Page 61 of Looking Grimm

He started pulling items out of the kit. Far from typical drugstore fare. There were, indeed, bandages and a roll of gauze wrap, but there were also bottles. Piles of them. All glass in a rainbow of colors. Some were labeled, others not. He heaped them on the bartop in a clinking, clattering mound before settling on one.

“Nash, we gotta hurry.” My attempt to speak clearly sounded more like a mumble.

Rather than answer, Nash thumbed the cork out of the vial, then thrust it at me. “Drink up.”

It was reddish purple and opaque, in a cut glass bottle shaped like a chandelier crystal. He’d said he had something for blood loss, but I didn’t expect it to be consumable. Maybe more like a cream or a powder he could pour on the knife wounds.

“What is it?” I asked.

Nash frowned. “Now is not the time to start vetting your drinks. Just trust me.”

With a hole through one hand and the other hanging limply at my side, I couldn’t take the offered bottle, so Nashput it to my lips. I bit it between my teeth, then threw my head back to empty it. The sudden motion tipped me backward as what blood I had left rushed my brain.

“Easy!” Nash caught the front of my shirt and jerked me upright. The barstool legs clunked against the floor.

He eyed me while the potion went to work. It might have helped, but it was hard to tell since slowing the blood loss did nothing to replenish what was already gone. And it was that absence that had me reeling.

Nash dug back into the medical kit, sorting through bottles till he produced another. It had a menacing, blue-black tone and was, predictably, unmarked. The way Nash raised it to the dim bar lights and regarded it grimly prompted me to draw a steeling breath before I reached for it.

“Might as well top her off,” I said, but Nash snatched the vial away.

“This is not for you.” He dropped it in his sweatpants pocket, still shirtless and making me wonder if he couldn’t have saved his business by offering some kind of drink and dance topless revue. He could serve drinks while flexing his pecs and rolling shaker bottles down his biceps. I was already sold.

“Why not for me?” I asked.

He closed the box but didn’t bother latching it or putting it back beneath the bar before taking two towels from the stack beside him and shaking them out. “It’ll make your heart race, which will make it pump blood, which is the last thing we want right now.” While he spoke, he knotted the towels together at both ends to form a loop.

“Why’d you get it, then?” I asked.

“Because I might need it if we’re gonna get out of here,” he said.

Stepping closer, Nash threw the towel ring around my neck, then took my dead arm and folded it through the makeshift sling. The coagulation concoction hadn’t put a dent in my pain level, and I failed to stifle a groan as his movements stretched the skin and muscles across my chest.

He fussed over it, spreading the terrycloth until my limp arm and hand were situated as securely as possible.

“You’re taking care of me,” I said, my voice distant.

The statement stirred him from concentration, and he met my eyes. His expression softened, but there was no denying the worry lurking behind his smile. “Of course, I am.”

He wrapped my cut palm with another clean towel, then closed my fingers to hold it in place. I watched him, overcome with a sense of gratitude that tugged at my dully thudding heart.

Nine years earlier

I was three blocks from the motel when the rain started. More than just rain, it was a full thunder-cracking, lightning-cutting-through-the-clouds storm that soaked me through in seconds. It blinded me, too, washing my mop of blond hair over my eyes so I had to sweep it away with an unsteady hand. My other palm pressed firmly to my thigh where my jeans were cut and stained with quickly spreading red. Theinvestigator’s bullet had grazed me, missing any vital veins or arteries, but you wouldn’t know it from the diluted blood that squished in my sneaker with every staggered step.

Sirens screamed in the near distance. I thought I’d lost them. Hoped I had because if I led the cops to Lazy Daze, Grimm would make me wish I’d died instead of just been lamed.

What should have been a short walk was excruciating with pain spiraling past my hip. Warmth slicked my fingers as I tried to compress the wound. I couldn’t push as hard as I needed to; it hurt too much, and it was slowing me down.

Across the dark, rain-streaked sky, red and blue lights flashed.

I swallowed a sob and tried to pick up the pace, thoroughly hobbled and swiping water and tears off my face. I hoped Donovan would be asleep but, at not yet midnight, I doubted it. He kept later hours than most eleven-year-olds, I imagined. Later than Dad ever let me stay up. But that was in a time of school days and summer camps and normalcy. Nothing about tromping through the rain to a motel room after failing to dodge a bullet was normal.

Shaking and cold, I sagged against the door to mine and Donovan’s room. Fumbling through my pockets yielded my keycard. My fingers smeared the white plastic with red and did the same to the doorknob as I turned it and shoved my way inside.

Palming the door left a gruesome handprint in my wake. I was likely trailing the stuff, too, filling up rain puddles like a breadcrumb trail the investigators would follow straight here. Then they’d have me cornered, and my brother would watch them put another bullet in me. This one in my brain.

The motel room was lit by only the television, beaming light across the bed where Donovan sprawled, munching ice chips. He was hungry. Always. And that would have been the first thing he said if he hadn’t gotten a look at me first.

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