve thought a human would have enough magic for that, huh? Go figure. But there you go.”

My head wrapped around the information slowly, the term unfamiliar anywhere but with a clown and a wand. “Magic? Me?”

My memory drifted back to that black stuff that shot out of my palms. It had felt like my insides were pulled out through my fingertips until I had nothing left to fill my body. Shortly thereafter I’d felt like I had the worst fever imaginable.

It made a lot more sense than I wanted it to. So I switched gears immediately. “Where’s Jared?”

“His mind was wiped and his body deposited back with his orange headed roommate. They’re both being kept in their rooms until all our influence wears off. Jared’s going to be a little spacey for a while, though—we had a lot of emotional damage to try and hide.”

“How do you do it? Erase memories?”

“Oh, we don’t exactly erase them. They’re still there, we just, kinda, cover it up. Hide it. Like really old memories that you thought were gone. Dreams will bring them back up, but everyone assumes dreams are just imaginary, so…”

My head felt like it was stuffed with cotton. I nodded, unable to process any more. “When can I go home? I have a class later this afternoon.”

He laughed, picking up his knitting. “You couldn’t even walk out of here if you tried, but you want to go to school? Tenacious. And dumb. No, Mira is taking care of that. She’ll go in your place until you’re well enough. She’s pretty smart! She has her doctorate in physics, I think. A little glamour in the right places, and actually doing your homework—something you apparently fail to do half the time…” he tsk’ed at me, “and voila, great grade.”

“But…”

“Plus, we’re still not 100% sure you’re accepting the Boss’s blood. You seem like you’re recovering, but sometimes humans’ bodies reject the potency of the magic. Usually, the first few times, you’d get blood from someone with a lower level of power to see your reaction, but you were too far gone.”

“The Boss’s blood?” My voice sounded hollow. I vaguely remembered choking down metallic tasting liquid, but I’d had no idea what it was. Or whose it was.

“Yes. Shocking, right? I know. He hasn’t given his blood to anyone since he became the leader of this territory. But he’s the strongest, most powerful of us, and if anyone could’ve saved you, it was him. His idea, too. Good guy, that Boss. We’re in good hands with him, even though we’re against a pretty powerful mage.”

Half of me found all this fascinating. This was another life, one I hadn’t known even existed outside of my weird hallucinations, a few short days ago. The other half of me just wanted him to stop talking. Even though he seemed sweet, he was uncommonly chatty, and with the state of my body and head at the moment, I just wanted quiet.

To that end, I lay back down, then immediately tried to fight off an overanxious sun. Eyes squeezed shut, I turned my face at Charles. “Can I ask you to lower the shade, please? The sun is blinding me.”

“And here I thought humans worshipped the sun.” He shook his head, his large body crossing the room to wrangle the shade. “Makes me tired, that’s all I know.”

“What’s with the knitting?” I asked sleepily, shifting to the center of the pillow. It felt like my veins were filled with lead. It hurt just to be awake.

As Charles sat back down, he said, “What do you mean?”

“Only old women knit.”

“Well, now, that’s just rude. And not true. I have made many a fine scarf, which I will prove by knitting you a fine scarf.”