Page 81 of The Fantastic Fluke

“He’ll be okay, ma’am,” Gideon assured her from my side.

In that moment, Iris proved to be the most adaptable person I’d ever met. She looked up at Gideon, paused for a mere fraction of a second at the realization that he was alive, then threw her arms around him. “Thank goodness you’re here, Gideon.”

He paused, eyes widening a bit, before returning the hug. “Of course I’m here. Can’t think of a single place I’d rather be.”

Once again, Jason gave me a gentle nudge in the direction of the gurney, but I stubbornly didn’t move. “Fluke,” I said to Gideon and Iris, and felt sick that I’d left him alone in the other room for so long, without even mentioning him to anyone. What the hell kind of mage was I, letting my familiar go so long without treatment? “She hit him with a baseball bat, and he’s hurt.”

Iris looked down at me, then back up at Gideon. “You go with Sage to the hospital, dear. I’ll get someone here to take care of Fluke, and then bring along anything you need as soon as possible.”

“Not leaving without Fluke,” I insisted, but she gave me an imperious glare, that... was actually pretty intimidating. I swallowed, but dammit, Fluke was—

“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re not doing him any good hurting yourself even more. I promise you; he’ll be fine.”

As though to prove her right, the fox himself limped into the room right then. My shoulders went slack out of sheer relief, unconsciously stretching a hand out in his direction. He was moving. He was okay. He made a tiny high whine with every step, but considering he was able to get onto three out of four feet and move, he was probably in better shape than me.

I finally let myself be helped onto the gurney, continuing to hold my hand out to Fluke as I got close enough. “You go with Grandma, okay, buddy? She’ll make sure you’re okay.”

Iris gave a tiny sniffle at being called grandma, even if I was talking to Fluke. “We’ll join you in the hospital before you know it,” she told me, softly stroking Fluke’s head. “You just focus on being okay, sweetheart. You’re my favorite grandson; you’ve got to get better.”

This time when Jason loaded me into the ambulance, Gideon was at my side.

“No wonder you didn’t seem interested in the quaesitor’s flirting,” Jason whispered to me. Then he seemed to recall that he’d just seen that very man dead on the floor of my kitchen, and went quiet, biting his lip.

I managed to reach out for Gideon’s hand, and he took it and squeezed.

“Damn right he wasn’t interested in that flirty Aureum bastard,” Gideon agreed. “He’s spoken for. And I’m sorry I wasn’t there last night. That’s never going to happen again. I’m here now.”

* * *

By the timeIris and Fluke joined us in the hospital, Fluke’s leg in a bright yellow cast, she had somehow procured a legal identity for Gideon.

“It’s Marsh, not Knight,” he told her, looking confusedly at the birth certificate that named him Gideon Knight and said he had been born in nineteen-seventy-nine.

She shrugged it off. “It’s Knight now, dear. I didn’t know, and we needed it done immediately. Besides,”—she looked around, making sure there were no eavesdroppers at the hospital room’s door, then turned back to us—“on the chance that the people that man worked for know who Gideon Marsh was, it’s for the best we don’t use that name.”

I suspected Gideon alone would be enough to get their attention, with his name and his, um, person, but it didn’t seem worth an argument. Besides, Knight fit him well enough. I reached out and squeezed his fingers. “It’s very you, my knight in shining armor.”

Gideon scoffed in disgust. “Right. Leaving you to almost get killed by that Merton woman twice. I’m a real protector.”

“You were there when I needed you.” I looked at Iris, then down at Fluke. “You all were. I think I’d be dead now without any one of you.” It was overwhelming, since just weeks earlier none of them had been a part of my life. And yet, the very thought of living without them now made my breath catch and my stomach churn.

Iris waved me off. “Them, sure, but—”

“That book you loaned me.The Spark? That was how I brought Gideon back. If he hadn’t been there, he couldn’t have saved me,” I pointed out to her.

She beamed at me, drawing her shoulders up. “I didn’t think it was possible, but I so hoped that you could manage it. Your mother always talked about the potential the magic had.”

“He’d have been the only one who would even try,” Gideon said with a chuckle. “Who else would have read a book that said ‘here’s a thing that don’t work’ and think, ‘but what if it did?’ ”

I shrugged, then winced when my whole body throbbed in pain. Fluke leapt up onto the bed next to me as though he weren’t wearing a cast on his front left leg, and lay across me. Something unwound in my chest to have him there. My life wasn’t quite right anymore if I didn’t have Fluke sprawled across me and Gideon smiling down at us in bemusement.

Iris gave us a soft smile, then turned to Gideon. “We should let them rest. In the meantime, we can discuss having a stable put up on Sage’s property. Your familiar will need a place, after all.”

I drifted off to sleep as they talked about just how much room Marron was going to need. Holy hell. Gideon had ahorse. I’d thought a fox was a big responsibility.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Gideon sniffed the lid of the cardboard pizza box for the fifth or sixth time as we walked down the sidewalk toward the bookstore, and I hid my smile.

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