She Dies at the End (November Snow #1) (27 page)

“How long will she sleep?” the king asked with concern.

“I’m not sure.  I’ve never done this before, injecting someone with vampire spit.”  Cedar wrinkled his nose in distaste.  “Frankly, I’d be more comfortable using a normal sedative, but since that’s not an option, Lord William suggested this.”

November shrank with fear as the doctor approached, but she didn’t protest or flee.

“Do you want me to stay until you fall asleep?” the king asked her quietly.  She started at him for a long moment, then nodded.  The men turned their backs as Hazel and Zinnia helped November to change.  She was so weak that it was like dressing a baby.  Ilyn placed her in the bed and gently tucked her in.  Dr. Cedar administered his potion, and November soon closed her eyes, still holding the king’s hand.

She woke up in a sunny garden, surrounded by flowers of every type and season.  Every surface in her room was crowded with vases.  Afternoon light glinted off the crystal.  As she struggled to sit up, Zinnia jumped up from the floor to help her.  “She’s awake!” her friend cried, and Pine rushed in from the hallway.

“Morning, sleepyhead,” he said with a hopeful smile.  “Feel any better?”

There was a long pause.  She opened her mouth, but made no sound.  Then she nodded hesitantly.  The two fairies exchanged a worried glance.  “Are you hungry?” Zinnia asked.  “You slept 36 hours; you must be hungry.”

November nodded again.  “I’ll go send down for something,” Pine said.  “Zin, why don’t you help her get cleaned up and dressed?”

November was cooperative as Zinnia helped her to and from the bathroom, but she never quite seemed all there.  When her friend placed the toothbrush in her hand, she managed to use it, carefully, as if trying something for the first time.  She had no opinion about what clothes to wear, but she helpfully held up her arms for her sweater and stepped into her jeans.

The only time she showed any real reaction was when she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror.  She reached out toward her image, and her face briefly twisted in horror at the state she was in: her pallor, the livid scar on her arm, her missing hair.  She’d always thought that she had pretty hair.  It had been her sole vanity.  For a moment, she seemed about to cry.

“It’s okay, Em.  It’ll grow back.  They had to cut it.  Your fever was so high,” Zinnia tried to explain.  “I can make it grow back faster, if you want.  It actually looks kind of badass, if you ask me.”

November pulled her hand away from the mirror and looked at her friend with confused eyes before she withdrew back into herself again.

Inside herself is where she stayed for days, never speaking, but communicating and understanding when it suited her.  At first Zinnia and Pine tried to fill the silence, catching her up on events.

“We’ve never left you alone.  Everyone’s been by to see you, too, to check on you and pay their respects.  There are even more flowers downstairs that wouldn’t fit,”  Zinnia began, as November slowly began to eat her breakfast.

She reacted to that information with a hint of surprise.  Humans usually didn’t rate much respect with fairies and vampires.  The courtiers certainly had never shown her any consideration before.

“You saved a lot of vampire and fairy lives the other night,” Pine explained further.  “They want to show their appreciation.  More importantly, they want to ensure that you’re on their side when things hit the fan.  Also, there’s a certain degree of sucking up to the King going on, since everyone knows you have his favor.”

November didn’t know quite what to make of any of that.  “Speaking of the King, he’s been checking on you every hour on the hour,” Zinnia reported.  “He stayed the whole day yesterday.  Slept on the floor holding your hand, with half a dozen fairies guarding you both.  Every time he tried to leave, your vitals went haywire.  Dr. Cedar says that with all the fairy magic you absorbed, you seem to have bonded to him like fairies do when they’re born.  You seemed more stable by nightfall last night, so he’s been able to come and go.  He’d probably be here right now, but he told us to open the shutters. Thought some sunlight would do you good.”

“His security detail freaked.  As did Lord William, when he found out last night.  Vampires who survive for thousands of years don’t tend to take such chances,” Pine elaborated.  The mention of Ilyn seemed to catch November’s attention for a moment, but then she returned to her food.

