The Sight Seer (12 page)

Chapter
Twenty-three

“I’m fine,” he repeated after we had parked in front of his apartment building and gotten out of the car. “Just worry about the cat, alright?”

“The cat looks better than you, actually,” I said, checking on it again.
It peered up at me with its huge eyes, looking a lot less scared than before. Maybe it knew the demon was dead and the danger was over?

“Gee thanks,” Rafe responded sarcastically, pulling out a set of keys to unlock the lobby door.
The apartment wasn’t new, but it wasn’t run-down, and no questionable types were hanging outside. Well, it was the middle of the afternoon, but still. It looked like a nice enough neighborhood, albeit a little busy. It was built on a main road, and shops of all sorts lined the streets. I had been to an ice cream parlor a few blocks from here with Chloe and Penny; they had really good soft serve cones.

The lobby had a few comfortable looking pieces of furniture, a small, old TV, and a pile of magazines spread across a wooden table.
We walked past all this to another door, which revealed a set of stairs. It smelled strongly of paint, and the floors must have been freshly polished because our shoes squeaked with every step.

“I’m on the second floor, so I never bother with the elevator,” Rafe explained, even though I hadn’t asked.
I shrugged. I was still humming with energy and didn’t mind the extra exertion.

On the second floor Rafe opened another door, taking us into a carpeted hallway.
A few paintings of flowers and other nature scenes hung crookedly on the walls and some people had tried to spruce up their doorways by laying out welcome mats or hanging wreaths on their doors. The door Rafe stopped in front of us was devoid of all decoration. He unlocked the door and pushed it open with his uninjured shoulder. “Welcome to my home,” he said over his shoulder.

I stepped in, wary, but really, it was just your typical apartment.
What did I expect? Swords strewn about? Demon heads mounted on the wall like moose heads? Nope, there was none of that here. I walked in to what was obviously the living room, with a long couch, recliner, table, and a large flat screen TV framed by a pair of bookshelves. A Wii was hooked up to the TV, the wireless controllers strewn on the floor. Yep, perfectly normal.

Well, except for that pair of boxer shorts hanging off the edge of the couch.

Rafe noticed them at the exact same moment I did. With a startled curse, he grabbed them and hid them behind his back. He was blushing, and I think I was as well.

“They’re Evan’s,” he said.

I almost dropped the kitten. Why was Evan’s
underwear
in Rafe’s apartment? “Um. What?”

“We live together.
And he’s a total slob. I could kill him,” he said as he walked past the small kitchen, opened a door, and flung the boxers in before slamming the door shut again. Rafe shuddered. “It looks like a bomb went off in there. Multiple times. You don’t want to know how many times I’ve asked him to clean up after himself.” Rafe walked back to me. “He usually keeps his crap in his room; I’m really sorry about that.”

“You live together?”
My voice had raised about ten octaves. Was that even legal? Rafe was seventeen; how old was Evan?

“Yeah.”
He shot me a confused look. “I didn’t tell you? I could have sworn I did. Evan is eighteen, so it’s in his name, but I pay my half of the rent and all that stuff.”

“Where are your parents?”

There was a flash of pain in his eyes. Ah, here we go again. The forbidden topic that Rafe didn’t want to discuss.

Well, screw that!
I had just told him about my mom—he owed me an explanation!

I was about to call him on that when he winced and held his arm again.
My anger instantly evaporated. “Where are your medical supplies?” I asked, gently laying the kitten down on the couch. “I’ll get them.” I gestured to the couch. “Sit down, alright? You look like you’re about to pass out.”

Surprisingly, he listened to me.
“They’re in the bathroom, under the sink. Second door on the left.”

I followed his instructions and walked into a small but
nearly spotless bathroom. Resting in the sink was a hairbrush full of golden blonde hair and an open bottle of gel. Shaking my head, I snapped the bottle’s flip-top cover closed and moved both it and the brush to the countertop before turning on the water so I could wash some of the blood and grime off of my hands. Then I knelt down and opened the cabinet under the sink, afraid I was going to find a giant box of condoms or who-knows-what down there. The inside of Evan’s car had been a disaster area filled with garbage and I felt a pang of sympathy for Rafe, who was obviously a neat freak.

Luckily, the cabinet was safe, instead looking l
ike a freaking hospital with piles of gauze, bandages, rubbing alcohol—holy crap, was this a year’s supply worth of first aid? I grabbed what I thought I would need and went back to the living room asking, “How often do you guys get hurt, Rafe?”

He was sitting with the kitten in his lap, petting it slowly with his good hand.
Giving me a half-hearted shrug, he said, “It happens. Not too often, but it’s better to be prepared, right?”

I sat down on the table so I could face him, laying the supplies out next to me.
“Alright, I’m not an expert on this stuff, so you have to tell me what to do.”

First he helped me bandage up the kitten’s paw.
We put antiseptic on the wound, which made it hiss and try to dart away, but I think it had used up all of its strength fighting the demon, because it eventually stopped struggling to give us pathetic looks. “Poor thing,” I said, feeling my heart break as I watched it. I wrapped the bandage around its paw, doing a pretty crappy job with tying it off at the end, but it wasn’t going to unwind, which was all that mattered.

“I’ll take it to a vet,” Rafe promised.
“I know a good place that doesn’t ask questions.”

“This happens often, then?
Demons attacking animals, I mean?”

Rafe clenched his jaw.
“They like to prey on the weak.” He nodded towards the kitten. “We were lucky, this time.”

I felt my stomach lurch.
This
time, he said. How many dead animals had Rafe seen? Or humans? Had he ever arrived too late to save a human?

I didn’t want to ask him.
Asking him meant knowing, and knowing meant I might actually start using my head and tell him I didn’t want to do this anymore. Because obviously it wasn’t as easy and painless as I thought it was.

