“Hey, don’t act like I’m the bad guy here. We’re all curious.”
Blue sighed, and Niko found amusement at the way her light crackled with annoyance.
She patted Niko’s wrist. “Back in a jiffy.”
He watched her red light blaze into the bathroom. Niko had no real concept of colors. He had given each variation a name based on what he knew of the world and all the color schemes. Blue’s was the only color he somewhat understood because it matched the intensity he often saw in flames, which he knew to be a mix of red, yellow, and orange. He couldn’t be certain if they were the same hues as what everyone else saw, but that didn’t seem relevant. There might be colors he could see that were off the spectrum and not visible to the naked eye. In his world, colors and textures served as identifiers.
Blue returned and stood beside him. “Here, drink this.” She put a glass in his hand. “Do you have to go to the bathroom?”
Wyatt snorted. “Just what every guy wants—a girl carrying him to the toilet.”
Realizing his throat was parched, Niko took the glass. He drank greedily until the water spilled down his chin. “Apologies,” he said, handing her the empty glass.
Wyatt used Niko’s bedsheets to dab at the water he had spilled on his chest.
Blue sat next to him on the bed. “You don’t remember anything?”
“I was fighting Cyrus, and then everything went dark. I don’t remember anything about the trip home. I must have been out for a while.”
“You got that right,” Wyatt said. “You’ve been asleep for over a month.”
“A month?” No wonder it felt like his muscles had atrophied. Niko surged forward when he remembered the final details of the attack. “Where’s Gem?”
“She’s okay.” Blue pushed at Niko’s shoulders. “She’s alive.”
Wyatt cleared his throat, and Niko noticed his light shift deceptively. They were communicating with head shakes and lip-reading. Niko had been around long enough to recognize the sound a person’s mouth made when shaping silent words.
“What’s going on?” he asked. “What are you keeping from me? Is she hurt?”
Blue’s voice dropped an octave. “She survived Cyrus. I really don’t think you should hear this right now. You just woke up.”
He reached out and gripped her arm tightly. “Tell me, because your light gives away so much more than your tongue wishes to reveal.”
“Maybe we need to wait for Viktor,” she said, backing away and pulling her arm from his grasp.
“We were about to pull the virtual plug,” Wyatt blurted. “After five weeks, Viktor had no answers. You were wasting away, and we didn’t think that was how you wanted to live.”
“Five weeks,” Niko mumbled as he lowered his head. He felt a tickle against his chest and reached up to discover a beard.
No. It wasn’t how he would have wanted to live. He felt ashamed at the very idea that his team had been changing his linens and nursing him.
“Yeah, five weeks,” Wyatt repeated. “Either we could feed you intravenously and keep you alive like a plant, or we could watch you starve and waste away to bones. That’s a hell of a lot worse than limbo.”
“What are you not telling me about Gem?”
Blue’s light briefly dimmed. “We had all come in here to say goodbye to you, but Gem didn’t show up. Then a few minutes ago, something bizarre happened. The earth shook, and we saw an explosion of light outside. Gem was at the back of the property, maybe wielding an energy ball that got out of control. After the explosion, Claude brought her inside, and then Viktor said you woke up. I don’t know what the hell’s going on.”
Niko’s blood went ice cold. The last thing he remembered was Gem casting a spell from the book. That spell must have put him to sleep. But for a month? What had woken him up?
A knock sounded at the door. “Strangest damn thing I’ve ever seen,” Christian remarked as he sauntered into the room. “Nothing but a pile of ashes out there… and this.” He held out something in his hand.
“What is that?” Wyatt asked.
Niko could see the object clearer than anything else in the room. Whatever Christian held contained Gem’s brilliant light. He recognized the deep amethyst hue and silver flashes. The light burned brighter than anyone else’s in the room, almost blinding him.
“It’s an opal,” Christian answered. “Not very big, but easy to spot with all that black shite everywhere. I found it lying on the ground. I’m not sure how opals form, but did you know that diamonds aren’t made from coal? Geologists believe they were formed in the earth’s mantle and brought up by volcanic eruptions. Do you think she made this with that ball of light?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Blue replied.
Niko reached out his hand. “Let me see it.”
“Afraid not. It’ll melt your skin clean off.”
Niko averted his eyes and thought about the five weeks that had come and gone. Gem must have been searching for a reversal spell. Why else would she have been apart from the team? He remembered how their hands had glowed. He remembered glimpsing an explosion of light before everything went dark. A spell was the only thing that could have had the power to wake him, but at what price? That book didn’t give without taking away. Niko believed in the balance of the universe.
Niko cleared his raspy throat. “Where is she?”
“Medical,” Blue answered.
Several familiar light sources entered the room, and Blue rose from the bed.
“Put her by the fire,” Viktor instructed them.
Niko stripped the blanket off his legs and leaned to the left as Claude—recognizable by his sage-colored light—set Gem on the floor. Her light was visibly depleted and barely covered the length of her body. He often saw that with victims of juicers but only when they were on the brink of death. She had no injuries that were apparent to him, but her hands were an ugly shade of orange.
“I have no time to explain details,” Viktor said in a rush. “Gem performed what I can only call Mage magic, and it was strong enough to wake Niko. We hired cleaners to take care of Cyrus and his men, but there was one more who was still alive.”
“Kallisto,” Niko said on a breath.
“Da. Kallisto. Now you all have his name. We turned him over to the higher authority, and they were keeping him in Breed jail. The facility is full, and they needed his cell. He has been unconscious this entire time, like you. They assumed it was safe to transport him, but I did not think of this before Gem and I made an agreement. I should have remembered. I’d assumed he would be behind bars.”
“Where did they take him?” Raven asked.
“They were on their way to a facility fifty miles west of Cognito but never made it that far. I received word that the van overturned. Everyone is dead except the prisoner, who is missing.”
Niko tried to move his legs, but they were too weak and heavy. “He’ll go to Cyrus’s home. What condition is it in? Did anyone clean up the blood?”
Viktor paced to the foot of the bed. “That is why we must go now, while he’s still in the city. The higher authority placed him on the top of the outlaw list. We cannot delay.”