From Zinnia and Pine, November learned that Ben’s execution had been postponed in the midst of all the excitement.  After she’d finished interrogating Lilith, Savita had been sent to Luka’s mansion in Arizona in command of a large contingent of federal knights.  They’d found the place deserted and were currently searching for clues to where they might have gone.

“Hey, why are people so afraid of Savita, anyhow?” Zinnia interrupted.

“Well, there’s the mind reading, for starters.  Scheming people like their privacy,” Pine began.

“And?” Zinnia asked when Pine hesitated to continue.

“They say she has the ability to enthrall supernaturals, event to the point of forcing them to commit murder or suicide.”  Pine accentuated this tidbit of information with spooky hand gestures.  “Blood kin are immune, they say.  I’ve never seen her do it, myself, but my grandmother tells stories.”

“For real?  Wow.  She could be seriously powerful if she wanted to be.  Like, rule-the-world-as-a despot powerful.”  Zinnia’s eyes were wide.

“Yep.  Lucky thing she’s not a monster like Luka.  She avoids using both her gifts as much as she can.  She wishes she didn’t have either one of them, I think.  Anyhow, as for Lilith, she’s going to be dead pretty soon, I imagine,” Pine continued, getting back on topic.  “They must be about through asking her questions if they sent Savita to Arizona.  Quickie trial and execution, I expect.  Unless they wait to try her at the Assembly of Lords, so everyone sees proof of what Luka’s been up to.  Though I suspect that those who refuse to believe it have already chosen Luka’s side, or are well compensated for staying neutral.”

“Is that a lot of people?” Zinnia asked.

“Enough for trouble, I’m afraid.”

“So what will the king do next?  Will he go back to Nevada?”

“You’ll have to ask him when he comes.”

Darkness was falling, and Zinnia turned on some lamps as she replied.  “I’m surprised he isn’t here right now.”

The conversation trailed off as the fairies looked with concern at their silent friend.  She had finished eating and was just sitting there, stating at the wall.

“I wonder if she saw bad things, when she was . . .” Zinnia said quietly to Pine, unsure if November was even listening.

“It certainly seemed like she did,” Pine replied.  “From what little I could make out of what she was saying.  For a while there, I would swear she was speaking Old Fairy.”

“Do you think it would make her feel better to draw?”

“It’s worth a try,” Pine replied, grabbing a notebook and pencil and placing them in November’s lap.  The girl registered their presence, looked up at Pine, and grinned her thanks before taking up the pencil and returning to her own world.  “At least she seems to know who we are.  That mean’s she’s still in there, right?” her bodyguard asked her best friend.

“She’s in there," the empath replied with assurance.  “It’s just going to take time for her to get back to normal.  She’s kind of blank right now.  I don’t think she’s ready to feel much yet.  Every so often, something gets through, but I think she put up some walls that night, to protect herself.  She’s just not ready to take them down yet.”  Zinnia seemed to be trying to convince herself as much as Pine.  “I really wonder where the king is,” she added, watching November begin to sketch.

November wondered, too.  As she turned her thoughts to him, she could see him clearly.  Ilyn had gone out to feed.  He was sitting in the back of a limo, drinking from a woman in a business suit.  He didn’t seem that into it, which somehow pleased her.  It wasn’t like most of her visions, which felt like trespassers.  This one was comfortable and reassuring, like when you hear your grandmother cooking in the next room and you know that it means you're both okay.

It was strange.  She’d never been able to just think of a person and see where they were and what they were doing.  She needed something of theirs: hair, jewelry, a piece of clothing, and even then, it was hit or miss.  Now, however, she seemed somehow linked with the King.  She tried to remember what her friends had been saying earlier about her vital signs worsening when Ilyn tried to leave.  It was so hard to pay attention to details; her focus seemed so fragmented.

For a moment, she hoped he would come see her when he returned.  But that hope came with the pain of possible disappointment, so she cut it off and went back to drawing, letting her mind wander and drift.  Her last coherent thought before letting go was that she probably shouldn’t tell anyone that she could see him.

