A giant fist hit me in the back. I staggered into the older waitress just ahead of me. She fell hard onto the paved walkway to the street. Bo-Ra and I landed on top of her. Though a sharp pain in my back took almost all my attention, I managed to slide sideways off the woman so she could breathe.

There was some screaming (Katerina, who’d realized she couldn’t see her mother), and some cursing (Clayton Dashwood and Matthew Gregory).

I ought to get up. I ought to draw my knife in case we were attacked out here.

For some reason, I couldn’t get myself on my feet.

I wondered if Bo-Ra was alive, and Matthew Gregory, and the waitress.

I was lying on the grass beside the paved walkway, just inside the hedge.

After another second or two, I knew I was hurt bad.

That held most of my attention, but just on the edges of it I smelled a chemical reek and dust, which was settling on me.

My clothes felt wet. On my front, I was sure the wetness was the rain-soaked grass.

But on my back… I was pretty sure that was my blood.

There was yelling above my head. The voice was familiar.

I might have relaxed, if I hadn’t been hurting so badly.

Felicia was standing over me, absolutely her eagle self.

I did not have to fear, now that she was with me.

I wondered in a fuzzy way what I’d been thinking, to believe I could protect Felicia.

She was capable of defending herself in the most savage way.

I was proud of my sister. Then her face was in front of my eyes.

My sister was lying on the grass, too, so she could look into my face.

“You hurt?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady.

“You’re the one who’s hurt,” she said. “Your back has a huge piece of wood stuck in it.”

So that was the pain. “Shit,” I said, for once not minding my language. “Is it deep?”

“Don’t know, but it’s sticking straight up like a spear.”

“I’m bleeding?”

“Like a stuck pig,” Felicia told me.

“How are the others?”

“Don’t care,” Felicia said.

I gave her a look.

“Oh, okay! Everyone is fine, even that little old woman who heard the bomb. She may have a broken arm, though. You’re all that matters.”

That was lovely to hear, though it wasn’t true.

“Irina knew it was going to happen,” I said, because that was important. I had to be sure someone else knew, in case I died. “Katerina didn’t, pretty sure. There was a bomb under the table. The whole time. Bo-Ra heard it.”

Felicia’s face twisted into a snarl. There was my sister! “I’ll get to the bottom of this,” she said, and I felt sorry for whoever waited at the bottom.

“Matthew’s responsibility,” I said, though I didn’t sound firm like I wanted to. I sounded wobbly, like I was going to pass out.

But I didn’t. I wished I had when the ambulance men slid me onto a stretcher on my side, told me to hold on, and lifted me. I made a sound through my teeth that sounded more like a growl than anything else.

“Hurting, huh?” the taller man said, sounding cheerful.

I wanted him to have this piece of wood in his own back.

“Just doing his job,” Felicia muttered in my ear. “Just doing his job.”

I could see her hand, swinging close to my face as she walked. By the stiffness of her gait, she was very angry, which didn’t surprise me at all.

“Eli?” I said.

“I’ll call his mom’s as soon as I know where they’re taking you,” she said.

“Mercy,” said the tall man. “It’s closest.”

I did not want to go to a hospital. I hated the way they smelled, the way they were chock-full of suffering, the way the doctors treated the patients. And some of the nurses, too.

But I wasn’t exactly in any shape to stop this from happening, and if Felicia stuck to me I might get good treatment.

I wouldn’t ask her to do it herself; she’d already brought me back from death once before, and she needed her strength to defend herself.

But I knew my sister would keep a close eye on me.

The pain got worse because of the bobbing of the stretcher. I could only close my eyes and bite my lip.

They stuck me in the back of a vehicle. I was resting on a shelf built for the stretcher. I was on my side because of the wood in my back, which was still in place. The men got in the front seats, while my sister crawled in beside me. The vehicle started with a lurch, and I groaned.

“She still alive?” one of the men called.

“Yes,” Felicia said. “Get us there.”

“Hold your horses, sister,” the driver said. “We’ll get her there as fast as we can.”

“I’ll watch you,” Felicia promised me. “I’ll get Eli. This is a regular hospital. They wouldn’t take you to the grigori one.”

“All right,” I said, because I didn’t dare nod. That would make the pain worse.

“How far?” I said, after the ambulance went around a curve. I’d always considered myself pretty tough, but this was getting to me.

“Northwest of the park, the man says.” That was all Felicia knew.

