Strange and Ever After (Something Strange and Deadly #3)(38)

“You’re only mad because I’ve rescued you more times than you’ve rescued me.” I laughed again, this time more deeply. I still burned with the power I’d cast on the parachute. It was a happy drunk that made me bold—made me draw back and flick his chin, like he always did to me.

But he grabbed my wrist and pulled me to him. Our bodies met. “That’s not true.” His voice was suddenly rougher. Lower. All sign of his tears were gone. “How many times have you saved me?”

My heart was thrashing erratically, but not because we’d almost died. Or even because Daniel held me. I was finally going to get what I wanted, and this time I would not balk.

“I’ve saved your life three times now.” I splayed three fingers on his chest. Beneath the thin cotton of his shirt, his pulse bounced as fast as mine. “First at the dynamite factory, then in the Paris underground, and now this.”

His lips quirked up. “That makes us even, then.” His smile faltered . . . and then fell again. “Promise me something.” He reached up and ran his knuckles down my jaw. I held my breath and strained to listen. “Promise me you’ll never do something like that again.”

“I can’t promise that, Daniel.”

His fingers paused. “Why?”

“Why do you think?”

He swallowed, glancing down at my hand on his chest. Then he flinched. “You’re hurt—oh hell, you’re bleeding.” He yanked up my right sleeve, and, sure enough, blood was sliding down my arm from my elbow.

A giggle broke through my lips. “I must have cut myself on the acacia thorns.”

Daniel’s brow furrowed. “I don’t see why it’s funny.”

“It doesn’t hurt,” I declared, but Daniel ignored me. He set to rolling up my sleeve, and moments later, once my forearm was exposed, his breath came hissing out. It was a huge gash—the sort that would need cleaning and salves. The sort that should be causing pain.

“We need to bind that immediately.” Daniel met my eyes, worried. “And your demon ain’t here, so it’s got to be the normal way.”

“Pshaw.” I pulled my arm free from his. It was tender, but nothing I couldn’t handle. “I told you: it doesn’t hurt.”

“And I don’t care.” Avoiding my eyes and with his jaw muscles twitching, he ripped off the bottom half of my sleeve. It was stained with blood but not yet soaked through. So he wrapped it tightly around the wound.

When he was finished, he pointed east. “Walk.”

“To where?” I glowered. “And since when are you in charge?”

“Since you got drunk off your black magic and lost the ability to think clearly.” He sighed . . . then groaned. “I don’t want to fight about this, all right? I am so, so, so grateful that you saved me, but that”—he pointed at my arm—“scares the hell out of me. So please, just do as I say. And walk.”

I eyed him. A thousand retorts lay on the tip of my tongue, but I swallowed them back. I would not shout at him. And I would not cry. I would cling to this magical strength for as long as it would let me.

But then panic jolted through me. My hand shot into my pocket to search for . . .

My breath whooshed out, relieved. The ivory fist was still there . . . though a fist no longer. Tracing the feel of its carvings, I could tell the fingers had further unfurled.

I had no idea what it meant, and I wasn’t in the mood to contemplate it. “Fine, Daniel,” I declared. “I’ll do as you say, and I will walk. But you follow me. I know where Oliver is—I can sense him through our bond.”

Daniel’s face tightened, but he did not argue. So with an unhappy inventor on my heels, I felt for Oliver—closer, ever closer—and set off at a steady march through the fields of sugarcane.

It took us almost an hour to find Oliver—and the balloon. Endless fields of sugarcane, dates, and cotton . . . endless mosquitoes and flies. Endless heat. Hawks glided overhead, while lapwings fluttered everywhere like butterflies.

I was desperate for water within minutes—especially seeing all the canals from the Nile that separated farms in place of hedges. But I doubted it was drinkable, and there was no one to ask. The fields were abandoned—likely to avoid the afternoon heat—and the few veiled women still out tending the crops did not seem open to conversation.

My arm began to hurt by the third farm—not badly, but it did throb as blood seeped out. The magic had already worn off. I was desperate for more, but too ashamed to use it with Daniel there. I tried, albeit halfheartedly, to speak—about the landscape or the bugs—but he only gave me one-word answers. He did not seem angry with me. Only sad. And silent.

But he did check on me several times, to rewrap the wound or to inspect me for other injuries. I think he could tell the magic had faded, but neither he nor I knew how to make amends. So silence it was until we finally crested a hill and reached a sprawling village of flat-roofed buildings and sycamore trees. In the distance, crumbling walls—Greek, by the look of the ornate columns thrusting up amid fields of grass and dust.

But what caught my eye was an obelisk that jutted out of the ruins. Much like the one in the Place de la Concorde in Paris, it towered over everything—even the small city. Sycamores grew all around it, and draped over one gnarled tree was a sprawling heap of white fabric. It billowed in the breeze like a sail.