She spent the night like this, filling sheets of paper with disjointed images, tearing them off, dropping them to the floor, and beginning again.  She stopped only when someone took the pencil out of her hand and placed food in front of her.  Several people came by to check her progress: William, Hazel, Cedar.  She heard worried whispers but didn’t bother listening to them.  William tried to talk to her for a moment.  He was determined to explain his behavior the other night, when he'd threatened to turn her himself.  She managed to give him a reassuring smile.  She didn’t really remember why she was supposed to be mad at him.

The person who did not come was Ilyn: not that night, not the next, not the one after that.  She knew he was still in the house.  In one of her more lucid moments, she’d heard Willow and Pine discussing the fact that Hazel and most of the court had returned to Las Vegas to plan for the upcoming Assembly, but Ilyn had stayed to make war plans with William.

She tried not to wonder why he didn’t come.  Perhaps he didn’t care about her as much as he had seemed to.  Perhaps now that she was out of danger, he had more important uses for his time.  Perhaps he had seen so much of her human weakness that she now repelled him.  Whatever the reason, part of her wanted to despair.  Part of her was angry.  After all, she’d suffered because she was protecting him and his people.  The rest of her was still numb and was willing to wait to see how things played out.

Ilyn certainly featured prominently in the fragments of vision she could recall from her ordeal, as well as her few actual memories from that night.  She remembered being curled up against his chest as he sang to her.  She remembered him holding her in ice cold water.  She remembered clutching his hand for dear life.  She had never held anyone’s hand like that.  With humans, the contact led to visions she didn’t want.  With vampires, she didn’t see much unless she chose to look.  With Ilyn in particular, when the visions did come, they weren’t disorienting and painful and nauseating like everyone else’s.  They were somehow comfortable and familiar, even when they were upsetting.  She couldn’t understand it.

She kept making the same drawings over and over: Ilyn dying, Ilyn as a young human throwing his dead son on pyre, Ilyn with his wives, Savita’s rebirth, William’s human death.  A number of her visions featured the knife that had caused her such damage: Marisha killing a fairy and taking his knife, Luka killing a number of people with that same knife.  

One vision of Luka stuck out in her mind, because it seemed so strangely gentle.  He was using the same knife, that cruel weapon, to cut ropes that were binding an injured young girl.  She’d obviously been badly abused, but apparently not by him, as she looked at him as though he were an angel.  November wondered who she was.

The most disturbing visions were those of the knife’s manufacture, which involved quenching the hot metal by plunging it into terrified fairy captives, who proceeded to die screaming.  The wooden inlay was carved from a stake used to execute vampires.  Those particular images haunted November for some time.

Sleep did not come easily during her recovery.  Visions, nightmares, night terrors, panic attacks – these all conspired to wake her every few hours.  Pine or Zinnia would come running and sit with her until she fell back asleep, as though she were a frightened child.

Even so, she made quick progress.  She began talking in her sleep.  One morning, Zinnia put some music on, and November began singing along without seeming to realize she was doing it.  Excited to see improvement, Pine and Zinnia kept up a constant soundtrack of November’s favorite musicians: Florence Welsh, Regina Spektor, the Devil Makes Three, Adele, Josh White, Lily Allen, Ingrid Michaelson, Son House, Bob Dylan, Pink, the Be Good Tanyas, Catey Shaw.

As she grew physically stronger, they took her on longer and longer walks outside.  They watched a movie in the theatre.  She picked up her guitar again.  She spent less time drawing in trances.  She began communicating more, writing out some of her messages, and yet, no conscious words passed her lips.

One early afternoon, she woke up to find a few drops of blood on her pillow.  She reached out to touch them, thinking she must have had a nosebleed in her sleep.  Instead, she plunged into a vision of the night before.

The king kneels by her bed, studying her as she sleeps.  Zinnia and Pine quietly sneak through the door.  Ilyn’s eyes turn cold.  “I believe I told the two of you to wait in the hallway,” he says without turning his head.

“Why are you doing this to her?  Staying away while she is awake?  Why are you doing it to yourself?”  Zinnia asks, practically distraught.