37. Chapter 37

37

R ebecca had already wasted so much time.

She’d thought she’d been so smart.

Then Maxwell figured out all on his own how he wanted to dispose of Hector’s remains and the chopped-up homunculus parts, but the shifter was taking forever.

And now the clock of how much time her manufactured energy from the last emergency vial would actually last was running out.

She’d stayed in her new office, pacing, sitting in the armchair, going through what little existed in the desk drawers and the bookshelves. She’d promised herself she would wait until she knew Maxwell was out of the way, but this was getting ridiculous.

How long had she been up here? Checking the time felt like an impossible task too, because that would only show her exactly how much time she’d already wasted.

When the energizing effects from Zida’s last dose first began to wear off, which now felt a lot sooner than the last time, Rebecca’s restlessness and urgency to get out of here threatened to overpower her.

She kept pacing, reminding herself of the value of patience.

But when people quoted the value of patience, it usually wasn’t with their magical potency—not to mention their very life—on the line.

Another wave of infuriating dizziness crashed over her, and she stumbled toward the armchair before dropping into it at the last second before her legs gave out.

The second her ass hit the cushion, the office door burst open with a bang, and Rebecca almost slid out of the armchair onto the floor.

Zida’s clawed hand thumped against the open door first before the rest of the healer stepped into view. “Here I am. At your service. Security just took off with the box of Hector. That’s what you wanted me to tell you, right? ”

Rebecca sighed and closed her eyes.

Finally.

“That’s exactly what I wanted to hear.”

“Well, you’re welcome then. Next time, I’ll bring you the bill. What did you tell him to do with all those body parts, by the way?”

“Whatever he wants,” Rebecca muttered.

“Wow.” Zida shuffled back into the office and chuckled. “That didn’t take long. Already giving commands and letting the competent operatives of the task force do whatever they damn well please. I’d call that a major improvement.”

“Great,” Rebecca said breathlessly as she focused on pushing herself up out of the armchair. “Call it whatever you want.”

The healer seemed particularly chatty now, but Rebecca had no desire to talk to anyone about anything. The coast was clear, and she needed to get the hell out of here.

With a final shove that took more strength than it should have, she pushed herself all the way to her feet and headed for the door, wobbling and swaying and feeling like every step brought her that much closer not to success but to falling flat on her face.

“And what do you think you’re doing?” healer asked.

“I have to get out of here,” she said. “Right now, before I do anything else, I have to fix whatever this is. As soon as I do, I’ll be back on my game.”

“Right as rain and all that, eh?” Zida asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Sure.”

“And you think you’ve just suddenly stumbled upon the solution to the problem even an old-world healer couldn’t solve?”

Rebecca snorted before her thighs bumped against the edge of the desk, then she steadied herself under another flash of vertigo that made the entire room spin like a giant top. “I don’t think I figured it out. I know exactly what I need.”

“Well don’t be greedy,” Zida urged. “Go on. Share with the rest of the class while you’re at it.”

“Wrong class,” Rebecca muttered. Somehow, she reached the old woman and held her hand out again. “I need another vial.”

“Oh, for the love of—” Zida rolled her beady eyes. “Am I living in some kind of waking nightmare? We just had this conversation.”

“Well it’s not a conversation anymore,” Rebecca snapped. “Now it’s an order. ”

Zida’s toothless mouth gaped open. Then the old woman huffed and scratched with a claw-like nail just beneath her nose. “Didn’t take you long to pull that one, either.”

“I’m serious,” Rebecca warned. “I need it so I can go take care of my little personal health problem. Then I won’t touch the stuff again. You have my word.”

For an agonizingly long moment, during which Rebecca’s body threatened to shut down completely, the healer glowered at her, then finally huffed in frustration. “Just remember I won’t be there this time to rush in and keep you from dropping dead on the spot.”

The closest thing to a smile Rebecca could summon in that moment was a quick twitch of her lips. “Trust me. I’m counting on it.”

R ebecca hurried through the compound, slipping through the hallways, tripping over her own feet, seeing double of everything. She didn’t want to take advantage of Zida’s newest vial until she was sure she could get out of the building and across town to do what had to be done.

A rather large gathering still remained in the common room—Shade’s members celebrating their newest success and getting rid of their old commander and ushering in a new one. Everyone seemed far happier with Rebecca sitting at the top of the pyramid.

She couldn’t stop them from seeing her let them down eventually, but she could stop them from seeing her now.

