Page 8 of Grim’s Delight (The New Protectorate Syndicate #1)

THREE

The healers at San Francisco General called her lucky. Dahlia begged to differ. It would’ve been a lot kinder if the gods had let her die on that rooftop instead of subjecting her to Cecilia’s idea of nursing.

All in all, the wound had been remarkably superficial.

The metal had missed her heart, lung, and all major arteries.

She was left with a big old hole in her muscle that was easy for the healers to fix.

They’d initially been deeply alarmed by the amount of blood on her, but it was quickly discovered that most of it wasn’t hers.

She only spent one uncomfortable night in the hospital because the healers were very good at their jobs. By the time Cecilia wheeled her out the doors and into the cab, she was exhausted but undamaged. There wasn’t even a scar.

A slight concussion and the exhaustion that came with healing were the worst of her injuries, but you wouldn’t know it by how Cecilia carried on.

If she wasn’t randomly bursting into tears, she was clinging to Dahlia like a barnacle.

It was nice to hold her hand when Patrol stopped by the apartment to grill her about the murder — Assassination?

Bombing? — but after a few hours, she’d been forced to send her friend on an errand to get a little peace.

“I left my purse in my locker,” she explained. “Can you go get it for me? I want my phone.”

“Ah, of course! Don’t worry about it. Just rest.” Cecilia tucked her into bed as tightly as a mummy, sniffling all the while, before she practically ran out the door.

As soon as she left, Dahlia climbed out of bed to take a shower.

Luckily there was hot water this time. She needed it to get all the crusted blood in her ears and under her fingernails.

The nurses at the hospital had done a wonderful job getting her clean, but there were some nooks and crannies even they missed.

She wasn’t sure when the shock would hit. Probably soon. It had to, right? One didn’t just see the mangled corpse of a woman a few feet away while impaled on shrapnel and be totally fine.

Dahlia pulled on her softest pajamas and climbed back into bed.

Her hair was wet, but she didn’t care what it’d look like when she woke up.

It wasn’t like she’d be going to work. The bar would be shuttered for a few days at the very least. Patrol had to do their investigation, though she doubted there would be much to find if the Vances weren’t complete idiots, and the city would probably have to check that the building was still structurally sound.

She stared sightlessly across the studio at her little kitchenette, trying to summon some great existential crisis from her near death experience. Nothing came.

That wasn’t to say she didn’t think about what happened. She did. Obsessively.

She’d run through every second of the night a thousand times since she woke up in the ambulance to find an extremely handsome were packing her wound with gauze.

Patrol hadn’t told her much, but they’d disclosed that the device used had been essentially a miniature hand grenade mostly likely intended for a single target.

They hadn’t needed to explain that she wasn’t important enough to be that target.

It’d been aimed precisely at Yvanna and did its job perfectly.

Of course, she wasn’t the only injury. Just the worst, if one didn’t count Mr. Bowan. Several members of security and one other server had been hit with shrapnel, and Devon had his right arm broken. It was a wound that took five minutes to heal, but you wouldn’t know it by how he gassed on and on.

Dahlia counted the old, yellowed tiles of her sink’s minuscule backsplash, thinking, If Mr. Bowan and Devon hadn’t started arguing, I probably would’ve died.

Devon’s chair had been right beside Yvanna’s. She’d stood behind it, a scant foot away from where the explosive landed. If she’d done as Devon told her to, she would’ve ended up just like Yvanna — smeared across the rooftop.

Still nothing. Well, not nothing. I’m relieved. And pissed off. Who throws a fucking grenade to kill someone? Snipers exist!

Whatever had happened, she was unlikely to find out the truth about it. All she knew was that Mr. Bowan was right. Yvanna had lost the war. Badly.

She looked away from her kitchenette when her front door swung open. Cecilia had a key and she never bothered to knock. Her best friend burst into the apartment with Dahlia’s purse slung over her arm, as well as several bags from the corner bodega.

“I know you’re probably tired— Oh good, you showered! But next time wait for me. What if you’d fallen?” She blew out a breath. “Okay, anyway… I brought comfort food and your purse. Which do you want first?”

Her stomach rolled at the thought of food, so she sat up and held out her hand. “Purse, please.”

“You can have the snacks later.” Cecilia dumped the bags on the floor by the bed and passed the little black purse over.

Dahlia’s pulse jumped as she dug through the minimal makeup and money she brought with her to work to find her old phone.

