Strange Academy (Hot Paranormal Romance) (33 page)
The rain came in dribbles now, and the moon lit a lump where Sterling pointed. On the ground. Not moving.
He fell to his knees in the sopping mud next to the inert form. Sadie. Face down.
Training took over. He cradled her head as he turned her over on her back. Breathing: none. Pulse: none. Wisps of smoke wafted from her ears and open mouth. His stomach turned.
“Go get the school nurse.” His voice was calm, even if his heart thundered. “Take him to Sadie’s apartment.”
He pulled his arms out of his silver trench coat and wadded it up under Sadie’s neck, ignoring a stab of guilt. He would have caught up to them earlier if he hadn’t stopped to get his coat full of spells. But none could save her life now.
Sterling hadn’t moved.
Gray tilted Sadie’s head back and sealed his open mouth over hers. He blew two deep breaths into her lungs. He placed the heel of his right hand on the lower tip of her breastbone and roared over his shoulder at his nephew. “Sterling. Go. Now.”
Sterling’s ashen face turned scarlet. He ran.
He leaned into a series of chest compressions. “Damn,” he told her bloodless face. “Is this what a guy has to do to get you alone?”
Light rain fell into her open mouth. She looked like the print on her wall—the drowned chick from Hamlet.
“You are getting rid of that picture,” he ordered her.
Two more deep breaths left a smoky taste in his mouth. Just breathe, dammit, he ordered mentally. “Where are your shoes? Just like when you lost one in the basement, remember? Right. You don’t. Breathe for me and I’ll find them. Deal?”
He counted off fifteen compressions and listened for breath. His heart skipped a beat when warm air brushed his ear. “Bribery works. If your heart is beating, screw your old shoes, I’ll buy you new ones.”
He put his fingers to the pulse in her neck and grinned like a madman at the faint beat there. “Black ones, right? Give me your size later. Now, wake up and I’ll kiss your feet.”
Her eyes stayed closed.
“Fine.” But her lips didn’t look so white. “You’re tired. It’s been a long day of humiliating yourself in public and finding out Pippa’s death was my fault.”
He cradled the curve of her skull with one hand as he eased his coat out from under it with the other. “I brought my instantaneous transportation spell, so all we need now is a door.” He scanned the soccer field. The field house was thirty feet away. Yes. “Too bad you aren’t awake. You always get hot for me when I kick down doors.” He rooted through the secret pockets in his coat. “Feel free to chime in. Maybe something like ‘I’ll never be hot for you again, alumnus.’”
He found the spell and lifted her with no effort.
His throat closed in a desperate realization. He could live without Sadie. He could live knowing they would never be together. He could go off and marry April and have kids and love them and be a good father to them. His life would go on.
But only if hers did, too. So simple, but very complicated.
He flung the transportation potion at the field house door with all his strength. It hit the target dead center and smashed. Shards of glass tumbled to the packed dirt below.
The door rippled and warped as the spell took hold, morphing a dull green wooden door into a shimmering portal capable of taking him anywhere in the world. He shot his mental energies at it, connecting the portal to Sadie’s bedroom door, then slipped his arms under her legs.
But he didn’t lift her. His throat went dry.
She wasn’t breathing.
*
***
******
****
*
“She died three times?” Chloë sounded as she might be asking whether her dry cleaning was ready.
“Only twice.” Gray tried to sound equally dispassionate. Only twice. The woman he loved only died twice.
Yes, love.
Yes, died.
But only twice.
His stress knot grew to the size of Germany. He watched as Chloë stood on her tiptoes and took another book off the shelves in Sadie’s apartment. She would read the first page, then return it to the shelf. He knew this because she’d been doing the same thing since he’d brought Sadie here.
Her sister was unconscious in the other room and Chloë was treating her apartment like a Barnes and Noble. He locked his fingers together, because if he didn’t, he’d be forced to shake Chloë until her head bobbled.
How long had it been since he’d stumbled through the portal, Sadie light as a phantom in his arms? Was it four a.m.? Five? If only there was some way to tell.
It’s called a watch, Dumbass. He checked his Rolex. Two a.m. He shifted, uncomfortable in Sadie’s comfy chair. A lot of night left to go.
Chloë put the book back on the shelf. He clenched his jaw to keep from grinding his teeth.
