Kansas had made all this happen?
I scooped Kansas from the ground, holding him tight to my chest. I didn't think, but my feet moved on autopilot, bringing me to the door. I paused in the doorway, looking back at all the bodies on the ground. My father's chest rose with each breath. They were all alive. Just sleeping.
Mr. Boots trotted through the mess of bodies and stood by my feet. He settled his neon green, cross-eyed gaze on me and then Kansas in my arms. He meowed.
"You've been keeping secrets, Mr. Boots."
He didn't reply—I hadn't really expected him to. Enough strange things had happened, I didn't need the cat to start talking too. I locked the door behind me. I wasn't sure what my grandfather and the rest of them would do when they woke up, but I wouldn't be there to find out. Hopefully, by then, I'd be busy finally getting some answers.
Chapter Eight
Kansas
Holy mother of Golden Grahams, my head hurt. It pounded like I'd tried to drive a metal spike down the middle of my skull. I knew without opening my eyes that I'd failed to keep all the promises I'd made myself the day before. I hadn't ignored Wyatt's charms. I did not keep my head down.
Instead, I'd stuck my nose right in the middle of everyone's business, and now I probably had one extremely confused boss. And my body felt like I'd spent the previous week on a bender.
"He's awake!" Wyatt yelled, and I winced from his sudden loudness.
My eyelids fluttered open. Anything further than a few feet from my face was still blurry, but I could see Wyatt.
I was in a bed, not the bed in my room in the bar. This room looked more like it belonged to a house. And it contained a Wyatt. A worried but still ruggedly handsome Wyatt.
"You scared the ever-living shit out of me!"
I found myself in a tight hug the next second. I swallowed, trying to work up enough saliva to be able to speak, but my throat was too dry. "Are you okay?" I managed to ask. "Where's Mr. Boots?"
There was a meow from somewhere else in the room that sounded a lot like Mr. Boots. Good, he was safe. And it looked like Wyatt was safe too. Not a mark on him. Before I'd speed-zapped everyone's energy, I'd been worried he was about to get his ass kicked. I wouldn't have worried if there had been only one or two of them, but there'd been at least five of them, and they had two attack dogs.
I tried to remember what they'd been arguing about. I hadn't understood the majority of what had been said, but I'd worked out that the other guys wanted something from Wyatt. Something he didn't want to give.
"Everyone's fine. Anyone who matters, anyway. Thanks, Riley." He spoke that last part to the man who came in through the doorway with a glass of water.
The man had a friendly face and a baby on his hip. He peered at me like I was on display at the zoo. It didn't make me feel uncomfortable as much as it just made me feel seen. I normally tried to avoid that unless I wanted to be looked at.
My fingernails scratched my arm, and I looked away from the newcomer, finding a small red patch on my skin. Sometimes, when I didn't catch myself, I'd scratch my skin raw. When I took in a lot of power, I sometimes went into something like a manic episode. That only meant I'd gone too long consuming one form of energy and not the other.
The only thing that would help the scratching, itching, shaking, and tapping was food. And only that could dampen it. Nothing would stop it completely. With the excitement of my job at the bar and having Wyatt in my life, I hadn't done a stellar job remembering to eat. Still, a quick burst of power from Wyatt was just the thing to take the edge off my headache.
I opened my mind, and Wyatt lunged forward, using both hands to smooth out the skin of my forehead. "Don't," he ordered on a gasp. "Whatever you do when your forehead gets that little wrinkle, don't do it. Please. You fell, collapsed like a bag of rice. And your nose was bleeding. What happened, Kansas? You knocked out every person in that room except me. How? Why?"
I thought the why should have been obvious, but the how would take a little more explaining.
"I—"
"Actually, scratch that. First, you're eating. Thank you, Riley."
The same man had come in again, but that time, he carried a bowl of something that was steaming. He smiled tentatively in my direction but quickly left. Wyatt lifted the glass of water to my lips, and I let him pour it into my mouth for a few sips. But as the moisture hit my tongue, I was suddenly ravenous for more, and I grabbed the glass with two hands.
"Careful," Wyatt said. "Don't choke."
"Where am I?" I asked now that I could speak through a throat that didn't feel like a desert.
"My house. I live about ten minutes out of town with my cousins and their mates."
Somewhere in the house, a baby began to scream.
"And their children," Wyatt added.
"Big house," I said because I couldn't think of anything else to say. When I'd pictured Wyatt's home outside of the bar, I hadn't pictured one full of family, with young children to boot. For so many people in a small house, I thought I should've seen more than one of them peeking in.
Unless Wyatt brought home mysterious men regularly.
Wyatt stirred the bowl of steaming liquid with his spoon and brought the tip to his tongue to check either the flavor or temperature. "The house isn't big enough. Ah—" he said, opening his mouth to mimic what he wanted me to do.
My lips parted, and he slid the spoon over my bottom lip, dumping the contents of the spoon inside. I didn't want the food. If he hadn't physically put the food in my mouth, I probably wouldn't have bothered with it. But because it was Wyatt and because he was feeding me, I swallowed.
I winced as the second spoonful sloshed around in my empty stomach. It hurt, and would for a bit longer. It always did when I started eating after a long break. By the fifth spoonful, I eagerly waited for the next. It still hurt, but my brain already felt clearer.
Every time I'd been caught by my uncle in the past had been when I'd let myself go too long consuming only energy and forgetting food. When I did that, the effect on my body was exponential. The first day, my quirks would begin to happen more frequently. That only got worse the longer I went without. And if I abstained for even longer, that was when the hallucinations started.
Which was how my uncle had found it such an easy task to have me repeatedly committed without my permission. He'd been successful so many times, the state had eventually granted him custody over my care. Legally, he still had it and would until I died. Or he died.
Silently, Wyatt fed me the rest of the bowl. Tomato soup with soggy bits of salty croutons and chunks of cheese. "We didn't have any chicken noodle."
"I'll pay you back for it—" I started to say, but Wyatt shook his hand in the air like he was erasing an imaginary blackboard.
"I'm not worried about the cost. I'm worried about you. Is that what you did to me? How come you didn't pass out? Do you need to see a doctor? There was a lot of blood."
That bit was disconcerting. I didn't normally get nosebleeds when I overloaded. But I hadn't overloaded like that in a while. Actually, I'd never overloaded like that. I'd sucked so much energy from the men in that room, it had been like drawing from a room of Wyatts. My body had sung, floating high on cloud nine, before I'd zonked out. "I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours," I whispered.