Page 56 of Bite of Passage
The cantankerous asshole who’d raised him had probably tried to attack her or kill her, even as a dead spirit.“He was a pisser in life.He hated witches and anything not human.The one thing he despised more than them were his own sons for allowing ourselves to be turned into what we are now.He’d rather we suicided ourselves.”
As if they’d had a choice.He and Cade had been captured and turned.Forced into eternal death.
“Enough.”Petra’s face flushed red.“Give me the crystal or I’ll get nasty.”
“It’s not here.”The sense this was preordained left him chilled.He shouldn’t have let Gemma keep the crystal, but he hadn’t considered that one of the crystals Petra sought might be his.Serish was right, damn it.Gemma was as much at risk in her world as his.At least here he could try to mitigate the threats to her.There?She was alone.No magic.No weapons.
He despised making severe strategic errors.
The need to rant and kill something thrummed through him.
Keeping emotion off his face he asked, “What does you getting nasty entail?Do you plan to try to kill me?Cast a spell on me?Or try to seduce me?”
“Where is it?”
“I don’t know.I gave it away.It wasn’t important to me.”
Her eyelids drifted closed.Her hands clenched as if reining in her frustration before it overwhelmed her.“To whom did you give it?”
He shrugged.“Some girl who thought it was pretty.I don’t even remember her name.”
She sucked in her cheeks, which made her look like a fish.“That’s a lie.You knew I wanted it and gave it away to keep it from me.Where did it go?”
“Is this the summation of your visit?No attempt to seduce me or stab me with a knife this time?You want a crystal.”He sighed.“How boring.I thought you might provide more entertainment.”
“I’ll find it.”She stormed past him but paused for dramatic effect before leaving.“Even if it’s not in this realm, I’ll get it.If I have to pry some woman’s dead fingers off it, it will be mine.”
ChapterTwenty-Three
Fourteen days.
Three hundred and thirty-six hours since the moment Gemma had come back through the mirror into her normal life.It’d probably been weeks for Skarde.She closed the calculator app and put the cell phone down on her office desk.She shouldn’t have plugged in the numbers again.The reminder pushed her overactive mind into further despair.
She massaged her achy feet.Lunch had come and gone two hours ago.She’d forced herself to take this break in order to survive the last four hours of her shift.It was a bad vein day for her, which meant she couldn’t hit a vein to place a catheter or draw blood from a patient, no matter how many times she had done so before.Everyone had days when the blood gods hated them.She put her head on the desk.Her mind worked circles around her trouble placing the catheter in her last patient.Had it been the reason the stroke victim died?Had she failed to get IV access fast enough?
She’d checked the DVD every single night.No new episode.A re-watch of all four episodes induced sobs by the end, so she stopped watching them.
A fellow nurse on the ward stuck her head into the shared nurse station.“Tough day?”
“Yeah.”
“Your hair looks good with the red highlights.”
“Thanks.I needed a change.”She didn’t lose any length when she had it highlighted yesterday.“I was stressed it’d be too bright, but it came out okay.”
“It’s perfect.Have you lost weight?”
“Maybe a bit.”
“Well, it works.I’ve got fifteen minutes to grab lunch.See you in a few.”
Gemma stared at the uneaten sandwich on her desk.Her ass was way down from eating less, not that she’d been on a diet.She simply had no appetite for anything.Pining for him wasn’t healthy, as Val had pointed out yesterday—not that recognizing it as a problem helped.She dreamed about him.Every time, the dream got right up to the moment when he’d almost have sex with her, and then it ended.It never moved beyond that point.
Her conclusion was she needed therapy to move past him.Her first appointment yesterday afternoon hadn’t gone well.The therapist seemed understanding right up until she admitted to being in love with a fictional vampire.Then everything got weird.The lady made her say out loud, “Everything took place in my imagination.”
If only she was a loony tune with an overactive imagination, then this would be tolerable.She wrapped her fingers around the crystal still hanging around her neck.
She had been there.She pulled up her sleeve to stare at the scar where the arrow had pierced her upper arm.Healed, but real.Very real.Fantasies didn’t cause scars.