So she avoided the common room altogether and opted instead to go the long way, where she could avoid everyone.

Not very many people milled around through the labyrinthine corridors of Shade headquarters. Not now that their most pressing issues had already been taken care of.

She had to pause at the end of the last hallway leading to the stairwell into the garage because she’d almost cracked her head open against the wall with her last stumble. Now the corners of her vision had gone past blurry and moved into darkening around the edges.

She wasn’t going to make it much longer before her wake-up juice failed, but as long as she could stay on her feet, she could make it to that stairwell and finally get the hell out of here .

It felt like hours of fumbling in her jacket pocket before Rebecca finally withdrew Zida’s last present and another agonizing eternity just to pull out the stopper, which she had to do with her teeth again.

Immediately, the blinding flash of white light and magic and energy and consciousness overriding her nervous system picked her up like one of those wooden dolls cut into pieces and sewn back together with string—pull the string, and the doll stood at attention again as if it had never taken a break.

Holy shit, that was a rush.

Rebecca tipped her head back and closed her eyes to inhale deeply, feeling the manufactured vitality filling her up again for who knew how long this time. According to Zida, there was a high probability of developing a tolerance to this stuff, which meant she didn’t have a whole lot of time to flush down the toilet.

Rolling back her shoulders, she stuffed the used vial into her pocket and took off at a brisk clip down the hall.

The top of the staircase loomed closer, yawning open wide, inviting her to just slip right through and escape. Not forever, of course. Just to get this fucking homunculus poison out of her system before she could go back to business as usual. Mostly.

Almost there…

“Roth-Da’al!”

By the Blood, no …

Rebecca’s bare feet squeaked across the linoleum floor at the sound of Maxwell’s voice, and she came to a dead stop.

He’d emerged from the last intersecting hallway mere feet in front of her and stepped toward her now, his silver eyes flashing beneath the overhead lights as he looked her up and down.

What was he doing here? He was supposed to be out disposing of body parts.

“Where are you going?” he asked with a tilt of his head.

Sure, she looked healthy and full of energy now , but who knew how long the vial’s effects would last this time? And no, she couldn’t just tell him what she meant to do.

Glad she’d already pocketed the vial, Rebecca spread her arms and took off again for the staircase. “Just handling some personal business.”

“Then I’ll come with you.” His footsteps echoed after her.

She could feel his presence behind her now—that warm, tingling weight from the top of her head all the way down her back and into her heels.

A side effect of her emergency energy boost, or was that something else?

“No need for that, Maxie,” she said, hoping to piss him off enough with the nickname he hated to make him give up .

Yes, it was a longshot, and yes, she knew it.

“Shade’s Roth-Da’al carries a high enough profile on the streets,” he said. “Whatever personal business you have, you won’t be doing it alone.”

“You’re Head of Security. Don’t you have plenty of other duties to perform?” She almost ran right into him when he swerved in front of her to cut her off at the top of the stairs.

“More important than ensuring my Roth-Da’al’s safety?” he asked. “No, actually. That’s at the top of the list.”

“I think it’s time we write you a new list.” Rebecca tried to step past him, to slip sideways, maybe even throw herself down the stairwell if she had to. Her energy was up enough that she was more likely to land on her feet than not.

Maxwell slapped a hand against the stairwell’s doorway with a thud, his raised arm now completely blocking her path. A darker silver blaze burned in his eyes, and the tingling rush of his presence now washed over her head to toe from the front this time.

Maybe the shifter was packing some extra magical abilities normal shifters didn’t usually possess, because this was ridiculous.

A low growl emanated from Maxwell’s throat as he dipped his head toward her. “I can’t let you leave.”

“Can’t or won’t?” Rebecca asked, glaring up into those silver eyes.

The corner of his mouth twitched. “It’s all the same to me.”

She could just shove him in the chest with both hands and send him flying down the staircase. That would help.

Then the image of throwing herself at him in an entirely different way flashed through her mind.

Her hands at his shirt, clawing at the buttons to tear the fabric off him. Her lips on his, fingers in his hair. She could make him back down, or he might force her into submission before she finally got out of here and he followed her for her secret solo operation.

Dammit, why was she thinking of that right now?

She’d have to tell Zida to add irrational and disturbing sexual fantasies about rivals to the list of side effects as well.

Clearing her throat, she tore her gaze away from his and nodded down the stairwell. “I don’t want your protection. And I certainly don’t need it.”