And what?
That meant I should give up? Already? And damn, when you think about it,
what
was I actually doing? I found the demon and let Rafe do all the hard work. What right did I have to tell him I was done? That he had to go back to doing this the hard way? We had managed to save that girl and the cat, but if I hadn’t been there, would they have died?

How could I just walk away from this?
              “Gabi?” I could feel his eyes on me as he watched my internal struggle.

I gave him a small smile.
“Sorry.” Grabbing the antiseptic, I said, “You’re in pain, and I’m spacing out. Let’s get this cleaned up.” I looked at his sleeve, shredded and stiff with dried blood and said, “Uhhh…maybe you should, uh, take off your shirt?”

Real smooth, Gabi.

Nodding, he put the dozing kitten down next to him and struggled to remove his shirt. I went to help him, and then sat my butt back down on the table. I’m sorry, but helping to take his shirt off while we were alone in his apartment was crossing a line. Maybe I was the only one in this room who thought so, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to look him in the face for a week (or ever) if I did.

“You can look,” he said in an amused voice.
My eyes flickered towards him and I was relieved to see he had been wearing a black tank top under his shirt. Of course, the thing did little to hide his crazy arm muscles, and I swallowed hard.

There was a tattoo of a black crescent moon on his right arm; he caught me looking and said, “Everyone in the organization has one of these.”
Rafe blanched. “Just don’t ask Evan to show you his, alright?”

“I don’t want to know, do I?”
I tore my eyes away from the tattoo (alright, I’ll admit it, it was way sexy) and said, “Give me your arm.” Taking it in my hands, I winced when I saw the long, ugly-looking gash. It was already clotted with dried blood and the skin around the cut looked swollen. “God, this looks horrible.”

“I thought you said it wasn’t so bad?” Rafe teased.
He cursed when I put the antiseptic-soaked cloth on the wound.

“Sorry.”
I didn’t want to hurt him, so I pulled away, but he gestured for me to continue. “I don’t know how to do stitches.” Tears formed in my eyes as I realized how stupidly useless I was. “Maybe we should go to a hospital?”

“Nah, we don’t need that.”
Rafe pointed towards the kitchen and I turned. A long partial wall divided the kitchen from the living room, and sitting on top of it was a small bottle. “Can you bring that over for me, please?”

I slipped off the table and picked up the bottle.
It looked suspiciously like eye drops and I asked, “Rafe, are you trying to tell me you wear contacts?”

He laughed.
“No, Gabi. Drop some of that on the wound.”

“More magic?”
I squeezed some of the clear liquid on his gash. At first nothing happened, but then it started fizzing and Rafe grunted, leaning his head back against the couch and closing his eyes. “I guess it’s supposed to do that?” I asked.

Rafe opened one eye.
“It closes up the wound. For humans only, though, or else I would have used it on the cat. It’s not as neat as stitches, but it saves us from unwanted questions. You can only show up so many times at the same hospital with various, ugly looking wounds, you know?”

“Yeah, I can see how that would be a problem.”
I held up the bottle. “It still looks like eye stuff, though.”

After the stuff finished bubbling, he had me tie up the wound nice and tight with the bandages.
Then Rafe gathered all the supplies and went to the bathroom to wash the blood off his hands. He stepped into his bedroom for a moment and, to my disappointment, emerged wearing a clean t-shirt. Damn, and I hadn’t ogled him nearly enough!

“Do you want pizza?” Rafe asked, stepping into the kitchen.
“Hunting always makes me hungry.”

“Will you leave some of the pie for me?” I teased, curling up on the couch with my feet under me.
The kitten gave a yawn and then snuggled closer to me. Picking it up, I set it in my lap and was happy to hear it purring. Guess the little guy was going to be A-Okay.

Rafe picked up a menu and scowled.
“I’m not a pig like Evan. We might have to order two pies, though. I am pretty hungry.”

“Throw in an order of garlic knots and I’m good,” I said.
I probably shouldn’t be hanging out at a boy’s house eating pizza when I was supposed to be sick, but I didn’t care. Besides, with a quick check to my phone, I saw it was still early. Dad didn’t usually get home until after six, so he wouldn’t even know I had left. And Chloe wouldn’t rat me out, not when she had been the one to call Rafe in the first place.

I needed to thank her for that, by the way.
Making a mental note…

Rafe picked up the phone and called in an order for two pies and my garlic knots, and then came back to sit next to me.
He turned on the TV and flipped through the channels until he found a baseball game. Tossing the remote back on the table, he settled into the couch, his eyes alight as he watched the game. According to the TV, this game had been played last night, but I guess that didn’t matter to Rafe.

“How’s your arm?” I asked after a few minutes of companionable silence.
              “It’s good,” he said flexing it for me. “You’d make a good nurse.”

“I don’t know about that,” I said, although I was pleased.
Maybe I should take some first aid classes. Then at least I would learn how to properly tie off a bandage!

I sat like that for a little bit more, letting the boy enjoy his game until I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Rafe?” He was probably going to hate me for this, but I
had
to ask.

“Yeah?”
He was only half paying attention to me, eyes glued to the screen.

“Are you ever going to tell me about what happened to your parents?”

He froze, the color draining from his face. I felt horrible, but I was determined to get the truth out of him this time.

Shaking his head stubbornly, he clenched his hands into fists.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“But I told you about my mom!
And I never talk about her with anyone, ever! Don’t you think it’s fair that you—”

“It’s not the same!” he cut me off, practically snarling the words.
I winced at his tone, but dug my feet in stubbornly.

“How is it not the same?
They’re obviously not in the picture, which is exactly how it is with my mom!”