Then she took a few steps forward and bent down to peer under the door. The kitchen floor spread out smoothly in front of her. Nothing moved across her field of vision. Mina let her breath out slowly and felt her face burning.
“I think everything’s fine,” she murmured. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what got into me.”
A shadow brushed across the room outside.
Mina stumbled backwards, away from the door, bringing her knife clumsily upward. She didn’t let herself breathe, but she shook her head frantically at Emily: I was wrong, I was wrong, don’t move, don’t speak, don’t do anything.
She seemed to get the message across. At least, the girl froze in place. Mina snapped her gaze back toward the door.
Nothing came through, but…were those footsteps?
Yes and no, Mina decided as she listened. They were definitely steps, but she didn’t know that feet were making them. They sounded too big and too…squishy.
She wanted to scream. She wanted to be sick. She made herself breathe quietly and slowly, and listened to the steps cross the room, then fade.
Then they paused.
Then they charged, running back toward the pantry with a sound like slopping jelly.
A huge blow hit the pantry door. The wood buckled in front of what looked like a fist the size of Mina’s head. Emily whimpered behind her, and Mina glanced backward. The pantry window was too small and too high to get out.
She might have chosen very badly.
The next blow splintered a hole in the door. The hand came through, except it wasn’t really a hand. Half of it was shadow, and the fingers were blurred or melted, vague around the edges and boneless. Mina’s stomach hitched, and she wanted to look away.
She darted forward and slashed at the hand, putting her back into the blow. Flesh, if it was flesh, parted and fell to the floor with a glop. The rest of the hand pulled back.
Mina knew she hadn’t won. The thing on the other side of the door probably had two hands, and it—she looked down at the puddle on the floor—didn’t bleed. There might be more than one. She swallowed a sob, conscious of Emily behind her, and waited. She couldn’t even close her eyes.
From farther off in the kitchen, she heard a snarl.
The thing at the door made more squishing sounds as it turned, and then there was a mighty crash and it hit the door again. This time, though, it was not under its own power. This time, the door held against its weight, spread out as it was, and Mina heard a boiling-water shriek. Now she heard crashing from upstairs, too, and the great roar of an angry dragon.
The cavalry, as the saying went, had arrived.
Thirty-three
“This isn’t healing,” Colin gasped out between his gritted teeth. “Not as quickly as it should.”
He lay on the drawing room sofa, his head flung back and his eyes closed. The fingers of his good arm were clenched at his side. Stephen and Mina were splinting the other arm, which was all any of them could do until the surgeon arrived.
“It is broken,” said Mina, eyes on the roll of gauze she was winding around Colin’s wrist. “That’s got to be more than a few minutes’ work, even for you lot.”
“It is,” said Colin. “But I’ve broken bones before. I know the feel of it. This is different.”
Stephen gave a moment of attention to his own wounds. None of them were particularly severe. Mostly, they were cold places where the manes had hit him, and one long cut along his chest where a tentacle had taken hold hard enough and for enough time to freeze the flesh until it cracked. None of them were healing as quickly as injuries he’d had in his past, either.
“It is,” he said and looked to Colin. “Because they’re not of this world?”
“It’s as good a reason as any.”
The thing Colin had pulled away from the pantry door at least had been physical, a hulking beast that had combined the shadowy facelessness of a manes with something like a human form, though a horribly distorted one. Dead, it had dissolved like its less substantial brethren, and the magical side had clearly been prominent enough to break Colin’s arm in a way that wouldn’t heal as most injuries did.
“How did they get in, anyhow?” Mina asked. “Weren’t the wards supposed to keep them out?”
“They were,” said Stephen. “Colin? I thought they were solid enough, but a fresh pair of eyes might help—and you’ve always been better at magic,” he admitted, feeling that he owed his brother something.
Mina frowned at him. “Now? The man’s got a broken arm.”
“I’ve done more under worse circumstances, and it is important. Though it’s kind of you to worry,” Colin added, smiling up at Mina in an obvious attempt at charm.
“You’ll be no good to anyone if you make yourself worse,” said Mina, but she did smile back. “Go on, then.”
Colin took a breath, straightened his back, and spoke the invocation. His eyes became unfocused, glowing faintly silver, and then focused again, first on Stephen and then on Mina.
“Ah,” he said and shook his head. “That would be the trouble, wouldn’t it?”
“What would be the trouble?” Stephen asked.
“The two of you.”
Mina coughed. “I beg your pardon?”
“Oh, I’m not implying anything,” Colin said. With an absently muttered word, he withdrew his sight back to the mortal side of the Veil. “The wards themselves are quite solid. Looking at them, it’s hard to believe you were new to magic,” he added to Mina, which wiped the should-I-be-offended look off her face.
She practically beamed, in fact.
“Right,” said Stephen, reminding himself that his brother was injured and thus not growling about how information, not flirting, was wanted here. “Then what happened?”
“Well—”
“Doctor Banks, sir,” said Baldwin.
As was almost second nature by now, Stephen left the alibi to Mina, who made up something simple about Colin falling down the stairs. Colin, Stephen was pleased to note, bridled at this clear implication that he was less than perfectly graceful, but had no chance to contradict Mina. He settled for saying that it was dark, he’d been ill, and he wasn’t used to this house.
“Yes, I’m quite sure,” said Dr. Banks, clearly not giving a damn. “Hold this sponge, please, miss. And don’t breathe deeply.”
As Mina held the sponge out with steady hands, he very carefully poured some of the contents of an unmarked bottle over it. A sickly sweet smell rose up: chloroform. Dr. Banks took the sponge back and thrust it under Colin’s nose. “You take a deep breath, sir. Good.”
The title was clearly perfunctory. Neither bloodline nor wealth carried much weight with Banks. Stephen wasn’t sure even the true nature of the MacAlasdairs would make much difference to the tall, gray-haired man, not if either of them was a patient.
Obediently, Colin took a long breath in, then, on Dr. Banks’s command, another, until his eyes rolled back in his head and he sagged onto the couch, boneless with unconsciousness.
Lucky Colin: the last time Stephen had broken a bone, he’d had a quart of whiskey to see him through the setting and had bitten most of the way through a leather belt despite that.
As Banks applied the cast, Stephen took Mina aside for a moment. Trusting to the doctor’s presence to guarantee his self-control, he took both her hands in his. “Are you well?” He looked into her face as he asked the question, trying to see the truth beneath whatever brave mask she might put on.
“I—” Mina caught her breath when she met his eyes. “I will be. No harm done, right?”
“Right.” The hands Stephen held didn’t shake, but they were cold. He used that excuse to keep them in his a few moments longer. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have known something was wrong.”