We went to a special ambulance entrance.

I could see the sign as we went by. The men carried me in, jostling and bumping all the way.

I almost threw up. I realized, in a hazy way, that this was a bigger hospital than I’d ever been in, and I heard voices all around me, but I quit trying to listen and understand.

All the energy I had was focused on fighting the pain.

Shallow breaths. No talking.

I heard Felicia while I was carried into a big room and the two men sort of eased me sideways onto a bed so they could take their stretcher with them. I was now on my stomach.

“She’s still bleeding,” Felicia was saying to a nurse. “The doctor needs to come right now.” I pretended to be unconscious while Felicia told the woman my full legal name and my husband’s. The nurse’s tone altered after that.

Maybe I wasn’t just pretending to be unconscious, because I’d lost some seconds (maybe even minutes) when I was aware again.

I heard Felicia tell me she was going to find a telephone, but then I lost some more time.

Next thing I knew, a man in a white coat was standing by the bed telling a nurse what a mess my back was and inquiring how I’d happened to be close to an explosion.

“The teahouse on Spruce Street,” Felicia said, from behind his back. “Lizbeth, Eli’s on his way. I caught him at the house.”

Good , I thought, in a kind of fuzzy way. He’s back from his meeting. I hope we can pay for this.

“Please tell your sister I’m going to take this piece of wood out. This is going to hurt,” the doctor said.

Maybe he thought I couldn’t speak English. “I can hear you,” I said, aware that my words were coming out funny. “You said it’s going to hurt.”

He was right.

Getting the giant splinter out was easy (at least for the doctor).

Just one terrible yank and it was done. But the hole had to be cleaned, then stitched, then bandaged.

The doctor talked the whole damn time. He told me how lucky I was that it hadn’t gone in half an inch deeper or half an inch to the left, he told me my spine was okay, probably.

He told me he was making sure I didn’t have any splinters or debris in the wound to fester.

He told me he’d never heard of anyone blowing up a teahouse.

Maybe he hoped his conversation would distract me from the pain.

He was wrong.

Felicia took my hand during the stitching and bandaging. It didn’t help, but it made her feel better, I guess. Then they wheeled me into a room and shifted me to another bed. I felt tears running down my face to soak the sheets.

I lost a little time just then. The next time I opened my eyes, I felt a familiar presence, and I knew my husband had entered the hospital. I knew he was angry. I just didn’t know who the target was.

Turns out he was mad every which way.

I was glad he talked to Felicia first. But while she was telling him what had happened, as far as she knew it, he fumbled for my hand. He held it throughout.

“She got us all out just in time,” Felicia said, and I thought she was crying a little. “If it hadn’t been for Lizbeth and Bo-Ra, we’d all have been blown to smithereens.”

Eli took a very deep breath. I could almost hear him making himself calm down. “Tell me,” he said.

While the doctor finished working on me, my sister told him what had happened at the teahouse, in a sort of indirect way since the doctor and nurse were in the room.

I squeezed his hand. “Irina Swindoll,” I whispered. “She left the room right before we found the bomb. I think she knew.”

“Felicia was just telling me about her,” he said, trying to sound tender instead of angry. He almost made it.

“Don’t leave me here,” I said.

Eli crouched down to look me in the eyes. “I won’t leave you here. I’ll take you home,” he said. He knew how much I hated hospitals.

“Thanks,” I whispered.

“This good doctor will give you a prescription for pain medicine,” Eli assured me. “Won’t you?” He was looking up at the doctor now.

“Yes,” the doctor said. “This could have been a very serious wound if it had gone deeper. She will have to be careful for a week or two.”

That wasn’t possible, not if I was going to fulfill my duty to Felicia. I started to say something, but Eli’s eyes were on me again. He shook his head, very slightly. I kept my mouth shut.

I figured he was planning to get me healed.

The problem with that was… it was too easy. I shouldn’t get used to being healed so quick. I would start taking bigger risks if I thought there would be only a light price to pay for sticking my neck out. I already had. My sister had brought me back from the dead.

I knew myself well enough to foresee this.

But I was in San Diego to protect my sister. I couldn’t do that lying in a bed on my stomach.

I’d been faced with a lot of bad choices in the past couple of years, and here was another one. I was sick and tired of bad choices.

The doctor gave me a shot. I felt the drug moving through my body inch by inch, almost. And then there was no pain. I was terrified.