She didn’t dare check it with Cecilia so close, but it felt somehow heavier in her hand.

She couldn’t decide if it would be better or worse if there was nothing from her boogeyman when she turned it on.

Does he know? Were him and Yvanna really related, or did I just imagine the resemblance? If there’s nothing, does that mean he’s okay or does that mean something bad happened to him, too?

She’d never, in the years he’d invaded her phone and her life, showed him how much she cared. But the fear that lodged itself behind her breast bone was a huge, spiky thing and she worried that she might be forced to break her own rule to make it go away.

Trying to breathe normally, she gave Cecilia a wan smile. “Thank you. How was the bar?”

“Not too bad, considering.” Her friend leaned down to fish around in one of the bags.

Pulling out a strawberry soda, she cracked the can open and took a long sip.

“Lotta Patrol milling around. One of them stopped me to ask what I was doing. When I told them I was there to get your things, they let me through.” She shuddered.

“Elves are so scary. Even when they’re being nice.

I almost peed my pants when they asked for my name. ”

Dahlia waved her hand at the soda. “Gimme some of that. I need to take my pain meds.”

Cecilia handed it over with a frown. “How’s your head?”

“Fine,” she muttered around the pill under her tongue. “Just sore.”

Dahlia normally liked Pink Pop, but when she took a large swig of the soda, she had to clamp her lips shut to avoid spitting it all over her friend and the nice bedspread she’d gotten at the discount store.

Coughing, she gasped, “What’s wrong with that?”

Cecilia snatched the can away from her. “What are you talking about? It’s the original flavor!”

“No, it absolutely isn’t. That tastes like sugary gasoline!”

Her friend gave her a bizarre look as she took an experimental sip. Swallowing, she said, “It tastes normal to me. How hard did you hit your head again?”

“Not hard enough to change my tastebuds,” Dahlia muttered. “Must be the shock, I guess. Or whatever they put in my IV.”

“All right, if you’re besmirching the world’s best soda, you definitely should get some rest.” Cecilia leaned over to press a kiss to Dahlia’s cheek. “I love you and I’m, like, so fucking happy you didn’t die.”

Dahlia slung her arm around her friend’s shoulders in a loose hug. “Someone’s gotta take care of Oyster when one of your dates stuffs you in his trunk.”

After a lingering embrace, Cecilia walked to the door, her can of soda in hand. “Yeah, well, they’d have to show up to kill me. Tony didn’t.”

“Your date stood you up?” Dahlia asked, outraged.

Opening the door, Cecilia turned her head to give her a heartbreakingly tender look. “I couldn’t give less of a shit, dude. My best friend’s alive. That’s all I care about.”

That really took the righteous wind out of her sails. Not all of it, but most.

Dahlia gripped her phone tightly as she leaned back into her pillows. “You go get some rest yourself, you sap. I’m not going anywhere.”

She waited five seconds after Cecilia locked the door before she dared to turn her phone on. It took a second for it to boot up, but when it did…

“Shit.”

She stared at the notifications streaming across the screen with horror. There were half a dozen calls, two video chat requests, and a cascade of texts. Obviously, he’d heard about what happened. Even if he wasn’t related to Yvanna, of course he knew. He had eyes everywhere.

It was terrifying. He was terrifying. But her ridiculous, self-destructive heart still swelled with warmth at the sight.

He’s alive.

Not that she really thought he was dead. She’d done everything in her power to not learn about him, but even she knew that Felix would be damn hard to kill.

They weren’t friends and they weren’t lovers. She’d only ever seen him in person the one time, when he showed up to retrieve that body bag during what now ranked as her second worst ever shift.

But they talked. A lot.

Not because she wanted to, but because he’d decided they should. She had no idea what drew his attention her way. All she’d done was serve him a drink. She didn’t want to know how he’d gotten her number, only that he had.

She knew what he wanted from her. Felix wasn’t a subtle man. He was a dangerous, unhinged one. He’d told her under no uncertain terms that she wasn’t getting rid of him, but she still tried.

Blocking him hadn’t worked. Telling him to go away hadn’t, either. Turning off her phone for a week had only resulted in a shiny new one showing up at her apartment. She shoved it in a drawer and never touched it again.

Dahlia didn’t want to say he’d worn her down because he hadn’t. She hadn’t cracked. She didn’t respond to his relentless flirting or his many, many requests to fly her out to see him.

But… she did learn to like him. Just a little bit.