Glimmerglass

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The moat had killed my watch and Ethan wasn’t wearing his, so I had no real concept of how long we huddled there beneath the bridge, except that it was far, far longer than I would have liked. During that time, I discovered a new pain. My skin apparently didn’t react well to Water Witch hair, so there were raised red welts all along the lower part of my legs where she’d grabbed me.

They burned and stung, and by the time Alistair arranged for someone to open the trapdoor that led under the bridge, I was starting to feel the warm flush of fever in my cheeks. They had to haul me up with some kind of harness. I’d have been scared, except I felt too awful to bother with fear. Maybe everyone—including me—would be better off if I fell and splatted on the concrete below. But I didn’t fall.

Alistair and my father were both waiting for me on the bridge, and they helped the emergency folks extract me from the harness. I locked eyes with my dad as they went to work on the buckles that held me safe. He looked pale and worried, impatient to get me out of the harness.

“Mom?” I asked in a terrified whisper, trying to keep myself from bursting into tears yet again.

Dad gave me a reassuring nod. “She’s safe.”

I didn’t try to hold back the tears anymore. I wasn’t up to standing, so when all the buckles and straps were loose, my dad picked me up and started carrying me toward his car, which was hard to miss, sitting in the parking lot in its bright red glory.

“Wait!” I cried, looking over his shoulder at Alistair.

He was watching the rescue workers lower the harness again, but he seemed to sense my gaze on him, since he turned toward me.

“Aunt Grace,” I said. “What happened to her?”

Alistair’s already thin lips practically disappeared as he pressed them together hard and shook his head. “She got past me.” He forced his expression into one of wry amusement, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I was somewhat distracted when she tossed you into the moat, I’m afraid.”

My eyes fixed on the door to Faerie, and Alistair’s slight nod told me that’s where Grace had gone. Why did I expect she wouldn’t stay there forever?

I lost consciousness before my dad got me to his car. When I woke up, it was to find myself in a hospital bed. The aches and pains I remembered from before were all gone, but my head throbbed fiercely, and I was sweating like it was a hundred degrees in the room. I moaned and turned to my side.

Fi

My stomach wasn’t much happier than my head, and for a moment, I was afraid I was going to puke over the side of the bed. But the urge passed.

“Why am I in the hospital?” I asked Fi

“It seems you had an encounter with a Water Witch,” he said.

“No kidding?” Whatever was wrong with me, it wasn’t amnesia. I wished I could burn the image of that evil face from my brain.

Fi

I couldn’t help it. I laughed. “Yeah, luck central, that’s me.” The laughter morphed into a coughing fit. I was braced for the coughing to hurt my chest, but only the headache pain troubled me. “How long have I been here?” I had absolutely no sense of time at this point. It could have been hours or days.

“About four hours,” he said, and I was relieved that I hadn’t lost more time than that. “The healers took care of your physical injuries.”

Oh. That explained why the chest and throat and joint pains weren’t bugging me.

“But they can’t fix the sickness?” I guessed.

Fi

In a way, I supposed that was a good thing. Otherwise every sick person in the world would be besieging Avalon. In fact, I bet even if the Fae healers could cure illnesses, they wouldn’t admit it. I could only imagine the chaos it would cause if a handful of people in one small city could, for instance, cure cancer.

I was already starting to feel exhausted just from the effort of simple concentration, but I managed one more question before I drifted back into sleep.

“How long am I in for?” I asked, not only because I hated being in the hospital—like any sensible person would—but because even with Fi

“Probably a couple of days. The human doctors want to keep an eye on you, make sure your fever doesn’t get too high.”

I acknowledged my sentence with a heartfelt sigh, then rolled over and willed myself back to sleep.

The next time I woke up, it was because someone was gently shaking my shoulder.

“Come on, Dana,” I heard Fi

The headache still pounded behind my eyes, and I was sweaty and cold at the same time. I didn’t much want to be awake for the experience, but I managed to pry my eyes open.

Fi

I should have been alarmed to see him. He was Aunt Grace’s … boyfriend? Nah. I couldn’t see applying that term to Lachlan. But “lover” sounded so crass. I hated the term “significant other,” but I decided it was a fair compromise.

Anyway, I should have been spooked, but I wasn’t. Either the hospital had me on some really good drugs, or I figured Fi

Fi

“Lachlan is here to relieve me for a while,” Fi

I saw Lachlan wince. “Thanks,” I mumbled. I just wanted to go back to sleep. Being sick sucks.

Fi

Tired as I was, I managed to smile up at him. “It’s all right, Lachlan,” I said. “I know you had nothing to do with what Aunt Grace did.” And I felt that truth to my bones. No matter what his relationship with Aunt Grace was, he wouldn’t sit by and let her kill someone. Or throw someone into the moat.

The tension in his shoulders relaxed, and he bowed his head. “Thank you.” He sighed heavily. “I don’t know what’s gotten into her.” He met my eyes with a pleading, earnest look. “She’s really not like that. She’s just…”

I could forgive Lachlan for being in love with Grace, but I really wasn’t open to hearing whatever excuses he had for her bad behavior. I guess he saw that, because he didn’t say anything more, just took a seat in what I was already coming to think of as Fi

That was my cue to return to la-la land, and I was more than happy to obey.

I drifted in and out of sleep for the better part of the day, waking up only when the nurses came to take my temperature, give me drugs, or urge me to eat and drink. I was not in the mood for eating and drinking, and hospital food turned out to be hospital food, even in Avalon. But they threatened to hook me up to an IV if I didn’t keep myself fed and hydrated, so I did the best I could.