“Tell her it was three times. It’s more literary. She’ll love it,” Chloë said.
“Chloë—” Cross looked up from staring at the tabletop. The bedroom door opened and the school nurse stumbled out, shoulders sagging. Black circles underscored his eyes. He collapsed face down on the couch, his feet hanging off the end. He mumbled something like “Danial sleep now” into the pillow.
“Danial, report.” Cross’s voice kicked the nurse awake. The principal could have that effect on you.
Danial sat up and rubbed his neck. “She’s hovering on the edge of a coma.” Gray jammed his fist into his thigh. The pain was good.
Danial continued, “But we’ll deal with it if it happens. I repaired the electroporation, which was bad, and the nerve damage, which was minimal.”
Gray’s stress knot annexed Poland.
“Electroporation?” Cross asked.
“Electricity turns cell membranes into sieves,” Danial explained. “They can’t hold nutrients in or keep waste out. I fixed it and rehydrated her. If she isn’t awake tomorrow, we’ll move her to the San and put in an I.V.”
“She’ll be awake tomorrow,” a voice said. “She’s tougher than you think.” Why was everyone in the room looking at him with their eyes narrowed? It wasn’t as if he’d said it.
“She, uh—” The nurse looked to the ceiling, avoiding Gray’s eyes. “She also had three cracked ribs. They're fixed now.”
“From the lightning?” Cross asked.
“No,” Danial said. “From the C.P.R. It can happen if there’s too much pressure.”
He closed his eyes against rising nausea.
Cross clapped a hand on his shoulder. “You saved her life. She would have died.”
“She did.” Chloë didn’t look up from her book.
“Permanently, I mean,” Cross said.
His chest swelled with pride. He was a little kid again, being praised by the principal.
Oh, wait,
he remembered.
This is my fault.
“Actually, the heart usually restarts after an electrical shock. But her brain would have been damaged from lack of oxygen. Can’t do anything about her hair, though.” Oddly, Danial touched his hairline above his left eye.
“Good thing Sterling saw her and came to get you.” Chloë’s voice was desert dry. “I’d like to speak to Lorde Gray alone.”
Cross nodded and helped Danial from the couch.
“Oh. I forgot to tell you. She said something,” Danial said, turning in the doorway.
Gray’s mind raced through the possibilities. Their affair. Pippa’s death. Nothing good.
“Something about someone wanting a wall down.”
Chloë’s head snapped up. “’Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, that wants it down.’”
Danial nodded.
“Robert Frost,” Chloë said. “
Mending Wall
. It’s a poem.”
“She wasn’t delirious. Lightning victims can spike a fever. She didn’t. And there are no walls around here,” Danial said.
“You don’t think there are walls at Strange Academy?” Chloë’s tone bordered on vicious. “There are walls everywhere. And not everyone wants them down.”
Did Chloë glance his way?
“Uh, right,” Danial said. “I meant on the soccer field.”
The door had barely closed on Cross and Danial when Chloë walked away, leaving him in the living room. He didn’t follow her. He’d followed Sadie into the kitchen the day they’d met and she’d turned his life upside down.
Would he do it again? He thought of Sadie, lying lifeless in the cold mud. No. Even if it meant they’d never known each other. Nothing was worth that.
Just when he’d given up on Chloë coming back, she strode into the room and handed him a glass. The hair on the back of his neck rose as he stared into the amber liquid. The 25-year-old single malt scotch he’d left in Sadie’s cupboard at Christmas. His stress knot invaded France.
He downed the scotch in one gulp.
“So, the Gray House saves the day. Another Non owes you her life.”
The scotch didn’t make Chloë’s words any easier to take. “Either say what you mean or pour me another drink. On second thought, both would be good.”
“Let me rephrase,” she backtracked. “So, you’re sleeping with my sister.”
He massaged the back of his neck as he looked at the floor. “It’s more than that. I care for her, Chloë.”
“I know,” she said.
His stress knot allied itself with Italy. “Right. Psychic.”
“Don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”
“Robert Frost?”
“Bob Dylan. I could tell by the way you look at her. Someone looked at me like that once.” Chloë paused. “Forget I said that.”
“It’s over,” he told her. “Sadie knows what happened the day Pippa died. Chloë, I want to tell you—”
She cut him off by making a sort of chopping motion with a gloved hand. “No, you don’t. You need to tell her.” She pointed a glove at the bedroom door.