“Too bad. That’s my job.”

“Yeah, yeah, and you take it very seriously,” she quipped. “I remember the conversation.”

Fuck.

Before Hector attacked the compound, she could have taken Maxwell with one hand behind her back and blindfolded. But she’d seen what Maxwell could do. Even with Zida’s temporary remedy, Rebecca would have been an idiot to think she could still take him now.

She could order him to stand down and let her leave. She had that power now, but it would only come back to bite her in the ass, making him even more suspicious of her. Knowing Maxwell, he’d find a loophole in the rules to come after her anyway. Then her anonymity was screwed just as much as she was.

A bitter laugh escaped her, and she took a step back just to grab a little more breathing room between them. To clear her head of the scent of earth and moonlight and sandalwood surrounding them both in their shared bubble of personal space.

Not to mention that tingling weight of his presence, which she hoped would back the hell off too.

“Are you always this obnoxious?” she asked.

“I’m always dedicated to my duty. Loyal to Shade and its members and to keeping this place in line.”

“Christ, you sound like a broken record, Max. I get it. Never mind.” Rolling her eyes, Rebecca tore away from him to storm down the same corridor from which he’d appeared to stop her, waiting for the feeling of his gaze on her body to disappear.

Hopefully, she could get out of his sight quickly enough that he wouldn’t see her falter or trip over herself or buckle against the wall when her fake health and magical energy dipped as a side effect.

Something was very wrong with her.

She’d just given in to the biggest pain in her ass, just like that. If his presence and the way it pulled at her—called her closer, filled her head with dangerously alluring bullshit—was becoming the norm now, Rebecca was really in trouble.

There were plenty of things wrong with her, and Maxwell Hannigan was creeping his way up the list toward becoming her number one.

On her way to her room—because that was the only place she could go where she wouldn’t use all her current energy on pretending —Rebecca passed the open door to the infirmary.

At the same second, Zida poked her scraggly-haired head into the hall, as if she’d been waiting for Rebecca this whole time. “ There you are. And don’t you look like someone on a mission.”

Rebecca scowled at her, then leaned toward the door on her way past and hissed, “You said Hannigan had already left to go take care of the bodies.”

The healer’s beady black eyes followed Rebecca down the hall, then Zida snorted. “No, you told me to alert you when security left the building to go handle it. Nothing specifically about the shifter on duty. ”

That made Rebecca pause.

“Don’t tell me your memory’s starting to go too,” Zida added folding her arms. “’Cause that brings a whole new world of problems we should probably start taking a look at.”

“My memory’s just fine.”

“Well alrighty, then. While you’re here, though, tell me. How’s your—”

“I’m still alive, Zida. That’s as good as it’s gonna get right now.”

Then Rebecca stormed off toward her room before the old woman could say anything else.

When had everyone in this place gotten so damn literal?

Still without a viable means of escaping for the night, her only option now was to relent and try again tomorrow.

After she found out how to craft an emergency big enough to draw Maxwell away from the compound but small enough that he could handle it on his own.

When she finally reached her room, it seemed the only positive thing about her day was that she returned to all the holes in the walls mended, the crumbled ceiling restored, and her own bed so thoughtfully swiped clean of debris from Hector’s attack that she didn’t have to do anything but fall into bed and wait for the exhaustion to drag her down with it.

T he next morning felt like an old-world hangover after far too much spiritwine, but she forced herself out of bed, into the shower, and finally into a fresh change of clothes.

A quick examination of the darkening gray handprint on her left wrist confirmed her wound was only worsening. She prodded it with an experimental finger and couldn’t feel anything from her left elbow to her left fingertips.

If she didn’t fix this soon, it was only too easy to imagine losing sensation in her entire arm, and there was no telling how quickly the issue would spread to other far more vital parts of her body.

Time to get out and do something about it.

But when she crossed her room to whisk open her bedroom door, she almost barreled into a solid wall dressed in gray cotton waiting on the other side. “What the—”

Maxwell pulled his hands from the pockets of his jeans as he turned around to face her, his eyes widening in expectation. “That’s the kind of day you’re having already?”

Rebecca staggered back a step, refusing to shake her head clear of the fuzzy cobwebs that still came and went in waves, though the strength of her last energy dose had substantially waned overnight. “What are you doing here?”

“My job,” he said flatly. “It still hasn’t changed, in case you were wondering.”

