Chapter 204: Six Guys in Gray Pajamas

Blair woke up tasting copper.

The room was dark except for a strip of lamplight under the door. A narrow bed. A desk and chair. A tall mirror on the closet door. Her old room in Professor Feron’s house, the little converted storeroom downstairs.

She was buried under three blankets and a jacket that smelled of Daemus. Her clothes were still damp. Someone had taken off her shoes.

She lifted her hands. Her palms were pink and raw, scrubbed clean of grease. The torch was gone from her wrist. A red line ran around it where the cord had been.

The last thing she had was the word. Then her hand full of blood. Then dark.

Something heavy shifted against her hip.

Daemus sat on the floor beside the bed with his head on the mattress. His ears twitched. Then his eyes opened, and he was up on his knees.

"Bunny."

His hands found her face. His thumb went to the corner of her mouth and stayed there. He looked at it, then at her eyes.

"Is there blood?" Her voice came out rough.

"Not anymore." His thumb moved over her lip once. "You stopped in the car."

"The car?"

"Jack’s car."

Blair pushed herself up on her elbows. The room tipped and settled.

"Heather?"

"Snake’s got her." Daemus sat back on his heels.

"To his rooms?"

"Where else?" He scrubbed a hand down his face.

Blair looked at her raw palms.

"Daemus. What happened?"

His ears went flat. "What do you remember?"

"Those things. They were saying something." She swallowed copper. "Then I coughed, and then..."

"Yeah. Then you dropped." He picked at a loose thread on the blanket. "Then the door at the end bangs open, and six guys walk in. Gray uniforms. Gray pajamas, basically. They had these long poles with wire loops on the end. Dog-catcher poles."

Blair’s fingers curled into the blanket.

"They just walked into them. Slow. Real calm. Dropped a loop over one’s neck, and it went where they pulled it. The rest went back in their rooms by themselves. The doors shut." He shook his head. "Like they’d done it a thousand times."

"And then?"

"Then they turned around and pointed the poles at us." A growl started low in his chest and died. "And there’s a TV up over the door. It comes on. Some guy in a robe, hood pulled down over his face. He leans in and says, ’Let them go’ in one of those super ominous voices."

The room was very quiet.

Blair stared at the strip of light under the door.

"So they did," Daemus said. "They stepped aside. We walked right past them. Out the door, down the stairs, through the tunnel. Nobody came after us. Gate was still open."

He looked up at her.

"Who was he?"

"I don’t know."

"And that thing they kept saying. Vara-whatever. They were saying it to you."

"I don’t know what it means."

Daemus looked at her for a long time. His silver eyes moved over her face, slow, from her eyes to her mouth and back.

Then he reached up and tucked her hair behind her ear.

Footsteps came down the stairs. The door opened, and lamplight fell across the bed.

Jack stood in the doorway in dry clothes, black on black, his sleeves rolled to the elbow. He held a glass of water in one hand and a folded black shirt in the other.

He crossed the room, set the glass on the nightstand and dropped the shirt at the foot of the bed.

"Drink all of it," he said. "Then get out of those clothes."

He walked out. The door clicked shut behind him, and his footsteps climbed the stairs.

Daemus looked at the shirt. He picked it up between two fingers, held it out at arm’s length and dropped it on the floor.

Then he grabbed the back of his own T-shirt and hauled it off over his head.

"Wear mine."

Blair’s face went hot. She took it. It was warm from him and still damp at the collar where her hair had soaked it.

She drank the water first, all of it. The copper went down with it.

"Turn around."

Daemus turned around on his knees. His ears stayed pointed back at her.

She peeled her wet shirt off under the blankets, then the leggings, which fought her every inch. She pulled his T-shirt over her head. It fell to the middle of her thighs, and the neck slid off one shoulder.

"Done."

He turned back. His eyes went to her bare shoulder and stayed there.

"You’re freezing," he said.

Her skin was warm under the blankets.

"A little," she said.

He was under the covers before she finished. He pulled her back against his bare chest and wrapped both arms around her. He was hot all over. His chin settled on top of her head, and his heart thudded against her spine.

For a while he only breathed.

Then his mouth found her bare shoulder. He kissed it once. Then again, higher, at the curve of her neck, and stayed there with his lips against her skin.

Her breath caught. His hand spread over her hip through the cotton of his shirt, and his thumb moved there, back and forth. Heat slid down low in her belly. She pressed back into him, and his breath went out hot against her neck.

"Three seconds," he said into her hair.

"What?"

"In the car. You stopped breathing for three seconds." His arm tightened across her ribs. "I had my hand right here. It just stopped."

Blair turned over in his arms.

His face was right there in the dark. His eyes were wet. His jaw was tight.

She put her hand on his cheek.

"Don’t do that to me again," he said.

"I won’t."

He pressed his forehead to hers and shut his eyes. His breath shook once on the way out. Then he pulled her in until her face was in his neck, and held on.