Gray blinked at her.
A thin smile played at her lips. “Thought you’d like to spend a few minutes with her.”
“Did she tell you...” He didn’t doubt Sadie had shared her suspicion of his involvement in Pippa’s death with her sister.
Chloë gave him a tired smile that didn’t quite turn up at the edges. “I spend time around criminals. You’re not a murderer. It would be a waste of hotness. You may be an asshole, though.”
“Alumnus,” he corrected, distractedly.
Chloë’s green eyes flashed at him. “You’re hurting her.” Her voice got quieter. “She wasn’t always like this.”
What was she talking about? “Like what?”
“Like Sadie. Self-confident. Assertive. She was shy as a kid. Don’t gape at me. It’s true. When she got older, she went for dominant men. Then one tried to rape her.”
“I know this story. She hit him with a lamp.”
“She usually leaves out the part where she sent him to jail,” Chloë said. “Standing up for herself isn’t natural for her. She took an assertiveness course at community college.”
Sadie, shy? He couldn’t imagine it.
“I’m not what’s-his-name,” he said, but his voice seemed to lack its usual force.
“If you were, you’d have a dent in your skull. But you’re a dominant type. You’re making all the decisions, aren’t you?”
“No,” he lied.
“She could go back to the way she was,” Chloë said, a severe tilt to her lips.
As he walked toward the bedroom door, he tried to picture Sadie without her bravery and her smart mouth.
He didn’t like what he saw.
Gray slipped through the bedroom door quietly so that he wouldn’t wake Sadie. Then he remembered he wanted her to wake up and slammed it. The figure in the bed didn’t move.
Sadie’s favorite book was on the chair next to her bed.
Precious Bane
. The book’s broken spine showed the glue. He placed it on the dresser, careful not to lose her page.
Chloë’s words stuck in his mind as he moved the chair to Sadie’s side and sat down. He
had
been making all the decisions. How many times had she tried to walk away?
Instead of letting her protect herself, he’d put a spell on her so she would come to him. The only thing she’d ever asked was that he send his children to another school. He’d said no.
Sadie lay on the left side of the bed. She should be on the right. Or did she take the right because he liked the left?
White moonlight from the now-clear night streamed through the window. His shadow fell across her in the bed.
Sadie, looking fragile in the dark red sheets, turned up the wattage on his protective instincts. Maybe she’d be better off without his protection. His record wasn’t exactly stellar. A mental snapshot of his
gris-gris
dropping to the floor hit him hard.
As he looked at her, Danial’s comment about her hair became less cryptic. A single light lock above her eye fell white against her coffee-colored waves. He’d thought people’s hair turning white from trauma was something that happened in bad novels. Now she had a permanent souvenir of his failure to protect her.
His guilt weighed like the force of gravity on his chest. Between it and his stress knot, he had trouble breathing. He watched her pale hand, motionless on the bed. It was inches away, but those inches could have been miles.
Her bedside clock read 2:37 a.m.
“Sadie, I know you can’t hear me—” He took a deep breath and looked at her pale face.
Brown eyes looked back at him.
He encased her hand in his, warming her fingers. “Sadie.”
“Don’t yell.” Her voice cracked and her unfocused gaze shifted around the room. “I can hear all of you. But I can only talk to you one at a time.”
His joy died. She was delirious. Confusion crossed her face. “Pippa?”
“Stay with me, Sadie. Don’t go to Pippa.” He held her hand to his chest. “It’s Gray. Remember? Please remember.”
“Why are you here?”
“I love you. I don’t want to be anywhere else.” He strained to make her understand, but something told him she didn’t.
“I don’t understand,” she told him.
“I’ll tell you when you’re stronger,” he assured her. “Just trust me.”
Sadie’s forehead furrowed. “No.”
A fist squeezed his heart. “I know, I don’t deserve your trust. But you’re too weak to hear it now.”
She squinted and tilted her head.
“You have to believe me,” he said, needing her to understand. “It’s my fault she’s dead, but I didn’t hurt Pippa.”
She gasped and tried to sit up. He put a hand to her shoulder and held it down. It didn’t take much of his strength. “I don’t believe it,” she said. “Queen.”