“I wasn’t.” She looked over her shoulder after the strangest sensation of needing to keep the shifter out of her personal space overwhelmed her, but there was nothing in her room that even Maxwell Hannigan might have considered suspicious or cause for further investigation.

That was a good thing, probably. So why was he still here?

When she turned back toward the open doorway, Maxwell had spun away from her room to stand sentinel there, perfectly still with his hands clasped behind his back like he’d been tasked with twenty-four-hour guard-the-commander duty.

It could have been a matter of respecting her privacy, or it could have been literally anything else that kept him from looking inside. Who knew why he did anything that hadn’t been specifically commanded of him?

By the Blood, had he been standing there like that all night?

Somehow, that thought filled her stomach with a rush of trembling, fluttering butterflies that bashed around against each other until they were swallowed prematurely by a dangerously loud growl erupting in her stomach.

No, if Maxwell wanted to stand outside her room all night to protect her or keep a suspicious eye on her or anything else, that was his business. It hadn’t interfered with hers—yet—so for now, he could have his secrets and keep his silence. She wasn’t getting involved.

She just really would have appreciated the same courtesy on his part in return.

But no, it was too much to ask. The shifter had posted himself outside her bedroom and intended to stay there all day.

His whispering footsteps trailed after her as Rebecca pushed herself to the current limits of her speed without tempting her frail physical state into awkward stumbles or collapsing in the corridor.

Once again, that tingling weight settled on the back of her head before draping down the back of her neck, dripping between her shoulder blades, tumbling all the way down to her heels.

That undeniably pleasant sensation of Maxwell’s presence that had already become a major destruction had just graduated to seriously fucking annoying .

Rebecca couldn’t wait to get out of here, heal herself, and never have to open one of those stupid vials again. After that, she was sure the obnoxiously delicious tingling racing across her body every time Maxwell was within ten feet of her would disappear with the other symptoms.

She didn’t delude herself into thinking she could outpace him this morning, not with her weak limbs and awkwardly flopping feet that occasionally went numb for a few seconds at a time, only for the sensation to return with the painful, prickling sting of neurons and sensory receptors coming back online.

Definitely not good. This would only get worse the longer she waited to get out of here.

And the longer Maxwell stuck on her like her own personal bodyguard, the less time she had.

Maxwell followed her without a word through headquarters, adjusting his pace to match hers so he remained four feet behind her at all times. All without saying a word.

When she paused in the entryway leading from the hall into the common room, Maxwell also paused, and then it felt necessary to say something.

“You really don’t have to do this.”

No response.

When she turned around to face him head on, he gazed down at her with zero expression, hands still clasped behind his back. gazing down at her with no expression whatsoever.

It was too easy to imagine him breaking into a little smirk at her growing frustration.

“Okay, seriously,” she tried again. “What is this? Are you my personal bodyguard now?”

“If that’s how you want to think of it.”

“I don’t want to think of it at all, actually. Feel free to go do your job somewhere else.”

“This is my job.” Now he wouldn’t even look at her but busied himself scanning the common room on the other side of the doorway, as if they had just entered enemy territory and he was intent on protecting her from unforeseen threats.

Right now, the only threat to Rebecca inside the walls of this compound was the shifter standing in front of her.

“Again, I don’t need—”

“The established protocol dictates a security escort for the acting Roth-Da’al when taking part in activities beyond the scope of—”

“Oh my god, just don’t .” The tender ache that had been banging around inside her skull since she’d gained consciousness in the infirmary now reminded her of its existence. Rebecca pinched the bridge of her nose. “I understand protocol. Trust me. You know what? I’d love to see the documents that spell this all out for you.”

Maxwell’s silver eyes darted toward her face, and he puffed out a breath through his nose. “That can be arranged.”

She studied him a moment longer, her right eye twitching beneath the building pressure in her head, then finally gave up trying. “Great. You should get on that, then.”

Then she surged forward into the common room, fighting against all her better judgment to just do what she had to do, no matter what Maxwell’s plans were.

With every passing second, however, the shifter’s plans grew clearer and clearer.

Rebecca’s Head of Security intended to shadow her every step, to stay right behind her no matter where she went, to insert himself into every interaction and conversation and attempt to move through her day like she wasn’t desperately walking the line between saving herself and falling into the dark oblivion of the poison writhing through her veins.

Maxwell had finally found his opportunity to tighten the grasp of his suspicion around her at every step, and Rebecca soon realized he wasn’t going to let her go.

Not until it was too late.