When she was finished, I asked, “How long do you think I’ll be here?”
“If everything progresses like it should?” she mused. “I’d say you can be discharged in three more days. And you’re going to have to take it easy.”
“Three more days,” I repeated mournfully. Being human was going to take some getting used to. As a succubus, I would’ve recovered from this in twenty-four hours. There wouldn’t have even been any taking it easy afterward.
Dr. Addison scoffed at my dismay. “Honestly, after getting hit like you did, a week total here isn’t bad at all. You took some nasty hits, but really, this could’ve been a lot worse.”
When she and the nurse left, I saw Hugh scanning his phone. “What are you looking at?”
“Seth’s schedule. In three days, he’ll be in St. Louis.”
“Hmm,” I said.
“In four, he’ll be in San Francisco.”
“That’s close,” I said. “Relatively.”
“It’d give you an extra day in there to recover,” said Hugh.
“An extra day, huh?” I teased. “What happened to not wasting a single day as a mortal?”
“My point about not wasting time still stands,” said Hugh. He grinned. “But even I can be realistic. Take the extra day. You need it for the logistics of travel, if nothing else. But not a single day more.”
“Get out and live life, huh?”
“If you’re up for it.”
I thought about his words, thought about Seth. I nodded, not caring whether hopping on a plane right after being discharged was crazy. I was human now. Crazy was in the job description.
“I’m up for it,” I said. “Book me a flight to San Francisco.”
Hugh’s attention was on his phone again. “Sweetie, I already am.”
Chapter 22
Flying from Seattle to San Francisco is easy, easier even than going to Las Vegas. It takes less than two hours, and tons of flights run each day. The whole trip should’ve been simple. I mean, there were days when I’d spent more time in traffic just trying to get from downtown Seattle to the suburbs.
But I’d never flown on an airplane as a mortal. I was still determined to get to Seth, so there was no question that I was going to make this flight—only a lot of fear. I sat on the plane, waiting for takeoff, noticing things I’d never paid much attention to before. Were the engines usually that loud? Was that fuel I smelled? Was that a crack in the window, and if so, would the whole thing hold when we were airborne? I’d never done much more than politely watch the flight attendants’ safety demo, but this time, I hung on to every detail. I had a lot on the line now—like, my life. An immortal could survive a plane crash. It wouldn’t be pretty, but it was possible. Now? Now I faced all the risks the rest of the human world did.
My fears were unfounded, of course. The flight was smooth and easy, just as fast as I’d expected. Flying really was the safest form of travel. That hadn’t changed. Only my perceptions of the world had. I made the trip white-knuckled and breathed a deep sigh of relief when the plane landed.
By the time I’d rented a car and was settled into my hotel room, I still had a couple hours before Seth’s signing. My hotel was only a couple of blocks from his store—I’d planned it that way—and there was little for me to do except wait. Wait and obsess. A lot of that time was spent agonizing over my appearance. Even when I could shape-shift, I’d always prided myself on my ability to do my own styling. Of course, when Jerome had been summoned and I’d lost my succubus powers briefly, I’d discovered that I really wasn’t quite as adept as I’d believed. I’d been cheating without realizing it all along, making small corrections with my powers. Stripped of them, I’d found all the little details I’d missed with blending eye shadow, straightening my hair, and myriad other grooming tasks.
Now was no different. I would never have that guaranteed perfection again. There would always be flaws in my appearance. I was going to start aging. How long until that set in? Staring at myself in the hotel bathroom’s mirror, I searched out all the little things I thought could be improved upon and then tried to fix them. When I was finished, I was so frustrated that I didn’t know if I’d come close to my previous perfection or not. The only thing I was fairly certain of was that it probably didn’t matter. Seth’s decision to forgive me wasn’t going to have anything to do with how my bangs fell or if my makeup brought out the gold flecks in my green eyes.
I showed up ten minutes before Seth’s event started, thought it was obvious people had been arriving for some time. A bit of nostalgia for Emerald City hit me as I gazed around and took in the efficient bookstore staff as they worked to accommodate the crowd. A podium had been set up in front of a large seating area, though no chairs were left empty. Staff shifted what furniture they could to improve the view for those of us who were standing, and I had to stop myself from offering to help. I ended up purposely staying near the back of the standing crowd. I could still see the podium and hoped my spot would keep me semiobscured. All around me, excited readers clutched copies of Seth’s books, some even carrying huge stacks.
Their excitement was electric, and I found myself getting caught up in it when Seth finally emerged to thunderous applause. My heart leaped. How long had it been since we’d last spoken? A week? It felt like an eternity, maybe because I’d pretty much lived one in the trial. He was wearing a Brady Bunch T-shirt, and though it looked like he’d brushed his hair, I could already see parts of it starting to go unruly in that way it had. He didn’t appear to have shaved in a couple days, but the scruff looked adorable and added to his carefree writer appearance. I felt a smile spreading on my face as I watched him and was reminded of the first time we’d met, when he’d come to Emerald City for a signing and I hadn’t recognized him.
“Hey, everybody,” he said into the microphone, once the applause had quieted. “Thanks for coming out tonight.”
Thinking about that first meeting with him also made me realize how much he had changed in the last year and a half. He would never be entirely comfortable in front of a crowd like this—especially since they kept getting bigger—but he was certainly more at ease than that first meeting. He grinned at their enthusiasm and made eye contact where he could, something he’d had trouble with in the past. There was confidence even in the way he stood and spoke. It made me love him that much more, something I hadn’t believed possible.
Sometimes he would open by reading aloud from the new book, but this time, he jumped straight into questions. Hands went up everywhere, and I found myself ducking against a shelf as he scanned the audience and called on people. I wasn’t quite ready for discovery yet. I just wanted to watch him and drink him in.
I was amused that the very first question he was asked was, “Where do you get your ideas from?” That had been a joke between us, at that first meeting, because it was one of the most common questions he received. I’d commented, back then, that it must get tedious answering the same things, and Seth had told me no. He’d said that the question was always new for the person asking and that he treated it as such. It didn’t matter how many times it came up. He took joy in their excitement for the books.
More questions came, both broad and specific, and Seth answered them all with friendliness and good humor that his fans loved. A lot of people especially wanted to know about the next book, the last book in his Cady and O’Neill series. My heart grew and grew the more I watched him, and I felt like I was getting away with something by being able to observe him without his knowledge. Our last few encounters hadn’t exactly been friendly, and it was a balm to me to observe all the warmth and kindness that had made me fall in love with him.